Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/112

66 watches over them, or still more practically as the " Singer" who rides before the procession cheering on the camels, which last were represented by the Pleiades. They also called it "the Guardian of the Pleiades."

Capella is a singularly beautiful object, and lies nearer the Pole than any other of the first magnitude stars. It rises almost exactly in the north-east, and July is the only month in the year when it is not visible in these latitudes sometime before midnight.

Seen in the cool evenings of early fall, flashing its wonderful prismatic rays from the low eastern sky, it seems like a herald of old announcing the coming of a mighty host, the brilliant stellar pageant that graces our clear winter nights, and renders them gorgeous with light and life.

Mrs. Martin thus refers to the rising of this famous star, a star which Tennyson designates as "a glorious crown": "When you watch the birds congregating in noisy flocks in the morning for the fall migration, and in the afternoon gather the first fringed gentians, look for Capella in the north-eastern sky in the evening... the fair, golden, bright Capella, that decks the sky in its season. We follow it in its course visible to us across the heavens, we joy in its beauty, and feel the kindly influence that astrologers have always ascribed to it."

Eudosia thus alludes to the brilliance of Capella:

Capella means "the little she-goat," the goat which suckled the infant Jupiter. The story runs that having in his play broken off one of the goat's horns, Jupiter endowed the horn with the power of being filled with whatever the possessor might wish, whence it was called "the Cornucopia," or "horn of plenty." This title is also applied to the horn of Capricornus the Sea Goat.