"Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "A Trip Around It"" - читать интересную книгу автора

and its realization no true Yankee would have allowed even the
semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is
no sooner said than done.

The triumphal progress of the president continued throughout
the evening. It was a regular torchlight procession. Irish, Germans,
French, Scotch, all the heterogeneous units which make up the
population of Maryland shouted in their respective vernaculars;
and the "vivas," "hurrahs," and "bravos" were intermingled in
inexpressible enthusiasm.

Just at this crisis, as though she comprehended all this
agitation regarding herself, the moon shone forth with
serene splendor, eclipsing by her intense illumination all the
surrounding lights. The Yankees all turned their gaze toward
her resplendent orb, kissed their hands, called her by all kinds
of endearing names. Between eight o'clock and midnight one
optician in Jones'-Fall Street made his fortune by the sale of
opera-glasses.

Midnight arrived, and the enthusiasm showed no signs of diminution.
It spread equally among all classes of citizens-- men of science,
shopkeepers, merchants, porters, chair-men, as well as "greenhorns,"
were stirred in their innermost fibres. A national enterprise was
at stake. The whole city, high and low, the quays bordering the
Patapsco, the ships lying in the basins, disgorged a crowd drunk
with joy, gin, and whisky. Every one chattered, argued, discussed,
disputed, applauded, from the gentleman lounging upon the barroom
settee with his tumbler of sherry-cobbler before him down to the
waterman who got drunk upon his "knock-me-down" in the dingy taverns
of Fell Point.

About two A.M., however, the excitement began to subside.
President Barbicane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and
squeezed almost to a mummy. Hercules could not have resisted a
similar outbreak of enthusiasm. The crowd gradually deserted
the squares and streets. The four railways from Philadelphia
and Washington, Harrisburg and Wheeling, which converge at
Baltimore, whirled away the heterogeneous population to the four
corners of the United States, and the city subsided into
comparative tranquility.

On the following day, thanks to the telegraphic wires, five
hundred newspapers and journals, daily, weekly, monthly, or
bi-monthly, all took up the question. They examined it under
all its different aspects, physical, meteorological, economical,
or moral, up to its bearings on politics or civilization.
They debated whether the moon was a finished world, or whether
it was destined to undergo any further transformation. Did it
resemble the earth at the period when the latter was destitute