then paused to call out:

“Mama, don’t you like my sweet voice?”

Asaph Hall, Jr., was born at the Bond cottage, October 6, 1859. If we may trust the accounts of his fond mother, he was a precocious little fellow—played bo-peep at four months—weighed twenty-one pounds at six months, when he used to ride out every day in his little carriage and get very rosy—took his first step at fourteen months, when he had ten teeth—was quite a talker at seventeen months, when he tumbled down the cellar stairs with a pail of coal scattered over him—darned his stocking at twenty-six months, and demanded that his aunt’s letter be read to him three or four times a day—at two and a half years trudged about in the snow in his rubber boots, and began to help his mother with the housework, declaring, “I’m big enough, mama.” “Little A.” was a general favorite. He fully enjoyed a clam bake, and was very fond of oranges. One day he got lost, and his terrified mother thought he might have fallen into a well. But he was found at last on his way to Boston to buy oranges.

Love in a cottage is sweeter and more prosperous when the cottage stands a hundred miles or more from the homes of relatives. How can wife cleave unto husband when mother lives next door? And how can husband prosper when father pays the bills? It was a fortunate piece of hard luck that Angeline Hall saw little of her people. As it was, her sympathy and interest constantly went out to mother and sisters. This is seen from her letters. In one she threatened to rescue her mother from the irate Mr. Woodward by carrying her off bodily to Cambridge. By others it appears that she was always in touch with her sisters Ruth and Mary. Indeed, during little A.’s early infancy Mary visited Cambridge and acted as nurse. In the summer of 1860, little A. and his mother visited Rodman. Charlotte Ingalls was on from the West, also, and there was a sort of family reunion. Charlotte, Angeline and Ruth, and their cousins Huldah and Harriette were all mothers now, and they merrily placed their five babies in a row.

In the fall of the same year Angeline visited her aunts, Lois and Charlotte Stickney, who still lived on their father’s farm in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. The old ladies were very poor, and labored in the field like men, maintaining a pathetic independence. Angeline was much concerned, but found some comfort, no doubt, in this example of Stickney grit. She had found her father’s old home, heard his story from his sisters’ lips, learned of the stalwart old grandfather, Moses Stickney; and from that time forth she took a great interest in the family genealogy. In 1863 she visited Jaffrey again, and that summer ascended Mt. Monadnock with her little boy. Just twenty-five years afterward, accompanied by her other three sons, she camped two or three weeks on her grandfather’s farm; and it was my own good fortune to ascend the grand old mountain with her. What a glorious day it was! Great white clouds lay against the blue sky in windrows. At a distance the rows appeared to merge into one great mass; but on the hills and fields and ponds below the shadows alternated with the sunshine as far as eye could reach. There beneath us lay the rugged land whose children had carried Anglo-Saxon civilization westward to the Pacific. Moses Stickney’s farm was a barren waste now, hardly noticeable from the mountain-top. Lois and Charlotte had died in the fall of 1869, within a few days of each other. House and barn had disappeared, and the site was marked by raspberry bushes. We drew water from the old well; and gathered the dead brush of the apple orchard, where our tent was pitched, to cook our victuals.

CHAPTER XIII.
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WASHINGTON AND THE CIVIL WAR.

Many an obscure man of ability was raised to prominence by the Civil War. So it was with the astronomer, Asaph Hall. A year after the war broke out, the staff of workers at the U.S. Naval Observatory was much depleted. Some resigned to go South; others were ordered elsewhere by the Federal Government. In the summer of 1862, while his wife was visiting her people in Rodman, Mr. Hall went to Washington, passed an examination, and was appointed an “Aid” in the Naval Observatory.

The city was in a turmoil. On August 27, three weeks after he entered the observatory, Mr. Hall wrote to his wife:

When I see the slack, shilly-shally, expensive way the Government has of doing everything, it appears impossible that it should ever succeed in beating the Rebels.