Next time the beautiful moonlight nights come, remember, as you watch all these changes, that this "waxing" and "waning" of the moon comes to pass, not because she really changes her shape, but because, as she goes round the earth, we see sometimes more, sometimes less of the bright part which is lit up by the sun. The moon is dark in herself, like our earth; not like the sun, and those stars which shine by their own glorious light; if she had light of her own, it would be full moon every night; but all that soft brightness which makes everything look so beautiful in the quiet moonlight, really comes from the sun. When the sun has gone down, as it were, into the sea, or has disappeared behind some distant mountain, how do you know that there _is_ any sun? Look at the moon "walking in brightness," and remember that it is only as the light of the absent sun falls upon her and is reflected from her face (just as Chrissie said he had often seen the light of the setting sun thrown back from the windows) that she can shine at all. [Illustration: "YON CRESCENT MOON, A GOLDEN BOAT, HANGS DIM BEHIND THE TREE, O!"] Little children love the moon. I have seen a baby who could hardly speak, clasp her tiny hands and call out, "Have it! have it!" as she saw it glow like a lamp behind the trees; and we do not lose this love as we grow older. When we remember that the sun is four hundred times farther away from us than the moon, it makes our earth's silent companion seem very near by comparison; but still you will not think the journey to the moon a short one, when I tell you that if you could travel through the fields of air, rushing along in a fast train, never stopping day or night, it would be eight months before you got to your journey's end. And when you did get there you would have arrived at a more desolate country than you ever dreamed of--a place much like what we might imagine our earth would have become if there were no water, no air (for if there is air, it is so thin that no creature like any we know could breathe it), no greenness or beauty, though there might be scenery grand in its awfulness. Have you ever looked through a telescope at the moon? I have. Last summer I was staying at a seaside town, and one evening I noticed a crowd gathered on the sands. As I came nearer, I found that a man was showing the moon and planets through his telescope to any who wished to see what they could see. He was selling peeps through the telescope, which was a pretty good-sized one, at a penny a peep. Now, though I had read a great deal about the moon, and had seen in books photographs of what are called lunar landscapes, I had never once had a chance of looking at her face through anything but a bit of smoked glass, at the time of an eclipse.