A BOY ASTRONOMER
What I Intended to Be--My Aunt’s View--My Parents’ Approval--My
Uncle’s Enthusiasm--The Total Eclipse of the Sun.
Like all ambitious boys, I now began to dream of my future.
In a daily paper to which we were subscribing, there was a story
appearing in serial form, which I happened to read, and in which I
became immediately interested. It was a scientific novel, with a
revenge motive. The title, the author, the plot--all are now forgotten
except the vague idea that the hero in the end, by his high inventive
ability, built a wonderful machine, by means of which he poured
poisonous gas into the castle where his enemy lived, and thereby took
his vengeance upon him. I was simply fascinated, and wanted to be an
engineer.
The first one to whom I confided my intention was Tomo-chan. Of course
I did not and could not depict an engineer as the one in the story,
wrapped in the glowing splendor of his intellectual triumph. I might
have tried it if she had given me a chance to do so. But too soon her
peculiar and perhaps truer view of the profession came on me like a
blow.
“Why, isn’t an engineer a sort of carpenter?” she asked. Reduced to
such a lowest term, even my hero looked shabby, and from that very
moment I dropped him entirely.
I was not, however, fortunate enough to find a substitute worthy of my
admiration, and I had to go without any. But this time my mind seemed
to be able to present to me a proper object of my ambition. All my
thought gradually drifted toward the province of science (I little
knew then that it was the same engineer story which influenced me).
Of all branches of learning, science appeared to me to be the most
substantial, most worthy of serious study, and most certain of arriving
at the secret of the creation. The study, however, of a small portion
of God’s work, such as a leaf of a tree or a nameless insect, did not
appeal to me. No, any section of the earth was not large enough to lay
down my life for. I wanted to take in the earth, the sun, the moon,
the planets, and the stars--in fact, all the universe at once! So I
fixed upon astronomy as my special study. The immensity of the field
and the purely theoretical nature of the subject, coupled with the
transcendency of the pursuit over the triviality of worldly affairs,
had all its charm over me. It was simply great.
I went again to Tomo-chan to tell her of my intention. The idea of an
astronomer was apparently beyond her grasp. She could not think of any
occupation such as carpenter, mason, and so forth, to associate with
an astronomer, and it did not take her long to admit that it was grand.
This was my first triumph, and now I approached my aunt to see what
she would think of it. She was one of those women whose mind never
soared above the world even for the sake of observation. She could
not conceive the idea that this earth--which, by the way, was flat,
according to her view--revolves every day. I went into a whole length
of explanation by the help of a lighted lamp and my fist, to show how
the revolution would cause day and night, but to no purpose. So I
changed my tactics and told her the story of a little girl, who, in
her own way, understood this fact. She lived at the foot of a high
mountain, on the summit of which there was a lake. The little girl
could not understand how water could be found in such a high place till
she was told one day about the diurnal revolution of the earth. “That
must be true,” she said, “and so the mountain dips into the sea in the
night and carries the water from there!”
But it was not my purpose to convince her about such a matter, and so I
proceeded to acquaint her with my intention. I soon found that it was
not exactly in the line of her approval. She presented to me at once
her worldly view of the profession, how out of ordinary my choice was.
The astronomer was to her a man who sleeps when all should be up, and
is awake when all should be in bed. He looks always at the sky, and
does not know often that he is about to tumble into a ditch. He has to
perch on a roof or a tree-top like a sparrow, to watch the stars while
everybody is enjoying some nice thing in the house.
This, however, had no effect of a wet blanket upon me. I knew that she
was teasing me for the mere fun of it. Her humorous eyes were ready
to take in any change in my surprised countenance, which on my part I
partly assumed to please her.
In the end, however, she frankly admitted that the constantly
increasing number of new studies in these enlightened days bewildered
her greatly, and she could not tell which profession was sure to lead
one to success. Perhaps I was right, she said, in choosing a study
which only a few might attempt.
Two days passed, in the course of which I became surer of my choice and
was ready to face my parents. I had a secret suspicion that my father
might have some plan already laid out for me. If he had had anything in
mind outside of a scientific pursuit, I should have been non-plussed.
But, luckily, I found I was ahead of him; indeed, he and my mother,
too, seemed to trust everything to my natural inclination, and had only
a vague but bright future for me without any particular road leading to
it. So, when I laid before them, side by side, my desire or rather my
determination to become an astronomer and a future college professor,
with an income four times as great as my father’s,--I reserved the
poetic side of my choice for my own meditation,--I made such a deep
impression on them that it surprised me altogether. My mother, bending
over her sewing by lamp-light, silently passed her hand over her eyes,
while my father picked up a paper which had been read all through,
with a slightly drawn “Um,” in his throat, which in his case was to
be interpreted as indicating some pleasant feeling. My mother was
the spokesman in such a case when my father’s silence was meant for
consent. She told me that one must go heart and soul into any sort of
study in order to excel in it. I simply nodded, and presently went to
bed with a light heart, after bidding good night to the dear little
stars who would be my constant companions hereafter.
I could not meet my uncle till Sunday, but Tomo-chan told me that he
heard everything about me from my aunt, and was very enthusiastic over
my intention. Indeed, he was always enthusiastic over new things,
though his enthusiasm was usually rather short-lived. But I was glad
that my news struck him in that light. That morning I found him
reading a paper, but as I approached he looked up, and, removing his
spectacles, and combing his beard with his fingers, surveyed me awhile
as if to see if I was capable of my word. But really he was waiting for
the return of his enthusiastic mood. I felt that Tomo-chan was smiling
over my situation from the next room, though I could not remove my eyes
from my uncle.
“Astronomer, eh?” he said at last.
“Yes, sir. Going to be one.”
“That’s grand. You will be the fourth or fifth in that line in our
country. I should take one of those new studies if I were young enough.
But astronomy is indeed fascinating. Do you know that the moon never
shows her other side?”
Here he rose up and began to pace the room. His enthusiasm served to
bring back a flood of the shallow but ready knowledge which he stored
up in a corner of his head. And he did not let me speak a word till he
had finished a lecture on the solar system.
“Look here,”--he turned to me with the look of a man who made a sudden
discovery,--“do you know of the solar eclipse we are going to have on
the 20th?”
Of course I did. It was still two weeks thence, and the moon was as
opposite as could be, but I had already darkened a piece of glass over
a candle and begun to observe the sun at least once a day.
“This is the total eclipse and its rare opportunity. You may not see it
again in Japan in your lifetime,” he went on.
In my lifetime was too strong a phrase, but I was very sorry to miss
the chance, as the zone of the total eclipse passed some fifty miles
north of Tokyo, and I had--no money.
“Perhaps in your lifetime, too,” I ventured to suggest.
“Yes, indeed. I did not think of myself,” he laughingly said. “Well,
then, let’s go!”
“Go?”
“I will take you and Tomo with me.”
In the adjoining room Tomo-chan was seen just raising both her
outstretched hands, opening her mouth, and rolling her eyes--all
bespeaking her joy and surprise. I wished very much to answer the
signal but for the presence of my uncle, who kept staring at anybody or
anything near him, and this time at me, while revolving some new plan
in his mind.
For the intervening days I was busy making preparations for the
expedition. I had to buy half a dozen pieces of glass, frame and
darken them in a variety of shade; to adjust my watch to keep time; to
study the constellation where the sun was, and note the stars of the
first magnitude visible on the day; and to make four or five copies
of a drawing with a graduated circle in the centre for the sun, and
two other concentric circles for the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The
difficult part of the business was how to record time for the beginning
of the eclipse. We needed two, at least, for this. Tomo-chan was glad
to offer her service, but she did not want to look at the watch but
at the sun. Well, I had no objection to that, as long as she could
tell the right moment. But as I was a little in doubt on that point,
we spent several nights in drill by means of a shaded lamp which cast
a bright disc on the wall. No sooner than I moved an opaque one and
touched the other, she had to press my hand. But too often the movable
disc was a quarter of an inch inside the other when the belated touch
passed on to me. So I had to train her eyes first by giving a signal at
the time of contact by means of a pinch. And if she did not perceive it
still, she got pinched still harder. She was very unteachable in this
respect, but still wanted to look at the sun rather than the watch!
So the day of the eclipse arrived. It was a hot, clear day in July,
and most fitted for the observation. We took an early train, as we
had a long way to go, and then we must settle somewhere to watch the
beginning and the end and the most precious middle. In the central part
of the zone of the total eclipse there was a government observatory
temporarily erected, and we wanted to get as near to it as possible.
But we did not take into account the rather slow service of the train,
and the hour for the eclipse had come before we got into the zone, and
were, of course, in the train. As nothing could be done under such
circumstances, we gave up the initial observation, and all the three
just looked at the sun through the soot-covered pieces of glass. We
did not know that we were a gainer and not a loser by this till late,
except Tomo-chan, who had already earned enough pinches merely to be
ready for the occasion.
The train was a few miles within the zone when my uncle thought it
wise to stop at a small village and make an observation there, as the
sun was fast being overshadowed. We settled in a nice tea-house, whose
front room in the second floor with an open veranda was just the sort
of place for our purpose. And there, after a quick lunch, we awaited
the hour. Tomo-chan and I had a board and a sheet of paper which I had
specially prepared, to note the location of the visible stars and to
draw the shape of the corona.
I never knew that the light of the sun was so strong, for till the
luminous surface was reduced to a very thin crescent, no change was
observed in the sky. But all at once, as the shadow of a man passing
on the street became weirdly faint, the color of the sky turned into
warm steel-black and the purple stars began to shine! And in no time
the crescent was changed into a mere speck of silver light, and in a
second, as it burned itself off, a beautifully soft fringe of twilight
appeared. That was the corona!
I now assiduously set about to take down the exact shape of it. There
were only thirty seconds of this precious moment. So I just put down
important points on the paper, noting carefully the position and the
distance, and tried to take a clear impression in my mind to be traced
out later. Tomo-chan was working, too. But her process was just the
opposite of mine. Evidently she wished to follow my picture, but as
mine was no picture, she turned to the sun with a sigh, and, though she
finished it in time, she had a picture of a heavenly corona twisted
considerably by an earthly wind!
The wonderful moment had now passed, and the corona, with a tail
trailing at the right-hand side of the sun, disappeared like a dream.
It was too brief, but we were satisfied, and did not know what to
think of our good fortune when, three minutes later, a dark cloud came
and brushed the sun off. Then we imagined what the consequence might
have been if the train had been fast and we had gone on further north.
The next day’s paper said that the government expedition was entirely
spoiled on account of the untimely shower!