The Reminiscences of an Astronomer

The Reminiscences of an Astronomer.

by Simon Newcomb.

PREFACE

The earlier chapters of this collection are so much in the nature of an autobiography that the author has long shrunk from the idea of allowing them to see the light during his lifetime. His repugnance has been overcome by very warm expressions on the subject uttered by valued friends to whom they were shown, and by a desire that some at least who knew him in youth should be able to read what he has written.

The author trusts that neither critic nor reader will object because he has, in some cases, strayed outside the limits of his purely personal experience, in order to give a more complete view of a situation, or to bring out matters that might be of historic interest. If some of the chapters are sc.r.a.ppy, it is because he has tried to collect those experiences which have afforded him most food for thought, have been most influential in shaping his views, or are recalled with most pleasure.

THE REMINISCENCES OF AN ASTRONOMER

I

THE WORLD OF COLD AND DARKNESS

I date my birth into the world of sweetness and light on one frosty morning in January, 1857, when I took my seat between two well-known mathematicians, before a blazing fire in the office of the "Nautical Almanac" at Cambridge, Ma.s.s. I had come on from Washington, armed with letters from Professor Henry and Mr. Hilgard, to seek a trial as an astronomical computer. The men beside me were Professor Joseph Winlock, the superintendent, and Mr. John D. Runkle, the senior a.s.sistant in the office. I talked of my unsuccessful attempt to master the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace without other preparation than that afforded by the most meagre text-books of elementary mathematics of that period. Runkle spoke of the translator as "the Captain." So familiar a designation of the great Bowditch--LL. D. and a member of the Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin--quite shocked me.

I was then in my twenty-second year, but it was the first time I had ever seen any one who was familiar with the "Mecanique Celeste."

I looked with awe upon the a.s.sistants who filed in and out as upon men who had all the mysteries of gravitation and the celestial motions at their fingers' ends. I should not have been surprised to learn that even the Hibernian who fed the fire had imbibed so much of the spirit of the place as to admire the genius of Laplace and Lagrange. My own rank was scarcely up to that of a tyro; but I was a few weeks later employed on trial as computer at a salary of thirty dollars a month.

How could an incident so simple and an employment so humble be in itself an epoch in one's life--an entrance into a new world?

To answer this question some account of my early life is necessary.

The interest now taken in questions of heredity and in the study of the growing mind of the child may excuse a word about my ancestry and early training.

Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent.

The first Simon Newcomb, from whom I am of the sixth generation, was born in Ma.s.sachusetts or Maine about 1666, and died at Lebanon, Conn., in 1745. His descendants had a fancy for naming their eldest sons after him, and but for the chance of my father being a younger son, I should have been the sixth Simon in unbroken lineal descent. [1]

Among my paternal ancestors none, so far as I know, with the exception of Elder Brewster, were what we should now call educated men. Nor did any other of them acquire great wealth, hold a high official position, or do anything to make his name live in history. On my mother's side are found New England clergymen and an English nonconformist preacher, named Prince, who is said to have studied at Oxford towards the end of the seventeenth century, but did not take a degree. I do not know of any college graduate in the list.

Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name. He was, I believe, a stonecutter by trade and owner of a quarry which has since become important; but tradition credits him with unusual learning and with having at some time taught school.

My maternal grandfather was "Squire" Thomas Prince, a native of Maine, who had moved to Moncton, N. B., early in his life, and lived there the rest of his days. He was an upright magistrate, a Puritan in principle, and a pillar of the Baptist Church, highly respected throughout the province. He came from a long-lived family, and one so prolific that it is said most of the Princes of New England are descended from it. I have heard a story of him which may ill.u.s.trate the freedom of the time in matters of legal proceedings before a magistrate's court. At that time a party in a suit could not be a witness. In the terse language of the common people, "no man could swear money into his own pocket." The plaintiff in the case advised the magistrate in advance that he had no legal proof of the debt, but that defendant freely acknowledged it in private conversation.

"Well," said the magistrate, "bring him in here and get him to talk about it while I am absent."

The time came.

"If you had n't sued me I would have paid you," said the defendant.

On the moment the magistrate stepped from behind a door with the remark,--

"I think you will pay him now, whether or no."

My father was the most rational and the most dispa.s.sionate of men.

The conduct of his life was guided by a philosophy based on Combe's "Const.i.tution of Man," and I used to feel that the law of the land was a potent instrument in shaping his paternal affections.

His method of seeking a wife was so far unique that it may not be devoid of interest, even at this date. From careful study he had learned that the age at which a man should marry was twenty-five.

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

Wherever he stopped overnight he made a critical investigation of the housekeeping, perhaps rising before the family for this purpose.

He searched in vain until his road carried him out of the province.

One young woman spoiled any possible chance she might have had by a lack of economy in the making of bread. She was asked what she did with an unnecessarily large remnant of dough which she left sticking to the sides of the pan. She replied that she fed it to the horses.

Her case received no further consideration.

The search had extended nearly a hundred miles when, early one evening, he reached what was then the small village of Moncton.

He was attracted by the strains of music from a church, went into it, and found a religious meeting in progress. His eye was at once arrested by the face and head of a young woman playing on a melodeon, who was leading the singing. He sat in such a position that he could carefully scan her face and movements. As he continued this study the conviction grew upon him that here was the object of his search.

That such should have occurred before there was any opportunity to inspect the doughpan may lead the reader to conclusions of his own.

He inquired her name--Emily Prince. He cultivated her acquaintance, paid his addresses, and was accepted. He was fond of astronomy, and during the months of his engagement one of his favorite occupations was to take her out of an evening and show her the constellations.

It is even said that, among the daydreams in which they indulged, one was that their firstborn might be an astronomer. Probably this was only a pa.s.sing fancy, as I heard nothing of it during my childhood.

The marriage was in all respects a happy one, so far as congeniality of nature and mutual regard could go. Although the wife died at the early age of thirty-seven, the husband never ceased to cherish her memory, and, so far as I am aware, never again thought of marrying.

My mother was the most profoundly and sincerely religious woman with whom I was ever intimately acquainted, and my father always entertained and expressed the highest admiration for her mental gifts, to which he attributed whatever talents his children might have possessed. The unfitness of her environment to her const.i.tution is the saddest memory of my childhood. More I do not trust myself to say to the public, nor will the reader expect more of me.

My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher. It was then, as it still is in many thinly settled parts of the country, an almost nomadic profession, a teacher seldom remaining more than one or two years in the same place. Thus it happened that, during the first fifteen years of my life, movings were frequent. My father tried his fortune in a number of places, both in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Our lot was made harder by the fact that his ideas of education did not coincide with those prevalent in the communities where he taught. He was a disciple and admirer of William Cobbett, and though he did not run so far counter to the ideas of his patrons as to teach Cobbett's grammar at school, he always recommended it to me as the one by which alone I could learn to write good English.

The learning of anything, especially of arithmetic and grammar, by the glib repet.i.tion of rules was a system that he held in contempt.

With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to cipher correctly or write grammatically.

So far as the economic condition of society and the general mode of living and thinking were concerned, I might claim to have lived in the time of the American Revolution. A railway was something read or heard about with wonder; a steamer had never ploughed the waters of Wallace Bay. Nearly everything necessary for the daily life of the people had to be made on the spot, and even at home. The work of the men and boys was "from sun to sun,"--I might almost say from daylight to darkness,--as they tilled the ground, mended the fences, or cut lumber, wood, and stone for export to more favored climes.

The spinning wheel and the loom were almost a necessary part of the furniture of any well-ordered house; the exceptions were among people rich enough to buy their own clothes, or so poor and miserable that they had to wear the cast-off rags of their more fortunate neighbors.

The women and girls sheared the sheep, carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the homespun cloth, and made the clothes. In the haying season they amused themselves by joining in the raking of hay, in which they had to be particularly active if rain was threatened; but any man would have lost caste who allowed wife or daughter to engage in heavy work outside the house.

The contrast between the social conditions and those which surround even the poorest cla.s.ses at the present day have had a profound influence upon my views of economic subjects. The conception which the ma.s.ses of the present time have of how their ancestors lived in the early years of the century are so vague and shadowy as not to influence their conduct at the present time.

What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed. For the most part, when I attended my father's school at all, I came and went with entire freedom, and this for causes which, as we shall see, he had reasons for deeming good.

It would seem that I was rather precocious. I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in cla.s.s and beginning geography when I was six.

One curious feature of my reading I do not remember to have seen noticed in the case of children. The printed words, for the most part, brought no well-defined images to my mind; none at least that were retained in their connection. I remember one instance of this.

We were at Bedeque, Prince Edward Island. During the absence of my father, the school was kept for a time by Mr. Bacon. The cla.s.s in reading had that chapter in the New Testament in which the treason of Judas is described. It was then examined on the subject. To the question what Judas did, no one could return an answer until it came my turn. I had a vague impression of some one hanging himself, and so I said quite at random that he hanged himself. It was with a qualm of conscience that I went to the head of the cla.s.s.

Arithmetic was commenced at the age of five, my father drawing me to school day by day on a little sled during the winter. Just what progress I made at that time I do not recall. Long years afterward, my father, at my request, wrote me a letter describing my early education, extracts from which I shall ask permission to reproduce, instead of attempting to treat the matter myself. The letter, covering twelve closely written foolscap pages, was probably dashed off at a sitting without supposing any eye but my own would ever see it:--

June 8th, '58.

I will now proceed to write, according to your request, about your early life.

While in your fifth year, your mother spoke several times of the propriety of teaching you the first rudiments of book-learning; but I insisted that you should not be taught the first letter until you became five. [2] I think, though, that at about four, or four and a half I taught you to count, as far, perhaps, as 100.

When a little over four and a half, one evening, as I came home from school, you ran to me, and asked, "Father, is not 4 and 4 and 4 and 4, 16?" "Yes, how did you find it out?"

You showed me the counterpane which was napped. The spot of four rows each way was the one you had counted up.

After this, for a week or two, you spent a considerable number of hours every day, making calculations in addition and multiplication. The rows of naps being crossed and complexed in various ways, your greatest delight was to clear them out, find how many small ones were equal to one large one, and such like. After a s.p.a.ce of two or three weeks we became afraid you would calculate yourself "out of your head," and laid away the counterpane.

Winter came, and pa.s.sed along, and your birthday came; on that day, having a light hand-sled prepared, I fixed you on it, and away we went a mile and a half to school.