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.