September 1911, Third Edition; illustrated by Peter Newell; nice front inscription (pic); Frederick A. Stokes Company publishers; hardbound; good condition with a few pages sticking so slightly along spine; boards good with minor fading; no dust jacket.
 
description -
full title: The Runaway Equator and the Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It.
 
MOTHER had been helping Billy with his geography lesson, sitting in the garden on a lovely day early in spring, and showing Billy how the earth revolves on its axis. To illustrate this difficult matter and to make it interesting, she had taken a big yellow orange to represent the Earth and had used a stick of lemon candy for the Pole. She made the Equator out of a black rubber band such as you put around fat envelopes.

Then, when Billy said that he understood, Mother dug a hole in the orange and stuck the lemon stick in it and, handing it to Billy, said with a droll twinkle in her blue eyes, which always seemed to be laughing:

"Would you like to eat up the Earth through the North Pole?"