a ray of light had flashed across the field of his telescope as an asteroid shot into the gloam of the sun.  Its movements were so rapid, its disappearance so sudden, that it was impossible to obtain another glimpse of the unknown body.  The god of day had enveloped the satellite in curtains of powerful light, so that no eye but that of its Creator could gaze again that night upon the little stranger which had been seen for the first time by man.

The astronomer moved away from his instrument and the wonderful machinery that had guided it in its search for the asteroid, slowly muttering.  “The sun robbed me of a second sight of my discovery, yet only at this hour can I hope to get a glimpse of it.  The difficulties attending this observation are the tremendous velocity with which it travels, its very small mass, and the rapidity with which, at the hour of sunset, it passes into the shadow of the earth.  I will, however, calculate its orbit, and search for it again; for I have this evening seen what no human eye has ever beheld, I have seen the earth’s little moon.”  While I watched, entranced, the astronomer, aided by his assistants, labored over multitudes of figures hour after hour, day after day; and from these computations an orbit was constructed for the Little Moon.

Their work was finished; and as they left the observatory, a shadow, which had thrown its dark outlines here and there about the professor during his investigations, assumed the proportions of a man; and I saw for an instant the brilliant French writer, Jules Verne, while a voice in the musical language of France fell upon my ear:  “Ah, Monsieur, it is true, then, and we have a second moon, which must revolve round our planet once in three hours and twenty minutes, at a distance of only four thousand six hundred and fifty miles from our terrestrial abiding-place!”

Then the professor and his figures faded out of my vision; and I seemed to be observing a little moon revolving with lightning rapidity round the earth, while I felt that I had, in some way, been sucked into its orbit, and was whirling around with it.  Suddenly, with a keen sense of danger pervading my whole nervous system, I awoke.  Yes, it was a dream!  I was in my boat, gazing up into the serene heavens, where the larger moon was tranquilly following her orbit, while I was being whirled round in a strong eddy under a high bank of the river, with the giant trees frowning down upon me as though rebuking a careless boatman for being caught napping.  And where was the flat?  I gazed across the wide river into the quiet atmosphere now full of the bright light of the moon,—­but no boat could be seen; and from the wild forest alone came back an echo to my shouts of “Flatboat, ahoy!” For hours I rowed in search of my compagnon de voyage.