But to see it hanging there, white and big
as an apple, suspended within its broad and shining ring, was a
revelation before which I stood awe-stricken and dumb. I gazed and
gazed; between the star and its ring I caught the infinite depth of
black space beyond; I seemed to see almost the whirl, the motion;
to hear the morning stars sing together--and then like a flash it
was gone. Crane my neck on my ladder as I might I could not get
sight of it.
"But where did she go?" I said, half to myself. Far down in the
darkness came the old professor's deep voice:--
"That time you saw the earth move."
And so I did. The clockwork that made the dome keep up with the
motion of the stars--of our world rather--had run down, and when
Saturn passed out of my sight, as I thought, it was the earth
instead which I literally saw move.
And now that I am on my travels let me cross the ocean long enough to
say that my digging among the London slums one summer only served
to convince me that their problem is the same as ours, and is to
be solved along the same lines.
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