rt Mill.
--Mr. Gladstone and the Royal Society Dinner.--Other Eminent
Englishmen.--Professors Cayley and Adams.--Professor Airy and
the Greenwich Observatory.--A Visit to Edinburgh.

XI
MEN AND THINGS IN EUROPE
A Voyage to Gibraltar with Professor Tyndall.--The Great Fortress.
--"Whispering Boanerges."--A Winter Voyage in the Mediterranean.--
Malta and Messina.--Advantage of not understanding a Language.--
German Astronomers.--The Pulkova Observatory.--A Meeting which
might have been Embarrassing.--From Germany to Paris at the Close
of the War.--Experiences at Paris during the Commune.--The Greatest
Astronomer of France.--The Paris Observatory.

XII
THE OLD AND THE NEW WASHINGTON
Washington during the Civil War.--Secretary Stanton.--
The Raid of General Early.--A Presidential Levee in 1864.--
The Fall of Richmond.--The Assassination of President Lincoln.--
Negro Traits and Education.--Senator Sumner.--An Ambitious Academy.
--President Garfield and his Assassination.--Cooling the White House
during his Illness.--The Shepherd Regime in Washington.

XIII
MISCELLANEA
The Great Star-Catalogue Case.--Professor Peters and the
Almagest of Ptolemy.--Scientific Cranks.--The Degrees of the
French Universities.--A Virginia Country School.--Political Economy
and Education.--Exact Science in America before the Johns Hopkins
University.--Professor Ely and Economics.--Spiritualism and
Psychic Research.--The Georgia Magnetic Girl.

THE REMINISCENCES OF AN ASTRONOMER

I

THE WORLD OF COLD AND DARKNESS

I date my birth into the world of sweetness and light on one
frosty morning in January, 1857, when I took my seat between two
well-known mathematicians, before a blazing fire in the office
of the "Nautical Almanac" at Cambridge, Mass. I had come on from
Washington, armed with letters from Professor Henry and Mr. Hilgard,
to seek a trial as an astronomical computer. The men beside me
were Professor Joseph Winlock, the superintendent, and Mr. John
D. Runkle, the senior assistant in the office. I talked of my
unsuccessful attempt to master the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace
without other preparation than that afforded by the most meagre
text-books of elementary mathematics of that period. Runkle spoke
of the translator as "the Captain." So familiar a designation of
the great Bowditch--LL. D. and a member of the Royal Societies of
London, Edinburgh, and Dublin--quite