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One listened instinctively for the tramp of the constellations. Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major marched to and fro on the vault like cohorts of legionaries, seemingly within call of our voices, and all without a sound. But beneath these quiet heavens the earth disengaged multitudinous sounds small sounds, minimized as it were by the muffling of the night.
On the 11th of November in that year, he was returning home to supper after a day's work in his laboratory, when he happened to lift his face to the sky, and there he beheld a brilliant new star. It was in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and occupied a position in which there had certainly been no bright star visible when his attention had last been directed to that part of the heavens.
Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter. His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds.
It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal." "You taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin." "I had a very apt scholar. There's Arcturus looking very bright." "Yes, and the Bear. I wish I could see Cassiopeia."
"I think he does," replied Sylvia. "He still lectures about them sometimes." "Wonder what that is, just across the farthest tip of that maple? It's familiar, but I can't name it." "That," said Sylvia, "is Cassiopeia." "So? How many constellations do you know?" Sylvia was silent a moment.
He worked by the conventional rules of astrology, and was quite prepared to take fees for so doing, although he had very little faith in them, preferring his own fanciful ideas. In 1604 the constellation of Cassiopeia was once more temporarily enriched by the appearance of a new star, said by some to be brighter than Tycho's nova, and by others to be twice as bright as Jupiter.
Cassiopeia, his queen, proud of her beauty, had dared to compare herself to the Sea- Nymphs, which roused their indignation to such a degree that they sent a prodigious sea-monster to ravage the coast. To appease the deities, Cepheus was directed hy the oracle to expose his daughter Andromeda to be devoured by the monster.
"Now, I'm through," she exclaimed, closing the book as an exclamation point; "but I won't bother you with what I have learned. Master McCosh knows the face of the sky as well as I know the alphabet. You should have heard him and seen him one night, pointing here and there and everywhere: That's Orion, that's Job's coffin, that's Cassiopeia! As fast as he could speak.
Or, again, when they sat out in the garden, or wandered back in the autumn twilight from some gipsy party, they were taught to recognise the stars and planets, until Mars and Jupiter, Orion and Cassiopeia, the Pleiads and the Northern Crown, seemed to look down upon them like old and beloved friends.
We now turn to the cluster of circumpolar constellations sometimes called the Royal Family, in allusion to the well-known story of the Ethiopian king Cepheus and his queen Cassiopeia, whose daughter Andromeda was exposed on the seashore to be devoured by a monster, but who was saved by the hero Perseus.
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