Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — “Falling Stars.” [ARTICLE]

“Falling Stars.”

“A little boy waa dreaming, Upon his-nnne's lap, That the pins fell out of aH the stem, And the stars fell into his cap. So, when hia dream waa over, What could that little boy do? Why, he went and looked inside hia cap— And found it wasn’t true.” If that little boy had been wide awake, and out of doors, with a cap on his head, instead of dreaming in hjs nurse’s lap, don’t you think he might really have seen a star fall out of the skyt Haven’t you all seen one many a time ? But you would never dream that those blazing suns, the stars, are pinned into the sky, and that they might tumble into your cap if the pins fell out. You know better than that; but do you know what does happen when a star falls ? We say, “A star falls,” because what we see falling look to us like a star; but it really is no more like a starthan a lump of coal. If we should see a piece of blazing coal falling through the air, we might be foolish enough to tbink that, too, was a star. And what we call a shooting-star is, perhaps, more like a lump of coal on fire than like anything else you know of. Sometimes these shooting stars fall to to the ground, and are picked up and found to be rocks. How do you suppose they take fire? It is by'striking against the air which is around our earth. They come from nobody knows where, and are no more on fire than any rock - is, . until they fall into our air; and that sets them blazing, just as a match lights when you rub it against something. These meteors, as they are called, do not often fall to theground; only the very large ones last until they reach the earth'; most of them burn-up on their way down. I think that is lucky, because they might at any time fall into some little boy’s cap and spoil it, and might even fall on his head, if they were in the habit erf falling anywhere. That little boy who thought the stars were only pinned in their pl aces must have felt very uneasy. I don’t wonder that he dreamed about them. Once in a great while, a shower of meteors rains down upon, the earth; and sometimes many of them can be seen falling from the sky, and horning up in the air. The fall of the-year is tfte best time for meteors; but you will be pretty sure to see one any evening you choose to look for it, and, perhaps, on the Fourth of July one of them will celebrate the day by bunting like a rocket, as they sometimes do.— Nursery.