FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

CHAPTER I

THE GUN CLUB

During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was

established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland.

It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters

became developed among that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers,

and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become

extemporized captains, colonels, and generals, without having

ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point;

nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their compeers of the old

continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of

lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.

But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the

Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not, indeed, that

their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than

theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and

consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of

grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank

firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to

learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere

pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the

American artillery.

This fact need surprise no one. The Yankees, the first

mechanicians in the world, are engineers-- just as the Italians

are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians-- by right of birth.

Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them

applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.

Witness the marvels of Parrott, Dahlgren, and Rodman.

The Armstrong, Palliser, and Beaulieu guns were compelled to bow

before their transatlantic rivals.

Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second

American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president

and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records,

and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general

meeting, and the club is fully constituted. So things were

managed in Baltimore. The inventor of a new cannon associated

himself with the caster and the borer. Thus was formed the

nucleus of the "Gun Club." In a single month after its formation

it numbered 1,833 effective members and 30,565 corresponding members.

One condition was imposed as a _sine qua non_ upon every

candidate for admission into the association, and that was the

condition of having designed, or (more or less) perfected a

cannon; or, in default of a cannon, at least a firearm of

some description. It may, however, be mentioned that mere

inventors of revolvers, fire-shooting carbines, and similar

small arms, met with little consideration. Artillerists always

commanded the chief place of favor.

The estimation in which these gentlemen were held, according to

one of the most scientific exponents of the Gun Club, was

"proportional to the masses of their guns, and in the direct

ratio of the square of the distances attained by their projectiles."