I felt as grand when I showed up my new discovery as if
I had created the beast. I don't doubt Herschel felt as if he had made a
planet when he first showed the astronomers Georgium Sidus, as he called
it. And that reminds me of something. I was riding on the outside of a
stagecoach from London to Windsor in the year--never mind the year, but
it must have been in June, I suppose, for I bought some strawberries.
England owes me a sixpence with interest from date, for I gave the woman
a shilling, and the coach contrived to start or the woman timed it so
that I just missed getting my change. What an odd thing memory is, to be
sure, to have kept such a triviality, and have lost so much that was
invaluable! She is a crazy wench, that Mnemosyne; she throws her jewels
out of the window and locks up straws and old rags in her strong box.
[De profundis! said I to myself, the bottom of the bushel has dropped
out! Sancta--Maria, ora pro nobis!]
--But as I was saying, I was riding on the outside of a stage-coach from
London to Windsor, when all at once a picture familiar to me from my New
England village childhood came upon me like a reminiscence rather than a
revelation. It was a mighty bewilderment of slanted masts and spars and
ladders and ropes, from the midst of which a vast tube, looking as if it
might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted angels battered the
walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly
towards the sky.
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