“The earth,” said he, “is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look up there.”
Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent and the stars were coming out above.
“Yonder star,” said Dabster, “is Venus, the evening star. She is 66,000,000 miles from the sun.”
“Fudge!” said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, “where do you think I come from—Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store—her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco—that’s only three thousand miles.”
The philosopher smiled indulgently.
“Our world,” he said, “is 91,000,000 miles from the sun. There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,000,000 stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us. Each of these stars—”
“You’re lyin’,” cried Daisy, angrily. ‘“You’re tryin’ to scare me. And you have; I want to go down!”
She stamped her foot.
“Arcturus—” began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrupted by a demonstration out of the vast-
