Alice was educated at the Methodist College in Belfast, a coeducational day school with a strong ethos of "plain living and high thinking" which after initial struggles had achieved a high level of academic distinction. She was a prize pupil whose later attainments are recorded with pride in the annals of the College.

... for a year after leaving school I gave my attention to art studies, and have never regretted it. At one time I hesitated between Girton and the studios. My mother has much artistic power, and I had some taste in the same direction.

I tried High School teaching for a term as a stop gap, though not desiring to be drawn into the universal drift towards teaching.

The question of employing women at the Royal Observatory arose when the new photographic section was started, and Mrs Huggins, who, like her distinguished husband, has earned a world-wide reputation as an astronomer, interested herself, I believe, in the matter. The first I heard of it was when the Observatory authorities wrote to ask if I would come.

... the title of the job she had was a Supernumerary Computer, which really put her on the same level as kind of boys who joined the Observatory straight out of school, and did fairly basic, repetitious kind of work, dealing with number-crunching, calculating what they called 'reducing the observations' so they could be printed. So that was her title and she was paid on that kind of level and yet she had the qualifications of one of the top astronomers there - a First Assistant or a Chief Assistant at the Observatory.

... the awkward technical title 'Assistant' is applied to those gentlemen who hold permanent posts at the Observatory under the Astronomer Royal. They are appointed partly by competitive Civil Service examinations, and are generally University men of good standing. Under them work boy computers. It is doubtful whether women are eligible for the examination, and candidates must be nominated by the Astronomer Royal, who refused to take the responsibility when we applied.

In 1892, [Edward Walter Maunder] nominated ... Annie Russell and Alice Everett as fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society, with the "him" on their application forms crossed out and replaced with "her". One member quipped that the nominations would make Royal Astronomical Society meetings more social, "and all we shall require is a piano and a fiddle", while another challenged the legality of any election; ultimately neither were elected.

... wrote her a glowing testimonial, referring to her experience with the various instruments, her familiarity with computation and other qualifications. He described her as "a skilful photographer who has made herself expert in the manipulation of the new photographic equatorial" and who carried her duties "with much intelligence and determination." Her experience would, he believed, qualify her for such a post as that of assistant at Dunsink Observatory.

... declared that she was very strong and was used to working with men at Greenwich where she and Miss Russell "seem to work along quite naturally in the midst of them ... I do not think that my sex should be any real obstacle, though to some at first, the presenting of an unusual idea may prejudice against it."

Observing is the part of the work I like best. You feel that you really are an astronomer then, doing practical business. Besides, there is a certain charm about having the handling of a fine and powerful instrument. I scarcely know why it is, but I find the hours fly when I am observing, though the old hands say it grows very monotonous in the course of years. In winter, though the roof is partly open and the dome kept at the temperature of the outer air, we are too actively employed to feel the cold much, unless it be windy. In summer, though, perhaps, the irregular hours may prove trying in time, the quiet, fresh night is much pleasanter than the hot and dusty London day. Towards dawn it is quite interesting to observe what a difference the dim light makes in the aspect of the earth.

I am one of the secretaries of the British Astronomical Association; Mr Duke is the other. Nothing could be more generous and considerate than the spirit which that Association has shown towards women. Please be sure to say in your paper how grateful we are for the help and encouragement its officers and council have given us.

Alive Everett was employed as an assistant for one year, 1898-99, at the observatory of Vassar College, USA, the women's college where Mary Whitney, successor to Maria Mitchell, was professor of astronomy. This small institution had only one member of staff besides Miss Whitney, and Alice Everett no doubt was pleased to have the opportunity of working there, even temporarily. Her year was fruitful and resulted in two papers jointly written with Mary Whitney on observations of minor planets and a comet in the Astrophysical Journal.

Miss Everett is a lady of distinction in astronomical science who is admirably qualified to aid us in a most important part of our work - the measurement of our photographs of star spectra in which we are falling sadly behind.

Mr Cyril Crossland's description of great shadow bands cast across the sky at sunset interested me, for I well remember being impressed by a similar phenomenon when crossing a New Mexican prairie, with the sun setting behind the Rockies. I have seen the bands in England, but imperfectly. To a non-expert, like myself, Mr Crossland's remark, "The shadows being cast by the reflected light of the glowing clouds in the west, not by the sun itself, of course", presents difficulties. A mass of glowing cloud seems too extensive a luminous source to cast definite shadows of peaks comparatively near it. Further, the sun being beyond the cloud, the bulk of the sunlight reflected by the cloud would fall the wrong way. Long after the sun's rays are cut off from the spectator, they will still be shining upon clouds high overhead, and therefore able to cast shadows.

Perhaps I may take this opportunity to record another little optical observation of different character. Once - I think it was towards the close of the hot summer of 1908 - watching, from the top of a cliff some 800 ft high, the sun setting over the sea, I saw the upper half of the disc look like a double staircase; there were three or four distinct, almost rectangular, steps cut out of the limb symmetrically on either side. When most of the disc had sunk out of sight, the small portion remaining was suggestive of the lid of a teapot with a knob on top. Some lines of light cloud about the horizon showed the existence of horizontal stratification in the atmosphere, and the strange distortion of the solar limb was evidently due to refraction through horizontal strata with extraordinary sharpness of boundary and difference of density.

Tennis and golf are among my favourite pursuits, and I probably owe my wiry health to a liking for exercise and fresh air. At home, when we generally spent the summer at some wild spot on the beautiful though stormy coast of Antrim, I used to enjoy the rough-and-tumble boating in fishermen's sturdy tubs, in which we all revelled.