The Reminiscences of an Astronomer Part 6

More definite was an observation made on his movements one afternoon by a looker-out from a window of the Nautical Almanac Office.

Across the way the road was bounded by no fence, simply pa.s.sing along the side of an open field. As Oliver got near the office, his chin on his breast, deep in thought, he was seen gradually to deviate from the sidewalk, and direct his steps along the field.

He continued on this erratic course until he ran almost against the fence at the other end. This awoke him from his reverie, and he started up, looked around, and made his way back to the road.

I have spoken only of the men who were employed at the office at the time I entered. Previous to my time were several who left to accept professorships in various parts of the country. Among them were Professors Van Vleck, of Middletown, and Hedrick and Kerr, of North Carolina. Not desiring to leave upon the mind of the reader the impression that all of whom I have not spoken remained in obscurity, I will remark that Mr. Isaac Bradford rose to the position of mayor of the city of Cambridge, and that fugitive pieces in prose and poetry by Mr. E. J. Loomis were collected in a volume. [2]

The discipline of the public service was less rigid in the office at that time than at any government inst.i.tution I ever heard of.

In theory there was an understanding that each a.s.sistant was "expected" to be in the office five hours a day. The hours might be selected by himself, and they generally extended from nine until two, the latter being at that time the college and family dinner hour.

As a matter of fact, however, the work was done pretty much where and when the a.s.sistant chose, all that was really necessary being to have it done on time.

It will be seen that the excellent opportunities offered by this system were well improved by those who enjoyed them--improved in a way that I fear would not be possible in any other surroundings. I took advantage of them by enrolling myself as a student of mathematics in the Lawrence Scientific School. On this occasion I well remember my pleasant reception by Charles W. Eliot, tutor in mathematics, and E. N. Horsford, professor of chemistry, and, I believe, dean of the school. As a newcomer into the world of light, it was pleasant to feel the spirit with which they welcomed me. The departments of chemistry and engineering were about the only ones which, at that time, had any distinct organization. As a student of mathematics it could hardly be said that anything was required of me either in the way of attendance on lectures or examinations until I came up for the degree of Bachelor of Science. I was supposed, however, to pursue my studies under the direction of Professor Peirce.

So slight a connection with the university does not warrant me in a.s.suming an authoritative position as an observer of its men or its workings. Yet there are many features a.s.sociated with it which I have not seen in print, which have probably disappeared with the progress of the age, and to which, therefore, allusion may be made.

One, as it presents itself to my memory, is the great variety and picturesqueness of character which the university then presented.

I would like to know whether the changes in men which one fancies he sees during his pa.s.sage from youth to age are real, or only relative to his point of view. If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard. Does not the Harvard professor of to-day always dine in a dress coat? Is he not free from every eccentricity? Do the students ever call him "Benny"

or "Tobie"? Is any "Old Soph" [3] now ambulant on the college green?

Is not the administration of the library a combination of liberality and correctness? Is such a librarian as John Langdon Sibley possible?

Mr. Sibley, under a rough exterior, was one of the best-hearted and most admirable of men, with whom I ultimately formed an intimate friendship. But our first acquaintance was of a very unfavorable kind. It came about in this way: not many days after being taken into the Nautical Almanac Office I wanted a book from the university library, and asked a not over-bright old gentleman in the office what formalities were necessary in order to borrow it.

"Just go over and tell them you want it for the Nautical Almanac."

"But they don't know me at the library, and surely will not give a book to any stray caller because he says he wants it for the Nautical Almanac."

"You have only to say 'Nautical Almanac' and you will get the book."

I argued the matter as stoutly as courtesy admitted, but at length, concluding that I was new to the rules and regulations of the place, accepted the supposedly superior knowledge of my informer and went over to the library with a due measure of a.s.surance. The first attendant whom I addressed referred me to the a.s.sistant librarian, and he again to the librarian. After these formalities, conducted with impressive gravity, my a.s.surance wilted when I was ushered into the august presence of the chief librarian.

As the mental picture of the ensuing scene has shaped itself through more than forty years it shows a personage of imposing presence, gigantic features, and forbidding countenance, standing on a dais behind a desk, expounding the law governing the borrowing of books from the library of Harvard College to an abashed youth standing before him. I left without the book, but with a valuable addition to my knowledge of library management. We both remembered this interview, and exchanged impressions about it long years after.

"I thought you the most crusty and disobliging old man I had ever seen."

"And I thought _you_ the most presumptuous youth that had ever appeared in the library."

One of Mr. Sibley's professional doctrines was that at least one copy of everything printed was worth preserving. I strove to refute him, but long failed. Half in derision, I offered the library the stub of my wash-book. Instead of throwing it into the wastebasket he kept it, with the remark that the wash-book of a nineteenth century student would at some future time be of interest to the antiquarian.

In due time I received a finely engraved acknowledgment of the gift.

But I forced him from his position at last. He had to admit that copies of the theatre posters need not all be preserved. It would suffice to keep a few specimens.

Professor Peirce was much more than a mathematician. Like many men of the time, he was a warm lover and a cordial hater. It could not always be guessed which side of a disputed question he would take; but one might be fairly sure that he would be at one extreme or the other. As a speaker and lecturer he was very pleasing, neither impressive nor eloquent, and yet interesting from his earnestness and vivacity. For this reason it is said that he was once chosen to enforce the views of the university professors at a town meeting, where some subject of interest to them was coming up for discussion.

Several of the professors attended the meeting, and Peirce made his speech. Then a townsman rose and took the opposite side, expressing the hope that the meeting would not allow itself to be dictated to by these nabobs of Harvard College. When he sat down, Peirce remained in placid silence, making no reply. When the meeting broke up, some one asked Peirce why he had not replied to the man.

"Why! did you not hear what he called us? He said we were nabobs!

I so enjoyed sitting up there and seeing all that crowd look up to me as a nabob that I could not say one word against the fellow."

The first of the leading astronomers whose acquaintance I made was Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. Knowing his eminence, I was quite surprised by his youthful vivacity. His history, had I time to recount it, might be made to serve well the purpose of a grave lesson upon the conditions required, even by the educated public, of a scientific investigator, capable of doing the highest and best work in his branch. The soul of generosity and the pink of honor, ever ready to lend a hand to a struggling youth whom he found deserving of help, enthusiastically devoted to his favorite science, pursuing it in the most exalted spirit, animated by not a single mean motive, it might have been supposed that all the facilities the world could offer would have been open to him in his career. If such was not the case to the extent one might have wished, I do not mean to intimate that his life can be regarded as a failure. In whatever respect the results may have fallen off from his high ideal, it is more to be regretted on the score of science than on his own.

Scorning pretense and charlatanry of all kinds, believing that only the best were to be encouraged, he was far from being a man of the people. Only a select few enjoyed his favor, but these few well deserved it. That no others would have deserved it I should be far from intimating. The undisguised way in which he expressed his sentiments for any one, no matter how influential, who did not come up to the high standard he set, was not adapted to secure the favor even of the most educated community. Of worldly wisdom in this matter he seemed, at least in his early days, to know nothing.

He graduated at Harvard in 1845, in one of the very distinguished cla.s.ses. Being fond of astronomy, he was struck with the backward condition of that science in our country. He resolved to devote his life to building up the science in America. He went to Germany, then the only country in which astronomy was pursued in its most advanced form, studied under Gauss and Argelander, and took his degree at Gottingen in 1848. Soon after his return he founded the "Astronomical Journal," and also took a position as Chief of the Longitude Department in the Coast Survey.

The great misfortune of his life, and temporarily at least, a severe blow to American astronomy, were a.s.sociated with his directorship of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. This inst.i.tution was founded by the munificence of a wealthy widow of Albany. The men to whom she intrusted the administration of her gift were among the most prominent and highly respected citizens of the place. The trustees went wisely to work. They began by forming an advisory scientific council, consisting of Bache, Henry, and Peirce. Under the direction of this council the observatory was built and equipped with instruments.

When ready for active work in 1857, Gould moved thither and took personal charge. Very soon rumors of dissension were heard.

The affair gradually grew into a contest between the director and the trustees, exceeding in bitterness any I have ever known in the world of learning or even of politics. It doubtless had its origin in very small beginnings. The policy of the director recognized no end but scientific efficiency. The trustees, as the responsible administrators of the trust, felt that they had certain rights in the matter, especially that of introducing visitors to inspect the inst.i.tution and look through the telescope. How fatal the granting of such courtesies is to continuous work with an instrument only astronomers know; and one of the most embarra.s.sing difficulties the director of such an inst.i.tution meets with is to effect a prudent compromise between the scientific efficiency of his inst.i.tution and the wishes of the public. But Gould knew no such word as compromise.

It was humiliating to one in the position of a trustee to send some visitor with a permit to see the observatory, and have the visitor return with the report that he had not been received with the most distinguished courtesy, and, perhaps, had not seen the director at all, but had only been informed by an a.s.sistant of the rules of the place and the impossibility of securing admission.

This spark was enough to kindle a fire. When the fire gathered strength, the director, instead of yielding, called on the scientific council for aid. It is quite likely that, had these wise and prudent men been consulted at each step, and their advice been followed, he would have emphasized his protest by resigning. But before they were called in, the affair had gone so far that, believing the director to be technically right in the ground he had taken and the work he had done, the council felt bound to defend him. The result was a war in which the shots were pamphlets containing charges, defenses, and rejoinders. The animosity excited may be shown by the fact that the attacks were not confined to Gould and his administration, but extended to every inst.i.tution with which he and the president of the council were supposed to be connected. Bache's administration of the Coast Survey was held up to scorn and ridicule. It was supposed that Gould, as a Cambridge astronomer, was, as a matter of course, connected with the Nautical Almanac Office, and paid a high salary.

This being a.s.sumed, the office was included in the scope of attack, and with such success that the item for its support for the year 1859, on motion of Mr. Dawes, was stricken out of the naval bill. How far the fire spread may be judged by the fact that a whole edition of the "Astronomical Journal," supposed to have some mention of the affair in the same cover, was duly sent off from the observatory, but never reached its destination through the mails. Gould knew nothing of this fact until, some weeks later, I expressed my surprise to him at not receiving No. 121. How or by whom it was intercepted, I do not know that he ever seriously attempted to inquire. The outcome of the matter was that the trustees a.s.serted their right by taking forcible possession of the observatory.

During my first year at Cambridge I made the acquaintance of a senior in the college whose untimely death seven years later I have never ceased to deplore. This was William P. G. Bartlett, son of a highly esteemed Boston physician, Dr. George Bartlett. The latter was a brother of Sidney Bartlett, long the leader of the Boston bar.

Bartlett was my junior in years, but his nature and the surrounding circ.u.mstances were such that he exercised a powerful influence upon me. His virile and aggressive honesty could not be exceeded.

His mathematical abilities were of a high order, and he had no ambition except to become a mathematician. Had he entered public life at Washington, and any one had told me that he was guilty of a dishonest act, I should have replied, "You might as well tell me that he picked up the Capitol last night and carried it off on his back."

The fact that one could say so much of any man, I have always looked upon as ill.u.s.trating one of the greatest advantages of having a youth go through college. The really important results I should look for are not culture or training alone, but include the acquaintance of a body of men, many of whom are to take leading positions in the world, of a completeness and intimacy that can never be acquired under other circ.u.mstances. The student sees his fellow students through and through as he can never see through a man in future years.

It was, and I suppose still is, the custom for the members of a graduating cla.s.s at Harvard to add to their cla.s.s biographies a motto expressing their aspirations or views of life. Bartlett's was, "I love mathematics and hate humbug." What the latter clause would have led to in his case, had he gone out into the world, one can hardly guess.

"I have had a long talk with my Uncle Sidney," he said to me one day.

"He wants me to study law, maintaining that the wealth one can thereby acquire, and the prominence he may a.s.sume, will give him a higher position in society and public esteem than mere learning ever can.

But I told him that if I could stand high in the esteem of twenty such men as Cayley, Sylvester, and Peirce, I cared nothing to be prominent in the eyes of the rest of the world." Such an expression from an eminent member of the Boston bar, himself a Harvard graduate, was the first striking evidence I met with that my views of the exalted nature of astronomical investigation were not shared by society at large.

One of the greatest advantages I enjoyed through Bartlett was an intimate acquaintance with a cultured and refined Boston family.

In 1858 Mr. Runkle founded the "Mathematical Monthly," having secured, in advance, the cooperation of the leading professors of the subject in the country. The journal was continued, under many difficulties, for three years. As a vehicle for publishing researches in advanced mathematics, it could not be of a high order, owing to the necessity of a subscription list. Its design was therefore to interest students and professors in the subject, and thus prepare the way for the future growth of mathematical study among us. Its princ.i.p.al feature was the offer of prize problems to students as well as prizes for essays on mathematical subjects.

The first to win a prize for an essay was George W. Hill, a graduate of Rutgers just out of college, who presented a memoir in which the hand of the future master was evident throughout.

In the general conduct of the journal Bartlett and myself, though not ostensibly a.s.sociate editors, were at least a.s.sistants. Simple though the affair was, some of our experiences were of an interesting and, perhaps, instructive nature.

Soon after the first number appeared, a contribution was offered by a professor in a distant State. An important part of the article was found to be copied bodily from Walton's "Problems in Mechanics,"

an English book which, it might be supposed, was not much known in this country. Runkle did not want to run the risk of injuring his subscription list by offending one occupying an influential position if he could help it with honor to the journal. Of course it was not a question of publishing the paper, but only of letting the author know why he did not do so,--"letting him down easy."

Bartlett's advice was characteristic. "Just write to the fellow that we don't publish stolen articles. That's all you need say."

I suggested that we might inflict on him all necessary humiliation by letting him know in the gentlest manner possible that we saw the fraud. Of course Runkle preferred this course, and wrote him, calling his attention to a similarity between his treatment of the subject and that of Walton, which materially detracted from the novelty of the former. I think it was suggested that he get the book, if possible, and a.s.sure himself on the subject.

A vigorous answer came by return of mail. He was a possessor of Walton's book, knew all about the similar treatment of the subject by Walton, and did not see that that should be any bar to the publication of the article. I think it was he who wound up his letter with the statement that, while he admitted the right of the editor to publish what he pleased, he, the writer, was too busy to spend his time in writing rejected articles.

An eminent would-be contributor was a prominent Pennsylvania politician, who had read a long and elaborate article, before some teachers' a.s.sociation, on an arithmetical problem about oxen eating gra.s.s, the power to solve which was taken as the highest mark of mathematical ability, among school teachers during the first half of the century. The a.s.sociation referred the paper to the editor of the "Mathematical Monthly," by whom it was, I believe, consigned to the wastebasket. The result was a good deal of correspondence, such a proceeding being rather humiliating to a man of eminence who had addressed so distinguished an a.s.sembly. The outcome of the matter was that the paper, which was much more in the nature of a legal doc.u.ment than of a mathematical investigation, was greatly reduced in length by its author, and then still further shorn by the editor, until it would fill only two or three pages of the journal; thus reduced, it was published.

The time was not yet ripe for the growth of mathematical science among us, and any development that might have taken place in that direction was rudely stopped by the civil war. Perhaps this may account for the curious fact that, so far as I have ever remarked, none of the student contributors to the journal, Hill excepted, has made himself known as a mathematical investigator. Not only the state of mathematical learning, but the conditions of success at that time in a mathematical text-book, are strikingly ill.u.s.trated by one of our experiences.

One of the leading publishing houses of educational text-books in the country issued a very complete and advanced series, from the pen of a former teacher of the subject. They were being extensively introduced, and were sent to the "Mathematical Monthly" for review.

They were distinguished by quite apt ill.u.s.trations, well fitted, perhaps, to start the poorly equipped student in the lower branches of the work, but the advanced works, at least, were simply ridiculous.

A notice appeared in which the character of the books was pointed out. The evidence of the worthlessness of the entire series was so strong that the publishers had it entirely rewritten by more competent authors. Now came the oddest part of the whole affair.

The new series was issued under the name of the same author as the old one, just as if the acknowledgment of his total failure did not detract from the value of his name as an author.

In 1860 a total eclipse of the sun was visible in British America.

The shadow of the moon, starting from near Vancouver's Island, crossed the continent in a northeast direction, pa.s.sed through the central part of the Hudson Bay region, crossed Hudson Bay itself and Greenland, then inclining southward, swept over the Atlantic to Spain.

As this was the first eclipse of the kind which had recently been visible, much interest was taken in its observation. On the part of the Nautical Almanac Office I computed the path of the shadow and the times of crossing certain points in it. The results were laid down on a map which was published by the office. One party, fitted out in connection with the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science, was sent to Greenland. Admiral Davis desired to send another, on behalf of his own office, into the central regions of the continent. As members of this party Mr. Ferrel and myself were chosen. At the request of Professor Aga.s.siz one of the a.s.sistants in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Mr. Samuel H. Scudder, accompanied us. More than twenty years later Mr. Scudder published a little book describing some of our adventures, which was ill.u.s.trated with sketches showing the experiences of a party in the wild West at that time.

Our course lay from St. Paul across Minnesota to the Red River of the North, thence north to Fort Garry near the southern end of Lake Winnipeg, then over the lake and some distance up the Saskatchewan River. At St. Paul we paid our respects to Governor Ramsey, afterward Senator from Minnesota and Secretary of War. We were much surprised at the extraordinary deference paid by the community to a Mr. Burbank, a leading citizen of the town, and owner of the stages which we had to engage for our journey across the country. He seemed to be a man whom every one was afraid to offend. Even the local newspapers were careful what they printed about matters in which he was interested.