watery vapor
experiences up there is so great that the vapor collects into little
liquid beads, and it is, of course, these liquid beads, associated in
countless myriads, which form the clouds we know so well.

We can now understand what happens as the buoyant carbon vapors
soar upwards through the sun's atmosphere. They attain at last to an
elevation where the fearful intensity of the solar heat has so
far abated that, though nearly all other elements may still remain
entirely gaseous, yet the exceptionally refractory carbon begins to
return to the liquid state. At the first stage in this return, the
carbon vapor conducts itself just as does the ascending watery vapor
from the earth when about to be transformed into a visible cloud.
Under the influence of a chill the carbon vapor collects into a myriad
host of little beads of liquid. Each of these drops of liquid carbon
in the glorious solar clouds has a temperature and a corresponding
radiance vastly exceeding that with which the filament glows in the
incandescent electric lamp. When we remember further that the entire
surface of our luminary is coated with these clouds, every particle
of which is thus intensely luminous, we need no longer wonder at that
dazzling brilliance which, even across the awful gulf of ninety-three
millions of miles, produces for us the indescribable glory of
daylight.

_Sir Robert Ball will contribute a series of articles on "The Marvels
of the Universe." Six or eight of these articles may be expected
during the coming year_.

[Illustration: THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BUILDINGS, ANDOVER,
MASSACHUSETTS.]

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

AUTHOR OF "THE GATES AJAR," "THE MADONNA OF THE TUBS," ETC.

LIFE IN ANDOVER BEFORE THE WAR.

Andover is--or Andover was--like the lady to whom Steele gave
immortality in the finest and most famous epigram ever offered to
woman.

To have loved Andover; to have been born in Andover--I am brought up
short, in these notes, by the sudden recollection that I was _not_
born in Andover. It has always been so difficult to believe it, that I
am liable any day to forget it; but the facts compel me to infer that
I was born within a mile of the State House. I must have become a
citizen of Andover at the age of three, when my father resigned his
Boston pulpit for the professorship of Rhetoric in Andover Seminary.
I remember distinctly our arrival at the white mansion with the
large, h