EFFECT OF THE PRESIDENT’S COMMUNICATION
It is impossible to describe the effect produced by the last words of
the honorable president—the cries, the shouts, the succession of roars,
hurrahs, and all the varied vociferations which the American language
is capable of supplying. It was a scene of indescribable confusion and
uproar. They shouted, they clapped, they stamped on the floor of the
hall. All the weapons in the museum discharged at once could not have
more violently set in motion the waves of sound. One need not be
surprised at this. There are some cannoneers nearly as noisy as their
own guns.
Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this enthusiastic clamor;
perhaps he was desirous of addressing a few more words to his
colleagues, for by his gestures he demanded silence, and his powerful
alarum was worn out by its violent reports. No attention, however, was
paid to his request. He was presently torn from his seat and passed
from the hands of his faithful colleagues into the arms of a no less
excited crowd.
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the
word “impossible” is not a French one. People have evidently been
deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and
as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
Between Barbicane’s proposition and its realization no true Yankee
would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A
thing with them is no sooner said than done.
The triumphal progress of the president continued throughout the
evening. It was a regular torchlight procession. Irish, Germans,
French, Scotch, all the heterogeneous units which make up the
population of Maryland shouted in their respective vernaculars; and the
“vivas,” “hurrahs,” and “bravos” were intermingled in inexpressible
enthusiasm.
Just at this crisis, as though she comprehended all this agitation
regarding herself, the moon shone forth with serene splendor, eclipsing
by her intense illumination all the surrounding lights. The Yankees all
turned their gaze toward her resplendent orb, kissed their hands,
called her by all kinds of endearing names. Between eight o’clock and
midnight one optician in Jones’-Fall Street made his fortune by the
sale of opera-glasses.
Midnight arrived, and the enthusiasm showed no signs of diminution. It
spread equally among all classes of citizens—men of science,
shopkeepers, merchants, porters, chair-men, as well as “greenhorns,”
were stirred in their innermost fibres. A national enterprise was at
stake. The whole city, high and low, the quays bordering the Patapsco,
the ships lying in the basins, disgorged a crowd drunk with joy, gin,
and whisky. Every one chattered, argued, discussed, disputed,
applauded, from the gentleman lounging upon the barroom settee with his
tumbler of sherry-cobbler before him down to the waterman who got drunk
upon his “knock-me-down” in the dingy taverns of Fell Point.
About two A.M., however, the excitement began to subside. President
Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and squeezed almost to a
mummy. Hercules could not have resisted a similar outbreak of
enthusiasm. The crowd gradually deserted the squares and streets. The
four railways from Philadelphia and Washington, Harrisburg and
Wheeling, which converge at Baltimore, whirled away the heterogeneous
population to the four corners of the United States, and the city
subsided into comparative tranquility.
On the following day, thanks to the telegraphic wires, five hundred
newspapers and journals, daily, weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly, all
took up the question. They examined it under all its different aspects,
physical, meteorological, economical, or moral, up to its bearings on
politics or civilization. They debated whether the moon was a finished
world, or whether it was destined to undergo any further
transformation. Did it resemble the earth at the period when the latter
was destitute as yet of an atmosphere? What kind of spectacle would its
hidden hemisphere present to our terrestrial spheroid? Granting that
the question at present was simply that of sending a projectile up to
the moon, every one must see that that involved the commencement of a
series of experiments. All must hope that some day America would
penetrate the deepest secrets of that mysterious orb; and some even
seemed to fear lest its conquest should not sensibly derange the
equilibrium of Europe.
The project once under discussion, not a single paragraph suggested a
doubt of its realization. All the papers, pamphlets, reports—all the
journals published by the scientific, literary, and religious societies
enlarged upon its advantages; and the Society of Natural History of
Boston, the Society of Science and Art of Albany, the Geographical and
Statistical Society of New York, the Philosophical Society of
Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian of Washington sent innumerable
letters of congratulation to the Gun Club, together with offers of
immediate assistance and money.
From that day forward Impey Barbicane became one of the greatest
citizens of the United States, a kind of Washington of science. A
single trait of feeling, taken from many others, will serve to show the
point which this homage of a whole people to a single individual
attained.
Some few days after this memorable meeting of the Gun Club, the manager
of an English company announced, at the Baltimore theatre, the
production of “Much ado about Nothing.” But the populace, seeing in
that title an allusion damaging to Barbicane’s project, broke into the
auditorium, smashed the benches, and compelled the unlucky director to
alter his playbill. Being a sensible man, he bowed to the public will
and replaced the offending comedy by “As you like it”; and for many
weeks he realized fabulous profits.