Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/227

 not propose that the kindergarten shall be a substitute for the mother; but it tries to provide for the little ones a beautiful home, where they may enjoy the sympathetic affection of a true woman's heart, and have at the same time the advantages of the culture of a trained educator. It is only when the child's nature opens to the light that its complete life grows; it is only when the child's heart is happy that its mind is free. In the true kindergarten no woman can find a place whose heart is not young, whose life is not pure, and whose aims are not unselfish. Love is the greatest controlling force and the greatest intellectual stimulus.

 

F the pure and elevated pleasure to be derived from the possession and use of a good telescope of three, four, five, or six inches aperture were generally known, I am certain that no instrument of science would be more commonly found in the homes of intelligent people. The writer, when a boy, discovered unexpected powers in a pocket telescope not more than fourteen inches long when extended, and magnifying ten or twelve times. It became his dream, which was afterward realized, to possess a more powerful telescope, a real astronomical glass, with which he could see the beauties of the double stars, the craters of the moon, the spots on the sun, the belts and satellites of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the extraordinary shapes of the nebulæ, the crowds of stars in the Milky Way, and the great stellar clusters. And now he would do what he can to persuade others, who perhaps are not aware how near at hand it lies, to look for themselves into the wonder-world of the astronomers.

There is only one way in which you can be sure of getting a good telescope. First, decide how large a glass you are to have, then go to a maker of established reputation, fix upon the price you are willing to pay—remembering that good work is never cheap—and finally see that the instrument furnished to you answers the proper tests for a telescope of its size. There are telescopes and telescopes. Occasionally a rare combination of perfect homogeneity in the material, complete harmony between the two kinds of glass of which the objective is composed, and lens surfaces whose curves are absolutely right, produces a telescope whose owner would part with his last dollar sooner than with it. Such treasures of the lens-maker's art can not, perhaps, be 