The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER III.

EF­FECT OF PRES­IDENT BAR­BI­CANE'S COM­MU­NI­CA­TION.

It is im­pos­si­ble to de­pict the ef­fect pro­duced by the last words of the hon­ourable pres­ident. What cries! what vo­cif­er­ations! What a suc­ces­sion of groans, hur­rahs, cheers, and all the ono­matopoeia of which the Amer­ican lan­guage is so full. It was an in­de­scrib­able hub­bub and dis­or­der. Mouths, hands, and feet made as much noise as they could. All the weapons in this ar­tillery mu­se­um go­ing off at once would not have more vi­olent­ly ag­itat­ed the waves of sound. That is not sur­pris­ing; there are can­noneers near­ly as noisy as their can­nons.

Bar­bi­cane re­mained calm amidst these en­thu­si­as­tic clam­ours; per­haps he again wished to ad­dress some words to his col­leagues, for his ges­tures asked for si­lence, and his ful­mi­nat­ing bell ex­haust­ed it­self in vi­olent det­ona­tions; it was not even heard. He was soon dragged from his chair, car­ried in tri­umph, and from the hands of his faith­ful com­rades he passed in­to those of the no less ex­cit­ed crowd.

Noth­ing can as­ton­ish an Amer­ican. It has of­ten been re­peat­ed that the word “im­pos­si­ble” is not French; the wrong dic­tio­nary must have been tak­en by mis­take. In Amer­ica ev­ery­thing is easy, ev­ery­thing is sim­ple, and as to me­chan­ical dif­fi­cul­ties, they are dead be­fore they are born. Be­tween the Bar­bi­cane project and its re­al­isa­tion not one true Yan­kee would have al­lowed him­self to see even the ap­pear­ance of a dif­fi­cul­ty. As soon said as done.

The tri­umphant march of the pres­ident was pro­longed dur­ing the evening. A ver­ita­ble torch­light pro­ces­sion--Irish, Ger­mans, French­men, Scotch­men--all the het­ero­ge­neous in­di­vid­uals that com­pose the pop­ula­tion of Mary­land--shout­ed in their ma­ter­nal tongue, and the cheer­ing was unan­imous.

Pre­cise­ly as if she knew it was all about her, the moon shone out then with serene mag­nif­icence, eclips­ing oth­er lights with her in­tense ir­ra­di­ation. All the Yan­kees di­rect­ed their eyes to­wards the shin­ing disc; some salut­ed her with their hands, oth­ers called her by the sweet­est names; be­tween eight o'clock and mid­night an op­ti­cian in Jones-​Fall-​street made a for­tune by sell­ing field-​glass­es. The Queen of Night was looked at through them like a la­dy of high life. The Amer­icans act­ed in re­gard to her with the free­dom of pro­pri­etors. It seemed as if the blonde Phoebe be­longed to these en­ter­pris­ing con­querors and al­ready formed part of the Union ter­ri­to­ry. And yet the on­ly ques­tion was that of send­ing a pro­jec­tile--a rather bru­tal way of en­ter­ing in­to com­mu­ni­ca­tion even with a satel­lite, but much in vogue amongst civilised na­tions.

Mid­night had just struck, and the en­thu­si­asm did not di­min­ish; it was kept up in equal dos­es in all class­es of the pop­ula­tion; mag­is­trates, _sa­vants_, mer­chants, trades­men, street-​porters, in­tel­li­gent as well as “green” men were moved even in their most del­icate fi­bres. It was a na­tion­al en­ter­prise; the high town, low town, the quays bathed by the wa­ters of the Pat­ap­sco, the ships, im­pris­oned in their docks, over­flowed with crowds in­tox­icat­ed with joy, gin, and whisky; ev­ery­body talked, ar­gued, per­orat­ed, dis­put­ed, ap­proved, and ap­plaud­ed, from the gen­tle­man com­fort­ably stretched on the bar-​room couch be­fore his glass of “sher­ry-​cob­bler” to the wa­ter­man who got drunk up­on “knock-​me-​down” in the dark tav­erns of Fell's Point.

How­ev­er, about 2 a.m. the emo­tion be­came calmer. Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane suc­ceed­ed in get­ting home al­most knocked to pieces. A Her­cules could not have re­sist­ed such en­thu­si­asm. The crowd grad­ual­ly aban­doned the squares and streets. The four rail­roads of Ohio, Susque­han­na, Philadel­phia, and Wash­ing­ton, which con­verge at Bal­ti­more, took the het­ero­ge­neous pop­ula­tion to the four cor­ners of the Unit­ed States, and the town re­posed in a rel­ative tran­quil­li­ty.

It would be an er­ror to be­lieve that dur­ing this mem­orable evening Bal­ti­more alone was ag­itat­ed. The large towns of the Union, New York, Boston, Al­bany, Wash­ing­ton, Rich­mond, New Or­leans, Charlestown, La Mo­bile of Texas, Mas­sachusetts, Michi­gan, and Flori­da, all shared in the delir­ium. The thir­ty thou­sand cor­re­spon­dents of the Gun Club were ac­quaint­ed with their pres­ident's let­ter, and await­ed with equal im­pa­tience the fa­mous com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the 5th of Oc­to­ber. The same evening as the or­ator ut­tered his speech it ran along the tele­graph wires, across the states of the Union, with a speed of 348,447 miles a sec­ond. It may, there­fore, be said with ab­so­lute cer­tain­ty that at the same mo­ment the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica, ten times as large as France, cheered with a sin­gle voice, and twen­ty-​five mil­lions of hearts, swollen with pride, beat with the same pul­sa­tion.

The next day five hun­dred dai­ly, week­ly, month­ly, or bi-​month­ly news­pa­pers took up the ques­tion; they ex­am­ined it un­der its dif­fer­ent as­pects--phys­ical, me­te­oro­log­ical, eco­nom­ical, or moral, from a po­lit­ical or so­cial point of view. They de­bat­ed whether the moon was a fin­ished world, or if she was not still un­der­go­ing trans­for­ma­tion. Did she re­sem­ble the earth in the time when the at­mo­sphere did not yet ex­ist? What kind of spec­ta­cle would her hid­den hemi­sphere present to our ter­res­tri­al spheroid? Grant­ing that the ques­tion at present was sim­ply about send­ing a pro­jec­tile to the Queen of Night, ev­ery one saw in that the start­ing-​point of a se­ries of ex­per­iments; all hoped that one day Amer­ica would pen­etrate the last se­crets of the mys­te­ri­ous orb, and some even seemed to fear that her con­quest would dis­turb the bal­ance of pow­er in Eu­rope.

The project once un­der dis­cus­sion, not one of the pa­pers sug­gest­ed a doubt of its re­al­isa­tion; all the pa­pers, trea­tis­es, bul­letins, and mag­azines pub­lished by sci­en­tif­ic, lit­er­ary, or re­li­gious so­ci­eties en­larged up­on its ad­van­tages, and the “Nat­ural His­to­ry So­ci­ety” of Boston, the “Sci­ence and Art So­ci­ety” of Al­bany, the “Ge­ograph­ical and Sta­tis­ti­cal So­ci­ety” of New York, the “Amer­ican Philo­soph­ical So­ci­ety” of Philadel­phia, and the “Smith­so­ni­an In­sti­tu­tion” of Wash­ing­ton sent in a thou­sand let­ters their con­grat­ula­tions to the Gun Club, with im­me­di­ate of­fers of ser­vice and mon­ey.

It may be said that no propo­si­tion ev­er had so many ad­her­ents; there was no ques­tion of hes­ita­tions, doubts, or anx­ieties. As to the jokes, car­ica­tures, and com­ic songs that would have wel­comed in Eu­rope, and, above all, in France, the idea of send­ing a pro­jec­tile to the moon, they would have been turned against their au­thor; all the “life-​pre­servers” in the world would have been pow­er­less to guar­an­tee him against the gen­er­al in­dig­na­tion. There are things that are not to be laughed at in the New World.

Im­pey Bar­bi­cane be­came from that day one of the great­est cit­izens of the Unit­ed States, some­thing like a Wash­ing­ton of sci­ence, and one fact amongst sev­er­al will serve to show the sud­den homage which was paid by a na­tion to one man.

Some days af­ter the fa­mous meet­ing of the Gun Club the man­ag­er of an En­glish com­pa­ny an­nounced at the Bal­ti­more The­atre a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of _Much Ado About Noth­ing_, but the pop­ula­tion of the town, see­ing in the ti­tle a dam­ag­ing al­lu­sion to the projects of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, in­vad­ed the the­atre, broke the seats, and forced the un­for­tu­nate man­ag­er to change the play. Like a sen­si­ble man, the man­ag­er, bow­ing to pub­lic opin­ion, re­placed the of­fend­ing com­edy by _As You Like It_, and for sev­er­al weeks he had fab­ulous hous­es.