544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF MARIA MITCHELL. 



THE list of the great inscribed ou the Boston Public Library- 

 bears the name of one American woman Maria Mitchell. 

 While other names of women equally worthy to be recorded there 

 may easily occur to all of us, the validity of Miss Mitchell's title 

 to be thus remembered will not be doubted. 



Maria Mitchell was born on the island of Nantucket, Au- 

 gust 1, 1818, and died in Lynn, Mass., June 28, 1889. Her-parents 

 belonged to the Society of Friends, of the colony who settled in 

 Nantucket when that island belonged to New York ; the father a 

 school teacher and afterward cashier of a bank, indulgent to his 

 children, fond of animals and kind to them, and cultivating a 

 well-developed taste for experimental astronomy. He was also 

 fond of beauty and of enjoyable things, and, as the rules of the so- 

 ciety would not allow him to wear bright colors, he indulged his 

 taste for them by buying red-covered copies of books, painting 

 the framework of his telescope bright red, spreading a gay carpet 

 on the floor, papering his sitting room with pink rose designs, and 

 displaying the polarization of light. The mother was a woman 

 of strong character, clear- headed and demonstrative. Books were 

 abundant, in the house and at the library. Mr. Mitchell from his 

 early youth was an enthusiastic student of astronomy. The even- 

 ings when pleasant, Mrs. Phoebe M. Kendall says in her biogra- 

 phy, " were spent in observing the heavens, and to the children, 

 accustomed to seeing such observations going on, the important 

 study in the world seemed to be astronomy. One by one, as they 

 became old enough, they were drafted into the service of count- 

 ing seconds by the chronometer during the observations. Some 

 of them took an interest in the thing itself, and others considered 

 it rather stupid work ; but they all took in so much of this atmos- 

 phere that, if any one had asked a little child of this family, 

 * Who was the greatest man that ever lived ? ' the answer would 

 have come promptly, ' Herschel.' " Maria very early learned to 

 use the sextant. On the occasion of the annular eclipse of the 

 sun of 1831 central at Nantucket when she was twelve years 

 old, she held the chronometer, counting the seconds, while her 

 father observed the eclipse. This event was called up in her 

 diary, March 16, 1885, when she wrote, mentioning it, that now, 

 " fifty-four years later, I counted seconds for a class of students at 

 Vassar ; it was the same eclipse, but the sun was only about half 

 covered. Both days were perfectly clear and cold." At sixteen 

 she became an assistant teacher in the school of Mr. Cyrus 

 Peirce, where she had been a pupil ; afterward opened a private 

 school ; and then became, for twenty years, librarian of the Nan- 



