s
aisles and all your listening shores for the man that wandered there?

Is it begun? Not yet. The kitchen clock has but just struck eleven,
and my watch lacks ten minutes of that. What if the astronomers made a
mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs are wrong, and the
eclipse shall not come off? Would it be strange? Would it not be
stranger if it were not so? How can a being, standing on one little
ball, spinning forever around and around among millions of other balls
larger and smaller, breathlessly the same endless waltz,--how can he
trace out their paths, and foretell their conjunctions? How can a puny
creature fastened down to one world, able to lift himself but a few
paltry feet above, to dig but a few paltry feet below its surface,
utterly unable to divine what shall happen to himself in the next
moment,--how can he thrust out his hand into inconceivable space, and
anticipate the silent future? How can his feeble eye detect the quiver
of a world? How can his slender strength weigh the mountains in
scales, and the bills in a balance? And yet it is. Wonderful is the
Power that framed all these spheres, and sent them on their great
errands; but more wonderful still the Power that gave to finite mind
its power, to stand on one little point, and sweep the whole circle of
the skies. Almost as marvelous is it that man, being man, can divine
the universe, as that God, being God, could devise it. Cycles of years
go by. Suns and moons and stars tread their mysterious rounds, but
steady eyes are following them into the awful distances, steady hands
are marking their eternal courses. Their multiplied motions shall yet
be resolved into harmony, and so the music of the spheres shall chime
with the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest!"

Is it begun? Not yet.

No wonder that eclipses were a terror to men before Science came
queening it through the universe, compelling all these fearful sights
and great signs into her triumphal train, and commanding us to be no
longer afraid of our own shadow. The sure and steadfast Moon,
shuddering from the fullness of her splendor into wild and ghostly
darkness, might well wake strange apprehensions. She is reeling in
convulsive agony. She is sickening and swooning in the death-struggle.
The principalities and powers of darkness, the eternal foes of men, are
working their baleful spell with success to cast the sweet Moon from
her path, and force her to work wo