Page:Millicent Fawcett - Some Eminent Women.djvu/33

 after all, proved of no use to me afterwards, except what little I knew of music … which my father took a pleasure in teaching me—''N.B., when my mother was not at home. Amen.''"

Very early in her life her brother William became Caroline's idol and hero. He was twelve years older than herself, and distinguished himself among the group of brothers for tenderness and kindness to the little maiden. Her eldest brother, Jacob, was a fastidious gentleman, and Caroline's inability to satisfy his requirements for nicety at table and as a waitress, often earned her a whipping. But her brother William's gentility was of a different order. She narrates one instance, which doubtless was a specimen of others, when "My dear brother William threw down his knife and fork and ran to welcome and crouched down to me, which made me forget all my grievances." Little did William or Caroline guess that in the kind brother soothing the little sister's trouble, the future astronomer was "sharpening the tool" that was hereafter to be of such inestimable service to him.

The connection of England and Hanover under one crown caused an intimate association between the two countries. William Herschel's first visit to England was as a member of the band of the regiment of which his father was bandmaster. On this first visit to England, William expended his little savings in buying Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding." Jacob made an equally characteristic purchase of specimens of English tailoring art. These professional journeys to England led, in the course of time, to William Herschel establishing himself as a music-master and professional musician at Bath. This, however, he very early regarded merely as a means to an end. He taught music to live, but he lived for his astronomical studies and for the inventions and improvements in telescopes which he afterwards introduced to the world. When Caroline was seventeen years old, her father died, leaving his family very ill provided for; Caroline was more closely than ever confined to the tasks