Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 25

"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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s, 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...o...b..t.

"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 gla.s.ses, 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.

"_We_ saw the giant shadow as it _left_ us and pa.s.sed over the lands of the untutored Indian; _they_ saw 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. The _will_ has 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 cl.u.s.ters, 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 know The 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 see_ what 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, Ursae Minoris, Altair and _a_ Canis, _a_ Lyrae,

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 gla.s.s, reach to violet or dark purple. With a gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s. But after these are all accounted for, there is still a real difference. Two stars of the cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sume, 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 const.i.tution.

"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 repet.i.tion 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 s.p.a.ces; 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 st.i.tches of the sewing-work of a little child are about as good as those of the mature man. The taking of small st.i.tches, involving minute and equable measurements of s.p.a.ce, 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 st.i.tch from morning to night would find two or three hours in the observatory a relief."

CHAPTER XII

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS--COMMENTS ON SERMONS--CONCORD SCHOOL--WHITTIER--COOKING SCHOOLS--ANECDOTES

Partly in consequence of her Quaker training, and partly from her own indifference towards creeds and sects, Miss Mitch.e.l.l 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 Va.s.sar College. She was a good learner, however, and after a while knew how to receive in silence that which she did not understand.

"Miss Mitch.e.l.l," 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 G.o.d, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed."

Miss Mitch.e.l.l 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.