  "Please tell us another story from the Big Book," begged Susie as the family were all seated on the piazza one beautiful summer evening. The great full moon, like a ball of molten iron, was rising in the east. It plowed a silver path across the river. Fireflies glimmered and sparkled in the dusky shadows of the meadow and in and out of the garden shrubs. The merry chirping of the crickets and the low hum of insect voices filled the air. Down by the creek the whip-poor-will told his one story over and over. "A story from the Big Book!" repeated Uncle Robert. "There are so many and they are all so wonderful. Ever since man was created he has read stories in the earth, water, and sky, and in all living things. Everything he has found in Nature helps him to live and grow wiser and better. We could never understand printed books unless we studied the Big Book. The more we read what God has written the more we shall want to read what other people have found out and put into printed books. The true desire to read these books springs from our love and study of Nature. "It was written for many years that the sun moved around the earth. But Copernicus studied the sun, earth, and stars anew, and he showed that the printed books were wrong by proving that the earth moved around the sun. Galileo read the same story through the telescope that he made. "Steam had always been a very common thing. Hot vapor had risen from heated water ever since fire was discovered, but the real story of steam had not been read until Watt sat long hours by a boiling teakettle. Then came the locomotive, the railroad, and mighty engines driving wheels that work for man." "Wasn't that a good story to read from the Big Book!" said Frank. "Lightning had flashed and thunder rolled throughout the ages. Men feared, wondered, and worshiped that mighty hidden power. Franklin looked straight at the forked lightning and asked, 'What are you?' The answer came in the telegraph that is fast making the nations of the earth one great family. Bell listened long and carefully to sounds, and now I can talk from New York to my friends in Chicago. "Are not these stories from the Big Book as wonderful as miracles? These are only a few of the many stories that have been read. Countless more will be read when children really open their eyes to the 'law of the Lord that converteth the soul.' Great men and great minds have road Nature's revelation in the past, but the time is coming when you and I and all children will read every day and hour the hidden things that surround us like light and press upon us like air. The Creator is writing the Big Book all the time for us—His children. Should we not read what He says there?" The children did not understand all that Uncle Robert said, yet they loved to listen. "We have found that our farm is a very interesting page of the Book," said Mrs. Leonard. "Yes, that is the precious thing about it all. "Whether we look, or whether we listen, All eyes were gazing at the moon as it seemed to rise above the trees. The great face of the man in the moon became distinct as he looked down upon the rolling earth. "A beautiful and wonderful world," continued Uncle Robert, "but probably not a bit more wonderful than the countless worlds we see up there. "Just think! we are on a great round ball, and it is moving on its axis from west to east toward the moon. The moon, you know, does not really move over our heads as it seems to do. The round earth rolls upon its axis, and that makes the moon seem to rise higher and higher, and then sink away below the western horizon." "To-morrow night it will come up in the east a little later," said "Round and round we go upon our ball of earth. The sun seems to rise and set just as the moon does, but it is the world itself that makes the sun and moon seem to rise and set," said Uncle Robert. "What is our earth made of?" asked Donald. "Just what you see before you," answered Uncle Robert. "Under our feet we have the ground, the soil, gravel, sand, and loam, which is made of—" "Ground-up rock," said Frank. "And underneath the soil there is—" "The solid rock," said Frank. "And underneath that?" asked Mr. Leonard. "We do not know, but it is quite certain the solid earth is made of ground-up rock and rock that may be ground. The mills are all at work, grinding all the time." "The mills!" said Susie. "Where are the mills?" "I know one," said Donald. "The river is a great mill. Don't you remember about the pebbles?" "And the glaciers are mills, too," said Frank. [Illustration: Glaciers on the Coast of Norway] "Yes, the rivers, the ice rivers or glaciers, the wind, the frost, heat and cold, all grind masses of rock into bowlders, pebbles, and sand." "The rock has been ground so long I should think there would be nothing left but soil," said Frank. "You saw the limestone down by the spring?" asked Uncle Robert. "Yes," the children said together. "That limestone was once soft mud spread out upon the bottom of the ocean in shallow water." "How do you know that is so, uncle?" questioned Frank. [Illustration: Fossil fish.] "There are many proofs, but the best proof is that in the limestone are found shells of animals that live in the sea," said Uncle Robert. "Fossils," said Mrs. Leonard. "Yes, fossils. They are the remains of plants and animals that lived a very long time ago. Many rocks are almost entirely made of fossils. Fish and shells also have been covered with soft clay and left their imprints. Great beasts have walked in the mud, and we now find their footprints in the hard stone. Coral—you have seen coral?—is often found in limestone. It is made of the shells of little animals, called the polyp, which live in the sea." [Illustration: Coral] "So you see that the firm ground under foot is made of rock, some of which has been ground up over and over again. But there is something else besides rock that makes the world" "Water," said Donald promptly as he looked down upon the river. "Yes, the water is just as much a part of our world as the solid rock and the soil. There is water in the soil and in the solid rock, too. It comes out to us in——" "Springs," said Donald. "Water fills hollows in the earth——" "Ponds and lakes," said Frank. "Water runs down the slopes—" "Streams," said Frank. "Rivers," said Donald. "There is water in the air—mist, fogs, and clouds—and there is much water in the air which we can not see." "Vapor?" asked Frank. "Sometimes water is so thin we can not see it, and again it is so thick and hard that we may walk over it." "Ice," said Susie. "Tiny bits of vapor come together until they become so heavy that they fall to the ground." "Raindrops," said Donald. "Water is sometimes frozen in the clouds in beautiful white crystals, and then they sail down to the earth." "Snowflakes," said Susie. "Sometimes drops start from the clouds and go through very cold air. The cold air freezes them quickly, and then they rattle on the roof and dash on the ground. They cut the corn leaves and destroy the crops." "Hailstones," said Donald. "Oh," said Susie, "I saw a hailstone once as big as an egg." "The lakes are hollows in the ground filled with water. There are many small hollows, and some big ones, but there is one so great that we may call it immense. It is the largest hollow in the world—so large that it occupies three-fourths of the earth's surface." [Illustration: Ocean islands] "The ocean," said Frank. "Yes, the ocean is only a great big hollow filled with water." "How deep is the ocean?" asked Frank. "Very deep in some places—deeper than the height of the highest mountains. In others it is very shallow. In some places bits and masses of land rise out of the ocean." "Islands?" asked Donald. "Four great masses of land rise above the ocean level. These immense rock masses are called—" "Continents," said Frank. "Yes," said Uncle Robert. "We live on one of them." "The continent of North America," said Donald. "Our island rises right out of the river," said Susie. "Rock and water make only a part of our world. We live on the firm earth. But we live in something. Indeed, we live at the bottom of a great, deep ocean, deeper than the water ocean, and broader than the rock and water surface taken all together." "We live at the bottom of an ocean!" said Donald in surprise. "Now you are joking, Uncle Robert," said Susie. "If we lived on the bottom of an ocean we should all drown." "Fish live in the ocean, and we live in an ocean, too—a very deep one, how deep no one really knows. It may be a hundred, or hundreds of miles deep. We see a part of the surface of the earth and of the water, but no one has ever seen the surface of the mighty ocean in which we live." Susie and Donald were puzzled. Frank's face lighted up as he said: "I think you mean the air, Uncle Robert." "You are right, Frank. The great ocean in which we live is the air, or, as it is called, the atmosphere. The atmosphere is just as much a part of our world as the rock and the water. The rock we may call solid, the water fluid, and the air gaseous. Solid, fluid, gas." "How do we know that the atmosphere is so deep?" asked Frank. "We do not know exactly, but there are ways of proving that it is very, very deep. When people began to study the atmosphere they thought it extended about fifty miles from the surface of the earth. Now they are sure that it is much deeper. We know that air has weight, like soil and water. It presses on us and everything else—" "Fifteen pounds to the square inch," said Donald. "We weigh the air with the—-" "Barometer," said Susie. "It is heavier at the ocean level than it is on the tops of mountains. "The less the air weighs," said Frank. "At the height of fifty miles it is thought to have little or no weight, and so people believed that was as far as it extended. But in time they discovered another way of measuring the atmosphere. You have seen falling stars, haven't you?" asked Uncle Robert. [Illustration: Meteors.] "Oh, yes," said the three children together. "I saw a star fall, so fast—just like a rocket. Then the light went out, and I wondered where it went," said Susie. "Falling stars are not stars at all, though they look like them. They are pieces of rock that break off from other worlds and whiz through space." "Oh!" said Susie. "Outside of our atmosphere there may be nothing for these masses of rock to strike against, but just as soon as they come into the air, it tries to stop them. The air is not strong enough to stop them, but it grinds them up." "Grinds them up!" exclaimed Donald. "Isn't that wonderful? But, uncle, what makes them look just like fire?" "If you put an axe or scythe on a dry grindstone and turn the crank, what do you see?" "Sparks of fire," said Frank. "Why do you put grease or oil upon the axles of your buggy?" "To keep them from becoming hot and dry," said Frank. "One time when father and I were on a train there was a hot box, and we had to stop to cool it." "The heat and the sparks of fire are caused by one body rubbing against another. The faster they move, the greater the heat. This rubbing is called friction." "There was a time," said Mr. Leonard, "when fires were started by rubbing two pieces of wood together. Some Indians do so now." "Then the great pieces of rock rub against the air when they whiz through it, and that makes the sparks?" asked Frank. "You are right. We can see the blaze of fire caused by the friction." "I should think the rocks would fall on us and kill us," said Donald. "Most of them are probably ground up into bits of dust before they reach the ground. Some of them, indeed, do strike the ground, and very large ones bury themselves deep in the earth. When we go to the Field Columbian Museum, in Chicago, we shall see these visitors from other worlds. They are called meteoric stones, or meteorites. When they are in the air we call them meteors." "I am going to watch the next one I see," said Susie. "They fly so fast that you hardly see them before they are gone," said "Men who study the heavens tell of the depth of the atmosphere by the angle the meteor makes in falling, but perhaps you can not understand that now. So you see, children, we live on the bottom of a great ocean of air, and that air, or atmosphere, is a part of our world—the outside part." "How plain it all is," said Mrs. Leonard, "when we think of it this way!" "Now we have the land and the water," said Uncle Robert. "And the atmosphere," put in Donald. "And they are all right here close to us. Here is the land with its hollows, and there," pointing to the river glistening in the moonlight, "is the water, and—" "You can't see the air," said Donald. "We can feel it, anyway," said Susie. "How large is the earth, uncle?" asked Frank. "Eight thousand miles through it and twenty-five thousand miles around it," answered Uncle Robert. "But, uncle, is it all solid rock for eight thousand miles?" "No one knows. The rocky outside of the ball is called the crust of the earth. Miners have dug down nearly four thousand feet, and makers of artesian wells have bored still farther. They always find rock." "I wonder how far four thousand feet would be," said Donald. "A little over three quarters of a mile," said Mr. Leonard. "The farther they go down into the crust of the earth, the warmer they find it. I have been down in a mine thirty-two hundred feet, and it was very hot. No one could have lived there if cool air had not been brought down from the surface. "Some people have thought that inside the crust of the earth the rock is all a molten mass, like melted iron. You have read about volcanoes, and of the lava that is thrown out of them?" "Does that come out of the inside of the earth?" asked Donald. [Illustration: Down in a Gold Mine] "It comes from somewhere in the earth. Some men give their whole lives to the study of these questions, but you know they can not see beneath the crust of the earth. It is thought by some that the weight of the crust would keep the center of the earth a solid mass. So you see there are still many questions unsettled. We know that the crust is moving up and down all the time." "Oh, I hope the land won't rise here!" said Susie. "You wouldn't know it, Susie, if it did," said Uncle Robert, laughing. "Unless there was an earthquake," said Frank. "Or a volcano," said Donald. "I'd like to see one." "I would like to see the ocean," said Frank. "It must be grand to stand on the shore and look way off and not see anything but water." "It is a grand sight, Frank. I have sat on the beach many a time and watched the waves roll in, and thought of the wonderful work the ocean is doing. You know it is the great reservoir that supplies all the land with water." [Illustration: View of the Ocean] "The heat of the sun lifts the water up, or evaporates it. The vapor that makes the clouds rises into the air. The winds blow the vapor many long miles, and some of the clouds come right over our heads. The cold air draws the little bits of vapor together and makes the clouds heavy, and down they fall upon the earth as drops of rain. "Some of the rain runs directly into the streams. Some of the rain water sinks down into the earth; in the gravel it sinks fast; in the sand it sinks slower; and in the loam, clay, and rock it sinks very slowly indeed. The water in the ground dissolves the rock or the loose earth into little particles so fine that the tiny roots, or root hairs, drink them up, and so the rock furnishes a part of the nourishment, or food, of plants. "Without the water that the clouds bring no plant could grow. It gives life and growth to everything that lives, and then sinks deep into the earth. It comes out of the ground again in springs, and flows away in rivulets, brooks, creeks, and rivers—away, and away, back to the ocean again. "On its way to the ocean it wears down the land, carries silt from place to place, spreads it out on beaches, sand bars, bottom lands, deltas, and on the bottom of shallow places in the ocean." "Isn't it strange how everything changes, and how all the changes help us?" said Frank thoughtfully. "Yes, Frank, it is wonderful how the Creator of all things is constantly moving earth, air, and water, and, as you say, making all these changes to help man." "It is the Big Book that tells us of this marvelous world of ours and of other worlds as well. It lies open before us for us to read every day. God has created and is still creating our home, the dwelling place of His children. We must study Him, my dear children, in all He has made. We must learn of His works in order to use everything to make man happier, better, and more useful." Mr. Leonard, who had been listening very attentively to the story, said, as his face lighted with a happy smile: "I never thought of it all in that way before. Every day, in all our work on the farm and in the house—indeed, wherever we may be—we should learn new and beautiful revelations from our Heavenly Father; how much He is constantly giving us, and how thankful we should be." The moon had risen to its full glory over the earth. The waters of the river glistened. The trees, cornfields, and meadows were peaceful and grand, as though they, too, felt the power of the glorious light. Susie put her brown arms around her mother's neck and kissed her good-night. "Oh, how I love the Big Book!" she said. "I wish I could read it as all those great men have read it," said "So do I," said Donald. "'Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge,'" mused the mother as her loved ones went to bed with sweet thoughts of a beautiful world and a loving God. Produced by D. Garcia, Tom Allen, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date. Most people start at our Web sites at: or http://promo.net/pg http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, as it appears in our Newsletters. We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): eBooks Year Month 1 1971 July We need your donations more than ever! As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones that have responded. As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. In answer to various questions we have received on this: We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, just ask. While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to donate. International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are ways. Donations by check or money order may be sent to: Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment method other than by check or money order. We need your donations more than ever! You can get up to date donation information online at: /donation.html *** Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. We would prefer to send you information by email. **The Legal Small Print** (Three Pages) ***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that time to the person you received it from. If you received it on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement copy. If you received it electronically, such person may choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to receive it electronically. THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights. [1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from conversion by word processing or hypertext software, but only so long as *EITHER*: [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not* contain characters other than those intended by the author of the work, although tilde (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used to convey punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters may be used to indicate hypertext links; OR [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays the eBook (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form). [2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement. If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: hart@pobox.com *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* |
|
