54- Mary Somerville. 



make and mend my own clothes. I rose early, 

 played on the piano, and painted during the time 

 I could spare in the daylight hours, but I sat up 

 very late reading Euclid. The servants, however, 

 told my mother " It was no wonder the stock of 

 candles was soon exhausted, for Miss Mary sat up 

 reading till a very late hour;" whereupon an order 

 was given to take away my candle as soon as I was 

 in bed. I had, however, already gone through the 

 first six books of Euclid, and now I was thrown 

 on my memory, which I exercised by beginning at 

 the first book, and demonstrating in my mind a 

 certain number of problems every night, till I could 

 nearly go through the whole. My father came home 

 for a short time, and, somehow or other, finding out 

 what I was about, said to my mother, "Peg, we 

 must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in 

 a strait jacket one of these days. There was X., 

 who went raving mad about the longitude I" 



# * * * # 



In our younger days my brother Sam and I kept 

 various festivals : we burnt nuts, ducked for apples, 

 and observed many other of the ceremonies of 

 Halloween, so well described by Burns, and we 

 always sat up to hail the new year on New Year's 

 Eve. When in Edinburgh we sometimes disguised 

 ourselves as " guisarts," and went abcut with a basket 



