You would laugh to know why I enjoy stars so much. I have always studied birds and flowers and trees and rocks and shells so much that I was afraid to get interested in stars. I thought it wouldn't rest me. But it's a totally different kind of science from any I ever studied! There are no families, genera, and species among the stars, thank Heaven! That's one reason they refresh me. Another is that no one can press them and put them in a herbarium, or shoot them and put them in a museum. And another thing about them that brings balm to my spirit is that no human being can destroy their beauty. No one can "sub-divide" Capella and fill it with tenements. No one can use Vega for a bill-board. Ah, well! we must not be disturbed if every member of our family has a different point of view toward the stars; we can all enjoy and love them in our own ways. How would you like to start a Star Club like ours? You ought to be able to persuade your family to form one, because it need not cost a cent. Perhaps this book will interest them all, but the better way is for you to read about one constellation and then go out with some of the family and find it. This book does not tell about wonderful things you can never see; it tells about the wonderful things all of us can see. I wish you success with your Star Club. Perhaps your uncles and aunts will start clubs, too. We have three Star Clubs in our family--one in New York, one in Michigan, and one in Colorado. Last winter the "Colorado Star Gazers" sent this challenge to the "New Jersey Night-Owls:" "_We bet you can't see Venus by daylight!_" That seemed possible, because during that week the "evening star" was by far the brightest object in the sky. But father and daughter searched the sky before sunset in vain, and finally we had to ask the "Moonstruck Michiganders" how to see Venus while the sun was shining. Back came these directions on a postal-card: "Wait until it is dark and any one can see Venus. Then find some tree, or other object, which is in line with Venus and over which you can just see her. Put a stake where you stand. Next day go there half an hour before sunset, and stand a little to the west. You will see Venus as big as life. The next afternoon you can find her by four o'clock. And if you keep on you will see her day before yesterday!" That was a great "stunt." We did it; and there are dozens like it you can do. And that reminds me that father was mistaken about our interest lasting only two years. We know that it will not die till we do. For, even if we never get a telescope, there will always be new things to see. Our club has still to catch Algol, the "demon's eye," which goes out and gleams forth every three days, because it is obscured by some dark planet we can never see. And we have never yet seen Mira the wonderful, which for some mysterious reason dies down to ninth magnitude and then blazes up to second magnitude every eleventh month.