Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals

by Maria Mitchell

Mr. Mitchell was a man of great suavity and gentleness; if left to himself he would never have denied a single request made to him by one of his children. His first impulse was to gratify every desire of their hearts, and if it had not been for the clear head of the mother, who took care that the household should be managed wisely and economically, the results might have been disastrous. The father had wisdom enough to perceive this, and when a child came to him, and in a very pathetic and winning way proffered some request for an unusual indulgence, he generally replied, "Yes, if mother thinks best."

Mr. Mitchell was very fond of bright colors; as they were excluded from the dress of Friends, he indulged himself wherever it was possible. If he were buying books, and there was a variety of binding, he always chose the copies with red covers. Even the wooden framework of the reflecting telescope which he used was painted a brilliant red. He liked a gay carpet on the floor, and the walls of the family sitting-room in the house on Vestal street were covered with paper resplendent with bunches of pink roses. Suspended by a cord from the ceiling in the centre of this room was a glass ball, filled with water, used by Mr. Mitchell in his experiments on polarization of light, flashing its dancing rainbows about the room.

At the back of this house was a little garden, full of gay flowers: so that if the garb of the young Mitchells was rather sombre, the setting was bright and cheerful, and the life in the home was healthy and wide-awake. When the hilarity became excessive the mother would put in her little check, from time to time, and the father would try to look as he ought to, but he evidently enjoyed the whole.

As Mr. Mitchell was kind and indulgent to his children, so he was the sympathetic friend and counsellor of many in trouble who came to him for help or advice. As he took his daily walk to the little farm about a mile out of town, where, for an hour or two he enjoyed being a farmer, the people would come to their doors to speak to him as he passed, and the little children would run up to him to be patted on the head.

He treated animals in the same way. He generally kept a horse. His children complained that although the horse was good when it was bought, yet as Mr. Mitchell never allowed it to be struck with a whip, nor urged to go at other than a very gentle trot, the horse became thoroughly demoralized, and was no more fit to drive than an old cow!

There was everything in the home which could amuse and instruct children. The eldest daughter was very handy at all sorts of entertaining occupations; she had a delicate sense of the artistic, and was quite skilful with her pencil.

The present kindergarten system in its practice is almost identical with the home as it appeared in the first half of this century, among enlightened people. There is hardly any kind of handiwork done in the kindergarten that was not done in the Mitchell family, and in other families of their acquaintance. The girls learned to sew and cook, just as they learned to read,—as a matter of habit rather than of instruction. They learned how to make their own clothes, by making their dolls' clothes,—and the dolls themselves were frequently home-made, the eldest sister painting the faces much more prettily than those obtained at the shops; and there was a great delight in gratifying the fancy, by dressing the dolls, not in Quaker garb, but in all of the most brilliant colors and stylish shapes worn by the ultra-fashionable.

There were always plenty of books, and besides those in the house there was the Atheneum Library, which, although not a free library, was very inexpensive to the shareholders.

There was another very striking difference between that epoch and the present. The children of that day were taught to value a book and to take excellent care of it; as an instance it may be mentioned that one copy of Colburn's "Algebra" was used by eight children in the Mitchell family, one after the other. The eldest daughter's name was written on the inside of the cover; seven more names followed in the order of their ages, as the book descended.

With regard to their reading, the mother examined every book that came into the house. Of course there were not so many books published then as now, and the same books were read over and over. Miss Edgeworth's stories became part of their very lives, and Young's "Night Thoughts," and the poems of Cowper and Bloomfield were conspicuous objects on the bookshelves of most houses in those days. Mr. Mitchell was very apt, while observing the heavens in the evening, to quote from one or the other of these poets, or from the Bible. "An undevout astronomer is mad" was one of his favorite quotations.