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:

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: