"I felt drawn to her when she was most serious. I told her I had suffered much from doubt, and asked her 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 wasquick, 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 beautiful 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, needlework, 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 that I had supposed it was for more advanced students, and she said, 'Oh, it is for girls up to twenty; one supposes 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 considered '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 needlework."
"The dissemination of information in regard to science 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 JohnHerschel 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? andHave I seenher?
"Nor can it be long, if the whole population is somewhat 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, 'Oh,' in a tone which plainly said, 'Isthatall?'
"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.
"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 scientific 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 teaching, 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 knowallscience.
"I have a friend who wonders that I do not take 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, probably, within, say, 100,000 miles; or, the sun is 91,000,000 minus 100,000 miles, or it is 91,000,000 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.
[Illustration: BUST OF MARIA MITCHELL.
From Original made by Miss Emma F. Brigham in 1877]
"This ignorance of the masses leads to a misconception 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 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 investigations. 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 engrossments; 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.
"1878. 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 limitations 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 hopeful 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, summer 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.
"We started from Boston a party of two; at Cincinnati 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 fortnight. Our party had three telescopes and one chronometer.
"We had travelled so comfortably all along the Santa Fé road, from Kansas City to Pueblo, that we had forgotten 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 Fé 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 Denver, 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; but a telescope-tube is of no value without glasses. We learned that there was a war between the two railroads 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 observation 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 imploring 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 telescopes, 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 Monday 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 ourselves 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 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 telescopes 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 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 occasion never comes to my mind without the accompaniment 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 supposed 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 photographer 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 sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' 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 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 is relative, and the minute of suspense is longer than the hour of satisfaction. [Footnote: 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 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 positions. The corona, which is the 'glory' seen around the sun, was visible at least thirteen minutes before totality; each of the party took a look at this, and then all was silent, only the count, on and on, of the young 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 shadow! the shadow!' And looking toward the southeast 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.
"Wesaw the giant shadow as itleftus and passed over the lands of the untutored Indian;theysaw it as it approached from the distant west, as it fell upon the peaks of the mountain-tops, and, in the impressive stillness, 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.
"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 intellectually 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 determined to see. Thewillhas 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 knowThe depths of heaven above and earth below.'
But we have a hunger of the mind which asks for 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 seewhat 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 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 constellations, 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 endless variety of tints of paler colors.
"We may turn our gaze as we turn a kaleidoscope, and the changes are infinitely more startling, the combinations 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 a scale of orange stars, beginning with Betel as orange red; then we should have
Betelgeuze, Aldebaran, ß Ursae Minoris, Altair andaCanis,aLyrae,
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 varieties 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 necessary 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 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 greenish, 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 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 measuring small spaces; of the ear, in estimating small intervals 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 observation.
"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."
Partly in consequence of her Quaker training, and partly from her own indifference towards creeds and sects, Miss Mitchell was entirely ignorant of the peculiar 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 understand.
"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 liberally inclined portion. There were always a few of the teachers and' some of the students who sympathized 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 asIdo—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 preceding Sunday was about Moses.
"It seems to me strange that since we have the history of Christ in theNew Testament, people continue 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 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 weakness 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 earnest. I felt the more respect for him because he was in earnest. But when he snapped his fingers and said, 'I don't care that for the religion of a man which does not begin with prayer,' I was provoked at his forgetfulness 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 wereemotionalcompletely—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 yourself about what youbelieve, butdothe 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. Everyone 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 inaccessible 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 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 preaching 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…. 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 1, 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 study of truth do harm? Does not every true scientist seek only to know the truth? And in our deep ignorance of what is truth, shall we dread the search for it?
"I hold the simple student of nature in holy reverence; 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 present, 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 introduced 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 have thought of it a great deal, and have come to feel it a friend. Icherishthe belief in immortality; I have suffered much, at times, in regard to that matter.' Scientifically considered, only, he thought the probability 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 thinking hard, and his logic stands out a prominent characteristic.
"Aug. 27, 1879. Scientific Association met at Saratoga. … 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 Professor Peirce replied, 'Yes, I think it is.' Then I asked, '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 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 beside 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 selfishness 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 genealogist, 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 similar 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 'Philosophy.' 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 narrow foot-path through the wet grass to the omnibus. But I listened to Dr. Harris, and enjoyed it. He lauded Fichte as the most accurate philosopher following Kant—he said not of the greatestbreadth, but the most acute.
"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! … Miss Peabody must have been very remarkable as a young woman to ask the questions which she asked at twenty.
"April, 1881. The waste of flowers on Easter Sunday 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 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 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 anecdotes. Whittier talked beautifully, almost always on the future state and his confidence in it. Occasionally 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. Cartland 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 distressed; 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 myself there was another of the party to whom a dying 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 basement 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 could come the utensils, the commodities, the clean towels, the ampletime, 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 important than to cook; but Iamafraid that not all canwrite—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 gentleman 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 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 Charlotte 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," said Miss Stebbins, "Jupiter Mammon!"—"Not at all," said Miss Mitchell, "Jupitergammon!"
"Farewell, Maria," said an old Friend, "I hope the Lord will be with thee."
"Good-by," she replied, "Iknowhe will be with you."
A characteristic trait in Miss Mitchell was her aversion 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?"
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 secretiveness, 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, 1860. I have spent $100 on dress this year. I have a very pretty new felt bonnet of the 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, andwhere 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.
… 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 imagination 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 majordomo 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 Gérôme's '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 Europeans 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 involvesonlysilence. And you are so all over a radical, 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, 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 ayounggirl 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 knewmuchof 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 ourheartunworldly if our manners take on something of those ways.
"Oct. 25, 1875…. I have scarcely got over thetireof the congress [Footnote: 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 1875.] 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 '_earth_ward.' 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 thousand seven hundred. It was packed and jammed, and rough men stood in the aisles. When I had to speak to announce a paper I stoodvery stilluntil they became quiet. Once, as I stood in that way, a man at the extreme rear, before I had spoken a word, shouted out, '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 suffrage 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. Garrison said what every one says—that the struggle for women was the old anti-slavery struggle over again; 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 societies.
She was the first woman elected to membership of the American Academy ofArts 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 members of the American Association for the Advancement 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 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 received 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 Columbia 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 societies, 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 difficulty 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 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 intermission. 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 following June, at which time the trustees made her Professor Emeritus, and offered her a home for life at the observatory. 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 faithful service and honesty of heart and life have been among the chief inspirations of Vassar College throughout 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."
"Jan. 10, 1888. You will consent, youmustconsent, 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 withdraw objections when she was convinced of error in her judgment. I well remember her opposition to the ground I took in my 'maiden speech' in faculty meeting, 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 furniture was plain and simple, and there was a frank simplicity 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."