Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/77

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CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.

phase of society, of which the family is a factor, where engrossing personal fueling will not continue to be a supreme womanly trait.

Resuming our history, we find that on the 1st of August, 1782, the Herschels with their instruments and furniture arrived at Datchet, and took possession of a large and neglected old house, with garden and grounds overgrown with weeds. Having no female servant, Miss Herschel was shown the shops by the gardener's wife, and her practical sense was at once shocked at the prices of everything, from coal to butcher's meat. But her brother was not disturbed by such considerations. He had stables where he could grind mirrors, a roomy laundry for a library, a large grass-plot for his instruments, and "he gayly assured her that they could live on eggs and bacon, which would cost nothing to speak of, now they were really in the country." After a couple of months the younger brother went back to Bath to resume his occupations in music; and it was this separation which awakened Caroline to a consciousness of what she was doing in giving up the prospect of becoming independent in the musical profession. But she reconciled herself to the situation by the thought that her brother William could not do without her, and that she had not spirit enough to throw herself upon the public without his protection. Soon after Alexander's departure, William had to go away for a week or ten days, and she was left alone. She thus describes her feelings in entering upon her new work:

"In my brother's absence from home, I was, of course, left solely to amuse myself with my own thoughts, which were anything but cheerful. I found I was to be trained for an assistant astronomer, and, by way of encouragement, a telescope adapted for 'sweeping,' consisting of a tube with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a 'finder,' was given me. I was 'to sweep for comets,' and I see by my journal that I began August 22, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my 'sweeps,' which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar-frost, without a human being near enough to be within call; for I knew too little of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find it again without losing too much time by consulting the atlas. But all these troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance, making observations with his various instruments on double stars, planets, etc., and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue; .but, at the end of 1783, I had only marked fourteen, when my sweeping was interrupted by being employed to write down my brother's observations with the large twenty-foot. I had, however, the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavors to assist him when he wanted another person, either to run to the clocks, write down a memorandum, fetch and carry instruments, or measure the ground with poles, etc., of which something of the kind every moment would occur."

The summer months of 1783 were spent in getting the large twenty-foot ready for the next winter. After some account of her brother's many and incessant occupations, she says he also threw away some

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