Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1885 — A Few Words About the Moon. [ARTICLE]

A Few Words About the Moon.

Whenever the scientific world begins to feel as though it ought to pull oft* its coat and buckle right down to business, and do something to earn its salary, it swings around the telescope, takes a few squints at the moon, and then proceeds to announce with great gravity that oiir satellite is as dead as a lamppost, but the repetition of this startling information never seems to have the slightest effect on the price of wheat or the amount of sparking done within a given radius. The moon may be dead, and it may not; but whether such or otherwise, there is no use in reviling it on account of a condition that it can’t help, any more than St. Louis is to blame for not being up to the chin in business enterprise. It is the only moon we’ve got, and we are in no hurry to swsip it off and take the chances in being beaten in the trade. It has given satisfaction to all people who have roamed about under its effulgent beams talking of impossible things that never happen, and figuring up the cost of matrimony and its attendant troubles, and if it suits them the scientific people have no business to be running it down, and doing all in their power to make folks dissatisfied with it. For all we know it may be as good as any other moon in the business, and we have no assurance that it would give any more light to the square inch if it was red hot and fairly boiling with business. We fail to discover"wherein it would be of any more value to us if every portion of its surface was selling readily in the open market at fifteen hundred dollars a front foot. As a place of residence Chicago does hot take a back seat for anything on earth or in the sky ; and if those scientific speculators who are so persistently bearing moon stock were to suddenly swing over to the bull side and thunder out the announcement that the moon was full of snap and crowded with life, we feel positive that scarcely anybody would be in mad haste to go there. Nothing but the positive knowledge that its crust was pure gold and two miles thick would be likely to create a stampede of emigration from this quarter, and even then we are not sure that the rush would be sufficient to attract more than passing attention. Astronomers have been of some service to the world, in fishing from the blue ether information that comes handy when yon want to trim a pig’s ears or vaccinate a child; but we don’t like this incessant meddling with the moon, simply because it happens to be our nearest neighbor, and has a lot of unsightly rubbish in the' back yard. Moonlight is a luxury that we get free of cost, and we ought to be thankful for it. If Luna were in the hands of a gas company we’d have to come down handsome or go without a glimmer. We can’t persuade the moon to be a sun, and we don’t want to. Sunlight during the day is enough. There’s no use in being hoggish about anything. If we had to have it all night as well, it would keep us humping to identify Sunday and avoid chipping into it on both sides. Other troubles would also follow. Lodge night would never come, and no insignificant fraction of the general population would have to buy their chickens or put up with bacon. It is best as it is, and the star-piercers had better rest content and let the moon boss its own picnic. Some people may object to the moon because it is changeable, but that’s all right when you get used to it, and the more you think about it the better you like it. If we had moonlight every night in the week some young people would walk themselves to death, and you would never know where to find a hirled girl after sundown. True, it might save coal and gas in the kitchen, but if they had to perambulate diumally the greater part of the night it would be tough on shoe-leather, and they would have to have more wages, and this would offset the gain hmted at above. It wouldn’t do to have a changeless moon at all. Everything would get into a mMSIe at once. ’"Our good brother with the burs on his pants would never know when to plant his pumpkin seed or pull his turnips, and agriculture would throw up its hands and go under. Not only that, but you might look over your left shoulder till you Became hopelessly cross-eyed, and not get a speck of good luck for your trouble. We can’t get along withi out change in the moon any more than Jwe can without it in the pocket. The ! moon may be dead, but, if so, it is like I the Irishman’s headless snake': it doesn’t know it, and keeps up the motion just j the same, as steadily as a hired man. ! Revile the moon as we may, there is no • getting around the fact that ibis steady in its habits, and never gets too full to navigate, if it don’t go home till morning sometimes. It is always on deck to the second when the time comes due for it to go on trick again, and it stays there and goes over its beat with a faithfulness that might shame the best of policemen.— Chicago Ledger.