Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/80

58 "litigious woman," who refused to be bound to reasonable terms, and at length, on the 3rd of April, 1786, the house and garden at were taken, and all the apparatus and machinery immediately removed there. .... And here I must remember that among all this hurrying business, every moment after daylight was allotted to observing. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping till daylight, and by the next evening the telescope stood ready for observation at Slough. . . . . A workman for the brass and optical parts was engaged, and two smiths were at work throughout the summer on different parts for the forty-foot telescope, and a whole troop of labourers were engaged in grinding the iron tools to a proper shape for the mirror to be ground on (the polishing and grinding by machines was not begun till about the end of 1788). These heavy articles were cast in town, and caused my brother frequent journeys to London, they were brought by water as far as Windsor At Slough no steady out-of-door workman for the sweeping handle could be met with, and a man-servant was engaged as soon as one could be found fit for the purpose. Meanwhile Campion assisted, but many memorandums were put down: "Lost a neb. by the blunder of the person at the handle." If it had not been sometimes for the intervention of a cloudy or moonlight night, I know not when my brother (or I either), should have got any sleep; for with the morning came also his workpeople, of whom there were no less than between thirty and forty at work for upwards of three months together, some employed in felling and rooting out trees, some digging and preparing the ground for the bricklayers who were laying the foundation for the telescope, and the carpenter in Slough, with all his men. The smith, meanwhile, was converting a