1. THERE was a quarrel in Nature. Red and blue and yellow stood in open defiance, each of the other two. "Acknowledge me chief!" said red. "I am the emblem. of charity. All that is warm and redolent of comfort and kindness meets in my tints. I rest on this rose, and claim precedence." 2. "Acknowledge me chief!" said blue. I am the emblem of truth. All that is high and pure and just wears my hue. I rise and shine from yonder sky, and claim precedence." "Acknowledge me chief!" said yellow. "I am the emblem of light and glory. Kings are crowned, palaces glitter, with my lustrous color. O golden sun, on thee I call, and claim precedence." 3. "Ah, my children," said the sun, "the very heavens weep at your disunion. Be reconciled, I pray, and show your strength of beauty where it must ever be, in harmony." They rose at the entreaty, and embraced in the tearful clouds; and the sun shone out on them, and glorious in loveliness was the rainbow they made. 4. There are in the world, strictly speaking, only three colors. They are red, yellow, and blue,—the first, or primary, colors. But there are different shades of red, of yellow, and of blue. There is pale red and there is deep red. Are there not roses of all shades of red, from the very faintest to the very deepest? Now these are all red roses, though some are of a light and some of a darker red. 5. So, too, with yellow. There is pale yellow and there is deep yellow. Think of a dandelion, a sunflower, and a buttercup. Their color is quite a deep yellow; but the yellow of a lemon is pale yellow. Among other flowers and fruits you must have noticed many different shades of yellow. 6. As it is with red and yellow, so it is with blue: there are many shades of that color too. Look at the sky when it is clear. We call its color cerulean; but the sky is never a very dark blue. A peacock has a neck and breast of the most charming deep blue. Other birds, and flowers also, show us very pure blue colors, some light and some dark. Sometimes the water of a lake has in a certain light the tenderest blue color. 7. Thus we see that there are light and dark shades of each of the three primary colors. But when we mix these prime colors one with another, an entirely different result is produced. We have, not a shade of red, or a shade of blue, or a shade of yellow, from this mixing: we have something entirely new, the secondary colors, orange, green, and purple. 8. If I should hold up before you an orange, and ask its color, you would perhaps be puzzled to decide whether it was red or yellow. Now the orange has in it both yellow and red, and, if these colors happened to be exactly balanced in a particular orange, you might say that it was neither exactly red nor yet exactly yellow. In fact, the red and yellow together make a union of color which is called orange, because many common kinds of oranges have the red and the yellow color very nearly equal. Some oranges have more red than yellow, and their united color is a reddish orange. So there is also a yellowish orange,— more yellow than red. 9. Now, if a bunch of grass, fresh from the meadow, were held before you, and you were asked its color, you might think, — Well, it is not exactly blue, nor yet is it yellow. Of course you would say it was green. You can see blue in it, and yellow too. These two colors blended make green. 10. Next look at a ripe plum. Can you detect in it both blue and red? Blue and red united make purple. Sometimes into the " 'blue urn" of the clear sky so much red is poured that it assumes a purplish hue, and sometimes the sunset clouds are tinted in delicate purple.1 1 If ever so little yellow unites with purple, the purple is not so purple as it was before; if some red mixes with the green, the green is not so green as it was before; if some blue mixes with orange, the orange is not so orange as it was before. Grass, and the leaves of trees and bushes, though greener than any green of the painter, are not really so green as we are apt to think them. We do not look upon black and white as colors. Some say that white is three colors together, blended in exactly equal proportions. So black is said to be the absence of color. Nevertheless, if a dark yellow, a dark red, and a dark blue be mixed together, there will result a black deeper and darker than the blackest paint. 11. There is nothing on earth that has any one of the six colors exactly pure. But if we look up at the rain bow, "The airy child of vapor and the sun," we do see them pure. The rainbow places before our eyes the clearest and most beautiful of colors, and causes the heart of man and child to leap up when we behold them. 12. We all like bright, pure colors. Still, we also admire many of those indefinite hues that are called neutral tints. And we should be careful not to bring ourselves to like only the one sort and not the other; for nature not only shows us very pure single and double colors, but an endless variety of neutral, gray, and somber hues. The rainbow and the sunset clouds hold before our eyes the bright pure colors. The somber and the neutral tints are before us everywhere. 13. Deep is the mystery of color. Why are our spirits lighter and brighter when the sun shines than when the sky is overcast ? It is because all things wear then a leaden aspect, the hue of night and death. The shadow on the meadow casts a shadow on the mind. But the glorious sunburst, the symbol of life, brings to view a thousand bright and sparkling colors which feed the eye, and flash their radiance into the heart. MRS. PROSSER. Adapted. 2.- THE RAINBOW. TRIUMPHAL arch, that fill'st the sky, Still seem, as to my childhood's sight, For happy spirits to alight, Betwixt the earth and heaven! Can all that optics 1 teach, unfold As when I dreamed of gems and gold When science from creation's face What lovely visions yield their place And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, Have told why first thy robe of beams When o'er the green undeluged earth, Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, How came the world's gray fathers forth To watch thy sacred sign! And when its yellow luster smiled O'er mountains yet untrod, Each mother held aloft her child Methinks, thy jubilee to keep, 1 op'tics, the science of light and vision. |