Fairer and grander than her dreams must be;
Till she shall leave the realm of the Ideal
To follow Truth throughout the world with thee,
Through earth and sea and up beyond the sun
Until the mystery of God is won.
Whatever the literary defects, these are noble sonnets. But I had rather take my chances in a good Unitarian church than try to nourish the soul with such Platonic love of God. She disliked the Unitarian habit of clinging to church traditions and ancient forms of worship; but better these than the materialism of a scientific age.
Perhaps I do her an injustice. She was absolutely loyal to truth, not guilty of that shuffling attitude of modern theologians who have outgrown the superstition of Old Testament only to cling more tenaciously to the superstition of the New. In the Concord School of Philosophy, and later in her studies as a member of the Ladies’ Historical Society of Washington, she was searching for the new faith that should fulfil the old. It might be of interest here to introduce selections from some of her Historical Society essays, into the composition of which she entered with great earnestness. Written toward the close of life, they still retain the freshness and unspoiled enthusiasm of youth. One specimen must suffice:
In thinking of Galileo, and the office of the telescope, which is to give us increase of light, and of the increasing power of the larger and larger lenses, which widens our horizon to infinity, this constantly recurring thought comes to me: how shall we grow into the immensity that is opening before us? The principle of light pervades all space—it travels from star to star and makes known to us all objects on earth and in heaven. The great ether throbs and thrills with its burden to the remotest star as with a joy. But there is also an all-pervading force, so subtle that we know not yet how it passes through the illimitable space. But before it all worlds fall into divine order and harmony. It is gravitation. It imparts the power of one to all, and gathers from all for the one. What in the soul answers to these two principles is, first, also light or knowledge, by which all things are unveiled; the other which answers to gravitation, and before which all shall come into proper relations, and into the heavenly harmony, and by which we shall fill the heavens with ourselves, and ourselves with heaven, is love.
This is better than most philosophy. But after all, Angeline Hall gave herself to duty and not to philosophy—to the plain, monotonous work of home and neighborhood. Like the virtuous woman of Scripture, she supplied with her own hands the various family wants—cooked with great skill, canned abundance of fruit for winter, and supplied the table from day to day with plain, wholesome food. Would that she might have taught Bostonians to bake beans! If they would try her method, they would discover that a mutton bone is an excellent substitute for pork. Pork and lard she banished from her kitchen. Beef suet is, indeed, much cleaner. The chief article of diet was meat, for Mrs. Hall was no vegetarian, and the Georgetown markets supplied the best of Virginia beef and mutton. Like the virtuous woman of Scripture, she provided the family with warm clothing, and kept it in repair. A large part of her life was literally spent in mending clothes. She never relaxed the rigid economy of Cambridge days. She commonly needed but one servant, for she worked with her own hands and taught her sons to help her. The house was always substantially clean from roof to cellar. No corner was neglected. Nowhere on the whole premises was a bad smell tolerated.
While family wants were scrupulously attended to, she stretched forth a hand to the poor. The Civil War filled Washington with negroes, and for several winters Mrs. Hall helped to distribute supplies among them. In 1872 she was “Directress” of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth wards; and for a long time she was a member of a benevolent society in Georgetown, having charge of a section of the city near her residence. For the last fourteen years of her life, she visited the Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in north Washington. Her poor colored neighbors regarded her with much esteem. She listened to their stories of distress, comforted them, advised them. The aged she admitted to her warm kitchen; and they went away, victuals in their baskets or coins in their hands, with the sense of having a friend in Mrs. Hall. Uncle Louis, said to be one hundred and fourteen years old, rewarded her with a grape-vine, which was planted by the dining room window. And “the Uncle Louis grape” was the best in the garden.