She was especially careful of a
timid child; she herself was timid, and, throughout her life, could
never witness a thunder-storm with any calmness.
On one of those occasions so common in an American household, when the
one servant suddenly takes her leave, or is summarily dismissed, Miss
Mitchell describes her part of the family duties:
"Oct. 21, 1854. This morning I arose at six, having been half asleep
only for some hours, fearing that I might not be up in time to get
breakfast, a task which I had volunteered to do the preceding evening.
It was but half light, and I made a hasty toilet. I made a fire very
quickly, prepared the coffee, baked the graham bread, toasted white
bread, trimmed the solar lamp, and made another fire in the dining-room
before seven o'clock.
"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.
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