“[A former croft worker] hated the industrial system and had found liberation by operating a market garden on the edge of the moors where he had the use of a powerful telescope erected on his land. Indoors he gave magic-lantern shows of the heavens and their constellations, and on clear evenings at the dark of the year we were invited to view the rings around Saturn, the beauty of the Milky Way or the craters and valleys of the Moon. After carefully sighting the objects he turned to us solemnly, “Sithee, lasses, isn’t that a marvelous seet; a stupendous universe, yet we fritter our lives away i’ wars and petty spites!” As youngsters we gazed, inclined to giggle; then came a moment of silent awe as awareness of “night clad in the beauty of a thousand inauspicious stars—the vast of night and its void”—seeped into consciousness.26”