The Reminiscences of an Astronomer Part 2

[3] The grandfather of President Schurman of Cornell University.

I retain a dreamy impression of two half-grown or nearly grown boys, perhaps between fourteen and eighteen years of age, one of whom became, I believe, the father of the president.

II

DOCTOR FOSHAY

In the summer of 1851, when I had pa.s.sed the age of sixteen, we lived in a little school district a mile or two from the town of Yarmouth, N. S. Late in the summer we had a visit from a maternal uncle and aunt. As I had not seen Moncton since I was six years old, and as I wanted very much to visit my grandfather Prince once more, it was arranged that I should accompany them on their return home.

An additional reason for this was that my mother's health had quite failed; there was no prospect of my doing anything where I was, and it was hoped that something might turn up at Moncton. There was but one difficulty; the visitors had driven to St. John in their own little carriage, which would hold only two people; so they could not take me back. I must therefore find my own way from St. John to Moncton.

We crossed the Bay of Fundy in a little sailing vessel. Among the pa.s.sengers was an English ship captain who had just been wrecked off the coast of Newfoundland, and had the saved remnant of his crew with him. On the morning of our departure the weather was stormy, so that our vessel did not put to sea--a precaution for which the captain pa.s.senger expressed great contempt. He did not understand how a vessel should delay going to see on account of a little storm.

The walk of one hundred miles from St. John to Moncton was for me, at that time, a much less formidable undertaking than it would appear in our times and lat.i.tude. A thirty-mile tramp was a bagatelle, and houses of entertainment--farmhouses where a traveler could rest or eat for a few pennies--were scattered along the road. But there was one great difficulty at the start. My instructions had been to follow the telegraph wires. I soon found that the line of telegraph came into the town from one direction, pa.s.sed through it, and then left, not in the opposite direction, but perhaps at right angles to it. In which direction was the line to be followed? It was difficult to make known what I wanted. "Why, my boy, you can't walk to Moncton," was one answer. In a shop the clerks thought I wanted to ride on the telegraph, and, with much chuckling, directed me to the telegraph office where the man in charge would send me on.

I tried in one direction which I thought could not be right, then I started off in the opposite one; but it soon became evident that that branch led up the river to Frederickton. So I had to retrace my steps and take the original line, which proved to be the right one.

The very first night I found that my grandfather's name was one to conjure with. I pa.s.sed it with a hearty old farmer who, on learning who I was, entertained me with tales of Mr. Prince. The quality which most impressed the host was his enormous physical strength.

He was rather below the usual stature and, as I remember him, very slightly built. Yet he could shoulder a barrel of flour and lift a hogshead of mola.s.ses on its end, feats of strength which only the most powerful men in the region were equal to.

On reaching my destination, I was not many days in learning that my grandfather was a believer in the maxims of "Poor Richard's Almanac,"

and disapproved of the aimless way in which I had been bred. He began to suggest the desirableness of my learning to do something to make a living. I thought of certain mechanical tastes which had moved me in former years to whittle and to make a reel on which to wind yarn, and to mend things generally. So I replied that I thought the trade of a carpenter was the one I could most easily learn.

He approved of the idea, and expressed the intention of finding a carpenter who would want my services; but before he did so, I was started in a new and entirely different direction.

On her last visit to her birthplace, my mother brought back glowing reports of a wonderful physician who lived near Moncton and effected cures of the sick who had been given up by other doctors. I need hardly remark that physicians of wonderful proficiency--Diomeds of the medical profession, before whose shafts all forms of disease had to fall--were then very generally supposed to be realities.

The point which specially commended Dr. Foshay to us was that he practiced the botanic system of medicine, which threw mineral and all other poisons out of the materia medica and depended upon the healing powers of plants alone. People had seen so much of the evil effects of calomel, this being the favorite alternative of the profession, that they were quite ready to accept the new system. Among the remarkable cures which had given Dr. Foshay his great reputation was one of a young man with dyspepsia. He was reduced to a shadow, and the regular doctors had given him up as incurable. The new doctor took him to his home. The patient was addicted to two practices, both of which had been condemned by his former medical advisers.

One was that of eating fat pork, which he would do at any hour of the day or night. The new doctor allowed him to eat all he wanted.

Another was getting up in the night and practicing an ablution of the stomach by a method too heroic to be described in anything but a medical treatise. [1] He was now allowed to practice it to his heart's content. The outcome of the whole proceeding was that he was well in a few months, and, when I saw him, was as l.u.s.ty a youth as one could desire to meet.

Before Mr. Prince could see a carpenter, he was taken ill. I was intensely interested to learn that his physician was the great doctor I had heard of, who lived in the village of Salisbury, fifteen miles on the road to St. John.

One of my aunts had an impression that the doctor wanted a pupil or a.s.sistant of some kind, and suggested that a possible opening might here be offered me. She promised to present me to the doctor on his next visit, after she had broached the subject to him.

The time for which I waited impatiently at length arrived.

Never before had I met so charming a man. He was decidedly what we should now call magnetic. There was an intellectual flavor in his talk which was quite new to me. What fascinated me most of all was his speaking of the difficulties he encountered in supplying himself with sufficient "reading matter." He said it as if mental food was as much a necessity as his daily bread. He was evidently a denizen of that world of light which I had so long wished to see. He said that my aunt was quite right in her impression, and our interview terminated in the following liberal proposition on his part:--

S. N. to live with the doctor, rendering him all the a.s.sistance in his power in preparing medicines, attending to business, and doing generally whatever might be required of him in the way of help.

The doctor, on his part, to supply S. N.'s bodily needs in food and clothing, and teach him medical botany and the botanic system of medicine. The contract to terminate when the other party should attain the age of twenty-one.

After mentioning the teaching clause, he corrected himself a moment, and added: "At least all I know about it."

All he knows about it! What more could heart desire or brain hold?

The brilliancy of the offer was dimmed by only a single consideration; I had never felt the slightest taste for studying medicine or caring for the sick. That my attainments in the line could ever equal those of my preceptor seemed a result too hopeless to expect. But, after all, something must be done, and this was better than being a carpenter.

Before entering upon the new arrangement, a ratification was required on both sides. The doctor had to make the necessary household arrangements, and secure the consent of his wife. I had to ask the approval of my father, which I did by letter. Like General Grant and many great men, he was a man of exceptional sagacity in matters outside the range of his daily concerns. He threw much cold water on the scheme, but consented to my accepting the arrangement temporarily, as there was nothing better to be done.

I awaited the doctor's next visit with glowing antic.i.p.ation. In due course of time I stepped with him into his gig for the long drive, expecting nothing less on the journey than a complete outline of the botanic system of medicine and a programme of my future studies.

But scarcely had we started when a chilling process commenced.

The man erstwhile so effusive was silent, cold, impa.s.sive,--a marble statue of his former self. I scarcely got three sentences out of him during the journey, and these were of the most commonplace kind.

Could it be the same man?

There was something almost frightful in being alongside a man who knew so much. When we reached our destination the horse had to be put away in the stable. I jumped up to the haymow to throw down the provender.

It was a very peculiar feeling to do so under the eye of a man who, as he watched me, knew every muscle that I was setting in operation.

A new chill came on when we entered the house and I was presented to its mistress.

"So you 're the boy that's come to work for the doctor, are you?"

"I have come to study with him, ma'am"' was my interior reply, but I was too diffident to say it aloud. Naturally the remark made me very uncomfortable. The doctor did not correct her, and evidently must have told her something different from what he told me. Her tone was even more depressing than her words; it breathed a coldness, not to say harshness, to which I had not been accustomed in a woman. There was nothing in her appearance to lessen the unpleasant impression. Small in stature, with florid complexion, wide cheek bones that gave her face a triangular form, she had the eye and look of a well-trained vixen.

As if fate were determined to see how rapid my downfall should be before the close of the day, it continued to pursue me. I was left alone for a few minutes. A child some four years old entered and made a very critical inspection of my person. The result was clearly unfavorable, for she soon asked me to go away. Finding me indisposed to obey the order, she proceeded to the use of force and tried to expel me with a few strong pushes. When I had had enough of this, I stepped aside as she was making a push. She fell to the floor, then picked herself up and ran off crying, "Mamma." The latter soon appeared with added ire infused into her countenance.

"What did you hit the child for?"

"I did n't hit her. What should I want to strike a child like that for?"

"But she says you hit her and knocked her down."

"I did n't, though--she was trying to push me and fell and hurt herself."

A long piercing look of doubt and incredulity followed.

"Strange, very strange. I never knew that child to tell a lie, and she says you struck her."

It was a new experience--the first time I had ever known my word to be questioned.

During the day one thought dominated all others: where are those treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy their owner's voracious intellectual appet.i.te? As houses were then built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor.

Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little parlor, and two small sleeping rooms, one for the doctor and one for myself. Before many hours I had managed to see the interior of every one except the doctor's bedroom, and there was not a sign of a book unless such common ones as a dictionary or a Bible. What could it all mean?

Next day the darkness was illuminated, at least temporarily, by a ray of light. The doctor had been absent most of the day before on a visit to some distant patient. Now he came to me and told me he wanted to show me how to make bilious powders.

Several trays of dried herbs had been drying under the kitchen stove until their leaves were quite brittle. He took these and I followed him to the narrow stairway, which we slowly ascended, he going ahead. As I mounted I looked for a solution of the difficulty.

Here upstairs must be where the doctor kept his books. At each step I peered eagerly ahead until my head was on a level with the floor.

Rafters and a window at the other end had successively come into view and now the whole interior was visible. Nothing was there but a loft, at the further end of which was a bed for the housemaid.

The floor was strewn with dried plants. Nothing else was visible.

The disillusion seemed complete. My heart sank within me.

On one side of the stairway at a level with the floor was screwed a large coffee mill. The doctor spread a sheet of paper out on the floor on the other side, and laid a line sieve upon it. Then he showed me how to grind the dry and brittle leaves in the coffee mill, put them into the sieve, and sift them on the paper. This work had a scientific and professional look which infused a glimmer of light into the Cimmerian darkness. The bilious powders were made of the leaves of four plants familiarly known as spearmint, sunflower, smartweed, and yarrow. In his practice a heaping teaspoonful of the pulverized leaves was stirred in a cup of warm water and the grosser parts were allowed to settle, while the patient took the finer parts with the infusion. This was one of Dr. Foshay's staple remedies.

Another was a pill of which the princ.i.p.al active ingredient was aloes. The art of making these pills seemed yet more scientific than the other, and I was much pleased to find how soon I could master it. Beside these a number of minor remedies were kept in the medicine room. Among them were tinctures of lobelia, myrrh, and capsic.u.m. There was also a pill box containing a substance which, from its narcotic odor, I correctly inferred to be opium.

This drug being prohibited by the Botanic School I could not but feel that Dr. Foshay's orthodoxy was painfully open to question.

Determined to fathom the mystery in which the doctor's plans for my improvement were involved, I announced my readiness to commence the study of the botanic system. He disappeared in the direction of his bedroom, and soon returned with--could my eyes believe it?--a big book. It was one which, at the time of its publication, some thirty or forty years before, was well known to the profession,--Miner and Tully on the "Fevers of the Connecticut Valley." He explained bringing me this book.

"Before beginning the regular study of the botanic system, you must understand something of the old system. You can do so by reading this book."

A duller book I never read. There was every sort of detail about different forms of fever, which needed different treatment; yet calomel and, I think, opium were its main prescriptions. In due time I got through it and reported to my preceptor.