The Days of a Man 



D86 5 



world 



Other 



tions 



Mapping life, and around it all my scientific work has built 

 tbe itself up. I now made elaborate colored maps of all 

 parts of the world, copied from wherever I found 

 material no * regular atlas being at that time 

 accessible to me: township maps of the counties of 

 New York, county maps of the different states, and 

 provincial and other maps of the rest of the globe. 

 These were done with more persistence than clever- 

 ness, but their broad range enabled me in after life 

 to look upon the whole world as of one piece. The 

 eagerness I then displayed rather worried my 

 mother, who thought I ought to be doing something 

 more relevant, and once she hid all my material, 

 hoping to turn my attention to something else. 



My youthful passions for astronomy and geography 

 were curiously paralleled in Eric's mental develop- 

 ment. Wjien about seven years old, entirely on his 

 own initiative he suddenly acquainted himself with 

 the names and positions of the stars he could see. 

 This diversion overlapped an earlier hereditary 

 "reverberation," the study of maps, though with 

 me the order was reversed and I made maps while 

 he planned elaborate itineraries. I once asked him 

 to name the capital of Greece. "Athens," he replied. 

 "Of Scorpio?" I quizzically inquired. "Antares," 

 was the instant answer, as if state and constellation 

 were organized alike. Quoting then from Manilius 

 the following lines: 



Below his girdle near his knee he bears 

 The bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars 



"Who was that?" I asked. And to my astonish- 

 ment he calmly replied : " Bootes." But having made 

 a list of the constellations with variable stars, that 



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