“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 religion!  Giles [Footnote:  Rev. Henry Giles.] I like the best, for he seems, like myself, to have no settled views, and to be religious only in feeling.  He says he has no piety, but a great sense of infinity.

“Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and to-day a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines.  The Catholic, a priest, I have known as an Atheneum visitor for some time.  He talked to-day, on my asking him some questions, and talked better than I expected.  He is plainly full of intelligence, full of enthusiasm for his religion, and, I suspect, full of bigotry.  I do not believe he will die a Catholic priest.  A young man of his temperament must find it hard to live without family ties, and I shall expect to hear, if I ever hear of him again, that some good little Irish girl has made him forget his vows.

“My visitors, in other respects, have been of the average sort.  Four women have been delighted to make my acquaintance—­three men have thought themselves in the presence of a superior being; one offered me twenty-five cents because I reached him the key of the museum.  One woman has opened a correspondence with me, and several have told me that they knew friends of mine; two have spoken of me in small letters to small newspapers; one said he didn’t see me, and one said he did!  I have become hardened to all; neither compliment nor quarter-dollar rouses any emotion.  My fit of humility, which has troubled me all summer, is shaken, however, by the first cool breeze of autumn and the first walk taken without perspiration.