In March,
1886, she wrote: "I have been in New York quite lately, and am quite
hopeful that Miss ---- will do something for Vassar. Mrs. C., of
Newburyport, is to ask Whittier, who is said to be rich, and ---- told
me to get anything I could out of her father. But after all I am a poor
beggar; my ideas are small!"
Since Miss Mitchell's death, the fund has been completed by the alumnae,
and is known as the Maria Mitchell Endowment Fund. With $10,000
appropriated by the trustees it amounts to $50,000.
"June 18, 1876. I had imagined the Emperor of Brazil to be a dark,
swarthy, tall man, of forty-five years; that he would not really have a
crown upon his head, but that I should feel it was somewhere around,
handy-like, and that I should know I was in royal presence. But he turns
out to be a large, old man,--say, sixty-five,--broad-headed and
broad-shouldered, with a big white beard, and a very pleasant, even
chatty, manner.
"Once inside of the dome, he seemed to feel at home; to my astonishment
he asked if Alvan Clark made the glass of the equatorial. As he stepped
into the meridian-room, and saw the instruments, he said, 'Collimators?'
I said, 'You have been in observatories before.' 'Oh, yes, Cambridge and
Washington,' he replied. He seemed much more interested in the
observatory than I could possibly expect. I asked him to go on top of
the roof, and he said he had not time; yet he stayed long enough to go
up several times.
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