Did any of you find the red star I asked you to look for last month? I hope you did; for I want you to look at it again while I tell you something about the "twinkle" of it.

Look very carefully, first at the red star, and then at just as large a white star; and, if your eyes are bright, you will see that the white one twinkles the most. I wish I could tell you why; but I think nobody knows.

Be very careful, though, not to choose a white star that is not a star; for, as that twinkles very little, you may think I am mistaken.

"A star that is not a star?" I think I hear you say, "How I wonder what you are!" Well, I will tell you.

Although most of the "diamonds in the sky," commonly called stars, are real stars, or suns like our sun, a few of them are not suns, but solid globes or worlds like that which we inhabit, warmed and lighted by our sun. When the sun is shining on them, they look bright to us; but it is only the light of our own sun thrown back, or reflected. They give no light themselves.

Because they have our sun, we and they are like members of one family. We call them "planets" (just as our earth is called "a planet"), and are as familiar with their names as if they were our brothers and sisters. One of them, for instance, is called Venus; another, Jupiter; and another, Saturn. Can you remember these hard names?

Now you would never notice the difference between these few stars and all the others, if you did not look very carefully to see whether they twinkle or not. And I would advise you to ask somebody to point them out to you whenever they are in sight.

I cannot tell you exactly where to look for them, because they wander about a good deal, and I do not know where they will be when you happen to read this number of "The Nursery."

From all this you will see that you will have to be very particular what kind of a star you look at when you say,—