HOW A BOY MEASURED A TREE

New Zealand Tablet, 26 June 1913, Page 61

HOW A BOY MEASURED A TREE

He is not a boy in a book. He seldom says anything remarkable. He eats oatmeal in large quantities and tears his trousers and goes through the toes of his boots and loses his cap and slams the doors and chases the cat, just like any other boy. But he is remarkable, for he asks few questions . and does much thinking. If he does not understand, he whistles—an excellent habit on most occasions. There was much whistling in our yard one summer. It seemed to be an all-summer performance. Near the end of the season, however, our boy announced the height of our tall maple to be thirty-three feet. ‘ Why, how do you know V was the general question. 1 Measured it.’ How ‘ Footrule and yardstick.’ ‘You didn’t climb that tall fre»*’ i-,;, _ , _ WW • -UlKt XAI.VUUOX asked, anxiously. * No’m ; I just found the length of the shadow and' measured that.’

i ‘ But the length of the shadow changes.’ ‘Yes’m; but twice a day the shadows are just as long as things themselves. I’ve been trying it all summer. I drove a stick into the ground, and when the shadows were just as long as the stick I knew that the shadow of the tree would be just as long as the tree, and that’s thirty-three feet.’ ‘Did I whistle?’ asked Tom. ‘I didn’t hear myself at it. I guess I was so busy watching the shadow and measuring that I didn’t know what else I was doing at that particular time.’