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ANN ARBOR AND SHALERSVILLE.
Do you know the beautiful legend of St. Christopher, the strong man who
served his masters well, but was dissatisfied in their service until he
heard of the Lord and Master Jesus Christ?—how he then served gladly at
a ford, carrying pilgrims across on his back—how one day a little child
asked to be carried across, and perching on his broad shoulders grew
heavier and heavier till the strong man nearly sank beneath the weight?
But he struggled manfully over the treacherous stones, and with a
supreme effort bore his charge safely through the waters. And behold,
the little child was Christ himself!
I think of that legend when I think of the poor ambitious scholar,
literally saddled by his invalid wife. For three years he hardly kept
his head above water. At one time he thought he could go no further, and
proposed that she stay with his mother while he gained a better footing.
But she pleaded hard, and he struggled through, to receive the reward of
duty nobly done.
They remained at Ann Arbor about three months. But in that time Asaph
Hall had made so favorable an impression that Professor Brünnow urged
him to continue his studies, and arranged matters so that he might
attend college at Ann Arbor as long as he chose without paying tuition
fees. Angeline made plans for her sister Ruth and husband to move to
Michigan, where Asaph could build them a house.
But a living for two must be provided. They went southward into Ohio,
where they spent a month with Angeline’s Aunt Achsah Taylor, her
mother’s sister. You may be sure they earned their board, Angeline in
the house and Asaph in the hayfield. Uncle Taylor was a queer old
fellow, shedding tears when his hay got wet, and going off to the hotel
for dinner when his wife happened to give him the wrong end of a fish.
August 6, 1856, they arrived at Shalersville, Ohio, where they had
engaged to teach at the Shalersville Institute. Here they remained till
about May 1 of the next year, when Angeline returned to Rodman with
funds enough to pay with interest the money borrowed from her cousin
Joseph Downs; and Asaph proceeded to Cambridge, Mass., where the
director of the Harvard Observatory was in need of an assistant.
Let it not be inferred that teaching at Shalersville was financially
profitable. Asaph Hall concluded that he preferred carpentry. And yet,
in the best sense they were most successful—things went smoothly—their
pupils, some of them school teachers, were apt—and they were well liked
by the people of Shalersville. Indeed, to induce them to keep school the
last term the townspeople presented them with a purse of sixty dollars
to eke out their income. Asaph Hall turned his mechanical skill to use
by making a prism, a three-sided receptacle of glass filled with water.
Saturdays he held a sort of smoke-talk for the boys—the smoke feature
absent—and at least one country boy was inspired to step up higher. The
lad became a civil engineer.
The little wife was proud of her manly husband, as the following passage
from a letter to her sister Ruth shows:
He is real good, and we are very happy. He is a real noble, true man
besides being an extra scholar, so you must never be concerned about
my not being happy with him. He will take just the best care of me
that he possibly can.
It appears also that she was converting her husband to the profession of
religion. Before he left Ohio he actually united with the Campbellites,
and was baptized. In the letter just quoted Angeline says:
We have been reading some of the strongest arguments against the
Christian religion, also several authors who support religion, and
he has come to the conclusion that all the argument is on the side
of Christianity.
She looked after his physical welfare, also. When he was threatened with
a severe fever, she wrapped him up in hot, wet blankets, and succeeded
in throwing the poison off through the pores of the skin. So they
cherished each other in sickness and in health.
Angeline’s cousin Mary Gilman, once a student at McGrawville, came to
Shalersville seeking to enlarge the curriculum of the institute with a
course in fine arts. She hindered more than she helped, and in January
went away—but not till she had taught Angeline to paint in oil.
The old home ties were weakening. News came of the death of Joseph
Downs, and Angeline wrote to her aunt, his mother:
He always seemed like a brother to me. I remember all our long walks
and rides to school. How kind it was in him to carry me all that
cold winter. Then our rides to church, and all the times we have
been together.... I can send you the money I owed him any time.... I
never can be enough obliged to him for his kindness in lending me
that money, and I wished to see him very much, that I might tell him
how thankful I felt when he sent it to me.
Her sister Ruth wrote:
Sweet sister, I am so _very lonely_. It would do me so much good to
tell you all I wish. I have never found ... one so _willing to share
all my grief and joy_.
But when Angeline did at length return to Rodman, Ruth’s comfort must
have been mixed with pain. A letter to Asaph tells the story:
It is almost dark, but I wish to write a few words to you before I
go to bed. I have had one of those bad spells of paralysis this
afternoon, so that I could not speak for a minute or two.... I do
not know what is to become of me. If I had some quiet little room
with you perhaps I might get strength slowly and be good for
something after awhile.... I do not mourn much for the blasting of
my own hopes of usefulness; but I can not bear to be the canker worm
destroying all your beautiful buds of promise.
She remained in poor health a long time—so thin and pale that old
acquaintances hardly knew her. She wrote:
I feel something as a stranger feels in a strange land I guess. This
makes me turn to you with all the more love. My home is where you
are.
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