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52
Caroline Lucretia Herschel.
[1783.
1st of January, 1783, a very fine one cracked by frost in the tube. I remember to have seen the thermometer 1½ degree below zero for several nights in the same year. . . .
. . . .In my brother's absence from home, I was of course left solely to amuse myself with my own thoughts, which were anything but cheerful. I found I was to be trained for an assistant-astronomer, and by way of encouragement a telescope adapted for "sweeping," consisting of a tube with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a "finder," was given me. I was "to sweep for comets," and I see by my journal that I began August 22nd, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my "sweeps," which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost, without a human being near enough to be within call. I knew too little of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find it again without losing too much time by consulting the Atlas. But all these troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance making observations with his various instruments on double stars, planets, &c., and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue; but at the end of 1783 I had only marked fourteen, when my sweeping was interrupted by being employed to write down my brother's observations with the large twenty-foot. I had, however, the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours to assist him when he wanted another person, either to run to the clocks, write down a memorandum, fetch and carry instruments, or measure the ground with poles, &c., &c., of which something of the kind every moment would occur. For the assiduity with which the measurements on the diameter of the Georgium Sidus, and observations of other