onquer poverty; but a large part of the
aided students are ordinary. They lack, at least, executive power, as
their ancestors probably did. Poverty is a misfortune; misfortunes are
often the result of blamable indiscretion, extravagance, etc.

"It is one of the many blessings of poverty that one is not obliged to
'give wisely.'"

1866. _To her students:_ "I cannot expect to make astronomers, but I do
expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy
modes of thinking.... When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a
look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.

"... But star-gazing is not science. The entrance to astronomy is
through mathematics. You must make up your mind to steady and earnest
work. You must be content to get on slowly if you only get on
thoroughly....

"The phrase 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That
knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

"The laws which govern the motions of the sun, the earth, planets, and
other bodies in the universe, cannot be understood and demonstrated
without a solid basis of mathematical learning.

* * * * *

"Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to
God.

* * * * *

"You cannot study anything persistently for years without becoming
learned, and although I would not hold reputation up to you as a very
high object of ambition, it is a wayside flower which you are sure to
have catch at your skirts.

"Whatever apology other women may have for loose, ill-finished work, or
work not finished at all, you will have none.

"When you leave Vassar College, you leave it the _best educated women in
the world_. Living a little outside of the college, beyond the reach of
the little currents that go up and down the corridors, I think I am a
fairer judge of your advantages than you can be yourselves; and when I
say you will be the best educated women in the world, I do not mean the
education of text-books, and class-rooms, and apparatus, only, but that
broader education which you receive unconsciously, that higher teaching
which comes to you, all unknown to the givers, from daily association
with the noble-souled women who are around you."

"1871. When astronomers compare observations made by different persons,
they cannot neglect the constitutional peculiarities of the individuals,
and there enters into these computa