THE FIRST ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. "In the name of the Prophet: - Figs!" It was about the period when, with the fast world of cities, De Sauty was beginning to become type of an "ism”; already the attention of excitement-hunters had travelled far from Trinity Bay, and Cyrus Field had yielded his harvest. Nevertheless, to me, who had just come to town from a quiet country seclusion into which news made its entry teredofashion only, the performances of the Agamemnon and Niagara were matters of fresh and vivid interest. So I purchased Mr. Briggs's book, and went to Guy's, to cut the leaves over a steak and a bottle of Edinburgh ale. It was while I was thus engaged that the little Frenchman had accosted me, calling my attention to his wares with such perfect courtesy, such airy grace, that I was forced to look at his baskets. And looking, I was induced to lay down my book and examine them more closely; for they were really pretty,-made of extremely white and delicate wood, showing an exquisite taste in their design, and being neatly and carefully finished. Then it was, that, having apparently noticed the title of my book, M. César Prévost had used the language above quoted, and with such empressement of manner, that my attention was diverted from his wares to himself. I looked at him with some curiosity. He was a little old Frenchman, lean as a haunch of dried venison, and scarcely less dark in complexion, — though his color was nearer that of rappee snuff, and had not the rich blood-lined purple of venison. His face was wofully meagre, and seemed scored and overlaid with care-marks. Nevertheless, there was an energetic, nervous, almost humorsome mobility about his mouth; while his little beady black eyes, quick, warm, scintillant, had ten times the life one would have expected to find keeping company with his fifty years. In dress, he was very threadbare, and, sooth to say, not over-clean; yet he was jaunty, and moved with the air of a man much better clad. I was impressed with his appearance, and especially with his voice, which was vibrant, firm, and excellently intoned. It is my foible, perhaps, but I am always charmed with bonhommie, I class originality among the cardinal virtues, and I am as eager in the chase after eccentricity as a veteran fox-hunter is in pursuit of Reynard. M. César promised a compensative proportion of all three qualities, could I only "draw him out"; and besides, he was not like Mr. Canning's "Knife-Grinder,”-for, evidently, he had a story to tell. Observing my scrutiny, he smiled; a singular, ironical smile it was, yet without a particle of bitterness or of cynicism. "Eh, bien!" said he; " you stare, Monsieur ! you sink me an excentrique. Vraiment! I am use to zat, — I am use to have persons smile reeseeblement, to tap zere fronts, an' spek of ze strait-jackets. Never fear, I am toujours harmless! Mais, Monsieur, it is true, vat I tell you: I am ze original inventeur of ze Atlantic Telegraph! You mus' not comprehend me, Sare, to intend somesing vat persons call ze Telegraph, - such like ze Electric Telegraph of Monsieur Morse, gaire sing of ze vire and ze acid. Mon Dieu, non! far more perfect,-far more a vul grrand, far more original! Ze acid may burn ze finger, ze vire vill become rrusty,ze isolation subject always to ze atmosphere. Ah, bah! Vat make you in zat event? As ze pure lustre of ze diamant of Golconde to ze distorted rays of a morsel of bottle-glass, so my grrand invention to ze modes of ze telegraph in vogue at present!" "Monsieur, you shall tell me about it," said I, pointing to a seat on the other side of the table; "sit down there, and tell me about your invention, and in your native language, that is, if you can spare the time to do so, and to drink a glass of Bordeaux with me." He accepted my invitation as a gentleman would, sipped his wine like a connoisseur, passed me a few compliments, such as any French gentleman might toss to you, if you had asked him to join you in a glass of wine in one of his city's cafés, and then proceeded with his story. My translation gives but a faint echo of the impression made upon me by his life, vigor, and originality; but still I have striven to do him as little injustice as possible. "But pardon, Monsieur,-I see that you are impatient. You shall immediately hear all I have to say, after I have, in a few words, given you a brief insight into the nature of my invention. Come, then!-Has it ever occurred to Monsieur to reflect upon that something which we call Sympathy? The philosophers, you know, and the physiologists, the followers of that coquin, Mesmer, and the bêtes Spiritualists, as they now dub themselves, these have written, talked, and speculated much about it. I doubt not these fellows have aided Monsieur in perplexing his brain respecting the diverse, the world-wide ramifications of this physiological problem. The limits, indeed, of Sympathy have not been, cannot be, rightly set or defined; and there are those who embrace under such a capitulation half the dark mysteries that bother our heads when we think of Life's under-current, instinct,- clairvoyance, - trance, ecstasy, all the dim and inner sensations of the Spirit, where it touches the Flesh as perceptibly, but as unseen and unanalyzed, as the kiss of the breeze at evening. Sans doute, Mon "Monsieur, it is ten years since I accomplished, put in practice, and evoked practical results from this international communication, which your two peoples have failed to establish, in spite of all their money, their great ships, and the united wisdom of their savans. I am a Frenchman, Monsieur,—and, you know, France is the congenial soil of Science. In that country, where they laugh ever and se jouent de tout, Science is sacred; the Academy has even pas of the army; honors there are higher prized than the very wreaths of glory. Among the votaries of Science in France, César Prévost was the humblest, — serviteur, Monsieur, 't is very wonderful, all this, — and sieur. Nevertheless, though my place was only in the outermost porch of the temple, I was a faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing worshipper of the goddess; and therefore, because earnest fidelity has ever its crown of reward, it happened to me to make a grand discovery, — a dis then, also, 't is very convenient. Our ships must have a steersman, you know. And, par exemple, unless we call it sympathetic, that strange susceptibility which we see in many persons, detect in ourselves sometimes, what name have we to give it at all? Unless we call it sympa thy, how shall we define those mysterious premonitions, shadowy warnings, solemn foretokens, that fall upon us now and then as the dew falls upon the grass-leaf, that make our blood to shiver and our flesh to quake, and will not by any means permit themselves to be passed by or nullified? "T is a fact that is irrepressible; and, in persons with imagination of morbid tendency, this spontaneous sympathy takes a hold so strong as to present visibly the image about which there is concern,—and, behold! your veritable spectre is begotten! So, again, of your 'love at first sight,' comme on dit, that inevitable attraction which one person exerts towards another, in spite, it may be, both of reason and judgment. If this be not child of sympathy, what parentage shall we assign it? And antipathy, Monsieur, the medal's reverse,-your bête noire, for instance, expound me that! Why do you so shudder at sight of this or that innocent object? You cannot reason it away, -'t is always there; you cannot explain it, nor diagnose its symptoms,-'t is a part of you, governed by the same laws that govern your elective affinities' throughout. But note, Monsieur! You and I and man in general are not alone in this: the whole organic world - nay, some say the entire universe, inorganic as well as organic is subject to these impalpable sympathetic forces. Is the hypothesis altogether fanciful of chemical election and rejection, of the kiss and the kick of the magnet? Your Sensitive-Plant, your Dionea, your Rose of Jericho, your Orinoco-blossom that sets itself afloat in superb faith that the ever-moving waters will bring it to meet its mate and lover, - are not these instances of sympathy? And tell me by what means your eye conquers the furious dog that would bite you, tell me how that dog is able to We call intelligible to them, how? this, Instinct. Eh, bien, Monsieur! what is Instinct, but Sympathy? "Bah! it amounts to nothing, all this, if we only look at it in such relations. For centuries have stupides bothered their brains about such matters, seeking to account for them. As well devote one's time to puzzling over 'Elia Lælia'! Mysteries were not meant to be put in the spelling-books, Monsieur. Ah, bah! a far different path did César Prévost pursue! He studied these phenomena, not to explain them,- being too wise to dream of living par amours with such barren virgins as are Whence and Why (your Bacon was very shrewd, Monsieur). What cared I about causes? Let Descartes, and Polignac, and Reid, and Cudworth, et id omne genus, famish themselves in this desert; but ask it not of César Prévost! He is always considerate to the impossible. He says this, always:- Here we have certain interesting phenomena; their causes are involved in mystery impenetrable; their esoteric nature is beyond the reach of any microscope;-what then? My Heaven! let us do what we can with them. Let us seek out their relations; let us investigate the laws regulating their interdependence, if there be such laws; and après, let us inquire if there be any practical results obtainable from such relations and laws. - "You follow me, Monsieur? Eh, bien! This was the system, and César Prévost came speedily to one law, a law so important, that, like Aaron's serpent, it put all the rest out of sight forever, engrossing thereafter his whole attention. This law, which pervades the entire animal economy, and is of course important in proportion to its universality, is as follows: The sympathetic harmony between animals, other things being equal, is IN INVERSE PROPORTION to their rank in that scale of comparison in which man is taken as the maximum of perfection. Consequently, man is most deficient in this instinctive something, which, for lack of a better term, I have ventured to style 'sympathetic harmony,' while the sim- the the to outrun the wildest time and space, - What a coltish fire of enthusiasm "Eh, bien! Now, distance made no and giving me unlimited teleAll that was "I was not rich, and so, to save the trouble and expense of importing my snails to Paris, - vast trouble and expense, of course, since my experiments were so numerous, I came across the Atlantic, and fixed myself at a point near St. Louis, where I could study in peace and have the subjects of my experiments close at hand. I used to pay the trappers liberally to get my snails for me, instructing them how to gather and how to transport them; and to divert all suspicion from my real objects, I pretended to be a gourmet, who used the snails solely for gastronomic purposes, - whereby, Monsieur," said César Prévost, with a hu morous smile, "I was unfortunate enough to inspire the hearty garçons with a supreme contempt for me, and they used to say I'vas not bettaire zan one blarsted Digger Injun!' Mon Dieu! what martyrs the votaries of Science have been, always! "Eh, bien! I shall not bother you with my experiments. In brief, let me give you only results, so as to be just comprehensible. Given my law, I had to find, first, the manner exactly in which snails manifest their sympathy, the one for the other,— c'est à dire, how Snail A tells you that something is happening to his comrade, Snail B. There was a constant law for this, hard to find, but I achieved it. Second, to make my telegraph perfect, and put my system beyond the touch of accident, I had to discover how to destroy the rapport between Snails A and B. Unless I could do this, I could never be sure my instruments were perfectly isolated, so to speak. "T was a difficult task, Monsieur; for the snail is the most constant in its attachments of all the animal kingdom, and I have known them to die, time and again, because their mates had died, 'Pining avay in a green and yaller melancholie,' as your grand poet has it, Monsieur. Still, I succeeded, and I am very proud to announce it;-'t was a great feat, indeed, no less than to subvert an instinct! Third, I found out the way to keep them perfectly isolated, so as to prevent any subvention of a higher influence from weakening or destroying the previous rapport. Fourth, what sort of influence brought to bear upon Snail B would be sympathetically indicated most palpably in Snail A. So, Monsieur, you may fancy I had my hands full. "But I succeeded, after long labor. Then I spent much time in seeking to perfect an Alphabetical System, and also a Recording Apparatus, capable of exactly setting forth the quality of the sympathy manifested, as well as the number of the manifestations. When these things were all perfected, I should have a complete system of Telegraph, which no circumstances of time, distance, or atmosphere could impair, which would put on record its every step, and permit no opportunity for error or for accident. Eh, bien! Man proposes,God disposes. Monsieur, when I began my experiments, when I devoted myself, my energies, and my life itself to developing and utilizing my discovery, my motives were purely, exclusively scientific. My sole aim was to win the position of an eminent savant, who, by conferring a signal benefit upon the race, should merit the common applause of mankind. But, as time wore on, as my labors began to be successful, as the grand possibilities of my achievement arrayed themselves before me, other dreams usurped my brain. I, the inventor of this thing, so glorious in its aspect, so incomputable in its results, was I to permit myself to go without reward? Fame? Ah, bah! what bread would Fame butter? 'T was a bubble, a name, an empty, profitless sound, this coquin of Fame! 'Proximus sum egomet mihi,' says Terence, or, as your English proverb has it, Charity begins at home.' I bethought me of the usual fate of discoverers and inventors,- neglected, scoffed at, ill-used, left to starve. The blesser of the world with infinite riches must nibble his crust au sixième. Why, then? Because, in their sublime eagerness to serve others, they forget to care for themselves. Eh, bien! One must still keep his powder dry, said your great Protector. This discovery was to double the effectiveness of men's hands, therefore, was grandly to enrich them. But could it not be also made a notable instrument for wealth in one man's hands? Ah! brave thought! How, if, none the less resolved to give man eventually the benefit of my Idea, I should yet keep it in abeyance, till I had made my own sufficient profit out of it? It could be done; -surely, to use it well were less difficult than to have invented it. So dreams of wealth and luxury began to fill my brain. I |