Tand

HE wonders of our solar universe, and of the thousands and thousands of other universes which we now know dot the heavens, were never more clearly demonstrated than they have been by the recently devised "stroboscope," an invention of Dr. Charles Van Heak, by means of which we are able to measure sun-jumps.

It was not known until recently that the sun jumped at all. It has been known for a long time that the sun is 92,830,000 miles from the earth (except on Leap Year). So much has been an open secret. It has also been recognized in a general way that the moon is swinging at a terrific rate around the sun and that the earth (our Earth) goes back and

forth between the sun and the moon once every twenty-four hours, drawing nearest to the sun at noon and then turning back to the moon. This makes our "night" and "day," or, as some say, "right" and "left." Men have also known a long time that if you took a train going a hundred miles an hour you would stand a fat chance of

reaching the sun.

OUR

ever

By Robert Benchley

night in the laboratory, Prof. MacRerly reached up and touched the sun and was severely burned. He bears the scar to this day. Following this discovery, scientists immediately set about to measure the sun's heat and to see what could be done to stop it. It was during the progress of these experiments that it was found out that the sun jumped.

How, you may say, can we tell that a body 92,000,000 miles away jumps? And, if it does, what the hell difference

LAYER

MOON

The principle of the "stroboscope" is that of the steam-engine, except that it has no whistle. It is based on the fact that around the sun there is a brilliantly luminous envelope of vaporous matter known as the "chromosphere." We are practically certain that this "chromosphere" exists. If it doesn't, Dr. Van Heak is out of luck, that's all.

NOW, knowing that this gas gives

off waves of varying lengths, according to the size of the atmosphere,

STROBOSCOPE

and that these wave lengths can be analyzed by the spectroscope (a wonderful instrument which breaks up wavelengths and plays, "See You in My Dreams" at the same time), Dr. Van Heak has constructed an instrument which will catch these rays as they come from the "chromosphere," spank them soundly, and send them right back again where they belong. Thus, when the sun jumps, if it ever does, the movement, however slight, will be registered on the "stroboscope" by the ringing of a tiny bell, as any deflection of these rays at all will strike the sensitized plate at the top of the instrument and will break it. As it breaks, the bell rings. Thus the observer will know that the sun has jumped.

UR own little colony of stars (we call it "our own," although we just rent it), the Solar System, is composed of millions and millions of things, each one 396,505,000,000,000 miles away from the others. If you will take your little sister out-of-doors some clear winter's night to look at the stars, and will stand on the top of a high hill from which you can get a good view of the heavens, you will probably both catch very bad colds.

Now it was not known until 1899, when Professor George M. MacRerly began his experiments with gin and absinthe, that the sun was hot at all. One morning, after having been up all

does it make, anyway? Ninety-two million miles is ninety-two million miles, and we have got enough things within a radius of five miles to worry about without watching the sun jump. This is what people said when Dr. Van Heak began his researches on the subject. A lot of them still say it.

BUT Dr. Van Heak was not discour

aged. He got out an old oblong box, and somewhere found a cover for it. Into this box he put his lunch. Then he went up to his observatory on the roof and sat. When he came down he had worked out a device for measuring sun-jumps, the "stroboscope."

The next step is to find out some use to which the "stroboscope"can be put.

EDITOR'S NOTE-This article was announced for publication last week but, what with one thing and another, was held over. In future we shall be more guarded, and shall merely announce that another of Mr. Benchley's informative little talks will appear "soon."

The Higher Grammar "Go to the board, Johnny, and

analyze the sentence I gave you." "Sorry, teacher, but it's a complex sentence; I'll have to psychoanalyze it."

(EDITOR'S NOTE-The series of articles entitled, "The Rover and Over Boys," by Corey Ford, come to an end in LIFE last week. In justice to Mr. Stratemeyer, who created the Rover Boys in 1899, we must explain that the copyrights on this series belong to him, and that he holds a trade-mark on the name, "Rover Boys." The following reminiscences, by Mr. Stratemeyer, were published in Grosset & Dunlap's "Business Promoter" and are reprinted here by permission of the author. They should be interesting to the many millions of boys and girls who have followed the Rovers through the twenty-six years of their existence.)

How

OW did I come to write The Rover Boys' stories, and how did I happen to pick out the pen name of Arthur M. Winfield?

Well, first as to the stories. For a long time I had had in mind to write a series dealing with up-to-date American boys. Many of our books of those days had an English setting, or else were of the wishy-washy, the "Rollo," or the poor class of Sunday school volume type. I remembered that when I had gone to Sunday school we had a library of over a thousand volumes and of those the boys did not care for more than a dozen. And at the public library, a small affair, we were handed dilapidated copies of "Ivanhoe," or "The Water Babies," or "Deeds of Daring Travelers," the latter with little woodcuts of lions, snakes, and the like.

I wrote the first three volumes of The Rover Boys one summer, and I have been writing one volume a year ever since. The first volumes were published by the Mershon Company, now defunct. In those days we thought a sale of three thousand of a title very fine, and we never dreamed the sale would go into the millions.

Now as to the pen name, Arthur M. Winfield. One evening, when writing with my mother sitting near sewing, I remarked that I wanted an assumed name-that I wasn't going to use my own name on the manuscript I was then turning out, a short story for a religious weekly. She thought a moment and suggested Winfield. "For then," she said, "you may win in that field." I thought that good and then asked about a front name. "Well," she said, "if you are going to be an author, why not make it Arthur?" And so it became Arthur. Then to make it look more natural, I inserted the middle initial M., saying M stood for thousands and it might help us to sell thousands of books. It has done that and more; it has brought thousands of letters to Arthur M. Winfield, from boys and girls all over this land, and in England, Australia and other quarters of the globe.

What do the boys and girls write about? Well, the girls generally want to know when the girls in the books are going to marry the Rover boys. Of the boys, fully fifty per cent. want to know where Putnam Hall is and what the tuition charges are. I really ought to start such a school and fill it with the boys who have read The Rover Boys. Many of the boys want to know where the Rover boys live, so they can write to them!

How do I write the stories? Well, I used to pound them

=

Life and Letters

WHEN I reviewed Virginia Woolf's

"Jacob's Room" two or three years ago, I ended up facetiously with the assertion that I should gladly surrender for the small sum of fifteen cents the copy for which I had paid three dollars. It caused a lot of trouble, because several subscribers wrote in, sending stamps. All these letters had to be answered, not to mention having to wrap up and post the book to a man in Brooklyn. Mrs. Woolf has now written another novel, "Mrs. Dalloway," and let me start right off by saying that my sample is not for sale at any price. In the first place, I had to beg a review copy from Mr. Harrison Smith of Harcourt, Brace and Co., after hearing from my pet bookseller that it was going strong with his trade; and in the second place, I intend to give it as a bon voyage present to a friend who is sailing for Europe.

Mrs. Woolf has come along a bit since "Jacob's Room." She is a fair exponent of the school of what Clive Bell calls "fourth dimensional writing," which really means putting down on paper details which most writers con

sider irrelevant to the plot, if they see them at all. Moods, evanescent psychology-all that sort of thing. It naturally follows that with fourth dimensional writers there isn't very much plot, if any. The three hundred pages of "Mrs. Dalloway" cover only one day in its heroine's existence, a day in which the reader meets a lot of assorted strangers. Yet Mrs. Woolf does manage to present her somehow, and the fashionable London which is her métier. And she docs make her charming, only I don't think she should have given her a pinched face and made her carry home the flowers she bought for her party.

(Fully conscious of my heresy, let me confess in a whisper that I am not yet quite up to the new fourth dimensional school. There are so many pages whereon I have no idea what the author is talking about. But you mustn't pay any attention to me. Remember what the critics said about Keats and Shelley.)

P. S. I hope Mr. Harrison Smith doesn't think, if he reads this, that I've played him a dirty trick.

THE kind of girl that men forget (am

I not being painfully grammatical by leaving out that "a" before "girl"?) is not at all what the song would lead us to believe. The kind of girl that men forget is the girl with the Queenof-the-May complex-the girl who leads them off into dark corners and talks to them as if she were a composite of Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and the siren sisters. The kind who says, "I was vain enough to imagine you would follow me-men have, you know....I am not the sort of woman who unfolds herself to any man interested enough to endure the revelation....Some call me a proud woman, Jerrold." Of course, in literature, as in life, such a female go-getter is usually left in the lurch (or must be killed off like Mercutio in order to save the plot) for a sweet young thing with a peaches-and-cream complexion who, like George Ade's heroine, knows that Columbus discovered America and what kind of cold cream to use, and lets it go at that. That is certainly what happens in "A Taste of Honey," by Eric Maschwitz (Continued on page 29)