One evening last autumn I was coming up Broadway, New York, with a friend, when we encountered at Union Square a man with a six-inch telescope directed toward the eastern sky. He was soliciting those who passed to stop and look at Mars and Saturn. Both of these planets were then very bright. They were also fairly near together, and so low in the east that one could scarcely help seeing them. But the people passed back and forth with hardly so much as a glance at the man and his telescope, and for the most part never even raised their eyes to the sky with a passing curiosity to see what it might be that he wanted to show them. My friend and I stopped and took each a view first of Mars and then of Saturn. While we were looking at the planets, a few of the passers-by began to loiter about, half smiling at us for so playing in public, slightly curious to see how we were faring at it, but for the most part apparently indifferent to what we were seeing. We had a fine view of Saturn lightly resting in his nest of rings, and an equally good view of the comical “eye” of Mars. After we had finished, one or two others, evidently prompted by our example, followed us at the telescope. One or two inquired of us what the stars were that had so interested us, and one, pointing to Mars, wanted to know if it was Venus. As the crowd grew larger a few more ventured to take a look, much as they might venture to take their chance at hitting the bull’s-eye in some shooting-gallery. With the telescope pointed at Saturn, the man droningly chanted: “This planet is 887,000,000 miles from the sun. The ring you see is 170,000 miles in diameter,” and so on. These, to be sure, were the facts--and most marvelous facts, too--but without much meaning to one who knows nothing much about the planets; and the manner of their recital certainly did not make them alluring. I could not myself help feeling that the people there were missing a valuable opportunity, and that it would be only fair to them for some one fairly to cry out: “Come here and look at this planet. It is different from anything else you have ever seen or ever will see. It was at one time a part of the same nebulous mass that we were a part of. It is in the same system of worlds with us. It was formed in the same way that this world was formed. It is in itself the most wonderful thing you ever saw, and it is bound, as we are, to the sun by the ever-drawing tie of gravitation. The very position of our own world in space is more or less influenced by it. If anything should happen to it, it might be a serious matter to us.”