Round the year with the stars by Garrett Putman Serviss is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Preface
Preface
This book represents an attempt to cultivate the love of the stars, and to offer a guiding hand to all those who are willing to believe that some of the most exquisite joys of life are to be found, like scattered and unregarded gems, waiting to be picked up by any chance wayfarer who, without special knowledge, or optical aids, or mathematical attainments, or any of the paraphernalia or advantages of the professional astronomer, will simply turn his eyes to the sky and open his mind to its plain teachings and its supernal inspirations.
The writer’s only real excuse for appearing again in this particular field is that he has never yet finished a book, and seen it go forth, without feeling that he had overlooked, or cast aside, or of necessity omitted a multitude of things quite as interesting and important as any he had touched upon. Accordingly, he yields once more to the lure of this inexhaustible and illimitable subject, and strives again to find expression for the thoughts which it continually awakens, and to exhibit, however imperfectly, the endless procession of marvels which stream before him who knows and loves the stars like a dazzling rivière of brilliants.
This book in no way duplicates another work of the same hand, Astronomy with the Naked Eye. In that the effort was to revive the romance of the constellations by retelling their fascinating history, their mythology, their immemorial legends and traditions, and indicating their poetic background in the presence of the imaginary figures which, “from times of which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” have been associated with them; in this the writer tries to draw the reader into more intimate relations with the stars by dwelling upon their individual peculiarities and beauties, and the impressions which either singly or in constellated groups they make upon the mind of the beholder. Surely there is not another field of human contemplation so wondrously rich as astronomy! It is so easy to reach, so responsive to every mood, so stimulating, uplifting, abstracting, and infinitely consoling. Everybody may not be a chemist, a geologist, a mathematician, but everybody may be and ought to be, in a modest, personal way, an astronomer, for star-gazing is a great medicine of the soul. There is the writer’s text.
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This book is part of the public domain. Garrett Putman Serviss (2022). Round the year with the stars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68391/pg68391-images.html
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