is a blessed thing that these pictures keep in
the mind and come out at the needful hour. I did not call them, but they
seemed to come forth as a regulator for my tired brain, as if they had
been set sentinel-like to watch a proper time to appear.

"November, 1853. There is said to be no up or down in creation, but I
think the _world_ must be _low_, for people who keep themselves
constantly before it do a great deal of stooping!

"Dec. 8, 1853. Last night we had the first meeting of the class in
elocution. It was very pleasant, but my deficiency of ear was never more
apparent to myself. We had exercises in the ascending scale, and I
practised after I came home, with the family as audience. H. says my ear
is competent only to vulgar hearing, and I cannot appreciate nice
distinctions.... I am sure that I shall never say that if I had been
properly educated I should have made a singer, a dancer, or a painter--I
should have failed less, perhaps, in the last. ... Coloring I might have
been good in, for I do think my eyes are better than those of any one I
know.

"Feb. 18, 1854. If I should make out a calendar by my feelings of
fatigue, I should say there were six Saturdays in the week and one
Sunday.

"Mr. ---- somewhat ridicules my plan of reading Milton with a view to
his astronomy, but I have found it very pleasant, and have certainly a
juster idea of Milton's variety of greatness than I had before. I have
filled several sheets with my annotations on the 'Paradise Lost,' which
I may find useful if I should ever be obliged to teach, either as a
schoolma'am or a lecturer. [Footnote: This paper has been printed since
Miss Mitchell's death in "Poet-lore," June-July, 1894.]

"March 2, 1854. I 'swept' last night two hours, by three periods. It was
a grand night--not a breath of air, not a fringe of a cloud, all clear,
all beautiful. I really enjoy that kind of work, but my back soon
becomes tired, long before the cold chills me. I saw two nebulae in Leo
with which I was not familiar, and that repaid me for the time. I am
always the better for open-air breathing, and was certainly meant for
the wandering life of the Indian.

"Sept. 12, 1854. I am just through with a summer, and a summer is to me
always a trying ordeal. I have determined not to spend so much time at
the Atheneum another season, but to put some one in my place who shall
see the strange faces and hear the strange talk.

"How much talk there is about religi