Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/74

and now low, about the pole. The "W," however, is most impressive when near the horizon.

Poets tell of the silvery currents of the Milky Way that wind in and out among the stars of this "Chair," but with the telescope one may see more clearly and perceive that the "silvery currents" are a magnificent wilderness of suns.

When the nymphs of the Mediterranean discovered that Cassiopeia had been honored with a choice position among the stars, they were perfectly furious, and even the sympathy of Juno did not console them as she recalled the time that Callisto was transposed as Ursa Major to the stars. Odd fate that forced an Arcadian maid and an Ethiopian Queen to follow each other forever around the Arctic circle of the heavens! The Nereids, however, protested violently to Jupiter that such a reward for Cassiopeia's boasting was unfair and their influence so far prevailed that the Queen was set in a tilted fashion and forced to swing half of every night with her head hanging downward, and both her arms upraised. Furthermore, her "Chair" was strongly outlined while her queenly person was quite ignored. Thus the petty spite of the sea-nymphs was much worse than Cassiopeia's boasting.There was a slight compensation, when, for all this humiliation, two of the stars in the "W" were named after the Queen's 'heart' and 'hand' by the Arabian astronomers,—Alpha, the lower star of the five bright ones, being called Shedir, "the heart," and Beta, in the back of the chair, Caph, "the tinted hand."

About six centuries ago, a phenomenon happened among the stars in Cassiopeia's constellation, where, suddenly, in a position

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