The Reminiscences of an Astronomer | Page 2

White House during his
Illness.--The Shepherd Régime in Washington.
XIII MISCELLANEA The Great Star-Catalogue Case.--Professor
Peters and the Almagest of Ptolemy.--Scientific Cranks.--The Degrees

of the French Universities.--A Virginia Country School.--Political
Economy and Education.--Exact Science in America before the Johns
Hopkins University.--Professor Ely and Economics.--Spiritualism and
Psychic Research.--The Georgia Magnetic Girl.

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, Mass. 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 assistant in the office. I talked of my unsuccessful attempt to
master the "Mécanique Céleste" 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 "Mécanique Céleste." I looked
with awe upon the assistants 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 Massachusetts 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 illustrate 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