"Occasionally it happened that work requiring two hours or more to prepare called for little time in the class. Then would come one of those treats which she bestowed so freely upon her girls, and which seemed to put them in touch with the great outside world. Letters from astronomers in Europe or America, or from members of their families, giving delightful glimpses of home life; stories of her travels and of visits to famous people; accounts of scientific conventions and of large gatherings of women,—not so common then as now,—gave her listeners a wider outlook and new interests.
"Professor Mitchell was chairman of a standing committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Women,—that on women's work in science,—and some of her students did their first work for women's organizations in gathering statistics and filling out blanks which she distributed among them.
"The benefits derived from my college course were manifold, but time and money would have been well spent had there been no return but that of two years' intercourse with Maria Mitchell."
Another pupil, and later her successor at Vassar College, Miss Mary W. Whitney, has said of her method of teaching: "As a teacher, Miss Mitchell's gift was that of stimulus, not that of drill. She could not drill; she would not drive. But no honest student could escape the pressure of her strong will and earnest intent. The marking system she held in contempt, and wished to have nothing to do with it. 'You cannot mark a human mind,' she said, 'because there is no intellectual unit;' and upon taking up her duties as professor she stipulated that she should not be held responsible for a strict application of the system."
"July, 1887. My students used to say that my way of teaching was like that of the man who said to his son, 'There are the letters of the English alphabet—go into that corner and learn them.'
"It is not exactly my way, but I do think, as a general rule, that teachers talk too much! A book is a very good institution! To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing. The fashion of lecturing is becoming a rage; the teacher shows herself off, and she does not try enough to develop her pupils.
"The greatest object in educating is to give a right habit of study….
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"… Not too much mechanical apparatus—let the imagination have some play; a cube may be shown by a model, but let the drawing upon the blackboard represent the cube; and if possible let Nature be the blackboard; spread your triangles upon land and sky.
"One of my pupils always threw her triangles on the celestial vault above her head….