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,