The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Now, you know, dear reader, that the gigantic
reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen-
inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate
from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old
Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I
have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon
Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in
your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this
began,--and as I have said already,--if there were a
State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first
Herschel would have seen it. His magnifying power was
6450; that would have brought this deaf and dumb State
House within some forty miles. Go up on Mt. Washington
and see white sails eighty miles away, beyond Portland,
with your naked eye, and you will find how well he would
have seen that State House with his reflector. Lord
Rosse's statement is, that with his reflector he can see
objects on old Thornbush two hundred and fifty-two feet
long. If he can do that he can see on our B. M. objects
which are five feet long; and, of course, we were beside
ourselves to get control of some instrument which had
some approach to such power. Haliburton was for at once
building a reflector at No. 9; and perhaps he will do it
yet, for Haliburton has been successful in his paper-
making and lumbering. But I went to work more promptly.
I remembered, not an apothecary, but an observatory,
which had been dormant, as we say of volcanoes, now for
ten or a dozen years,--no matter why! The trustees
had quarrelled with the director, or the funds had given
out, or the director had been shot at the head of his
division,--one of those accidents had happened which will
happen even in observatories which have fifteen-inch
equatorials; and so the equatorial here had been left as
useless as a cannon whose metal has been strained or its
reputation stained in an experiment. The observatory at
Tamworth, dedicated with such enthusiasm,--"another
light-house in the skies," had been, so long as I have
said, worthless to the world. To Tamworth, therefore, I
travelled. In the neighborhood of the observatory I took
lodgings. To the church where worshipped the family
which lived in the observatory buildings I repaired;
after two Sundays I established acquaintance with John
Donald, the head of this family. On the evening of the
third, I made acquaintance with his wife in a visit to
them. Before three Sundays more he had recommended me to
the surviving trustees as his successor as janitor to the
buildings. He himself had accepted promotion, and gone,
with his household, to keep a store for Haliburton in
North Ovid. I sent for Polly and the children, to
establish them in the janitor's rooms; and, after writing
to her, with trembling eye I waited for the Brick Moon to
pass over the field of the fifteen-inch equatorial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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