THE AUSTRIAN EDISON KEEPING SCHOOL AGAIN
BY MARK TWAIN
BY a paragraph in the Freie Presse it appears
that Jan Szczepanik, the youthful inventor
of the "telelectroscope" (for seeing at
great distances) and some other scientific
marvels, has been having an odd adventure,
by help of the state.
Vienna is hospitably ready to smile whenever
there is an opportunity, and this seems
to be a fair one. Three or four years ago,
when Szczepanik was nineteen or twenty
years old, he was a schoolmaster in a
Moravian village, on a salary of--I forget
the amount, but no matter; there was not
enough of it to remember. His head was
full of inventions, and in his odd hours
he began to plan them out. He soon perfected
an ingenious invention for applying
photography to pattern-designing as used
in the textile industries, whereby he
proposed to reduce the customary outlay
of time, labor, and money expended on that
department of loom-work to next to nothing.
He wanted to carry his project to Vienna
and market it; and as he could not get
leave of absence, he made his trip without
leave. This lost him his place, but did
not gain him his market. When his money
ran out he went back home, and was presently
reinstated. By and by he deserted once
more, and went to Vienna, and this time
he made some friends who assisted him,
and his invention was sold to England and
Germany for a great sum. During the past
three years he has been experimenting
and investigating in velvety comfort.
His most picturesque achievement is his
telelectroscope, a device which a number
of able men--including Mr. Edison, I
think--had already tried their hands at,
with prospects of eventual success. A
Frenchman came near to solving the
difficult and intricate problem fifteen
years ago, but an essential detail was
lacking which he could not master, and
he suffered defeat. Szczepanik's
experiments with his pattern-designing
project revealed to him the secret of
the lacking detail. He perfected his
invention, and a French syndicate has
bought it, and saved it for exhibition
and fortune-making at the Paris world's
fair.
As a schoolmaster Szczepanik was exempt
from military duty. When he ceased from
teaching, being an educated man he could
have had himself enrolled as a one-year
volunteer; but he forgot to do it, and
this exposed him to the privilege, and also
the necessity, of serving three years in
the army. In the course of duty, the
other day, an official discovered the
inventor's indebtedness to the state,
and took the proper measures to collect.
At first there seemed to be no way for
the inventor (and the state) out of the
difficulty. The authorities were loath
to take the young man out of his great
laboratory, where he was helping to
shove the whole human race along on its
road to new prosperities and scientific
conquests, and suspend operations in
his mental Klondike three years, while
he punched the empty air with a bayonet
in a time of peace; but there was the
law, and how was it to be helped? It was
a difficult puzzle, but the authorities
labored at it until they found a forgotten
law somewhere which furnished a loophole--a
large one, and a long one, too, as it
looks to me. By this piece of good luck
Szczepanik is saved from soldiering, but
he becomes a schoolmaster again; and it
is a sufficiently picturesque billet,
when you examine it. He must go back
to his village every two months, and
teach his school half a day--from early
in the morning until noon; and, to the
best of my understanding of the published
terms, he must keep this up the rest of
his life! I hope so, just for the romantic
poeticalness of it. He is twenty-four,
strongly and compactly built, and comes
of an ancestry accustomed to waiting to
see its great-grandchildren married. It
is almost certain that he will live to
be ninety. I hope so. This promises
him sixty-six years of useful school
service. Dissected, it gives him a
chance to teach school 396 half-days,
make 396 railway trips going and 396
back, pay bed and board 396 times in the
village, and lose possibly 1,200 days
from his laboratory work--that is to
say, three years and three months or so.
And he already owes three years to this
same account. This has been overlooked;
I shall call the attention of the
authorities to it. It may be possible
for him to get a compromise on this
compromise by doing his three years in
the army, and saving one; but I think it
can't happen. This government "holds the
age" on him; it has what is technically
called a "good thing" in financial circles,
and knows a good thing when it sees it.
I know the inventor very well, and he
has my sympathy. This is friendship.
But I am throwing my influence with the
government. This is politics.
Szczepanik left for his village in Moravia
day before yesterday to "do time" for
the first time under his sentence. Early
yesterday morning he started for the school
in a fine carriage, which was stocked with
fruits, cakes, toys, and all sorts of
knick-knacks, rarities, and surprises for
the children, and was met on the road by
the school and a body of schoolmasters
from the neighboring districts, marching
in column, with the village authorities
at the head, and was received with the
enthusiastic welcome proper to the man
who had made their village's name celebrated,
and conducted in state to the humble doors
which had been shut against him as a
deserter three years before. It is out
of materials like these that romances
are woven; and when the romancer has
done his best, he has not improved upon
the unpainted facts. Szczepanik put
the sapless school-books aside, and led
the children a holiday dance through the
enchanted lands of science and invention,
explaining to them some of the curious
things which he had contrived, and the
laws which governed their construction
and performance, and illustrating these
matters with pictures and models and
other helps to a clear understanding of
their fascinating mysteries. After this
there was play and a distribution of the
fruits and toys and things; and after
this, again, some more science, including
the story of the invention of the telephone,
and an explanation of its character and
laws, for the convict had brought a
telephone along. The children saw that
wonder for the first time, and they also
personally tested its powers and verified
them. Then school "let out"; the teacher
got his certificate, all signed, stamped,
taxed, and so on, said good-by, and drove
off in his carriage under a storm of
"Do widzenia!" ("Au revoir!") from the children,
who will resume their customary sobrieties
until he comes in August and uncorks his
flask of scientific fire-water again.
|
