Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/563

Rh Athenæum. In the library she found Dr. Bowditch's translation of La Place's Mécanique céleste and Gauss's Theoria Motus, in Latin, and read them. She also read voraciously on all subjects; and, as librarian, saw that the boys and girls got good books, while she skillfully kept the unwholesome ones out of their sight. While enjoying in her home all advantages for the cultivation of her scientific tastes. Miss Mitchell took her part in all the household work, knew how everything was to be done, and did what she did thoroughly. On one occasion, when the "help" had gone, she took charge, and made a record of how she spent the day. It was late in October. She arose at six, having been half asleep only for some hours, fearing she might not be up in time to get breakfast. "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. . . . 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 Athenæum at 9.30, and, having decided that I would take the Newark and Cambridge places of the comet and work them up, did so, getting to the three equations before I went home to dinner at 12.30. I omitted the corrections for parallax and aberration, 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 them over again next week. At noon I ran around and did 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 mistake. 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 can not rely upon my own. I saw also to-day in Monthly Notices a plan for measuring the light of stars by degrees of illumination—an idea which occurred to me long ago, but which I have not practiced." The next day she got breakfast again, and varied her astronomical computation with tatting, reading in Humboldt's Cosmos for rest when she was tired; and in the evening, it being stormy and no observing, made a loaf of bread, worked at tatting and gave a lesson in it, and completed sixteen hours of steady work.

The discovery of a comet by Miss Mitchell, which first made her known to the world as an astronomer, is thus described in Mrs. Kendall's Life, Letters, and Journals: "Miss Mitchell spent every clear evening on the housetop ‘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,