brought any secretary with him
on his travels I never heard of it.

The letter placed me in an embarrassing position, because its being
addressed to me was in contravention of all official propriety.
Of course I lost no time in calling on him and trying to explain the
situation. I told him that Admiral Davis, whom he well knew from
his being in command of the Brazilian station a few years before,
was the head of the observatory, and hinted as plainly as I could
that a notification of the coming of such a visitor as he should
be sent to the head of the institution. But he refused to take
the hint, and indicated that he expected me to arrange the whole
matter for him. This I did by going to the observatory and frankly
explaining the matter to Admiral Davis. Happily the latter was not
a stickler for official forms, and was cast in too large a mould to
take offense where none was intended. At his invitation I acted as
one of the receiving party. The carriage drove up at the appointed
hour, and its occupant was welcomed by the admiral at the door with
courtly dignity. The visitor had no time to spend in preliminaries;
he wished to look through the establishment immediately.

The first object to meet his view was a large marble-cased clock
which, thirty years before, had acquired some celebrity from being
supposed to embody the first attempt to apply electricity to the
recording of astronomical observations. It was said to have cost
a large sum, paid partly as a reward to its inventor. Its only
drawbacks were that it would not keep time and had never, so far as
I am aware, served any purpose but that of an ornament. The first
surprise came when the visitor got down on his hands and knees in
front of the clock, reached his hands under it, and proceeded to
examine its supports. We all wondered what it could mean. When he
arose, it was explained. He did not see how a clock supported in this
way could keep the exact time necessary in the work of an astronomer.
So we had to tell him that the clock was not used for this purpose,
and that he must wait until we visited the observing rooms to see
our clocks properly supported.

The only evidence of the imperial will came out when he reached the
great telescope. The moon, near first quarter, was then shining,
but the night was more than half cloudy, and there was no hope of
obtaining more than a chance glimpse at it through the clouds.
But he wished to see the moon t