To the true lover of the stars, one universe or a million makes not a whit of difference. The silent song of the heavens is as sweet today, its mystery as alluring, its delights more marvelous, than in the days of yore when planets rolled out heavenly notes and stars shone through the seven spheres of pure, translucent crystal. CHAPTER X ALONG THE MILKY WAY THE MILKY WAY ONE of the loveliest, and most amazing, phenomena of the heavens is the Milky Way. In olden times, imagination ran riot as to just what this luminous band of light could be. It was almost as great a mystery as the tides, which were called the "grave of curiosity." Fully equal to solving the problem to their own satisfaction, even as they did the motion of the stars, the ancient people considered that here, perhaps, was a crack or seam where the two halves of heaven were imperfectly joined thus giving to earth a glimpse of the glory beyond the darkness. "Whether the skies grown old here shrink their frame, And through the chinks admit an upper Flame, Or whether here the heaven's two Halves are joyn'd, But oddly clos'd, still leave a Seam behind." --_Manilius._ In ancient Judea it was imagined as a Long Bandage wrapped around the heavens. Others thought that the Milky Way was not an imperfection in the floor of heaven but a pathway left open for the angels. A French legend has it the glimmering of lights held by angels to guide mortals on their way to heaven. Some of the tribes of American Indians have a legend somewhat like the French legend for they, too, thought that it was a road on which souls journeyed to their "happy hunting ground." The large stars, on either side of the road, were camp fires which cheered and warmed the travelers on their way. Aristotle imagined that this misty arch of light was the result of gaseous exhalations which had risen from the earth and now rested between the region of the ether and that of the planets. "The stars, and Sun himself, as some have said By exhalations from the deep are fed." --_Lucan's Pharsalia._ Posidonious thought that it was a compound of fire less dense than that of the stars but more luminous. Still others fancifully considered it to be the course of the sun-chariot after Phæthon had lost control of his horses and that along here were the imprints of the hot hoofs and the ruts scorched by the fiery wheels. A more modern legend of Swedish origin tells of the construction of the Milky Way by two lovers who were mourning for each other on separate stars. After toiling a thousand years they built this "bridge of starry light" which spanned the space between the two stars and enabled them to once more be united.