Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/98

76 money I ever in all my lifetime thought myself to be at liberty to spend to my own liking. A great uneasiness was by this means removed from my mind, for though I had generally (and especially during the last busy six years) been almost the keeper of my brother's purse, with a charge to provide for my personal wants, only annexing in my accounts the memorandum for Car. to the sums so laid out—when cast up, they hardly amounted to seven or eight pounds per year since the time we had left Bath. Nothing but bankruptcy had all the while been running through my silly head, when looking at the sums of my weekly accounts and knowing they could be but trifling in comparison with what had been and had yet to be paid in town, for my brother had not been fortunate enough to meet with a reasonable man for a caster who could also furnish the crane, &c., and his bills came in greatly overcharged. But more of this in another place. I will only add that from this time the utmost activity prevailed to forward the completion of the forty-foot. An additional optical workman was engaged, and preparation made for casting the second mirror. Journeys to town were made for moulding, and at the end of January a fine cast mirror arrived safely at Slough. Several seven-foot telescopes were finished and sent off.

The fine nights were not neglected, though observations were often interrupted by visitors. Messrs. Casini, Mechain, Le Genre, and Carochet spent November 26th and 27th with my brother, and saw many objects in the twenty-foot and other instruments. The catalogue of the second thousand new nebulæ wanted but a few numbers in March to being complete. The observations on the Georgian satellites furnished a paper which was delivered to the Royal Society in May. The 8th of that month being fixed on for my brother's