Effect Of The President's Communication

: From The Earth To The Moon

It is impossible to describe the effect produced by the last

words of the honorable president-- the cries, the shouts, the

succession of roars, hurrahs, and all the varied vociferations

which the American language is capable of supplying. It was a

scene of indescribable confusion and uproar. They shouted, they

clapped, they stamped on the floor of the hall. All the weapons

in the museum discharged at once could not ave more violently set

in motion the waves of sound. One need not be surprised at this.

There are some cannoneers nearly as noisy as their own guns.



Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this enthusiastic

clamor; perhaps he was desirous of addressing a few more words

to his colleagues, for by his gestures he demanded silence,

and his powerful alarum was worn out by its violent reports.

No attention, however, was paid to his request. He was presently

torn from his seat and passed from the hands of his faithful

colleagues into the arms of a no less excited crowd.



Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted

that the word "impossible" in not a French one. People have

evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is

easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they

are overcome before they arise. Between Barbicane's proposition

and its realization no true Yankee would have allowed even the

semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is

no sooner said than done.



The triumphal progress of the president continued throughout

the evening. It was a regular torchlight procession. Irish, Germans,

French, Scotch, all the heterogeneous units which make up the

population of Maryland shouted in their respective vernaculars;

and the "vivas," "hurrahs," and "bravos" were intermingled in

inexpressible enthusiasm.



Just at this crisis, as though she comprehended all this

agitation regarding herself, the moon shone forth with

serene splendor, eclipsing by her intense illumination all the

surrounding lights. The Yankees all turned their gaze toward

her resplendent orb, kissed their hands, called her by all kinds

of endearing names. Between eight o'clock and midnight one

optician in Jones'-Fall Street made his fortune by the sale of

opera-glasses.



Midnight arrived, and the enthusiasm showed no signs of diminution.

It spread equally among all classes of citizens-- men of science,

shopkeepers, merchants, porters, chair-men, as well as "greenhorns,"

were stirred in their innermost fibres. A national enterprise was

at stake. The whole city, high and low, the quays bordering the

Patapsco, the ships lying in the basins, disgorged a crowd drunk

with joy, gin, and whisky. Every one chattered, argued, discussed,

disputed, applauded, from the gentleman lounging upon the barroom

settee with his tumbler of sherry-cobbler before him down to the

waterman who got drunk upon his "knock-me-down" in the dingy taverns

of Fell Point.



About two A.M., however, the excitement began to subside.

President Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and

squeezed almost to a mummy. Hercules could not have resisted a

similar outbreak of enthusiasm. The crowd gradually deserted

the squares and streets. The four railways from Philadelphia

and Washington, Harrisburg and Wheeling, which converge at

Baltimore, whirled away the heterogeneous population to the four

corners of the United States, and the city subsided into

comparative tranquility.



On the following day, thanks to the telegraphic wires, five

hundred newspapers and journals, daily, weekly, monthly, or

bi-monthly, all took up the question. They examined it under

all its different aspects, physical, meteorological, economical,

or moral, up to its bearings on politics or civilization.

They debated whether the moon was a finished world, or whether

it was destined to undergo any further transformation. Did it

resemble the earth at the period when the latter was destitute

as yet of an atmosphere? What kind of spectacle would its hidden

hemisphere present to our terrestrial spheroid? Granting that

the question at present was simply that of sending a projectile

up to the moon, every one must see that that involved the

commencement of a series of experiments. All must hope that

some day America would penetrate the deepest secrets of that

mysterious orb; and some even seemed to fear lest its conquest

should not sensibly derange the equilibrium of Europe.



The project once under discussion, not a single paragraph

suggested a doubt of its realization. All the papers,

pamphlets, reports-- all the journals published by the

scientific, literary, and religious societies enlarged upon its

advantages; and the Society of Natural History of Boston, the

Society of Science and Art of Albany, the Geographical and

Statistical Society of New York, the Philosophical Society of

Philadelphia, and the Smithsonian of Washington sent innumerable

letters of congratulation to the Gun Club, together with offers

of immediate assistance and money.



From that day forward Impey Barbicane became one of the greatest

citizens of the United States, a kind of Washington of science.

A single trait of feeling, taken from many others, will serve to

show the point which this homage of a whole people to a single

individual attained.



Some few days after this memorable meeting of the Gun Club, the

manager of an English company announced, at the Baltimore

theatre, the production of "Much ado about Nothing." But the

populace, seeing in that title an allusion damaging to

Barbicane's project, broke into the auditorium, smashed the

benches, and compelled the unlucky director to alter his playbill.

Being a sensible man, he bowed to the public will and replaced

the offending comedy by "As you like it"; and for many weeks he

realized fabulous profits.