Uncle Henry cut two long strips from what was left of the cardboard and crossed the strips over the top of Paul’s head, fastening the four ends of them to the round cardboard brim close to his head.
After this Uncle Henry rolled a sheet of the scratch paper round a pencil, put rubber bands tightly around it, cut the end to bend up and make a foot and pinned the foot to the cardboard strips at the place where they crossed. When Paul had it all on he looked very funny with the pencil sticking straight up from the top of his head, and his eyes just peeping over the cardboard brim on each side of the strip down the middle of his nose.
“Now come on, Mr. Earth,” said Uncle Henry, “It’s time for you to spin round the lamp-sun for another year or two.”
So Paul held his head on a slant and kept it so that the pencil always pointed in the same direction as he went round the lamp. These four little pictures show how he looked at the four sides of the sun where the earth is in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn.
“Now,” said Uncle Henry, “you see that if we make a black dot on one of the cardboard strips about halfway between the cardboard brim, or the earth’s equator, and the pencil, or the North Pole, it will be about as far north as we are in the United States. And when Paul is in his Summer position, with the pencil slanting toward the ‘sun,’ you see that the sun’s rays beat down much straighter on the black dot than they do when he is on the other side of the lamp, with the pole slanting away from the ‘sun.’ That is why the Winter sun appears to be lower in the sky at noon than the Summer sun, and also why the Summer sun shines hotter on the earth than it does in Winter. Notice, too, that the rays from the lamp light up Paul’s head for quite a little way beyond the foot of the ‘pole’ when it slants toward the ‘sun,’ while when it slants away from the ‘sun’ the rays fail to reach the ‘pole’ at all. This means that in summer the sun shines a longer time upon the part of the earth that slants toward it. If you could look down from the ceiling at Paul’s head in his Summer position and in his Winter one you would see why.”
Uncle Henry quickly drew these two pictures of the top of a globe to show the children why the days are long in Summer and short in Winter at any point in the United States.
| The Winter Day | The Summer Day | |
| lasts while the black dot on the earth travels from A to B—less than half-way round. | lasts while the black dot on the earth travels from C to D—more than half-way round. |