The Reminiscences of an Astronomer | Page 8

I spent the
winter in the house of an old farmer named Jefferson. He and his wife
were a very kindly couple and took much interest in me. He was fond
of his pipe, as most old farmers are. I questioned whether anything else
would not do just as well as tobacco to smoke, and whether he was not
wasting his money by buying that article when a cheap substitute could
be found. So one day I took his pipe, removed the remains of the
tobacco ashes, and stuffed the pipe with tea leaves that had been
steeped, and which in color and general appearance looked much like
tobacco. I took care to be around when he should again smoke. He lit
the pipe as usual and smoked it with, seemingly, as much satisfaction
as ever, only essaying the remark, "This tobacco tastes like tea." My
conscience pricked me, but I could say nothing.
My father bought a copy of Lardner's "Popular Lectures on Science and
Art." In this I first read of electricity. I recall an incident growing out of
it. In Lardner's description of a Leyden jar, water is the only internal
conductor. The wonders of the newly invented telegraph were then
explained to the people in out of the way places by traveling lecturers.
One of these came to Clements, where we then lived, with a lot of
apparatus, amongst which was what I recognized as a Leyden jar. It

was coated with tin-foil on the outside, but I did not see the inner
coating, or anything which could serve as the necessary conductor. So
with great diffidence I asked the lecturer while he was arranging his
things, if he was not going to put water into the jar.
"No, my lad," was his reply, "I put lightning into it."
I wondered how the "lightning" was going to be conveyed to the
interior surface of the glass without any conductor, such as water, but
was too much abashed to ask the question.
Moore's "Navigator" taught not only a very crude sort of trigonometry,
but a good deal about the warship of his time. To a boy living on the
seacoast, who naturally thought a ship of war one of the greatest works
of man, the book was of much interest.
Notwithstanding the intellectual pleasure which I have described, my
boyhood was on the whole one of sadness. Occasionally my love of
books brought a word of commendation from some visitor, perhaps a
Methodist minister, who patted me on the head with a word of praise.
Otherwise it caused only exclamations of wonder which were
distasteful.
"You would n't believe what larnin' that boy has got. He has more
larnin' than all the people around here put together," I heard one farmer
say to another, looking at me, in my own view of the case, as if I were
some monster misshapen in the womb. Instead of feeling that my
bookish taste was something to be valued, I looked upon myself as a
lusus naturæ whom Nature had cruelly formed to suffer from an
abnormal constitution, and lamented that somehow I never could be
like other boys.
The maladroitness described by my father, of which I was fully
conscious, added to the feeling of my unfitness for the world around
me. The skill required on a farm was above my reach, where efficiency
in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments. I
keenly felt my inability to acquire even respectable mediocrity in this
branch of the agricultural profession. It was mortifying to watch the

dexterous motions of the whip and listen to the torrent of imperatives
with which a young farmer would set a team of these stolid animals in
motion after they had failed to respond to my gentle requests, though
conveyed in the best of ox language.
I had indeed gradually formed, from reading, a vague conception of a
different kind of world,--a world of light,--where dwelt men who wrote
books and people who knew the men who wrote books,--where lived
boys who went to college and devoted themselves to learning, instead
of driving oxen. I longed much to get into this world, but no possibility
of doing so presented itself. I had no idea that it would be imbued with
sympathy for a boy outside of it who wanted to learn. True, I had once
read in some story, perhaps fictitious, how a nobleman had found a boy
reading Newton's "Principia," and not only expressed his pleased
surprise at the performance, but actually got the boy educated. But
there was no nobleman in sight of the backwoods of Nova Scotia. I
read in the autobiography of Franklin how he had made his way in life.
But he was surrounded with opportunities from which I