Sun River, M. T.
The following rule will enable any one to determine the true difference between noon by clock-time and noon by the sun-dial or noon-mark; which seems to be a vexing question with some of your correspondents: Rule: From any almanac take the time from sunrise to 12 o’clock and from 12 o’clock to sunset. Half of the difference between the two is the number of minutes which the dial shows wrong, either plus or minus. This is called the equation of time and varies about fifteen minutes either way, at its highest.
John Kerler.
THREE AMERICAN AUTHORESSES.
Englewood, Ill.
Please name the author of “The Lamplighter”—an old book, but a good one—and who wrote “The Wide, Wide World.”
E. O. G.
Answer.—The author of “The Lamplighter” was Maria S. Cummins, born in Massachusetts in 1827; died in 1866. The writer of “The Wide, Wide World,” of which there were 500,000 copies sold in the first ten years, and of “Queechey,” is Susan Warner, born in New York in 1818. Her sister Anna is the popular author of “The Fourth Watch,” “The Other Shore,” and other works published under the pseudonym of “Amy Lathrop.”