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COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.
President Eliot of Harvard University is quoted as saying that marriage
ought to unite two persons of the same religious faith: otherwise it is
likely to prove unhappy. President Eliot has said many wise things, but
this is not one of them—unless he is shrewdly seeking to produce
bachelors and spinsters to upbuild his university. One of Angeline
Stickney’s girl friends had a suitor of the Universalist denomination,
and a very fine man he was; but the girl and her mother belonged to the
Baptist denomination, which was the denomination of another suitor, whom
she married for denominational reasons. Abbreviating the word, her
experience proves the following principle: If a young woman belonging to
the Baptist demnition rejects an eligible suitor because he belongs to
the Universalist demnition, she is likely to go to the demnition
bow-wows.
For religious tolerance even in matrimony there is the best of reasons:
We are Protestants before we are Baptists or Universalists, Christians
before we are Catholics or Protestants, moralists before we are Jews or
Christians, theists before we are Mohammedans or Jews, and human before
every thing else.
Angeline Stickney, like her girl friend, was a sincere Baptist. Had
joined the church at the age of sixteen. One of her classmates, a person
of deeply religious feeling like herself, was a suitor for her hand. But
she married Asaph Hall, who was outside the pale of any religious sect,
disbelieved in woman-suffrage, wasted little sympathy on negroes, and
played cards! And her marriage was infinitely more fortunate than her
friend’s. To be sure she labored to convert her splendid Pagan, and
partially succeeded; but in the end he converted her, till the Unitarian
church itself was too narrow for her.
Cupid’s ways are strange, and sometimes whimsical. There was once a
young man who made fun of a red-haired woman and used to say to his
companions, “Get ready, get ready,” till Reddy got him! No doubt the
little god scored a point when Asaph Hall saw Angeline Stickney solemnly
parading in the “bloomer” costume. Good humor was one of the young man’s
characteristics, and no doubt he had a hearty laugh at the young lady’s
expense. But Dan Cupid contrived to have him pursue a course in geometry
taught by Miss Stickney; and, to make it all the merrier, entangled him
in a plot to down the teacher by asking hard questions. The teacher did
not down, admiration took the place of mischief, and Cupid smiled upon a
pair of happy lovers.
The love-scenes, the tender greetings and affectionate farewells, the
ardent avowals and gracious answers—all these things, so essential to
the modern novel, are known only in heaven. The lovers have lived their
lives and passed away. Some words of endearment are preserved in their
old letters—but these, gentle reader, are none of your business.
However, I may state with propriety a few facts in regard to Angeline
Stickney’s courtship and marriage. It was characteristic of her that
before she became engaged to marry she told Asaph Hall all about her
father. He, wise lover, could distinguish between sins of the stomach
and sins of the heart, and risked the hereditary taint pertaining to the
former—and this although she emphasized the danger by breaking down and
becoming a pitiable invalid. Just before her graduation she wrote:
I believe God sent you to love me just at this time, that I might
not get discouraged.
How very good and beautiful you seemed to me that Saturday night
that I was sick at Mr. Porter’s, and you still seem just the same. I
hope I may sometime repay you for all your kindness and love to me.
If I have already brightened your hopes and added to your joy I am
thankful. I hope we may always be a blessing to each other and to
all around us; and that the great object of our lives may be the
good that we can do. There are a great many things I wish to say to
you, but I will not try to write them now. I hope I shall see you
again soon, and then I can tell you all with my own lips. Do not
study too hard, Love, and give yourself rest and sleep as much as
you need.
Yours truly,
A. HALL. C. A. S.
After her graduation, Mr. Hall accompanied her to Rodman, where he
visited her people a week or ten days—a procedure always attended with
danger to Dan Cupid’s plans. In this case, it is said the young
carpenter was charmed with the buxom sister Ruth, who was, in fact, a
much more marriageable woman than Angeline. But he went about to get the
engagement ring, which, in spite of a Puritanical protest against such
adornment, was faithfully worn for twenty years. At last the busy
housewife burned her fingers badly washing lamp-chimneys with carbolic
acid, and her astronomer husband filed asunder the slender band of gold.
That the Puritan maiden disdained the feminine display by which less
manly lovers are ensnared is illustrated by the following extract from a
letter to Mr. Hall:
Last week Wednesday I went to Saratoga. Staid there till the
afternoon of the next day. The Convention was very interesting. The
speakers were Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, Lucy Stone Blackwell,
Ernestine Rose, Samuel J. May, and T. W. Higginson.
The streets of Saratoga were thronged with fashionables. I never saw
before such a display of dress. Poor gilded butterflies, no object
in life but to make a display of their fine colors. I could not help
contrasting those ladies of fashion with the earnest, noble, working
women who stood up there in that Convention, and with words of
eloquence urged upon their sisters the importance of awaking to
usefulness.
This letter was written in August, 1855, when Angeline Stickney was
visiting friends and relatives in quest of health. In the same letter
she sent directions for Mr. Hall to meet her in Albany on his way to
McGrawville; but for some reason he failed her, although he passed
through the city while she was there. This was a grievous
disappointment, of which she used to speak in after years.
But in a few days they were together at McGrawville, where she remained
ten weeks—visiting friends, of course. November 13 she set out for
Wisconsin, hoping to find employment as a teacher near her sister
Charlotte Ingalls. Mr. Hall purposed to follow later. At depots and
hotels, during the journey westward, she thought of the absent lover,
and sent him long messages. In one letter she said:
One night I dreamed you had gone away somewhere, without letting any
one know where, and I tried to find where you had gone but could
not. Then I felt as miserable as could be. When I awoke it still
seemed a reality.... You must be a good boy and not go away where I
shall not know where you are.... It makes my heart ache to think
what a long weary way it is from Wisconsin to McGrawville.
In the same letter she speaks about lengthening a poem, so that the time
occupied in reading it was about twenty minutes. In married life Mr.
Hall rather discouraged his wife’s inclination to write verses. Is it
possible that he flattered her before marriage? If so, it was no more
than her other admirers did.
Again, in the same letter, she pleads for the cultivation of religion:
Did you go to the prayer-meeting last evening? It seemed to me that
you were there. If you do not wish to go alone I am sure Mr. Fox
will go with you. You must take some time, Love, to think of the
life beyond the grave. You must not be so much engaged in your
studies that you cannot have time to think about it and prepare for
it.
About the middle of December she had reached Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where
she remained a fortnight with Elder Bright, her old pastor. Then she
went to her sister Charlotte’s, at Milford. In one of her letters from
this place she speaks of going surveying. It seems the surveyor of the
neighborhood was surprised to find a woman who understood his business.
In the latter part of December, Asaph Hall returned to Goshen, Conn.
Hence the following letter:
GOSHEN, Jan. 17th, 1856.
DEAREST ANGIE: ... I think of you a great deal, Angie, and sometimes
when I feel how much better and holier you are than I am, I think
that I ought to go through with much trial and affliction before I
shall be fitted for your companion. In this way I presume that my
letters have been shaded by my occasional sad thoughts. But Angie
you _must not_ let them affect you any more, or cherish gloomy
thoughts about me. I would not drive the color from your cheek or
give you one bad thought concerning me for the world. I want, very
much, to see you look healthy and strong when I meet you.... Every
time I go away from home, among strangers, I feel my need of you. My
friends here, even my sisters, seem cold and distant when compared
with you. O there is no one like the dear one who nestles in our
hearts, and loves us always. My mother loves me, and is very dear to
me, and my sisters too, but then they have so many other things to
think about that their sympathies are drawn towards other objects. I
must have you, Angie, to love me, and we will find a good happy home
somewhere, never fear. And now you must be cheerful and hopeful, try
to get rid of your headaches, and healthy as fast as you can.... You
must remember that I love you very much, and that with you life
looks bright and hopeful, while if I should lose you I fear that I
should become sour and disheartened, a hater of my kind. May God
bless you, Angie.
Yours Truly,
A. HALL.
The next month Mr. Hall was in Milford, Wisconsin, whence he wrote to
Angeline’s mother as follows:
MILFORD, WISCONSIN, Feb. 28th.
DEAR MRS. WOODWARD: ... I find Angeline with her health much
improved.... We expect to be married some time this spring. I fear
that I shall fail to fulfil the old rule, which says that a man
should build his house before he gets his wife, and shall commence a
new life rather poor in worldly goods. But then we know how, and are
not ashamed to work, and feel trustful of the future. At least, I am
sure that we shall feel stronger, and better fitted to act an
honorable part in life, when we are living together, and encouraging
each other, than we could otherwise. I know that this will be the
case with myself, and shall try to make it so with Angeline.
Yours Sincerely,
ASAPH HALL.
This hardly sounds like the epistle of a reluctant lover; and yet
tradition says the young carpenter hesitated to marry; and for a brief
season Angeline Stickney remembered tearfully that other McGrawville
suitor who loved her well, but whose bashful love was too tardy to
forestall the straightforward Mr. Hall. “The course of true love never
did run smooth.” In this case, the trouble seems to have been the lady’s
feeble health. When they were married she was very weak, and it looked
as if she could not live more than two or three years. But her mental
powers were exceptionally strong, and she remembered tenaciously for
many a year the seeming wrong.
However, under date of April 2, 1856, Angeline wrote to her sister Mary,
from Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Mr. Hall and I went to Elder Bright’s and staid over Sunday. We were
married Monday morning, and started for this place in the afternoon.
Mr. Hall came here for the purpose of pursuing his studies. We have
just got nicely settled. Shall remain here during the summer term,
and perhaps three or four years.
And so Asaph Hall studied astronomy under the famous Brünnow, and French
under Fasquelle. And he used to carry his frail wife on his back across
the fields to hunt wild flowers.
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