“If the new planets were acknowledged, what a chaos would ensue!” * * “I will never concede his four new planets to that Italian, though I die for it.”
Martin Horky, Times of Galileo.
“O my beloved Kepler! How I wish we could have one good laugh together! Here, at Padua, is the principal Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my telescope, which he pertinaciously refuses to do! Why, my dear Kepler, are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at all this solemn folly!”
Letter from Galileo to John Kepler.
POEMS OF PROGRESS.
THE CHEMISTRY OF CHARACTER.
John, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul,
God in his wisdom created them all.
John was a statesman, and Peter a slave,
Robert a preacher, and Paul—was a knave.
Evil or good as the case might be,
White, or colored, or bond, or free—
John, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul,
God in his wisdom created them all.
Out of earth’s elements, mingled with flame,
Out of life’s compounds of glory and shame,
Fashioned and shaped by no will of their own,
And helplessly into life’s history thrown;
Born by the law that compels men to be,
Born to conditions they could not foresee,
John, and Peter, and Robert, and Paul,
God in his wisdom created them all.
John was the head and the heart of his State,
Was trusted and honored, was noble and great.
Peter was made ’neath life’s burdens to groan,
And never once dreamed that his soul was his own.
Robert great glory and honor received,
For zealously preaching what no one believed;
While Paul, of the pleasures of sin took his fill,
And gave up his life to the service of ill.