tudents of life as a most
essential element in the achievement of the highest and fullest
success. The optimist sees open paths leading to pleasant and
prosperous fields of endeavor where the pessimist can see no way out
of the hopeless surroundings amid which he has been thrust by an
unkind fate. The disposition to seize upon the opportunities lying
close at hand and to believe that the here and now is full of sunshine
and golden possibilities has carried many a one to success, where
others, lacking the illumination born of good cheer and a hope well
grounded in a broad and beautiful faith, have sat complainingly by the
way and permitted the golden chances to go by unobserved.

"Born of only ordinary capacity, but of extraordinary persistency,"
said Professor Maria Mitchell, the distinguished astronomer, in the
later years of her life in looking back upon her career. But she
added, with a simplicity as rare as it is pleasing: "I did not quite
take this in, myself, until I came to mingle with the best girls of
our college, and to become aware how rich their mines are and how
little they have been worked." At sixteen she left school, and at
eighteen accepted the position of librarian of the Nantucket public
library. Her duties were light and she had ample opportunity,
surrounded as she was by books, to read and study, while leisure was
also left her to pursue by practical observation the science in which
she afterward became known. Those who dwell upon the smaller islands,
among which must be classed Nantucket, her island home, learn almost
of necessity to study the sea and the sky. The Mitchell family
possessed an excellent telescope. From childhood Maria had been
accustomed to the use of this instrument, searching out with its aid,
the distant sails upon the horizon by day, and viewing the stars by
night. Her father possessed a marked taste for astronomy, and carried
on an independent series of observations. He taught his daughter all
he knew, and what was more to her advancement, she applied herself to
the study and made as much independent advancement as was possible for
her to do. It was this cheerful willingness to make the most of her
immediate surroundings that proved to be the secret of her world-wide
fame in after years when her name was included with those of the other
prominent astronomers of the world. At half past ten of the evening of
October First, 1847, she made the discovery which first brought her
nam