"The sad of Earth, the glad of Heaven,"
written many years later in honoring Nathan's splendid sacrifice. The poem to which the line belongs, read more than sixty years ago on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Linonian Society, an organization of Yale College of which Nathan Hale had been an early and an active member, had much influence in rousing first Yale men, and then other patriotic Americans, to recognize Nathan Hale as one of America's bravest martyrs.
Mrs. Hale died in 1767. About two years later Deacon Hale married again, bringing to his home this time a widow, Mrs. Abigail Adams, of Canterbury, who must have been well fitted to take her place as the new head of the family. No ignoble mother could rear such children as she had reared, and Deacon Hale's second choice of a wife proved a wise and happy one. Providence appears to have smiled upon him when he opened his doors and invited Mrs. Adams and her children to share his home, and even the affection of some of his sons. It is said that two of Deacon Hale's sons fell in love with her youngest daughter, Alice Adams, who, at Deacon Hale's desire, came to live permanently in the family in 1770 or 1771, while his second son, John, married her eldest daughter, Sarah Adams, on December 19, 1770.
The lives of both these women, Sarah and Alice Adams, are sufficient witnesses to the high character of the new mother added to the Hale household. To several of his biographers it has seemed quite probable that Nathan Hale wrote one of his last two letters to this mother. We grant that it may have been addressed to her, while intended for the reading of another. Of this, later.
In regard to the marriage of John Hale and Sarah Adams it may be as well to state here that, after a married life of thirty-one years, John Hale died suddenly in December, 1802, his health probably undermined by his service in the Revolutionary War, where he held the rank of major. His widow, desiring to carry out what she believed would have been his wishes, "bequeathed £1000 to trustees as a fund, the income of which was to be used for the support of young men preparing for missionary service,"—probably among the Indians, as this was before the support of foreign missions was undertaken in America—"and in part for founding and supporting the Hale Library in Coventry, to be used by the ministers of Coventry and the neighboring towns." Included in the bequest for founding the still existing so-called "Hale Donation" was a portrait of the donor's husband, Major John Hale;—well painted, for the period, and now of great interest. Mrs. John Hale died a few months after her husband. It is easy to believe that, though born of different parents, the Hale and Adams families were congenial mentally and morally, and that Deacon Richard Hale was a wise and fortunate man in his choice of a second mother for his children.
According to his mother's and grandmother's wishes, it was early decided that Nathan should be prepared to enter college. After the fashion of those times, he and two of his brothers began their preparatory studies under the direction of the Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D., then pastor of the church in Nathan's native town. He is said to have been a man noted for his intellectual power, for his patriotism, and for his courteous manners.
It may be well to say here that, in those early days, the New England ministers usually settled in one pastorate for life, and they were not only teachers in spiritual things, but were noted for their courteous and dignified manners; so that even before he entered college Nathan Hale must have had ample opportunities for the cultivation of the easy manners and courteous deportment which are said by all who knew him to have been so marked in him.
Nathan Hale, as a boy, had one more asset that must have helped to insure his future success, and that did, as we believe, help him to die nobly. He was not overindulged; he had always the spur of effort to urge him forward. It was told of him, many years after his death, by the woman he had loved and who had known him well all his later years, Mrs. Alice Adams Lawrence, that whatever he did, even as boy, he did with all his heart, as if it engrossed his whole mind. Whether it was work, or study, or play, he gave all his energies to the doing of it. Such a disposition, together with his fine home training, must have helped to insure his success in Yale.