[Following the Equator by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookFollowing the Equator CHAPTER V 10/16
If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for. Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the fanciful name has to be discarded for a common-sense one, a manifestly descriptive one.
The Great Bear remained the Great Bear--and unrecognizable as such--for thousands of years; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly; but as soon as it became the property of the United States, Congress changed it to the Big Dipper, and now every body is satisfied, and there is no more talk about riots.
I would not change the Southern Cross to the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the Southern Kite; for up there in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for coffins and crosses and dippers.
In a little while, now--I cannot tell exactly how long it will be--the globe will belong to the English-speaking race; and of course the skies also.
Then the constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-named--the most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as the Southern Kite, or go out of business.
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