Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 23

"I think I saw a Russian gentleman at St. Isaac's touch his forehead to the floor, rise and stand erect, touch the floor again, and rise again, ten times in as many minutes; and we were one day forbidden entrance to a church because the czar was about to say his prayers; we found he was making the pilgrimage of some seventy churches, and praying in each one.

"Christians who believe in public prayer, and who claim that we should be instant in prayer, would consider it a severe tax upon their energies to pray seventy times a day--they don't care to do it!

"Then there is the _democracy_ of the church. There are no pews to be sold to the highest bidder--no 'reserved seats;' the oneness and equality before G.o.d are always recognized. A Russian gentleman, as he prays, does not look around, and move away from the poor beggar next to him. At St. Peter's the crowd stands or kneels--at St. Isaac's they stand; and they stand literally on the same plane.

"I noticed in the crowd at St. Isaac's, one festival day, young girls who were having a friendly chat; but their religion was ever in their thoughts, and they crossed themselves certainly once a minute. Their religion is not an affair of Sunday, but of every day in the week.

"The drosky-driver, certainly the most stupid cla.s.s of my acquaintance in Russia, never forgets his prayers; if his pa.s.senger is never so much in a hurry, and the bribe never so high, the drosky-driver will check his horse, and make the sign of the cross as he pa.s.ses the little image of the Virgin,--so small, perhaps, that you have not noticed it until you wonder why he slackens his pace.

"Then as to government. We boast of our national freedom, and we talk about universal suffrage, the 'Home of the Free,' etc. Yet the serfs in Russia were freed in March, 1861, just before our Civil war began. They freed their serfs without any war, and each serf received some acres of land. They freed twenty-three millions, and we freed four or five millions of blacks; and all of us, who are old enough, remember that one of the fears in freeing the slaves was the number of lawless and ignorant blacks who, it was supposed, would come to the North.

"We talk about _universal_ suffrage; a larger part of the antiquated Russians vote than of Americans. Just as I came away from St. Petersburg I met a Moscow family, travelling. We occupied the same compartment car.

It was a family consisting of a lady and her three daughters. When they found where I had been, they asked me, in excellent English, what had carried me to St. Petersburg, and then, why I was interested in Pulkova; and so I must tell them about American girls, and so, of course, of Va.s.sar College.

"They plied me with questions: 'Do you have women in your faculty? Do men and women hold the same rank?' I returned the questions: 'Is there a girl's college in Moscow?' 'No,' said the youngest sister, with a sigh, 'we are always _going_ to have one.' The eldest sister asked: 'Do women vote in America?' 'No,' I said. 'Do women vote in Russia?' She said 'No;' but her mother interrupted her, and there was a spicy conversation between them, in Russian, and then the mother, who had rarely spoken, turned to me, and said: 'I vote, but I do not go to the polls myself. I send somebody to represent me; my vote rests upon my property.'

"Have you not read a story, of late, in the newspapers, about some excellent women in a little town in Connecticut whose pet heifers were taken by force and sold because they refused to pay the large taxes levied upon them by their townsmen, they being the largest holders of property in the town? That circ.u.mstance could not have happened in barbarous Russia; there, the owner of property has a right to say how it shall be used.

"'Why do you ask me about our government?' I said to the Russian girls.

'Are you interested in questions of government?' They replied, 'All Russian women are interested in questions of that sort.' How many American women are interested in questions concerning government?

"These young girls knew exactly what questions to ask about Va.s.sar College,--the course of study, the diploma, the number of graduates, etc. The eldest said: 'We are at once excited when we hear of women studying; we have longed for opportunities to study all our lives. Our father was the engineer of the first Russian railroad, and he spent two years in America."

"I confess to a feeling of mortification when one of these girls asked me, 'Did you ever read the translation of a Russian book?' and I was obliged to answer 'No.' This girl had read American books in the original. They were talking Russian, French, German, and English, and yet mourning over their need of education; and in general education, especially in that of women, I think we must be in advance of them.

"One of these sisters, forgetting my ignorance, said something to me in Russian. The other laughed. 'What did she say?' I asked. The eldest replied, 'She asked you to take her back with you, and educate her.'

'But,' I said, 'you read and speak your languages--the learning of the world is open to you--found your own college!' And the young girl leaned back on the cus.h.i.+ons, drew her mantle around her, and said, 'We have not the energy of the American girl!'

"The energy of the American girl! The rich inheritance which has come down to her from men and women who sought, in the New World, a better and higher life.

"When the American girl carries her energy into the great questions of humanity, into the practical problems of life; when she takes home to her heart the interests of education, of government, and of religion, what may we not hope for our country!

London, 1873. "It was the 26th of August, and I had no hope that Miss Cobbe could be at her town residence, but I felt bound to deliver Mrs.

Howe's letter, and I wished to give her a Va.s.sar pamphlet; so I took a cab and drove; it was at an enormous distance from my lodging--she told me it was six miles. I was as much surprised as delighted when the girl said she was at home, for the house had painters in it, the carpets were up, and everything looked uninhabitable. The girl came back, after taking my card, and asked me if I would go into the studio, and so took me through a pretty garden into a small building of two rooms, the outer one filled with pictures and books. I had never heard that Miss Cobbe was an artist, and so I looked around, and was afraid that I had got the wrong Miss Cobbe. But as I glanced at the table I saw the 'Contemporary Review,' and I took up the first article and read it--by Herbert Spencer. I had become somewhat interested in a pretty severe criticism of the modes of reasoning of mathematical men, and had perceived that he said the problems of concrete sciences were harder than any of the physical sciences (which I admitted was all true), when a very white dog came bounding in upon me, and I dropped the book, knowing that the dog's mistress must be coming,--and Miss Cobbe entered. She looked just as I expected, but even larger; but then her head is magnificent because so large. She was very cordial at once, and told me that Miss Davies had told her I was in London. She said the studio was that of her friend. I could not refrain from thanking her for her books, and telling her how much we valued them in America, and how much good I believed they had done. She colored a very little, and said, 'Nothing could be more gratifying to me.'

"I had heard that she was not a women's rights woman, and she said, 'Who could have told you that? I am remarkably so. I write suffrage articles continually--I sign pet.i.tions.'

"I was delighted to find that she had been an intimate friend of Mrs.

Somerville; had corresponded with her for years, and had a letter from her after she was ninety-two years of age, when she was reading Quaternions for amus.e.m.e.nt. She said that Mrs. Somerville would probably have called herself a Unitarian, but that really she was a Theist, and that it came out more in her later life. She said she was correcting proof of the Life by the daughters; that the Life was intensely interesting; that Mrs. Somerville mourned all her life that she had not had the advantages of education.

"I asked her how I could get a photograph of Mrs. Somerville, and she said they could not be bought. She told me, without any hint from me, that she would give Va.s.sar College a plaster cast of the bust of Mrs.

Somerville. [Footnote: This bust always stood in Miss Mitch.e.l.l's parlor at the observatory.] She said, as women grew older, if they lived independent lives, they were pretty sure to be 'women's rights women.'

She said the clergy--the broadest, who were in harmony with her--were very courteous, and that since she had grown old (she's about forty-five) all men were more tolerant of her and forgot the difference of s.e.x.

"I felt drawn to her when she was most serious. I told her I had suffered much from doubt, and asked her if she had; and she said yes, when she was young; but that she had had, in her life, rare intervals when she believed she held communion with G.o.d, and on those rare periods she had rested in the long intermissions. She laughed, and the tears came to her eyes, all together; she was _quick_, and all-alive, and so courteous. When she gave me a book she said, 'May I write your whole name? and may I say "from your friend"?'

"Then she hurried on her bonnet, and walked to the station with me; and her round face, with the blond hair and the light-blue eyes, seemed to me to become beautiful as she talked.

"In Edinburgh I asked for a photograph of Mary Somerville, and the young man behind the counter replied, 'I don't know who it is.'

"In London I asked at a bookstore, which the Murrays recommended, for a photograph of Mrs. Somerville and of Sir George Airy, and the man said if they could be had in London he would get them; and then he asked, 'Are they English?' and I informed him that Sir George Airy was the astronomer royal!

"'The Glasgow College for Girls.' Seeing a sign of this sort, I rang the door-bell of the house to which it was attached, entered, and was told the lady was at home. As I waited for her, I took up the 'Prospectus,'

and it was enough,--'music, dancing, drawing, needlework, and English'

were the prominent features, and the pupils were children. All well enough,--but why call it a college?

"When the lady superintendent came in, I told her that I had supposed it was for more advanced students, and she said, 'Oh, it is for girls up to twenty; one supposes a girl is finished by twenty.'

"I asked, as modestly as I could, 'Have you any pupils in Latin and mathematics?' and she said, 'No, it's for girls, you know. Dr. M. hopes we shall have some mathematics next year.' 'And,' I asked, 'some Latin?'

'Yes, Dr. M. hopes we shall have some Latin; but I confess I believe Latin and mathematics all bosh; give them modern languages and accomplishments. I suppose your school is for professional women.'

"I told her no; that the daughters of our wealthiest people demand learning; that it would scarcely be considered 'good society' when the women had neither Latin nor mathematics.

"'Oh, well,' she said, 'they get married here so soon.'

"When I asked her if they had lady teachers, she said 'Oh, no [as if that would ruin the inst.i.tution]; nothing but first-cla.s.s masters.'

"It was clear that the women taught the needlework."

CHAPTER XI

PAPERS--SCIENCE [1874]--THE DENVER ECLIPSE [1878]--COLORS OF STARS

"The dissemination of information in regard to science and to scientific investigations relieves the scientist from the small annoyances of extreme ignorance.

"No one to-day will expect to receive a letter such as reached Sir John Herschel some years ago, asking for the writer's horoscope to be cast; or such as he received at another time, which asked, Shall I marry? and Have I seen _her_?

"Nor can it be long, if the whole population is somewhat educated, that I shall be likely to receive, as I have done, applications for information as to the recovery of stolen goods, or to tell fortunes.

"When crossing the Atlantic, an Irish woman came to me and asked me if I told fortunes; and when I replied in the negative, she asked me if I were not an astronomer. I admitted that I made efforts in that direction. She then asked me what I could tell, if not fortunes. I told her that I could tell when the moon would rise, when the sun would rise, etc. She said, 'Oh,' in a tone which plainly said, 'Is _that_ all?'

"Only a few winters since, during a very mild winter, a young lad who was driving a team called out to me on the street, and said he had a question to ask me.

"I stopped; and he asked, 'Shall we lose our ice-crop this winter?'

"It was January, and it was New England. It took very little learning and no alchemy to foretell that the month of February and the neighborhood of Boston would give ice enough; and I told him that the ice-crop would be abundant; but I was honest enough to explain to him that my outlook into the future was no better than his.

"One of the unfavorable results of the attempt to popularize science is this: the reader of popular scientific books is very likely to think that he understands the science itself, when he merely understands what some writer says about science.

"Take, for example, the method of determining the distance of the moon from the earth--one of the easiest problems in physical astronomy. The method can be told in a few sentences; yet it took a hundred years to determine it with any degree of accuracy--and a hundred years, not of the average work of mankind in science, but a hundred years during which able minds were bent to the problem.

"Still, with all the school-masters, and all the teaching, and all the books, the ignorance of the unscientific world is enormous; they are ignorant both ways--they underrate the scientific people and they overrate them. There is, on the one hand, the Irish woman who is disappointed because you cannot tell fortunes, and, on the other hand, the cultivated woman who supposes that you must know _all_ science.