<h2 id="sigil_toc_id_7">CHAPTER III.</h2>
<h3 id="sigil_toc_id_8">EFFECT OF THE PRESIDENT'S COMMUNICATION.</h3>
<p>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 have 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.</p>
<p>Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this enthusiastic clamour;
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.</p>
<p>Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that
the word "impossible" is 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Just at this crisis, as though she comprehended all this agitation
regarding herself, the Moon shone forth with serene splendour,
eclipsing by her intense illumination all the surrounding lights. The
Yankees all turned their gaze towards 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>About 2 a.m., however, the excitement began to subside. President
Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and squeezed almost to
a mummy. A 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 tranquillity.</p>
<div class="illus"><ANTIMG alt="Illustration: THE TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION." id="torchlight" src=
"images/torchlight.jpg" /></div>
<div class="caption">THE TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION.</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="illus"><ANTIMG alt="Illustration: CAMBRIDGE OBSERVATORY." id="cambridge" src="images/cambridge.jpg" /></div>
<div class="caption">CAMBRIDGE OBSERVATORY.</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />