Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/319

says Willie. ' What is that he says ?' ' He says he comes from the Cape of Good Hope.' ' Ay ? and who is he ? What is his name ?* ' His name is Herschel.' * Yes,' says Willie, ' William James Herschel.' ' Ach, meiu Gott ! das ist nicht mogiich ; ist clieser meines Xeffeii's Solm ?' And so it all came out, and when I came to her all was understood, .and we sat down and talked as quietly as if we had parted but yesterday " Groskopff, by the way, was recounting a strange feat which, to give you some notion of the sort of fterson (par rapport an physique), she performed, not longer than half a year ago. Remember it is a person of eighty-eight or eighty-nine of whom we are speaking. Well ! what do you say of such a person being able to put her foot behind her back and scratch her ear, in imitation of a dog, with it, in one of her merry moods?" The " Day-Book," which, as already stated, had been recommenced in the year 1833. The first volume of the new Day-Book concludes in May, 1837, with comments on Baily's account of Flamsteed, and recollections of days spent at Greenwich in 1799, when she had seen and wondered at the piles of manuscripts accumulated there. "Dr. Maskelyne was not indifferent to the stores of observations of his predecessor, for he even attempted to make me undertake the examination of some of Halley's scribblings on fragments of waste paper [to see if they] might not belong to some star or other. But such things cannot be done in a moment, and the parcel was restored to its dusty shelf. Poor Dr. Maskelyne had but one assistant,