He expostulated, gesticulated, and fumed, but I kept up the bombardment until he had to surrender. He motioned to me to step round into the office, where he took the ticket and returned the money. I mention the matter because taking back a ticket is said to be quite unusual on a German railway.

At Berlin, the leading astronomers then, as now, were Foerster, director of the observatory, and Auwers, permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. I was especially interested in the latter, as we had started in life nearly at the same time, and had done much work on similar lines. It was several days before I made his acquaintance, as I did not know that the rule on the Continent is that the visitor must make the first call, or at least make it known by direct communication that he would be pleased to see the resident; otherwise it is presumed that he does not wish to see callers. This is certainly the more logical system, but it is not so agreeable to the visiting stranger as ours is. The art of making the latter feel at home is not brought to such perfection on the Continent as in England; perhaps the French understand it less than any other people. But none can be pleasanter than the Germans, when you once make their acquaintance; and we shall always remember with pleasure the winter we passed in Berlin.

To-day, Auwers stands at the head of German astronomy. In him is seen the highest type of the scientific investigator of our time, one perhaps better developed in Germany than in any other country. The work of men of this type is marked by minute and careful research, untiring industry in the accumulation of facts, caution in propounding new theories or explanations, and, above all, the absence of effort to gain recognition by being the first to make a discovery. When men are ambitious to figure as Newtons of some great principle, there is a constant temptation to publish unverified speculations which are likely rather to impede than to promote the advance of knowledge. The result of Auwers's conscientiousness is that, notwithstanding his eminence in his science, there are few astronomers of note whose works are less fitted for popular exposition than his. His specialty has been the treatment of all questions concerning the positions and motions of the stars. This work has required accurate observations of position, with elaborate and careful investigations of a kind that offer no feature to attract public attention, and only in exceptional cases lead to conclusions that would interest the general reader. He considers no work as ready for publication until it is completed in every detail.

The old astronomical observations of which I was in quest might well have been made by other astronomers than those of Paris, so while awaiting the end of the war I tried to make a thorough search of the writings of the medieval astronomers in the Royal Library. If one knew exactly what books he wanted, and had plenty of time at his disposal, he would find no difficulty in consulting them in any of the great Continental libraries. But at the time of my visit, notwithstanding the cordiality with which all the officials, from Professor Lepsius down, were disposed to second my efforts, the process of getting any required book was very elaborate. Although one could obtain a book on the same day he ordered it, if he went in good time, it was advisable to leave the order the day before, if possible. When, as in the present case, one book only suggests another, this a third, and so on, in an endless chain, the carrying on of an extended research is very tedious.

One feature of the library strongly impressed me with the comparatively backward state of mathematical science in our own country. As is usual in the great European libraries, those books which are most consulted are placed in the general reading-room, where any one can have access to them, at any moment. It was surprising to see amongst these books a set of Crelle's "Journal of Mathematics," and to find it well worn by constant use. At that time, so far as I could learn, there were not more than two or three sets of the Journal in the United States; and these were almost unused. Even the Library of Congress did not contain a set. There has been a great change since that time,—a change in which the Johns Hopkins University took the lead, by inviting Sylvester to this country, and starting a mathematical school of the highest grade. Other universities followed its example to such an extent that, to-day, an American student need not leave his own country to hear a master in any branch of mathematics.

I believe it was Dr. B. A. Gould who called the Pulkova Observatory the astronomical capital of the world. This institution was founded in 1839 by the Emperor Nicholas, on the initiative of his greatest astronomer. It is situated some twelve miles south of St. Petersburg, not far from the railway between that city and Berlin, and gets its name from a peasant village in the neighborhood. From its foundation it has taken the lead in exact measurements relating to the motion of the earth and the positions of the principal stars. An important part of its equipment is an astronomical library, which is perhaps the most complete in existence. This, added to all its other attractions, induced me to pay a visit to Pulkova. Otto Struve, the director, had been kind enough to send me a message, expressing the hope that I would pay him a visit, and giving directions about telegraphing in advance, so as to insure the delivery of the dispatch. The time from Berlin to St. Petersburg is about forty-eight hours, the only through train leaving and arriving in the evening. On the morning of the day that the train was due I sent the dispatch. Early in the afternoon, as the train was stopping at a way station, I saw an official running hastily from one car to another, looking into each with some concern. When he came to my door, he asked if I had sent a telegram to Estafetta. I told him I had. He then informed me that Estafetta had not received it. But the train was already beginning to move, so there was no further chance to get information. The comical part of the matter was that "Estafetta" merely means a post or postman, and that the directions, as Struve had given them, were to have the dispatch sent by postman from the station to Pulkova.

It was late in the evening when the train reached Zarsko-Selo, the railway station for Pulkova, which is about five miles away. The station-master told me that no carriage from Pulkova was waiting for me, which tended to confirm the fear that the dispatch had not been received. After making known my plight, I took a seat in the station and awaited the course of events, in some doubt what to do. Only a few minutes had elapsed when a good-looking peasant, well wrapped in a fur overcoat, with a whip in his hand, looked in at the door, and pronounced very distinctly the words, "Observatorio Pulkova." Ah! this is Struve's driver at last, thought I, and I followed the man to the door. But when I looked at the conveyance, doubt once more supervened. It was scarcely more than a sledge, and was drawn by a single horse, evidently more familiar with hard work than good feeding. This did not seem exactly the vehicle that the great Russian observatory would send out to meet a visitor; yet it was a far country, and I was not acquainted with its customs.

The way in which my doubt was dispelled shows that there is one subject besides love on which difference of language is no bar to the communication of ideas. This is the desire of the uncivilized man for a little coin of the realm. In South Africa, Zulu chiefs, who do not know one other word of English, can say "shilling" with unmistakable distinctness. My Russian driver did not know even this little English word, but he knew enough of the universal language. When we had made a good start on the snow-covered prairie, he stopped his horse for a moment, looked round at me inquiringly, raised his hand, and stretched out two fingers so that I could see them against the starlit sky.

I nodded assent.

Then he drew his overcoat tightly around him with a gesture of shivering from the cold, beat his hands upon his breast as if to warm it, and again looked inquiringly at me.

I nodded again.

The bargain was complete. He was to have two rubles for the drive, and a little something to warm up his shivering breast. So he could not be Struve's man.

There is no welcome warmer than a Russian one, and none in any country warmer than that which the visiting astronomer receives at an observatory. Great is the contrast between the winter sky of a clear moonless night and the interior of a dining-room, forty feet square, with a big blazing fire at one end and a table loaded with eatables in the middle. The fact that the visitor had never before met one of his hosts detracted nothing from the warmth of his reception.

The organizer of the observatory, and its first director, was Wilhelm Struve, father of the one who received me, and equally great as man and astronomer. Like many other good Russians, he was the father of a large family. One of his sons was for ten years the Russian minister at Washington, and as popular a diplomatist as ever lived among us. The instruments which Struve designed sixty years ago still do as fine work as any in the world; but one may suspect this to be due more to the astronomers who handle them than to the instruments themselves.

The air is remarkably clear; the entrance to St. Petersburg, ten or twelve miles north, is distinctly visible, and Struve told me that during the Crimean war he could see, through the great telescope, the men on the decks of the British ships besieging Kronstadt, thirty miles away.

One drawback from which the astronomers suffer is the isolation of the place. The village at the foot of the little hill is inhabited only by peasants, and the astronomers and employees have nearly all to be housed in the observatory buildings. There is no society but their own nearer than the capital. At the time of my visit the scientific staff was almost entirely German or Swedish, by birth or language. In the state, two opposing parties are the Russian, which desires the ascendency of the native Muscovites, and the German, which appreciates the fact that the best and most valuable of the Tsar's subjects are of German or other foreign descent. During the past twenty years the Russian party has gradually got the upper hand; and the result of this ascendency at Pulkova will be looked for with much solicitude by astronomers everywhere.

Once a year the lonely life of the astronomers is enlivened by a grand feast—that of the Russian New Year. One object of the great dining-room which I have mentioned, the largest room, I believe, in the whole establishment, was to make this feast possible. My visit took place early in March, so that I did not see the celebration; but from what I have heard, the little colony does what it can to make up for a year of ennui. Every twenty-five years it celebrates a jubilee; the second came off in 1889.

There is much to interest the visitor in a Russian peasant village, and that of Pulkova has features some of which I have never seen described. Above the door of each log hut is the name of the occupant, and below the name is a rude picture of a bucket, hook, or some other piece of apparatus used in extinguishing fire. Inside, the furniture is certainly meagre enough, yet one could not see why the occupants should be otherwise than comfortable. I know of no good reason why ignorance should imply unhappiness; altogether, there is some good room for believing that the less civilized races can enjoy themselves, in their own way, about as well as we can. What impressed me as the one serious hardship of the peasantry was their hours of labor. Just how many hours of the twenty-four these beings find for sleep was not clear to the visitor; they seemed to be at work all day, and at midnight many of them had to start on their way to St. Petersburg with a cartload for the market. A church ornamented with tinsel is a feature of every Russian village; so also are the priests. The only two I saw were sitting on a fence, wearing garments that did not give evidence of having known water since they were made. One great drawback to the growth of manufactures in Russia is the number of feast days, on which the native operators must one and all abandon their work, regardless of consequences.

The astronomical observations made at Pulkova are not published annually, as are those made at most of the other national observatories; but a volume relating to one subject is issued whenever the work is done. When I was there, the volumes containing the earlier meridian observations were in press. Struve and his chief assistant, Dr. Wagner, used to pore nightly over the proof sheets, bestowing on every word and detail a minute attention which less patient astronomers would have found extremely irksome.

Dr. Wagner was a son-in-law of Hansen, the astronomer of the little ducal observatory at Gotha, as was also our Bayard Taylor. My first meeting with Hansen, which occurred after my return to Berlin, was accompanied with some trepidation. Modest as was the public position that he held, he may now fairly be considered the greatest master of celestial mechanics since Laplace. In what order Leverrier, Delaunay, Adams, and Hill should follow him, it is not necessary to decide. To many readers it will seem singular to place any name ahead of that of the master who pointed out the position of Neptune before a human eye had ever recognized it. But this achievement, great as it was, was more remarkable for its boldness and brilliancy than for its inherent difficulty. If the work had to be done over again to-day, there are a number of young men who would be as successful as Leverrier; but there are none who would attempt to reinvent the methods of Hansen, or even to improve radically upon them. Their main feature is the devising of new and refined methods of computing the variations in the motions of a planet produced by the attraction of all the other planets. As Laplace left this subject, the general character of these variations could be determined without difficulty, but the computations could not be made with mathematical exactness. Hansen's methods led to results so precise that, if they were fully carried out, it is doubtful whether any deviation between the predicted and the observed motions of a planet could be detected by the most refined observation.

At the time of my visit Mrs. Wagner was suffering from a severe illness, of which the crisis passed while I was at Pulkova, and left her, as was supposed, on the road to recovery. I was, of course, very desirous of meeting so famous a man as Hansen. He was expected to preside at a session of the German commission on the transit of Venus, which was to be held in Berlin about the time of my return thither from Pulkova. The opportunity was therefore open of bringing a message of good news from his daughter. Apart from this, the prospect of the meeting might have been embarrassing. The fact is that I was at odds with him on a scientific question, and he was a man who did not take a charitable view of those who differed from him in opinion.

He was the author of a theory, current thirty or forty years ago, that the farther side of the moon is composed of denser materials than the side turned toward us. As a result of this, the centre of gravity of the moon was supposed to be farther from us than the actual centre of her globe. It followed that, although neither atmosphere nor water existed on our side of the moon, the other side might have both. Here was a very tempting field into which astronomical speculators stepped, to clothe the invisible hemisphere of the moon with a beautiful terrestrial landscape, and people it as densely as they pleased with beings like ourselves. If these beings should ever attempt to explore the other half of their own globe, they would find themselves ascending to a height completely above the limits of their atmosphere. Hansen himself never countenanced such speculations as these, but confined his claims to the simple facts he supposed proven.

In 1868 I had published a little paper showing what I thought a fatal defect, a vicious circle in fact, in Hansen's reasoning on this subject. Not long before my visit, Delaunay had made this paper the basis of a communication to the French Academy of Sciences, in which he not only indorsed my views, but sought to show the extreme improbability of Hansen's theory on other grounds.

When I first reached Germany, on my way from Italy, I noticed copies of a blue pamphlet lying on the tables of the astronomers. Apparently, the paper had been plentifully distributed; but it was not until I reached Berlin that I found it was Hansen's defense against my strictures,—a defense in which mathematics were not unmixed with seething sarcasm at the expense of both Delaunay and myself. The case brought to mind a warm discussion between Hansen and Encke, in the pages of a scientific journal, some fifteen years before. At the time it had seemed intensely comical to see two enraged combatants—for so I amused myself by fancying them—hurling algebraic formulae, of frightful complexity, at each other's heads. I did not then dream that I should live to be an object of the same sort of attack, and that from Hansen himself.

To be revised, pulled to pieces, or superseded, as science advances, is the common fate of most astronomical work, even the best. It does not follow that it has been done in vain; if good, it forms a foundation on which others will build. But not every great investigator can look on with philosophic calm when he sees his work thus treated, and Hansen was among the last who could. Under these circumstances, it was a serious question what sort of reception Hansen would accord to a reviser of his conclusions who should venture to approach him. I determined to assume an attitude that would show no consciousness of offense, and was quite successful. Our meeting was not attended by any explosion; I gave him the pleasant message with which I was charged from his daughter, and, a few days later, sat by his side at a dinner of the German commission on the coming transit of Venus.

As Hansen was Germany's greatest master in mathematical astronomy, so was the venerable Argelander in the observational side of the science. He was of the same age as the newly crowned Emperor, and the two were playmates at the time Germany was being overrun by the armies of Napoleon. He was held in love and respect by the entire generation of young astronomers, both Germans and foreigners, many of whom were proud to have had him as their preceptor. Among these was Dr. B. A. Gould, who frequently related a story of the astronomer's wit. When with him as a student, Gould was beardless, but had a good head of hair. Returning some years later, he had become bald, but had made up for it by having a full, long beard. He entered Argelander's study unannounced. At first the astronomer did not recognize him.

"Do you not know me, Herr Professor?"

The astronomer looked more closely. "Mine Gott! It is Gould mit his hair struck through!"

Argelander was more than any one else the founder of that branch of his science which treats of variable stars. His methods have been followed by his successors to the present time. It was his policy to make the best use he could of the instruments at his disposal, rather than to invent new ones that might prove of doubtful utility. The results of his work seem to justify this policy.

We passed the last month of the winter in Berlin waiting for the war to close, so that we could visit Paris. Poor France had at length to succumb, and in the latter part of March, we took almost the first train that passed the lines.

Delaunay was then director of the Paris Observatory, having succeeded Leverrier when the emperor petulantly removed the latter from his position. I had for some time kept up an occasional correspondence with Delaunay, and while in England, the autumn before, had forwarded a message to him, through the Prussian lines, by the good offices of the London legation and Mr. Washburn. He was therefore quite prepared for our arrival. The evacuation of a country by a hostile army is rather a slow process, so that the German troops were met everywhere on the road, even in France. They had left Paris just before we arrived; but the French national army was not there, the Communists having taken possession of the city as fast as the Germans withdrew. As we passed out of the station, the first object to strike our eyes was a flaming poster addressed to "Citoyens," and containing one of the manifestoes which the Communist government was continually issuing.

Of course we made an early call on Mr. Washburn. His career in Paris was one of the triumphs of diplomacy; he had cared for the interests of German subjects in Paris in such a way as to earn the warm recognition both of the emperor and of Bismarck, and at the same time had kept on such good terms with the French as to be not less esteemed by them. He was surprised that we had chosen such a time to visit Paris; but I told him the situation, the necessity of my early return home, and my desire to make a careful search in the records of the Paris Observatory for observations made two centuries ago. He advised us to take up our quarters as near to the observatory as convenient, in order that we might not have to pass through the portions of the city which were likely to be the scenes of disturbance.

We were received at the observatory with a warmth of welcome that might be expected to accompany the greeting of the first foreign visitor, after a siege of six months. Yet a tinge of sadness in the meeting was unavoidable. Delaunay immediately began lamenting the condition of his poor ruined country, despoiled of two of its provinces by a foreign foe, condemned to pay an enormous subsidy in addition, and now the scene of an internal conflict the end of which no one could foresee.

While I was mousing among the old records of the Paris Observatory, the city was under the reign of the Commune and besieged by the national forces. The studies had to be made within hearing of the besieging guns; and I could sometimes go to a window and see flashes of artillery from one of the fortifications to the south. Nearly every day I took a walk through the town, occasionally as far as the Arc de Triomphe. The story of the Commune has been so often written that I cannot hope to add anything to it, so far as the main course of events is concerned. Looking back on a sojourn at so interesting a period, one cannot but feel that a golden opportunity to make observations of historic value was lost. The fact is, however, that I was prevented from making such observations not only by my complete absorption in my work, but by the consideration that, being in what might be described as a semi-official capacity, I did not want to get into any difficulty that would have compromised the position of an official visitor. I should not deem what we saw worthy of special mention, were it not that it materially modifies the impressions commonly given by writers on the history of the Commune. What an historian says may be quite true, so far as it goes, and yet may be so far from the whole truth as to give the reader an incorrect impression of the actual course of events. The violence and disease which prevail in the most civilized country in the world may be described in such terms as to give the impression of a barbarous community. The murder of the Archbishop of Paris and of the hostages show how desperate were the men who had seized power, yet the acts of these men constitute but a small part of the history of Paris during that critical period.

What one writes at the time is free from the suspicion that may attach to statements not recorded till many years after the events to which they relate. The following extract from a letter which I wrote to a friend, the day after my arrival, may therefore be taken to show how things actually looked to a spectator:—

Dear Charlie,—Here we are, on this slumbering volcano. Perhaps you will hear of the burst-up long before you get this. We have seen historic objects which fall not to the lot of every generation, the barricades of the Paris streets. As we were walking out this morning, the pavement along one side of the street was torn up for some distance, and used to build a temporary fort. Said fort would be quite strong against musketry or the bayonet; but with heavy shot against it, I should think it would be far worse than nothing, for the flying stones would kill more than the balls.

The streets are placarded at every turn with all sorts of inflammatory appeals, and general orders of the Comite Central or of the Commune. One of the first things I saw last night was a large placard beginning "Citoyens!" Among the orders is one forbidding any one from placarding any orders of the Versailles government under the severest penalties; and another threatening with instant dismissal any official who shall recognize any order issuing from the said government.

I must do all hands the justice to say that they are all very well behaved. There is nothing like a mob anywhere, so far as I can find. I consulted my map this morning, right alongside the barricade and in full view of the builders, without being molested, and wife and I walked through the insurrectionary districts without being troubled or seeing the slightest symptoms of disturbance. The stores are all open, and every one seems to be buying and selling as usual. In all the cafes I have seen, the habitues seem to be drinking their wine just as coolly as if they had nothing unusual on their minds.

From this date to that of our departure I saw nothing suggestive of violence within the limited range of my daily walks, which were mostly within the region including the Arc de Triomphe, the Hotel de Ville, and the observatory; the latter being about half a mile south of the Luxembourg. The nearest approach to a mob that I ever noticed was a drill of young recruits of the National Guard, or a crowd in the court of the Louvre being harangued by an orator. With due allowance for the excitability of the French nature, the crowd was comparatively as peaceable as that which we may see surrounding a gospel wagon in one of our own cities. A drill-ground for the recruits happened to be selected opposite our first lodgings, beside the gates of the Luxembourg. This was so disagreeable that we were glad to accept an invitation from Delaunay to be his guests at the observatory, during the remainder of our stay. We had not been there long before the spacious yard of the observatory was also used as a drill-ground; and yet later, two or three men were given billets de logement upon the observatory; but I should not have known of the latter occurrence, had not Delaunay told me. I believe he bought the men off, much as one pays an organ-grinder to move on. In one of our walks we entered the barricade around the Hotel de Ville, and were beginning to make a close examination of a mitrailleuse, when a soldier (beg his pardon, un citoyen membre de la Garde Nationale) warned us away from the weapon. The densest crowd of Communists was along the Rue de Rivoli and in the region of the Colonne Vendome, where some of the principal barricades were being erected. But even here, not only were the stores open as usual, but the military were doing their work in the midst of piles of trinkets exposed for sale on the pavement by the shopwomen. The order to destroy the Column was issued before we left, but not executed until later. I have no reason to suppose that the shopwomen were any more concerned while the Column was being undermined than they were before. To complete the picture, not a policeman did we see in Paris; in fact, I was told that one of the first acts of the Commune had been to drive the police away, so that not one dared to show himself.

An interesting feature of the sad spectacle was the stream of proclamations poured forth by the Communist authorities. They comprised not only decrees, but sensational stories of victories over the Versailles troops, denunciations of the Versailles government, and even elaborate legal arguments, including a not intemperate discussion of the ethical question whether citizens who were not adherents of the Commune should be entitled to the right of suffrage. The conclusion was that they should not. The lack of humor on the part of the authorities was shown by their commencing one of a rapid succession of battle stories with the words, "Citoyens! Vous avez soif de la verite!" The most amusing decree I noticed ran thus:—

"Article I. All conscription is abolished.

"Article II. No troops shall hereafter be allowed in Paris, except the National Guard.

"Article III. Every citizen is a member of the National Guard."

We were in daily expectation and hope of the capture of the city, little imagining by what scenes it would be accompanied. It did not seem to my unmilitary eye that two or three batteries of artillery could have any trouble in demolishing all the defenses, since a wall of paving-stones, four or five feet high, could hardly resist solid shot, or prove anything but a source of destruction to those behind it if attacked by artillery. But the capture was not so easy a matter as I had supposed.

We took leave of our friend and host on May 5, three weeks before the final catastrophe, of which he wrote me a graphic description. As the barricades were stormed by MacMahon, the Communist line of retreat was through the region of the observatory. The walls of the building and of the yard were so massive that the place was occupied as a fort by the retreating forces, so that the situation of the few non-combatants who remained was extremely critical. They were exposed to the fire of their friends, the national troops, from without, while enraged men were threatening their lives within. So hot was the fusillade that, going into the great dome after the battle, the astronomer could imagine all the constellations of the sky depicted by the bullet-holes. When retreat became inevitable, the Communists tried to set the building on fire, but did not succeed. Then, in their desperation, arrangements were made for blowing it up; but the most violent man among them was killed by a providential bullet, as he was on the point of doing his work. The remainder fled, the place was speedily occupied by the national troops, and the observatory with its precious contents was saved.

The Academy of Sciences had met regularly through the entire Prussian siege. The legal quorum being three, this did not imply a large attendance. The reason humorously assigned for this number was that, on opening a session, the presiding officer must say, Messieurs, la seance est ouverte, and he cannot say Messieurs unless there are at least two to address. At the time of my visit a score of members were in the city. Among them were Elie de Beaumont, the geologist; Milne-Edwards, the zoologist; and Chevreul, the chemist. I was surprised to learn that the latter was in his eighty-fifth year; he seemed a man of seventy or less, mentally and physically. Yet we little thought that he would be the longest-lived man of equal eminence that our age has known. When he died, in 1889, he was nearly one hundred and three years old. Born in 1786, he had lived through the whole French Revolution, and was seven years old at the time of the Terror. His scientific activity, from beginning to end, extended over some eighty years. When I saw him, he was still very indignant at a bombardment of the Jardin des Plantes by the German besiegers. He had made a formal statement of this outrage to the Academy of Sciences, in order that posterity might know what kind of men were besieging Paris. I suggested that the shells might have fallen in the place by accident; but he maintained that it was not the case, and that the bombardment was intentional.

The most execrated man in the scientific circle at this time was Leverrier. He had left Paris before the Prussian siege began, and had not returned. Delaunay assured me that this was a wise precaution on his part; for had he ventured into the city he would have been mobbed, or the Communists would have killed him as soon as caught. Just why the mob should have been so incensed against one whose life was spent in the serenest fields of astronomical science was not fully explained. The fact that he had been a senator, and was politically obnoxious, was looked on as an all-sufficient indictment. Even members of the Academy could not suppress their detestation of him. Their language seemed not to have words that would fully express their sense of his despicable meanness, not to say turpitude.

Four years later I was again in Paris, and attended a meeting of the Academy of Sciences. In the course of the session a rustle of attention spread over the room, as all eyes were turned upon a member who was entering rather late. Looking toward the door, I saw a man of sixty, a decided blond, with light chestnut hair turning gray, slender form, shaven face, rather pale and thin, but very attractive, and extremely intellectual features. As he passed to his seat hands were stretched out on all sides to greet him, and not until he sat down did the bustle caused by his entrance subside. He was evidently a notable.

"Who is that?" I said to my neighbor.

"Leverrier."

Delaunay was one of the most kindly and attractive men I ever met. We spent our evenings walking in the grounds of the observatory, discussing French science in all its aspects. His investigation of the moon's motion is one of the most extraordinary pieces of mathematical work ever turned out by a single person. It fills two quarto volumes, and the reader who attempts to go through any part of the calculations will wonder how one man could do the work in a lifetime. His habit was to commence early in the morning, and work with but little interruption until noon. He never worked in the evening, and generally retired at nine. I felt some qualms of conscience at the frequency with which I kept him up till nearly ten. I found it hopeless to expect that he would ever visit America, because he assured me that he did not dare to venture on the ocean. The only voyage he had ever made was across the Channel, to receive the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his work. Two of his relatives—his father and, I believe, his brother—had been drowned, and this fact gave him a horror of the water. He seemed to feel somewhat like the clients of the astrologists, who, having been told from what agencies they were to die, took every precaution to avoid them. I remember, as a boy, reading a history of astrology, in which a great many cases of this sort were described; the peculiarity being that the very measures which the victim took to avoid the decree of fate became the engines that executed it. The death of Delaunay was not exactly a case of this kind, yet it could not but bring it to mind. He was at Cherbourg in the autumn of 1872. As he was walking on the beach with a relative, a couple of boatmen invited them to take a sail. Through what inducement Delaunay was led to forget his fears will never be known. All we know is that he and his friend entered the boat, that it was struck by a sudden squall when at some distance from the land, and that the whole party were drowned.

There was no opposition to the reappointment of Leverrier to his old place. In fact, at the time of my visit, Delaunay said that President Thiers was on terms of intimate friendship with the former director, and he thought it not at all unlikely that the latter would succeed in being restored. He kept the position with general approval till his death in 1877.

The only occasion on which I met Leverrier was after the incident I have mentioned, in the Academy of Sciences. I had been told that he was incensed against me on account of an unfortunate remark I had made in speaking of his work which led to the discovery of Neptune. I had heard this in Germany as well as in France, yet the matter was so insignificant that I could hardly conceive of a man of philosophic mind taking any notice of it. I determined to meet him, as I had met Hansen, with entire unconsciousness of offense. So I called on him at the observatory, and was received with courtesy, but no particular warmth. I suggested to him that now, as he had nearly completed his work on the tables of the planets, the question of the moon's motion would be the next object worthy of his attention. He replied that it was too large a subject for him to take up.

To Leverrier belongs the credit of having been the real organizer of the Paris Observatory. His work there was not dissimilar to that of Airy at Greenwich; but he had a much more difficult task before him, and was less fitted to grapple with it. When founded by Louis XIV. the establishment was simply a place where astronomers of the Academy of Sciences could go to make their observations. There was no titular director, every man working on his own account and in his own way. Cassini, an Italian by birth, was the best known of the astronomers, and, in consequence, posterity has very generally supposed he was the director. That he failed to secure that honor was not from any want of astuteness. It is related that the monarch once visited the observatory to see a newly discovered comet through the telescope. He inquired in what direction the comet was going to move. This was a question it was impossible to answer at the moment, because both observations and computations would be necessary before the orbit could be worked out. But Cassini reflected that the king would not look at the comet again, and would very soon forget what was told him; so he described its future path in the heavens quite at random, with entire confidence that any deviation of the actual motion from his prediction would never be noted by his royal patron.

One of the results of this lack of organization has been that the Paris Observatory does not hold an historic rank correspondent to the magnificence of the establishment. The go-as-you-please system works no better in a national observatory than it would in a business institution. Up to the end of the last century, the observations made there were too irregular to be of any special importance. To remedy this state of things, Arago was appointed director early in the present century; but he was more eminent in experimental physics than in astronomy, and had no great astronomical problem to solve. The result was that while he did much to promote the reputation of the observatory in the direction of physical investigation, he did not organize any well-planned system of regular astronomical work.

When Leverrier succeeded Arago, in 1853, he had an extremely difficult problem before him. By a custom extending through two centuries, each astronomer was to a large extent the master of his own work. Leverrier undertook to change all this in a twinkling, and, if reports are true, without much regard to the feelings of the astronomers. Those who refused to fall into line either resigned or were driven away, and their places were filled with men willing to work under the direction of their chief. Yet his methods were not up to the times; and the work of the Paris Observatory, so far as observations of precision go, falls markedly behind that of Greenwich and Pulkova.

In recent times the institution has been marked by an energy and a progressiveness that go far to atone for its former deficiencies. The successors of Leverrier have known where to draw the line between routine, on the one side, and initiative on the part of the assistants, on the other. Probably no other observatory in the world has so many able and well-trained young men, who work partly on their own account, and partly in a regular routine. In the direction of physical astronomy the observatory is especially active, and it may be expected in the future to justify its historic reputation.



XII

THE OLD AND THE NEW WASHINGTON

A few features of Washington as it appeared during the civil war are indelibly fixed in my memory. An endless train of army wagons ploughed its streets with their heavy wheels. Almost the entire southwestern region, between the War Department and the Potomac, extending west on the river to the neighborhood of the observatory, was occupied by the Quartermaster's and Subsistence Departments for storehouses. Among these the astronomers had to walk by day and night, in going to and from their work. After a rain, especially during winter and spring, some of the streets were much like shallow canals. Under the attrition of the iron-bound wheels the water and clay were ground into mud, which was at first almost liquid. It grew thicker as it dried up, until perhaps another rainstorm reduced it once more to a liquid condition. In trying first one street and then another to see which offered the fewest obstacles to his passage, the wayfarer was reminded of the assurance given by a bright boy to a traveler who wanted to know the best road to a certain place: "Whichever road you take, before you get halfway there you'll wish you had taken t' other." By night swarms of rats, of a size proportional to their ample food supply, disputed the right of way with the pedestrian.

Across the Potomac, Arlington Heights were whitened by the tents of soldiers, from which the discharges of artillery or the sound of the fife and drum became so familiar that the dweller almost ceased to notice it. The city was defended by a row of earthworks, generally not far inside the boundary line of the District of Columbia, say five or six miles from the central portions of the city. One of the circumstances connected with their plans strikingly illustrates the exactness which the science or art of military engineering had reached. Of course the erection of fortifications was one of the first tasks to be undertaken by the War Department. Plans showing the proposed location and arrangements of the several forts were drawn up by a board of army engineers, at whose head, then or afterward, stood General John G. Barnard. When the plans were complete, it was thought advisable to test them by calling in the advice of Professor D. H. Mahan of the Military Academy at West Point. He came to Washington, made a careful study of the maps and plans, and was then driven around the region of the lines to be defended to supplement his knowledge by personal inspection. Then he laid down his ideas as to the location of the forts. There were but two variations from the plans proposed by the Board of Engineers, and these were not of fundamental importance.

Willard's Hotel, then the only considerable one in the neighborhood of the executive offices, was a sort of headquarters for arriving army officers, as well as for the thousands of civilians who had business with the government, and for gossip generally. Inside its crowded entrance one could hear every sort of story, of victory or disaster, generally the latter, though very little truth was ever to be gleaned.

The newsboy flourished. He was a bright fellow too, and may have developed into a man of business, a reporter, or even an editor. "Another great battle!" was his constant cry. But the purchaser of his paper would commonly read of nothing but a skirmish or some fresh account of a battle fought several days before—perhaps not even this. On one occasion an officer in uniform, finding nothing in his paper to justify the cry, turned upon the boy with the remark,—

"Look here, boy, I don't see any battle here."

"No," was the reply, "nor you won't see one as long as you hang around Washington. If you want to see a battle you must go to the front."

The officer thought it unprofitable to continue the conversation, and beat a retreat amid the smiles of the bystanders. This story, I may remark, is quite authentic, which is more than one can say of the report that a stick thrown by a boy at a dog in front of Willard's Hotel struck twelve brigadier generals during its flight.

The presiding genius of the whole was Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. Before the actual outbreak of the conflict he had been, I believe, at least a Democrat, and, perhaps, to a certain extent, a Southern sympathizer so far as the slavery question was concerned. But when it came to blows, he espoused the side of the Union, and after being made Secretary of War he conducted military operations with a tireless energy, which made him seem the impersonation of the god of war. Ordinarily his character seemed almost savage when he was dealing with military matters. He had no mercy on inefficiency or lukewarmness. But his sympathetic attention, when a case called for it, is strikingly shown in the following letter, of which I became possessed by mere accident. At the beginning of the war Mr. Charles Ellet, an eminent engineer, then resident near Washington, tendered his services to the government, and equipped a fleet of small river steamers on the Mississippi under the War Department. In the battle of June 6, 1862, he received a wound from which he died some two weeks later. His widow sold or leased his house on Georgetown Heights, and I boarded in it shortly afterward. Amongst some loose rubbish and old papers lying around in one of the rooms I picked up the letter which follows.

War Department, Washington City, D. C., June 9, 1862.

Dear Madam,—I understand from Mr. Ellet's dispatch to you that as he will be unfit for duty for some time it will be agreeable to him for you to visit him, traveling slowly so as not to expose your own health.

With this view I will afford you every facility within the control of the Department, by way of Pittsburg and Cincinnati to Cairo, where he will probably meet you.

Yours truly, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War.

The interesting feature of this letter is that it is entirely in the writer's autograph, and bears no mark of having been press copied. I infer that it was written out of office hours, after all the clerks had left the Department, perhaps late at night, while the secretary was taking advantage of the stillness of the hour to examine papers and plans.

Only once did I come into personal contact with Mr. Stanton. A portrait of Ferdinand R. Hassler, first superintendent of the Coast Survey, had been painted about 1840 by Captain Williams of the Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., a son-in-law of Mr. G. W. P. Custis, and therefore a brother-in-law of General Lee. The picture at the Arlington house was given to Mrs. Colonel Abert, who loaned it to Mr. Custis. When the civil war began she verbally donated it to my wife, who was Mr. Hassler's grand-daughter, and was therefore considered the most appropriate depositary of it, asking her to get it if she could. But before she got actual possession of it, the Arlington house was occupied by our troops and Mr. Stanton ordered the picture to be presented to Professor Agassiz for the National Academy of Sciences. On hearing of this, I ventured to mention the matter to Mr. Stanton, with a brief statement of our claims upon the picture.

"Sir," said he, "that picture was found in the house of a rebel in arms [General Robert E. Lee], and was justly a prize of war. I therefore made what I considered the most appropriate disposition of it, by presenting it to the National Academy of Sciences."

The expression "house of a rebel in arms" was uttered with such emphasis that I almost felt like one under suspicion of relations with the enemy in pretending to claim the object in question. It was clearly useless to pursue the matter any further at that time. Some years later, when the laws were no longer silent, the National Academy decided that whoever might be the legal owner of the picture, the Academy could have no claim upon it, and therefore suffered it to pass into the possession of the only claimant.

Among the notable episodes of the civil war was the so-called raid of the Confederate general, Early, in July, 1864. He had entered Maryland and defeated General Lew Wallace. This left nothing but the well-designed earthworks around Washington between his army and our capital. Some have thought that, had he immediately made a rapid dash, the city might have fallen into his hands.

All in the service of the War and Navy departments who were supposed capable of rendering efficient help, were ordered out to take part in the defense of the city, among them the younger professors of the observatory. By order of Captain Gilliss I became a member of a naval brigade, organized in the most hurried manner by Admiral Goldsborough, and including in it several officers of high and low rank. The rank and file was formed of the workmen in the Navy Yard, most of whom were said to have seen military service of one kind or another. The brigade formed at the Navy Yard about the middle of the afternoon, and was ordered to march out to Fort Lincoln, a strong earthwork built on a prominent hill, half a mile southwest of the station now known as Rives. The Reform School of the District of Columbia now stands on the site of the fort. The position certainly looked very strong. On the right the fort was flanked by a deep intrenchment running along the brow of the hill, and the whole line would include in the sweep of its fire the region which an army would have to cross in order to enter the city. The naval brigade occupied the trench, while the army force, which seemed very small in numbers, manned the front.

I was not assigned to any particular duty, and simply walked round the place in readiness to act whenever called upon. I supposed the first thing to be done was to have the men in the trench go through some sort of drill, in order to assure their directing the most effective fire on the enemy should he appear. The trench was perhaps six feet deep; along its bottom ran a little ledge on which the men had to step in order to deliver their fire, stepping back into the lower depth to load again. Along the edge was a sort of rail fence, the bottom rail of which rested on the ground. In order to fire on an enemy coming up the hill, it would be necessary to rest the weapon on this bottom rail. It was quite evident to me that a man not above the usual height, standing on the ledge, would have to stand on tiptoe in order to get the muzzle of his gun properly directed down the slope. If he were at all flurried he would be likely to fire over the head of the enemy. I called attention to this state of things, but did not seem to make any impression on the officers, who replied that the men had seen service and knew what to do.

We bivouacked that night, and remained all the next day and the night following awaiting the attack of the enemy, who was supposed to be approaching Fort Stevens on the Seventh Street road. At the critical moment, General H. G. Wright arrived from Fort Monroe with his army corps. He and General A. McD. McCook both took their stations at Fort Lincoln, which it was supposed would be the point of attack. A quarter or half a mile down the hill was the mansion of the Rives family, which a passenger on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway can readily see at the station of that name. A squad of men was detailed to go to this house and destroy it, in case the enemy should appear. The attack was expected at daybreak, but General Early, doubtless hearing of the arrival of reinforcements, abandoned any project he might have entertained and had beat a retreat the day before. Whether the supposition that he could have taken the city with great celerity has any foundation, I cannot say; I should certainly greatly doubt it, remembering the large loss of life generally suffered during the civil war by troops trying to storm intrenchments or defenses of any sort, even with greatly superior force.

I was surprised to find how quickly one could acquire the stolidity of the soldier. During the march from the Navy Yard to the fort I felt extremely depressed, as one can well imagine, in view of the suddenness with which I had to take leave of my family and the uncertainty of the situation, as well as its extreme gravity. But this depression wore off the next day, and I do not think I ever had a sounder night's sleep in my life than when I lay down on the grass, with only a blanket between myself and the sky, with the expectation of being awakened by the rattle of musketry at daybreak.

I remember well how kindly we were treated by the army. The acquaintance of Generals Wright and McCook, made under such circumstances, was productive of a feeling which has never worn off. It has always been a matter of sorrow to me that the Washington of to-day does not show a more lively consciousness of what it owes to these men.

One of the entertainments of Washington during the early years of the civil war was offered by President Lincoln's public receptions. We used to go there simply to see the people and the costumes, the latter being of a variety which I do not think was ever known on such occasions before or since. Well-dressed and refined ladies and gentlemen, men in their working clothes, women arrayed in costumes fanciful in cut and brilliant in color, mixed together in a way that suggested a convention of the human race. Just where the oddly dressed people came from, or what notion took them at this particular time to don an attire like that of a fancy-dress ball, no one seemed to know.

Among the never-to-be-forgotten scenes was that following the news of the fall of Richmond. If I described it from memory, a question would perhaps arise in the reader's mind as to how much fancy might have added to the picture in the course of nearly forty years. I shall therefore quote a letter written to Chauncey Wright immediately afterwards, of which I preserved a press copy.

Observatory, April 7, 1865.

Dear Wright,—Yours of the 5th just received. I heartily reciprocate your congratulations on the fall of Richmond and the prospective disappearance of the S. C. alias C. S.

You ought to have been here Monday. The observatory is half a mile to a mile from the thickly settled part of the city. At 11 A. M. we were put upon the qui vive by an unprecedented commotion in the city. From the barracks near us rose a continuous stream of cheers, and in the city was a hubbub such as we had never before heard. We thought it must be Petersburg or Richmond, but hardly dared to hope which. Miss Gilliss sent us word that it was really Richmond. I went down to the city. All the bedlams in creation broken loose could not have made such a scene. The stores were half closed, the clerks given a holiday, the streets crowded, every other man drunk, and drums were beating and men shouting and flags waving in every direction. I never felt prouder of my country than then, as I compared our present position with our position in the numerous dark days of the contest, and was almost ashamed to think that I had ever said that any act of the government was not the best possible.

Not many days after this outburst, the city was pervaded by an equally intense and yet deeper feeling of an opposite kind. Probably no event in its history caused such a wave of sadness and sympathy as the assassination of President Lincoln, especially during the few days while bands of men were scouring the country in search of the assassin. One could not walk the streets without seeing evidence of this at every turn. The slightest bustle, perhaps even the running away of a dog, caused a tremor.

I paid one short visit to the military court which was trying the conspirators. The court itself was listening with silence and gravity to the reading of the testimony taken on the day previous. General Wallace produced on the spectators an impression a little different from the other members, by exhibiting an artistic propensity, which subsequently took a different direction in "Ben Hur." The most impressive sight was that of the conspirators, all heavily manacled; even Mrs. Surratt, who kept her irons partly concealed in the folds of her gown. Payne, the would-be assassin of Seward, was a powerful-looking man, with a face that showed him ready for anything; but the other two conspirators were such simple-minded, mild-looking youths, that it seemed hardly possible they could have been active agents in such a crime, or capable of any proceeding requiring physical or mental force.

The impression which I gained at the time from the evidence and all the circumstances, was that the purpose of the original plot was not the assassination of the President, but his abduction and transportation to Richmond or some other point within the Confederate lines. While Booth himself may have meditated assassination from the beginning, it does not seem likely that he made this purpose known to his fellows until they were ready to act. Then Payne alone had the courage to attempt the execution of the programme.

Two facts show that a military court, sitting under such circumstances, must not be expected to reach exactly the verdict that a jury would after the public excitement had died away. Among the prisoners was the man whose business it was to assist in arranging the scenery on the stage of the theatre where the assassination occurred. The only evidence against him was that he had not taken advantage of his opportunity to arrest Booth as the latter was leaving, and for this he was sentenced to twenty years penal servitude. He was pardoned out before a great while.

The other circumstance was the arrest of Surratt, who was supposed to stand next to Booth in the conspiracy, but who escaped from the country and was not discovered until a year or so later, when he was found to have enlisted in the papal guards at Rome. He was brought home and tried twice. On the first trial, notwithstanding the adverse rulings and charge of the judge, only a minority of the jury were convinced of his guilt. On the second trial he was, I think, acquitted.

One aftermath of the civil war was the influx of crowds of the newly freed slaves to Washington, in search of food and shelter. With a little training they made fair servants if only their pilfering propensities could be restrained. But religious fervor did not ensure obedience to the eighth commandment. "The good Lord ain't goin' to be hard on a poor darky just for takin' a chicken now and then," said a wench to a preacher who had asked her how she could reconcile her religion with her indifference as to the ownership of poultry.

In the seventies I had an eight-year-old boy as help in my family. He had that beauty of face very common in young negroes who have an admixture of white blood, added to which were eyes of such depth and clearness that, but for his color, he would have made a first-class angel for a medieval painter.

One evening my little daughters had a children's party, and Zeke was placed as attendant in charge of the room in which the little company met. Here he was for some time left alone. Next morning a gold pen was missing from its case in a drawer. Suspicion rested on Zeke as the only person who could possibly have taken it, but there was no positive proof. I thought so small and innocent-looking a boy could be easily cowed into confessing his guilt; so next morning I said to him very solemnly,—

"Zeke, come upstairs with me."

He obeyed with alacrity, following me up to the room.

"Zeke, come into this room."

He did so.

"Now, Zeke," I said sternly, "look here and see what I do."

I opened the drawer, took out the empty case, opened it, and showed it to him.

"Zeke, look into my eyes!"

He neither blinked nor showed the slightest abashment or hesitation as his soft eyes looked steadily into mine with all the innocence of an angel.

"Zeke, where is the pen out of that case?"

"Missr Newcomb," he said quietly, "I don't know nothin' about it."

I repeated the question, looking into his face as sternly as I could. As he repeated the answer with the innocence of childhood, "Deed, Missr Newcomb, I don't know what was in it," I felt almost like a brute in pressing him with such severity. Threats were of no avail, and I had to give the matter up as a failure.

On coming home in the afternoon, the first news was that the pen had been found by Zeke's mother hidden in one corner of her room at home, where the little thief had taken it. She, being an honest woman, and suspecting where it had come from, had brought it back.

There was a vigorous movement, having its origin in New England, for the education of the freedmen. This movement was animated by the most philanthropic views. Here were several millions of blacks of all ages, suddenly made citizens, or eligible to citizenship, and yet savage so far as any education was concerned. A small army of teachers, many, perhaps most of them, young women, were sent south to organize schools for the blacks. It may be feared that there was little adaptation of the teaching to the circumstances of the case. But one method of instruction widely adopted was, so far as I can learn, quite unique. It was the "loud method" of teaching reading and spelling. The whole school spelled in unison. The passer-by on the street would hear in chorus from the inside of the building, "B-R-E-A-D—BREAD!" all at the top of the voice of the speakers. Schools in which this method was adopted were known as "loud schools."

A queer result of this movement once fell under my notice. I called at a friend's house in Georgetown. In the course of the conversation, it came out that the sable youngster who opened the door for me filled the double office of scullion to the household and tutor in Latin to the little boy of the family.

Probably the Senate of the United States never had a member more conscientious in the discharge of his duties than Charles Sumner. He went little into society outside the circles of the diplomatic corps, with which his position as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee placed him in intimate relations. My acquaintance with him arose from the accident of his living for some time almost opposite me. I was making a study of some historic subject, pertaining to the feeling in South Carolina before the civil war, and called at his rooms to see if he would favor me with the loan of a book, which I was sure he possessed. He received me so pleasantly that I was, for some time, an occasional visitor. He kept bachelor quarters on a second floor, lived quite alone, and was accessible to all comers without the slightest ceremony.

One day, while I was talking with him, shortly after the surrender of Lee, a young man in the garb of a soldier, evidently fresh from the field, was shown into the room by the housemaid, unannounced, as usual. Very naturally, he was timid and diffident in approaching so great a man, and the latter showed no disposition to say anything that would reassure him. He ventured to tell the senator that he had come to see if he could recommend him for some public employment. I shall never forget the tone of the reply.

"But I do not know you." The poor fellow was completely dumfounded, and tried to make some excuses, but the only reply he got was, "I cannot do it; I do not know you at all." The visitor had nothing to do but turn round and leave.

At the time I felt some sympathy with the poor fellow. He had probably come, thinking that the great philanthropist was quite ready to become a friend to a Union soldier without much inquiry into his personality and antecedents, and now he met with a stinging rebuff. But it must be confessed that subsequent experience has diminished my sympathy for him, and probably it would be better for the country if the innovation were introduced of having every senator of the United States dispose of such callers in the same way.

Foreign men of letters, with whom Sumner's acquaintance was very wide, were always among his most valued guests. A story is told of Thackeray's visit to Washington, which I distrust only for the reason that my ideas of Sumner's make-up do not assign him the special kind of humor which the story brings out. He was, however, quoted as saying, "Thackeray is one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever knew. I had a striking illustration of that this morning. We went out for a walk together and, thoughtlessly, I took him through Lafayette Square. Shortly after we entered it, I realized with alarm that we were going directly toward the Jackson statue. It was too late to retrace our steps, and I wondered what Thackeray would say when he saw the object. But he passed straight by without seeming to see it at all, and did not say one word about it."

Sumner was the one man in the Senate whose seat was scarcely ever vacant during a session. He gave the closest attention to every subject as it arose. One instance of this is quite in the line of the present book. About 1867, an association was organized in Washington under the name of the "American Union Academy of Literature, Science, and Art." Its projectors were known to few, or none, but themselves. A number of prominent citizens in various walks of life had been asked to join it, and several consented without knowing much about the association. It soon became evident that the academy was desirous of securing as much publicity as possible through the newspapers and elsewhere. It was reported that the Secretary of the Treasury had asked its opinion on some instrument or appliance connected with the work of his department. Congress was applied to for an act of incorporation, recognizing it as a scientific adviser of the government by providing that it should report on subjects submitted to it by the governmental departments, the intent evidently being that it should supplant the National Academy of Sciences.

The application to Congress satisfied the two requirements most essential to favorable consideration. These are that several respectable citizens want something done, and that there is no one to come forward and say that he does not want it done. Such being the case, the act passed the House of Representatives without opposition, came to the Senate, and was referred to the appropriate committee, that on education, I believe. It was favorably reported from the committee and placed on its passage. Up to this point no objection seems to have been made to it in any quarter. Now, it was challenged by Mr. Sumner.

The ground taken by the Massachusetts senator was comprehensive and simple, though possibly somewhat novel. It was, in substance, that an academy of literature, science, and art, national in its character, and incorporated by special act of Congress, ought to be composed of men eminent in the branches to which the academy related. He thought a body of men consisting very largely of local lawyers, with scarcely a man of prominence in either of the three branches to which the academy was devoted, was not the one that should receive such sanction from the national legislature.

Mr. J. W. Patterson, of New Hampshire, was the principal advocate of the measure. He claimed that the proposed incorporators were not all unscientific men, and cited as a single example the name of O. M. Poe, which appeared among them. This man, he said, was a very distinguished meteorologist.

This example was rather unfortunate. The fact is, the name in question was that of a well-known officer of engineers in the army, then on duty at Washington, who had been invited to join the academy, and had consented out of good nature without, it seems, much if any inquiry. It happened that Senator Patterson had, some time during the winter, made the acquaintance of a West Indian meteorologist named Poey, who chanced to be spending some time in Washington, and got him mixed up with the officer of engineers. The senator also intimated that the gentleman from Massachusetts had been approached on the subject and was acting under the influence of others. This suggestion Mr. Sumner repelled, stating that no one had spoken to him on the subject, that he knew nothing of it until he saw the bill before them, which seemed to him to be objectionable for the very reasons set forth. On his motion the bill was laid on the table, and thus disposed of for good. The academy held meetings for some time after this failure, but soon disappeared from view, and was never again heard of.

In the year 1862, a fine-looking young general from the West became a boarder in the house where I lived, and sat opposite me at table. His name was James A. Garfield. I believe he had come to Washington as a member of the court in the case of General Fitz John Porter. He left after a short time and had, I supposed, quite forgotten me. But, after his election to Congress, he one evening visited the observatory, stepped into my room, and recalled our former acquaintance.

I soon found him to be a man of classical culture, refined tastes, and unsurpassed eloquence,—altogether, one of the most attractive of men. On one occasion he told me one of his experiences in the State legislature of Ohio, of which he was a member before the civil war. A bill was before the House enacting certain provisions respecting a depository. He moved, as an amendment, to strike out the word "depository" and insert "depositary." Supposing the amendment to be merely one of spelling, there was a general laugh over the house, with a cry of "Here comes the schoolmaster!" But he insisted on his point, and sent for a copy of Webster's Dictionary in order that the two words might be compared. When the definitions were read, the importance of right spelling became evident, and the laughing stopped.

It has always seemed to me that a rank injustice was done to Garfield on the occasion of the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1873, which came near costing him his position in public life. The evidence was of so indefinite and flimsy a nature that the credence given to the conclusion from it can only illustrate how little a subject or a document is exposed to searching analysis outside the precincts of a law court. When he was nominated for the presidency this scandal was naturally raked up and much made of it. I was so strongly impressed with the injustice as to write for a New York newspaper, anonymously of course, a careful analysis of the evidence, with a demonstration of its total weakness. Whether the article was widely circulated, or whether Garfield ever heard of it, I do not know; but it was amusing, a few days after it appeared, to see a paragraph in an opposition paper claiming that its contemporary had gone to the trouble of hiring a lawyer to defend Garfield.

No man better qualified as a legislator ever occupied a seat in Congress. A man cast in the largest mould, and incapable of a petty sentiment, his grasp of public affairs was rarely equaled, and his insight into the effects of legislation was of the deepest. But on what the author of the Autocrat calls the arithmetical side,—in the power of judging particular men and not general principles; in deciding who were the good men and who were not, he fell short of the ideal suggested by his legislative career. The brief months during which he administered the highest of offices were stormy enough, perhaps stormier than any president before him had ever experienced, and they would probably have been outdone by the years following, had he lived. But I believe that, had he remained in the Senate, his name would have gone into history among those of the greatest of legislators.

Sixteen years after the death of Lincoln public feeling was again moved to its depth by the assassination of Garfield. The cry seemed to pass from mouth to mouth through the streets faster than a messenger could carry the news, "The President has been shot." It chanced to reach me just as I was entering my office. I at once summoned my messenger and directed him to go over to the White House, and see if anything unusual had happened, but gave him no intimation of my fears. He promptly returned with the confirmation of the report. The following are extracts from my journal at the time:—

"July 2, Saturday: At 9.20 this morning President Garfield was shot by a miserable fellow named Guiteau, as he was passing through the Baltimore and Potomac R. R. station to leave Washington. One ball went through the upper arm, making a flesh wound, the other entered the right side on the back and cannot be found; supposed to have lodged in the liver. In the course of the day President rapidly weakened, and supposed to be dying from hemorrhage."

"Sunday morning: President still living and rallied during the day. Small chance of recovery. At night alarming symptoms of inflammation were exhibited, and at midnight his case seemed almost hopeless."

"Monday: President slightly better this morning, improving throughout the day."

"July 6. This P. M. sought an interview with Dr. Woodward at the White House, to talk of an apparatus for locating the ball by its action in retarding a rapidly revolving el. magnet. I hardly think the plan more than theoretically practical, owing to the minuteness of the action."

"The President still improving, but great dangers are yet to come, and nothing has been found of the ball, which is supposed to have stayed in the liver because, were it anywhere else, symptoms of irritation by its presence would have been shown."

"July 9. This is Saturday evening. Met Major Powell at the Cosmos Club, who told me that they would like to have me look at the air-cooling projects at the White House. Published statement that the physicians desired some way to cool the air of the President's room had brought a crowd of projects and machines of all kinds. Among other things, a Mr. Dorsey had got from New York an air compressor such as is used in the Virginia mines for transferring power, and was erecting machinery enough for a steamship at the east end of the house in order to run it."

Dr. Woodward was a surgeon of the army, who had been on duty at Washington since the civil war, in charge of the Army Medical Museum. Among his varied works here, that in micro-photography, in which he was a pioneer, gave him a wide reputation. His high standing led to his being selected as one of the President's physicians. To him I wrote a note, offering to be of any use I could in the matter of cooling the air of the President's chamber. He promptly replied with a request to visit the place, and see what was being done and what suggestions I could make. Mr. Dorsey's engine at the east end was dispensed with after a long discussion, owing to the noise it would make and the amount of work necessary to its final installation and operation.

Among the problems with which the surgeons had to wrestle was that of locating the ball. The question occurred to me whether it was not possible to do so by the influence produced by the action of a metallic conductor in retarding the motion of a rapidly revolving magnet, but the effect would be so small, and the apparatus to be made so delicate, that I was very doubtful about the matter. If there was any one able to take hold of the project successfully, I knew it would be Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. When I approached him on the subject, he suggested that the idea of locating the ball had also occurred to him, and that he thought the best apparatus for the purpose was a telephonic one which had been recently developed by Mr. Hughes. As there could be no doubt of the superiority of his project, I dropped mine, and he went forward with his. In a few days an opportunity was given him for actually trying it. The result, though rather doubtful, seemed to be that the ball was located where the surgeons supposed it to be. When the autopsy showed that their judgment had been at fault, Mr. Bell admitted his error to Dr. Woodward, adding some suggestion as to its cause. "Expectant attention," was Woodward's reply.

I found in the basement of the house an apparatus which had been brought over by a Mr. Jennings from Baltimore, which was designed to cool the air of dairies or apartments. It consisted of an iron box, two or three feet square, and some five feet long. In this box were suspended cloths, kept cool and damp by the water from melting ice contained in a compartment on top of the box. The air was driven through the box by a blower, and cooled by contact with the wet cloths. But no effect was being produced on the temperature of the room.

One conversant with physics will see one fatal defect in this appliance. The cold of the ice, if I may use so unscientific an expression, went pretty much to waste. The air was in contact, not with the ice, as it should have been, but with ice-water, which had already absorbed the latent heat of melting.

Evidently the air should be passed over the unmelted ice. The question was how much ice would be required to produce the necessary cooling? To settle this, I instituted an experiment. A block of ice was placed in an adjoining room in a current of air with such an arrangement that, as it melted, the water would trickle into a vessel below. After a certain number of minutes the melted water was measured, then a simple computation led to a knowledge of how much heat was absorbed from the air per minute by a square foot of the surface of the ice. From this it was easy to calculate from the known thermal capacity of air, and the quantity of the latter necessary per minute, how many feet of cooling surface must be exposed. I was quite surprised at the result. A case of ice nearly as long as an ordinary room, and large enough for men to walk about in it, must be provided. This was speedily done, supports were erected for the blocks of ice, the case was placed at the end of Mr. Jennings's box, and everything gotten in readiness for directing the air current through the receptacle, and into the room through tubes which had already been prepared.

It happened that Mr. Jennings's box was on the line along which the air was being conducted, and I was going to get it out of the way. The owner implored that it should be allowed to remain, suggesting that the air might just as well as not continue to pass through it. The surroundings were those in which one may be excused for not being harsh. Such an outpouring of sympathy on the part of the public had never been seen in Washington since the assassination of Lincoln. Those in charge were overwhelmed with every sort of contrivance for relieving the sufferings of the illustrious patient. Such disinterested efforts in behalf of a public and patriotic object had never been seen. Mr. Jennings had gone to the trouble and expense of bringing his apparatus all the way from Baltimore to Washington in order to do what in him lay toward the end for which all were striving. To leave his box in place could not do the slightest harm, and would be a gratification to him. So I let it stand, and the air continued to pass through it on its way to the ice chest.

While these arrangements were in progress three officers of engineers of the navy reported under orders at the White House, to do what they could toward the cooling of the air. They were Messrs. William L. Baillie, Richard Inch, and W. S. Moore. All four of us cooperated in the work in a most friendly way, and when we got through we made our reports to the Navy Department. A few weeks later these reports were printed in a pamphlet, partly to correct a wrong impression about the Jennings cold-box. Regular statements had appeared in the local evening paper that the air was being cooled by this useless contrivance. Their significance first came out several months later, on the occasion of an exhibition of mechanical or industrial implements at Boston. Among these was Mr. Jennings's cold-box, which was exhibited as the instrument that had cooled the air of President Garfield's chamber.

More light yet was thrown on the case when the question of rewarding those who had taken part in treating the President, or alleviating his sufferings in any way, came before Congress. Mr. Jennings was, I believe, among the claimants. Congress found the task of making the proper awards to each individual to be quite beyond its power at the time, so a lump sum was appropriated, to be divided by the Treasury Department according to its findings in each particular case. Before the work of making the awards was completed, I left on the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope to observe the transit of Venus, and never learned what had been done with the claims of Mr. Jennings. It might naturally be supposed that when an official report to the Navy Department showed that he had no claims whatever except those of a patriotic citizen who had done his best, which was just nothing at all, to promote the common end, the claim would have received little attention. Possibly this may have been the case. But I do not know what the outcome of the matter was.

Shortly after the death of the President, I had a visit from an inventor who had patented a method of cooling the air of a room by ice. He claimed that our work at the Executive Mansion was an infringement on his patent. I replied that I could not see how any infringement was possible, because we had gone to work in the most natural way, without consulting any previous process whatever, or even knowing of the existence of a patent. Surely the operation of passing air over ice to cool it could not be patentable.

He invited me to read over the statement of his claims. I found that although this process was not patented in terms, it was practically patented by claiming about every possible way in which ice could be arranged for cooling purposes. Placing the ice on supports was one of his claims; this we had undoubtedly done, because otherwise the process could not have been carried out. In a word, the impression I got was that the only sure way of avoiding an infringement would have been to blindfold the men who put the ice in the box, and ask them to throw it in pellmell. Every method of using judgment in arranging the blocks of ice he had patented.

I had to acknowledge that his claim of infringement might have some foundation, and inquired what he proposed to do in the case. He replied that he did not wish to do more than have his priority recognized in the matter. I replied that I had no objection to his doing this in any way he could, and he took his leave. Nothing more, so far as I am aware, was done in his case. But I was much impressed by this as by other examples I have had of the same kind, of the loose way in which our Patent Office sometimes grants patents.

I do not think the history of any modern municipality can show an episode more extraordinary or, taken in connection with its results, more instructive than what is known as the "Shepherd regime" in Washington. What is especially interesting about it is the opposite views that can be taken of the same facts. As to the latter there is no dispute. Yet, from one point of view, Shepherd made one of the most disastrous failures on record in attempting to carry out great works, while, from another point of view, he is the author of the beautiful Washington of to-day, and entitled to a public statue in recognition of his services. As I was a resident of the city and lived in my own house, I was greatly interested in the proposed improvements, especially of the particular street on which I lived. I was also an eye-witness to so much of the whole history as the public was cognizant of. The essential facts of the case, from the two, opposing points of view, are exceedingly simple.

One fact is the discreditable condition of the streets of Washington during and after the civil war. The care of these was left entirely to the local municipality. Congress, so far as I know, gave no aid except by paying its share of street improvements in front of the public buildings. It was quite out of the power of the residents, who had but few men of wealth among them, to make the city what it ought to be. Congress showed no disposition to come to the help of the citizens in this task.

In 1871, however, some public-spirited citizens took the matter in hand and succeeded in having a new government established, which was modeled after that of the territories of the United States. There was a governor, a legislature, and a board of public works. The latter was charged with the improvements of the streets, and the governor was ex officio its president. The first governor was Henry D. Cooke, the banker, and Mr. Shepherd was vice-president of the board of public works and its leading member. Mr. Cooke resigned after a short term, and Mr. Shepherd was promoted to his place. He was a plumber and gas-fitter by trade, and managed the leading business in his line in Washington. Through the two or three years of his administration the city directory still contained the entry—

Shepherd, Alex. R. & Co., plumbers and gas-fitters, 910 Pa. Ave. N. W.

In recent years he had added to his plumbing business that of erecting houses for sale. He had had no experience in the conduct of public business, and, of course, was neither an engineer nor a financier. But such was the energy of his character and his personal influence, that he soon became practically the whole government, which he ran in his own way, as if it were simply his own business enlarged. Of the conditions which the law imposes on contracts, of the numerous and complicated problems of engineering involved in the drainage and street systems of a great city, of the precautions to be taken in preparing plans for so immense a work, and of the legal restraints under which it should be conducted, he had no special knowledge. But he had in the highest degree a quality which will bear different designations according to the point of view. His opponents would call it unparalleled recklessness; his supporters, boldness and enterprise.

Such were the preliminaries. Three years later the results of his efforts were made known by an investigating committee of Congress, with Senator Allison, a political friend, at its head. It was found that with authority to expend $6,000,000 in the improvement of the streets, there was an actual or supposed expenditure of more than $18,000,000, and a crowd of additional claims which no man could estimate, based on the work of more than one thousand principal contractors and an unknown number of purchasers and sub-contractors. Chaos reigned supreme. Some streets were still torn up and impassable; others completely paved, but done so badly that the pavements were beginning to rot almost before being pressed by a carriage. A debt had been incurred which it was impossible for the local municipality to carry and which was still piling up.

For all this Congress was responsible, and manfully shouldered its responsibility. Mr. Shepherd was legislated out of office as an act of extreme necessity, by the organization of a government at the head of which were three commissioners. The feeling on the subject may be inferred from the result when President Grant, who had given Shepherd his powerful support all through, nominated him as one of the three commissioners. The Senate rejected the nomination, with only some half dozen favorable votes.

The three commissioners took up the work and carried it on in a conservative way. Congress came to the help of the municipality by bearing one half the taxation of the District, on the very sound basis that, as it owned about one half of the property, it should pay one half the taxes.

The spirit of the time is illustrated by two little episodes. The reservation on which the public library founded by Mr. Carnegie is now built, was then occupied by the Northern Liberties Market, one of the three principal markets of the city. Being a public reservation, it had no right to remain there except during the pleasure of the authorities. Due notice was given to the marketmen to remove the structures. The owners were dilatory in doing so, and probably could not see why they should be removed when the ground was not wanted for any other purpose, and before they had time to find a new location. It was understood that, if an attempt was made to remove the buildings, the marketmen would apply to the courts for an injunction. To prevent this, an arrangement was made by which the destruction of the buildings was to commence at dinner-time. At the same time, according to current report, it was specially arranged that all the judges to whom an application could be made should be invited out to dinner. However this may have been, a large body of men appeared upon the scene in the course of the evening and spent the night in destroying the buildings. With such energy was the work carried on that one marketman was killed and another either wounded or seriously injured in trying to save their wares from destruction. The indignation against Shepherd was such that his life was threatened, and it was even said that a body-guard of soldiers had to be supplied by the War Department for his protection.

The other event was as comical as this was tragic. It occurred while the investigating committee of Congress was at its work. The principal actors in the case were Mr. Harrington, secretary of the local government and one of Mr. Shepherd's assistants, the chief of police, and a burglar. Harrington produced an anonymous letter, warning him that an attempt would be made in the course of a certain night to purloin from the safe in which they were kept, certain government papers, which the prosecutors of the case against Shepherd were anxious to get hold of. He showed this letter to the chief of police, who was disposed to make light of the matter. But on Harrington's urgent insistence the two men kept watch about the premises on the night in question. They were in the room adjoining that in which the records were kept, and through which the robber would have to pass. In due time the latter appeared, passed through the room and proceeded to break into the safe. The chief wanted to arrest him immediately, but Harrington asked him to wait, in order that they might see what the man was after, and especially what he did with the books. So they left and took their stations outside the door. The burglar left the building with the books in a satchel, and, stepping outside, was confronted by the two men.