_Happy the man with the bulging Tum,_ _Who smiles and smiles and is never glum!--_ _But alas for the man with the bulging brow,_ _If he wanted to smile, he wouldn"t know how!_
If the Giddy Globe asked _us_ to guess her age, we should say, without a moment"s hesitation, "Whatever it is you certainly don"t look it!"
Astronomers may say what they like, a Planet is as old as it looks, especially if it is a Lady-Planet, and we have seen ours when she didn"t look a June day over sixteen! and, not having a bulging forehead, we told her so!
Astronomers think themselves so wise, but what do they know about the s.e.x of the Planets?
With the exception of Mother Earth and old Sol Phbus,--nothing!
If you asked an Astronomer whether the Pleiad girls were really the daughters of Atlas, or what Jupiter was doing with eight Moons (if they _were_ Moons), he would think you were trifling with him.
But is it not possible that the old Greek tales were the garbled gossip of an age-forgotten science of which we have only the A.B.C.?
If it is Love that makes the world go round (and who can prove that it isn"t?), what makes the other Planets go round?
How about the movements of the Heavenly Bodies?
How about----*
* This is all very interesting, but don"t you think perhaps it is---- _The Reader._
Quite right! Quite right! how we do run on!
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER IX
THE FACE OF THE GLOBE
There are no good photographs of the Giddy Globe; she refuses to sit.
Imagine attempting to photograph an obese and flighty Spheroid who spends her time pirouetting round in a circle with all her might and main.
Perhaps it is to avoid the photographer that the Earth spins, and not merely to reduce her girth as we hinted elsewhere.
In these days such a strenuous evasion of publicity is suspicious.
Where does she come from?
Where is she going?
She refuses to answer, she will not even state her business or tell her real name.
For aeons (quite a number of aeons) this Giddy one has been going round under various male and female aliases such as--Cosmos, Mother Earth, The World, Mrs. Grundy, the Footstool, the Terrestrial Globe.
If you look up her record you will find the following press notices--
"The Earth"s a thief."
Timon of Athens.
"Earth"s bitter."
Wordsworth.
"This distracted Globe."
Hamlet.
"This tough World."
King Lear.
"Naughty World."
Merchant of Venice.
"This World is given to Lying."
Henry IV.
"The World is too much with us."
Wordsworth.
"The World is grown so bad."
Richard III.
"The narrow World."
Julius Caesar.
"The World is not thy friend."
Romeo and Juliet.
"The World"s a bubble."
Bacon.
"This World is all a fleeting show."
Moore.
"The World was not worthy."
St. Paul.
"The World"s a tragedy."
Horace Walpole.
"This bleak World."
Moore.
"The weary weight of all this unintelligible World."
Wordsworth.