MARIA MITCHELL. 333 



eclipse, corresponding to this one during wliicli she noted the time 

 for her father, occurred fifty-four years later, and at that time she 

 again sat by the chronometer and noted the seconds of beginning and 

 end, as she had done for her father, now for her pupils." 



These observations of the eclipse, made in concurrence with those 

 of Paine at Monomoy and Bond at Dorchester, had for practical ob- 

 ject the determination of the longitude of the house in Vestal Street 

 wliere the chronometers of the whale-ships were carried to be rated 

 and set to Greenwich time. Mr. Mitchell came in time to be the 

 rater of all the chronometers of a fleet of ninety-two whale-ships, re- 

 quiring observations on every fine day of the year. We mention this 

 to indicate how accustomed his daughter must have been to the talk 

 of astronomy, even as the source, in part, of her daily bread. 



As Halley's Comet approached, in 1835, there was much anxiety 

 to be foremost in the rediscovery. From Mr. Mitchell's note-books 

 it would seem that it was first seen at Yale College, and next at Nan- 

 tucket, while it was yet a very faint telescopic object. His daughter 

 Maria, remembering all the excitement, never relinquished her father's 

 claim to priority, as indicated by a note made by her on the margin of 

 his journal not long before her death. " He [her father] was one of 

 the first, if not the very first, to see Halley's Comet on its return in 

 1835. — M. M." Coming so near to priority served, as it proved, 

 to give to the Vestal Street lookout the rank of an observatory, and 

 introduced to the family valuable acquaintances among the rising 

 astronomers. 



At the time she assisted at the eclipse, Maria attended her father's 

 school, and several of his pupils still live at Nantucket to bear witness 

 to the enthusiasm which his teaching usually excited ; but it was not 

 till she was a pupil of Cyrus Peirce that she began to study in ear- 

 nest. Father Peirce (as he was called many years later when he 

 came to be the Principal of the first Normal School) had a natural 

 genius for teaching, and a great many accomplished women now living 

 found their earliest inspiration in his school. Maria remained with 

 him two years, one as pupil and one as assistant teacher, and there 

 began her mathematics and also began to develop that power of con- 

 centration of mind for which she became remarkable in later years. 



The books in wliich her earliest notes appear are Bridge's " Conic 

 Sections," Hutton's " Mathematics," and Bowditch's " Navigator." 

 Some of the notices have spoken of her as backward in childhood 

 upon her own authority ; but the date of her review of the " Hyper- 

 bola " in Hutton is given on the margin, and makes her seventeen, 



