244 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



comet." At the same time she could flare up with 

 true feminine fire when it seemed to her that her 

 dignity, as a woman of science, was in any degree 

 infringed. " This puts me in mind of Olbers saying 

 somewhere," she wrote, " I had discovered five comets. 

 Who wanted him to give the number of my comets when 

 he knew them no better ? As far as I recollect, Dr. 

 Maskelyne has observed them all, and his observations 

 on them are, I daresay, all printed in the volumes of the 

 Greenwich observations at least of some he has shown 

 me the proof sheets. I never called a comet mine till 

 several post days were passed without any account of 

 them coming to hand." She was then ninety-two years 

 of age, and Olbers had died more than two years before. 



Caroline Herschel maintained to the close of her 

 days the same habits of thrift, the same dread of not 

 getting the two ends to meet, and the same foresight 

 in providing means for ends that characterised her 

 early life. She enjoyed a pension of 50 a year from 

 the Civil List a small allowance for so deserving a 

 recipient. She had also an annuity of 100 settled 

 on her by her brother's will a small return, we should 

 say, for the invaluable services she rendered, but a 

 sum which she probably regarded as unnecessarily 

 taken out of her " dear nephew's " pocket. " Let the 

 time come when it may please God," she writes in 

 her eighty-fifth year, "I leave cash enough behind 

 to clear me from all and any obligations to all who 

 here do know me. Even the expenses of a respectable 

 funeral lie ready to enable my friend Mrs. Beckedorff, 

 and one of my nieces to fulfil my directions. 



"I hope you will pardon my troubling you with 

 such doleful subjects, but I wish to show you that 



