class
and his corps of teachers for an evening.

They remained in Lynn until Miss Mitchell was called to Vassar College,
in 1865, as professor of astronomy and director of the observatory.

CHAPTER IX

1865-1885

LIFE AT VASSAR COLLEGE

In her life at Vassar College there was a great deal for Miss Mitchell
to get accustomed to; if her duties had been merely as director of the
observatory, it would have been simply a continuation of her previous
work. But she was expected, of course, to teach astronomy; she was by no
means sure that she could succeed as a teacher, and with this new work
on hand she could not confine herself to original investigation--that
which had been her great aim in life.

But she was so much interested in the movement for the higher education
of women, an interest which deepened as her work went on, that she gave
up, in a great measure, her scientific life, and threw herself heart and
soul into this work.

For some years after she went to Vassar, she still continued the work
for the Nautical Almanac; but after a while she relinquished that, and
confined herself wholly to the work in the college.

"1866. Vassar College brought together a mass of heterogeneous material,
out of which it was expected that a harmonious whole would
evolve--pupils from all parts of the country, of different habits,
different training, different views; teachers, mostly from New England,
differing also; professors, largely from Massachusetts, yet differing
much. And yet, after a year, we can say that there has been no very
noisy jarring of the discordant elements; small jostling has been felt,
but the president has oiled the rough places, and we have slid over
them.

"... Miss ---- is a bigot, but a very sincere one. She is the most
conservative person I ever met. I think her a very good woman, a woman
of great energy.... She is very kind to me, but had we lived in the
colonial days of Massachusetts, and had she been a power, she would have
burned me at the stake for heresy!

"Yesterday the rush began. Miss Lyman [the lady principal] had set the
twenty teachers all around in different places, and I was put into the
parlor to talk to 'anxious mothers.'

"Miss Lyman had a hoarse cold, but she received about two hundred
students, and had all their rooms assigned to them.

"While she had one anxious mamma, I took two or three, and kept them
waiting until she could attend to them. Several teachers wer