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STRENUOUS TIMES.
They had left Shalersville resolved that Asaph should continue his
studies, but undecided where to go. Professor Brünnow invited him to Ann
Arbor; and Mr. Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory,
encouraged him to go there. Besides, the famous mathematician Benjamin
Peirce taught at Harvard. Not till they reached Cleveland was the
decision made. The way West was barred by a storm on Lake Erie, and
Angeline said, “Let’s go East.”
So she returned to Rodman for a visit, while her husband set out for
Harvard University. Fifty years and more have passed since then. Their
four sons have long since graduated at Harvard, and growing
grandchildren are turning their eyes thither. Mr. Hall talked with
Professors Peirce and Bond, and with the dean of the faculty, Professor
Hosford. All gave him encouragement, and he proceeded to Plymouth
Hollow, Conn., now called Thomaston, to earn money enough at carpentry
to give him a start. He earned the highest wages given to carpenters at
that time, a dollar and a half a day; but his wife’s poor health almost
discouraged him. On May 19, 1857, he wrote her as follows:
I get along very well with my work, and try to study a little in the
evenings, but find it rather hard business after a day’s labor.... I
don’t fairly know what we had better do, whether I had better keep
on with my studies or not. It would be much pleasanter for you, I
suppose, were I to give up the pursuit of my studies, and try to get
us a home. But then, as I have no tact for money-making by
speculation, and it would take so long to earn enough with my hands
to buy a home, we should be old before it would be accomplished, and
in this case, my studies would have to be given up forever. I do not
like to do this, for it seems to me that with two years’ more study
I can attain a position in which I can command a decent salary.
Perhaps in less time, I can pay my way at Cambridge, either by
teaching or by assisting in the Observatory. But how and where we
shall live during the two years is the difficulty. I shall try to
make about sixty dollars before the first of August. With this money
I think that I could stay at Cambridge one year and might possibly
find a situation so that we might make our home there.
But I think that it is not best that we should both go to Cambridge
with so little money, and run the risk of my finding employment. You
must come here and stay with our folks until I get something
arranged at Cambridge, and then, I hope that we can have a permanent
home.... Make up your mind to be a stout-hearted little woman for a
couple of years. Come to Conn. as soon as you are ready.
Yours,
ASAPH HALL.
But Angeline begged to go to Cambridge with him, although she wrote:
These attacks are so sudden, I might be struck down instantly, or
become helpless or senseless.
About the first of July she went to Goshen, Conn., to stay with his
mother, in whom she found a friend. Though very delicate, she was
industrious. Her husband’s strong twin sisters wondered how he would
succeed with such a poor, weak little wife. But Asaph’s mother assured
her son that their doubts were absurd, as Angeline accomplished as much
as both the twins together.
So it came to pass that in the latter part of August, 1857, Asaph Hall
arrived in Cambridge with fifty dollars in his pocket and an invalid
wife on his arm. Mr. George Bond, son of the director of the
observatory, told him bluntly that if he followed astronomy he would
starve. He had no money, no social position, no friends. What right had
he and his delicate wife to dream of a scientific career? The best the
Harvard Observatory could do for him the first six months of his stay
was to pay three dollars a week for his services. Then his pay was
advanced to four dollars. Early in 1858 he got some extra work—observing
moon-culminations in connection with Col. Joseph E. Johnston’s army
engineers. For each observation he received a dollar; and fortune so far
favored the young astronomer that in the month of March he made
twenty-three such observations. His faithful wife, as regular as an
alarm clock, would waken him out of a sound sleep and send him off to
the observatory. In 1858, also, he began to eke out his income by
computing almanacs, earning the first year about one hundred and thirty
dollars; but competition soon made such work unprofitable. In less than
a year he had won the respect of Mr. George Bond by solving problems
which that astronomer was unable to solve; and at length, in the early
part of 1859, upon the death of the elder Bond, his pay was raised to
four hundred dollars a year. He had won the fight.
After his experience such a salary seemed quite munificent. The twin
sisters visited Cambridge and were much dissatisfied with Asaph’s
poverty. They tried to persuade Angeline to make him go into some more
profitable business. Mr. Sibley, college librarian, observing his shabby
overcoat and thin face, exclaimed, “Young man, don’t live on bread and
milk!” The young man was living on astronomy, and his delicate wife was
aiding and abetting him. In less than a year after his arrival at
Cambridge, he had become a good observer. He had learned to compute. He
was pursuing his studies with great ardor. He read _Brünnow’s Astronomy_
in German, which language his wife taught him mornings as he kindled the
fire. In 1858 he was reading _Gauss’s Theoria Motus_.
Angeline was determined her husband should make good use of the talents
God had given him. She was courageous as only a Puritan can be. In
domestic economy she was unsurpassed. Husband and wife lived on much
less than the average college student requires. She mended their old
clothes again and again, turning the cloth; and economized with
desperate energy.
At first they rented rooms and had the use of the kitchen in a house on
Concord Avenue, near the observatory. But their landlady proving to be a
woman of bad character, after eight or nine months they moved to a
tenement house near North Avenue, where they lived a year. Here they
sub-let one of their rooms to a German pack-peddler, a thrifty man,
free-thinker and socialist, who was attracted to Mrs. Hall because she
knew his language. He used to argue with her, and to read to her from
his books, until finally she refused to listen to his doctrines,
whereupon he got very angry, paid his rent, and left.
One American feels himself as good as another—if not better—especially
when brought up in a new community. But Cambridge was settled long ago,
and social distinctions are observed there. It was rather exasperating
to Asaph Hall and his wife to be snubbed and ignored and meanly treated
because they were poor and without friends. Even their grocer seemed to
snub them, sending them bad eggs. You may be sure they quit him
promptly, finding an honest grocer in Cambridgeport, a Deacon Holmes.
There is a great advantage in obscurity. Relieved of petty social cares
and distractions a man can work. Mrs. Hall, writing to her sister Mary,
February 4, 1859, declared her husband was “getting to be a _grand_
scholar”:
.... A little more study and Mr. Hall will be excelled by few in
this country in his department of science. Indeed that is the case
now, though he is not very widely known yet.
In another letter, dated December 15, 1858, she wrote:
People are beginning to know something of Mr. Hall’s worth and
ability.
May 4, 1858 she wrote:
Mr. Hall has just finished computing the elements of the orbit of
one [a comet] which have been published neatly in the _Astronomical
Journal_.
And thus Dr. B. A. Gould, editor of the Journal, became acquainted with
the young astronomer who was afterward his firm friend and his associate
in the National Academy of Sciences.
Merit wins recognition—recognition of the kind which is worth while. It
was not many months before the Halls found friends among quiet,
unassuming people, and formed friendships that lasted for life. It was
worth much to become acquainted with Dr. Morrill Wyman, their physician.
In a letter of February 4, 1859, already cited, Mrs. Hall wrote: “Mr.
Hall and I have both had some nice presents this winter,” and she
mentions a Mrs. Wright and a Mr. Pritchett as donors. This Mr.
Pritchett, an astronomer clergyman from Missouri, was the father of Dr.
Henry S. Pritchett, a recent president of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Mr. Hall had given him some assistance in his studies; and
twenty years afterward Henry S. Pritchett, the son, became a member of
the Hall family.
“We are having a holiday,” wrote Mrs. Hall, on the first May-day spent
in Cambridge; “the children are keeping May-day something like the old
English fashion. It is a beautiful day, the warmest we have had this
spring. Mr. Hall and I have been Maying. Got some dandelions, and
blossoms of the soft maple. Have made quite a pretty bouquet.” The tone
of morbidness was beginning to disappear from her letters, for her
health was improving. Her religious views were growing broader and more
reasonable, also. Too poor to rent a pew in any of the churches, she and
her husband attended the college chapel, where they heard the Rev. F. D.
Huntington. In the following poem, suggested by one of his sermons, she
seems to embody the heroic experience of those early days in Cambridge:
“THE MOUNTAINS SHALL BRING PEACE.”
O grand, majestic mountain! far extending
In height, and breadth, and length,—
Fast fixed to earth yet ever heavenward tending,
Calm, steadfast in thy strength!
Type of the Christian, thou; his aspirations
Rise like thy peaks sublime.
The rocks immutable are thy foundations,
His, truths defying time.
Like thy broad base his love is far outspreading;
He scatters blessings wide,
Like the pure springs which are forever shedding
Sweet waters down thy side.
“The mountains shall bring peace,”—a peace transcending
The peace of sheltered vale;
Though there the elements ne’er mix contending,
And its repose assail,
Yet ’tis the peace of weakness, hiding, cow’ring;—
While thy majestic form
In peerless strength thou liftest, bravely tow’ring
Above the howling storm.
And there thou dwellest, robed in sunset splendor,
Up ’mid the ether clear,
Midst the soft moonlight and the starlight tender
Of a pure atmosphere.
So, Christian soul, to thy low states declining,
There is no peace for thee;
Mount up! mount up! where the calm heavens are shining,
Win peace by victory!
What giant forces wrought, O mount supernal!
Back in the early time,
In building, balancing thy form eternal
With potency sublime!
O soul of mightier force, thy powers awaken!
Work, sovereign energy!
Build thou foundations which shall stand unshaken
When heaven and earth shall flee.
O Mount! thy heart with earthquake shocks was rifted,
With red fires melted through,
And many were the mighty throes which lifted
Thy head into the blue.
Let Calv’ry tell, dear Christ! the sacrificing
By which thy peace was won;
And the sad garden by what agonizing
The world was overcome.
Then Christian soul! throughout thy grand endeavor
Pray not that trials cease!
’Tis these that lift thee into Heaven forever,
The Heaven of perfect peace.
It was the eve of the Civil War. The young astronomer and his Wife used
to attend the Music Hall meetings in Boston, where Sumner, Garrison,
Theodore Parker, and Wendell Phillips thundered away. On one occasion,
after Lincoln’s election, Phillips spoke advocating disunion. The crowd
was much excited, and threatened to mob him. “Hurrah for old Virginny!”
they yelled. Phillips was as calm as a Roman; but it was necessary to
form a body-guard to escort him home. Asaph Hall was a six-footer, and
believed in fair play; so he joined the little knot of men who bore
Phillips safely through the surging crowd. In after years he used to
tell of Phillips’ apparent unconcern, and of his courteous bow of thanks
when arrived at his doorstep.
Angeline Hall had an adventure no less interesting. She became
acquainted with a shrewd old negress, called Moses, who had helped many
slaves escape North, stirring up mobs, when necessary, to free the
fugitives from the custody of officers. One day she went with Moses to
call upon the poet Lowell. He treated them very kindly. Was glad to have
a chat with the old woman, and smilingly asked her if it did not trouble
her conscience to resist the law. Moses was ready to resist the law
again, and Lowell gave her some money.
Superstitious people hailed the advent of Donati’s comet as a sign of
war—and Angeline Hall was yet to mourn the loss of friends upon the
battlefield. But hoping for peace and loving astronomy, she published
the following verses in a local newspaper:
DONATI’S COMET.
O, not in wrath but lovingly,
In beauty pure and high,
Bright shines the stranger visitant,
A glory in our sky.
No harbinger of pestilence
Nor battle’s fearful din;
Then open wide, ye gates of heaven,
And let the stranger in.
It seems a spirit visible
Through some diviner air,
With burning stars upon her brow
And in her shining hair.
Through veil translucent, luminous
Shines out her starry face,
And wrapped in robes of light she glides
Still through the silent space.
Ye everlasting stars shine on!
And fill till it o’errun
Thy silver horn thou ancient moon,
From fountains of the sun!
But open wide the golden gates
Into your realm of Even,
And let the angel presence pass
In glory through the heaven.
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