Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 24.djvu/615

1869.] off the men, and he brought us up the news that the Rebellion had begun.

" The last of this happy life," he said ; "the last, alas, of our dear MOON." How little he knew and we !

But he paid off the men, and they packed their traps and disappeared, and, before two months were over, were in the lines before the enemy. George packed up, bade us sadly good-by, and before a week had offered his service to Governor Fenton in Albany. For us, it took rather longer ; but we were soon packed ; Polly took the children to her sister's, and I went on to the De- partment to offer my service there. No sign of 'life left in No. 9, but the two gigantic Fly-Wheels, moving faster and faster by day and by night, and accumu- lating Power till it was needed. If only they would hold together till the mo- ment came !

So we all ground through the first slow year of the war. George in his place, I in mine, Brannan in his, we lifted as we could. But how heavy the weight seemed ! It was in the second year, when the second large loan was placed, that Haliburton wrote to me, I got the letter, I think, at Hilton Head, that he had sold out every penny of our railroad stocks, at the high prices which railroad stocks then bore, and had invested the whole fifty- nine thousand in the new Govern- ments. " I could not call a board meet- ing," said Haliburton, "for I am here only on leave of absence, and the rest are all away. But the case is clear enough. If the government goes up, the MOON will never go up ; and, for one, I do not look beyond the veil." So he wrote 'to us all, and of course we all approved.

So it was that Jeff. Davis also served. Deep must that man go into the Pit who does not serve, though uncon- scious. For thus it was that, in the fourth year of the war, when gold was at 290, Haliburton was receiving on his fifty-nine thousand dollars seventeen per cent interest in currency ; thus was it that, before the war was over, he had piled up, compounding his interest, more than fifty per cent addition to his capital ; thus was it that, as soon as peace came, all his stocks were at a handsome percentage ; thus was it that, before I returned from South America, he reported to all the subscribers that the full quarter-million was secured ; thus was it that, when I returned after that long cruise of mine in the Florida, I found Polly and the children again at No. 9, George there also, directing a working party of nearly eighty brick- layers and hodmen, the lower centrings wellnigh filled to their horizons, and the BRICK MOON, to the eye, seeming almost half completed.

Here it is that I regret most of all that I cannot print the working-draw- ings with this paper. If you will cut open the seed-vessel of Spergularia Rubra, or any other carpel that has a free central placenta, and observe how the circular seeds cling around the cir- cular centre, you will have some idea of the arrangement of a transverse hori- zontal section of the completed MOON. Lay three croquet-balls on the piazza, and call one or two of the children to help you poise seven in one plane above the three ; then let another Child place three more above the seven, and you have the core of the MOON completely. If you want a more poetical illustration, it was what Mr. Wordsworth calls a mass

" Of conglobated bubbles undissolved."

Any section through any diameter looked like an immense rose-window, of six circles grouped round a seventh. In truth, each of these sections would reveal the existence of seven chambers in the moon, each a sphere itself, whose arches gave solidity to the whole ; while yet, of the whole moon, the great- er part was air. In all there were thir- teen of these moonlets, if I am so to call them ; though no one section, of course, would reveal so many. Sus- tained on each side by their groined arches, the surface of the whole moon was built over them and under them, simply two domes connected at the bases. The chambers themselves were