The Reminiscences of an Astronomer

zing fire in the office of the "Nautical Almanac" at Cambridge, Mass. I had come on from Washington, armed with letters from Professor Henry and Mr. Hilgard, to seek

the most meagre text-books of elementary mathematics of that period. Runkle spoke of the translator as "the Captain." So familiar

ho had all the mysteries of gravitation and the celestial motions at their fingers' ends. I should not have been surprised to learn that even the Hibernian who fed the fire had imbibed so much of the spirit

new world? To answer this question some account of my early life is necessary. The interest now taken in questions

s born in Massachusetts or Maine about 1666, and died at Lebanon, Conn., in 1745. His descendants had a fancy for naming their eldest so

alth, hold a high official position, or do anything to make his name live in history. On my mother's side are found New England clergymen and an English nonconformist preacher

e of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name. He was, I believe, a stonecutter by trade and owner of a quarry whi

ce. He came from a long-lived family, and one so prolific that it is said most of the Princes of New England are descended from it. I have heard a story of him which may illustrate the freedom of the time in matters of legal proceedings before a magistrate's court. At that time a party in

ing him in here and get him to t

time

e I would have paid yo

rate stepped from behind

ll pay him now,

ects in view in entering the marriage state, and this required a mentally gifted wife. She must be of different temperament from his own and an economical housekeeper. So when he found the age of twenty-five approaching, he began to look about. There was no one in Wallace who satisfied the requirements. He therefore set out afoot to discover his ideal. In those days and regions the professional tramp and mendicant were unknown, and every farmhouse dispensed its hospitality with an Arcadian simplicity little known in our

nviction grew upon him that here was the object of his search. That such should have occurred before there was any opportunity to inspect the doughpan may lead the reader to conclusions of his own. He inquired her name-Emily Prince. He cultivated her acquaintance, paid his addresses, and was accepted. He was fond of astronomy, and during the months of his engagement one of his favorite occupations was to take her out of an evening and show her the constellations. It

sed the highest admiration for her mental gifts, to which he attributed whatever talents his children might have possessed. The unfitness of her enviro

ortune in a number of places, both in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Our lot was made harder by the fact that his ideas of education did not coincide with those prevalent in the communities where he taught. He was a disciple and admirer of William Cobbett, and though he did not run so far counter to the ideas of his patrons as to teach Cobbett's grammar at school, he always re

boys was "from sun to sun,"-I might almost say from daylight to darkness,-as they tilled the ground, mended the fences, or cut lumber, wood, and stone for export to more favored climes. The spinning wheel and the loom were almost a necessary part of the furniture of any well-ordered house; the exceptions were among people rich enough to buy their own clothes, or so poor and miserable that they had to wear the c

ofound influence upon my views of economic subjects. The conception which the masses of the present time have of how their an

teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed. For the most part, when I attended my father's school at all,

lphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was rea

s. We were at Bedeque, Prince Edward Island. During the absence of my father, the school was kept for a time by Mr. Bacon. The class in reading had that chapter in the New Testament in which the treason of Judas is described. It was then examined on the subject.

Long years afterward, my father, at my request, wrote me a letter describing my early education, extracts from which I shall ask permission to reproduce, instead of attempting t

8th

e, according to your reque

nts of book-learning; but I insisted that you should not be taught the first letter until you became five.

ows each way was the one you had counted up. After this, for a week or two, you spent a considerable number of hours every day, making calculations in addition and multiplication. The rows of naps being crossed and complexed in various ways, y

on that day, having a light hand-sled prepared, I fixed

be put into the child's hands as soon as the book is," you of course

hour's study, I sent you out, telling you to run about and play a "good spell." To the best of my judgment

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evening. This would make six hours per day, nearly or quite two and a half hours of that time at numbers either at your slate or mentally. When my school ended he

n about this period, and had asked my father for a description of it in

what you went for. I have seen you come back from Cale Schurman's crying, [3] and after asking you several times you would make out to answer, you had not been a

d you several things, explaining that they all had some shape or form. You now brightened up like a lawyer who had led on a witness with easy questions to a certain point, and

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big crooked horns on him? Does he know it himself, I me

corner. Your rise was also rapid, I think about a week (or perhaps two weeks) from your first at recovery, until y

w weeks I began to examine you in figures, and foun

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re. I usually asked you questions on the road going to school, in the morning, upon the history you had read, or something you had studied the day previous. While there, you made a dozen or two of the folks raise a terrible laugh. I one evening lectured on astronom

ever knew you to deviate from it in one s

ng the woods or in places in the dark among cattle, and I am sur

uncommonly deficient in that sort of courage necessary to perform bodily labor. Until nine or

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o me. I will name one case. After a return to Wallace (you were eleven) I, one day, on going from home for an hour or so, gave you a borrowed newspaper, telling you there was a fine piece; to read it, and tell me its content

system, so as to be able to stand long hours of study when you came to manhood, for it was evident to me that you would not labor with the hands

into employment at some future day, among the learned. The pleasure of intellectual exercise in demonstrating or analyzing a geometrical problem, or solving

, to know if he would give you a place among the midshipmen of the navy; but my hope of seeing you a leading lawyer, and finally a judge on the bench, together

y should have any value as a mental discipline. Its real value consisted, not in what it taught about the position of the "organs," but in presenting a study of human nature which, if not scientific in form, was truly so in spirit. I acquired the habit of looking on the charact

his sort will avail to keep the passions of a youth always in check, and my own were no exception. When about fifteen I once made a great scandal by taking out my knife in prayer meeting and assaulting a young man who, while I was kneeling down during the prayer, stood above me and squeezed my neck. He escaped with a couple of severe though not serious

ills were due to men's disregard of the laws of Nature, which were classified as physical and moral. Obey the laws of health and we and our posterity will all reach the age of one hundred years. Obey the moral law and social evils will disappear. Its reading was accompanied by some qualms of conscience, arising from the non-accordance of many of its tenets with those of the "Catech

s a story which a boy who had scarcely read any other would naturally follow with interest. Two circumstances connected with the reading, one negative and the other positive, I recall. Looking into the book after attaining years of maturity, I found it to contain many incidents of a character that would not be admitted into a modern work.

at length did so in consequence of a passage in the algebra which referred to the 47th proposition of the First Book. It occurred to me to look into the book and see what this was. It was the first conception of mathematical proof that I had ever met with. I saw that the demonstration referred to a previous proposition, went back to that, and so on to the beginning. A new world of thought seemed to be opened. That principles so pr

and even erroneous though it was, it presented in a pleasing manner the first principles of physical science. I used to steal into the

uestioned whether anything else would not do just as well as tobacco to smoke, and whether he was not wasting his money by buying that article when a cheap substitute could be found. So one day I took his pipe, removed the remains of the tobacco ashes, and stuffed the pipe with tea leaves that had been steeped, a

newly invented telegraph were then explained to the people in out of the way places by traveling lecturers. One of these came to Clements, where we then lived, with a lot of apparatus, amongst which was what I recognized as a Leyden jar. It was coated

his reply, "I put

the interior surface of the glass without any conductor,

eal about the warship of his time. To a boy living on the seacoast, who naturally t

asionally my love of books brought a word of commendation from some visitor, perhaps a Methodist minister, who pa

g at me, in my own view of the case, as if I were some monster misshapen in the womb. Instead of feeling that my bookish taste was something to be valued, I looke

was one of the most valued of accomplishments. I keenly felt my inability to acquire even respectable mediocrity in this branch of the agricultural profession. It was mortifying to watch the dexterous motions of the wh

arn. True, I had once read in some story, perhaps fictitious, how a nobleman had found a boy reading Newton's "Principia," and not only expressed his pleased surprise at the performance, but actually got the boy educated. But there was no nobleman in sight of the backwoods of Nova Scotia. I read in the autobiography of Franklin how he had made his way in life. But he was surrounded with opportunities from which I was cut off. It does seem a little singular that,

cellent and esteemed cousin, Judge

struction from my aunts, received more tha

y impression of two half-grown or nearly grown boys, perhaps between fourteen and