There was a naturalist named William Beebe and he was a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, of course, was a great friend of nature, as we know. He began the now very extensive National Park system.

One evening the two of them were at Teddy’s home at Sagamore Hill. They walked together around the beautiful gardens and spreading lawn. They took turns identifying the stars and constellations in the night sky.

One of them said: “That is the spiral galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is 800,000 light years away from ours. And that galaxy consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.”

After a moment of gazing and silence, Theodore Roosevelt finally grinned and said: “Now, I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed!”

For some reason that reminds me of the words Abigail Adams wrote in a letter to her husband, John Adams: “We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.”

I think that Abigail was indeed very instrumental in keeping the sometimes noble, proud, and grand husband of hers, small enough to go about his duties!