“What do any of you know of the Stars?” said the Moon-Struck-Sage.
“Very little, but tell us,” said one of the boys, “for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire—a bad sign as you very well know—and the next day I got ‘pinched.’”
“Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars,” he said with smiling skepticism, “that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern.”
“Look out,” said a boy who had not spoken before, “he is joking you.”
“No, seriously,” said the Witless One, "when I said ‘lantern’ I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear—you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day.... Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"
“Yes,” said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison’s powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper.
“He is a wonderful man,” said another.
At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose rather abruptly, and went into the house.
A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was not their equal in wit.
It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we were talking out of doors in the evening: