UC-NRLF SB 35 521 MARIA MITCHELL LIFE, LETTERS, AND JOURNALS COMPILED BY PHEBE MITCHELL KENDALL > > > * ILLUSTRATED BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 10 MILK STREET 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY LEE AND SHEPARD All rights reserved MARIA MITCHELL ant) Churdjlll BOSTON U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The parents Home life Education, teachers, books Astronomical instruments Solar eclipse of 1831 Teaching Appointment as librarian of Nantucket Atheneum Friendships for young people Extracts from diary, 1855 Music The piano Society Story-telling Housework Extract from diary, 1854, l CHAPTER II " Sweeping" the heavens Discovery of the comet, 1847 Frederick VI. and the comet Letters from G. P. Bond and Hon. Edward Everett Admiral Smyth Ameri- can Academy American Association for the Advance- ment of Science Extract from diary, 1855 Dorothea Dix Esther Divers extracts from diary, 1853, 1854 Comet of 1854 Computations for comet Visit to Cape Cod Sandwich and Plymouth Pilgrim Hall Rev. James Freeman Clarke Accidents in observ- ing . . . ' . . . . . . . 19 CHAPTER III Wires in the transit instrument Deacon Greele Smith- sonian fund " Doing " Rachel in " Phedre " and " Adrienne " Emerson The hard winter . . 39 CHAPTER IV Southern tour Chicago St. Louis Scientific Academy of St. Louis Dr. Pope Dr. Seyffarth Mississippi river Sand-bars Cherry blossoms Eclipse of iv CONTENTS PAGE sun Natchez New Orleans Slave market Negro church The " peculiar institution " Bible Judge Smith Travelling without escort Savannah Rice plantations Negro children Miss Murray Charleston Drive Condition of slaves Old build- ings Miss Rutledge Mr. Capers Class meeting Hospitality Mrs. Holbrook Miss Pinckney Manners Portraits Miss Pinckney' s father George Washington Augusta Nashville Mrs. Fogg Mrs. Polk Charles Sumner Mammoth cave Chattanooga . . ... . . -56 CHAPTER First European tour Liverpool London Rev. James Martineau Mr. John Taylor Mr. Lassell Liver- pool observatory The Hawthornes Shop-keepers and waiters Greenwich observatory Sir George Airy Visits to Greenwich Herr Struve 's mission to England Dinner party General Sabine West- minster Abbey Newton's monument British mu- seum Four great men St. Paul's Dr. Johnson Opera Aylesbury Admiral Smyth's family Amateur astronomers Hartwell house Dr. Lee . 85 CHAPTER VI Cambridge Dr. Whewell Table conversation Pro- fessor Challis Professor Adams Customs Profes- sor Sedgwick Caste King's Chapel Fellows Ambleside Coniston waters The lakes Miss Southey Collingwood Letter to her father Herschels London rout Professor Stokes Dr. Arnott Edinboro' Observatory Glasgow observa- tory Professor Nichol Dungeon Ghyll English language English and Americans Boys and beg- gars 112 CONTENTS v CHAPTER VII PAGE Adams and Leverrier The discovery of the planet Neptune Extract from papers Professor Bond, of Cambridge, Mass. Paris Imperial observatory Mons. and Mme. Leverrier Reception at Leverrier's Rooms in observatory Rome Impressions Apartments in Rome and Paris Customs Holy week Vespers at St. Peter's Women Frederika Bremer Paul Akers Harriet Hosmer Collegio Romano Father Secchi Galileo Visit to the Roman observatory Permission from Cardinal Antonelli Spectroscope . 137 CHAPTER VIII Mrs. Somerville Berlin Humboldt Mrs. Mitchell's ill- ness and death Removal to Lynn, Mass. Telescope presented to Miss Mitchell by Elizabeth Peabody and others Letters from Admiral Smyth Colors of stars Extract from letter to a friend San Marino medal Other extracts ....... 159 CHAPTER IX Life at Vassar College Anxious mammas Faculty meet- ings President Hill Professor Peirce Burlington, la., and solar eclipse Classes at Vassar Professor Mitchell and her pupils Extracts from diary Aids Scholarships Address to her students Imagina- tion in science "I am but a woman" Maria Mitchell endowment fund Emperor of Brazil Presi- dent Raymond's death Dome parties Comet, 1881 The apple-tree "Honor girls" Mr. Matthew Arnold *. '. . . . . . . . . 172 CHAPTER X Second visit to Europe Russia Extracts from diary and letters Custom-house peculiarities Russian rail- ways Domes Russian thermometers and calendars VI CONTENTS PAGE The drosky and drivers Observatory at Pulkova Herr Struve* Scientific position of Russia Lan- guage Religion Democracy of the Church Gov- ernment A Russian family London, 1873 Frances Power Cobbe Bookstores in London Glasgow College for Girls . . . . . . .197 CHAPTER XI Papers Science Eclipse of 1878, Denver, Colorado Colors of stars . ... . . . . 220 CHAPTER XII Religious matters President Taylor's remarks Sermons George MacDonald Rev. Dr. Peabody Dr. Lyman Abbott Professor Henry Meeting of the American Scientific Association at Saratoga Professor Peirce Concord School of Philosophy Emerson Miss Pea- body Dr. Harris Easter flowers Whittier Rich days Cooking schools Anecdotes . . . 239 CHAPTER XIII Letter-writing Woman suffrage Membership in various societies Women's Congress at Syracuse, N.Y. Picnic at Medfield, Mass. Degrees from different col- leges Published papers Failure in health Re- signs her position at Vassar College Letters from various persons Death Conclusion . . . 255 APPENDIX Introductory note by Hon. Edward Everett .... 267 Correspondence relative to the Danish medal . . . _ . 293 MARIA MITCHELL CHAPTER I 1818-1846 BIRTH PARENTS HOME SURROUNDINGS AND EARLY LIFE MARIA MITCHELL was born on the island of Nan- tucket, Mass., Aug. I, 1818. She was the third child of William and Lydia [Coleman] Mitchell. Her ancestors, on both sides, were Quakers for many generations ; and it was in consequence of the intoler- ance of the early Puritans that these ancestors had been obliged to flee from the State of Massachusetts, and to settle upon this island, which, at that time, be- longed to the State of New York. For many years the Quakers, or Friends, as they called themselves, formed much the larger part of the inhabitants of Nantucket, and thus were enabled to crystallize, as it were, their own ideas of what family and social life should be; and although in course of time many " world's people " swooped down and helped to swell the number of islanders, they still continued to hold their own methods, and to bring up their children in accordance with their own conceptions of " Divine light." 2 MARIA MITCHELL Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell were married during the war 6t:i8i2 ;\ the ifcttmdr lacking one week of being twenty- one years' old, and the latter being a few months over twenty;, (j *\\ S /.\ ! c ? 'fhe people of Nantucket by their situation endured many hardships during this period ; their ships were upon the sea a prey to privateers, and communication with the mainland was exposed to the- same danger, so that it was difficult to obtain such necessaries of life as the island could not furnish. There were still to be seen, a few years ago, the marks left on the moors, where fields of corn and potatoes had been planted in that trying time. So the young couple began their housekeeping in a very simple way. Mr. Mitchell used to describe it as being very delightful ; it was noticed that Mrs. Mitchell never expressed herself on the subject, it was she, probably, who had the planning to do, to make a little money go a great way, and to have everything smooth and serene when her husband came home. Mrs. Mitchell was a woman of strong character, very dignified, honest almost to an extreme, and perfectly self-controlled where control was necessary. She pos- sessed very strong affections, but her self-control was such that she was undemonstrative. She kept a close watch over her children, was clear- headed, knew their every fault and every merit, and was an indefatigable worker. It 'was she who looked out for the education of the children and saw what their capacities were. Mr. Mitchell was a man of great suavity and gentle- THE PARENTS 3 ness ; if left to himself he would never have denied a single request made to him by one of his children. His first impulse was to gratify every desire of their hearts, and if it had not been for the clear head of the mother, who took care that the household should be managed wisely and economically, the results might have been disastrous. The father had wisdom enough to perceive this, and when a child came to him, and in a very pathetic and winning way proffered some request for an unusual indulgence, he generally replied, "Yes, if mother thinks best." Mr. Mitchell was very fond of bright colors ; as they were excluded from the dress of Friends, he indulged himself wherever it was possible. If he were buying books, and there was a variety of binding, he always chose the copies with red covers. Even the wooden framework of the reflecting telescope which he used was painted a brilliant red. He liked a gay carpet on the floor, and the walls of the family sitting-room in the house on Vestal street were covered with paper resplen- dent with bunches of pink roses. Suspended by a cord from the ceiling in the centre of this room was a glass ball, filled with water, used by Mr. Mitchell in his experiments on polarization of light, flashing its dancing rainbows about the room. At the back of this house was a little garden, full of gay flowers: so that if the garb of the young Mitchells was rather sombre, the setting was bright and cheerful, and the life in the home was healthy and wide-awake. When the hilarity became excessive the mother would put in her little check, from time to time, and the father 4 MARIA MITCHELL would try to look as he ought to, but he evidently enjoyed the whole. As Mr. Mitchell was kind and indulgent to his chil- dren, so he was the sympathetic friend and counsellor of many in trouble who came to him for help or advice. As he took his daily walk to the little farm about a mile out of town, where, for an hour or two he enjoyed being a farmer, the people would come to their doors to speak to him as he passed, and the little children would run up to him to be patted on the head. He treated animals in the same way. He generally kept a horse. His children complained that although the horse was good when it was bought, yet as Mr. Mitchell never allowed it to be struck with a whip, nor urged to go at other than a very gentle trot, the horse became thoroughly demoralized, and was no more fit to drive than an old cow ! There was everything in the home which could amuse and instruct children. The eldest daughter was very handy at all sorts of entertaining occupations ; she had a delicate sense of the artistic, and was quite skilful with her pencil. The present kindergarten system in its practice is almost identical with the home as it appeared in the first half of this century, among enlightened people. There is hardly any kind of handiwork done in the kindergar- ten that was not done in the Mitchell family, and in other families of their acquaintance. The girls learned to sew and cook, just as they learned to read, as a matter of habit rather than of instruction. They THE PARENTS 5 learned how to make their own clothes, by making their dolls' clothes, and the dolls themselves were fre- quently home-made, the eldest sister painting the faces much more prettily than those obtained at the shops ; and there was a great delight in gratifying the fancy, by dressing the dolls, not in Quaker garb, but in all of the most brilliant colors and stylish shapes worn by the ultra-fashionable. There were always plenty of books, and besides those in the house there was the Atheneum Library, which, although not a free library, was very inexpensive to the shareholders. There was another very striking difference between that epoch and the present. The children of that day were taught to value a book and to take excellent care 'of it; as an instance it may be mentioned that one copy of Colburn's " Algebra " was used by eight children in the Mitchell family, one after the other. The eldest daughter's name was written on the inside of the cover ; seven more names followed in the order of their ages, as the book descended. With regard to their reading, the mother examined every book that came into the house. Of course there were not so many books published then as now, and the same books were read over and over. Miss Edgeworth's stories became part of their very lives, and Young's " Night Thoughts," and the poems of Cowper and Bloomfield were conspicuous objects on the book- shelves of most houses in those days. Mr. Mitchell was very apt, while observing the heavens in the even- ing, to quote from one or the other of these poets, or 6 MARIA MITCHELL from the Bible. " An undevout astronomer is mad " was one of his favorite quotations. Among the poems which Maria learned in her child- hood, and which was repeatedly upon her lips all through her life, was, " The spacious firmament on high." In her latter years if she had a sudden fright which threatened to take away her senses she would test her mental condition by repeating that poem ; it is needless to say that she always remembered it, and her nerves instantly relapsed into their natural condition. The lives of Maria Mitchell and her numerous brothers and sisters were passed in simplicity and with an entire absence of anything exciting or abnormal. The education of their children is enjoined upon the parents by the " Discipline," and in those days at least the parents did not give up all the responsibility in that line to the teachers. In Maria Mitchell's childhood the children of a family sat around the table in the evenings and studied their lessons for the next day, the parents or the older children assisting the younger if the lessons were too difficult. The children attended school five days in the week, six hours in the day, and their only vacation was four weeks in the summer, generally in August. The idea that children over-studied and injured their health was never promulgated in that family, nor indeed in that community; it seems to be a notion of the present half-century. Maria's first teacher was a lady for whom she always felt the warmest affection, and in her diary, written in her later years, occurs this allusion to her: THE PARENTS 7 " I count in my life, outside of family relatives, three aids given me on my journey ; they are prominent to me : the woman who first made the study-book charm- ing; the man who sent me the first hundred dollars I ever saw, to buy books with ; and another noble woman, through whose efforts I became the owner of a tele- scope ; and of these, the first was the greatest." As a little girl, Maria was not a brilliant scholar ; she was shy and slow ; but later, under her father's tuition, she developed very rapidly. After the close of the war of 1812, when business was resumed and the town restored to its normal prosperity, Mr. Mitchell taught school, at first as master of a public school, and afterwards in a private school of his own. Maria attended both of these schools. Mr. Mitchell's pupils speak of him as a most inspiring teacher, and he always spoke of his experiences in that capacity as very happy. When her father gave up teaching, Maria was put under the instruction of Mr. Cyrus Peirce, afterwards principal of the first normal school started in the United States. Mr. Peirce took a great interest in Maria, especially in developing her taste for mathematical study, for which she early showed a remarkable talent. The books which she studied at the age of seventeen, as we know by the date of the notes, were Bridge's " Conic Sections," Hutton's " Mathematics," and Bow- ditch's "Navigator." At that time Prof. Benjamin Peirce had not published his " Explanations of the Nav- igator and Almanac," so that Maria was obliged to 8 MARIA MITCHELL consult many scientific books and reports before she could herself construct the astronomical tables. Mr. Mitchell, on relinquishing school-teaching, was appointed cashier of the' Pacific Bank; but although he gave up teaching, he by no means gave up studying his favorite science, astronomy, and Maria was his willing helper at all times. Mr. Mitchell from his early youth was an enthusias- tic student of astronomy, at a time, too, when very little attention was given to that study in this country. His evenings, when pleasant, were spent in observing the heavens, and to the children, accustomed to seeing such observations going on, the important study in the world seemed to be astronomy. One by one, as they became old enough, they were drafted into the service of count- ing seconds by the chronometer, during the observa- tions. Some of them took an interest in the thing itself, and others considered it rather stupid work, but they all drank in so much of this atmosphere, that if any one had asked a little child in this family, " Who was the greatest man that ever lived? " the answer would have come promptly, " Herschel." Maria very early learned the use of the sextant The chronometers of all the whale ships were brought to Mr. Mitchell, on their return from a voyage, to be " rated," as it was called. For this purpose he used the sextant, and the observations were made in the little back yard of the Vestal-street home. There was also a clumsy reflecting telescope made on the Herschelian plan, but of very great simplicity, THE- PARENTS 9 which was put up on fine nights in the same back yard, when the neighbors used to flock in to look at the moon. Afterwards Mr. Mitchell bought a small Dol- land telescope, which thereafter, as long as she lived, his daughter used for " sweeping " purposes. After their removal to the bank building there were added to these an " altitude and azimuth circle," loaned to Mr. Mitchell by West Point Academy, and two transit instruments. A little observatory for the use of the first was placed on the roof of the bank building, and two small buildings were erected in the yard for the transits. There was also a much larger and finer tele- scope loaned by the Coast Survey, for which service Mr. Mitchell made observations. At the time when Maria Mitchell showed a decided taste for the study of astronomy there was no school in the world where she could be taught higher mathe- matics and astronomy. Harvard College, at that time, had no telescope better than the one which her father was using, and no observatory except the little octag- onal projection to the old mansion in Cambridge occupied by the late Dr. A. P. Peabody. However, every one will admit that no school nor institution is better for a child than the home, with an enthusiastic parent for a teacher. At the time of the annular eclipse of the sun in 1831 the totality was central at Nantucket. The window was taken out of the parlor on Vestal street, the telescope, the little Dolland, mounted in front of it, and with Maria by his side counting the seconds the father observed the eclipse. Maria was then twelve years old. 10 MARIA MITCHELL At sixteen Miss Mitchell left Mr. Peirce's schcn -s a pupil, but was retained as assistant teacher; she on relinquished that position and opened a private s' ool on Traders' Lane. This school too she gave up for the position of librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, winch office she held for nearly twenty years. This library was open only in the afternoon, and on Saturday evening. The visitors were comparatively few in the afternoon, so that Miss Mitchell had ample leisure for study, an opportunity of which she made the most, Her visitors in the afternoon were elderly men of leisure, who enjoyed talking with so bright a girl on their favorite hobbies. When they talked Miss Mitchell closed her book and took up her knitting, for she was never idle. With some of these visitors the friendship was kept up for years. It was in this library that she found La Place's " Mecanique Celeste," translated by her father's friend, Dr. Bowditch ; she also read the "Theoria Motus," of Gauss, in its original Latin form. In her capacity as librarian Miss Mitchell to a large extent controlled the reading of the young people in the town. Many of them on arriving at mature years have expressed their gratitude for the direction in which their reading was turned by her advice. Miss Mitchell always had a special friendship for young girls and boys. Many of these intimacies grew out of the acquaintance made at the library, the young girls made her their confidante and went to her for sympathy and advice. The boys, as they grew up, and went away to sea, perhaps, always remembered her, THE PARENTS 1 1 and made a point, when they returned in their vaca- tions, of coming to tell their experiences to such a sympathetic listener. "April 1 8, 1855. A young sailor boy came to see me to-day. It pleases me to have these lads seek me on their return from their first voyage, and tell me how much they have learned about navigation. They always say, with pride, ' I can take a lunar, Miss Mitchell, and work it up ! ' "This boy I had known only as a boy, but he has suddenly become a man and seems to be full of intelli- gence. He will go once more as a sailor, he says, and then try for the position of second mate. He looked as if he had been a good boy and would make a good man. " He said that he had been ill so much that he had been kept out of temptation ; but that the forecastle of a ship was no place for improvement of mind or morals. He said the captain with whom he came home asked him if he knew me, because he had heard of me. I was glad to find that the captain was a man of intelli- gence and had been kind to the boy." Miss Mitchell was an inveterate reader. She de- voured books on all subjects. If she saw that boys were eagerly reading a certain book she immediately read it; if it were harmless she encouraged them to read it ; if otherwise, she had a convenient way of los- ing the book. In November, when the trustees made their annual examination, the book appeared upon the shelf, but the next day after it was again lost. At this time Nantucket was a thriving, busy town. The 12 MARIA MITCHELL whale-fishery was a very profitable business, and the town was one of the wealthiest in the State. There was a good deal of social and literary life. In a Friend's family neither music nor dancing was allowed. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell were by no means narrow sec- tarians, but they believed it to be best to conform to the rules of Friends as laid down in the " Discipline." George Fox himself, the founder of the society, had blown a blast against music, and especially instrumental music in churches. It will be remembered that the Methodists have but recently yielded to the popular demand in this respect, and have especially favored congregational singing. It is most likely that George Fox had no ear for music himself, and thus entailed upon his followers an obligation from which they are but now freeing them- selves. There was plenty of singing in the Mitchell family, and the parents liked it, especially the father, who, when he sat down in the evening with the children, would say, " Now sing something." But there could be no instruc- tion in singing ; the children sang the songs that they picked up from their playmates. However, one of the daughters bought a piano, and Maria's purse opened to help that cause along. It would not have been proper for Mr. Mitchell to help pay for it, but he took a great interest in it, nevertheless. So indeed did the mother, but she took care not to express herself outwardly. The piano was kept in a neighboring building not too far off to be heard from the house. Maria had no ear THE PARENTS 13 for music herself, but she was always to be depended upon to take the lead in an emergency, so the sisters put their heads together and decided that the piano must be brought into the house. When they had made all the preparations the father and mother were invited to take tea with their married daughter, who lived in another part of the town and had been let into the secret. The piano was duly removed and placed in an upper room called the " hall," where Mr. Mitchell kept the chronometers, where the family sewing was done, and where the larger part of the books were kept, a beautiful room, overlooking " the square," and a great gathering-place for all their young friends. When the piano was put in place, the sisters awaited the coming of the parents. Maria stationed herself at the foot of the stairs, ready to meet them as they entered the front door ; another, half-way- between, was to give the signal to a third, who was seated at the piano. The footsteps were heard at the door, the signal was given ; a lively tune was started, and Maria confronted the parents as they entered. " What's that? " was the exclamation. "Well," said Maria, soothingly, " we've had the piano brought over." " Why, of all things ! " exclaimed the mother. The father laid down his hat, walked immediately upstairs, entered the hall, and said, " Come, daughter, play something lively ! " So that was all. But that was not all for Mr. Mitchell ; he had broken 14 MARIA MITCHELL the rules accepted by the Friends, and it was necessary for some notice to be taken of it, so a dear old Friend and neighbor came to deal with him. Now, to be " under dealings," as it is called, was a very serious matter, to be spoken of only under the breath, in a half whisper. " I hear that thee has a piano in thy house," said the old Friend. " Yes, my daughters have," was the reply. " But it is in thy house," pursued the Friend. " Yes ; but my home is my children's home as well as mine," said Mr. Mitchell, " and I propose that they shall not be obliged to go away from home for their pleasures. I don't play on the piano." It so happened that Mr. Mitchell held the property of the "monthly meeting" in his hands at the time, and it was a very improper thing for the accredited agent of the society to be " under dealings," as Mr. Mitchell gently suggested. This the Friend had not thought of, and so he said, " Well, William, perhaps we'd better say no more about it." When the father came home after this interview he could not keep it to himself. If it had been the mother who was interviewed she would have kept it a profound secret, because she would not have liked to have her children get any fun out of the proceedings of the old Friend.' But Mr. Mitchell told the story in his quiet way, the daughters enjoyed it, and declared that the piano was placed upon a firm foothold by this proceed- ing. The news spread abroad, and several other young THE PARENTS 15 Quaker girls eagerly seized the occasion to gratify their musical longings in the same direction. 1 Few women with scientific tastes had the advantages which surrounded Miss Mitchell in her own home. Her father was acquainted with the most prominent scientific men in the country, and in his hospitable home at Nantucket she met many persons of distinc- tion in literature and science. She cared but little for general society, and had al- ways to be coaxed to go into company. Later in life, however, she was much more socially inclined, and took pleasure in making and receiving visits. She could neither dance nor sing, but in all amusements which require quickness and a ready wit she was very happy. She was very fond of children, and knew how to amuse them and to take care of them. As she had half a dozen younger brothers and sisters, she had ample opportunity to make herself useful. She was a capital story-teller, and always had a story on hand to divert a wayward child, or to soothe the little sister who was lying awake, and afraid of the dark. She wrote a great many little stories, printed them with a pen, and bound them in pretty covers. Most of them were destroyed long ago. Maria took her part in all the household work. She knew how to do everything that has to be done in a large family where but one servant is kept, and she did everything thoroughly. If she swept a room it became 1 It is pleasant to note that this objection to music among Friends is a thing of the past, and that the Friends' School at Providence, R.I., which is under the control of the " New England Yearly Meeting of Friends," has music in its regular curriculum. 1 6 MARIA MITCHELL clean. She might not rearrange the different articles of furniture in the most artistic manner, but everything would be clean, and there would be nothing left crooked. If a chair was to be placed, it would be parallel to something ; she was exceedingly sensitive to a line out of the perpendicular, and could detect the slightest deviation from that rule. She had also a sensitive eye in the matter of color, and felt any lack of harmony in the colors worn by those about her. Maria was always ready to " bear the brunt," and could at any time be coaxed by the younger children to do the things which they found difficult or disagreeable. The two youngest children in the family were deli- cate, and the special care of the youngest sister de- volved upon Maria, who knew how to be a good nurse as well as a good playfellow. She was especially care- ful of a timid child ; she herself was timid, and, through- out her life, could never witness a thunder-storm with any calmness. On one of those occasions so common in an Ameri- can household, when the one servant suddenly takes her leave, or is summarily dismissed, Miss Mitchell de- scribes her part of the family duties : "Oct. 21, 1854. This morning I arose at six, having been half asleep only for some hours, fearing that I might not be up in time to get breakfast, a task which I had volunteered to do the preceding evening. It was but half light, and I made a hasty toilet. I made a fire very quickly, prepared the coffee, baked the graham bread, toasted white bread, trimmed the solar lamp, and made another fire in the dining-room before seven o'clock. THE PARENTS 1 7 " I always thought that servant- girls had an easy time of it, and I still think so. I really found an hour too long for all this, and when I rang the bell at seven for breakfast I had been waiting fifteen minutes for the clock to strike. " I went to the Atheneum at 9.30, and having de- cided that I would take the Newark and Cambridge places of the comet, and work them up, I did so, getting to the three equations before I went home to dinner at 12.30. I omitted the corrections of parallax and aberrations, not intending to get more than a rough approximation. I find to my sorrow that they do not agree with those from my own observations. I shall look over them again next week. " At noon I ran around and did up several errands, dined, and was back again at my post by 1.30. Then I looked over my morning's work, I can find no mis- take. I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter. " I saw, in looking over Cooper, elements of a comet of 1825 which resemble what I get out for this, from my own observations, but I cannot rely upon my own. " I saw also, to-day, in the ' Monthly Notices,' a plan for measuring the light of stars by degrees of illumina- tion, an idea which had occurred to me long ago, but which I have not practised. " October 23. Yesterday I was again reminded of the remark which Mrs. Stowe makes about the variety of occupations which an American woman pursues. " She says it is this, added to the cares and anxieties, 1 8 MARIA MITCHELL which keeps them so much behind the daughters of England in personal beauty. ''And to-day I was amused at reading that one of her party objected to the introduction of waxed floors into American housekeeping, because she could seem to see herself down on her knees doing the waxing. " But of yesterday. I was up before six, made the fire in the kitchen, and made coffee. Then I set the table in the dining-room, and made the fire there. Toasted bread and trimmed lamps. Rang the break- fast bell at seven. After breakfast, made my bed, and 'put up' the room. Then I came down to the Atheneum and looked over my comet computations till noon. Before dinner I did some tatting, and made seven button-holes for K. I dressed and then dined. Came back again to the Atheneum at 1.30, and looked over another set of computations, which took me until four o'clock. I was pretty tired by that time, and rested by reading ' Cosmos.' Lizzie E. came in, and I gossiped for half an hour. I went home to tea, and that over, I made a loaf of bread. Then I went up to my room and read through (partly writing) two exer- cises in German, which took me thirty-five minutes. " It was stormy, and I had no observing to do, so I sat down to my tatting. Lizzie E. came in and I took a new lesson in tatting, so as to make the pearl-edged. I made about half a yard during the evening. At a little after nine I went home with Lizzie, and carried a letter to the post-office. I had kept steadily at work for sixteen hours when I went to bed." EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY 19 CHAPTER II ' 1847-1854 MISS MITCHELL'S COMET EXTRACTS FROM DIARY THE COMET MlSS MITCHELL spent every clear evening on the house-top " sweeping " the heavens. No matter how many guests there might be in the parlor, Miss Mitchell would slip out, don her regimentals as she called them, and, lantern in hand, mount to the roof. On the evening of Oct. i, 1847, there was a party of invited guests at the Mitchell home. As usual, Maria slipped out, ran up to the telescope, and soon returned to the parlor and told her father that she thought she saw a comet. Mr. Mitchell hurried upstairs, stationed himself at the telescope, and as soon as he looked at the object pointed out by his daughter declared it to be a comet. Miss Mitchell, with her usual caution, advised him to say nothing about it until they had observed it long enough to be tolerably sure. But Mr. Mitchell immediately wrote to Professor Bond, at Cambridge, announcing the discovery. On account of stormy weather, the mails did not leave Nantucket until October 3. - Frederick VI., King of Denmark, had offered, Dec. 17, 1831, a gold medal of the value of twenty ducats to the first discoverer of a telescopic comet. The regula- 20 MARIA MITCHELL tions, as revised and amended, were republished, in April, 1840, in the " Astronomische Nachrichten." When this comet was discovered, the king who had offered the medal was dead. The son, Frederick VIL, who had succeeded him, had not the interest in science which belonged to his father, but he was prevailed upon to carry out his father's designs in this particular case. The same comet had been seen by Father de Vico at Rome, on October 3, at 7.30 P.M., and this fact was immediately communicated by him to Professor Schu- macher, at Altona. On the /th of October, at 9.20 P.M., the comet was observed by Mr. W. R. Dawes, at Kent, England, and on the I ith it was seen by Madame Riimker, the wife of the director of the observatory at Hamburg. The following letter from the younger Bond will show the cordial relations existing between the observatory at Cambridge and the smaller station at Nantucket : CAMBRIDGE, Oct. 20, 1847. DEAR MARIA : There ! I think that is a very amiable begin- ning, considering the way in which I have been treated by you ! If you are going to find any more comets, can you not wait till they are announced by the proper authorities? At least, don't kid- nap another such as this last was. If my object were to make you fear and tremble, I should tell you that on the evening of the 3Oth I was sweeping within a few degrees of your prize. I merely throw out the hint for what it is worth . It has been very interesting to watch the motion of this comet among the stars with the great refractor; we could almost see it move. EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY 21 An account of its passage over the star mentioned by your father when he 'was here, would make an interesting notice for one of the foreign journals, which we would readily forward. . . . [Here follow Mr. Bond's observations.] Respectfully, Your obedient servant, G. P. BOND. Hon. Edward Everett, who at that time was presi- dent of Harvard College, took a great interest in the matter, and immediately opened a correspondence with the proper authorities, and sent a notice of the dis- covery to the " Astronomische Nachrichten." The priority of Miss Mitchell's discovery was im- mediately admitted throughout Europe. The King of Denmark very promptly referred the matter to Professor Schumacher, who reported in favor of granting the medal to Miss Mitchell, and the medal was duly struck off and forwarded to Mr. Everett. Among European astronomers who urged Miss Mitchell's claim was Admiral Smyth, whom she knew through his " Celestial Cycle," and who later, on her visit to England, became a warm personal friend. Madame Riimker, also, sent congratulations. Mr. Everett announced the receipt of the medal to Miss Mitchell in the following letter: CAMBRIDGE, March 29, 1849. MY DEAR Miss MITCHELL: I have the pleasure to inform you that your medal arrived by the last steamer ; it reached me by mail, yesterday afternoon. I went to Boston this morning, hoping to find you at the Adams House, to put it into your own hand. 22 MARIA MITCHELL As your return to Nantucket prevented this, I, of course, retain it, subject to your orders, not liking to take the risk again of its transmission by mail. Having it in this way in my hand, I have taken the liberty to show it to some friends, such as W. C. Bond, Professor Peirce, the editors of the "Transcript," and the members of my family, which I hope you will pardon. I remain, my dear Miss Mitchell, with great regard, Very faithfully yours, EDWARD EVERETT.' In 1848 Miss Mitchell was elected to membership by x the " American Academy of Arts and Sciences," unani- mously ; she was the first and only woman ever ad- mitted. In the diploma the printed word " Fellow" is erased, and the words " Honorary Member " inserted by Dr. Asa Gray, who signed the document as secretary. Some years later, however, her name is found in the list of Fellows of this Academy, also of the American Insti- tute and of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science. For many years she attended the annual conventions of this last-mentioned association, in which she took great interest. The extract below refers to one of these meetings, probably that of 1855 : " August 23. It is really amusing to find one's self lionized in a city where one has visited quietly for years ; to see the doors of fashionable mansions open wide to receive you, which never opened before. I sus- pect that the whole corps of science laughs in its sleeves at the farce. 1 See Appendix. EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY 23 "The leaders make it pay pretty well. My friend Professor Bache makes the occasions the opportunities for working sundry little wheels, pulleys, and levers ; the result of all which is that he gets his enormous appro- priations of $400,000 out of Congress, every winter, for the maintenance of the United States Coast Survey. " For a few days Science reigns supreme, we are fted and complimented to the top of our bent, and al- though complimenters and complimented must feel that it is only a sort of theatrical performance, for a few days and over, one does enjoy acting the part of great- ness for a while ! I was tired after three days of it, and glad to take the cars and run away. " The descent into a commoner was rather sudden. I went alone to Boston, and when I reached out my free pass, the conductor read it through and handed it back, saying in a gruff voice, ' It's worth nothing ; a dollar and a quarter to Boston.' Think what a downfall ! the night before, and ' One blast upon my bugle horn Were worth a hundred men ! ' Now one man alone was my dependence, and that man looked very much inclined to put me out of the car for attempting to pass a ticket that in his eyes was valueless. Of course I took it quietly, and paid the money, merely remarking, ' You will pass a hundred per- sons on this road in a few days on these same tickets.' " When I look back on the paper read at this meeting by Mr. J in his uncouth manner, I think when a man is thoroughly in earnest, how careless he is of mere words! " 24 MARIA MITCHELL In 1849 Miss Mitchell was asked by the late Admiral Davis, who had just taken charge of the American Nautical Almanac, to act as computer for that work, a proposition to which she gladly assented, and for nine- teen years she held that position in addition to her other duties. This, of course, made a very desirable increase to her income, but not necessarily to her ex- penses. The tables of the planet Venus were assigned to her. In this year, too, she was employed by Pro- fessor Bache, of the United States Coast Survey, in the work of an astronomical party at Mount Independence, Maine. "1853. I was told that Miss Dix wished to see me", and I called upon her. It was dusk, and I did not at once see her; her voice was low, not particularly sweet, but very gentle. She told me that she had heard Professor Henry speak of me, and that Professor Henry was one of her best friends, the truest man she knew. When the lights were brought in I looked at her. She must be past fifty, she is rather small, dresses indif- ferently, has good features in general, but indifferent eyes. She does not brighten up in countenance in conversing. She is so successful that I suppose there must be a hidden fire somewhere, for heat is a motive power, and her cold manners could never move Legis- latures. I saw some outburst of fire when Mrs. Hale's book was spoken of. It seems Mrs. Hale wrote to her for permission to publish a notice of her, and was decidedly refused ; another letter met with the same answer, yet she wrote a * Life",' which Miss Dix says is utterly false. EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY 2$ " In her general sympathy for suffering humanity, Miss Dix seems neglectful of the individual interest. She has no family connection but a brother, has never had sisters, and she seemed to take little interest in the persons whom she met. I was surprised at her feeling any desire to see me. She is not strikingly interesting in conversation, because she is so grave, so cold, and so quiet. I asked her if she did not become at times weary and discouraged ; and she said, wearied, but not discouraged, for she had met with nothing but success. There is evidently a strong will which carries all be- fore it, not like the sweep of the hurricane, but like the slow, steady, and powerful march of the molten lava. "It is sad to see a woman sacrificing the ties of the affections even to do good. I have no doubt Miss Dix does much good, but a woman needs a home and the love of other women at least, if she lives without that of man." The following entry was made many years after : " August, 1871. I have just seen Miss Dix again, having met her only once for a few minutes in all the eighteen years. She listened to a story of mine about some girls in need, and then astonished me by an offer she made me." "Feb. 15, 1853. I think Dr. Hall [in his ' Life of Mary Ware '] does wrong when he attempts to encourage the use of the needle. It seems to me that the needle is the chain of woman, and has fettered her more than the laws of the country. " Once emancipate her from the ' stitch, stitch, stitch,' the industry of which would be commendable if it 26 MARIA MITCHELL served any purpose except the gratification of her vanity, and she would have time for studies which would engross as the needle never can. I would as soon put a girl alone into a closet to meditate as give her only the society of her needle. The art of sewing, so far as men learn it, is well enough ; that is, to enable a person to take the stitches, and, if necessary, to make her own garments in a strong manner ; but the dressmaker should no more be a universal character than the carpenter. Suppose every man should feel it is his duty to do his own mechanical work of all kinds, would society be benefited? would the work be well done? Yet a woman is expected to know how to do all kinds of sew- ing, all kinds of cooking, all kinds of any woman 's work, and the consequence is that life is passed in learning these only, while the universe of truth beyond remains unentered. " May 1 1, 1853. I could not help thinking of Esther [a much-loved cousin who had recently died] a few evenings since when I was observing. A meteor flashed upon me suddenly, very bright, very short-lived ; it seemed to me that it was sent for me especially, for it greeted me almost the first instant I looked up, and was gone in a second, it was as fleeting and as beautiful as the smile upon Esther's face the last time I saw her. I thought when I talked with her about death that, though she could not come to me visibly, she might be able to influence my feelings ; but it cannot be, for my faith has been weaker than ever since she died, and my fears have been greater." EXTRACTS FROM HER DIARY 2/ A few pages farther on in the diary appears this poem: " ESTHER " Living, the hearts of all around Sought hers as slaves a throne ; Dying, the reason first we found The fulness of her own. " She gave unconsciously the while A wealth we all might share To me the memory of the smile That last I saw her wear. " Earth lost from out its meagre store A bright and precious stone ; Heaven could not be so rich before, But it has richer grown." "Sept. 19, 1853. I am surprised to find the verse which I picked up somewhere and have always ad- mired NEAR AYLESBURY, > MY DEAR Miss MITCHELL : . . . We are much pleased to hear of your acquisition of an equatorial instrument under a revolving roof, for it is a true scientific luxury as well as an efficient imple- ment. The aperture of your object-glass is sufficient 'for doing much useful work, but, if I may hazard an opinion to you, do not attempt too much, for it is quality rather than quantity which is now desirable. I would therefore leave the multiplication of objects to the larger order of telescopes, and to those who are given to sweep and ransack the heavens, of whom there is a goodly corps. Now, for your purpose, I would recommend a batch of neat, but not over- close, binary systems, selected so as to have always one or the other on hand. I, however, have been bestirring myself to put amateurs upon a more convenient and, I think, a better mode of examining double stars than by the wire micrometer, with its faults of illumination, fiddling, jumps, and dirty lamps. This is by the beautiful method of rock-crystal prisms, not the Rochon method of double-image, but by thin wedges cut to given angles. I have told Mr. Alvan Clark my " experiences." and I hope he will apply his excellent mind to the scheme. I am insisting upon this point in some astro- nomical twaddle which I am now printing, and of which I shall soon have to request your acceptance of a copy. There is a very important department which calls for a zealous amateur or two, namely, the colors of double stars, for these have FIRST EUROPEAN TOUR 169 usually been noted after the eye has been fatigued with observing in illuminated fields. The volume I hope to forward enhommage will contain all the pros and cons of this branch. There is, for ultimate utility, nothing like forming a plan and then steadily following it. Those who profess they will attend to everything often fall short of the mark. The division of labor leads to beneficial conclusions as well in astronomy as in mechanics and arts. Mrs. Smyth and my daughter unite with me in wishing you all happiness and success ; and believe me My dear Miss Mitchell, Yours very faithfully, W. H. SMYTH. In regard to the colors of stars, Miss Mitchell had already begun their study, as these extracts from her diary show: "Feb. 19, 1853. I am just learning to notice the dif- ferent colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment. Betelgeuse is strikingly red, while Rigel is yellow. There is something of the same pleasure in noticing the hues that there is in looking at a collec- tion of precious stones, or at a flower-garden in autumn. Blue stars I do not yet see, and but little lilac except through the telescope. "Feb. 12, 1855. ... I swept around for comets about an hour, and then I amused myself with noticing the varieties of color. I wonder that I have so long been insensible to this charm in the skies, the tints of the different stars are so delicate in their variety. . . . What a pity that some of our manufacturers shouldn't be able to steal the secret of dyestuffs from I/O MARIA MITCHELL the stars, and astonish the feminine taste by new brilliancy in fashion." l [NANTUCKET], April [1860]. MY DEAR : Your father just gave me a great fright by " tapping at my window" (I believe Poe's was a door, wasn't it?) and holding up your note. 1 was busy examining some star notices just received from Russia or Germany, I never knew where Dor- pat is, and just thinking that my work was as good as theirs. I always noticed that when school-teachers took a holiday in order to visit other institutions they came home and quietly said, "No school is better or as good as mine." And then I read your note, and perceive your reading is as good as Mrs. Kemble's. Now, being modest, I always felt afraid the reason I thought you such a good reader was because I didn't know any better, but if all the world is equally ignorant, it makes it all right. . . . IVe been intensely busy. I have been looking for the little inferior planet to cross the sun, which it hasn't done, and I got an article ready for the paper and then hadn't the courage to publish not for fear of the readers, but for fear that I should change my own ideas by the time 'twas in print. I am hoping, however, to have something by the meeting of the Scientific Association in August, some paper, not to get repu- tation for myself, my reputation is so much beyond me that as policy I should keep quiet, but in order that my telescope may show that it is at work. I am embarrassed by the amount of work it might do as you do not know which of Mrs. Browning's poems to read, there are so many beauties. The little republic of San Marino presented Miss Mitchell, in 1859, with a bronze medal of merit, to- gether with the Ribbon and Letters Patent signed by the two captains regent. This medal she prized as highly as the gold one from Denmark. 1 See Chapter XI. FIRST EUROPEAN TOUR I /I " Nantucket, May 12, i8[6o]. ... I send you a notice of an occultation ; the last sentence and the last figures are mine. You and I can never occult, for have we not always helped one another to shine? Do you have Worcester's Dictionary? I read it continually. Did you feast on ' The Marble Faun ' ? I have a charming letter from Una Hawthorne, herself a poet by nature, all about ' papa's book.' Ought not Mr. Haw- thorne to be the happiest man alive? He isn't, though ! Do save all the anecdotes you possibly can, piquant or not; starved people are not over-nice. LYNN, Jan. 5 [1864]. ... I very rarely see the B s ; they go to a different church, and you know with that class of people " not to be with us is to be against us." Indeed, I know very little of Lynn people. If I can get at Mr. J., when you come to see me I'll ask him to tea. He has called several times, but he's in such demand that he must be engaged some weeks in advance ! Would you, if you lived in Lynn, want to fall into such a mass of idolaters? I was wretchedly busy up to December 3 1 , but have got into quiet seas again. I have had a great deal of company not a person that I did not want to see, but I can't make the days more than twenty-four hours long, with all my economy of time. This week Professor Crosby, of Salem, comes up with his gradual ing class and his corps of teachers for an evening. They remained in Lynn until Miss Mitchell was called to Vassar College, in 1865, as professor of as- tronomy and director of the observatory. 1 72 MARIA MITCHELL CHAPTER IX 1865-1885 LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE IN her life at Vassar College there was a great deal for Miss Mitchell to get accustomed to ; if her duties had been merely as director of the observatory, it would have been simply a continuation of her previous work. But she was expected, of course, to teach astronomy ; she was by no means sure that she could succeed as a teacher, and with this new work on hand she could not confine herself to original investigation that which had been her great aim in life. But she was so much interested in the movement for the higher education of women, an interest which deepened as her work went on, that she gave up, in a great measure, her scientific life, and threw herself heart and soul into this work. For some years after she went to Vassar, sne $til\ continued the work for the Nautical Almanac ; but after a while she relinquished that, and confined herself wholly to the work in the college. " 1866. Vassar College brought together a mass of heterogeneous material, out of which it was expected that a harmonious whole would evolve pupils from all parts of the country, of different habits, different train- ing, different views ; teachers, mostly from New England, LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 173 differing also ; professors, largely from Massachusetts, yet differing much. And yet, after a year, we can say that there has been no very noisy jarring of the dis- cordant elements ; small jostling has been felt, but the president has oiled the rough places, and we have slid over them. "... Miss is a bigot, but a very sincere one. She is the most conservative person I ever met. I think her a very good woman, a woman of great energy. . . . She is very kind to me, but had we lived in the colonial days of Massachusetts, and had she been a power, she would have burned me at the stake for heresy ! "Yesterday the rush began. Miss Lyman [the lady principal] had set the twenty teachers all around in different places, and I was put into the parlor to talk to * anxious mothers.' " Miss Lyman had a hoarse cold, but she received about two hundred students, and had all their rooms assigned to them. "While she had one anxious mamma, I took two or three, and kept them waiting until she could attend to them. Several teachers were with me. I made a rush at the visitors as they entered, and sometimes I was asked if I were lady principal, and sometimes if I were the matron. This morning Miss Lyman's voice was gone. She must have seen five hundred people yesterday. "Among others there was one Miss Mitchell, and, of course, that anxious mother put that girl under my special care, and she is very bright. Then there were two who were sent with letters to me, and several 1/4 MARIA MITCHELL others whose mothers took to me because they were frightened by Miss Ly man's style. " One lady, who seemed to be a bright woman, got me by the button and held me a long time she wanted this, that, and the other impracticable thing for the girl, and told me how honest her daughter was ; then with a flood of tears she said, ' But she is not a Christian. I know I put her into good hands when I put her here.' (Then I was strongly tempted to avow my Unitarian- ism.) Miss W., who was standing by, said, ' Miss Lyman will be an excellent spiritual adviser,' and we both looked very serious ; when the mother wiped her weeping eyes and said, 'And, Miss Mitchell, will you ask Miss Lyman to insist that my daughter shall curl her hair? She looks very graceful when her hair is curled, and I want it insisted upon/ I made a note of it with my pencil, and as I happened to glance at Miss W. the corners of her mouth were twitching, upon which I broke down and laughed. The mother bore it very good-naturedly, but went on. She wanted to know who would work some buttonholes in her daugh- ter's dress that was not quite finished, etc., and it all ended in her inviting me to make her a visit. "Oct. 31, 1866. Our faculty meetings always try me in this respect : we do things that other colleges have done before. We wait and ask for precedent. If the earth had waited for a precedent, it never would have turned on its axis ! "Sept. 22, 1868. I have written to-day to give up the Nautical Almanac work. I do not feel sure that it will be for the best, but I am sure that I could not LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 175 hold the almanac and the college, and father is happy here. " I tell Miss Lyman that my father is so much pleased with everything here that I am afraid he will be im- mersed ! " l Only those who knew Vassar College in its earlier days can tell of the life that the father and daughter led there for four years. Mr. Mitchell died in 1869. "Jan. 3, 1868. Meeting Dr. Hill at a private party, I asked him if Harvard College would admit girls in fifty years. He said one of the most conservative members of the faculty had said, within sixteen days, that it would come about in twenty years. I asked him if I could go into one of Professor Peirce's recitations. He said there was nothing to keep me out, and that he would let me know when they came. " At eleven A.M., the next Friday, I stood at Professor Peirce's door. As the professor came in I went towards him, and asked him if I might attend his lecture. He said ' Yes.' I said ' Can you not say " I shall be happy to have you " ? ' and he said ' I shall be happy to have you,' but he didn't look happy ! " It was with some little embarrassment that Mrs. K. and I seated ourselves. Sixteen young men came into the room ; after the first glance at us there was not another look, and the lecture went on. Professor Peirce had filled the blackboard with formulae, and went on developing them. He walked backwards and forwards 1 Vassar College, though professedly unsectarian, was mainly under Baptist control. 176 MARIA MITCHELL all the time, thinking it out as he went. The students at first all took notes, but gradually they dropped off until perhaps only half continued. When he made simple mistakes they received it in silence ; only one, that one his son (a tutor in college), remarked that he was wrong. The steps of his lesson were all easy, but of course it was impossible to tell whence he came or whither he was going. " The recitation-room was very common-looking we could not tolerate such at Vassar. The forms and benches of the recitation-room were better for taking notes than ours are.) " The professor was polite enough to ask us into the senior class, but I had an engagement. I asked him if a young lady presented herself at the door he could keep her out, and he said ' No, and I shouldn't.' I told him I would send some of my girls. "Oct. 15, 1868. Resolved, in case of my outliving father and being in good health, to give my efforts to the intellectual culture of women, without regard to salary; if possible, connect myself with liberal Chris- tian institutions, believing, as I do, that happiness and growth in this life are best promoted by them, and that what is good in this life is good in any life." In August, 1869, Miss Mitchell, with several of her Vassar students, went to Burlington, la., to observe the total eclipse of the sun. She wrote a popular account of her observations, which was printed in " Hours at Home" for September, 1869. Her records were pub- lished in Professor Coffin's report, as she was a member of his party. LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 177 " Sept. 26, 1871. My classes came in to-day for the first time ; twenty-five students more than ever be- fore ; fine, splendid-looking girls. I felt almost frightened at the responsibility which came into my hands of the possible twist which I might give them. "1871. I never look upon the mass of girls going into our dining-room or chapel without feeling their nobility, the sovereignty of their pure spirit." The following letter from Miss Mitchell, though written at a later date, gives an idea of the practical observing done by her classes : MY DEAR Miss : I reply to your questions concerning the observatory which you propose to establish. And, first, let me con- gratulate you that you begin small. A large telescope is a great luxury, but it is an enormous expense, and not at all necessary for teaching. . . . My beginning class uses only a small portable equatorial. It stands out-doors from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. The girls are encouraged to use it : they are expected to determine the rotation of the sun on its axis by watching the spots the same for the planet Jupiter ; they determine the revolution of Titan by watching its motions, the retrograde and direct motion of the planets among the stars, the position of the sun with reference to its setting in winter and summer, the phases of Venus. All their book learning in astronomy should be mathematical. The astron- omy which is not mathematical is what is so ludicrously called " Geography of the Heavens " is not astronomy at all. My senior class, generally small, say six, is received as a class, but in practical astronomy each girl is taught separately. I believe in small classes. I instruct them separately, first in the use of the meridian instrument, and next in that of the -equatorial. They obtain the time for the college by meridian passage of stars ; they use the equatorial just as far as they can do with very insufficient mechanism. We work wholly on planets, and they are taught to 1 78 MARIA MITCHELL find a planet at any hour of the day, to make drawings of what they see, and to determine positions of planets and satellites. With the clock and chronograph they determine difference of right ascension of objects by the electric mode of recording. They make, sometimes, very accurate drawings, and they learn to know the satellites of Saturn (Titan, Rhea, etc.) by their different physi- ognomy, as they would persons. They have sometimes measured diameters. If you add to your observatory a meridian instrument, I should advise a small one. Size is not so important as people generally suppose. Nicety and accuracy are what is needed in all scientific work ; startling effects by large telescopes and high powers are too suggestive of sensational advertisement. / The relation between herself and her pupils was quite remarkable it was very cordial and intimate ; she spoke of them always as her " girls," but at the same time she required their very best work, and was intoler- ant of shirking, or of an ambition to do what nature never intended the girl in question to do. One of her pupils writes thus : " If it were only possible to tell you of what Professor Mitchell did for one of her girls ! ' Her girls ! ' It meant so much to come into daily contact with such a woman ! There is no need of speaking of her ability ; the world knows what that was. But as her class-room was unique, hav- ing something of home in its belongings, so its atmos- phere differed from that of all others. Anxiety and nervous strain were left outside of the door. Perhaps one clue to her influence may be found in her remark to the senior class in astronomy when '76 entered upon its last year : ' We are women studying together.' " Occasionally it happened that work requiring two LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 179 hours or more to prepare called for little time in the class. Then would come one of those treats which she bestowed so freely upon her girls, and which seemed to put them -in touch with the great outside world. Let- ters from astronomers in Europe or America, or from members of their families, giving delightful glimpses of home life;' stories of her travels and of visits to famous people ; accounts of scientific conventions and of large gatherings of women, not so common then as now, gave her listeners a wider outlook and new interests. " Professor Mitchell was chairman of a standing com- mittee of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Women, that on women's work in science, and some of her students did their first work for women's organizations in gathering statistics and filling out blanks which she distributed among them. " The benefits derived from my college course were manifold, but time and money would have been well spent had there been no return but that of two years' intercourse with Maria Mitchell." Another pupil, and later her successor at Vassar College, Miss Mary W. Whitney, has said of her method of teaching : "As a teacher, Miss Mitchell's gift was that of stimulus, not that of drill. She could not drill ; she would not drive. But no honest student could escape the pressure of her strong will and earnest intent. The marking system she held in contempt, and wished to have nothing to do with it. ' You cannot mark a human mind,' she said, ' because there is no intellectual unit; ' and upon taking up her duties as l8o MARIA MITCHELL professor she stipulated that she should not be held responsible for a strict application of the system." "July, 1887. My students used to say that my way of teaching was like that of the man who said to his son, 'There are the letters of the English alphabet go into that corner and learn them.' " It is not exactly my way, but I do think, as a gen- eral rule, that teachers talk too much ! A book is a very good institution ! To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing. The fashion of lecturing is becoming a rage ; the teacher shows herself off, and she does not try enough to develop her pupils. " The greatest object in educating is to give a right habit of study. . . . " . . . Not too much mechanical apparatus let the imagination have some play; a cube may be shown by a model, but let the drawing upon the blackboard represent the cube ; and if possible let Nature be the blackboard ; spread your triangles upon land and sky. " One of my pupils always threw her triangles on the celestial vault above her head. " A small apparatus well used will do wonders. A celebrated chemist ordered his servant to bring in the laboratory on a tray! Newton rolled up the cover of a book ; he put a small glass at one end, and a large brain at the other it was enough. " When a student asks me, ' What specialty shall I LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE l8l follow?' I answer, 'Adopt some one, if none draws you, and wait.' I am confident that she will find the specialty engrossing. " Feb. 10, 1887. When I came to Vassar, I re- gretted that Mr. Vassar did not give full scholarships. By degrees, I learned to think his plan of giving half scholarships better; and to-day I am ready to say, ' Give no scholarships at all.' " I find a helping-hand lifts the girl as crutches do ; she learns to like the help which is not self-help. " If a girl has the public school, and wants enough to learn, she will learn. It is hard, but she was born to hardness she cannot dodge it. Labor is her inheri- tance. " I was born, for instance, incapable of appreciating music. I mourn it. Should I go to a music-school, therefore? No, avoid the music-school ; it is a very ex- pensive branch of study. When the public school has taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, the boy or girl has his or her tools ; let them use these tools, and get a few hours for study every day. " . . . Do not give educational aid to sickly young people. The old idea that the feeble young man must be fitted for the ministry, because the more sickly the more saintly, has gone out. Health of body is not only an accompaniment of health of mind, but is the cause ; the converse may be true, that health of mind causes health of body; but we all know that intellectual cheer and vivacity act upon the mind. If the gymnastic exercise helps the mind, the concert or the theatre improves the health of the body. 1 82 MARIA MITCHELL "Let the unfortunate young woman whose health is delicate take to the culture of the woods and fields, or raise strawberries, and avoid teaching. " Better give a young girl who is poor a common- school education, a little lift, and tell her to work out her own career. If she have a distaste to the homely routine of life, leave her the opportunity to try any other career, but let her understand that she stands or falls by herself. " . . . Not every girl should go to college. The over-burdened mother of a large family has a right to be aided by her daughter's hands. I would aid the mother and not the daughter. " I would not put the exceptionally smart girl from a very poor family into college, unless she is a genius ; and a genius should wait some years to prove her genius. " Endow the already established institution with money. Endow the woman who shows genius with time. " A case at Johns Hopkins University is an excellent one. A young woman goes into the institution who is already a scholar ; she shows what she can do, and she takes a scholarship ; she is not placed in a happy valley of do nothing, she is put into a workshop, where she can work. . . ... "... We are all apt to say, ' Could we have had the opportunity in life that our neighbor had/ and we leave the unfinished sentence to imply that we should have been geniuses. " No one ever says, ' If I had not had such golden LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 183 opportunities thrust upon me, I might have developed by a struggle ' ! But why look back at all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction? " But our want of opportunity was our opportunity our privations were our privileges our needs were stimulants; we are what we are because we had little and wanted much ; and it is hard to tell which was the more powerful factor. . * J ^, " Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses. " The Russian Czar determined to found an observ- atory, and the first thing he did was to take a million dollars from the government treasury. He sends to America to order a thirty-five inch telescope from Alvan Clark, not to promote science, but to surpass other nations in the size of his glass. ' To him that hath shall be given.' Read it, 'To him that hath should be given.' " To give wisely is hard. I do not wonder that the millionaire founds a new college why should he not? Millionaires are few, and he is a man by himself he must have views, or he could not have earned a million. But let the man or woman of ordinary wealth seek out the best institution already started, the best girl already in college, and give the endowment. " I knew a rich woman who wished to give aid to some girls' school, and she travelled in order to find that institution which gave the most solid learning with 1 84 MARIA MITCHELL the least show. She found it where few would expect it, in Tennessee. It was -worth while to travel. "The aid that comes need not be money; let it be a careful consideration of the object, and an evident interest in the cause. " When you aid a teacher, you improve the educa- tion of your children. It is 'a wonder that teachers work as Well as they do. I never look at a group of them without using, mentally, the expression, ' The noble army of martyrs ' ! "The chemist should have had a laboratory, and the observatory should have had an astronomer; but we are too apt to bestow money where there is no man, and to find a man where there is no money. " If every girl who is aided were a very high order of scholar, scholarship would undoubtedly conquer pov- erty; but a large part of the aided students are ordi- nary. They lack, at least, executive power, as their ancestors probably did. Poverty is a misfortune ; mis- fortunes are often the result of blamable indiscretion, extravagance, etc. " It is one of the many blessings of poverty that one is not obliged to ' give wisely.' " 1866. To her students : "I cannot expect to make astronomers, but I do expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy modes of thinking. . . . When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests. "... But star-gazing is not science. The LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 185 entrance to astronomy is through mathematics. You must make up your mind to steady and earnest work. You must be content to get on slowly if you only get on thoroughly. "The phrase 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific. " The laws which govern the motions of the sun, the earth, planets, and other bodies in the universe, cannot be understood and demonstrated without a solid basis of mathematical learning. " Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God. " You cannot study anything persistently for years without becoming learned, and although I would not hold reputation up to you as a very high object of ambition, it is a wayside flower which you are sure to have catch at your skirts. " Whatever apology other women may have for loose, ill-finished work, or work not finished at all, you will have none. " When you leave Vassar College, you leave it the best educated women in the world. Living a little outside of the college, beyond the reach of the little currents that go up and down the corridors, I think I am a fairer judge of your advantages than you can be yourselves ; and when I say you will be the best educated women in the world, I do not mean the education of text-books, and class-rooms, and apparatus, only, but that broader 1 86 MARIA MITCHELL education which you receive unconsciously, that higher teaching which comes to you, all unknown to the givers, from daily association with the noble-souled women who are around you." " 1871. When astronomers compare observations made by different persons, they cannot neglect the constitutional peculiarities of the individuals, and there enters into these computations a quantity called ' per- sonal equation.' In common terms, it is that difference between two individuals from which results a difference in the time which they require to receive and note an occurrence. If one sees a star at one instant, and records it, the record of another, of the same thing, is not the same. " It is true, also, that the same individual is not the same at all times ; so that between two individuals there is a mean or middle individual, and each individual has a mean or middle self, which is not the man of to-day, nor the man of yesterday, nor the man of to-morrow ; but a middle man among these different selves. . . . " We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. " There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people ; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 187 all ; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to pro- mote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future. ". . . The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubt- ingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered. [1874.] " I am but a woman ! 11 For women there are, undoubtedly, great difficulties in the path, but so much the more to overcome. First, no woman should say, * I am but a woman ! ' But a woman! What more can you ask to be? "Born a woman born with the average brain of humanity born with more than the average heart if you are mortal, what higher destiny could you have? No matter where you are nor what you are, you are a power your influence is incalculable; personal in- fluence is always underrated by the person. We are all centres of spheres we see the portions of the sphere above us, and we see how little we affect it. We forget the part of the sphere around and before us it ex- tends just as far every way. " Another common saying, ' It isn't the way,' etc. Who settles the way? Is there any one so forgetful of the 1 88 MARIA MITCHELL sovereignty bestowed on her by God that she accepts a leader one who shall capture her mind? " There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? " We must at least question it ; we cannot accept any- thing as granted, beyond the first mathematical form- ulae. Question everything else. ' ' The world is round, and like a ball Seems swinging in the air.' * " No such thing ! the world is not round, it does not swing, and it doesn't seem to swing ! " I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be play- ing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music ; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, ' Don't study it at all ; ' you can- not afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. "If for four hours a day you studied, year after*year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose 1 From Peter Parley's Primary Geography. LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 189 you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? " When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. " I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music ; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer ! "Jan. 8, 1876. At the meeting of graduates at the Deacon House, the speeches that were made were mainly those of Dr. R. and Professor B. I am sorry now that I did not at least say that the college is what it is mainly because the early students pushed up the course to a collegiate standard. "Jan. 25, 1876. It has become a serious question with me whether it is not my duty to beg money for the observatory, while what I really long for is a quiet life of scientific speculation. I want to sit down and study on the observations made by myself and others." During her later years at Vassar, Miss Mitchell interested herself personally in raising a fund to endow the chair of astronomy. In March, 1886, she wrote: " I have been in New York quite lately, and am quite hopeful that Miss will do something for Vassar. 190 MARIA MITCHELL Mrs. C, of Newburyport, is to ask Whittier, who is said to be rich, and told me to get anything I could out of her father. But after all I am a poor beggar ; my ideas are small ! " Since Miss Mitchell's death, the fund has been com- pleted by the alumnae, and is known as the Maria Mitchell Endowment Fund. With $10,000 appro- priated by the trustees it amounts to $50,000. "June 1 8, 1876. I had imagined the Emperor of Brazil to be a dark, swarthy, tall man, of forty-five years; that he would not really have a crown upon his head, but that I should feel it was somewhere around, handy-like, and that I should know I was in royal presence. But he turns out to be a large, old man, say, sixty-five, broad-headed and broad-shouldered, with a big white beard, and a very pleasant, even chatty, manner. "Once inside of the dome, he seemed to feel at home; to my astonishment he asked if Alvan Clark made the glass of the equatorial. As he stepped into the meridian-room, and saw the instruments, he said, ' Collimators?' I said, * You have been in observa- tories before.' ' Oh, yes, Cambridge and Washington,' he replied. He seemed much more interested in the observatory than I could possibly expect. I asked him to go on top of the roof, and he said he had not time; yet he stayed long enough to go up several times. I am told that he follows out, remarkably, his own ideas as to his movements." In 1878, Miss Mitchell went to Denver, Colorado, to observe the total eclipse of the sun. She was accom- LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE IQI panied by several of her former pupils. She prepared an account of this eclipse, which will be found in Chapter XI. " Aug. 20, 1878. Dr. Raymond [President of Vassar College] is dead. I cannot quite take it in. I have never known the college without him, and it will make all things different. " Personally, I have always been fond of him ; he was very enjoyable socially and intellectually. Officially he was, in his relations to the students, perfect. He was cautious to a fault, and has probably been very wise in his administration of college affairs. He was broad in his religious views. He was not broad in his ideas of women, and was made to broaden the education of women by the women around him. " June 1 8, 1 88 1. The dome party to-day was sixty- two in number. It was breakfast, and we opened the dome ; we seated forty in the dome and twenty in the meridian-room." This " dome party" requires a few words of explana- tion, because it was unique among all the Vassar festivities. The week before commencement, Miss Mitchell's pupils would be informed of the approach- ing gathering by a notice like the following : CIRCULAR. The annual dome party will be held at the observatory on Satur- day, the igth, at 6 P.M. You are cordially invited to be present. M. M. [As this gathering is highly intellectual, you are invited to bring poems.] 192 MARIA MITCHELL It was, at first, held in the evening, but during the last years was a breakfast party, its character in other respects remaining the same. Little tables were spread under the dome, around the big telescope ; the flowers were roses from Miss Mitchell's own garden. The " poems " were nonsense rhymes, in the writing of which Miss Mitchell was an adept. Each student would have a few verses of a more or less personal character, written by Miss Mitchell, and there were others written by the girls themselves; some were impromptu ; others were set to music, and sung by a selected glee-club. "June 5, 1 88 1. We have written what we call our dome poetry. Some nice poems have come in to us. I think the Vassar girls, in the main, are magnificent, they are so all-alive. " May 20, 1882. Vassar is getting pretty. I gathered lilies of the valley this morning. The young robins are out in a tree close by us, and the phcebe has built, as usual, under the front steps. " I am rushing dome poetry, but so far show no alarm- ing symptoms of brilliancy." A former student writes as follows about the dome poetry : " At the time it was read, though it seemed mere merry nonsense, it really served a more serious purpose in the work of one who did nothing aimlessly. This apparent nonsense served as the vehicle to convey an expression of approbation, affection, criticism, or dis- approval in such a merry mode that even the bitterest draught seemed sweet." "1881, July 5. We left Vassar, June 24, on the LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE 193 steamer ' Galatea,' from New York to Providence. I looked out of my state-room window, and saw a strange- looking body in the northern sky. My heart sank ; I knew instantly that it was a comet, and that I must return to the observatory. Calling the young people around me, and pointing it out to them, I had their assurance that it was a comet, and nothing but a comet. " We went to bed at nine, and I arose at six in the morning. As soon as I could get my nieces started for Providence, I started for Stonington, the most easy of the ways of getting to New York, as I should avoid Point Judith. " I went to the boat at the Stonington wharf about noon, and remained on board until morning there were few passengers, it was very quiet, and I slept well. " Arriving in New York, I took cars at 9 A.M. for Poughkeepsie, and reached the college at dinner-time. I went to work the same evening. " As I could not tell at what time the comet would pass the meridian, I stationed myself at the telescope in the meridian-room by 10 P.M., and watched for the comet to cross. As it approached the meridian, I saw that it would go behind a scraggy apple-tree. I sent for the watchman, Mr. Crumb, to come with a saw, and cut off the upper limbs. He came back with an axe, and chopped away vigorously ; but as one limb after another fell, and I said, ' I need more, cut away,' he said, ' I think I must cut down the whole tree.' I said, ' Cut it down.' I felt the barbarism of it, but I felt more that a bird might have a nest in it. " I found, when I went to breakfast the next morning, 194 MARIA MITCHELL that the story had preceded me, and I was called ' George Washington.' " But for all this, I got almost no observation ; the fog came up, and I had scarcely anything better than an estimation. I saw the comet blaze out, just on the edge of the field, and I could read its declination only. " On the 28th, 29th, and July 1st, I obtained good meridian passages, and the R.A. must be very good. "Jan. 12, 1882. There is a strange sentence in the last paragraph of Dr. Jacobi's article on the study of medicine by women, to the effect that it would be better for the husband always to be superior to the wife. Why? And if so, does not it condemn the ablest women to a single life? "March 13, 1882, 3 P.M. I start for faculty, and we probably shall elect what are called the ' honor girls.' I dread the struggle that is pretty certain to come. Each of us has some favorite whom she wishes to put into the highest class, and whom she honestly believes to be of the highest order of merit. I never have the whole ten to suit me, but I can truly say that at this minute I do not care. I should be sorry not to see S., and W., and P., and E., and G., and K. on the list of the ten, but probably that is more than I ought to expect. The whole system is demoralizing and foolish. Girls study for prizes and not for learn- ing, when ' honors ' are at the end. The unscholarly motive is wearing. If they studied for sound learning, the cheer which would come with every day's gain would be health-preserving. " . . . I have seven advanced students, and to- LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE. 195 day, when I looked around to see who should be called to help look out for meteors, I could consider only one of them not already overworked, and she was the post- graduate, who took no honors, and never hurried, and has always been an excellent student. " . . . We are sending home some girls already [November 14], and is among them. I am some- what alarmed at the dropping down, but does an enormous amount of work, belongs to every club, and writes for every club and for the ' Vassar Mis- cellany,' etc. ; of course she has the headache most of the time. "Sometimes I am distressed for fear Dr. Clarke 1 is not so far wrong ; but I do not think it is the study it is the morbid conscientiousness of the girls, who think they must work every minute. " April 26, 1882. Miss Herschel came to the college on the nth, and stayed three days. She is one of the little girls whom I saw, twenty-three years since, playing on the lawn at Sir John Herschel's place, Collingwood. " . . . Miss Herschel was just perfect as a guest; she fitted in beautifully. The teachers gave a reception for her, gave her his poem, and Henry, the gar- dener, found out that the man in whose employ he lost a finger was her brother-in-law, in Leeds ! "Jan. 9, 1884. Mr. [Matthew] Arnold has been to the college, and has given his lecture on Emerson. The audience was made up of three hundred students, and three hundred guests from town. Never was a man listened to with so much attention. Whether he is right 1 Author of " Sex in Education." 196 MARIA MITCHELL in his judgment or not, he held his audience by his manly way, his kindly dissection, and his graceful English. Socially, he charmed us all. He chatted with every one, he smiled on all. He said he was sorry to leave the college, and that he felt he must come to America again. We have not had such an awakening for years. It was like a new volume of old English poetry. "March 16, 1885. In February, 1831, I counted seconds for father, who observed the annular eclipse at Nantucket. I was twelve and a half years old. In 1885, fifty-four years later, I counted seconds for a class of students at Vassar ; it was the same eclipse, but the sun was only about half-covered. Both days were perfectly clear and cold." SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 197 CHAPTER X 1873 SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR RUSSIA FRANCES POWER COBBE " THE GLASGOW COLLEGE FOR GIRLS " IN 1873, Miss Mitchell spent the summer in Europe, and availed herself of this oppo-tunity to visit the government observatory at Pulkova, in Russia. "Eydkuhnen, Wednesday, July 30, 1873. Certainly, I never in my life expected to spend twenty- four hours in this small town, the frontier town of Prussia. Here I remembered that our little bags would be examined, and I asked the guard about it, but he said we need not trouble ourselves ; we should not be examined until we reached the first Russian town of Wiersbelow. So, after a mile more of travel, we came to Wiersbelow. Knowing that we should keep our little compartment until we got to St. Peters- burg, we had scattered our luggage about; gloves were in one place, veil in another, shawl in another, parasol in another, and books all around. " The train stopped. Imagine our consternation ! Two officials entered the carriage, tall Russians in full uniform, and seized everything shawls, books, gloves, bags ; and then, looking around very carefully, espied W's poor little ragged handkerchief, and seized that, too, as a contraband article ! We looked at one another, 198 MARIA MITCHELL and said nothing. The tall Russian said something to us ; we looked at each other and sat still. The tall Russians looked at one another, and there was almost an official smile between them. " Then one turned to me, and said, very distinctly, ' Passy-port.' 'Oh/ I said, 'the passports are all right; where are they?' and we produced from our pockets the passports prepared at Washington, with the official seal, and we delivered them with a sort of air as if we had said, ' You'll find that they do things all right at Washington.' " The tall Russians got out, and I was about to breathe freely, when they returned, and said something else not a word did I understand ; they exchanged a look of amusement, and W. and I, one of amazement; then one of them made signs to us to get out. The sign was unmistakable, and we got out, and followed them into an immense room, where were tables all around covered with luggage, and about a hundred travellers standing by; and our books, shawls, gloves, etc., were thrown in a heap upon one of these tables, and we awoke to the disagreeable consciousness that we were in a custom-house, and only two out of a hundred travellers, and that we did not understand one word of Russian. " But, of course, it could be only a few minutes of delay, and if German and French failed, there is always left the language of signs, and all would be right. " After, perhaps, half an hour, two or three officials approached us, and, holding the passports, began to talk to us. How did they know that those two pass- SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 199 ports belonged to us ? Out of two hundred persons, how could they at once see that the woman whose age was given at more than half a century, and the lad whose age was given at less than a score of years, were the two fatigued and weary travellers who stood guarding a small heap of gloves, books, handkerchiefs, and shawls? Two of the officials held up the passports to us, pointed to the blank page, shook their heads omi- nously; the third took the passports, put them into his vest pocket, buttoned up his coat, and motioned to us to follow him. "We followed; he opened the door of an ordinary carriage, waved his hand for us to get in, jumped in himself, and we found we were started back. We could not cross the line between Germany and Russia. " We meekly asked where we were to go, and were relieved when we found that we went back only to the nearest town, but that the passports must be sent to Konigsberg, sixty miles away, to be endorsed by the Russian ambassador it might take some days. W. was very much inclined to refuse to go back and to attempt a war of words, but it did not seem wise to me to undertake a war against the Russian government; I know our country does not lightly go into an 'unpleas- antness ' of that kind. . . . : " So we went back to Eydkuhnen, a little miserable German village. We took rooms at the only hotel, and there we stayed twenty-four hours. Before the end of that time, we had visited every shop in the village, and aired our German to most-of our fellow-travellers whom we met at the hotel. 200 MARIA MITCHELL " The landlord took our part, and declared it was hard enough on simple travellers like ourselves to be stopped in such a way, and that Russia was the only country in Europe which was rigid in that respect. Happily, our passports were back in twenty-four hours, and we started again ; our trunks had been registered for St. Petersburg, and to St. Petersburg they had gone, ahead of us; and of the small heap of things thrown down promiscuously at the custom-house, the whole had not come back to us it was not very im- portant. I learned how to wear one glove instead of two, or to go without. "We had the ordeal of the custom-house to pass again ; but once passed, and told that we were free to go on, it was like going into a clear atmosphere from a fog. We crossed the custom-house threshold into another room, and we found ourselves in Russia, and in an excellent, well- furnished, and cheery restaurant. We lost the German smoke and the German beer ; we found hot coffee and clean tal?le-cloths. "We did not return to our dusty, red-velvet palace, but we entered a clean, comfortable compartment, with easy sofas, for the night. We started again for St. Petersburg; we were now four days from London. I will omit the details of a break-down that night, and another change of cars. We had some sleep, and awoke in the morning to enjoy Russia. " And, first, of Russian railroads. When the railroads of Russia were planned, the Emperor Nicholas allowed a large sum of money for the building. The engineer showed him his plan. The road wound by slight SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 2OI curves from one town to another. This did not suit the emperor at all. He took his ruler, put it down upon the table, and said : ' I choose to have my roads run so.' Of course the engineer assented he had his large fund granted ; a straight road was much cheaper to build than a curved one. As a consequence, he built and furnished an excellent road. " At every ' verst,' which is not quite a mile, a small house is placed at the roadside, on which, in very large figures, the number of versts from St. Petersburg is told. The train runs very smoothly and very slowly; twenty miles an hour is about the rate. Of course the journey seemed long. For a large part of the way it was an uninhabited, level plain ; so green, however, that it seemed like travelling on prairies. Occasionally we passed a dreary little village of small huts, and as we neared St. Petersburg we passed larger and better built towns, which the dome of some cathedral lighted up for miles. "The road was enlivened, too, by another peculiarity. The restaurants were all adorned by flags of all colors, and festooned by vines. At one place the green arches ran across the road, and we passed under a bower of evergreens. I accepted this, at first, as a Russian pe- culiarity, and was surprised that so much attention was paid to travellers ; but I learned that it was not for us at all. The Duke of Edinboro' had passed over the road a few days before, on his way to St. Petersburg, for his betrothal to the only daughter of the czar, and the decorations were for him ; and so we felt that we were of the party, although we had not been asked. 202 MARIA MITCHELL "We approached St. Petersburg just at night, and caught the play of the sunlight on the domes. It is a city of domes blue domes, green domes, white domes, and, above all, the golden dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac's. " It is almost never a single dome. St. Isaac's central, gilded dome looms , up above its fellow domes, but four smaller ones surround it. " It was summer ; the temperature was delightful, about like our October. The showers were frequent, there was no dust and no sultry air. " There must be a great deal of nice mechanical work required in St. Petersburg, for on the Nevsky Perspec- tive, the principal street, there were a great many shops in which graduating and measuring instruments of very nice workmanship were for sale. Especially I noticed the excellence of the thermometers, and I naturally stopped to read them. Figures are a com- mon language, but it was clear that I was in another planet; I could not read the thermometers! I judged that the weather was warm enough for the thermometer to be at 68. I read, say, 16. And then I remem- bered that the Russians do not put their freezing point at 32, as we do, and I was obliged to go through a troublesome calculation before I could tell how warm it was. " But I came to a still stranger experience. I dated my letters August 3, and went to my banker's, before I sealed them, to see if there were letters for me. The banker's little calendar was hanging by his desk, and the day of the month was on exhibition, in large SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 203 figures. I read, July 22 ! This was distressing ! Was I like Alice in Wonderland? Did time go backward? Surely, I had dated August 3. Could I be in error twelve days? And then I perceived that twelve days was just the difference of old and new calendars. " How many times I had taught students that the Russians still counted their time by the ' old style,' but had never learned it myself! And so I was obliged to teach myself new lessons in science. The earth turns on its axis just the same in Russia as in Boston, but you don't get out of the sunlight at the Boston sunset hour. "When the thermometer stands at 32 in St. Peters- burg, it does not freeze as it does in Boston. On the contrary, it is very warm in St. Petersburg, for it means what 104 does in Boston. And if you leave London on the 22d of July, and are five days on the way to St. Petersburg, a week after you get there it is still the 22d of July! And we complain that the day is too short ! " Another peculiarity. We strolled over the city all day; we came back to our hotel tired; we took our tea; we talked over the day; we wrote to our friends ; we planned for the next day; we were ready to retire. We walked to the window the sun was striking on all the chimney tops. It doesn't seem to be right even for the lark to go to sleep while the sun shines. We looked at our watches ; but the watches said nine o'clock, and we went off to our beds in daytime ; and we awoke after the first nap to perceive that the sun still shone into the room. 204 MARIA MITCHELL " Like all careful aunts, I was unwilling that my nephew should be out alone at night. He was desirous of doing the right thing, but urged that at home, as a little boy, he was always allowed to be out until dark, and he asked if he could stay out until dark ! Alas for the poor lad ! There was no dark at all ! I could not consent for him to be out all night, and the twilight was not over. You may read and read that the sum- mer day at St. Petersburg is twenty hours long, but until you see that the sun scarcely sets, you cannot take it in. " I wondered whether the laboring man worked eight or ten hours under my window; it seemed to me that he was sawing wood the whole twenty-four ! " W. came in one night after a stroll, and described a beautiful square which he had come upon accidentally. I listened with great interest, and said, ' I must go there in the morning; what is the name of it?' 'I don't know,' he replied. ' Why didn't you read the sign ? ' I asked. * I can't read,' was the reply. ' Oh, no ; but why didn't you ask some one?' 'I can't speak,' he answered. Neither reading nor speaking, we had to learn St. Petersburg by our observation, and it is the best way. Most travellers read too much. "There are learned institutions in St. Petersburg: universities, libraries, picture-galleries, and museums; but the first institution with which I became acquainted was the drosky. The drosky is a very, very small phaeton. It has the driver's seat in front, and a very narrow seat behind him. One person can have room enough on this second seat, but it usually carries two. SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 205 Invariably the drosky is lined with dark-blue cloth, and the drosky-driver wears a dark-blue wrapper, com- ing to the feet, girded around the waist by a crimson sash. He also wears a bell-shaped hat, turned up at the side. You are a little in doubt, if you see him at first separated from his drosky, whether he is a market- woman or a serving-man, the dress being very much like a morning wrapper. But he is rarely six feet away from his carriage, and usually he is upon it, sound asleep ! "The trunks having gone to St. Petersburg in advance of ourselves, our first duty was to get pos- session of them. They were at the custom-house, across the city. My nephew and I jumped upon a drosky we could not say that we were really in the drosky, for the seat was too short. The drosky-driver started off his horse over the cobble-stones at a terrible rate. I could not keep my seat, and I clung to W. He shouted, ' Don't hold by me ; I shall be out the next minute ! ' What could be done? I was sure I shouldn't stay on half a minute. Blessings on the red sash of the drosky-man I caught at that ! He drove faster and faster, and I clung tighter and tighter, but alarmed at two immense dangers : first, that I should stop his breath by dragging the girdle so tightly ; and, next, that when it became unendurable to him, he would loosen it in front. " I could not perceive that he was aware of my exist- ence at all ! He had only one object in life, to carry us across the city to our place of destination, and to get his copecks in return. 206 MARIA MITCHELL " In a few days I learned to like the jolly vehicles very much. They are so numerous that you may pick one up on any street, whenever you are tired of walking. " My principal object in visiting St. Petersburg was the astronomical observatory at Pulkova, some twelve miles distant. "I had letters to the director, Otto von Struve, but our consul declared that I must also have one from him, for Struve was a very great man. I, of course, accepted it. " We made the journey by rail and coach, but it would be better to drive the whole way. " Most observatories are temples of silence, and quiet reigns. As we drove into the grounds at Pulkova, a small crowd of children of all ages, and servants of all degrees, came out to meet us. They did not come out to do us honor, but to gaze at us. I could not under- stand it until I learned that the director of the observa- tory has a large number of aids, and they, with all their families, live in large houses, connected with the central building by covered ways. " All about the grounds, too, were small observa- tories, little temples, in which young men were practising for observations on the transit of Venus. These little buildings, I afterwards learned, were to be taken down and transported, instruments and all, to the coast of Asia. " The director of the observatory is Otto Struve his father, Wilhelm Struve, preceded him in this office. Properly, the director is Herr Von Struve ; but the old SECOND EUROPEAN JOUR 2O/ Russian custom is still in use, and the servants call him Wilhelm-vitch ; that is, ' the son of William.' " When I bought a photograph of the present emperor, Alexander, I saw that he was called Nicholas- vitch. " Herr Struve received us courteously, and an assistant was called to show us the instruments. All observa- tories are much alike ; therefore I will not describe this, except in its peculiarities. One of these was the pres- ence of small, light, portable rooms, i.e., baseless boxes, which rolled over the instruments to protect them ; two sides were of wood, and two sides of green silk curtains, which could, of course, be turned aside when the boxes, or little rooms, were rolled over the appa- ratus. Being covered in this way, the heavy shutters can be left open for weeks at a time. " Everything was on a large scale the rooms were immense. " The director has three assistants who are called ' elder astronomers,' and two who are called ' adjunct astronomers.' Each of these has a servant devoted to him. I asked one of the elder astronomers if he had rooms in the observatory, and he answered, ' Yes, my rooms are 94 ft. by 50,' " They seem to be amused at the size of their lodg- ings, for Mr. Struve, when he told me of his apartments, gave me at once the dimensions, 200 ft. by 100 ft. " The room in which we dined with the family of Herr Struve was immense. I spoke of it, and he said, * We cannot open our windows in the winter, the winters are so severe, and so we must have good air 208 MARIA MITCHELL without it.' Their drawing-room was also very large ; the chairs (innumerable, it seemed to me) stood stiffly around the walls of the room. The floor was painted and highly varnished, and flower-pots were at the nu- merous windows on little stands. It was scrupulously neat everywhere. " There was very little ceremony at dinner ; we had the delicious wild strawberries of the country in great profusion ; and the talk, the best part of the dinner, was in German, Russian, and English. " Madame Struve spoke German, Russian, and French, and complained that she could not speak English. She said that she had spent three weeks with an English lady, and that she must be very stupid not to speak English. " I noticed that in one of the rooms, which was not so very immense, there was a circular table, a small centre-carpet, and chairs around the table ; I have been told that ' in society' in Russia, the ladies sit in a circle, and the gentlemen walk around and talk con- secutively with the ladies, kindly giving to each a share of their attention. " They assured me that the winters were charming, the sleighing constant, and the social gatherings cheery ; but think of four hours, only, of daylight in the depth of the winter. Their dread was the spring and the autumn, when the mud is deep. " Everything in the observatory which could be was built of wood. They have the fir, which is very inde- structible ; it is supposed to show no mark of change in two hundred years. SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 209 " Wood is so susceptible of ornamentation that, the pretty villages of Russia and there are some that look like New England villages struck us very pleasantly, after the stone and brick villages of England. " I try, when I am abroad, to see in what they are superior to us, not in what they are inferior. " Our great idea is, of course, freedom and self-govern- ment ; probably in that we are ahead of the rest of the world, although we are certainly not so much in advance as we suppose ; but we are sufficiently inflated with our own greatness to let that subject take care of itself when we travel. We travel to learn ; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own as in the art of Italy, the learning of England, and the philosophy of Germany. " Let us take the scientific position of Russia. When, half a century ago, John Quincy Adams proposed the establishment of an astronomical observatory, at a cost of $100,000, it was ridiculed by the newspapers, con- sidered Utopian, and dismissed from the public mind. When our government, a few years since, voted an appropriation of $50,000 for a telescope for the National Observatory, it was considered magnificent. Yet, a quarter of a century since (1838), Russia founded an astronomical observatory. The government spent $200,000 on instruments, $1,500,000 on buildings, and annually appropriated $38,000 for salaries of observ- ers. I naturally thought that a million and a half dollars, and Oriental ideas, combined, would make the 210 MARIA MITCHELL observatory a showy place ; I expected that the obser- vatory would be surmounted by a gilded dome, and that' pearly gates ' would open as I approached. There is not even a dome ! " The central observation-room is a cylinder, and its doors swing back on hinges. Wherever it is possible, wood is used, instead of stone or brick. I could not detect, in the whole structure, anything like carving, gilding, or painting, for mere show. It was all for science ; and its ornamentations were adapted to its uses, and came at their demand. " In our country, the man of science leads an isolated life. If he has capabilities of administration, our gov- ernment does not yet believe in them. " The director of the observatory at Pulkova has the military rank of general, and he is privy councillor to the czar. Every subordinate has also his military position he is a soldier. "What would you think of it, if the director of any observatory were one of the President's cabinet at Washington, in virtue of his position? Struve's posi- tion is that of a member of the President's cabinet. " Here is another difference : Ours is a democratic country. We recognize no caste ; we are born ' free and equal.' We honor labor; work is ennobling. These expressions we are all accustomed to use. Do we live up to them? Many a rich man, many a man in fine social position, has married a school-teacher; but I never heard it spoken of as a source of pride in the alliance until I went to despotic Russia. Struve told me, as he would have told of any other honor SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 211 which had been his, that his wife, as a girl, had taught school in St. Petersburg. And then Madame Struve joined in the conversation, and told me how much the subject of woman's education still held her interest. " St. Petersburg is about the size of Philadelphia. Struve said, ' There are thousands of women studying science in St. Petersburg/ How many thousand women do you suppose are studying science in the whole State of New York? I doubt if there are five hundred. " Then again, as to language. It is rare, even among the common people, to meet one who speaks one lan- guage only. If you can speak no Russian, try your poor French, your poor German, or your good Eng- lish. You may be sure that the shopkeeper will answer in one or another, and even the drosky-driver picks up a little of some one of them. " Of late, the Russian government has founded a medical school for women, giving them advantages which are given to men, and the same rank when they graduate ; the czar himself contributed largely to the fund. " One wonders, in a country so rich as ours, that so few men and women gratify their tastes by founding scholarships and aids for the tuition of girls it must be such a pleasant way of spending money. "Then as regards religion. I am never in a country where the Catholic or Greek church is dominant, but I see with admiration the zeal of its followers. I may pity their delusions, but I must admire their devotion. If you look around in one of our churches upon the 212 MARIA MITCHELL congregation, five-sixths are women, and in some towns nineteen-twentieths ; and if you form a judgment from that fact, you would suppose that religion was entirely a ' woman's right.' In a Catholic church or Greek church, the men are not only as numerous as the women, but they are as intense in their worship. Well- dressed men, with good heads, will prostrate themselves before the image of the Holy Virgin as many times, and as devoutly, as the beggar-woman. " I think I saw a Russian gentleman at St. Isaac's touch his forehead to the floor, rise and stand erect, touch the floor again, and rise again, ten times in as many minutes ; and we were one day forbidden entrance to a church because the czar was about to say his prayers ; we found he was making the pilgrimage of some seventy churches, and praying in each one. " Christians who believe in public prayer, and who claim that we should be instant in prayer, would con- sider it a severe tax upon their energies to pray seventy times a day they don't care to do it ! " Then there is the democracy of the church. There are no pews to be sold to the highest bidder no ' re- served seats; ' the oneness and equality before God are always recognized. A Russian gentleman, as he prays, does not look around, and move away from the poor beggar next to him. At St. Peter's the crowd stands or kneels at St. Isaac's they stand ; and they stand literally on the same plane. " I noticed in the crowd at St. Isaac's, one festival day, young girls who were having a friendly chat ; but their religion was ever in their thoughts, and they crossed SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 213 themselves certainly once a minute. Their religion is not an affair of Sunday, but of every day in the week. " The drosky-driver, certainly the most stupid class of my acquaintance in Russia, never forgets his prayers ; if his passenger is never so much in a hurry, and the bribe never so high, the drosky-driver will check his horse, and make the sign of the cross as he passes the little image of the Virgin, so small, perhaps, that you have not noticed it until you wonder why he slackens his pace. " Then as to government. We boast of our national freedom, and we talk about universal suffrage, the ' Home of the Free,' etc. Yet the serfs in Russia were freed in March, 1861, just before our Civil war began. They freed their serfs without any war, and each serf received some acres of land. They freed twenty-three millions, and we freed four or five millions of blacks ; and all of us, who are old enough, remember that one of the fears in freeing the slaves was the number of lawless and ignorant blacks who, it was supposed, would come to the North. " We talk about universal suffrage ; a larger part of the antiquated Russians vote than of Americans. Just as I came away from St. Petersburg I met a Moscow family, travelling. We occupied the same compartment car. It was a family consisting of a lady and her three daughters. When they found where I had been, they asked me, in excellent English, what had carried me to St. Petersburg, and then, why I was interested in Pulkova ; and so I must tell them about American girls, and so, of course, of Vassar College. 214 MARIA MITCHELL "They plied me with questions: 'Do you have women in your faculty? Do men and women hold the same rank?' I returned the questions: 'Is there a girl's college in Moscow?' 'No/ said the youngest sister, with a sigh, ' we are always going to have one.' The eldest sister asked : ' Do women vote in Amer- ica?' 'No,' I said. ' Do women vote in Russia? ' She said ' No; ' but her mother interrupted her, and there was a spicy conversation between them, in Russian, and then the mother, who had rarely spoken, turned to me, and said : ' I vote, but I do not go to the polls myself. I send somebody to represent me ; my vote rests upon my property.' " Have you not read a story, of late, in the news- papers, about some excellent women in a little town in Connecticut whose pet heifers were taken by force and sold because they refused to pay the large taxes levied upon them by their townsmen, they being the largest holders of property in the town? That circumstance could not have happened in barbarous Russia ; there, the owner of property has a right to say how it shall be used. "'Why do you ask me about our government? ' I said to the Russian girls. ' Are you interested in questions of government?' They replied, 'All Rus- sian women are interested in questions of that sort.' How many American women are interested in ques- tions concerning government? " These young girls knew exactly what questions to ask about Vassar College, the course of study, the diploma, the number of graduates, etc. The eldest SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 21$ said : ' We are at once excited when we hear of women studying; we have longed for opportunities to study all our lives. Our father was the engineer of the first Russian railroad, and he spent two years in America.' " I confess to a feeling of mortification when one of these girls asked me, ' Did you ever read the transla- tion of a Russian book?' and I was obliged to answer ' No.' This girl had read American books in the origi- nal. They were talking Russian, French, German, and English, and yet mourning over their need of educa- tion; and in general education, especially in that of women, I think we must be in advance of them. " One of these sisters, forgetting my ignorance, said something to me in Russian. The other laughed. 'What did she say?' I asked. The eldest replied, 4 She asked you to take her back with you, and educate her.' 'But,' I said, 'you read and speak your lan- guages the learning of the world is open to you found your own college ! ' And the young girl leaned back on the cushions, drew her mantle around her, and said, ' We have not the energy of the American girl ! ' " The energy of the American girl ! The rich inher- itance which has come down to her from men and women who sought, in the New World, a better and higher life. " When the American girl carries her energy into the great questions of humanity, into the practical problems of life ; when she takes home to her heart the interests of education, of government, and of religion, what may we not hope for our country ! London, 1873. " It was the 26th of August, and I had 2l6 MARIA MITCHELL no hope that Miss Cobbe could be at her town residence, but I felt bound to deliver Mrs. Howe's letter, and I wished to give her a Vassar pamphlet ; so I took a cab and drove ; it was at an enormous distance from my lodging she told me it was six miles. I was as much surprised as delighted when the girl said she was at home, for the house had painters in it, the carpets were up, and every- thing looked uninhabitable. The girl came back, after taking my card, and asked me if I would go into the studio, and so took me through a pretty garden into a small building of two rooms, the outer one filled with pictures and books. I had never heard that Miss Cobbe was an artist, and so I looked around, and was afraid that I had got the wrong Miss Cobbe. But as I glanced at the table I saw the ' Contemporary Review,' and I took up the first article and read it by Herbert Spencer. I had become somewhat interested in a pretty severe criticism of the modes of reasoning of mathematical men, and had perceived that he said the problems of concrete sciences were harder than any of the physical sciences (which I admitted was all true), when a very white dog came bounding in upon me, and I dropped the book, knowing that the dog's mistress must be coming, and Miss Cobbe entered. She looked just as I expected, but even larger ; but then her head is magnificent because so large. She was very cordial at once, and told me that Miss Davies had told her I was in London. She said the studio was that of her friend. I could not refrain from thanking her for her books, and telling her how much we valued them in America, and how much good I believed they had done. She colored SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 2 1/ a very little, and said, ' Nothing could be more grati- fying to me/ " I had heard that she was not a women's rights woman, and she said, ' Who could have told you that? I am remarkably so. I write suffrage articles contin- ually I sign petitions.' " I was delighted to find that she had been an inti- mate friend of Mrs. Somerville ; had corresponded with her for years, and ha^d a letter from her after she was ninety-two years of age, when she was reading Qua- ternions for amusement. She said that Mrs. Somerville would probably have called herself a Unitarian, but that really she was a Theist, and that it came out more in her later life. She said she was correcting proof of the Life by the daughters ; that the Life was intensely interesting; that Mrs. Somerville mourned all her life that she had not had the advantages of education. " I asked her how I could get a photograph of Mrs. Somerville, and she said they could not be bought. She told me, without any hint from me, that she would give Vassar College a plaster cast of the bust of Mrs. Somerville. 1 She said, as women grew older, if they lived independent lives, they were pretty sure to be 'women's rights women.' She said the clergy the broadest, who were in harmony with her were very courteous, and that since she had grown old (she's about forty-five) all men were more tolerant of her and forgot the difference of sex. " I felt drawn to her when she was most serious. I told her I had suffered much from doubt, and asked her 1 This bust always stood in Miss Mitchell's parlor at the observatory. 2l8 MARIA MITCHELL if she had ; and she said yes, when she was young ; but that she had had, in her life, rare intervals when she believed she held communion with God, and on those rare periods she had rested in the long intermissions. She laughed, and the tears came to her eyes, all together; she was quick, and all-alive, and so courteous. When she gave me a book she said, ' May I write your whole name? and may I say " from your friend "? ' " Then she hurried on her bonnet, and walked to the station with me ; and her round face, with the blond hair and the light-blue eyes, seemed to me to become beau- tiful as she talked. " In Edinburgh I asked for a photograph of Mary Somerville, and the young man behind the counter replied, ' I don't know who it is.' " In London I asked at a bookstore, which the Murrays recommended, for a photograph of Mrs. Somerville and of Sir George Airy, and the man said if they could be had in London he would get them ; and then he asked, 'Are they English?' and I informed him that Sir George Airy was the astronomer royal ! " ' The Glasgow College for Girls/ Seeing a sign of this sort, I rang the door-bell of the house to which it was attached, entered, and was told the lady was at home. As I waited for her, I took up the ' Prospectus,' and it was enough, ' music, dancing, drawing, needle- work, and English' were the prominent features, and the pupils were children. All well enough, but why call it a college? "When the lady superintendent came in, I told her SECOND EUROPEAN TOUR 219 that I had supposed it was for more advanced students, and she said, ' Oh, it is for girls up to twenty ; one sup- poses a girl is finished by twenty.' " I asked, as modestly as I could, ' Have you any pupils in Latin and mathematics?' and she said, 'No, it's for girls, you know. Dr. M. hopes we shall have some mathematics next year.' ' And,' I asked, ' some Latin ? ' ' Yes, Dr. M. hopes we shall have some Latin ; but I confess I believe Latin and mathematics all bosh ; give them modern languages and accomplishments. I suppose your school is for professional women.' "I told her no; that the daughters of our wealthiest people demand learning; that it would scarcely be con- sidered ' good society ' when the women had neither Latin nor mathematics. " ' Oh, well,' she said, ' they get married here so soon.' " When I asked her if they had lady teachers, she said ' Oh, no [as if that would ruin the institution] ; nothing but first-class masters.' " It was clear that the women taught the needle- work." 220 MARIA MITCHELL CHAPTER XI PAPERS SCIENCE [1874] THE DENVER ECLIPSE [1878] COLORS OF STARS " THE dissemination of information in regard to sci- ence and to scientific investigations relieves the scientist from the small annoyances of extreme ignorance. " No one to-day will expect to receive a letter such as reached Sir John Herschel some years ago, asking for the writer's horoscope to be cast; or such as he received at another time, which asked, Shall I marry? and Have I seen her f " Nor can it be long, if the whole population is some- what educated, that I shall be likely to receive, as I have done, applications for information as to the recovery of stolen goods, or to tell fortunes. " When crossing the Atlantic, an Irish woman came to me and asked me if I told fortunes ; and when I replied in the negative, she asked me if I were not an astronomer. I admitted that I made efforts in that direction. She then asked me what I could tell, if not fortunes. I told her that I could tell when the moon would rise, when the sun would rise, etc. She said, 1 Oh/ in a tone which plainly said, ' Is that all? ' " Only a few winters since, during a very mild winter, a young lad who was driving a team called out to me on the street, and said he had a question to ask me. SCIENCE 22 1 " I stopped ; and he asked, ' Shall we lose our ice- crop this winter? ' " It was January, and it was New England. It took very little learning and no alchemy to foretell that the month of February and the neighborhood of Boston would give ice enough ; and I told him that the ice- crop would be abundant; but I was honest enough to explain to him that my outlook into the future was no better than his. "One of the unfavorable results of the attempt to popularize science is this : the reader of popular scien- tific books is very likely to think that he understands the science itself, when he merely understands what some writer says about science. " Take, for example, the method of determining the distance of the moon from the earth one of the easiest problems in physical astronomy. The method can be told in a few sentences ; yet it took a hundred years to determine it with any degree of accuracy and a hundred years, not of the average work of mankind in science, but a hundred years during which able minds were bent to the problem. " Still, with all the school-masters, and all the teach- ing, and all the books, the ignorance of the unscientific world is enormous ; they are ignorant both ways they underrate the scientific people and they overrate them. There is, on the one hand, the Irish woman who is disappointed because you cannot tell fortunes, and, on the other hand, the cultivated woman who supposes that you must know all science. " I have a friend who wonders that I do not take 222 MARIA MITCHELL my astronomical clock to pieces. She supposes that because I am an astronomer, I must be able to be a clock-maker, while I do not handle a tool if I can help it ! She did not expect to take her piano to pieces because she was musical ! She was as careful not to tinker it as I was not to tinker the clock, which only an expert in clock-making was prepared to handle. " . . . Only a few weeks since I received a letter from a lady who wished to come to make me a visit, and to ' scan the heavens/ as she termed it. Now, just as she wrote, the clock, which I was careful not to meddle with, had been rapidly gaining time, and I was standing before it, watching it from hour to hour, and slightly changing its rate by dropping small weights upon its pendulum. Time is so important an element with the astronomer, that all else is subordinate to it. "Then, too, the uneducated assume the unvarying exactness of mathematical results; while, in reality, mathematical results are often only approximations. We say the sun is 91,000,000 miles from the earth, plus or minus a probable error ; that is, we are right, prob- ably, within, say, 100,000 miles; or, the sun is 91,000,- OOO minus 100,000 miles, or it is 9 1,000,000 plus 100,000 miles off; and this probable error is only a probability. " If we make one more observation it cannot agree with any one of our determinations, and it changes our probable error. " This ignorance of the masses leads to a misconcep- tion in two ways ; the little that a scientist can do, they do not understand, they suppose him to be godlike in his capacity, and they do not see results ; they BUST OF MARIA MITCHELL From Original made by Miss Emma F. Brig-ham in 1877 SCIENCE 223 overrate him and they underrate him they underrate his work. " There is no observatory in this land, nor in any land, probably, of which the question is not asked, ' Are they doing anything? Why don't we hear from them? They should make discoveries, they should publish.' " The one observation made at Greenwich on the planet Neptune was not published until after a century or more it was recorded as a star. The observation had to wait a hundred years, about, before the time had come when that evening's work should bear fruit; but it was good, faithful work, and its time came. " Kepler was years in passing from one of his laws to another, while the school-boy, to-day, rattles off the three as if they were born of one breath. " The scientist should be free to pursue his investiga- tions. He cannot be a scientist and a school-master. If he pursues his science in all his intervals from his class-work, his classes suffer on account of his engross- ments ; if he devotes himself to his students, science suffers ; and yet we all go on, year after year, trying to work the two fields together, and they need different culture and different implements. " 1 878. In the eclipse of this year, the dark shadow fell first on the United States thirty-eight degrees west of Washington, and moved towards the south-east, a circle of darkness one hundred and sixteen miles in diameter; circle overlapping circle of darkness until it could be mapped down like a belt. " The mapping of the dark shadow, with its limita- 224 MARIA MITCHELL tions of one hundred and sixteen miles, lay across the country from Montana, through Colorado, northern and eastern Texas, and entered the Gulf of Mexico between Galveston and New Orleans. This was the region of total eclipse. Looking along this dark strip on the map, each astronomer selected his bit of darkness on which to locate the light of science. " But for the distance from the large cities of the country, Colorado seemed to be a most favorable part of the shadow ; it was little subject to storms, and reputed to be enjoyable in climate and abundant in hospitality. " My party chose Denver, Col. I had a friend who lived in Denver, and she was visiting me. I sought her at once, and with fear and trembling asked, ' Have you a bit of land behind your house in Denver where I could put up a small telescope? ' ' Six hundred miles/ was the laconic reply ! " I felt that the hospitality of the Rocky mountains was at my feet. Space and time are so unconnected ! For an observation which would last two minutes forty seconds, I was offered six hundred miles, after a journey of thousands. " A journey from Boston to Denver makes one hope- ful for the future of our country. We had hour after hour and day after day of railroad travel, over level, unbroken land on which cattle fed unprotected, sum- mer and winter, and which seemed to implore the traveller to stay and to accept its richness. It must be centuries before the now unpeopled land of western Kansas and Colorado can be crowded. THE DENVER ECLIPSE 22$ " We started from Boston a party of two ; at Cincin- nati a third joined us ; at Kansas City we came upon a fourth who was ready to fall into our ranks, and at Denver two more awaited us ; so we were a party of six ' All good women and true.' "All along the road it had been evident that the country was roused to a knowledge of the coming eclipse ; we overheard remarks about it; small telescopes travelled with us, and our landlord at Kansas City, when I asked him to take care of a chronometer, said he had taken care of fifty of them in the previous fort- night. Our party had three telescopes and one chro- nometer. " We had travelled so comfortably all along the Santa Fe road, from Kansas City to Pueblo, that we had for- gotten the possibility of other railroad annoyances than those of heat and dust until we reached Pueblo. At Pueblo all seemed to change. We left the Santa Fe road and entered upon that of the Rio Grande. " Which road was to blame, it is not for me to say, but there was trouble at once about our ' round-trip ticket.' That settled, we supposed all was right. " In sending out telescopes so far as from Boston to Denver, I had carefully taken out the glasses, and packed them in my trunks. I carried the chronometer in my hand. " It was only five hours' travel from Pueblo to Den- ver, and we went on to that city. The- trunks, for some unexplained reason, or for no reason at all, chose to remain at Pueblo. " One telescope-tube reached Denver when we did; 226 MARIA MITCHELL but a telescope-tube is of no value without glasses. We learned that there was a war between the two rail- roads which unite at Pueblo, and war, no matter where or when it occurs, means ignorance and stupidity. "The unit of measure of value which the railroad man believes in is entirely different from that in which the scientist rests his faith. "A war between two railroads seemed very small compared with two minutes forty seconds of observa- tion of a total eclipse. One was terrestrial, the other cosmic. " It was Wednesday when we reached Denver. The eclipse was to occur the following Monday. " We haunted the telegraph-rooms, and sent implor- ing messages. We placed ourselves at the station, and watched the trains as they tossed out their freight ; we listened to every express-wagon which passed our door without stopping, and just as we were trying to find if a telescope could be hired or bought in Denver, the glasses arrived. " It was now Friday ; we must put up tents and tele- scopes, and test the glasses. " It rained hard on Friday nothing could be done. It rained harder on Saturday. It rained hardest of all on Sunday, and hail mingled with the rain. But Mon- day morning was clear and bright. It was strange enough to find that we might camp anywhere around Denver. Our hostess suggested to us to place our- selves on ' McCullough's Addition.' In New York or Boston, if I were about to camp on private grounds I should certainly ask permission. In the far West you THE DENVER ECLIPSE 22 / choose your spot of ground, you dig post-holes and you pitch tents, and you set up telescopes and inhabit the land ; and then the owner of the land comes to you, and asks if he may not put up a fence for you, to keep off intruders, and the nearest residents come to you and offer aid of any kind. " Our camping-place was near the house occupied by sisters of charity, and the black-robed, sweet-faced women came out to offer us the refreshing cup of tea and the new-made bread. " All that we needed was ' space,' and of that there was plenty. " Our tents being up and the telescopes mounted, we had time to look around at the view. The space had the unlimitedness that we usually connect with sea and sky. Our tents were on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which we were about six thousand feet above the sea. The plain was three times as high as the hills of the Hudson-river region, and there arose on the south, almost from west to east, the peaks upon peaks of the Rocky mountains. One needs to live upon such a plateau for weeks, to take in the grandeur of the panorama. " It is always difficult to teach the man of the people that natural phenomena belong as much to him as to scientific people. Camping parties who put up tele- scopes are always supposed to be corporations with particular privileges, and curious lookers-on gather around, and try to enter what they consider a charmed circle. We were remarkably free from specialists of this kind. Camping on the south-west slope of the 228 MARIA MITCHELL hill, we were hidden on the north and east, and another party which chose the brow of the hill was much more attractive to the crowd. Our good serving-man was told to send away the few strollers who approached ; even our friends from the city were asked to remove beyond the reach of voice. " There is always some one to be found in every gathering who will not submit to law. At the time of the total eclipse in Iowa, in 1869, there passed in and out among our telescopes and observers an unknown, closely veiled woman. The remembrance of that occa- sion never comes to my mind without the accompani- ment of a fluttering green veil. " This time it was a man. How he came among us and why he remained, no one can say. Each one sup- posed that the others knew, and that there was good reason for his presence. If I was under the tent, wiping glasses, he stood beside me ; if the photog- rapher wished to make a picture of the party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, ' They do not understand the sacred- ness of the occasion, and the fineness of the condi- tions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none the less a tramp. " Persons who observe an eclipse of the sun always try to do the impossible. They seem to consider it a solemn duty to see the first contact of sun and moon. The moon, when seen in the daytime, looks .like a small faint cloud ; as it approaches the sun it becomes THE DENVER ECLIPSE 2 29 wholly unseen ; and an observer tries to see when this unseen object touches the glowing disc of the sun. " When we look at any other object than the sun, we stimulate our vision. A good observer will remain in the dark for a short time before he makes a delicate observation on a faint star, and will then throw a cap over his head to keep out strong lights. " When we look at the sun, we at once try to deaden its light. We protect our eyes by dark glasses the less of sunlight we can get the better. We calculate exactly at what point the moon will touch the sun, and we watch that point only. The exact second by the chronometer when the figure of the moon touches that of the sun, is always noted. It is not only valuable for the determination of longitude, but it is a check on our knowledge of the moon's motions. Therefore, we try for the impossible. " One of our party, a young lady from California, was placed at the chronometer. She was to count aloud the seconds, to which the three others were to listen. Two others, one a young woman from Missouri, who brought with her a fine telescope, and another from Ohio, besides myself, stood at the three telescopes. A fourth, from Illinois, was stationed to watch general effects, and one special artist, pencil in hand, to sketch views. " Absolute silence was imposed upon the whole party a few minutes before each phenomenon. " Of course we began full a minute too soon, and the constrained position was irksome enough, for even time 230 MARIA MITCHELL is relative, and the minute of suspense is longer than the hour of satisfaction. 1 "The moon, so white in the sky, becomes densely black when it is closely ranging with the sun, and it shows itself as a black notch on the burning disc when the eclipse begins. " Each observer made her record in silence, and then we turned and faced one another, with record in hand we differed more than a second ; it was a large difference. " Between first contact and totality there was more than an hour, and we had little to do but look at the beautiful scenery and watch the slow motion of a few clouds, on a height which was cloud-land to dwellers by the -sea. " Our photographer begged us to keep our positions while he made a picture of us. The only value to the picture is the record that it preserves of the parallelism of the three telescopes. You would say it was stiff and unnatural, did you not know that it was the ordering of Nature herself they all point to the centre of the solar system. " As totality approached, all again took their posi- tions. The corona, which is the ' glory ' seen around the sun, was visible at least thirteen minutes before total- ity ; each of the party took a look at this, and then all was silent, only the count, on and on, of the young 1 As the computed time for the first contact drew near, the breath of the counter grew short, and the seconds were almost gasped and threatened to become inaudible, when Miss Mitchell, without moving her eye from the tube of the telescope, took up the counting, and continued until the young lady recovered herself, which she did immediately. THE DENVER ECLIPSE 2$ I woman at the chronometer. When totality came, even that ceased. " How still it was ! "As the last rays of sunlight disappeared, the corona burst out all around the sun, so intensely bright near the sun that the eye could scarcely bear it ; extending less dazzlingly bright around the sun for the space of about half the sun's diameter, and in some directions sending off streamers for millions of miles. " It was now quick work. Each observer at the telescopes gave a furtive glance at the un-sunlike sun, moved the dark eye-piece from the instrument, replaced it by a more powerful white glass, and prepared to see all that could be seen in two minutes forty seconds. They must note the shape of the corona, its color, its seeming substance, and they must look all around the sun for the ' interior planet.' " There was certainly not the beauty of the eclipse of 1869. Then immense radiations shot out in all directions, and threw themselves over half the sky. In 1869, the rosy prominences were so many, so brilliant, so fantastic, so weirdly changing, that the eye must follow them; now, scarcely a protuberance of color, only a roseate light around the sun as the totality ended. But if streamers and prominences were absent, the corona itself was a great glory. Our special artist, who made the sketch for my party, could not bear the light. " When the two minutes forty seconds were over, each observer left her instrument, turned in silence from the sun, and wrote down brief notes. Happily, some one broke through all rules of order, and shouted out, ' The 232 MARIA MITCHELL shadow ! the shadow ! ' And looking toward the south- east we saw the black band of shadow moving from us, a hundred and sixty miles over the plain, and toward the Indian Territory. It was not the flitting of the closer shadow over the hill and dale : it was a picture which the sun threw at our feet of the dignified march of the moon, in its orbit. " And now we looked around. What a strange orange light there was in the north-east ! what a spectral hue to the whole landscape ! Was it really the same old earth, and not another planet? " Great is the self-denial of those who follow science. They who look through telescopes at the time of a total eclipse are martyrs; they severely deny themselves. The persons who can say that they have seen a total eclipse of the sun are those who rely upon their eyes. My aids, who touched no glasses, had a season of rare enjoyment. They saw Mercury, with its gleam of white light, and Mars, with its ruddy glow ; they saw Regulus come out of the darkening blue on one side of the sun, Venus shimmer and Procyon twinkle near the horizon, and Arcturus shine down from the zenith. " We saw the giant shadow as it left us and passed over the lands of the untutored Indian ; they saw it as it approached from the distant west, as it fell upon the peaks of the mountain-tops, and, in the impressive still- ness, moved directly for our camping-ground. " The savage, to whom it is the frowning of the Great Spirit, is awe-struck and alarmed ; the scholar, to whom it is a token of the inviolability of law, is serious and reverent. COLORS OF STARS 233 "There is a dialogue in some of the old school- readers, and perhaps in some of the new, between a tutor and his two pupils who had been out for a walk. One pupil complained that the way was long, the road was dusty, and the scenery uninteresting; the other was full of delight at the beauties he had found in the same walk. One had walked with his eyes intellectu- ally closed ; the other had opened his eyes wide to all the charms of nature. In some respects we are all, at different times, like each of these boys : we shut our eyes to the enjoyments of nature, or we open them. But we are capable of improving ourselves, even in the use of our eyes we see most when we are most de- termined to see. The will has a wonderful effect upon the perceptive faculties. When we first look up at the myriads of stars seen in a moonless evening, all is confusion to us ; we admire their brilliancy, but we scarcely recognize their grouping. We do not feel the need of knowing much about them. " A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition ; and all persons who, like mariners and soldiers, are left much with the companionship of the stars, only learn to know the prominent clusters, even if they do not know the names given to them in books. " The daily wants of the body do not require that we should say " ' Give me the ways of wandering stars to know The depths of heaven above and earth below.' But we have a hunger of the mind which asks for 234 MARIA MITCHELL knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing. "Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned, not to see what is not. " If we read in to-day's paper that a brilliant comet was seen last night in New York, we are very likely to see it to-night in Boston ; for we take every long, fleecy cloud for a splendid comet. " When the comet of 1680 was expected, a few years ago, to reappear, some young men in Cambridge told Professor Bond that they had seen it ; but Professor Bond did not see it. Continually are amateurs in astronomy sending notes of new discoveries to Bond, or some other astronomers, which are no discoveries at all ! " Astronomers have long supposed the existence of a planet inferior to Mercury; and M. Leverrier has, by mathematical calculation, demonstrated that such a planet exists. He founded his calculations upon the supposed discovery of M. Lesbarcault, who declares that it crossed the sun's disc, and that he saw it and made drawings. The internal evidence, from the man's account, is that he was an honest enthusiast. I have no doubt that he followed the path of a solar spot, and as the sun turned on its axis he mistook the motion for that of the dark spot ; or perhaps the spot changed and became extinct, and another spot closely resembling it broke out and he was deceived ; his wishes all the time being ' father to the thought.' " The eye is as teachable as the hand. Every one COLORS OF STARS 235 knows the most prominent constellations, the Pleiades, the Great Bear, and Orion. Many persons can draw the figures made by the most brilliant stars in these con- stellations, and very many young people look for the ' lost Pleiad.' But common observers know these stars only as bright objects ; they do not perceive that one star differs from another in glory ; much less do they perceive that they shine with differently colored rays. " Those who know Sirius and Betel do not at once perceive that one shines with a brilliant white light and the other burns with a glowing red, as different in their brilliancy as the precious stones on a lapidary's table, perhaps for the same reason. And so there is an end- less variety of tints of paler colors. " We may turn our gaze as we turn a kaleidoscope, and the changes are infinitely more startling, the com- binations infinitely more beautiful; no flower garden presents such a variety and such delicacy of shades. " But beautiful as this variety is, it is difficult to measure it ; it has a phantom-like intangibility we seem not to be able to bring it under the laws of science. " We call the stars garnet and sapphire ; but these are, at best, vague terms. Our language has not terms enough to signify the different delicate shades ; our factories have not the stuff whose hues might make a chromatic scale for them. " In this dilemma, we might make a scale of colors from the stars themselves. We might put at the head of the scale of crimson stars the one known as Hind's, which is four degrees west of Rigel ; we might make 236 MARIA MITCHELL a scale of orange stars, beginning with Betel as orange red ; then we should have Betelgeuze, Aldebaran, /3 Ursae Minoris, Altair and a Canis, a Lyrae, the list gradually growing paler and paler, until we come to a Lyrae, which might be the leader of a host of pale yellow stars, gradually fading off into white. "Most of the stars seen with the naked eye are vari- eties of red, orange, and yellow. The reds, when seen with a glass, reach to violet or dark purple. With a glass, there come out other colors : very decided greens, very delicate blues, browns, grays, and white. If these colors are almost intangible at best, they are rendered more so by the variations of the atmosphere, of the eye, and of the glass. But after these are all accounted for, there is still a . real difference. Two stars of the class known as double stars, that is, so little separated that considerable optical power is nec- essary to divide them, show these different tints very nicely in the same field of the telescope. "Then there comes in the chance that the colors are complementary ; that the eye, fatigued by a brilliant red in the principal star, gives to the companion the color which would make up white light. This happens sometimes ; but beyond this the reare innumerable cases of finely contrasted colors which are not complementary, but which show a real difference of light in the stars; resulting, perhaps, from distance, for some colors COLORS OF STARS 237 travel farther than others, and all colors differ in their order of march, perhaps from chemical differences. " Single blue or green stars are never seen ; they are always given as the smaller companion of a pair. " Out of several hundred observed by Mr. Bishop, forty-five have small companions of a bluish, or green- ish, or purplish color. Almost all of these are stars of the eighth to tenth magnitude ; only once are both seen blue, and only in one case is the large one blue. In almost every case the large star is yellow. The color most prevailing is yellow; but the varieties of yellow are very great. " We may assume, then, that the blue stars are faint ones, and probably distant ones. But as not all faint stars or distant ones are blue, it shows that there is a real difference. In the star called 35 Piscium, the small star shows a peculiar snuffy-brown tinge. "Of two stars in the constellation Ursa Minoris, not double stars, one is orange and the other is green, both very vivid in color. " From age to age the colors of some prominent stars have certainly changed. This would seem more likely to be from change of place than of physical constitution. " Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe. ' All change, no loss, 'tis revolution all.' " Observations of this, kind are peculiarly adapted-to women. Indeed, all astronomical observing seems to be so fitted. The training of a girl fits her for delicate work. The touch of her fingers upon the delicate screws of an astronomical instrument might become 238 MARIA MITCHELL wonderfully accurate in results ; a woman's eyes are trained to nicety of color. The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spider web of the micrometer. Routine observations, too, dull as they are, are less dull than the endless repetition of the same pattern in crochet-work. " Professor Chauvenet enumerates among ' accidental errors in observing/ those arising from imperfections in the senses, as ' the imperfection of the eye in measur- ing small spaces ; of the ear, in estimating small inter- vals of time; of the touch, in the delicate handling of an instrument.' " A girl's eye is trained from early childhood to be keen. The first stitches of the sewing-work of a little child are about as good as those of the mature man. The taking of small stitches, involving minute and equable measurements of space, is a part of every girl's training; she becomes skilled, before she is aware of it, in one of the nicest peculiarities of astronomical obser- vation. " The ear of a child is less trained, except in the case of a musical education ; but the touch is a delicate sense given in exquisite degree to a girl, and her training comes in to its aid. She threads a needle almost as soon as she speaks ; she touches threads as delicate as the spider-web of a micrometer. " Then comes in the girl's habit of patient and quiet work, peculiarly fitted to routine observations. The girl who can stitch from morning to night would find two or three hours in the observatory a relief." RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 239 CHAPTER XII RELIGIOUS BELIEFS COMMENTS ON SERMONS CONCORD SCHOOL WHITTIER COOKING SCHOOLS ANECDOTES PARTLY in consequence of her Quaker training, and partly from her own indifference towards creeds and sects, Miss Mitchell was entirely ignorant of the pecu- liar phrases and customs used by rigid sectarians ; so that she was apt to open her eyes in astonishment at some of the remarks and sectarian prejudices which she met after her settlement at Vassar College. She was a good learner, however, and after a while knew how to receive in silence that which she did not under- stand. " Miss Mitchell," asked one good missionary, " what is your favorite position in prayer?" " Flat upon my back ! " the answer came, swift as lightning. In 1854 she wrote in her diary: "There is a God, and he is good, I say to. myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed." Miss Mitchell never joined any church, but for years before she left Nantucket she attended the Unitarian church, and her sympathies, as long as she lived, were with that denomination, especially with the more liber- ally inclined portion. There were always a few of the teachers and some of the students who sympathized 240 MARIA MITCHELL with her in her views; but she usually attended the college services on Sunday. President Taylor, of Vassar College, in his remarks at her funeral, stated that all her life Professor Mitchell had been seeking the truth, that she was not willing to accept any statement without studying into the matter herself, " And," he added, " I think she has found the truth she was seeking." Miss Mitchell never obtruded her views upon others, nor did she oppose their views. She bore in silence what she could not believe, but always insisted upon the right of private judgment. Miss W., a teacher at Vassar, was fretting at being obliged to attend chapel exercises twice a day when she needed the time for rest and recreation, and applied to Miss Mitchell for help in getting away from it. After some talk Miss Mitchell said : " Oh, well, do as / do sit back folding your arms, and think of something pleasant ! " "Sunday, Dec. 18, 1866. We heard two sermons: the first in the afternoon, by Rev. Mr. A., Baptist, the second in the evening, by Rev. Mr. B., Congregationalist. " Rev. Mr. A. took a text from Deuteronomy, about ' Moses ; ' Rev. Mr. B. took a text from Exodus, about ' Moses;' and I am told that the sermon on the preced- ing Sunday was about Moses. " It seems to me strange that since we have the history of Christ in the New Testament, people con- tinue to preach about Moses. " Rev. Mr. A. was a man of about forty years of age. He chanted rather than read a hymn. He chanted a RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 241 sermon. His description of the journey of Moses towards Canaan had some interesting points, but his manner was affected ; he cried, or pretended to cry, at the pathetic points. I hope he really cried, for a weak- ness is better than an affectation of weakness. He said, * The unbeliever is already condemned.' It seems to me that if anything would make me an infidel, it would be the threats lavished against unbelief. " Mr. B. is a self-made man, the son of a blacksmith. He brought the anvil, the hammer, and bellows into the pulpit, and he pounded and blew, for he was in ear- nest. I felt the more respect for him because he was in earnest. But when he snapped his fingers and said, 1 1 don't care that for the religion of a man which does not begin with prayer,' I was provoked at his forget- fulness of the character of his audience. " 1867. I am more and more disgusted with the preaching that I hear ! . . . Why cannot a man act himself, be himself, and think for himself ? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word -is weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be. If I reach a girl's heart or head, I know I must reach it through my own, and not from bigger hearts and heads than mine. " March, 1873. There was something so genuine and so sincere in George Macdonald that he took those of us who were emotional completely not by storm so much as by gentle breezes. . . . What he said wasn't profound except as it reached the depths of the heart. . . . He gave us such broad theological lessons ! In his sermon he said, ' Don't trouble your- 242 MARIA MITCHELL self about what you believe, but do the will of God.' His consciousness of the existence of God and of his immediate supervision was felt every minute by those who listened. , . ^ > " He stayed several days at the college, and the girls will never get over the good effects of those three days the cheerier views of life and death. ". . . Rev. Dr. Peabody preached for us yesterday, and was lovely. Every one was charmed in spite of his old-fashioned ways. His voice is very bad, but it was such a simple, common-sense discourse ! Mr. Vassar said if that was Unitarianism, it was just the right thing. "Aug. 29, 1875. Went to a Baptist church, and heard Rev. Mr. F. * Christ the way, the only way.' The sermon was wholly without logic, and yet he said, near its close, that those who had followed him must be convinced that this was true. He said a traveller whom he met on the cars admitted that we all desired heaven, but believed that there were as many ways to it as to Boston. Mr. F. said that God had prepared but one way, just as the government in those countries of the Old World whose cities were upon almost inac- cessible pinnacles had prepared one way of approach. (It occurred to me that if those governments possessed godlike powers, they would have made a great many ways.) " Mr. F. was very severe upon those who expect to be saved by their own deserts. He said, ' You tender a farthing, when you owe a million.' I could not see what they owed at all ! At this point he might well have given some attention to ' good works; ' and if he must RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 243 mention ' debt,' he might well remind them that they sat in an unpaid-for church ! "It was plain that he relied upon his anecdotes for the hold upon his audience, and the anecdotes were attached to the main discourse by a very slender thread of connection. I felt really sad to know that not a listener would lead a better life for that sermon no man or woman went out cheered, or comforted, or stimulated. " On the whole, it is strange that people who go to church are no worse than they are ! "Sept. 26, 1880. A clergyman said, in his sermon, ' I do not say with the Frenchman, if there were no God it would be well to invent one, but I say, if there were no future state of rewards and punishments, it would be better to believe in one.' Did he mean to say, ' Better to believe a lie ' ? " March 27, 1881. Dr. Lyman Abbott preached. I was surprised to find how liberal Congregational preach- ing had become, for he said he hoped and expected to see women at the bar and in the pulpit, although he believed they would always be exceptional cases. He preached mainly on the motherhood of God, and his whole sermon was a tribute to womanhood. V * - . I rejoice at the ideal womanhood of purity which he put before the girls. I wish some one would preach purity to young men. "July i, 1883. I went to hear Rev. Mr. at the Universalist church. He enumerated some of the dangers that threaten us : one was ' The doctrines of scientists/ and he named Tyndale, Huxley, and Spencer. I was most surprised at his fear of these men. Can the 244 MARIA MITCHELL study of truth do harm? Does not every true scientist seek only to know the truth? And in our deep igno- rance of what is truth, shall we dread the search for it? " I hold the simple student of nature in holy rever- ence ; and while there live sensualists, despots, and men who are wholly self-seeking, I cannot bear to have these sincere workers held up in the least degree to reproach. And let us have truth, even if the truth be the awful denial of the good God. We must face the light and not bury our heads in the earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on, will reveal new ways in which God works, and bring to us deeper revelations of the wholly unknown. " The physical and the spiritual seem to be, at pres- ent, separated by an impassable gulf; but at any moment that gulf may be overleaped possibly a new revelation may come. . . . ... ''April, 1878. I called on Professor Henry at the Smithsonian Institute. He must be in his eightieth year ; he has been ill and seems feeble, but he is still the majestic old man, unbent in figure and undimmed in eye. " I always remember, when I see him, the remark of Dorothy Dix, ' He is the truest man that ever lived.' " We were left alone for a little while, and he intro- duced the subject of his nearness to death. He said, 'The National Academy has raised $40,000, the interest of which is for myself and family as long as any of us live [he has daughters only], and in view of my death it is a great comfort to me.' I ventured to ask him if he feared death at all. He said, 'Not in the least; I RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 245 have thought of it a great deal, and have come to feel it a friend. I cherish the belief in immortality; I have suffered much, at times, in regard to that matter.' Scientifically considered, only, he thought the proba- bility was on the side of continued existence, as we must believe that spirit existed independent of matter. " He went to a desk and pulled out from a drawer an old copy of ' Gregory's Astronomy/ and said, ' That book changed my whole life I read it when I was sixteen years old ; I had read, previously, works of the imagination only, and at sixteen, being ill in bed, that book was near me ; I read it, and determined to study science.' I asked him if a life of science was a good life, and he said that he felt that it was so. ". . . When I was travelling with Miss S., who was near-sighted and kept her eyes constantly half- shut, it seemed to me that every other young lady I met had wide, staring eyes. Now, after two years sitting by a person who never reasons, it strikes me that every other person whom I meet has been think- ing hard, and his logic stands out a prominent charac- teristic. " Aug. 27, 1879. Scientific Association met at Sara- toga. . . . Professor Peirce, now over seventy years old, was much the same as ever. He went on in the cars with us, and was reading Mallock's ' Is Life Worth Living?' and I asked, 'Is it?' to which Profes- sor Peirce replied, 'Yes, I think it is.' Then I asked, 1 If there is no future state, is life worth living? ' He replied, 'Indeed it is not; life is a cruel tragedy if there is no immortality.' I asked him if he conceived 246 MARIA MITCHELL of the future life as one of embodiment, and he said 'Yes; I believe with St. Paul that there is a spiritual body. . . .' " Professor Peirce's paper was on the ' Heat of the Sun;' he considers the sun fed not by impact of meteors, but by the compression of meteors. I did not think it very sound. He said some good things : 'Where the truth demands, accept; what the truth denies, reject/ "Concord, Mass., 1879. To establish a school of philosophy had been the dream of Alcott's life ; and there he sat as I entered the vestry of a church on one of the hottest days in August. He looked full as young as he did twenty years ago, when he gave us a ' conversation ' in Lynn. " Elizabeth Peabody came into the room, and walked up to the seat of the rulers ; her white hair streamed over her shoulders in wild carelessness, and she was as careless as ever about her whole attire, but it was beautiful to see the attention shown to her by Mr. Alcott and Mr. Sanborn. " Emerson entered, pale, thin, almost ethereal in countenance, followed by his daughter, who sat be- side him and watched every word that he uttered. On the whole, it was the same Emerson he stumbled at a quotation as he always did ; but his thoughts were such as only Emerson could have thought, and the sentences had the Emersonian pithiness. He made his frequent sentences very emphatic. It was impossible to see any thread of connection ; but it always was so the oracular sentences made the charm. The subject was ' Memory/ He said, ' We remember the selfish- RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 247 ness or the wrong act that we have committed for years. It is as it should be Memory is the police- officer of the universe.' 'Architects say that the arch never rests, and so the past never rests.' (Was it, never sleeps?) 'When I talk with my friend who is a gene- alogist, I feel that I am talking with a ghost.' "The little vestry, fitted perhaps for a hundred people, was packed with two hundred, all people of an intellectual cast of face, and the attention was intense. The thermometer was ninety in the shade ! " I did not speak to Mr. Emerson ; I felt that I must not give him a bit of extra fatigue. "July 12, 1880. The school of philosophy has built a shanty for its meetings, but it is a shanty to be proud of, for it is exactly adapted to its needs. It is a long but not low building, entirely without finish, but water-tight. A porch for entrance, and a recess simi- lar at the opposite end, which makes the place for the speakers. There was a small table upon the platform on which were pond lilies, some shelves around, and a few busts one of Socrates, I think. " I went in the evening to hear Dr. Harris on ' Philos- ophy.' The rain began to come down soon after I entered, and my philosophy was not sufficient to keep me from the knowledge that I had neither overshoes nor umbrella ; I remembered, too, that it was but a nar- row foot-path through the wet grass to the omnibus. But I listenecf to Dr. Harris, and enjoyed it. He lauded Fichte as the most accurate philosopher follow- ing Kant he said not of the greatest breadth, but the most acute. 248 MARIA MITCHELL " After Dr. Harris' address, Mr. Alcott made a few remarks that were excellent, and said that when we had studied philosophy for fifteen years, as the lecturer had done, we might know something; but as it was, he had pulled * us to pieces and then put us together again. " The audience numbered sixty persons. "May, 1880. I have just finished Miss Peabody's account of Channing. I have been more interested in Miss Peabody than in Channing, and have felt how valuable she must have been to him. How many of Channing' s sermons were instigated by her questions ! .' Y . Miss Peabody must have been very remarkable as a young woman to ask the questions which she asked at twenty. " April, 1 88 1. The waste of flowers on Easter Sun- day distressed me. Something is due to the flowers themselves. They are massed together like a bushel of corn, and look like red and white sugar-plums as seen in a confectioner's window. " A pillow of flowers is a monstrosity. A calla lily in a vase is a beautiful creation ; so is a single rose. But when the rose is crushed by a pink on each side of it, and daisies crush the pinks, and azaleas surround the daisies, there is no beauty and no fitness. " The cathedral had no flowers. "Aug. 22, 1882. We visited Whittier; we found him at lunch, but he soon came into the parlor. He was very chatty, and seemed glad to see us. Mrs. L. was with me, and Whittier was very ready to write in the album which she brought with her, belonging to RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 249 her adopted son. We drifted upon theological subjects, and I asked Mr. Whittier if he thought that we fell from a state of innocence ; he replied that he thought we were better than Adam and Eve, and if they fell, they ' fell up.' " His faith seems to be unbounded in the goodness of God, and his belief in moral accountability. He said, ' I am a good deal of a Quaker in my conviction that a light comes to me to dictate to me what is right.' We stayed about an hour, and we were afraid it would be too much for him; but Miss Johnson, his cousin, who lives with him, assured us that it was good for him ; and he himself said that he was sorry to have us go. " One thing that he said, I noted : that his fancy was for farm-work, but he was not strong enough ; he had as a young man some literary ambition, but never thought of attaining the reputation which had come to him. "July 31, 1883. I have had two or three rich days ! On Friday last I went to Holderness, N.H., to the Asquam House ; I had been asked by Mrs. T. to join her party. There were at this house Mr. Whittier, Mr. and Mrs. Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale, Mr. Williams, the Chinese scholar, his brother, an Episcopal clergyman, and several others. The house seemed full of fine, cultivated people. We stayed two days and a half. "And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The panorama is complete 250 MARIA MITCHELL one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes lie the mountains. We do not see Mt. Washington. The house has a piazza nearly all around it. We had a room on the first floor large, and with two windows opening to the floor. "The programme of the day's work was delightfully monotonous. For an hour or so after breakfast we sat in the ladies' parlor, we sewed, and we told anec- dotes. Whittier talked beautifully, almost always on the future state and his confidence in it. Occasion- ally he touched upon persons. He seems to have loved Lydia Maria Child greatly. "When the cool of the morning was over, we went out upon the piazza, and later on we went under the trees, where, it is said, Whittier spends most of the time. " There was little of the old-time theology in his views ; his faith has been always very firm. Mr. Cart- land asked me one day if I really felt there was any doubt of the immortality of the soul. I told him that on the whole I believed it more than I doubted it, but I could not say that I felt no doubt. Whittier asked me if there were no immortality if I should be distressed by it, and I told him that I should be exceedingly dis- tressed ; that it was the only thing that I craved. He said that ' annihilation was better for the wicked than everlasting punishment,' and to that I assented. He said that he thought there might be persons so depraved as not to be worth saving. I asked him if God made such. Nobody seemed ready to reply. Besides my- self there was another of the party to whom a dying RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 2$ I friend had promised to return, if possible, but had not come. "Whittier believed that they did sometimes come. He said that of all whom he had lost, no one would be so welcome to him as Lydia Maria Child. "We held a little service in the parlor of the hotel, and Mrs. C. read the fourteenth chapter of John. Rev. Mr. W. read a sermon from ' The pure in heart shall see God/ written by Parkhurst, of New York. He thought the child should be told that in heaven he should have his hobby-horse. After the service, when we talked it over, I objected to telling the child this. Whittier did not object ; he said that Luther told his little boy that he should have a little dog with a golden tail in heaven. "Aug. 26, 1886. I have been to see an exhibition of a cooking school. I found sixteen girls in the base- ment of a school-house. They had long tables, across which stretched a line of gas-stoves and jets of gas. Some of the girls were using saucepans ; they set them upon the stove, and then sat down where they could see a clock while the boiling process went on. " At one table a girl was cutting out doughnuts ; at another a girl was making a pudding a layer of bits of bread followed by a layer of fruit. Each girl had her rolling-pin, and moulding-board or saucepan. " The chief peculiarity of these processes was the cleanliness. The rolling-pins were clean, the knives were clean, the aprons were clean, the hands were clean. Not a drop was spilled, not a crumb was dropped. " If into the kitchen of the crowded mother there 252 MARIA MITCHELL could come the utensils, the commodities, the clean towels, the ample time, there would come, without the lessons, a touch of the millennium. " I am always afraid of manual-labor schools. I am not afraid that these girls could not read, for every American girl reads, and to read is much more impor- tant than to cook ; but I am afraid that not all can write some of them were not more than twelve years old. "And what of the boys? Must a common cook always be a girl? and must a boy not cook unless on the top of the ladder, with the pay of the president of Harvard College? " I am jealous for the schools ; I have heard a gen- tleman who stands high in science declare that the cooking schools would eventually kill out every literary college in the land for women. But why not for men? If the food for the body is more important than the food for the mind, let us destroy the latter and accept the former, but let us not continue to do what has been tried for fifteen hundred years, to keep one half of the world to the starvation of the mind, in order to feed better the physical condition of the other half. " Let us have cooks ; but let us leave it a matter of choice, as we leave the dressmaking and the shoe- making, the millinery and the carpentry, free to be chosen ! " There are cultivated and educated women who enjoy cooking; so there are cultivated men who enjoy Kensington embroidery. Who objects? But take care that some rousing of the intellect comes first, that it may be an enlightened choice, and do not so fill the RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 253 day with bread and butter and stitches that no time is left for the appreciation of Whittier, letting at least the simple songs of daily life and the influence of rhythm beautify the dreary round of the three meals a day." Miss Mitchell had a stock of conundrums on hand, and was a good guesser. She told her stories at all times when they happened to come into her mind. She would arrive at her sister's house, just from Poughkeepsie on a vacation, and after the threshold was crossed and she had said " Good morning," in a clear voice to be heard by all within her sight, she would, perhaps, say, " Well, I have a capital story which I must tell before I take my bonnet off, or I shall forget it ! " And there went with her telling an action, voice, and manner which added greater point to the story, but which cannot be described. One of her associates at Vassar, in recalling some of her anecdotes, writes : " Professor Mitchell was quite likely to stand and deliver herself of a bright little speech before taking her seat at breakfast. It was as though the short walk from the observatory had been an inspiration to thought." She was quick at repartee. On one occasion Char- lotte Cushman and her friend Miss Stebbins were visiting Miss Mitchell at Vassar. Miss Mitchell took them out for a drive, and pointed out the different objects of interest as they drove along the banks of the Hudson, " What is that fine building on the hill?" asked Miss Cushman. "That," said Miss Mitchell, "was a boys' school, originally, but it is now used as a hotel, where they charge five dollars a day ! " " Five dollars a day ? " exclaimed Miss Cushman ; " Jupiter Ammon ! " " No," 254 MARIA MITCHELL said Miss Stebbins, " Jupiter Mammon ! " -" Not at all," said Miss Mitchell, " Jupiter gammon!" " Farewell, Maria," said an old Friend, " I hope the Lord will be with thee." " Good-by," she replied, " I know he will be with you." A characteristic trait in Miss Mitchell was her aver- sion to receiving unsolicited advice in regard to her private affairs. " A suggestion is an impertinence," she would often say. The following anecdote shows how she received such counsel : A literary man of more than national reputation said to one of her admirers, " I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitchell." At her solicitation he explained why ; and his reason was, as she had anticipated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitchell. During the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which some self-important men extend to all women indiscriminately, he proceeded to inform her that her manner of living was not in accordance with his ideas of expediency. " Now," he said, " instead of going for each one of your meals all the way from your living-rooms in the observatory over to the dining-hall in the college building, I should think it would be far more convenient and sensible for you to get your breakfast, at least, right in your own apartments. In the morning you could make a cup of coffee and boil an egg with almost no trouble." At which Professor Mitchell drew herself up with the air of a tragic queen, saying, " And is my time worth no more than to boil eggs ? " DEATH 255 CHAPTER XIII MISS MITCHELL'S LETTERS WOMAN SUFFRAGE MEMBERSHIP IN VARIOUS SOCIETIES PUBLISHED ARTICLES DEATH CONCLUSION Miss MITCHELL was a voluminous letter writer and an excellent correspondent, but her letters are not essays, and not at all in the approved style of the " Complete Letter Writer." If she had any particular thing to communicate, she rushed into the subject in the first line. In writing to her own family and intimate friends, she rarely signed her full name; sometimes she left it out altogether, but ordinarily " M. M." was appended abruptly when she had expressed all that she had to say. She wrote as she talked, with directness and promptness. No one, in watching her while she was writing a letter, ever saw her pause to think what she should say next or how she should express the thought. When she came to that point, the " M. M." was instantly added. She had no secretive- ness, and in looking over her letters it has been almost impossible to find one which did not contain too much that was personal, either about herself or others, to make it proper; especially as she herself would be very unwilling to make the affairs of others public. "Oct. 22, i860. I have spent $100 on dress this year. I have a ver> pretty new felt bonnet of the 256 MARIA MITCHELL fashionable shape, trimmed with velvet; it cost only $7, which, of course, was pitifully cheap for Broadway. If thou thinks after $100 it wouldn't be extravagant for me to have a waterproof cloak and a linsey-woolsey morning dress, please to send me patterns of the latter material and a description of waterproofs of various prices. They are so ugly, and I am so ditto, that I feel if a few dollars, more or less, would make me look better, even in a storm, I must not mind it." " My orthodoxy is settled beyond dispute, I trust, by the following circumstance : The editor of a New York magazine has written to me to furnish an article for the Christmas number on ' The Star in the East.' I have ventured, in my note of declination, to mention that if I investigated that subject I might decide that there was no star in the case, and then what would become of me, and where should I go ? Since that he has not written, so I may have hung myself! "1879. April 25. I have 'done' New York very much as we did it thirty years ago. On Saturday I went to Miss Booth's reception, and it was like Miss Lynch's, only larger than Miss Lynch's was when I was there. . . . Miss Booth and a friend live on Fifty- ninth street, and have lived together for years. Miss Booth is a nice-looking woman. She says she has often been told that she looked like me ; she has gray hair and black eyes, but is fair and well-cut in feature. I had a very nice time. " On Sunday I went to hear Frothingham, and he was at his very best. The subject was ' Aspirations of Man,' and the sermon was rich in thought and in word. DEATH 257 ,~ Frothingham's discourse was more cheery than usual ; he talked about the wonderful idea of personal immortality, and he said if it be a dream of the imagi- nation let us worship the imagination. He spoke of Mrs. Child's book on ' Aspirations,' and I shall order it at once. The only satire was such a sentence as this : on speaking of a piece of Egyptian sculpture he said, ' The gates of heaven opened to the good, not to the orthodox/ " To-day, Monday, I have been to a public school (a primary) and to Stewart's mansion. I asked the major- domo to take us through the rooms on the lower floor, which he did. I know of no palace which comes up to it. The palaces always have a look as if at some point they needed refurbishing up. I suppose that Mrs. Stewart uses that dining-room, but it did not look as if it was made to eat in. I still like Ger6me's 1 Chariot Race ' better than anything else of his. The ' Horse Fair ' was too high up for me to enjoy it, and a little too mixed up. " 1873. St. Petersburg is another planet, and, strange to say, is an agreeable planet. Some of these Euro- peans are far ahead of us in many things. I think we are in advance only in one universal democracy of freedom. But then, that is everything. "Nov. 17, 1875. I think you are right to decide to make your home pleasant at any sacrifice which in- volves only silence. And you are so all over a radi- cal, that it won't hurt you to be toned down a little, and in a few years, as the world moves, your family will have moved one way and you the other a little, 258 MARIA MITCHELL and you will suddenly find yourself on the same plane. It is much the way that has been between Miss and myself. To-day she is more of a women's rights woman than I was when I first knew her, while I begin to think that the girls would better dress at tea- time, though I think on that subject we thought alike at first, so I'll take another example. " I have learned to think that a young girl would better not walk to town alone, even in the daytime. When I came to Vassar I should have allowed a child to do it. But I never knew much of the world never shall nor will you. And as we were both born a little deficient in worldly caution and worldly policy, let us receive from others those lessons, do as well as we can, and keep our heart unworldly if our manners take on something of those ways. "Oct. 25, 1875. . v . I have scarcely got over the tire of the congress 1 yet, although it is a week since I returned. I feel as if a great burden was lifted from my soul. You will see my ' speech' in the 'Woman's Journal/ but in the last sentence it should be ' eastward ' and not ' ^r//2ward.' It was a grand affair, and babies came in arms. School-boys stood close to the platform, and school-girls came, books in hand. The hall was a beautiful opera-house, and could hold at least one thou- sand seven hundred. It was packed and jammed, and rough men stood in the aisles. When I had to speak to announce a paper I stood very still until they became quiet. Once, as I stood in that way, a man at the 1 The annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Women, of which Miss Mitchell was president. It was held at Syracuse, N.Y., in 18/5. DEATH 259 extreme rear, before I had spoken a word, shouted out, 1 Louder ! ' We all burst into a laugh. Then, of course, I had to make them quiet again. I lifted the little mallet, but I did not strike it, and they all became still. I was surprised at the good breeding of such a crowd. In the evening about half was made up of men. I could not have believed that such a crowd would keep still when I asked them to. " They say I did well. Think of my developing as a president of a social science society in my old age ! " Miss Mitchell took no prominent part in the woman suffrage movement, but she believed in it firmly, and its leaders were some of her most highly valued friends. "Sept. 7, 1875. Went to a picnic for woman suf- frage at a beautiful grove at Medfield, Mass. It was a gathering of about seventy-five persons (mostly from Needham), whose president seemed to be vigorous and good-spirited. " The main purpose of the meeting was to try to affect public sentiment to such an extent as to lead to the defeat of a man who, when the subject of woman suffrage was before the Legislature, said that the women had all they wanted now that they could get anything with ' their eyes as bright as the buttons on an angel's coat.' Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Rev. Mr. Bush, Miss Eastman, and William Lloyd Garrison spoke. " Garrison did not look a day older than when I first saw him, forty years ago; he spoke well they said with less fire than he used in his younger days. Gar- rison said what every one says that the struggle for women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again;. 260 MARIA MITCHELL that as he looked around at the audience beneath the trees, it seemed to be the same scene that he had known before. " . . . We had a very good bit of missionary work done at our table (at Vassar) to-day. A man whom we all despise began to talk against voting by women. I felt almost inclined to pay him something for his remarks. " A group from the Washington Women Suffrage Association stopped here to-day. , . . I liked Susan B. Anthony very much. She seemed much worn, but was all alive. She is eighteen months younger than I, but seems much more alert. I suppose brickbats are livelier than logarithms ! " Miss Mitchell was a member of several learned soci- eties. She was the first woman elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose headquarters are at Boston. In 1869 she was chosen a member of the American Philosophical Society, a society founded by Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia. The American Association for the Advancement of Science made her a member in the early part of its existence. Miss Mitchell was one of the earliest mem- bers of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Women. At one period she was president of the association, and for many years served as chairman of the committee on science. In this latter capacity she reached, through circulars and letters, women studying science in all parts of the country; and the DEATH 26l reports, as shown from year to year, show a wonderful increase in the number of such women. She was a member, also, of the New England Women's Club, of Boston, and after her annual visit at Christmas she entertained her students at Vassar with descriptions of the receptions and meeting of that body. She was also a member of the New York Sorosis. She re- ceived the degree of Ph.D. from Rutgers Female College in 1870, her first degree of LL.D. from Hanover College in 1832, and her last LL.D. from Co- lumbia College in 1887. Miss Mitchell had no ambition to appear in print, and most of her published articles were in response to applications from publishers. A paper entitled " Mary Somerville " appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly" for May, 1860. There were several articles in " Silliman's Journal," mostly results of observations on Jupiter and Saturn, a few popular science papers in " Hours at Home," and one on the " Herschels," printed in " The Century " just after her death. Miss Mitchell also read a few lectures to small socie- ties, and to one or two girls' schools; but she never allowed such outside work to interfere with her duties at Vassar College, to which she devoted herself heart and soul. When the failure of her health became apparent to the members of her family, it was with the utmost diffi- culty that Miss Mitchell could be prevailed upon to resign her position. She had fondly hoped to remain at Vassar until she should be seventy years old, of 262 MARIA MITCHELL which she lacked about six months. It was hoped that complete rest might lead to several years more of happy life for her ; but it was not to be so she died in Lynn, June 28, 1889. It was one of Miss Mitchell's boasts that she had earned a salary for over fifty years, without any inter- mission. She also boasted that in July, 1883, when she slipped and fell, spraining herself so that she was obliged to remain in the house a day or two, it was the first time in her memory when she had remained in the house a day. In fact, she made a point of walking out every day, no matter what the weather might be. A serious fall, during her illness in Lynn, stopped forever her daily walks. She had resigned her position in January, 1888. The resignation was laid on the table until the follow- ing June, at which time the trustees made her Professor Emeritus, and offered her a home for life at the observ- atory. This offer she did not accept, preferring to live with her family in Lynn. The following extracts from letters which she received at this time show with what reverence and love she was regarded by faculty and students. "Jan. 9, 1888. . . . You may be sure that we shall be glad to do all we can to honor one whose faith- ful service and honesty of heart and life have been among the chief inspirations of Vassar College through- out its history. Of public reputation you have doubtless had enough, but I am sure you cannot have too much of the affection and esteem which we feel toward you, who have had the privilege of working with you." DEATH 263 " Jan. 10, 1888. You will consent, you must consent, to having your home here, and letting the work go. It is not astronomy that is wanted and needed, it is Maria Mitchell. . . . The richest part of my life here is connected with you. ... I cannot picture Vassar without you. There's nothing to point to ! " " May 5, 1889. In all the great wonder of life, you have given me more of what I have wanted than any other creature ever gave me. I hoped I should amount to something for your sake." Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, at one time resident physician at the college, said of her : " She was quick to with- draw objections when she was convinced of error in her judgment. I well remember her opposition to the ground I took in my ' maidea speech ' in faculty meet- ing, and how, at supper, she stood, before sitting down, to say, ' You were right this afternoon. I have thought the matter over, and, while I do not like to believe it, I think it is true.' " Of her rooms at the observatory, Miss Grace Anna Lewis, who had been a guest, wrote thus: " Her furni- ture was plain and simple, and there was a frank sim- plicity corresponding therewith which made me believe she chose to have it so. It looked natural for her. I think I should have been disappointed had I found her rooms fitted up with undue elegance." " Professor Mitchell's position at Vassar gave astron- omy a prominence there that it has never had in any- other college for women, and in but few for men. I suppose it would have made no difference what she had taught. Doubtless she never suspected how many 264 MARIA MITCHELL students endured the mathematical work of junior Astronomy in order to be within range of her magnetic personality." (From "Wide Awake," September, 1889.) A graduate writes : " Her personality was so strong that it was felt all over the college, even by those who were not in her department, and who only admired her from a distance." Extract from a letter written after her death by a former pupil: "I count Maria Mitchell's services to Vassar and her pupils infinitely valuable, and her charac- ter and attainments great beyond anything that has yet been told. ... I was one of the pupils upon whom her freedom from all the shams and self-deceptions made an impression that elevated my whole standard, mental and moral. . . . The influence of her own personal character sustains its supreme test in the evidence con- stantly accumulating, that it strengthens rather than weakens with the lapse of time. Her influence upon her pupils who were her daily companions has been permanent, character-moulding, and unceasingly pro- gressive." President Taylor, in his address at her funeral, said : " If I were to select for comment the one most striking trait of her character, I should name her genuineness. There was no false note in Maria Mitchell's thinking or utterance. . . . "One who has known her kindness to little children, who has watched her little evidences of thoughtful care for her associates and friends, who has seen her put aside her own long-cherished rights that she might DEATH 265 make the way of a new and untried officer easier, can- not forget the tenderer side of her character. . . . " But it would be vain for me to try to tell just what it was in Miss Mitchell that attracted us who loved her. It was this combination of great strength and inde- pendence, of deep affection and tenderness, breathed through and through with the sentiment of a perfectly genuine life, which has made for us one of the pil- grim-shrines of life the study in the observatory of Vassar College where we have known her at home, surrounded by the evidences of her honorable profes- sional career. She has been an impressive figure in our time, and one whose influence lives." INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON the 1 7th 01 December, 1831, a gold medal of the value of twenty ducats was founded, at the suggestion of Professor Schumacher, of Altona, by his Majesty Frederic VI., at that time king of Denmark, to be awarded to any person who should first discover a telescopic comet. This foundation and the conditions on which the medal would be awarded were announced to the public in the " Astronomische Nachrichten" for the 20th of March, .1832. The regulations underwent a revision after a few years, and in April, 1840 ("Astronomische Nachrichten," No. 400), were republished as follows : " i . The medal will be given to the first discoverer of any comet, which, at the time of its discovery, is invisible to the naked eye, and whose periodic time is unknown. " 2. The discoverer, if a resident of any part of Europe except Great Britain, is to make known his discovery to Mr. Schumacher at Altona. If a resident in Great Britain, or any other quarter of the globe except the continent of Europe, he is to make his discovery known directly to Mr. Francis Baily, London. [Since Mr. Baily's decease, G. B. Airy, Esq., Astronomer Royal, has been substituted in this and in the 7th and 8th articles of the regulations.] " 3. This communication must be made by the first post after the discovery. If there is no regular mail at the place of dis- covery, the first opportunity of any other -kind must be made use of, without waiting for other observations. ' Exact compli- ance with this condition is indispensable. If this condition is (267) 268 MARIA MITCHELL not complied with, and only one person discovers the comet, no medal will be given for the discovery. Otherwise, the medal will be assigned to the discoverer who earliest complies with the condition. " 4. The communication must not only state as exactly as possible the time of the discovery, in order to settle the ques- tion between rival claims, but also as near as may be the place of the comet, and the direction in which it is moving, as far as these points can be determined from the observations of one night. "5. If the observations of one night are not sufficient to settle these points, the enunciation of the discovery must still be made, in compliance with the third article. As soon as a second observation is made, it must be communicated in like manner with the first, and with it the longitude of the place where the discovery is made, unless it take place at some known observatory. The expectation of obtaining a second observation will never be received as a satisfactory reason for postponing the communication of the first. " 6. The medal will be assigned twelve months after the discovery of the comet, and no claim will be admitted after that period. " 7. Messrs. Baily and Schumacher are to decide if a dis- covery has been made. If they differ, Mr. Gauss, of Gottin- gen, is to decide. " 8. Messrs. Baily and Schumacher have agreed to com- municate mutually to each other every announcement of a discovery. "Altona, April, 1840." On the ist of October, 1847, at half- past ten o'clock, P.M., a telescopic comet was discovered by Miss Maria Mitchell, of Nantucket, nearly vertical above Polaris about five de- grees. The further progress and history of the discovery will INTRODUCTORY NOTE 269 sufficiently appear from the following correspondence. On the 3d of October the same comet was seen at half-past seven, P.M., at Rome, by Father de Vico, and information of the fact was immediately communicated by him to Professor Schumacher at Altona. On the yth of October, at twenty minutes past nine, P.M., it was observed by Mr. W. R. Dawes, at Camden Lodge, Cranbrook, Kent, in England, and on the nth it was seen by Madame Riimker, the wife of the direc- tor of the observatory at Hamburg. Mr. Schumacher, in announcing this last discovery, observes : l " Madame Riim- ker has for several years been on the lookout for comets, and her persevering industry seemed at last about to be rewarded, when a letter was received from Father de Vico, ad- dressed to the editor of this journal, from which it appeared that the same comet had been observed by him on the $d instant at Rome." Not deeming it probable that his daughter had anticipated the observers of this country and Europe in the discovery of this comet, no steps were taken by Mr. Mitchell with a view to obtaining the king of Denmark's medal. Prompt informa- tion, however, of the discovery was transmitted by Mr. Mitchell to his friend, William C. Bond, Esq., director of the observa- tory at Cambridge. The observations of the Messrs. Bond upon the comet commenced on the yth of October ; and on the 3oth were transmitted by me to Mr. Schumacher, for pub- lication in the " Astronomische Nachrichten." It was stated in the memorandum of the Messrs. Bond that the comet was seen by Miss Mitchell on the ist instant. This notice appeared in the "Nachrichten" of Dec. 9, 1847, an d the priority of Miss Mitchell's discovery was immediately ad- mitted throughout Europe. My attention had been drawn to the subject of the king of 1 " Astronomische Nachrichten," No. 616. 270 MARIA MITCHELL Denmark's comet medal by some allusion to it in my corre- spondence with Professor Schumacher, in reference to the dis- covery of telescopic comets by Mr. George P. Bond, of the observatory at Cambridge. Having learned some weeks after Miss Mitchell's discovery that no communication had been made on her behalf to the trustees of the medal, and aware that the regulations in this respect were enforced with strict- ness, I was apprehensive that it might be too late to supply the omission. Still, however, as the spirit of the regulations had been complied with by Mr. Mitchell's letter to Mr. Bond of the 3d of October, it seemed worth while at least to make the attempt to procure the medal for his daughter. Al- though the attempt might be unsuccessful, it would at any rate cause the priority of her discovery to be more authentically established than it might otherwise have been. I accordingly wrote to Mr. Mitchell for information on the subject, and applied for, and obtained from Mr. Bond, Mr. Mitchell's original letter to him of the 3d of October, with the Nantucket postmark. These papers were transmitted to Pro r fessor Schumacher, with a letter dated i5th and 24th January. On the 8th of February I wrote a letter to my much es- teemed friend, Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N., formerly presi- dent of the Astronomical Society at London, requesting him to interest himself with Professor Schumacher to obtain the medal for Miss Mitchell. Captain Smyth entered with great readiness into the matter, and addressed a note on the subject to Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, at Greenwich. Mr. Airy kindly wrote to Professor Schumacher without loss of time ; but it was their united opinion that a compliance with the condition relative to immediate notice of a discovery was in- dispensable, and that it was consequently out of their power to award the medal to Miss Mitchell. Mr. Schumacher suggested, as the only means by which this difficulty could be overcome, INTRODUCTORY NOTE 2? I an application to the Danish government, through the Ameri- can legation at Copenhagen. Conceiving that the correspondence could be carried on more promptly through the Danish legation at Washington, I addressed a letter on the 20th of April to Mr. Steene-Bille", Charge d'Affaires of the king of Denmark in this country, and sent with it copies of the documents which had been forwarded to Professor Schumacher. Mr. Steene-Bille", how- ever, was of opinion that the application, if made at all, should be made through the American legation at Copenhagen ; but he expressed at the same time a confident opinion that, owing to the condition and political relations of Denmark, the application would necessarily prove unavailing. It was at this time that the difficulties in Schleswig-Holstein were at their height, and it seemed hopeless at such a mo- ment, and in face of the opinion of the official representative of the Danish government in this country, to engage its attention to an affair of this kind. No further attempt was accordingly made by me, for some weeks, to pursue the matter. In fact, a report reached the United States that the medal had actually been awarded to Father de Vico. Al- though this was believed by me to be an unfounded rumor, the regulations allowing one year for the presentation of claims, there was reason to apprehend that it proceeded from some quarter well informed as to what would probably take place at the expiration of the twelvemonth. On the 5th of August, Father de Vico, who had left Rome in the spring in consequence of the troubles there, made a visit to Cambridge, in company with the Right Rev. Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, and on this occasion informed me that he had received an intimation from Pro- fessor Schumacher that the comet-medal would be awarded to Miss Mitchell. I was disposed to think that Father 272 MARIA MITCHELL de Vico labored under some misapprehension as to the pur- port of Professor Schumacher's communications, as afterwards appeared to be the case. I felt encouraged, however, by his statement not only to renew my correspondence on the sub- ject with Professor Schumacher, but I determined, on the 8th of August, to address a letter to R. P. Fleniken, Esq., Charg d' Affaires of the United States at Copenhagen. This letter was accompanied with copies of the original papers. Mr. Fleniken entered with great zeal and interest into the subject. He lost no time in bringing it before the Danish government by means of a letter to the Count de Knuth, the Minister at that time for Foreign Affairs, and of another to the king of Denmark himself. His Majesty, with the most oblig- ing promptness, ordered a reference of the case to Professor Schumacher, with directions to report thereon without delay. Mr. Schumacher had been for a long time in possession of the documents establishing Miss Mitchell's priority, which was, indeed, admitted throughout scientific Europe. Professor Schumacher immediately made his report in favor of granting the medal to Miss Mitchell, and this report was accepted by the king. The result was forthwith communicated by the Count de Knuth to Mr. Fleniken, with the gratifying intelli- gence that the king had ordered the medal to be awarded to Miss Mitchell, and that it would be delivered to him for transmission as soon as it could be struck off. This has since been done. It must be regarded as a striking proof of an enlightened interest for the promotion of science, not less than of a kind regard for the rights and feelings of the individual most con- cerned in this decision, that the king of Denmark should have bestowed his attention upon this subject, at a period of so much difficulty and alarm for Europe in general and his own kingdom in particular. It would not have been possible to INTRODUCTORY NOTE 273 act more promptly in a season of the profoundest tranquillity. His Majesty has on this occasion shown that he is animated by the same generous zeal for the encouragement of astro- nomical research which led his predecessor to found the medal ; while he has performed an act of gracious courtesy toward a stranger in a distant land which must ever be warmly appreciated by her friends and countrymen. Nor ought the obliging agency of the Count de Knuth, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to be passed without notice. The slightest indifference on his part, even the usual delays of office, would have prevented the application from reaching the king before the expiration of the twelvemonth within which all claims must, by the regulations, be presented. No one can reflect upon the pressure of business which must have existed in the foreign office at Copenhagen during the past year, without feeling that the Count de Knuth must largely share his sovereign's zeal for science, as well as his love of justice. Nothing else will account for the attention be- stowed at such a political crisis on an affair of this kind. The same attention appears to have been given to the subject by his successor, Count Moltka. It was quite fortunate for the success of the application that the office of charge" d'affaires of the United States at Copenhagen happened to be filled by a gentleman disposed to give it his prompt and persevering support. A matter of this kind, of course, lay without the province of his official duties. But no subject officially committed to him by the instructions of his government could have been more zealously pursued. On the very day on which my communication of the 8th of August reached him, Mr. Fleniken addressed his letters to the minister of foreign affairs and to the king, and he continued to give his attention to the subject till the object was happily effected, and the medal placed in his hands. 274 MARIA MITCHELL The event itself, however insignificant in the great world of politics and business, is one of pleasing interest to the friends of American science, and it has been thought proper that the following record of it should be preserved in a permanent form. I have regretted the frequent recurrence of my own name in the correspondence, and have suppressed several let- ters of my own which could be spared, without rendering less intelligible the communications of the other parties, to whom the interest and merit of the transaction belong. EDWARD EVERETT. CAMBRIDGE, ist February, 1849. CORRESPONDENCE HON. WILLIAM MITCHELL TO WILLIAM C. BOND, ESQ., CAMBRIDGE. " Nantucket, 10 mo. 36, 1847. " MY DEAR FRIEND : I write now merely to say that Maria discovered a telescopic comet at half-past ten on the evening of the first instant, at that hour nearly vertical above Polaris five degrees. Last evening it had advanced westwardly ; this evening still further, and nearing the pole. It does not bear illumination, but Maria has obtained its right ascension and declination, and will not suffer me to announce it. Pray tell me whether it is one of George's ; if not, whether it has been seen by anybody. Maria supposes it may be an old story. If quite convenient, just drop a line to her; it will oblige me much. I expect to leave home in a day or two, and shall be in Boston next week, and I would like to have her hear from you before I can meet you. I hope it will not give thee much trouble amidst thy close engagements. " Our regards are to all of you, most truly, " WILLIAM MITCHELL." HON. EDWARD EVERETT TO HON. WILLIAM MITCHELL. "Cambridge, loth January, 1848. " DEAR SIR : I take the liberty to inquire of you whether any steps have been taken by you, on behalf of your danghter, by way of claiming the medal of the king of Denmark for the (275) 276 MARIA MITCHELL first discovery of a telescopic comet. The regulations require that information of the discovery should be transmitted by the next mail to Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, if the discovery is made elsewhere than on the continent of Europe. If made in the United States, I understand from Mr. Schumacher that information may be sent to the Danish minister at Washing- ton, who will forward it to Mr. Airy, but it must be sent by next mail. " In consequence of non-compliance with these regulations, Mr. George Bond has on one occasion lost the medal. I trust this may not be the case with Miss Mitchell. " I am, dear sir, with much respect, faithfully yours, "EDWARD EVERETT." EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF THE HON. WILLIAM MITCHELL TO HON. EDWARD EVERETT. "Nantucket, ist mo. I5th, 1848. "ESTEEMED FRIEND: Thy kind letter of the loth instant reached me duly. No steps were taken by my daughter in claim of the medal of the Danish king. On the night of the discovery, I was fully satisfied that it was a comet from its location, though its real motion at this time was so nearly opposite to that of the earth (the two bodies approaching each other) that its apparent motion was scarcely appre- ciable. I urged very strongly that it should be published immediately, but she resisted it as strongly, though she could but acknowledge her conviction that it was a comet. She remarked to me, ' If it is a new comet, our friends, the Bonds, have seen it. It may be an old one, so far as relates to the discovery, and one which we have not followed.' She con- sented, however, that I should write to William C. Bond, which I did by the first mail that left the island after the CORRESPONDENCE 277 discovery. This letter did not reach my friend till the 6th or 7th, having been somewhat delayed here and also in the post- office at Cambridge. " Referring to my journal I find these words : < Maria will not consent to have me announce it as an original discovery.' " The stipulations of His Majesty have, therefore, not been complied with, and the peculiar circumstances of the case, her sex, and isolated position, may not be sufficient to justify a suspension of the rules. Nevertheless, it would gratify me that the generous monarch should know that there is a love of science even in this to him remote corner of the earth. " I am thine, my dear friend, most truly, " WILLIAM MITCHELL." HON. EDWARD EVERETT TO PROFESSOR SCHUMACHER, AT ALTONA. "Cambridge, I5th January, 1848. " DEAR SIR : Your letter of the 2 ;th October, accompanying the ' Planeten-Circular,' reached me but a few days since. If you would be so good as to forward to the care of John Miller, Esq., 26 Henrietta street, Covent Garden, London, any letter you may do me the favor to write to me, it would reach me promptly. " The regulations relative to the king of Denmark's medal have not hitherto been understood in this country. I shall take care to give publicity to them. Not only has Mr. Bond lost the medal to which you think he would have been en- titled, 1 but I fear the same has happened to Miss Mitchell, of Nantucket, who discovered the comet of last October on 1 Mr. Schumacher had remarked to me, in his letter of the 27th of October, that Mr. George P. Bond would have received the medal for the comet first seen by him as a nebulous object on the i8th of February, 1846, if his observation made at that time had been communicated, according to the regulations, to the trustees of the medal. 278 MARIA MITCHELL the first day of that month. I think it was not seen in Europe till the third. " I remain, dear sir, with great respect, faithfully yours, "EDWARD EVERETT." HON. EDWARD EVERETT TO HON. WILLIAM MITCHELL. " Cambridge, i8th January, 1848. " DEAR SIR : I have your esteemed favor of the i5th, which reached me this day. I am fearful that the rigor deemed necessary in enforcing the regulations relative to the king of Denmark's prize may prevent your daughter from receiving it. I learn from Mr. Schumacher's letter, that, besides Mr. George Bond, Dr. Bremeker lost the medal because he allowed a single post-day to pass before he announced his discovery. There could, in his case, be no difficulty in establishing the fact of his priority, nor any doubt of the good faith with which it was asserted. But inasmuch as Miss Mitchell's dis- covery was actually made known to Mr. Bond by the next mail which left your island, it is possible barely possible that this may be considered as a substantial compliance with the regu- lation. At any rate, it is worth trying ; and if we can do no more we can establish the lady's claim to all the credit of the prior discovery. I shall therefore apply to Mr. Bond for the letter which you wrote, and if it contains nothing improper to be seen by others we will forward it to the Danish min- ister at Washington with a certified extract from your journal. I will have a certified copy of all these papers prepared and sent to Mr. Schumacher ; and if any departure from the letter of the regulations is admissible, this would seem to be a case for it. I trust Miss Mitchell's retiring disposition will not lead her to oppose the taking of these steps. " I am, dear sir, with great respect, faithfully yours, [Signed] "EDWARD EVERETT." CORRESPONDENCE 279 POSTSCRIPT TO MR. EVERETT'S LETTER TO PROFESSOR SCHUMACHER OF THE I5TH JANUARY, 1848. " P.S. The foregoing was written to go by the steamer of the 1 5th, but was a few hours too late. I have since received some information in reference to the comet of October which leads me to hope that you may feel it in your power to award the medal to Miss Maria Mitchell. Miss Mitchell saw the comet at half- past ten o'clock on the evening of October ist. Her father, a skilful astronomer, made an entry in his journal to that effect. On the third day of October he wrote a letter to Mr. Bond, the director of our observatory, announcing the discovery. This letter was despatched the following day, being the first post-day after the discovery of the comet. This letter I transmit to you, together with letters from Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Bond to myself. Nantucket, as you are probably aware, is a small, secluded island, lying off the extreme point of the coast of Massachusetts. Mr. Mitchell is a member of the executive council of Massachusetts and a most respectable person. " As the claimant is a young lady of great diffidence, the place a retired island, remote from all the high-roads of com- munication ; as the conditions have not been well understood in this country ; and especially as there was a substantial com- pliance with them I hope His Majesty may think Miss Maria Mitchell entitled to the medal. " Cambridge, 24th January, 1848. 280 MARIA MITCHELL EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM MR. EVERETT TO CAPTAIN W. H. SMYTH, R.N., LATE PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, LONDON, DATED CAMBRIDGE, 8TH FEBRUARY, 1848. " I have lately been making interest with Mr. Schumacher to cause the king of Denmark's medal to be given to Miss Mitchell for the discovery of the comet to which her name has been given, if I mistake not, in the journal of your society as well as in the ' Nachrichten.' She unquestionably dis- covered it at half- past ten on the evening of the ist of Octo- ber ; it was not, I think, seen in Europe till the 3d. Her father, on the 3d, wrote a letter to Mr. Bond, the director of our observatory, informing him of this discovery; and this letter was sent by the first mail that left the little out-of-the- way island (Nantucket) after the discovery. The spirit of the regulations was therefore complied with. But as the letter requires that the notice should be given either to the Danish minister resident in the country or to Mr. Airy, if the dis- covery is made elsewhere than on the continent of Europe, it is possible that some demur may be made. The precise terms of the regulations have not been sufficiently made known in this country. As the claim in this case is really a just one, the claimant a lady, industrious, vigilant, a good astronomer and mathematician, I cannot but hope she will succeed ; and if you have the influence with Schumacher which you ought to have, I would take it kindly if you would use it in her favor." CAPTAIN SMYTH TO MR. EVERETT. " 3 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, loth March, 1848, " MY DEAR SIR : On the receipt of your last letter, I forthwith wrote to the astronomer royal, urging the claims of Miss Mitchell, of Nantucket, and he immediately replied, saying CORRESPONDENCE 2 8 1 that he would lose no time in consulting his official colleague, Mr. Schumacher, on the subject. I have just received the accompanying letter from Greenwich, by which you will per- ceive how the matter stands at present; I say at present, because, however the claim may be considered as to the tech- nical form of application, there is no doubt whatever of her fully meriting the award. " I am, my dear sir, very faithfully yours, [Signed] " W. H. SMYTH." G. B. AIRY, ESQ., TO CAPTAIN SMYTH. " Royal Observatory, Greenwich, loth March, 1848. "MY DEAR SIR: I have received Mr. Schumacher's answer in regard to Miss Mitchell's supposed claims for the king of Denmark's medal. We agree, without the smallest hesitation, that we cannot award the medal. We have in all cases acted strictly in conformity with the published rules ; and I am con- vinced, and I believe that Mr. Schumacher is convinced, that it is absolutely necessary that we do not depart from them. " Mr. Schumacher suggests, as the only way in which Miss Mitchell's claim in equity could be urged, that application might be made on her part, through the American legation, to the king of Denmark; and the king can, if he pleases, make exception to the usual rules. " I am, my dear sir, yours most truly, [Signed] " G. B. AIRY." HON. EDWARD EVERETT TO R. P. FLENIKEN. " Cambridge, Mass., 8th August, 1848. " DEAR SIR : Without the honor of your personal acquaint- ance, I take the liberty of addressing you on a subject which I am confident will interest you as a friend of American science. 282 MARIA MITCHELL " You are doubtless aware that by the liberality of one of the kings of Denmark, the father, I believe, of his late Majesty, a foundation was made for a gold medal to be given to the first discoverer of a telescopic comet. Mr. Schumacher, of Altona, and Mr. Baily, of London (and since his decease Mr. Airy, Astronomer Royal at Greenwich), were made the trustees of this foundation. Among the regulations estab- lished for awarding the medal was this : that the discoverer should, by the first mail which leaves the place of his residence after the discovery, give notice thereof to Mr. Schumacher if the discovery is made on the continent of Europe, and to Mr. Airy if made in any other part of the world ; provided that, if the discovery be made in America, the notice may be given to the Danish minister at Washington. It has been deemed necessary to adhere with great strictness to this regulation, in order to prevent fraudulent claims. " On the first day of October last, at about half- past ten o'clock in the evening, a telescopic comet was discovered, in the island of Nantucket, by Miss Maria Mitchell, daughter of Hon. W. Mitchell, one of the executive council of this State. Mr. Mitchell made an entry of the discovery at the time in his journal. In consequence of Miss Mitchell's diffidence, she would not allow any publicity to be given to her discovery till its reality was ascertained. Her father, however, by the first mail that left Nantucket for the mainland, addressed a letter- to Mr. W. C. Bond, director of the observatory in this place, acquainting him with his daughter's discovery. A copy of this letter I herewith transmit to you. The comet was not discovered in Europe till the 3d of October, when it was seen by Father de Vico, the celebrated astronomer at Rome. " You perceive from this statement that, if Mr. Mitchell had addressed his letter to the Danish minister at Washington instead of Mr. Bond, his daughter would have been entitled to CORRESPONDENCE 283 the medal, under the strict terms of the regulations. But these regulations have not been generally understood in this country ; and as the fact of Miss Mitchell's prior discovery is undoubted, and recognized throughout Europe, it would be a pity that she should lose the medal on a mere technical punc- tilio. The comet is constantly called ' Miss Mitchell's comet' in the monthly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society at London, and in the ( Astronomische Nachrichten,' the well-known astronomical journal, edited by Mr. Schu- macher himself, at Altona. Father de Vico (who, with his brothers of the Society of Jesuits, has left Rome since the revolution there) was at this place (Cambridge) three days ago, and spoke of Miss Mitchell's priority as an undoubted fact. " Last winter I addressed a letter to Mr. Schumacher, ac- quainting him with the foregoing facts relative to the discov- ery, and transmitting to him the original letter of Mr. Mitchell to Mr. Bond, dated 3d October, bearing the original Nan- tucket postmark of the 4th. I also wrote to Capt. W. H. Smyth, late president of the Royal Astronomical Society of England, desiring him to speak to Mr. Airy on the subject. He did so, and Mr. Airy wrote immediately to Mr. Schu- macher. Mr. Schumacher in his reply expressed the opinion, in which Mr. Airy concurs, that under the regulations it is not in their power to award the medal to Miss Mitchell. They suggest, however, that an application should be made, through the American legation at the Danish court, to His Majesty the King of Denmark, for authority, under the present circum- stances, to dispense with the literal fulfilment of the conditions. "It is on this subject that I take the liberty to ask your good offices. I accompany my letter with copies of a portion of the correspondence which has been had on the subject, and I venture to request you to address a note to the proper 284 MARIA MITCHELL department of the Danish government, to the end that authority should be given to Messrs. Schumacher and Airy to award the medal to Miss Mitchell, provided they are satisfied that she first discovered the comet. " I will only add that, should you succeed in effecting this object, you will render a very acceptable service to all the friends of science in America. " I remain, dear sir, with high consideration, your obedient, faithful servant, [Signed] " EDWARD EVERETT. " To R. P. FLENIKEN, ESQ., Charge d'Affaires of the United States of America at Copenhagen." R. P. FLENIKEN, ESQ., TO THE COUNT DE KNUTH. " Legation des Etats Unis d'Amerique, \ a Copenhague, le 6 Septembre, 1848. J " MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE : J'ai 1'honneur de remettre sous ce pli a votre Excellence une lettre que j'ai reue d'un de mes concitoyens les plus distingue"s, avec une correspondance touchaixt >une matiere a laquelle il me semble que le Dane- mark ne soit guere moins interess^ que ne le sont les Etats Unis ; le premier y ayant contribue" le digne motif, 1'autre en ayant heureusement accompli 1'objet. "Je recommande ces documents a 1'examination attentive de votre .Excellence, sachant bien 1'inte'ret pro fond qu'elle ne manque jamais de prendre a de tels sujets, et la reputation e"minente de cultivateur des sciences et de la littrature, dont elle jouit avec tant de justice. J'y ai joint une lettre de moi-meme, addressee a sa Majeste" le Roi de Danemark. " La matiere dont il est question, Monsieur, sera d'autant plus inte"ressante a votre Excellence, qu'on peut la regarder comme une voix de r^ponse addressee a Tancienne Scandi- CORRESPONDENCE 285 navie, proclaimant les prodiges merveilleux de la science moderne, des bqrds memes du Vinland des Vikinger hardis et entreprenants du dixieme et de Ponzieme siecles. "Je prie votre Excellence de vouloir bien soumettre tous les documents ci-joints a 1'oeil de sa Majeste", et dans le cas heureux ou vous seriez d'avis que ma compatriote, Mile. Mitchell, puisse avec justice revendiquer la recompense ge"nereuse institute par le Roi Frederic VI., alors, Monsieur, je prie votre Excellence de vouloir bien appuyer de ses pro- pres estimables et puissantes recommandations Implication des amis de la jeune demoiselle. " Je m'empresse a cette occasion, Monsieur, de renouveler a votre Excellence 1'assurance de ma consideration tres distingue"e. " R. P. FLENIKEN. "A Son Excellence M. LE COMTE DE KNUTH, Ministre d'Etat, et Chef du De"partement des Affaires Etrangeres. TRANSLATION. 1 " Legation of the United States of America,') City of Copenhagen, September 6th, 1848. / " SIR : I have the honor to communicate to you a letter from a distinguished citizen of my own country, together with a correspondence relating to a subject in which Denmark and the United States appear somewhat equally interested, the former in furnishing a laudable motive, and the latter as hap- pily achieving the object. "I commend these papers to your careful examination, being well aware of the deep interest you take in all such subjects, and of the eminent reputation you so justly enjoy 1 This and the other translations of the French letters are printed as received in this country. 286 MARIA MITCHELL as a gentleman of science and of literature. They are accom- panied by a letter from myself addressed to His Majesty the King of Denmark. " This subject will not be the less interesting to you, sir, as it would appear to be a returning voice addressed to ancient Scandinavia, speaking of the wonderful achievements of mod- ern science, from the ' Vinland ' of the hardy and enterprising ' Northmen ' of the tenth and the eleventh centuries. " I beg, therefore, that you will obligingly lay them all before His Majesty, and should they happily impress you that my countrywoman, Miss Mitchell, is fairly entitled to the generous offering of King Frederic VI., be pleased, sir, to accompany the application of her friends in her behalf by your own very valuable and potent recommendation. " I avail myself of this occasion to renew to your Excellency the assurance of my most distinguished consideration. [Signed] " R. P. FLENIKEN. "To His Excellency THE COUNT DE KNUTH, Minister of State and Chief of the Department of Foreign Affairs. R. P. FLENIKEN, ESQ., TO THE KING OF DENMARK. " Legation des Etats Unis d'Amerique, 1 a Copenhague, le 6 Septembre, 1848. / " SIRE : Le soussigne" a 1'honneur, par 1'interm^diaire de M. votre ministre d'etat et chef du departement des affaires e"trangeres, de soumettre a votre Majeste" une lettre d'un citoyen tres distingue des Etats Unis, accompagne"e de la copie d'une correspondance concernant une matiere a laquelle votre Majeste", soverain e"galement distingue" par la lib^ralite" gne"reuse qu'elle fait voir dans ses rapports sociaux et politiques, et par 1'admiration ardente qu'elle manifeste envers CORRESPONDENCE 287 la science et la litte'rature, ne peut manquer de prendre un vif inte"ret. "Le soussigne" se fdicite beaucoup d'etre 1'interme'diaire par les mains duquel ces documents arrivent sous 1'ceil de votre Majest^, tant persuade" que la lecture en fournira a votre Majest^ 1'occasion de recourir avec une grande satis- faction patriotique, comme protecteur Eminent des sciences, a I'institution d'un de ses illustres pre"de"cesseurs } et ce sou- venir de la haute position a laquelle le Danemark s'est e"ieve" dans les arts et les sciences, ne lui sera peut-etre pas moins doux quand elle songe que c'est justement sur cette meme cote, oil de"ja au dixieme siecle rintre"pidite" et 1'esprit hardi de ses ancetres Scandinaves les avaient amends a la dcou- verte du grand continent occidental et a la fondation d'une colonie, que vient de s'accomplir cette conquete de la sci- ence, dont parlent les dits papiers. " Le soussigne" ose done espe"rer, qu'a la suite d'une exam- ination attentive des lettres ci-jointes, et desquelles il parai- trait etre ge"ne"ralement reconnu qu'a Mile. Mitchell des Etats Unis est du 1'honneur d'avoir la premiere de"couvert la comete te"lescopique qui aujourd'hui porte son nom, que votre Majeste" ne trouvera point dans la reserve louable qui empecha cette jeune demoiselle de se pre"cipiter a la pour- suite d'une renommee publique, une cause suffisante de lui refuser le prix de sa brilliante d^couverte ; mais qu'au con- traire elle donnera 1'ordre de lui expe"dier la me"daille, autant comme une recompense due a ses e"minents talents scien- tifiques, que pour te"moigner combien votre Majest^ sait apprcier cette modestie charmante qui s'opposa a ce que Mile. Mitchell recherchat une c^l^brit^ publique et scien- tifique, avec le seul but de remplir une forme tout-a-fait technique. " Le soussigne", charg^ d'affaires des Etats Unis de 1'Ame"- 288 MARIA MITCHELL rique, saisit avec empressement cette occasion d'offrir a votre Majest^ 1'expression de sa consideration la plus haute et la plus distingue"e. " R. P. FLENIKEN. "X Sa Majeste" FREDERIC VII., Roi de Danemark, Due de Slesvig et de Holstein." TRANSLATION. " Legation of the United States of America, City of Copenhagen, September 4th, 1848. "SiRE: The undersigned has the honor, through your Majesty's minister of state and chief of the department of foreign affairs, to communicate to you a letter from a very distinguished citizen of the United States, together with copies of a correspondence relating to a subject in which your Majesty, alike distinguished for generous liberality in social and political affairs as a sovereign, as well as an ardent ad- mirer of science and of literature, will doubtless feel a lively interest. " The undersigned is happy to be the medium through which those papers reach the eye of your Majesty, feeling sensible that their perusal will furnish occasion to your Majesty to recur with much national pleasure to the act of one of your illustrious predecessors as a distinguished patron of science j and this recurrence to the eminent position that Denmark has attained in the arts and the sciences may perhaps not be the less pleasurable from the fact that the trophy of science to which the papers allude was achieved on the very coast where, as far back as the tenth century, the intrepidity and enterprise of your Majesty's Scandinavian ancestors first discovered and planted a colony upon the great western continent. CORRESPONDENCE 289 "The undersigned therefore hopes that, after a careful examination of the accompanying papers, from which it would seem to be admitted that Miss Mitchell, of the United States, is entitled to the honor of first discovering the tele- scopic comet bearing her name, your Majesty will not be able to perceive in that commendable delicacy which forbade her hastily seeking public notoriety a sufficient motive for with- holding from her the reward of her eminent discovery ; but, on the contrary, will direct the medal to be awarded to her, not only as a suitable encouragement to her distinguished scientific attainments, but also as evincing your Majesty's appre- ciation of that beautiful virtue which withheld her from rush- ing into public and scientific renown merely to comply with a purely technical condition. "The undersigned, American charg d'affaires, gladly improves this very pleasant occasion to tender to your Majesty the expression of his high and most distinguished consideration. [Signed] "R. P. FLENIKEN. "To his Majesty FREDERIC VII., King of Denmark, Duke of Schleswig and Holstein." THE COUNT DE KNUTH TO MR. FLENIKEN. " Copenhague, ce 6 Octobre, 1848. " MONSIEUR : J'ai eu 1'honneur de recevoir votre office du 6 du passe, par lequel vous avez exprim le desir que la medaille institute par feu le Roi Frederic VI., en recompense de la decouverte de cometes telescopiques, fut accordee a Mile. Maria Mitchell, de Nantucket dans les EtatsUnis d'Amerique. " Apres avoir examine les pieces justificatives que vous avez bien voulu me communiquer relativement a cette re- clamation, je ne saurais que partager votre avis, Monsieur, 2QO MARIA MITCHELL qu'il parait hors de doute que la d^couverte de la comete en question est effectivement due aux savantes recherches de Mile. Mitchell ; et que ce n'est que faute de n'avoir pas observe les formalite"s prescrites, qu'elle n'a point jusqu'ici recu une marque de distinction a laquelle elle parait avoir de si justes titres. " Le savant astronome, le Professeur Schumacher, ayant egalement recommande" Mile. Mitchell a la faveur qu'elle sollicite maintenant, je me suis empre,sse" de referer cette question au roi, mon auguste maitre, en mettant en meme temps sous les yeux de sa Majeste" la lettre que vous lui avez addressee a ce sujet; et c'est avec bien du plaisir que je me vois aujourd'hui a meme de vous faire part, Monsieur, que sa Majest n'a point he"sit a satisfaire a votre demande, en accordant a Mile. Mitchell la mdaille qu'elle ambitionne. " Aussitot que cette mdaille sera frappe"e, je m'empresse- rai de vous la faire parvenir. "En attendant je saisis avec bien du plaisir cette occasion pour vous renouveler, Monsieur, les assurances de ma con- sideration tres distinguee. " F. W. KNUTH. "X MONSIEUR FLENIKEN, Charge" d' Affaires des Etats Unis d'Amerique." TRANSLATION. " Copenhagen, 6th October, 1848. " SIR : I have had the honor to receive your communication of the 6th ultimo, in which you express the desire that the medal instituted by his late Majesty, Frederic VI., as a reward for the discovery of telescopic comets, should be granted to Miss Maria Mitchell, of Nantucket, in the United States of America. CORRESPONDENCE 29 1 " On examination of the justificatory pieces which you have been good enough to forward me, relating to her claim, I cannot do otherwise than participate in your opinion, sir, that it would appear to admit of no doubt that the dis- covery of the comet in question was really due to Miss Mitchell's learned researches ; and that her not having as yet received a mark of distinction to which she seems to have such a just claim was entirely owing to her not having observed the prescribed forms. "The learned astronomer, Professor Schumacher, having likewise recommended Miss Mitchell to the favor which she now solicits, I hasten to refer this question to the king, my august master, at the same time laying before His Majesty the letter which you have addressed to him on this subject ; and I have much pleasure in being now enabled to inform you, sir, that His Majesty has not hesitated to grant your request by awarding to Miss Mitchell the medal which she desires. " As soon as this medal is struck, I will have it forwarded to you, and. meanwhile have much pleasure in availing myself of this occasion to renew to you, sir, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration. [Signed] " F. W. KNUTH. " To MR. FLENIKEN, Charge" d' Affaires of the United States of America." MR. FLENIKEN TO THE COUNT DE KNUTH. " Legation des Etats Unis d'Amerique, "I a Copenhague, le 7 Octobre, 1848. J " MONSIEUR : Le soussigne" a eu Phonneur de recevoir Poffice que votre Excellence lui a addresse" en date d'hier pour lui faire part de la nouvelle heureuse que sa Majeste", apres avoir examine" les documents que vous avez bien voulu lui 2Q2 MARIA MITCHELL soumettre, ayant pour objet d'e"tablir le fait que Mile. Mitchell ait la premiere decouvert la comete te"lescopique d'Octobre de 1'an dernier, a bien voulu trouver ces preuves suffisantes, et a ordonne" qu'on frappe une me"daille, afin de la lui faire presenter comme une marque de distinction que sa Majeste" croit qu'elle me"rite en effet, quoiqu'elle n'ait pas rigoureusement observe" les formalite"s prescrites par le Roi Fre"dric VI., fondateur de ce don. " Le soussigne" s'empresse done d'assurer votre Excellence et en meme temps de vous prier, Monsieur, de vouloir bien faire parvenir cette assurance a sa Majeste", que cet acte signale" de liberalite" ne peut manquer d'etre dignement et hautement appre"cie" par les institutions scientifiques des Etats Unis, par Mile. Mitchell qui est 1'objet de cette distinction ge"ne"reuse, et par les nombreux amis scientifiques de cette dame ; enfin, par tous ceux qui prennent de 1' hit e" ret a la re~ussite heureuse des recherches astronomiques. " Le soussigne" ne peut terminer cette communication sans exprimer a votre Excellence (en la priant de porter aussi ses sentiments a la connaissance de sa Majeste") sa vive appre"cia- tion de ce noble et e"clatant acte de justice, si promptement et si ge"ne"reusement rendu a sa jeune compatriote par le roi de Danemark, et il saisit avec empressement cette occasion de renouveler a votre Excellence les assurances de sa conside"ra- tion tres distingue"e. "R. P. FLENIKEN. "A Son Excellence M. LE COMTE DE KNUTH, Ministre d'Etat et Chef du Department des Affaires Etrangeres." CORRESPONDENCE 293 TRANSLATION. " Legation of the United States, "I Copenhagen, October 7th, 1848. J " SIR : The undersigned has the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's communication of yesterday's date, conveying to him the gratifying intelligence that His Majesty, from an examination of the evidence which you obligingly laid before him, tending to establish the fact of Miss Mitchell's having discovered the telescopic comet of October, last, has been pleased to consider it quite satisfactory, and has ordered a medal to be struck for her as a mark of distinction to which his Majesty deems her entitled, notwith- standing her omission to comply with the prescribed conditions of Frederic VI., who instituted the donation. "The undersigned, therefore, begs to express to you, sir, and through you to His Majesty, the assurance that this eminent act of liberality cannot fail to be duly and highly appreciated by the scientific institutions of his own country, by Miss Mitchell herself, who is the object of this generous distinction, and by her numerous scientific friends, as well as by all who feel an interest in successful astronomical achievements. "The undersigned cannot close this communication without expressing to you and to the king his own unaffected appre- ciation of this noble and distinguished act of justice, so promptly and so generously bestowed upon his unobtrusive countrywoman by the king of Denmark, and avails himself of the occasion to renew to your Excellency the assurance of his most distinguished consideration. [Signed] "R. P. FLENIKEN. 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