Front Matter

The Storyland of Stars

What can be more in order, children, than that now, when the earth flowers are all gone, and the air, so clear and frosty, is bringing out the stars in all their brightness, we should turn to study them —the sky-flowers, as we may well call them?

But will they be as beautiful and as full of interest as were the earth flowers? Yes,—no,—yes,—indeed, who shall say? If you will try to tell me which season to you is the most beautiful, which flower you love best, perhaps I might find courage to try to say which of these, the earth-flowers or the sky-flowers, seem fullest of beauty and interest.

I am afraid we should all finish up as a little boy did, of whom I once read. In the winter he rushed into the house, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks red with the pinches and bites of playful old Jack Frost, and said, "Oh, mamma, is there anything so beautiful as winter? The sleighing! the coasting and the skating! O, and the sun! See, see the sun! see how pink it makes the snow! O I wish it would always be winter!"

Spring came. The soft rains, the warm showers, brought out the clean new buds and the grasses. "O the beautiful spring!" said the boy. "It's as if the world were waking up after a long nap. I can almost see the grasses grow! How glad the birds seem! And the air is so full of flowers. Mamma, you never saw anything like the woods to-day. O I wish it would stay spring forever!"

Then summer came. The little fellow went far up among the hills to play until vacation was over. O the great, broad fields, the dark, shady trees, the soft, warm air!" Just hark, mamma," the boy would say, "you can hear the stillness! How big the world looks! I wish the summer would never go!"

Autumn came. "Mamma," cried the boy, "I believe I could paint a picture. Just see the red leaves, and the flowers—I like those dark, rich colors! And the air—what makes the dim, hazy light? So different from the clear, hot air of the summer. What could grand-mamma have meant by saying this was a sad season?—the saddest of all the year? Why, it's the brightest of them all! Wouldn't it be grand if the world would look like this always? I wish it would never change!"

And so it is, I think, with any of these studies that have to do with Nature. Each is of itself so beautiful, so full of its own interests, that it is hard to say which is the best. Like the little boy's seasons, the one before us seems for the time better than all the rest.

And aren't you glad that it is so? How dismal it would be if only one of the seasons were beautiful and we had to wait and wait, and long for its return during all the other three!

But dear old mother Nature is not so stingy as that. There seems no end to her bounty. She takes away one beautiful gift only to give us another.

And now, right here, she has given us the stars, brighter and clearer than they ever are in the summer time, just because she has had to put the flowers away for their winter's rest, I think.