We have not very far to travel before reaching her,--merely about two hundred and forty thousand miles. That is nothing, compared with the weary millions of miles which we have had to cross to visit some members of our family. A rope two hundred and forty thousand miles long would fold nearly ten times round the earth at the equator. You know the earth’s diameter--about eight thousand miles. If you had thirty poles, each eight thousand miles long, and could fasten them all together, end to end, one beyond another, you would have a rod long enough to reach from the earth to the moon. Let us take a good look at her before starting. She is very beautiful. That soft silvery light, so unlike sunlight or gaslight, or any other kind of light seen upon earth, has made her the darling of poets and the delight of all who love nature. Little children like to watch her curious markings, and to make out the old man with his bundle of sticks, or the eyes, nose, and mouth of the moon--not dreaming what those markings really are. And in moods of sadness, how the pure calm moonlight seems to soothe the feelings! Who would suppose that the moon’s beauty is the beauty rather of death than of life? [Illustration: APPEARANCE OF THE FULL MOON.] The stars have not much chance of shining through her bright rays. It is well for astronomers that she is not always at the full. But when she is, how large she looks--quite as large as the sun, though in reality her size, compared with his, is only as a very small pin’s head compared with a school globe two feet in diameter. Her diameter is little more than two thousand miles, or one quarter that of our earth; and her whole surface, spread out flat, would scarcely equal North and South America, without any of the surrounding islands. The reason she looks the same size as the sun, is that she is so very much nearer. The sun’s distance from us is more than one-third as many _millions_ of miles as the moon’s distance is _thousands_ of miles. This makes an enormous difference. We call our friend a “moon,” and say that she journeys round the earth, while the earth journeys round the sun. This is true, but it is only part of the truth. Just as certainly as the earth travels round the sun, so the moon also travels round the sun. And just as surely as the earth is a planet, so the moon also is a planet. It is a common mode of expression to talk about “the earth and her satellite.” A no less correct, if not more correct, way would be to talk of ourselves as “a pair of planets,” journeying round the same sun, each pulled strongly towards him, and each pulling the other with a greater or less attraction, according to her size and weight. For the sun actually does draw the moon with more force than that with which the earth draws her. Only as he draws the earth with the same sort of force, and nearly in the same degree, he does not pull them apart.