It is curious to me now, that I was not the least excited in announcing
the discovery,--not because I did not feel the force of it, but because
my mind was so filled, so to speak, so saturated, with the idea, that
it was perfectly even with itself, though raised to an immensely higher
level. In smaller minds an idea seizes upon one part of them, thus
inequalizing it with the rest, and so, throwing them off their balance,
they are literally _de_-ranged (or disarranged) with excitement. It was
so with Herndon. For a minute he stared at me in stupefied
astonishment, and then burst into a torrent of incoherent
congratulations.
"Why, Zeitzer!" he cried, "you are the lucky man, after all. Why, your
fortune's made,--you'll be the greatest man of the age. You must come
to America; that is the place for appreciating such things. You'll have
a Common-Council dinner in Boston, and a procession in New York. Your
book will sell like wildfire. You'll be a lion of the first magnitude.
Just think! The Man who discovered the Source of the Nile!"
I stood bewildered, like one suddenly awakened from sleep. The unusual
excitement in one generally so self-possessed and indifferent as my
companion made me wonder sufficiently; but these allusions to my
greatness, my prospects, completely astounded me.
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