calculations were the embryo. For this I was now to
contribute the mathematical certainty and the lore
borrowed from naval science, which should blossom and
bear fruit when the Brick Moon was snapped like a cherry
from the ways on which it was built, was launched into
the air by power gathered from a thousand freshets, and,
poised at last in its own pre-calculated region of the
ether, should begin its course of eternal blessings in
one unchanging meridian!

Vision of Beneficence and Wonder! Of course I
consented.

Oh that you were not so eager for the end! Oh that
I might tell you, what now you will never know,--of the
great campaign which we then and there inaugurated! How
the horrible loss of the Royal Martyr, whose longitude
was three degrees awry, startled the whole world, and
gave us a point to start from. How I explained to George
that he must not subscribe the one hundred thousand
dollars in a moment. It must come in bits, when "the
cause" needed a stimulus, or the public needed
encouragement. How we caught neophyte editors, and
explained to them enough to make them think the Moon was
well-nigh their own invention and their own thunder.
How, beginning in Boston, we sent round to all the men of
science, all those of philanthropy, and all those of
commerce, three thousand circulars, inviting them to a
private meeting at George's parlors at the Revere. How,
besides ourselves, and some nice, respectable-looking old