f
all the world is equally ignorant, it makes it all right....

I've been intensely busy. I have been looking for the little
inferior planet to cross the sun, which it hasn't done, and I
got an article ready for the paper and then hadn't the courage
to publish--not for fear of the readers, but for fear that I
should change my own ideas by the time 'twas in print.

I am hoping, however, to have something by the meeting of the
Scientific Association in August,--some paper,--not to get
reputation for myself,--my reputation is so much beyond me that
as policy I should keep quiet,--but in order that my telescope
may show that it is at work. I am embarrassed by the amount of
work it might do--as you do not know which of Mrs. Browning's
poems to read, there are so many beauties.

The little republic of San Marino presented Miss Mitchell, in 1859, with
a bronze medal of merit, together with the _Ribbon_ and _Letters Patent_
signed by the two captains regent. This medal she prized as highly as
the gold one from Denmark.

"Nantucket, May 12, 18[60].... I send you a notice of an occultation;
the last sentence and the last figures are mine. You and I can never
occult, for have we not always helped one another to shine? Do you have
Worcester's Dictionary? I read it continually. Did you feast on 'The
Marble Faun'? I have a charming letter from Una Hawthorne, herself a
poet by nature, all about 'papa's book.' Ought not Mr. Hawthorne to be
the happiest man alive? He isn't, though! Do save all the anecdotes you
possibly can, piquant or not; starved people are not over-nice.

LYNN, Jan. 5 [1864].

... I very rarely see the B----s; they go to a different church,
and you know with that class of people "not to be with us is to
be against us." Indeed, I know very little of Lynn people. If I
can get at Mr. J., when you come to see me I'll ask him to tea.
He has called several times, but he's in such demand that he
must be engaged some weeks in advance! Would you, if you lived
in Lynn, want to fall into such a mass of idolaters?

I was wretchedly busy up to December 31, but have got into quiet
seas again. I have had a great deal of company--not a person
that I did not want to see, but I can't make the days more than
twenty-four hours long, with all my economy of time. This week
Professor Crosby, of Salem, comes up with his graduating