1796--1876.
But what a life story is revealed by the dash which separates those
figures, 1796--1876! Eighty years of toil and endurance, toil in early
youth, toil in manhood, toil in the midst of amassed wealth, until the
inevitable end at last came. He was born in Fredericksburg, Pa., where
he received a common school education. He learned the trade of an organ
builder and piano maker in Hanover, Pa. He went into business in
Baltimore, Md., and also in Philadelphia; but his destiny drove him
away to Buenos Ayres, to Valparaiso, and other places in South America,
until, in 1847, he settled in California, where he became interested in
real estate, and in due time amassed a large fortune. His strong face,
which greets one in bronze, at the Mount Hamilton Observatory, bespeaks
a powerful and stern character. He never married. He was deemed by
those who knew him to be "unlovable, eccentric, solitary, selfish, and
avaricious," but when this is said, the memory of it is somewhat
condoned, for there was a romance in the case--he was crossed in love.
It is hard to judge of such a man, and of such circumstances. He
certainly has made amends for all his shortcomings, or tried to, if
they were as related, by his munificent bequests to charity, and above
all to pure science. When one looks at his carpenter's bench, preserved
as a relic of his workman's life, and then at his tomb in the still
silence and darkness of the great telescope chamber, and then remembers
all that this silent, lonely man has done, one cannot but believe that
he had in heart, all along, great ideals which none of those about him,
in the vulgar strife of life, ever imagined. What can be more unlike a
narrow, selfish, unlovable, and avaricious man than his splendid
offering of a fortune to keep eternal watch upon the stars?
These thoughts danced through one's brain in presence of it all. We
were grateful to the old man, whose face, singularly like that of John
Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, seemed to embody the tragedies and
aspirations of life; and we thought of his silent dust beneath us, as
through his gifts we looked at Jupiter and his moons, and noted the
strange belts which band the planet, brought near to us by the lens of
the Lick telescope. We saw also the crested edge, glittering like
molten silver, of the moon of this our own planet, and longed to wait
until Saturn should rise, and other wonders open before us. Professor
Schaeberle made me the fascinating offer to stay all night, and go down
the mountain in the early morning; but I kept with the party, and, well
after eleven at night, we started on the home run down the mountain to
San Jose.
The coming up was grand indeed, but the going down was better. The
great moon flung its radiance over the vast expanse. It was a symphony
in gray and silver. It was a downward plunge into black mysteries of
overhanging mountains. It was delirious with possible dangers. It set
one's heart throbbing, and the best relief we could have was in song
and shout which roused the echoes of the night.
We subsided into silence when we reached safety and the plain, and were
rather bored than otherwise, as we cantered into the deserted streets
of San Jose at half-past two o'clock in the morning. How tame seemed
the dull surroundings of even that pretty place at such an hour--a few
saloons yet aglare, a light in an occasional window, all the rest
ghostly, silent, and yet commonplace, too, after our splendid excursion
to the stars.