Troy, Saturday, Jan. 8.
Sweetheart, this is the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, which was fought & bloodily won by Gen. Jackson, at a time when England & America were at peace.1
It is also the anniversary of other events, but I do not know what they were, now.
I have been reading some new arguments to prove that the world is very old, & that the six days of creation were six immensely long periods. For instance, according to Genesis, the stars were made when the world was, yet this writer mentions the significant fact that there are stars within reach of our telescopes whose light requires 50,000 years to traverse the wastes of space & come to our earth.2 And so, if we made a tour through space ourselves, might we not, in some remote era of the future, meet & shake han greet the lag first lagging rays [of ] stars that started on their weary visit to us a million years ago?—rays that are outcast & homeless, now, their parent stars crumbled to nothingness & swept from the firmament five hundred thousand years after these journeying rays departed—stars whose peoples lived their little lives, & laughed & wept, hoped & feared, sinned & perished, bewildering ages since these vagrant twinklings went wandering through the solemn solitudes of space?
How insignificant we are, with our pigmy little world!—an atom glinting with uncounted myriads of other atom worlds in a broad shaft of light streaming from God’s countenance—& yet prating complacently about of our speck as the Great World, & regarding the other specks as pretty trifles made to steer our schooners by & inspire the reveries of “puppy” lovers. Did Christ live 33 years in each of the millions & millions of worlds that hold their majestic courses above our heads? [ Ou Or ] was our small [ glov globe ] the favored one of all? Does one apple in a vast orchard think as much of itself as we do?—or one leaf in the forest,—or one grain of sand upon the sea shore? Do the pismires argue upon vexed questions of [ theology ] pismire theology,—& do they climb a molehill & look abroad over the grand universe of an acre of ground & say “Great is God, who created all things for Us?”3
I do not see how astronomers can help [feeling ] exquisitely insignificant, for every new page of the Book of the Heavens they open reveals to them more & more that the world we are so proud of is to the universe of careering globes is as ‸is‸ one mosquito to the winged & hoofed flocks & [ hea herds ] that darken the air & populate the plains & forests of all the earth. Verily, What is Man, that he should be considered of God? If you killed the mosquito, would it be missed? Verily, What is m Man, that he should be considered of God?4
One of these astronomers has been taking photographs of tongues of flame 17,000 miles high that [ shot shoot ] aloft from the surface of the sun, & [waver ], & sink, & rise again—all in two or three minutes,—& sometimes in one minute swinging a banner of flame from left to right a distance of 5,000 miles—an inconceivable velocity! Think of the hurricanes that sweep the sun, to do such miracles as this! And other tongues of flame stream upward, arch & bend & hang down again, forming a crimson arch [28,000 ] miles in height, through which our poor globe might be bowled as one bowls [ an apple ] ‸a football‸ between a boy’s legs.5
But I must stop. I have concluded to stay here to-day & tomorrow, as this hotel suits me first-rate. I had the sagacity to enter my nom de plume on the register, & so they have made me very comfortable. (For I find that the landlord6 is a frantic admirer of mine.) He is a good fellow, too (naturally.)
Go to bed, sweetheart. Go to bed, & sleep peacefully, & awake refreshed & happy, my darling.
Sam
Add to list of after-cards for San Francisco:
Mr. & Mrs. Dr. Bruner.
Mrs. Joseph Woodworth, care of Dr. Bruner.7
Miss Olivia L. Langdon | Elmira | N. Y. [return address:] troy house troy, n. y. chas. h. jones. proprietor. [postmarked:] troy [n. y. jan 10] [docketed by OLL:] 8 170th
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
It is familiar that the defenders of this
chronology—which is as purely a human invention as is the bicycle velocipede—have
been obliged to stretch the days of creation, as given in Genesis,
into periods of time of indefinite duration—millions of
years, if necessary. . . . Our next remark is that astronomy sets
the existence of the world more than 20,000
years ago beyond doubt, by showing that there are stars now visible
to us whose light takes at least 50,000 years to cross the space
that separates us from them. (6–7) That Clemens read the Eclectic was
first deduced from his use of pages torn from a copy of it (L3, 394 n. 3, 400 n. 1 top).
We have before us as we write a series of
colored prominence-pictures taken by Dr. [Johann Karl
Friedrich] Zöllner, the eminent
photometrician. It is impossible to contemplate these strange
figures without a sense of the magnificence of the problem which the
sun presents to astronomers. . . . First, there is a vast flame,
some 18,000 miles high, bowed towards the right, as though some
fierce wind were blowing upon it. It extends in this direction some
four or five thousand miles. The next picture represents the same
object ten minutes later. The figure of the prominence has wholly
changed. It is now a globe-shaped mass, standing on a narrow stalk
of light above a row of flame-hillocks. It is bowed towards the
left, so that in those short minutes the whole mass of the flame has
swept thousands of miles away from its former position. Only two
minutes later, and again a complete change of appearance. The stalk
and the flame-hillocks have vanished, and the globe-shaped mass has
become elongated. Three minutes later, the shape of the prominence
has altered so completely that one can hardly recognize it for the
same. The stalk is again visible, but the upper mass is bowed down
on the right so that the whole figure resembles a gigantic A,
without the cross-bar, and with the downstroke abnormally thick.
This great A is some twenty thousand miles in height, and the whole
mass of our earth might be bowled between its legs without touching
them! (112–13)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L4, 11–14; LLMT, 132–34, with omission; Chester L. Davis 1981, 1–2, with omission.
Provenance:see Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
of • of of [canceled ‘f’ partly formed]
Ou Or • Our
glov globe • glovbe
theology • [false ascenders/descenders]
feeling • ◇ feeling [doubtful, partly formed ‘p’]
hea herds • heards
shot shoot • shotot shoot [revision rewritten for clarity]
waver • wav waver [miswritten; possibly ‘van’]
28,000 • [possibly ‘208,000’; blotted]
an apple • [false ascenders/descenders]
n.y. jan 10 • [n].y. jan [10] [badly inked]
