Another time to an officer whose parents had visited her at the college came this:—"Such a handsome father and mother as you've got! Aren't any of you children good looking?" One rarely felt aggrieved at Miss Mitchell's bluntness. It was her "way." She was a privileged person, and most of us were ready to share the laugh she raised at our expense.
Her "Dome" parties for her students at the end of the year were famous, and she was busy weeks beforehand composing her "poetry" for the occasion. She had a natural gift in impromptu rhyming, and what was bestowed on her girls was treasured years after. Two of these precious relics of the past have been loaned to me to copy here. It is most fitting that the last words of this sketch should be her own, and lingeringly with them I leave her.
A "Dome" rhyme to her girls:—
"Who lifting their hearts to the heavenly blue
Will do woman's work for the good and true;
And as sisters or daughters or mothers or wives
Will take the starlight into their lives."
In the train with three of her seniors after Commencement, June 30th, 1868:—
"Sarah, Mary, Louise and I
Have come to the cross roads to say good-bye;