Into society better adapted to my taste and purposes I could not have gone.  This mode of life is very extensively adopted in America, —­married couples, with families, living in this manner for years, without the least loss of respectability.  They seldom have sitting-rooms distinct from their bed-rooms, which are made to answer both purposes; and as to meals, all meet to eat the same things, at the same table, and at the same time.  The custom is economical; but it has an injurious effect upon character, especially in the case of the women.  The young wife, not being called upon to exercise herself in domestic economy, is apt to become idle, slovenly, and—­in a certain sense—­worthless.  The softening associations and influences, and even the endearments, of “home,” are lost.  There is no domesticity.

In the evening of the 17th I went to the Broadway Tabernacle, to hear a lecture on Astronomy from Professor Mitchell of Cincinnati, no ordinary man.  Although the admission fee was half-a-dollar, upwards of a thousand persons were present.  Without either diagrams or notes, the accomplished lecturer kept his audience in breathless attention for upwards of an hour.  He seemed to be a devout, unassuming man, and threw a flood of light on every subject he touched.  His theme was the recent discovery of the Leverrier planet; and perhaps you will not be displeased if I give you a summary of his lucid observations.  In observing how the fluctuations of the planet Herschel had ultimately led to this discovery, he said: 

“For a long time no mind dared to touch the problem.  At length a young astronomer rises, unknown to fame, but with a mind capable of grasping all the difficulties involved in any of these questions.  I refer of course to LEVERRIER.  He began by taking up the movements of Mercury.  He was dissatisfied with the old computations and the old tables; and he ventured to begin anew, and to compute an entirely new set of tables.  With these new tables, he predicted the precise instant when the planet Mercury, on the 18th of May, 1845, would touch the sun, and sweep across it.  The time rolls round when the planet is to be seen, and his prediction verified or confuted.  The day arrives, but, alas! for the computer, the clouds let down their dark curtains, and veil the sun from his sight.  Our own Observatory had just been finished; and if the audience will permit, I will state briefly my own observations upon the planet.  I had ten long years been toiling.  I had commenced what appeared to be a hopeless enterprise.  But finally I saw the building finished.  I saw this mighty telescope erected,—­I had adjusted it with my own hands,—­I had computed the precise time when the planet would come in contact with the sun’s disk, and the precise point where the contact would take place; but when it is remembered that only about the thousandth part of the sun’s disk enters upon the field of the telescope, the importance