winter William, evidently to divert her mind from the depressing home-sickness which weighed it down, gave her lessons in astronomy, or amused her with dreams that in a few years became waking realities. He was running a hard race for daily bread, for the thirty-five or thirty-eight lessons a week which he gave to music pupils might be counted work enough for an ordinary man, without reference to his duties as organist and manager of concerts. But he had also entered the arena of science in the race for lasting fame. A holiday from teaching meant for him increased work in the astronomical studies which were now absorbing his time and thoughts. "It soon appeared," his sister writes, "that he was not contented with knowing what former observers had seen, for he began to contrive a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long (I believe after Huyghens' description)." Her help was continually wanted in executing the various contrivances required. Although the lenses were ordered from London, she had to make the pasteboard tube they were fitted into, and when the telescope was turned on Jupiter or Saturn, she had to keep the paper tube straight till her brother got a peep through it. We need not be surprised to read her complaint that her music lessons were much hindered by astronomy, housekeeping, and indifferent servants. She was realising an old truth. Her brother and she imagined that service to two or three or even to four masters was possible. They were finding out that they could really serve only one. And slowly but surely William Herschel and his sister were drifting into the service of the one master, not the fleeting fame of a singer but the lasting fame of a discoverer. But those days of singing were never
