"If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of
language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do
you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a
few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of
study of something for which you were born?
"When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through
with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I
wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for
which God designed them, would do for them.
"I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be
something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there
would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then
thinking she was an astronomer!
"Jan. 8, 1876. At the meeting of graduates at the Deacon House, the
speeches that were made were mainly those of Dr. R. and Professor B. I
am sorry now that I did not at least say that the college is what it is
mainly because the early students pushed up the course to a collegiate
standard.
"Jan. 25, 1876. It has become a serious question with me whether it is
not my duty to beg money for the observatory, while what I really long
for is a quiet life of scientific speculation. I want to sit down and
study on the observations made by myself and others."
During her later years at Vassar, Miss Mitchell interested herself
personally in raising a fund to endow the chair of astronomy.
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