Gala-Days | Page 7

thrill
through all your luminous aisles and all your listening shores for the
man that wandered there?
Is it begun? Not yet. The kitchen clock has but just struck eleven, and
my watch lacks ten minutes of that. What if the astronomers made a
mistake in their calculations, and the almanacs are wrong, and the
eclipse shall not come off? Would it be strange? Would it not be
stranger if it were not so? How can a being, standing on one little ball,
spinning forever around and around among millions of other balls

larger and smaller, breathlessly the same endless waltz,--how can he
trace out their paths, and foretell their conjunctions? How can a puny
creature fastened down to one world, able to lift himself but a few
paltry feet above, to dig but a few paltry feet below its surface, utterly
unable to divine what shall happen to himself in the next
moment,--how can he thrust out his hand into inconceivable space, and
anticipate the silent future? How can his feeble eye detect the quiver of
a world? How can his slender strength weigh the mountains in scales,
and the bills in a balance? And yet it is. Wonderful is the Power that
framed all these spheres, and sent them on their great errands; but more
wonderful still the Power that gave to finite mind its power, to stand on
one little point, and sweep the whole circle of the skies. Almost as
marvelous is it that man, being man, can divine the universe, as that
God, being God, could devise it. Cycles of years go by. Suns and
moons and stars tread their mysterious rounds, but steady eyes are
following them into the awful distances, steady hands are marking their
eternal courses. Their multiplied motions shall yet be resolved into
harmony, and so the music of the spheres shall chime with the angels'
song, "Glory to God in the highest!"
Is it begun? Not yet.
No wonder that eclipses were a terror to men before Science came
queening it through the universe, compelling all these fearful sights and
great signs into her triumphal train, and commanding us to be no longer
afraid of our own shadow. The sure and steadfast Moon, shuddering
from the fullness of her splendor into wild and ghostly darkness, might
well wake strange apprehensions. She is reeling in convulsive agony.
She is sickening and swooning in the death-struggle. The principalities
and powers of darkness, the eternal foes of men, are working their
baleful spell with success to cast the sweet Moon from her path, and
force her to work woe and disaster upon the earth. Some fell monster,
roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he may devour,--some
dragon, "monstrous, horrible, and waste," whom no Redcrosse Knight
shall pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing with giant gulps
the writhing victim. Blow shrill and loud your bugle blasts! Beat with
fierce clangor your brazen cymbals! Push up wild shrieks and groans,

and horrid cries,
"That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring,"
and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by deafening din.
O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls were disinherited; for
whom the woods and waters, and the deep places, were peopled with
mighty, mysterious foes; who saw evil spirits in the earth forces, and
turned her gold into consuming fire. For us, later born, Science has
dived into the caverns, and scaled the heights, and fathomed the depths,
forcing from coy yet willing Nature the solution of her own problems,
and showing us everywhere, GOD. We are not children of fate,
trembling at the frown of fairies and witches and gnomes, but the
children of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he is there. If we
take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the
sea, even there shall his hand lead, and his right hand hold.
Is it begun? Not--well, I don't know, though. Something seems to be
happening up in the northwest corner. Certainly, a bit of that round disk
has been shaved off. I will wait five minutes. Yes, the battle is begun.
The shadow advances. The moon yields. But there are watchers in the
heaven as well as in the earth. There is sympathy in the skies. Up floats
an argosy of compassionate clouds, and fling their fleecy veil around
the pallid moon, and bear her softly on their snowy bosoms. But she
moves on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the sad clouds. Deeper and
deeper into the darkness. Closer and closer the Shadow clutches her in
his inexorable arms. Wan and weird becomes her face, wrathful and
wild the astonished winds; and for all her science and her faith, the
Earth trembles in the night, and a hush of