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 clamour; 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 splendour, eclipsing
by her intense illumination all the surrounding lights. The Yankees
all turned their gaze towards 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 2 a.m., however, the excitement began to subside. President
Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and squeezed almost
to a mummy. A 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 tranquillity.
Illustration: THE TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION.
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.
Illustration: CAMBRIDGE OBSERVATORY.