She disliked extremely to have attention called to anything out of order in her dress, and the person who innocently ventured to tell her was sure to get pungent reproof. Once as she stood in the college office by the counter waiting for the mail, a teacher passing, unaware of this peculiarity, picked off with a good deal of manner and great unnecessary deliberation a long white thread from Miss Mitchell's grey shawl. "Please put that back just where you took it from! I consider it an impertinence!" She had to accept, though, and laugh in spite of herself, at her predicament in Main Street one afternoon. Forty years ago a leghorn bonnet was not a thing to be treated lightly and thrown aside at the end of a season, but reappeared, year after year, to be bleached, pressed and rejuvenated generally. Miss Mitchell was taking one of this sort to her milliner, swinging carelessly the huge paper bag in which the denuded bonnet reposed. Suddenly her name was called several times, and turning she was aware of a fastidious little old gentleman of her acquaintance, his own hat in one hand and her unsightly headgear in the other, bowing before her, breathless in his pursuit,--"Miss Mitchell, when you alighted from the street car back there, I happened to be passing just as this dropped out of your bag," presenting, as he spoke, the unfortunate bonnet of whose loss she had been entirely unaware. The courtly grace of his action amused her immensely, and she delighted to tell this story often. She had many other stories against herself that she liked to tell. One was of being on an ocean steamer and hearing a man among a group of passengers near say,--"Maria Mitchell, daughter of General O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer, is on board." Attention being called to her proximity, and that it was thought she belonged to another branch of the name, he crossed over to Miss Mitchell's chair, and put the question to her direct. She answered quietly,--"No, my father is William Mitchell of Nantucket. He is also an astronomer." "All the same," she heard him say in a low tone as he regained his party, "I can't help what she says, but Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, _is_ the daughter of General Mitchell of Ohio." Again she was on a steamer bound for Nantucket, and as the passage was rough, was lying half asleep on a couch in the ladies' cabin. Two women belonging to Nantucket were chatting together in the farthest corner of the room, and she suddenly became faintly conscious that she was the subject of their conversation. "I suppose Maria Mitchell has done some pretty big things--people say so--but she is awful homely!" "Well, yes," hesitated the other, "I s'pose she is, but you must admit she has fine eyes."