Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 3

A few pages farther on in the diary appears this poem:

"ESTHER

"Living, the hearts of all around Sought hers as slaves a throne; Dying, the reason first we found-- The fulness of her own.

"She gave unconsciously the while A wealth we all might share-- To me the memory of the smile That last I saw her wear.

"Earth lost from out its meagre store A bright and precious stone; Heaven could not be so rich before, But it has richer grown."

"Sept. 19, 1853. I am surprised to find the verse which I picked up somewhere and have always admired--

"'Oh, reader, had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, Oh, gentle reader, you would find A tale in everything'--

belonging to Wordsworth and to one of Wordsworth's simple, I am almost ready to say _silly_, poems. I am in doubt what to think of Wordsworth.

I should be ashamed of some of his poems if I had written them myself, and yet there are points of great beauty, and lines which once in the mind will not leave it.

"Oct. 31, 1853. People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear. My letter came from Cambridge [the Harvard Observatory], and I had some work to do over. It was a wearyful job, but by dint of shutting myself up all day I did manage to get through with it. The good of my travelling showed itself then, when I was too tired to read, to listen, or to talk; for the beautiful scenery of the West was with me in the evening, instead of the tedious columns of logarithms. It is a blessed thing that these pictures keep in the mind and come out at the needful hour. I did not call them, but they seemed to come forth as a regulator for my tired brain, as if they had been set sentinel-like to watch a proper time to appear.

"November, 1853. There is said to be no up or down in creation, but I think the _world_ must be _low_, for people who keep themselves constantly before it do a great deal of stooping!

"Dec. 8, 1853. Last night we had the first meeting of the cla.s.s in elocution. It was very pleasant, but my deficiency of ear was never more apparent to myself. We had exercises in the ascending scale, and I practised after I came home, with the family as audience. H. says my ear is competent only to vulgar hearing, and I cannot appreciate nice distinctions.... I am sure that I shall never say that if I had been properly educated I should have made a singer, a dancer, or a painter--I should have failed less, perhaps, in the last. ... Coloring I might have been good in, for I do think my eyes are better than those of any one I know.

"Feb. 18, 1854. If I should make out a calendar by my feelings of fatigue, I should say there were six Sat.u.r.days in the week and one Sunday.

"Mr. ---- somewhat ridicules my plan of reading Milton with a view to his astronomy, but I have found it very pleasant, and have certainly a juster idea of Milton's variety of greatness than I had before. I have filled several sheets with my annotations on the 'Paradise Lost,' which I may find useful if I should ever be obliged to teach, either as a schoolma'am or a lecturer. [Footnote: This paper has been printed since Miss Mitch.e.l.l's death in "Poet-lore," June-July, 1894.]

"March 2, 1854. I 'swept' last night two hours, by three periods. It was a grand night--not a breath of air, not a fringe of a cloud, all clear, all beautiful. I really enjoy that kind of work, but my back soon becomes tired, long before the cold chills me. I saw two nebulae in Leo with which I was not familiar, and that repaid me for the time. I am always the better for open-air breathing, and was certainly meant for the wandering life of the Indian.

"Sept. 12, 1854. I am just through with a summer, and a summer is to me always a trying ordeal. I have determined not to spend so much time at the Atheneum another season, but to put some one in my place who shall see the strange faces and hear the strange talk.

"How much talk there is about religion! Giles [Footnote: Rev. Henry Giles.] I like the best, for he seems, like myself, to have no settled views, and to be religious only in feeling. He says he has no piety, but a great sense of infinity.

"Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and to-day a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines. The Catholic, a priest, I have known as an Atheneum visitor for some time. He talked to-day, on my asking him some questions, and talked better than I expected. He is plainly full of intelligence, full of enthusiasm for his religion, and, I suspect, full of bigotry. I do not believe he will die a Catholic priest. A young man of his temperament must find it hard to live without family ties, and I shall expect to hear, if I ever hear of him again, that some good little Irish girl has made him forget his vows.

"My visitors, in other respects, have been of the average sort. Four women have been delighted to make my acquaintance--three men have thought themselves in the presence of a superior being; one offered me twenty-five cents because I reached him the key of the museum. One woman has opened a correspondence with me, and several have told me that they knew friends of mine; two have spoken of me in small letters to small newspapers; one said he didn't see me, and one said he did! I have become hardened to all; neither compliment nor quarter-dollar rouses any emotion. My fit of humility, which has troubled me all summer, is shaken, however, by the first cool breeze of autumn and the first walk taken without perspiration.

"Sept. 22, 1854. On the evening of the 18th, while 'sweeping,' there came into the field the two nebulae in Ursa Major, which I have known for many a year, but which to my surprise now appeared to be three. The upper one, as seen from an inverting telescope, appeared double-headed, like one near the Dolphin, but much more decided than that, the s.p.a.ce between the two heads being very plainly discernible and subtending a decided angle. The bright part of this object was clearly the old nebula--but what was the appendage? Had the nebula suddenly changed? Was it a comet, or was it merely a very fine night? Father decided at once for the comet; I hesitated, with my usual cowardice, and forbade his giving it a notice in the newspaper.

"I watched it from 8.30 to 11.30 almost without cessation, and was quite sure at 11.30 that its position had changed with regard to the neighboring stars. I counted its distance from the known nebula several times, but the whole affair was difficult, for there were flying clouds, and sometimes the nebula and comet were too indistinct to be definitely seen.

"The 19th was cloudy and the 20th the same, with the variety of occasional breaks, through which I saw the nebula, but not the comet.

"On the 21st came a circular, and behold Mr. Van Arsdale had seen it on the 13th, but had not been sure of it until the 15th, on account of the clouds.

"I was too well pleased with having really made the discovery to care because I was not first.

"Let the Dutchman have the reward of his st.u.r.dier frame and steadier nerves!

"Especially could I be a Christian because the 13th was cloudy, and more especially because I dreaded the responsibility of making the computations, _nolens volens_, which I must have done to be able to call it mine....

"I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill to-day from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the places, and mean to work hard again to-night.

"Sept. 25, 1854. I began to recompute for the comet, with observations of Cambridge and Washington, to-day. I have had a fit of despondency in consequence of being obliged to renounce my own observations as too rough for use. The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.

"October 10. As soon as I had run through the computations roughly for the comet, so as to make up my mind that by my own observations (which were very wrong) the Perihelion was pa.s.sed, and nothing more to be hoped for from observations, I seized upon a pleasant day and went to the Cape for an excursion. We went to Yarmouth, Sandwich, and Plymouth, enjoying the novelty of the new car-route. It really seemed like railway travelling on our own island, so much sand and so flat a country.

"The little towns, too, seemed quaint and odd, and the old gray cottages looked as if they belonged to the last century, and were waked from a long nap by the railway whistle.

"I thought Sandwich a beautiful, and Plymouth an interesting, town. I would fain have gone off into some poetical quotation, such as 'The breaking waves dashed high' or 'The Pilgrim fathers, where are they?'

but K., who had been there before, desired me not to be absurd, but to step quietly on to the half-buried rock and quietly off. Younger sisters know a deal, so I did as I was bidden to do, and it was just as well not to make myself hoa.r.s.e without an appreciative audience.

"I liked the picture by Sargent in Pilgrim Hall, but seeing Plymouth on a mild, sunny day, with everything looking bright and pleasant, it was difficult to conceive of the landing of the Pilgrims as an event, or that the settling of such a charming spot required any heroism.

"The picture, of course, represents the dreariness of winter, and my feelings were moved by the chilled appearance of the little children, and the pathetic countenance of little Peregrine White, who, considering that he was born in the harbor, is wonderfully grown up before they are welcomed by Samoset. According to history little Peregrine was born about December 6 and Samoset met them about March 16; so he was three months old, but he is plainly a forward child, for he looks up very knowingly. Such a child had immortality thrust upon him from his birth.

It must have had a deadening influence upon him to know that he was a marked man whether he did anything worthy of mark or not. He does not seem to have made any figure after his entrance into the world, though he must have created a great sensation when he came.

"October 17. I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work. To be sure, I have only once in the time computed a parabolic orbit; but it seems to me that I know no more in general. I think I am a little better thinker, that I take things less upon trust, but at the same time I trust myself much less. The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.

"Will it really unroll to us at some future time? Aside from the gratification of the affections in another world, that of the intellect must be great if it is enlarged and its desires are the same.

"Nov. 24, 1854. Yesterday James Freeman Clarke, the biographer of Margaret Fuller, came into the Atheneum. It was plain that he came to see me and not the inst.i.tution.... He rushed into talk at once, mostly on people, and asked me about my astronomical labors. As it was a kind of flattery, I repaid it in kind by asking him about Margaret Fuller. He said she did not strike any one as a person of intellect or as a student, for all her faculties were kept so much abreast that none had prominence. I wanted to ask if she was a lovable person, but I did not think he would be an unbia.s.sed judge, she was so much attached to him.

"Dec. 5, 1854. The love of one's own s.e.x is precious, for it is neither provoked by vanity nor retained by flattery; it is genuine and sincere.

I am grateful that I have had much of this in my life.

"The comet looked in upon us on the 29th. It made a twilight call, looking sunny and bright, as if it had just warmed itself in the equinoctial rays. A boy on the street called my attention to it, but I found on hurrying home that father had already seen it, and had ranged it behind buildings so as to get a rough position.

"It was piping cold, but we went to work in good earnest that night, and the next night on which we could see it, which was not until April.

"I was dreadfully busy, and a host of little annoyances crowded upon me.

I had a good star near it in the field of my comet-seeker, but _what_ star?

"On that rested everything, and I could not be sure even from the catalogue, for the comet and the star were so much in the twilight that I could get no good neighboring stars. We called it Arietes, or 707.

"Then came a waxing moon, and we waxed weary in trying to trace the fainter and fainter comet in the mists of twilight and the glare of moonlight.

"Next I broke a screw of my instrument, and found that no screw of that description could be bought in the town.

"I started off to find a man who could make one, and engaged him to do so the next day. The next day was Fast Day; all the world fasted, at least from labor.

"However, the screw was made, and it fitted nicely. The clouds cleared, and we were likely to have a good night. I put up my instrument, but scarcely had the screw-driver touched the new screw than out it flew from its socket, rolled along the floor of the 'walk,' dropped quietly through a crack into the gutter of the house-roof. I heard it click, and felt very much like using language unbecoming to a woman's mouth.

"I put my eye down to the crack, but could not see it. There was but one thing to be done,--the floor-boards must come up. I got a hatchet, but could do nothing. I called father; he brought a crowbar and pried up the board, then crawled under it and found the screw. I took good care not to lose it a second time.

"The instrument was fairly mounted when the clouds mounted to keep it company, and the comet and I again parted.

"In all observations, the blowing out of a light by a gust of wind is a very common and very annoying accident; but I once met with a much worse one, for I dropped a chronometer, and it rolled out of its box on to the ground. We picked it up in a great panic, but it had not even altered its rate, as we found by later observations.

"The glaring eyes of the cat, who nightly visited me, were at one time very annoying, and a man who climbed up a fence and spoke to me, in the stillness of the small hours, fairly shook not only my equanimity, but the pencil which I held in my hand. He was quite innocent of any intention to do me harm, but he gave me a great fright.