What I Intended to Be—My Aunt’s View—My Parents’ Approval—My Uncle’s Enthusiasm—The Total Eclipse of the Sun.

Like all ambitious boys, I now began to dream of my future.

In a daily paper to which we were subscribing, there was a story appearing in serial form, which I happened to read, and in which I became immediately interested. It was a scientific novel, with a revenge motive. The title, the author, the plot—all are now forgotten except the vague idea that the hero in the end, by his high inventive ability, built a wonderful machine, by means of which he poured poisonous gas into the castle where his enemy lived, and thereby took his vengeance upon him. I was simply fascinated, and wanted to be an engineer.

The first one to whom I confided my intention was Tomo-chan. Of course I did not and could not depict an engineer as the one in the story, wrapped in the glowing splendor of his intellectual triumph. I might have tried it if she had given me a chance to do so. But too soon her peculiar and perhaps truer view of the profession came on me like a blow.

“Why, isn’t an engineer a sort of carpenter?” she asked. Reduced to such a lowest term, even my hero looked shabby, and from that very moment I dropped him entirely.

I was not, however, fortunate enough to find a substitute worthy of my admiration, and I had to go without any. But this time my mind seemed to be able to present to me a proper object of my ambition. All my thought gradually drifted toward the province of science (I little knew then that it was the same engineer story which influenced me). Of all branches of learning, science appeared to me to be the most substantial, most worthy of serious study, and most certain of arriving at the secret of the creation. The study, however, of a small portion of God’s work, such as a leaf of a tree or a nameless insect, did not appeal to me. No, any section of the earth was not large enough to lay down my life for. I wanted to take in the earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars—in fact, all the universe at once! So I fixed upon astronomy as my special study. The immensity of the field and the purely theoretical nature of the subject, coupled with the transcendency of the pursuit over the triviality of worldly affairs, had all its charm over me. It was simply great.

I went again to Tomo-chan to tell her of my intention. The idea of an astronomer was apparently beyond her grasp. She could not think of any occupation such as carpenter, mason, and so forth, to associate with an astronomer, and it did not take her long to admit that it was grand.

This was my first triumph, and now I approached my aunt to see what she would think of it. She was one of those women whose mind never soared above the world even for the sake of observation. She could not conceive the idea that this earth—which, by the way, was flat, according to her view—revolves every day. I went into a whole length of explanation by the help of a lighted lamp and my fist, to show how the revolution would cause day and night, but to no purpose. So I changed my tactics and told her the story of a little girl, who, in her own way, understood this fact. She lived at the foot of a high mountain, on the summit of which there was a lake. The little girl could not understand how water could be found in such a high place till she was told one day about the diurnal revolution of the earth. “That must be true,” she said, “and so the mountain dips into the sea in the night and carries the water from there!”

But it was not my purpose to convince her about such a matter, and so I proceeded to acquaint her with my intention. I soon found that it was not exactly in the line of her approval. She presented to me at once her worldly view of the profession, how out of ordinary my choice was. The astronomer was to her a man who sleeps when all should be up, and is awake when all should be in bed. He looks always at the sky, and does not know often that he is about to tumble into a ditch. He has to perch on a roof or a tree-top like a sparrow, to watch the stars while everybody is enjoying some nice thing in the house.

This, however, had no effect of a wet blanket upon me. I knew that she was teasing me for the mere fun of it. Her humorous eyes were ready to take in any change in my surprised countenance, which on my part I partly assumed to please her.

In the end, however, she frankly admitted that the constantly increasing number of new studies in these enlightened days bewildered her greatly, and she could not tell which profession was sure to lead one to success. Perhaps I was right, she said, in choosing a study which only a few might attempt.

Two days passed, in the course of which I became surer of my choice and was ready to face my parents. I had a secret suspicion that my father might have some plan already laid out for me. If he had had anything in mind outside of a scientific pursuit, I should have been non-plussed. But, luckily, I found I was ahead of him; indeed, he and my mother, too, seemed to trust everything to my natural inclination, and had only a vague but bright future for me without any particular road leading to it. So, when I laid before them, side by side, my desire or rather my determination to become an astronomer and a future college professor, with an income four times as great as my father’s,—I reserved the poetic side of my choice for my own meditation,—I made such a deep impression on them that it surprised me altogether. My mother, bending over her sewing by lamp-light, silently passed her hand over her eyes, while my father picked up a paper which had been read all through, with a slightly drawn “Um,” in his throat, which in his case was to be interpreted as indicating some pleasant feeling. My mother was the spokesman in such a case when my father’s silence was meant for consent. She told me that one must go heart and soul into any sort of study in order to excel in it. I simply nodded, and presently went to bed with a light heart, after bidding good night to the dear little stars who would be my constant companions hereafter.

I could not meet my uncle till Sunday, but Tomo-chan told me that he heard everything about me from my aunt, and was very enthusiastic over my intention. Indeed, he was always enthusiastic over new things, though his enthusiasm was usually rather short-lived. But I was glad that my news struck him in that light. That morning I found him reading a paper, but as I approached he looked up, and, removing his spectacles, and combing his beard with his fingers, surveyed me awhile as if to see if I was capable of my word. But really he was waiting for the return of his enthusiastic mood. I felt that Tomo-chan was smiling over my situation from the next room, though I could not remove my eyes from my uncle.

“Astronomer, eh?” he said at last.

“Yes, sir. Going to be one.”

“That’s grand. You will be the fourth or fifth in that line in our country. I should take one of those new studies if I were young enough. But astronomy is indeed fascinating. Do you know that the moon never shows her other side?”

Here he rose up and began to pace the room. His enthusiasm served to bring back a flood of the shallow but ready knowledge which he stored up in a corner of his head. And he did not let me speak a word till he had finished a lecture on the solar system.

“Look here,”—he turned to me with the look of a man who made a sudden discovery,—“do you know of the solar eclipse we are going to have on the 20th?”

Of course I did. It was still two weeks thence, and the moon was as opposite as could be, but I had already darkened a piece of glass over a candle and begun to observe the sun at least once a day.

“This is the total eclipse and its rare opportunity. You may not see it again in Japan in your lifetime,” he went on.

In my lifetime was too strong a phrase, but I was very sorry to miss the chance, as the zone of the total eclipse passed some fifty miles north of Tokyo, and I had—no money.

“Perhaps in your lifetime, too,” I ventured to suggest.“Yes, indeed. I did not think of myself,” he laughingly said. “Well, then, let’s go!”

“Go?”

“I will take you and Tomo with me.”

In the adjoining room Tomo-chan was seen just raising both her outstretched hands, opening her mouth, and rolling her eyes—all bespeaking her joy and surprise. I wished very much to answer the signal but for the presence of my uncle, who kept staring at anybody or anything near him, and this time at me, while revolving some new plan in his mind.

For the intervening days I was busy making preparations for the expedition. I had to buy half a dozen pieces of glass, frame and darken them in a variety of shade; to adjust my watch to keep time; to study the constellation where the sun was, and note the stars of the first magnitude visible on the day; and to make four or five copies of a drawing with a graduated circle in the centre for the sun, and two other concentric circles for the orbits of Mercury and Venus. The difficult part of the business was how to record time for the beginning of the eclipse. We needed two, at least, for this. Tomo-chan was glad to offer her service, but she did not want to look at the watch but at the sun. Well, I had no objection to that, as long as she could tell the right moment. But as I was a little in doubt on that point, we spent several nights in drill by means of a shaded lamp which cast a bright disc on the wall. No sooner than I moved an opaque one and touched the other, she had to press my hand. But too often the movable disc was a quarter of an inch inside the other when the belated touch passed on to me. So I had to train her eyes first by giving a signal at the time of contact by means of a pinch. And if she did not perceive it still, she got pinched still harder. She was very unteachable in this respect, but still wanted to look at the sun rather than the watch!So the day of the eclipse arrived. It was a hot, clear day in July, and most fitted for the observation. We took an early train, as we had a long way to go, and then we must settle somewhere to watch the beginning and the end and the most precious middle. In the central part of the zone of the total eclipse there was a government observatory temporarily erected, and we wanted to get as near to it as possible. But we did not take into account the rather slow service of the train, and the hour for the eclipse had come before we got into the zone, and were, of course, in the train. As nothing could be done under such circumstances, we gave up the initial observation, and all the three just looked at the sun through the soot-covered pieces of glass. We did not know that we were a gainer and not a loser by this till late, except Tomo-chan, who had already earned enough pinches merely to be ready for the occasion.

The train was a few miles within the zone when my uncle thought it wise to stop at a small village and make an observation there, as the sun was fast being overshadowed. We settled in a nice tea-house, whose front room in the second floor with an open veranda was just the sort of place for our purpose. And there, after a quick lunch, we awaited the hour. Tomo-chan and I had a board and a sheet of paper which I had specially prepared, to note the location of the visible stars and to draw the shape of the corona.

I never knew that the light of the sun was so strong, for till the luminous surface was reduced to a very thin crescent, no change was observed in the sky. But all at once, as the shadow of a man passing on the street became weirdly faint, the color of the sky turned into warm steel-black and the purple stars began to shine! And in no time the crescent was changed into a mere speck of silver light, and in a second, as it burned itself off, a beautifully soft fringe of twilight appeared. That was the corona!

I now assiduously set about to take down the exact shape of it. There were only thirty seconds of this precious moment. So I just put down important points on the paper, noting carefully the position and the distance, and tried to take a clear impression in my mind to be traced out later. Tomo-chan was working, too. But her process was just the opposite of mine. Evidently she wished to follow my picture, but as mine was no picture, she turned to the sun with a sigh, and, though she finished it in time, she had a picture of a heavenly corona twisted considerably by an earthly wind!

The wonderful moment had now passed, and the corona, with a tail trailing at the right-hand side of the sun, disappeared like a dream. It was too brief, but we were satisfied, and did not know what to think of our good fortune when, three minutes later, a dark cloud came and brushed the sun off. Then we imagined what the consequence might have been if the train had been fast and we had gone on further north. The next day’s paper said that the government expedition was entirely spoiled on account of the untimely shower!