ter of solidity, yet it is amply firm for all practical purposes.
A negro who fell out of the tower of a twelve-story building while
trying to clean the upper window by drinking a quart of alcohol and then
breathing hard on the glass, says that he regards the earth as perfectly
solid, and safe to do business on for years to come. He claims that
those who maintain that the earth's crust is only 2,500 miles in
thickness have not thoroughly tested the matter by a system of practical
experiments.

The poles of the earth are merely imaginary. I hate to print this
statement in a large paper in such a way as to injure the reputation of
great writers on this subject who still cling to the theory that the
earth revolves upon large poles, and that the aurora borealis is but
the reflection from a hot box at the north pole, but I am here to tell
the truth, and if my readers think it disagreeable to read the truth,
what must be my anguish who have to tell it? The mean diameter of the
earth is 7,916 English statute miles, but the actual diameter from pole
to pole is a still meaner diameter, being 7,899 miles, while the
equatorial diameter is 7,925-1/2 miles.

The long and patient struggle of our earnest and tireless geographers
and savants in past years in order to obtain these figures and have them
exact, few can fully realize. The long and thankless job of measuring
the diameter of the earth, no matter what the weather might be, away
from home and friends, footsore and weary, still plodding on, fatigued
but determined to know the mean diameter of the earth, even if it took a
leg, measuring on for thousands of weary miles, and getting farther and
farther away from home, and then forgetting, perhaps, how many thousand
miles they had gone, and being compelled to go back and measure it over
again while their noses got red and their fingers were benumbed. These,
fellow-citizens, are a few of the sacrifices that science has made on
our behalf in order that we may not grow up in ignorance. These are a
few of the blessed privileges which, along with life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, are ours--ours to anticipate, ours to
participate, ours to precipitate.

[Illustration]

FRANCISCO PIZARRO'S CAREER.

BORN IN SHAME AND REARED AMONG SWINE, HE CONQUERS FAME AND FORTUNE IN
PERU WITH THE SWORD--HISTORY OF A SELF-MADE MAN.

BILL NYE.

Perhaps the history of the western hemisphere has never furnished a more
wonderful exa