The Literary Astronomer


  THE Director of an Observatory, who, with a thirty-six-inch 
refractor, had discovered the moon, hastened to an Editor, with a 
four-column account of the event.

  "How much?" said the Editor, sententiously, without looking up from 
his essay on the circularity of the political horizon.

  "One hundred and sixty dollars," replied the man who had discovered 
the moon.

  "Not half enough," was the Editor's comment.

  "Generous man!" cried the Astronomer, glowing with warm and 
elevated sentiments, "pay me, then, what you will."

  "Great and good friend," said the Editor, blandly, looking up from 
his work, "we are far asunder, it seems.  The paying is to be done 
by you."

  The Director of the Observatory gathered up the manuscript and went 
away, explaining that it needed correction; he had neglected to dot 
an m.