“Doesn’t look much, does it, Tom?” he said.
“No, uncle.”
“And I’m afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather uninteresting to you.”
“Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope.”
“I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?”
Tom shook his head.
“Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty thousand; Jupiter with its four moons—perhaps we shall see the fifth—its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars—white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?”
“Dry, uncle! Oh!” panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness, “it sounds glorious.”
“It is glorious, my boy; and you who have read your Arabian Nights, and stories of magicians and their doings, will have to own that our piece of dull glass will grow into a power that shall transcend infinitely anything the imagination of any storyteller ever invented. Now, what do you say? for I must not preach any more.”
“Say, uncle!” cried Tom. “Let’s begin at once!”