And now you will guess at once, that, if it is not fire itself, it must shine from the sun's fire; and that is right. The moon itself is cold and dark. It is the light of the sun that makes it look bright to us. We might call it the sun's looking-glass, in which we see his image or reflection. But we cannot at all times see the whole of it. When we do, we call it a full moon, and, when we see only the edge of it, we say it is a new moon. The moon itself does not change its shape. It is always round, like an orange--a dark round ball, which we should never see at all, if the sun did not light it up for us; and it is only a part of the time we can see the side which is lighted up. Which do you suppose is the larger,--the moon, or the stars? Now I know you will say the moon, because it looks so much larger; but you must remember that the stars are so far away, we can hardly see them at all, and the moon is our own moon, and much nearer to us than our own sun. We can see more of it than we can see of the stars; but it is a very small thing indeed, compared with one of them. It would take about fifty moons to make one such earth as we live on, and it would take more earths than you can count to make one star or sun. M. E. R. THE ROBBERY. I MUST tell you of something that happened one day last summer, when I was at the Zoölogical Garden in Philadelphia. Among the persons standing around the cage where the monkeys were kept, was an old lady who had on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. All at once, a big brown monkey stretched out his paw between the bars, snatched the spectacles, and scampered away, chattering and grinning with delight. Of course, the poor lady was in distress. The keeper came to the rescue, and, by driving the monkey about the cage with a long pole, forced him at last to drop the spectacles. But one of the glasses had come out of it; and this the thief still held in his mouth, and refused to give up. [Illustration] The keeper followed him sharply with the pole. Away he went, swinging from one rope to another, screaming and scolding all the time, until the keeper was so tired, that I feared he would have to let the monkey keep the glass. But this the keeper said would never do; for he knew, that, if he let the monkey carry the day, he never could control him again. So the keeper still plied his pole. The monkey dodged it as well as he could, until the blows came so thick and fast, that he could bear them no longer, when he opened his mouth, and let the glass drop. Now comes the funniest part of the story. The glass fell quite near the bars, just where the old lady was standing; and a gentleman took her parasol, which had a hooked handle, to draw it within reach. But he put the parasol in a little too far, and it slipped out of his hand.