tical Almanac, in order to devote herself more exclusively to this. In October, 1888, we find this entry in her diary: "Resolved, in case of my outliving father and being in good health, to give my efforts to the intellectual culture of women, without regard to salary; if possible, connect myself with liberal Christian institutions—believing, as I do, that happiness and growth in this life are best promoted by them, and that what is good in this life is good in any life." She had her own views about the way teaching should be done, and did not hesitate to express them. Thus: "Our faculty meetings always try me in this respect; we do things that other colleges have done before. We wait and ask for precedent. If the earth had waited for a precedent, it would never have turned on its axis!" She thought teachers were inclined to talk too much; that to read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes, was a useful exercise; that "the greatest object in educating is to give the right habit of study; . . . 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; . . . a small apparatus well used does wonders. . . . I find a helping hand lifts the girl as crutches do; she learns to like the help which is not self-help." The relation between herself and her pupils is described as having been very cordial and intimate, and she remarked to one of her classes entering upon its study for the last year, "We are women studying together." According to her own description of her teaching, her beginning class used a small portable equatorial, which stood out of doors from seven o'clock in the morning till nine o'clock in the evening. They were expected to determine the rotation of the sun upon its axis by watching the spots; "the same for the planet Jupiter." They determined the revolution of Titan by watching its motions, the retrograde and direct motion of the planets among the stars, the position of the sun with reference to its setting in winter and summer, and the phases of Venus. "All their book learning in astronomy should be mathematical. The astronomy which is not mathematical, in what is so ludicrously called ‘geography of the heavens,’ is not astronomy at all." The senior girls in practical astronomy were taught separately: to obtain the time for the college by the meridian passage of stars; to find a planet at any hour of the day; to make drawings of what they see, and to determine positions of planets and satellites; to determine differences of right ascension; to know the satellites of Saturn by their physiognomy, as if they were persons; and they sometimes measured diameters. She held the marking system in contempt, would not drill, and could not drive.
