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744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which was in progress, without taking time for changing dress, and many a lace 

 ruffle' was torn or bespattered by molten pitch, etc., besides the danger to 

 which he continually exposed himself by the uncommon precipitancy of all his 

 actions, of which we had a sample one Saturday evening, when both brothers 

 returned from a concert between eleven and twelve o'clock, my eldest brother 

 pleasing himself all the way home with being at liberty to spend the next day 

 (except a few hours' attendance at chapel) at the turning-bench ; but, recollect- 

 ing that the tools wanted sharpening, they ran with a lantern and tools to our 

 landlord's grindstone, in a public yard, where they did not wish to be seen on a 

 Sunday morning. But my brother William was soon brought back fainting by 

 Alexandei", with the loss of one of his finger-nails. . . . 



"My time was much taken up with copying music and practising, besides 

 attendance on my brother when polishing, since, by way of keeping him alive, I 

 was constantly obliged to feed him by putting victuals in his mouth. This was 

 once the case when, in order to finish a seven-foot mirror, he had not taken his 

 hands off from it for sixteen hours together. Generally I was obliged to read 

 to him, while he was at the turning-lathe or polishing mirrors, 'Don Quixote,' 

 ' Arabian Nights Entertainment,' the novels of Sterne, Fielding, etc. ; serving 

 tea and supper without interrupting the work, and sometimes lending a hand. I 

 became in time as useful a member of the workshop as a boy might be to his 

 master in the first year of his apprenticeship. But, as I was to take a part the 

 next year in the oratorios, I had for a twelvemonth two lessons per week from 

 Miss Fleming, the celebrated dancing-mistress, to drill me for a gentle-woman 

 (God knows how she succeeded!). So we lived on, without interruption." 



On her first public appearance as the leading treble singer in the 

 oratorios, her brother gave her ten guineas for her dress, and on the 

 occasion the proprietor of the theatre pronounced her an ornament to 

 the stage. If she had chosen to persevere, her biographer says her 

 reputation as a singer would have been secure, but, like a woman, she 

 thought more of securing her brother's success than her own. She 

 steadily decliired to sing in public unless he was conductor. Besides 

 regular Sunday services, she sang in concerts and oratorios at Bath 

 and Bristol, all the while carrying on her housekeeping with one 

 servant. In this way for ten years at Bath she went on " singing 

 when she was told to sing, copying when she was told to copy, lend- 

 ing a hand in the workshop," and sympathizing with all the intensity 

 of her nature in the course of events, which ended by her brother 

 becoming "the king's astronomer." She sang with him for the last 

 time at Bath, on Whitsunday, 1782. 



The following extract narrates the course of events that led to her 

 becoming her brother's constant assistant in his astronomical work: 



" My brother, applied himself to perfect his mirrors, erecting in his garden a 

 stand for his twenty-foot telescope. Many trials were necessary before the re- 

 'quired motions for such an unwieldy machine could be contrived. Many at- 

 tempts were made by way of experiment against a mirror, before an intended 

 thirty-foot telescope eould be completed, for which, between-whiles (not inter- 

 rupting the observations with seven, ten, and twenty foot, and writing papers 



' She means hei" brother's ruffles. In thorse days lace was worn by gentlemen, and 

 she elsewhere speaks of knitting ruffles for her brother. 



