But what a life story is revealed by the dash which separates those figures, 1796–1876! Eighty years of toil and endurance, toil in early youth, toil in manhood, toil in the midst of amassed wealth, until the inevitable end at last came. He was born in Fredericksburg, Pa., where he received a common school education. He learned the trade of an organ builder and piano maker in Hanover, Pa. He went into business in Baltimore, Md., and also in Philadelphia; but his destiny drove him away to Buenos Ayres, to Valparaiso, and other places in South America, until, in 1847, he settled in California, where he became interested in real estate, and in due time amassed a large fortune. His strong face, which greets one in bronze, at the Mount Hamilton Observatory, bespeaks a powerful and stern character. He never married. He was deemed by those who knew him to be "unlovable, eccentric, solitary, selfish, and avaricious," but when this is said, the memory of it is somewhat condoned, for there was a romance in the case—he was crossed in love.
It is hard to judge of such a man, and of such circumstances. He certainly has made amends for all his shortcomings, or tried to, if they were as related, by his munificent bequests to charity, and above all to pure science. When one looks at his carpenter's bench, preserved as a relic of his workman's life, and then at his tomb in the still silence and darkness of the great telescope chamber, and then remembers all that this silent, lonely man has done, one cannot but believe that he had in heart, all along, great ideals which none of those about him, in the vulgar strife of life, ever imagined. What can be more unlike a narrow, selfish, unlovable, and avaricious man than his splendid offering of a fortune to keep eternal watch upon the stars?
These thoughts danced through one's brain in presence of it all. We were grateful to the old man, whose face, singularly like that of John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, seemed to embody the tragedies and aspirations of life; and we thought of his silent dust beneath us, as through his gifts we looked at Jupiter and his moons, and noted the strange belts which band the planet, brought near to us by the lens of the Lick telescope. We saw also the crested edge, glittering like molten silver, of the moon of this our own planet, and longed to wait until Saturn should rise, and other wonders open before us. Professor Schaeberle made me the fascinating offer to stay all night, and go down the mountain in the early morning; but I kept with the party, and, well after eleven at night, we started on the home run down the mountain to San José.
The coming up was grand indeed, but the going down was better. The great moon flung its radiance over the vast expanse. It was a symphony in gray and silver. It was a downward plunge into black mysteries of overhanging mountains. It was delirious with possible dangers. It set one's heart throbbing, and the best relief we could have was in song and shout which roused the echoes of the night.
We subsided into silence when we reached safety and the plain, and were rather bored than otherwise, as we cantered into the deserted streets of San José at half-past two o'clock in the morning. How tame seemed the dull surroundings of even that pretty place at such an hour—a few saloons yet aglare, a light in an occasional window, all the rest ghostly, silent, and yet commonplace, too, after our splendid excursion to the stars.
XVI
Sunday at San José. — The Big Trees. — The Fruit Farm at Gilroy. — Hotel del Monte. — The Ramble on the Beach. — The Eighteen-Mile Drive. — Dolce far Niente.
We stayed at San José over Sunday, and attended church morning and evening, furnishing from our number the preacher for both services. The church had a good choir of men and boys, surpliced, which was, very sensibly, placed near the organ in one of the transepts. A much better arrangement this is than putting all in the compass of a small chancel. To have choristers close up to the altar is not a commendable use, though very general. The structural choir of a cathedral gives ample room for singers and worshippers, with dignified and clear space about the chancel proper. The ordinary parish church, in its whole extent, should be treated as if it were just such a structural choir, with the singers well among the people in raised seats, for the prominence of their office and the better effect of the music.
We had time on Monday to take another stroll among the roses and palm trees of San José, and then the car "Lucania" in the forenoon took all our party, except one, to Santa Cruz, for an excursion to the Big Trees, about ten miles from there. All this I missed. From the leaves of the diary of one of the party I quote the impression of the trip: