"Oct. 31, 1853. People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear. My letter came from Cambridge [the Harvard Observatory], and I had some work to do over. It was a wearyful job, but by dint of shutting myself up all day I did manage to get through with it. The good of my travelling showed itself then, when I was too tired to read, to listen, or to talk; for the beautiful scenery of the West was with me in the evening, instead of the tedious columns of logarithms. It 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.