The incredibly absurd story of Joshua’s commanding the sun to stand still for several hours has a rational explanation, regarded as a myth, well known to initiates to set forth the correction of the calendar, so as to make different periods correspondras one stops a clock to make it agree with the ringing of the standard time by the town bell. There are scores of parallels in ancient history. Regard Solomon as a sun-myth, and you have no difficulty about the size of his family. The seven hundred wives and the three hundred concubines represented so many stars. Even the narratives of David’s exploits with the five kings, his “unpleasantness” with Saul, and his dalliance and intrigue with Bathsheba yield to the astro-mythological key. The same is true of the story of the two she-bears that ate up the forty-two children who called shorn Elisha “bald-head.” The prophet was the Sun, denuded of his curls at a certain astronomical period; the two bears were the constellations _Ursa Major and Ursa Minor_, the great bear and the little bear; and the forty-two children were a group of stars covered by the two bears, so that, figuratively, it might be said they were “eaten up.” And yet the late Dr. Nehemiah Adams of Boston once exclaimed: “I believe that the forty-two children who made fun of the bald head of the prophet of God are now in hell.” He once wrote an admirable book entitled _Agnes; or, The Little Key,_ but he failed to find the skeleton key to unlock the solar fable of the prophet, the saucy little children, and the voracious bears.