The best family hobby we have ever had is the stars. We have a star club with no dues to pay, no officers to boss us, and only three rules:

1. We shall have nothing but "fun" in this club—no hard work. Therefore no mathematics for us!

2. We can't afford a telescope. Therefore we must be satisfied with what bright eyes can see.

3. No second-hand wonders for us! We want to see the things ourselves, instead of depending on books.

You can't imagine what pleasure we have had in one short year! The baby, of course, was too young to learn anything, and besides he was in bed long before the stars came out. But Ruth, our seven-year-old, knows ten of the fifteen brightest stars; and she can pick out twelve of the most beautiful groups or constellations. We grown-ups know all of the brightest stars, and all forty-eight of the most famous constellations. And the whole time we have given to it would not exceed ten minutes a day!

And the best part is the way we know the stars. The sky is no longer bewildering to us. The stars are not cold, strange, mysterious. They are friends. We know their faces just as easily as you know your playmates. For instance, we know Sirius, because he is the brightest. We know Castor and Pollux, because they are twins. We know Regulus, because he is in the handle of the Sickle. And some we know by their colours. They are just as different as President Taft, "Ty" Cobb, Horace Fletcher and Maude Adams. And quite as interesting!

What's more, none of us can ever get lost again. No matter what strange woods or city we go to, we never get "turned around." Or if we do, we quickly find the right way by means of the sun or the stars.

Then, too, our star club gives us all a little exercise when we need it most. Winter is the time when we all work hardest and have the fewest outdoor games. Winter is also the best time for young children to enjoy the stars, because it gets dark earlier in winter—by five o'clock, or long before children go to bed. It is pleasant to go out doors for half an hour before supper and learn one new star or constellation.

Again, it is always entertaining because every night you find the old friends in new places. No two nights are just the same. The changes of the moon make a great difference. Some nights you enjoy the moonlight; other nights you wish there were no moon, because it keeps you from spying out some new star. We have a little magazine that tells us all the news of the stars and the planets and the comets before the things happen! We pay a dollar a year for it. It is called the Monthly Evening Sky Map.

When we first became enthusiastic about stars, the father of our family said: "Well, I think our Star Club will last about two years. I judge it will cost us about two dollars and we shall get about twenty dollars worth of fun out of it." But in all three respects father was mistaken.

Part of the two dollars father spoke of went for a book called "The Friendly Stars," and seventy-five cents we spent for the most entertaining thing our family ever bought—a planisphere. This is a device which enables us to tell just where any star is, at any time, day or night, the whole year. It has a disc which revolves. All we have to do is to move it until the month and the day come right opposite the very hour we are looking at it, and then we can tell in a moment which stars can be seen at that time. Then we go down the street where there is a good electric light at the corner and we hold our planisphere up, almost straight overhead. The light shines through, so that we can read it, and it is just as if we had a map of the heavens. We can pick out all the interesting constellations and name them just as easily as we could find the Great Lakes or Rocky Mountains in our geography.

We became so eager not to miss any good thing that father got another book. Every birthday in our family brought a new star book, until now we have about a dozen—all of them interesting and not one of them having mathematics that children cannot understand. So I think we have spent on stars fifteen dollars more than we needed to spend (but I'm glad we did it), and I think we have had about two hundred dollars worth of fun! Yes, when I think what young people spend on ball games, fishing, tennis, skating, and all the other things that children love, I am sure our family has had about two hundred dollars worth of fun out of stars. And there is more to come!

You would laugh to know why I enjoy stars so much. I have always studied birds and flowers and trees and rocks and shells so much that I was afraid to get interested in stars. I thought it wouldn't rest me. But it's a totally different kind of science from any I ever studied! There are no families, genera, and species among the stars, thank Heaven! That's one reason they refresh me. Another is that no one can press them and put them in a herbarium, or shoot them and put them in a museum. And another thing about them that brings balm to my spirit is that no human being can destroy their beauty. No one can "sub-divide" Capella and fill it with tenements. No one can use Vega for a bill-board. Ah, well! we must not be disturbed if every member of our family has a different point of view toward the stars; we can all enjoy and love them in our own ways.

How would you like to start a Star Club like ours? You ought to be able to persuade your family to form one, because it need not cost a cent. Perhaps this book will interest them all, but the better way is for you to read about one constellation and then go out with some of the family and find it. This book does not tell about wonderful things you can never see; it tells about the wonderful things all of us can see.

I wish you success with your Star Club. Perhaps your uncles and aunts will start clubs, too. We have three Star Clubs in our family—one in New York, one in Michigan, and one in Colorado. Last winter the "Colorado Star Gazers" sent this challenge to the "New Jersey Night-Owls:" "We bet you can't see Venus by daylight!"

That seemed possible, because during that week the "evening star" was by far the brightest object in the sky. But father and daughter searched the sky before sunset in vain, and finally we had to ask the "Moonstruck Michiganders" how to see Venus while the sun was shining. Back came these directions on a postal-card: "Wait until it is dark and any one can see Venus. Then find some tree, or other object, which is in line with Venus and over which you can just see her. Put a stake where you stand. Next day go there half an hour before sunset, and stand a little to the west. You will see Venus as big as life. The next afternoon you can find her by four o'clock. And if you keep on you will see her day before yesterday!"

That was a great "stunt." We did it; and there are dozens like it you can do. And that reminds me that father was mistaken about our interest lasting only two years. We know that it will not die till we do. For, even if we never get a telescope, there will always be new things to see. Our club has still to catch Algol, the "demon's eye," which goes out and gleams forth every three days, because it is obscured by some dark planet we can never see. And we have never yet seen Mira the wonderful, which for some mysterious reason dies down to ninth magnitude and then blazes up to second magnitude every eleventh month.

Ah, yes, the wonders and the beauties of astronomy ever deepen and widen. Better make friends with the stars now. For when you are old there are no friends like old friends.