Lives of Girls Who Became Famous

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

In this impecunious condition he had fallen in love with and married Lydia Coleman, a true-hearted Quaker girl, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, one singularly fitted to help him make his way in life. She was quick, intelligent, and attractive in her usual dress of white, and was the clerk of the Friends' meeting where he attended. She was enthusiastic in reading, becoming librarian successively of two circulating libraries, till she had read every book upon the shelves, and then in the evenings repeating what she had read to her associates, her young lover among them.

When they were married, they had nothing but warm hearts and willing hands to work together. After a time William joined his father in converting a ship-load of whale oil into soap, and then a little money was made; but at the end of seven years he went back to school-teaching because he loved the work. At first he had charge of a fine grammar school established at Nantucket, and later, of a school of his own.

Into this school came his third child, Maria, shy and retiring, with all her mother's love of reading. Faithful at home, with, as she says, "an endless washing of dishes," not to be wondered at where there were ten little folks, she was not less faithful at school. The teacher could not help seeing that his little daughter had a mind which would well repay all the time he could spend upon it.

While he was a good school-teacher, he was an equally good student of nature, born with a love of the heavens above him. When eight years old, his father called him to the door to look at the planet Saturn, and from that time the boy calculated his age from the position of the planet, year by year. Always striving to improve himself, when he became a man, he built a small observatory upon his own land, that he might study the stars. He was thus enabled to earn one hundred dollars a year in the work of the United States Coast Survey. Teaching at two dollars a week, and fishing, could not always cramp a man of such aspiring mind.

Brought up beside the sea, he was as broad as the sea in his thought and true nobility of character. He could see no reason why his daughters should not be just as well educated as his sons. He therefore taught Maria the same as his boys, giving her especial drill in navigation. Perhaps it is not strange that after such teaching, his daughter could have no taste for making worsted work or Kensington stitches. She often says to this day, "A woman might be learning seven languages while she is learning fancy work," and there is little doubt that the seven languages would make her seven times more valuable as a wife and mother. If teaching navigation to girls would give us a thousand Maria Mitchells in this country, by all means let it be taught.

Maria left the public school at sixteen, and for a year attended a private school; then, loving mathematics, and being deeply interested in her father's studies, she became at seventeen his helper in the work of the Coast Survey. This astronomical labor brought Professors Agassiz, Bache, and other noted men to the quiet Mitchell home, and thus the girl heard the stimulating conversation of superior minds.

But the family needed more money. Though Mr. Mitchell wrote articles for Silliman's Journal, and delivered an able course of lectures before a Boston society of which Daniel Webster was president, scientific study did not put many dollars in a man's pocket. An elder sister was earning three hundred dollars yearly by teaching, and Maria felt that she too must help more largely to share the family burdens. She was offered the position of librarian at the Nantucket library, with a salary of sixty dollars the first year, and seventy-five the second. While a dollar and twenty cents a week seemed very little, there would be much time for study, for the small island did not afford a continuous stream of readers. She accepted the position, and for twenty years, till youth had been lost in middle life, Maria Mitchell worked for one hundred dollars a year, studying on, that she might do her noble work in the world.

Did not she who loved nature, long for the open air and the blue sky, and for some days of leisure which so many girls thoughtlessly waste? Yes, doubtless. However, the laws of life are as rigid as mathematics. A person cannot idle away the hours and come to prominence. No great singer, no great artist, no great scientist, comes to honor without continuous labor. Society devotees are heard of only for a day or a year, while those who develop minds and ennoble hearts have lasting remembrance.

Miss Mitchell says, "I was born of only ordinary capacity, but of extraordinary persistency," and herein is the secret of a great life. She did not dabble in French or music or painting and give it up; she went steadily on to success. Did she neglect home duties? Never. She knit stockings a yard long for her aged father till his death, usually studying while she knit. To those who learn to be industrious early in life, idleness is never enjoyable.

There was another secret of Miss Mitchell's success. She read good books early in life. She says: "We always had books, and were bookish people. There was a public library in Nantucket before I was born. It was not a free library, but we always paid the subscription of one dollar per annum, and always read and studied from it. I remember among its volumes Hannah More's books and Rollin's Ancient History. I remember too that Charles Folger, the present Secretary of the Treasury, and I had both read this latter work through before we were ten years old, though neither of us spoke of it to the other until a later period."