What Miss Mary E. Proctor Did to Popularize Astronomy

“YOU can never know what your possibilities are,” said Miss Proctor, “till you have put yourself to the test. There are many, many women who long to do something, and could succeed, if they would only banish their doubts, and plunge in. For example, I was not at all sure that I could interest audiences with talks on astronomy, but, in 1893, I began, and since then have given between four and five hundred lectures.”

Miss Proctor is so busy spreading knowledge of the beauties and marvels of the heavens, that she was at home in New York for only a two days’ interval between tours, when she consented to talk to me about her work. This talk showed such enthusiasm and whole-souled devotion to the theme that it is easy to understand Miss Proctor’s success as a lecturer, although she is physically diminutive, and is very domestic in her tastes.

AUDIENCES ARE APPRECIATIVE

“I am always nervous in going before an audience,” she said, “but there is so much I want to tell them that I have no time at all to think of myself. I find that if the lecturer is really interested in the subject, those who come to listen usually are; and it is certainly true, as I have learned by going upon the platform, tired out from a long journey, that you cannot expect enthusiasm in your audience, unless you are enthusiastic yourself. But I think that audiences are very responsive and appreciative of intelligent efforts to interest them, and, therefore, I am sure, that if a woman possesses, or can acquire a thorough knowledge of some practical, popular subject, and has enthusiasm and a fair knowledge of human nature, she can attain success on the lecture platform.

“The field is broad, and far from over-crowded, and it yields bountifully to those who are willing to toil and wait. There is Miss Roberts, for instance, who commands large audiences for her lectures on music; and Mrs. Lemcke, who has been remarkably successful in her practical talks on cooking; and Mary E. Booth, who gives wonderfully instructive and entertaining lectures on the revelations of the microscope; and Miss Very, who takes audiences of children on most delightful and profitable imaginary trips to places of importance.

LECTURES TO CHILDREN

“Children, by the way, are my most satisfactory audiences. Grown-up people never become so absorbed. It is the greatest pleasure of my lecturing to talk to the little tots, and watch them drink it all in. Indeed, I prepared my very first lecture for children, but didn’t deliver it. That episode marked the beginning of my career as a lecturer.

“Do you ask me to tell you about it? My father, Richard A. Proctor, wrote, as you know, many books on popular astronomy. When I was a girl I did not read them very carefully; my education at South Kensington, London, following a musical and artistic direction. In fact, I was ambitious to become a painter. But when my father died, in 1888, I found comfort in reading his books all over again; and as he had drilled me to write for his periodical, ‘Knowledge,’ I began to write articles on astronomy for anyone who would accept them. One day, in the spring of 1893, I received a letter from Mrs. Potter Palmer, asking me if I would talk to an audience of children in the Children’s Building at the World’s Fair. The idea of lecturing was new to me, but I decided that I would try, at any rate, and so I took great pains to prepare a talk that I thought the children would understand, and be interested in. But when I reached the building, I found an audience, not of children, but of men and women. There was hardly a child in all the assembled five hundred people. It would never do to give them the childish talk I had prepared, and as it was my first attempt to talk from a platform, you can imagine my state of mind. I was determined, however, that my first effort should not be a fiasco, so I stepped out upon the platform and talked about the things that had most interested me in my father’s books and conversations.”

A LESSON IN LECTURING

“I have lectured a great many times since then, but my first lecture was the most trying. I am now glad that things happened as they did, for that experience taught me a valuable lesson. I learned not to commit my talks to memory, but merely to have the topics and facts and general arrangement of the lecture well in mind. By this method, I can change and adapt myself to my audience at any time; and I often have to do this. I am able to feel intuitively whether I have gained my listeners’ sympathy and interest, and when I feel that I have not, I immediately take another tack. Another great advantage of not committing what you are going to say to memory, word for word, is the added color and animation and spontaneity which the conversational tone and manner gives the lecture.”

THE STEREOPTICON

“My stereopticon pictures of the heavenly bodies are of great help to me. They naturally add much to the interest, and are really a revelation to most of my audiences, for the reason that they show things that can never be seen with the naked eye. How my father would have delighted in them, and how effectively he would have used them. But celestial photography had not been made practical at the time of his death; it is, indeed, quite a new art, although its general principles are very simple. A special lens and photographic plate are adjusted in the telescope, and the plate is exposed as in an ordinary camera, except that the exposure is much longer. It usually continues for about four hours, the greater the length of time the greater being the number of stars that will be seen in the photograph. After the developing, these stars appear as mere specks on the plate. That they are so small is not surprising, for most of them are stars that are never seen by the eye alone. When the photograph is enlarged by the stereopticon, the result is like looking at a considerable portion of the heavens through a powerful telescope.

“The children utter exclamations of delight when they see the pictures,—the children, dear, imaginative little souls, it is my ambition to devote more and more of my time to them, and finally talk and write for them altogether. They are greatly impressed with the new world in the skies which is opened to them, and I like to think that these early impressions will give them an understanding and appreciation of the wonders of astronomy that will always be a pleasure to them.”

“For the children, my first book, ‘Stories From Starland,’ was written. I tried to weave into it poetical and romantic ideas, that appeal to the imaginative mind of the child, and quicken the interest without any sacrifice of accuracy in the facts with which I deal. I wrote the book in a week. The publisher came to me one Saturday, and told me that he would like a children’s book on astronomy. I devoted all my days to it till the following Saturday night, and on Monday morning took the completed manuscript to the publishing house. They seemed very much surprised that it should be finished so soon; but as a matter of fact it was not much more than the manual labor of writing out the manuscript that I did in that week. The little book itself is the result of ten years’ thought and study.

“It is much the same with my lectures. I deliver them in a hasty, conversational tone, and they seem, as one of my listeners told me recently, to be ‘just offhand chats.’ But in reality I devote a great deal of labor to them, and am constantly adding new facts and new ideas.”

“I learned very soon after I began my work, that I must give myself up to it absolutely if I were to achieve success. There could be no side issues, nothing else to absorb any of my energy, or take any of my thought or time. One of the first things I did was to take a thorough course in singing, for the purpose of acquiring complete control of my voice. I put aside all social functions, of which I am rather fond and have since devoted my days and nights to astronomy,—not that I work at night, except when I lecture; I rest and retire early, so that in the morning I may have the spirit and enthusiasm necessary to do good work.

“Enthusiasm, it seems to me, is an important factor in success. It combats discouragement, makes work a pleasure, and sacrifices easier.

“A great many women fail in special fields of endeavor, who might succeed if they were willing to sacrifice something, and would not let the distractions creep in. There is more in a woman’s life to divert her attention from a single purpose than in a man’s; but if the woman has chosen some line of effort that is worthy to be called life work, and if—refusing to be drawn aside,—she keeps her eyes steadfastly upon the goal, I believe that she is almost certain to achieve success.”