An odorous breath of him the missing one.
Of this effusion John Greenleaf Whittier—to whom the verses were addressed—graciously wrote:
The first four verses of thy poem are not only very beautiful from an artistic point of view, but are wonderfully true of the man they describe.
CHAPTER XIV.
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THE GAY STREET HOME.
In November, 1867, the Halls bought the Captain Peters’ place, No. 18 Gay Street, Georgetown, and for twenty-five years, that is, for the rest of Angeline Hall’s life, this was her home. The two-story brick house, covered with white stucco, and having a shingled roof, stood in the centre of a generous yard, looking southward. Wooden steps led up to a square front porch, the roof of which was supported by large wooden pillars. The front door opened into a hall, with parlor on the right hand and sitting room on the left. Back of the sitting room was the dining room, and back of that the kitchen. In the year of the Centennial, 1876, the house was enlarged to three stories, with a flat tin roof, and three bay-windows were added, one in the dining room and two in front of the house, and the front porch was lengthened so as to extend from one bay window to the other. The new house was heated chiefly by a furnace and a large kitchen range, but in the dining room and sitting room grates were put in for open coal fires. The two rooms were thrown together by sliding doors, and became the centre of home comfort; though the room over the sitting room, where, in a low cane-seated rocking chair of oak, Mrs. Hall sat and did the family sewing, was of almost equal importance. In the sitting room hung the old-fashioned German looking-glass with its carved and gilded frame, the gift of Dr. Powalky. Over the fire-place was an engraving of Lincoln, and in one corner of the room was the round mahogany table where Professor Hall played whist with his boys. Over the dining room mantle hung a winter scene painted by some relative of the family, and in the bay window stood Mrs. Hall’s fern table.
THE GAY STREET HOME
In the front yard was a large black-heart cherry tree, where house-wrens built their nests, a crab-apple tree that blossomed prodigiously, a damson plum, peach trees, box-trees and evergreens. The walks were bordered with flower beds, where roses and petunias, verbenas and geraniums, portulacas and mignonnette blossomed in profusion. In the back yard was a large English walnut tree, from the branches of which the little Halls used to shoot the ripe nuts with their bows and arrows. In another part of the back yard was Mrs. Hall’s hot-bed, with its seven long sashes, under which tender garden plants were protected during the winter, and sweet English violets bloomed. Along the sidewalk in front of the premises was a row of rather stunted rock-maples; for the Southern soil seemed but grudgingly to nourish the Northern trees.
Such, in bare outline, was the Gay Street home. Here on September 16, 1868, the third child, Angelo, was born. Among the boys of the neighborhood 18 Gay Street became known as the residence of “Asaph, Sam, and Angelico.” This euphonious and rhythmical combination of names held good for four years exactly, when, on September 16, 1872, the fourth and last child, Percival, was born. One of my earliest recollections is the sight of a red, new-born infant held in my father’s hands. It has been humorously maintained that it was my parents’ design to spell out the name “Asaph” with the initials of his children. I am inclined to discredit the idea, though the pleasantry was current in my boyhood, and the fifth letter,—which might, of course, be said to stand for Hall,—was supplied by Henry S. Pritchett, who as a young man became a member of the family, as much attached to Mrs. Hall as an own son. In fact, when Asaph was away at college, little Percival used to say there were five boys in the family counting Asaph. As a curious commentary upon this letter game, I will add that my own little boy Llewellyn used to pronounce his grandfather’s name “Apas.” Blood is thicker than water, and though the letters here are slightly mixed, the proper four, and four only, are employed.