And finally _we_ have perpetuated the illogical system of absolutely reversing nature’s rule in the succession of the seasons by making the year begin about nine days after the Winter Solstice. But in spite of calendars and laws nature prevails, and everybody instinctively feels that the true beginning of the year is in the season when the currents of life resume their youthful flow. At any rate, however it may be with strictly terrestrial affairs, that is the time when the call of the stars becomes the most insistent and irresistible. Accordingly the epoch of the Vernal Equinox is chosen for our opening chapter. But the reader at the commencement of his star-gazing is not confined to this season; he can begin at any time convenient to him. To avoid misapprehension it is important to point out that our concern is not with that half of the heavens which the sun illumines when he crosses the equator, coming north, at the Vernal Equinox, but with the diametrically opposite half, where in countless multitudes shine his fellow suns--his peers, his inferiors, and his superiors--turning physical night into intellectual day. Accordingly, in Chart I we see not that part of the sky which contains the point called the Vernal Equinox, but the opposite part, where the sun pursues his course when he is declining from the Summer Solstice toward the Autumnal Equinox. The chart represents the appearance of the sky at 10 P.M. on the 20th of March (see Introduction). It also represents the sky as it appears about 11.30 P.M. at the beginning of March, about 9 P.M. the first week of April, and 8 P.M. about April 20th. Let us, then, near one of these dates and hours, go out-of-doors and transport ourselves to the universe. Why does not everybody feel the thrill that comes to the astronomer when, with eager expectation, he watches the fading sunset light, the slow withdrawal of the vast curtain of illuminated air which for twelve hours has hidden the prodigious marvel of the spangled heavens, and the first peering forth of the great stars? I believe that everybody _does_ feel it when he gives himself the opportunity and abandons his mind to its own reflections--but so few embrace the opportunity or encourage the reflections!