The Moon: A Popular Treatise

ONE serene evening, when the full moon, rising slowly above the tree tops, began to spread over the landscape that peculiar radiance which, by half revealing and half concealing, by softening all outlines, and by imparting a certain mystery to the most familiar objects, fascinates at once the eye and the imagination, I was walking with a friend, a lady of charming intelligence, in a private park adjoining an old mansion in one of the most beautiful districts of central New York. For a long time we both remained silent, admiring the scene before us, so different in every aspect from its appearance in the glare of daylighteach occupied with the thoughts that such a spectacle suggests. Suddenly my friend turned to me and said: "Tell mefor, like so many thousand others, I am virtually ignorant of these mysteries of the skytell me, what is that moon? What do astronomers really know about it?" "But," I replied, "you certainly exaggerate your ignorance. You must have read what so many books have told about the moon." "Not a word," was the reply, "or at least, what I have read has made little impression upon my mind. I read few books of science; generally they repel me. But face to face with that marvelous moon, I find it irresistible, and my desire for knowledge concerning it becomes intense. I remember something about eclipses, and something about tides, with which, I believe, the moon is concerned. I recall the statement that the moon has no atmosphere, but does possess great mountains and volcanoes. Yet these things are so jumbled in my memory with technical statements which failed to interest me, that really my ignorance remains profound. But I have heard that many surprising discoveries have been made lately concerning the moon, and that astronomers have succeeded in taking wonderful photographs of scenes in the lunar world. I have, indeed, seen copies of some of these photographs, but beyond awaking curiosity by their bizarreeffects of light and shadow, they impressed me little, for lack, I suppose, of information as to their meaning. I beg you, then, to tell me what is really known about the world of the moon. There it is; I see it; I experience the delightful impressions which its light producesbut, after all, what is it, and what should we behold if we could go there? I once read Jules Verne's romance of a trip to the moon, but unfortunately his adventurers never really got there, and I finished the story with a keen sense of disappointment because, in the end, he told so very little about the moon itself. As for the professional books of the astronomers they are useless to me. Then, please tell me that which, at this moment, with that wonderful orb actually in sight, I so much desire to know." It was not possible to resist an appeal so earnestly urged, but I felt compelled to say:"Since you remember so little about the fundamental facts which generations of astronomers have accumulated concerning our nearest neighbor in the sky, I must, for the sake of completeness, and in order to put you au courant with the more captivating things that will come later, begin at the beginning, and the true beginning is not among the mountains of the moon, but here on the earth. We must start from our own globeas the moon herself did."

Dettagli