instrument, with the coloured lens screwed in for day observations. I thought, "I'll take one more look and then hurry up my task;" but that look took longer than I expected, and very little of the task was done when the time was up. The case was referred to Papa, who, without a word spoken, boxed up my telescope and shipped it off—I never knew where to this day. For years I could not speak of it without tears.
When Betty and myself were almost grown up, and he began to travel about the country to address the agricultural societies of the different States about "Meteorology for the Farmers," and "Crop and Weather Reports," he said, as we had been so faithful in teaching the little ones, he would take first one of us and then the other wherever he went. So we made two trips with him, and then came the Brussels Conference, "to propose a uniform plan of observations at sea, and to adopt a meteorological log."[1] He said such a chance might never occur again, and, if he could "raise the wind," he would take us both that time. "The wind" was raised somehow, and we both went, accompanied by our two cousins, Ellen Herndon and Ellen Maury. Betty, the eldest of the party, was not seventeen when we sailed. Ellen Herndon was a lovely blonde, Ellen Maury a very handsome brunette. Sure such a merry party never sailed the broad ocean before! We were dubbed "The Magpie Club" by acclamation on board the steamer. When landed at Liverpool, we found awaiting us an invitation from Lord Wrottesley for us all to visit him at Wrottesley Hall near Wolverhampton. The house was in Cromwell's time the "Convent of White ladies," and in its park stood the "Royal Oak," in which Richard Penderill hid the fugitive prince after the disastrous battle of Worcester. So we were wild to go, and the invitation was accepted. Lord Wrottesley had been a correspondent of my father's for
- ↑ See page 72.
