I think it was on this occasion that my father expressed his thought
upon some form of interplanetary telegraphy in a manner that left it in
my own mind a very impressive and majestic idea. He had read at some
length the address of Sir William Armstrong before the British
Association in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of the
sympathy between forces operating in the sun, and magnetic forces in the
earth and remarks the phenomenon seen by independent observers in
September, 1859. The passage, easily verified by the reader, was to this
effect:

"A sudden outburst of light, far exceeding the brightness of the sun's
surface was seen to take place, and sweep like a drifting cloud over a
portion of the solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbances
of unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinary
brilliancy. The identical instant at which the effusion of light was
observed was recorded by an abrupt and strongly marked deflection in the
self-registering instruments at Kew."

My father then pausing and walking impetuously across the room
declaimed, as it were, his views:

"Here we are, a group of limited intelligent beings circumscribed by a
boundless space, and placed upon a speck of matter which is whirled
around the sun in an endless captivity, bound by this inexorable law of
gravitation, like a stone in a sling. About us in this ethereal ocean
floats a host of similarly made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases,
inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own to
reach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of the
animated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in the
other stars. Why must it not be part of this immeasurable design which