to know horribly all the same."

"I'm glad of it, boy, because I don't want what the Germans call a
dummkopf to help me. I see; I must volunteer my information. To begin
with then, that disc of glass is--"

"For the speculum," said Tom eagerly; "and you're going to polish it."

"Wrong. That's only for the tool. The other is for the speculum, and
we are going to grind it upon the tool."

He turned to the other flat disc of ground-glass, where it lay upon a
piece of folded blanket upon a bench under the window, and laid his head
upon it.

"Doesn't look much, does it, Tom?" he said.

"No, uncle."

"And I'm afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather
uninteresting to you."

"Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope."

"I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so
you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know
what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?"

Tom shook his head.

"Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and
see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic
spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is
beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its
hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking
to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty
thousand; Jupiter with its four moons--perhaps we shall see the fifth--
its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant
Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn,
with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking
Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points
of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double,
triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets
and the different-coloured stars--white, blue, and green. In short,
endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand,
how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round.
Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you
find it dry?"

"Dry, uncle! Oh!" panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness,
"it sounds glorious."

"It is glorious, my boy; and you who have read your _Arabian Nights_,
and stories of magicians and their doings, will have to own that our
piece of dull glass will grow into a p