“I always thought that servant-girls had an easy time of it, and I still think so.  I really found an hour too long for all this, and when I rang the bell at seven for breakfast I had been waiting fifteen minutes for the clock to strike.

“I went to the Atheneum at 9.30, and having decided that I would take the Newark and Cambridge places of the comet, and work them up, I did so, getting to the three equations before I went home to dinner at 12.30.  I omitted the corrections of parallax and aberrations, not intending to get more than a rough approximation.  I find to my sorrow that they do not agree with those from my own observations.  I shall look over them again next week.

“At noon I ran around and did up several errands, dined, and was back again at my post by 1.30.  Then I looked over my morning’s work,—­I can find no mistake.  I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.

“I saw, in looking over Cooper, elements of a comet of 1825 which resemble what I get out for this, from my own observations, but I cannot rely upon my own.

“I saw also, to-day, in the ‘Monthly Notices,’ a plan for measuring the light of stars by degrees of illumination,—­an idea which had occurred to me long ago, but which I have not practised.

“October 23.  Yesterday I was again reminded of the remark which Mrs. Stowe makes about the variety of occupations which an American woman pursues.

“She says it is this, added to the cares and anxieties, which keeps them so much behind the daughters of England in personal beauty.

“And to-day I was amused at reading that one of her party objected to the introduction of waxed floors into American housekeeping, because she could seem to see herself down on her knees doing the waxing.

“But of yesterday.  I was up before six, made the fire in the kitchen, and made coffee.  Then I set the table in the dining-room, and made the fire there.  Toasted bread and trimmed lamps.  Rang the breakfast bell at seven.  After breakfast, made my bed, and ‘put up’ the room.  Then I came down to the Atheneum and looked over my comet computations till noon.  Before dinner I did some tatting, and made seven button-holes for K. I dressed and then dined.  Came back again to the Atheneum at 1.30, and looked over another set of computations, which took me until four o’clock.  I was pretty tired by that time, and rested by reading ‘Cosmos.’  Lizzie E. came in, and I gossiped for half an hour.  I went home to tea, and that over, I made a loaf of bread.  Then I went up to my room and read through (partly writing) two exercises in German, which took me thirty-five minutes.

“It was stormy, and I had no observing to do, so I sat down to my tatting.  Lizzie E. came in and I took a new lesson in tatting, so as to make the pearl-edged.  I made about half a yard during the evening.  At a little after nine I went home with Lizzie, and carried a letter to the post-office.  I had kept steadily at work for sixteen hours when I went to bed.”