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.