fire in the kitchen,
and made coffee. Then I set the table in the dining-room, and made the
fire there. Toasted bread and trimmed lamps. Rang the breakfast bell at
seven. After breakfast, made my bed, and 'put up' the room. Then I came
down to the Atheneum and looked over my comet computations till noon.
Before dinner I did some tatting, and made seven button-holes for K. I
dressed and then dined. Came back again to the Atheneum at 1.30, and
looked over another set of computations, which took me until four
o'clock. I was pretty tired by that time, and rested by reading
'Cosmos.' Lizzie E. came in, and I gossiped for half an hour. I went
home to tea, and that over, I made a loaf of bread. Then I went up to my
room and read through (partly writing) two exercises in German, which
took me thirty-five minutes.

"It was stormy, and I had no observing to do, so I sat down to my
tatting. Lizzie E. came in and I took a new lesson in tatting, so as to
make the pearl-edged. I made about half a yard during the evening. At a
little after nine I went home with Lizzie, and carried a letter to the
post-office. I had kept steadily at work for sixteen hours when I went
to bed."

CHAPTER II

1847-1854

MISS MITCHELL'S COMET--EXTRACTS FROM DIARY--THE COMET

Miss Mitchell spent every clear evening on the house-top "sweeping" the
heavens.

No matter how many guests there might be in the parlor, Miss Mitchell
would slip out, don her regimentals as she called them, and, lantern in
hand, mount to the roof.

On the evening of Oct. 1, 1847, there was a party of invited guests at
the Mitchell home. As usual, Maria slipped out, ran up to the telescope,
and soon returned to the parlor and told her father that she thought she
saw a comet. Mr. Mitchell hurried upstairs, stationed himself at the
telescope, and as soon as he looked at the object pointed out by his
daughter declared it to be a comet. Miss Mitchell, with her usual
caution, advised him to say nothing about it until they had observed it
long enough to be tolerably sure. But Mr. Mitchell immediately wrote to
Professor Bond, at Cambridge, announcing the discovery. On account of
stormy weather, the mails did not leave Nantucket until October 3.

Frederick VI., King of Denmark, had offered, Dec. 17, 1831, a gold medal
of the value of twenty ducats to the first discoverer of a telescopic
comet. The regulations, as revised and amended, were republished, in
April, 1840, in the "