Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers

by William Hale White

Mr. Farrow was not disappointed.

"It will be all right," he said, and the next morning he was busy in the shed in the bottom of the garden. He came to his afternoon meal with glee, and directly it was over, took his wife away to see what he had been doing. The shed had two floors, with a trap-door in the middle. To the topmost corner of the upper story he had fixed a pole which descended obliquely through a hole in the floor. This was the axis, and the floor was the horizon. He had also, by the help of some stoutish wire and some of his withies, fairly improvised a few meridians, so that when Miriam put her head through the trap-door, she seemed to be in the centre of a half globe.

"Now, my dear, it will all be plain. I cannot make the thing turn, but you can fancy a star fixed down there in the east at the end of that withy, and if the withy were to go round, or if the star were to climb up it, it would just go so," tracing its course with his finger, "and set there. Now, those stars near the pole, you see, would never set, and that is why we see them all night long."

It all came to her in an instant.

"Really, how clever you are!" she said.

"Do you think so?" and there was a trace of something serious, something of a surprise on his countenance.

"I have heard Mr. Armstrong talk about the stars before, although never so much as he did that night, and then I've watched them a good bit, and noticed the way they go. As for the planets, they are not so easy, but I think I have got hold of it all."

Miriam looked out of window when she went to bed, and felt a new pleasure. The firmament, instead of being a mere muddle—beautiful, indeed, she had always thought it—had a plan in it. She marked where one particularly bright star was showing itself in the south-east—it was Sirius; and in the night she rose softly, drew aside the blind, saw him again due south, and recognised the similarity of the arc with that which her husband had constructed with his withies and wire. She lay down again, thinking, as she went off to sleep, that still that silent, eternal march went on. At four she again awoke from light slumber, and crept to the blind again. Another portion of the same arc had been traversed, and Sirius with his jewelled flashes was beginning to descend. She thought she should like to see him actually sink, and she waited and waited till he had disappeared, till the first tint of dawn was discernible in the east, and that almost indistinguishable murmur was heard which precedes the day. She then once more lay down, and when she rose, she was richer by a very simple conception, but still richer. She felt as a novice might feel who had been initiated, and had been intrusted at least with the preliminary secrets of her community. She owed her initiation to Mr. Armstrong, but also to her husband. Experts no doubt may smile, and so may the young people who, in these days of universal knowledge, have got up astronomy for examinations, but nevertheless, in the profounder study of the science there is perhaps no pleasure so sweet and so awful as that which arises, not when books are read about it, but when the heavens are first actually watched, when the movement of the Bear is first actually seen for ourselves, and with the morning Arcturus is discerned punctually over the eastern horizon; when the advance of the stars westwards through the year, marking the path of the earth in its orbit, is noted, and the moon's path also becomes intelligible.

Mr. Armstrong had long desired to make an orrery for the purpose of instructing a few children and friends, but had never done anything towards it, partly for lack of time, and partly for lack of skill with joinery tools. He now, however, had in Farrow at once a willing pupil and an artist, and the work went forward in Farrow's house, Miriam watching its progress with great interest. She could even contribute her share, and the graduation of the rim was left to her, a task she performed with accuracy after a few failures in pencil. It was a handsome instrument when it was completed. The relative distances of the planets from the sun could not be preserved, nor their relative magnitudes; but what was of more importance, their relative velocities in their orbits were maintained. The day came when the machine was to be first used. Miriam insisted that there should be no experiments with it beforehand. She desired, even at the risk of disappointment, to see a dramatic start into existence. She did not wish her pleasure to be spoiled and her excitement to be diminished by trials. Her husband humoured her, but secretly he took care that every preventible chance of a breakdown should be removed. When she was absent, he tested every pinion and every cog, eased a wheel here and an axle there, and in truth what he had to do in this way with file and sandpaper was almost equal to the labour spent upon saw and chisel. Infinite adjustment was necessary to make the idea a noiseless, smooth practical success, and infinite precautions had to be taken and devices invented which were not foreseen when the drawing first appeared on paper. With some of these difficulties Miriam, of course, was acquainted. They would not probably have been so great to a professional instrument-maker, but they were very considerable to an amateur. Farrow selected the best-seasoned wood he could find, but it frequently happened that after it was cut it warped a little, and the slightest want of truth threw all the connected part out of gear. Miriam learned something when she saw that a wheel whose revolution was not in a perfect plane could give rise to so much annoyance, and she learned something also when she saw how her husband, in the true spirit of a genuine craftsman, remained discontented if there was the slightest looseness in a bearing.

"Do you think it matters?" said she.