Baring-Gould Sabine
Historic Oddities and Strange Events
A Wax-and-Honey-Moon
In the history of Selenography, John Henry Maedler holds a distinguished place. He was the very first to publish a large map of the lunar surface; and his map was a good one, very accurate, and beautifully executed, in four sheets (1834-6). For elucidation of this map he wrote a book concerning the moon, entitled "The Universal Selenography." Not content with this, he published a second map of the moon in 1837, embodying fresh discoveries. Indeed as an astronomer, Maedler was a specialist. Lord Dufferin when in Iceland met a German naturalist who had gone to that inclement island to look for one moth. It is of the nature of Teutonic scientific men not to diffuse their interests over many branches of natural history or other pursuits, but to focus them on a single point. Maedler was comparatively indifferent to the planets, cold towards the comets, and callous to the attractions of the nebulæ. On the subject of the moon, he was a sheer lunatic.
He died at Hanover in 1874 at the age of eighty, a moon gazer to the last. Indeed, he appeared before the public as the historian of that science in a work published at Brunswick, the year previous to his death. The study of astronomy, more than any other, – even than theology – detaches a man from the world and its interests. Indeed theology as a study has a tendency to ruffle a man, and make him bark and snap at his fellow men who use other telescopes than himself; it is not so with astronomy. This science exercises a soothing influence on those who make it their study, so that an Adams and a Le Verrier can simultaneously discover a Neptune without flying at each other's noses.
Astronomy is certainly an alluring science; set an astronomer before a telescope, and an overwhelming attraction draws his soul away through the tube up into heaven, and leaves his body without mundane interests. An astronomer is necessarily a mathematician, and mathematics are the hardest and most petrifying of studies. The "humane letters," as classic studies are called, draw out the human interests, they necessarily carry men among men, but mathematics draw men away from all the interests of their fellows. The last man one expects to find in love, the last man in whose life one looks for a romantic episode, is a mathematician and astronomer. But as even Cæsar nods, so an astronomer may lapse into spooning. The life of Professor Maedler does not contain much of animated interest; but it had its poetic incident. The curious story of his courtship and marriage may be related without indiscretion, now that the old Selenographer is no more.
Even the most prosaic of men have their time of poetry. The swan is said to sing only once – just before it dies. The man of business – the stockbroker, the insurance-company manager, the solicitor, banker, the ironmonger, butcher, greengrocer, postman, have all passed through a "moment," as Hegel would call it, when the soul burst through its rind of common-place and vulgar routine, sang its nightingale song, and then was hushed for ever after. It is said that there are certain flowers which take many years coming to the point of bloom, they open, exhale a flood of incense, and in an hour wither. It is so with many. Even the astronomer has his blooming time. Then, after the honeymoon, the flower withers, the song ceases, the sunshine fades, and folds of the fog of common-place settle deeper than before.
Ivan Turgenieff, the Russian novelist, says of love, "It is not an emotion, it is a malady, attacking soul and body. It is developed without rule, it cannot be reckoned with, it cannot be overreached. It lays hold of a man, without asking leave, like a fever or the cholera. It seizes on its prey as a falcon on a dove, and carries it, where it wills. There is no equality in love. The so-termed free inclination of souls towards each other is an idle dream of German professors, who have never loved. No! of two who love, one is the slave, the other is the lord, and not inaccurately have the poets told of the chains of love."
But love when it does lay hold of a man assumes some features congruent to his natural habit. It is hardly tempestuous in a phlegmatic temperament, nor is a man of sanguine nature liable to be much influenced by calculations of material advantages. That calculations should form a constituent portion of the multiform web of a mathematician's passion is what we might anticipate.
It will be interesting to see in a German professor devoted to the severest, most abstract and super-mundane of studies, the appearance, course, and dying away of the "malady" of love. We almost believe that this case is so easy of analysis that the very bacillus may be discovered.
Before, however, we come to the story of Professor Maedler's love episode, we must say a word about his previous history.
Maedler was born at Berlin on May 29th, 1794, in the very month of love, though at its extreme end. He began life as a schoolmaster, but soared in his leisure hours into a purer atmosphere than that of the schoolroom; he began to study the stars, and found them brighter and more interesting than the heads of his pupils.
In 1828 William Beer, the Berlin banker, brother of the great composer, Meyerbeer, a Jew, built a small observatory in the suburbs of Berlin. He had made the acquaintance of Maedler, they had the same love of the stars, and they became close friends.
The Beers were a gifted family, running out in different directions. Michael, a third brother, was a poet, and wrote tragedies, one or two of which occasionally reappear on the boards.
The result of the nightly star gazings was an article on Mars when in opposition, with a drawing of the surface as it appeared to Beer and Maedler, through the telescope of the former.
But Mars did not admit of much further scrutiny, it presented no more problems they were capable of solving, so they devoted themselves to the moon. A gourmand exists from dinner to dinner, that meal is the climax of his vitality, that past he lapses into inertness, indifference, quiescence. Full moon was the exciting moment of the periods in Maedler's life, which was divided, not like a gourmand's day, into periods of twenty-four hours, but into lunar months. When the moon began to show, Maedler began to live; his interest, the pulses of his life quickened as full moon approached, then declined and went to sleep when there was no lunar disc in the sky. From 1834 to 1836 he issued his great map of the moon, and so made his name. But beyond that, in the summer of 1833 he was employed by the Russian Government on a chronometrical expedition in the Baltic.
When his map came out, he was at once secured by the Prussian Government as assistant astronomer to the observatory at Berlin, recently erected. In 1840 he became a professor, and was summoned to take charge of the observatory, and lecture on astronomy, in the Russian University of Dorpat. There he spent six uneventful years. He was unmarried, indifferent to female society, and as cold as his beloved moon. He was as solitary, as far removed from the ideas of love and matrimony, as the Man in the Moon.
At last, one vacation time, he paid a long deferred visit to a friend, a Selenologist, at Gröningen, the University of the Kingdom of Hanover. Whilst smoking, drinking beer, and talking over the craters and luminous streaks in the moon, with his friend, who was also a professor, that gentleman drew his pipe from his mouth, blew a long spiral from between his lips, and then said slowly, "By the way, professor, are you aware that we have here, in this kingdom, not, indeed, in Gröningen, but in the town of Hanover, a lady, the wife of the Herr Councillor Witte, who is, like yourself, devoted to the moon; a lady, who spends entire nights on the roof of her house peering at the face of the moon through one end – the smaller – of her telescope, observing all the prominences, measuring their altitudes, and sounding all the cavities. Indeed, it is asserted that she studies the face and changes of the moon much more closely than the features and moods of her husband. Also, it is asserted, that when the moon is shining, the household duties are neglected, the dinners are bad, the maids – "
"O dinners! maids! you need not consider them; there are always dinners and maids," said the Dorpat astronomer contemptuously, "but the moon is seen so comparatively rarely. The moon must be made much of when she shows. Everything must then be sacrificed to her."
Dr. Maedler did not call the moon she, but he; however, we are writing in English, not in German, so we change the gender.
The Astronomer Royal of the University of Gröningen went on, without noticing the interruption: "Frau von Witte has spent a good deal of her husband's money in getting the largest procurable telescope, and has built an observatory for it with a dome that revolves on cannon balls, on the top of her house. Whilst Herr von Witte slumbers and snores beneath, like a Philistine, his enlightened lady is aloft, studying the moon. The Frau Councilloress has done more than observe Luna, she has done more than you and Beer together, with your maps – she has modelled it."
"Modelled it! – modelled the moon! – in what?"
"In white wax."
Professor Maedler's countenance fell. He had gained great renown, not in Germany only, but throughout Europe by his maps of the moon. Here was an unknown lady, as enthusiastic a devotee to the satellite as himself, who had surpassed him. "You see," continued the Hanoverian professor, "the idea is superb, the undertaking colossal. You have a fixed strong light, you make the wax moon to revolve on its axis, and you reproduce in the most surprising and exact manner, all the phases of the moon itself."
This was indeed an idea. Maedler looked at his hands, his fingers. Would they be capable of modelling such a globe? Hardly, he had very broad coarse hands, and thick flat fingers, like paddles. He suddenly stood up.
"What is the matter? Whither are you going?" asked his friend.
"To Hanover, to Frau Witte, to see the wax moon." No persuasion would restrain him, he was in a selenological fever, he could not sleep, he could not eat, he could not read, he must see the wax moon.
And now, pray observe the craft of Cupid. The professor was aged fifty-two. In vain had the damsels of Berlin and Dorpat set their caps at him. Not a blonde beauty of Saxon race with blue eyes had caught his fancy, not a dark Russian with large hazel eyes and thick black hair, had arrested his attention. His heart had been given to the cold, chaste Diana. It was, with him, the reverse of the tale of Endymion.
He had written a treatise on the occultation of Mars, he had described the belts of Saturn, he had even measured his waist. Venus he had neglected, and now Cupid was about to avenge the slight passed on his mother. There was but one avenue by which access might be had to the professor's heart. The God of Love knew it, and resolved to storm the citadel through this avenue. Dr. Maedler packed his trunk himself in the way in which unmarried men and abstract thinkers do pack their portmanteaus. He bundled all his clothes in together, higglety-pigglety. The only bit of prudence he showed was to put the pomatum pot into a stocking. His collars he curled up in the legs of his boots. Copies of his astronomical pamphlets for presentation, lay in layers between his shirts. Then as the trunk would not close, the Professor of Astronomy sat down heavily on it, stood up, then sharply sat down on it again, and repeated this operation, till coats, trousers, linen, pamphlets, brushes and combs had been crushed together into one cohesive mass, and so the lock would fasten.
No sooner was Dr. Maedler arrived at his inn in Hanover, and had dusted the collar of his coat, and revolved before the garçon who went over him with a clothes brush, revolved like the moon he loved, than he sallied forth in quest of the house of the Wittes. There was no mistaking it – with the domed observatory on the roof.
Dr. Maedler stood in the square, looking up at it. The sight of an observatory touched him; and now, hard and dry as he was, moisture came into his eyes, as he thought that there, on that elevated station, an admirable woman spent her nights in the contemplation of the moon. What was Moses on Pisgah, viewing the Promised Land, what was Simeon Stylites braving storm and cold, to this spectacle?
Never before had the astronomer met with one of the weaker sex who cared a button for the moon, qua moon, and not as a convenience for illumining lovers' meetings, or for an allusion in a valentine. Here was an heroic soul which surged, positively surged above the frivolities of her sex, one who aspired to be the rival of man in intelligence and love of scientific research.
Professor Maedler sent in his card, and a letter of introduction from his friend at Gröningen, and was at once admitted. He had formed an ideal picture of the Selenographic lady, tall, worn with night watching, with an arched brow, large, clear eyes. He found her a fat little woman, with a face as round and as flat as that of the moon, not by any means pale, but red as the moon in a fog.
The lady was delighted to make the acquaintance of so renowned an astronomer. She made him pretty speeches about his map, at the same time letting him understand that a map was all very well, but she knew of something better. Then she launched out into a criticism of his pamphlets on Mars and Saturn, on which, as it happened, he was then sitting. He had put a crumpled copy in each of his tail-coat pockets for an offering, and was now doubly crumpling them. Then she asked his opinion about the revolution and orbit of Biela's comet, which had been seen the preceding year. Next she carried him to Hencke's recently discovered planet, Astræa; after that she dashed away, away with him to the nebulæ, and sought to resolve them with his aid. Then down they whirled together through space to the sun, and the luminous red protuberances observable at an eclipse. Another step, and they were plunging down to earth, had reached it in safety, and were discussing Lord Rosse's recently erected telescope. It was like Dante and Beatrix, with this difference, that Maedler was not a poet, and Frau Witte was a married woman.
The Professor was uneasy. Charming as is a telescope, delightful as is the sun, fascinating as Astræa may be, still, the moon, the moon was what he had come to discuss, and wax moon what he had come to see.
So he exercised all his skill, and with great dialectic ability conducted his Beatrix away on another round. They gave the fixed stars a wide berth, dived in and out among the circling planets and planetoids without encountering one, avoided the comets, kept their feet off nebulous matter, and at last he planted his companion firmly on the moon, and when there, there he held her.
To her words of commendation of his lunar map, he replied by expressing his astonishment at her knowledge of the several craters and so-called seas. Presently Frau Witte rose with a smile, and said, "Herr Professor, I may, perhaps, be allowed to exhibit a trifle on which I have been engaged for many years: – an independent work that I have compared with, but not copied from, your excellent selenic map."
The doctor's heart fluttered; his eyes brightened; a hectic flush came into his cheeks.
Frau Witte took a key and led the way to her study, where she threw open a mahogany cupboard, and exposed to view something very much like a meat cover. This also she removed, it was composed of the finest silk stretched on a frame, and exposed to view – the wax moon.
The globe was composed of the purest white beeswax, it stood upon a steel needle that passed through it, and rested on pivots, so that the globe was held up and held firm, and could be easily made to revolve. Frau Witte closed the shutters, leaving open only one orifice through which the light could penetrate and fall on the wax ball.
The doctor raised his hands in admiration. Never had he seen anything that so delighted him. The globe's surface had been most delicately manipulated. The mountains were pinched into peaks, the hollows indented to the requisite depth, the craters were rendered with extraordinary precision, the striæ being indicated by insertions of other tinted wax. A shadow hung sombre over the mysterious Sea of Storms.
Professor Maedler returned to his hotel a prey to emotion. He inquired the address of a certain Rollmann, whom he had known in former years at Berlin, and who was now professor in the Polytechnic school at Hanover. Then he rushed off in quest of Rollmann. The Polytechnic Professor was delighted to see his friend, but disturbed at the condition of mind in which he found him.
"What has brought you to Hanover, dear Professor?" he asked.
"The moon! the moon! I have come after the moon."
"The moon! How can that be? She shines over Dorpat as surely as over our roofs in Hanover."
"I've just seen her."
"Impossible. The moon is new. Besides, it is broad daylight."
"New! of course she is new. Only made lately."
Professor Rollman was puzzled.
"The moon is certainly as old as the world, and even if we give the world so limited an age as four thousand years – "
"I was not allowed to touch her, scarcely to breathe near her," interrupted Maedler.
"My dear colleague, what is the matter with you? You are – what do you say, seen, touched, breathed on the moon? The distance of the moon from the earth is two hundred and forty thousand miles."
"Not the old moon – I mean the other."
"There is no other, that is, not another satellite to this world. I am well aware that Jupiter has four moons, two of which are smaller than the planet Mars. I know also that Mars – "
"My dear Rollman, there is another – here in Hanover."
"I give it up, I cannot understand."
"Happy Hanover to possess such an unique treasure," continued the excited Maedler, "and such a woman as Frau Witte."
"Oh! her wax moon!" said Rollmann, with a sigh of relief.
"Of what else could I speak?"
"So you have seen that. The old lady is very proud of her performance."
"She has cause to be proud of it. It is simply superb."
"And the sight of it has nearly sent you off your head!"
"Rollmann! what will become of that model? Frau Councilloress Witte will not live for ever. She is old, puffy, and red, and might have apoplexy any day. Is her husband an astronomer?"
"O dear no! he regards astronomy as as unprofitable a study as astrology. It is quite as expensive a pursuit, he says."
"Merciful heavens! Suppose she were to predecease – he would have the moon, and be unable to appreciate it. He might let it get dusty, have the craters and seas choked; perhaps the mountain-tops knocked off. He must not have it."
"It cannot be helped. The moon must take its chance."
"It must not be. She must outlive the Councillor."
"If you can manage that – well."
"But – supposing she does outlive him, she is not immortal. Some day she must die. Who will have the moon then?"
"I suppose, her daughter."
"What will the daughter do with it?"
"Melt it up for waxing the floors."
Professor Maedler uttered a cry of dismay.
"The object is one of incalculable scientific value. Has the daughter no husband, a man of intelligence, to stay her hand?"
"The daughter is unmarried. There was some talk of a theological candidate – "
"A theological candidate! An embryo pastor! Just powers! These men are all obscurantists. He will melt up the moon thinking thereby to establish the authority of Moses."
"That came to nothing. She is disengaged."
Professor Maedler paced the room. Perspiration bedewed his brow. He wiped his forehead, more drops formed. Suddenly he stood still. "Rollmann," he said, in a hollow voice, "I must – I will have that moon, even if I have to marry the daughter to secure it."
"By all means. Minna is a pleasant young lady."
"Minna! Minna! is that her name?" asked the distracted professor; then, more coolly, "I do not care a rush what her name is. I want, not her, but the moon."
"She is no longer in the bloom of early youth."
"She is an exhausted world; a globe of volcanic cinder."
"She is of real solid worth."
"Solid – she is of solid wax – white beeswax."
"If she becomes yours – "
"I will exhibit her at my lectures to the students."
"As you are so much older, some provision will have to be made in the event of your death."
"I will leave her to the Dorpat museum, with directions to the curator to keep the dust off her."
"My dear Professor Maedler, I am speaking of the young lady, you of the moon."
"Ah so! I had forgotten the incumbrance. Yes, I will marry the moon. I will carry her about with me, hug her in my arms, protect her most carefully from the fingers of the Custom House officers. I will procure an ukase from the Emperor to admit her unfingered over the frontier."
"And Minna!"
"What Minna?"
"The young lady."
"Ah so! She had slipped out of my reckoning. She shall watch the box whilst I sleep, and whilst she sleeps I will keep guard."
"Be reasonable, Maedler. Do you mean, in sober earnest, to invite Minna Witte to be your wife?"
"If I cannot get the moon any other way."
"But you have not even seen her yet."
"What does that matter? I have seen the moon."
"And you are in earnest!"
"I will have the moon."
"Then, of course, you will have to propose."
"I propose!"
"And, of course, to make love."
"I make love!"
Professor Maedler's colour died away. He stood still before his friend, his pocket-handkerchief in hand, and stared.
"I have not the remotest idea how to do it."
"You must try."
"I've had no experience. I am going on to fifty-three. As well ask me to dance on the trapeze. It is not proper. It is downright indecent."
"Then you must do without the wax moon."
"I cannot do without the wax moon."
"Then, there is no help for it, you must make love to and propose to the fair Minna."
"Friend," said the Russian-imperial-professor-of-astronomy-of-the-University-of-Dorpat, as he clasped Rollmann's hand. "You are experienced in the ways of the world. I have lived in an observatory, and associated only with fixed stars, revolving moons, and comets. Tell me how to do it, and I will obey as a lamb."
"You will have to sigh."
"O! I can do that."
"And ogle the lady."
"Ogle! – when going fifty-three!"
"Learn a few lines of poetry."
"Yes, Milton's Paradise Lost. Go on."
"Tell the young lady that your heart is consumed with love."
"Consumed with love, yes, go on."
"Squeeze her hand."
"I cannot! That I cannot!" gasped Professor Maedler. "Look at my whiskers. They are grey. There is a point beyond which I cannot go. Rollmann, why may I not settle it all with the mother, and let you court the young lady for me by proxy."
"No, no, you must do it yourself."
"I would not be jealous. Consider, I care nothing for the young girl. It is the moon I want. That you shall not touch or breathe on."
"My dear Maedler, you and I are sure to be invited to dine with the family on Sunday. After dinner we will take a stroll in the garden. During dinner mind and be attentive to Miss Minna, and feed her with honeyed words. When we visit the garden I will tackle the mother, as Mephistopheles engages Martha, and you, you gay Faust, will have to be the gallant to Minna."
"My good Rollmann! I dislike the simile. It offends me. Consider my age, my whiskers, my position at the Dorpat University, my map of the moon in four sheets, my paper on the occultation of Mars."
"Pay attention to me, if you want your wax globe. Frau Witte, the Councillor and I will sit drinking coffee in the arbour. You ask Minna to show you the garden. When you are gone I will begin at once with the mother, praise you, and say how comfortably you are provided for at Dorpat, laud your good qualities, and bring her to understand that you are a suitor for the hand of her daughter. Meanwhile press your cause with ardour."
"With ardour! I shall not be able to get up any warmth."
"Think of the wax moon! direct your raptures to that."
"This is all very well," said Maedler fretfully, "but you have forgotten the main thing. I know you will make a mistake. You have asked for the hand of the daughter, and said nothing about the moon."
"Do not be concerned."
"But I am concerned. It would be a pretty mischief if I got the daughter's hand instead of the face of the moon."
"I will manage that you have what you want. But the moon must not rise over the matrimonial scene till the preliminaries are settled. I will represent to the old lady what credit will accrue to her if her moon be exhibited and lectured on at the Dorpat University by so distinguished an astronomer as yourself. Then, be well assured, she will give you the wax moon along with her daughter."
"Very well, I will do what I can. Only, further, explain to me the whole process, that I may learn it by heart. It seems to me as knotty to a beginner as Euler's proof of the Binomial Theorem."
"It is very easy. Pay attention. You must begin to talk about the fascination which a domestic life exerts on you; you then say that the sight of such an united household as that in which you find yourself influences you profoundly."
"I see. Causes a deflection in my perihelion. That deflection is calculable, the force excited calculable, the position of the attractive body estimable. I direct my telescope in the direction, and discover – Minna. Put astronomically, I can understand it."
"But you must not put it astronomically to her. Paint in glowing tints the charms of the domestic hearth – that is to say, of the stove. Touch sadly on your forlorn condition, your unloved heart – are you paying attention, or thinking of the moon?"
"On the contrary, I was thinking of myself, from a planetary point of view. I see, a wife is a satellite revolving round her man. I see it all now. Jupiter has four."
"Sigh; let the corners of your mouth droop. Throw, if you can, an emotional vibration into your tones, and say that hitherto life has been to you a school, where you have been set hard tasks; not a home. Here shake your head slowly, drop a tear if you can, and say again, in a low and thrilling voice, 'Not a home!' Now for the poetry. Till now, you add, you have looked into the starry vault – "
"It is not a vault at all."
"Never mind; say this. Till now you have looked into the starry vault for your heaven, and not dreamed that a heaven full of peaceful lights was twinkling invitingly about your feet. That is poetical, is it not? It must succeed."
"Quite so, I should never have thought of it."
"Then turn, and look into Miss Minna's eyes."
"But suppose she is looking in another direction?"
"She will not be. A lady is always ready to help a stumbling lover over the impediments in the way of a declaration. She will have her eyes at command, ready to meet yours."
"Go on."
"You will presently come to a rose tree. You must stop there and be silent. Then you must admire the roses, and beg Miss Minna to present you with one."
"But I do not want any roses. What can I do with them? I am lodging at an hotel."
"Never mind, you must want one. When she has picked and offered it – "
"But perhaps she will not."
"Fiddlesticks! Of course she will. Then take the rose, press your lips to it, and burst forth into raptures."
"Excuse me, how am I to do the raptures?"
"Think of the wax moon, man. Exclaim, 'Oh that I might take the fair Minna, fairer than this rose, to my heart, as I apply this flower to my buttonhole!'"
"Shall I say nothing about the wax moon?"
"Not a word. Leave me to manage that."
"Go on."
"Then she will look down, confused, at the gravel, and stammer. Press her for a Yes or No. Promise to destroy yourself if she says No. Take her hand and squeeze it."
"Must I squeeze it? About how much pressure to the square-foot should I apply?"
"Then say, 'Come, let us go to your parents, and obtain their blessing.' The thing is done."
"But suppose she were to say No?"
Rollmann stamped with impatience. "I tell you she will not say No, now that the theological candidate has dropped through."
"Well," said Professor Maedler, "I must go along with it, now I have made up my mind to it. But, on my word, as an exact reasoner, I had no idea of the difficulties men have to go through to get married. Why, the calculation of the deflections of the planets is nothing to it. And the Grand Turk, like Jupiter, has more satellites than one!"
A few months after the incident above recorded Professor Maedler returned to Dorpat, not alone; with him was the Frau Professorinn – Minna. Everything had gone off in the garden as Rollmann had planned.
The moon and Minna, or Minna and the moon, put it which way you will, were secured.
When the Professor arrived at Dorpat with his wife, the students gave him an ovation after the German style, that is to say, they organized a Fackel-zug, or torch-light procession.
Three hundred young men, some wearing white caps, some green caps, some red, and some purple, marched along the street headed by a band, bearing torches of twisted tow steeped in tar, blazing and smoking, or, to be more exact, smoking and blazing. Each corps was followed by a hired droschky, in which sat the captain and stewards of the white, red, green, or purple corps, with sashes of their respective colours. Behind the last corps followed the elephants, two and two. By elephants is not meant the greatest of quadrupeds, but the smallest esteemed of the students, those who belong to no corps.
The whole procession gathered before the house of the Professor, and brandished their torches and cheered. Then the glass door opening on the balcony was thrown back, and the Professor John Henry Maedler appeared on the balcony leading forth his wife. The astronomer looked younger than he had been known to look for the last twenty years. His whiskers in the torchlight looked not grey, but red. The eyes, no longer blear with star-gazing, watered with sentiment. His expression was no longer that of a man troubled with integral calculus, but of a man in an ecstasy. He waved his hand. Instantly the cheers subsided. "My highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs," began the Professor, "this is a moment never to be forgotten. It sends a fackel-zug of fiery emotion through every artery and vein. Highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs, I am not so proud as to suppose that this reception is accorded to me alone. It is an ovation offered to my highly-beloved-and-evermore-to-be-beloved-and-respected consort, Frau Minna Maedler, born Witte, the daughter of a distinguished lady, who, like myself, has laboured on Selenography, and loved Selenology. Highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-respected sirs, when I announce to you that I have returned to Dorpat to endow that most-eminent-and-ever-to-become-more-eminent-University with one of the most priceless treasures of art the world has ever seen, a monument of infinite patience and exact observation; I mean a wax moon; I am sure I need only allude to the fact to elicit your unbounded enthusiasm. But, highly-worthy-and-ever-to-be-honoured sirs, allow me to assure you that my expedition to Hanover has not resulted in a gain to the highly eminent University of Dorpat only, but to me, individually as well.
