XXV
Though I continued to respect my clothes, I did not at once cease to
tear such material as would serve me in my scientific investigations.
Gravity being conquered, it was inevitable that I should devote some of
my time to the invention of a flying-machine. This was soon
perfected—in my mind; and all I needed, that I might test the device,
was my liberty. As usual I was unable to explain how I should produce
the result which I so confidently foretold. But I believed and
proclaimed that I should, erelong, fly to St. Louis and claim and
receive the one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward offered by the
Commission of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition for the most efficient
airship to be exhibited. The moment the thought winged its way through
my mind, I had not only a flying-machine, but a fortune in the bank.
Being where I could not dissipate my riches, I became a lavish verbal
spender. I was in a mood to buy anything, and I whiled away many an
hour planning what I should do with my fortune. The St. Louis prize was
a paltry trifle. I reasoned that the man who could harness gravity had
at his beck and call the world and all that therein is. This sudden
accession of wealth made my vast humanitarian projects seem only the
more feasible. What could be more delightful, I thought, than the
furnishing and financing of ideas of a magnitude to stagger humanity.
My condition was one of ecstatic suspense. Give me my liberty and I
would show a sleepy old world what could be done to improve conditions,
not only among the insane, but along every line of beneficent endeavor.
The city of my birth was to be made a garden-spot. All defiling,
smoke-begriming factories were to be banished to an innocuous distance.
Churches were to give way to cathedrals; the city itself was to become
a paradise of mansions. Yale University was to be transformed into the
most magnificent—yet efficient—seat of learning in the world. For
once, college professors were to be paid adequate salaries, and
alluring provision for their declining years was to be made. New Haven
should become a very hotbed of culture. Art galleries, libraries,
museums and theatres of a dreamlike splendor were to rise whenever and
wherever I should will. Why absurd? Was it not I who would defray the
cost? The famous buildings of the Old World were to be reproduced, if,
indeed, the originals could not be purchased, brought to this country
and reassembled. Not far from New Haven there is a sandy plain, once
the bed of the Connecticut River, but now a kind of miniature desert. I
often smile as I pass it on the train; for it was here, for the
edification of those who might never be able to visit the Valley of the
Nile, that I planned to erect a pyramid that should out-Cheops the
original. My harnessed gravity, I believed, would not only enable me to
overcome existing mechanical difficulties, but it would make the
quarrying of immense monoliths as easy as the slicing of bread, and the
placing of them in position as easy as the laying of bricks.
After all, delusions of grandeur are the most entertaining of toys. The
assortment which my imagination provided was a comprehensive one. I had
tossed aside the blocks of childhood days. Instead of laboriously
piling small squares of wood one upon another in an endeavor to build
the tiny semblance of a house, I now, in this second childhood of mine,
projected against thin air phantom edifices planned and completed in
the twinkling of an eye. To be sure, such houses of cards almost
immediately superseded one another, but the vanishing of one could not
disturb a mind that had ever another interesting bauble to take its
place. And therein lies part of the secret of the happiness peculiar to
that stage of elation which is distinguished by delusions of
grandeur—always provided that he who is possessed by them be not
subjected to privation and abuse. The sane man who can prove that he is
rich in material wealth is not nearly so happy as the mentally
disordered man whose delusions trick him into believing himself a
modern Croesus. A wealth of Midas-like delusions is no burden. Such a
fortune, though a misfortune in itself, bathes the world in a golden
glow. No clouds obscure the vision. Optimism reigns supreme. "Failure"
and "impossible" are as words from an unknown tongue. And the unique
satisfaction about a fortune of this fugitive type is that its loss
occasions no regret. One by one the phantom ships of treasure sail away
for parts unknown; until, when the last ship has become but a speck on
the mental horizon, the observer makes the happy discovery that his
pirate fleet has left behind it a priceless wake of Reason!
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