Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/857

Rh his work was so changed and broken up that young Hall decided to leave after he had been there but half a year.

He went with his wife to Shalersville, Ohio, and took charge of the academy there. They conducted it successfully for a year, paying off all their debts and buying themselves new clothes, of which they were much in need. When the school was over they had no idea where to turn next. Hall wanted to go back to Ann Arbor and study again, but there was a great storm on the lakes at that time and his wife would not go. So they started East. He had had an offer from Prof. Bond, who was in charge of the Harvard College Observatory, of three dollars a week as assistant. Finally, he decided to accept it. He visited his old home in the summer, and in the fall of 1857 he took his wife to Cambridge and began his career as an astronomer.

Very few young married men of this day would like to start in a profession at the age of twenty-nine on a salary of three dollars a week. But young Hall expected he would be able to pick up outside work. He thought he could pursue his study in mathematics under Prof. Benjamin Peirce, then at Harvard. So he entered on his new life full of hope. He took a couple of rooms on Concord Avenue, near the observatory, and began housekeeping. He soon found he could not carry out all his plans. There was some quarrel between Prof. Peirce and Prof. Bond, and he could not study with the former without offending his employer. He had to give up that plan. His work at the observatory required long hours, but he managed to study a little by himself. He studied mathematics and German at the same time by translating a German mathematical work. His little income was all eaten up by simply the room rent. In order to live he had to do outside work. By computing, making almanacs, and observing moon culminations he doubled his salary and managed to scrape along. His wife worked by his side faithfully, encouraging him, helping him in his studies, and doing all the housework with her own hands. Hall soon became a rapid, accurate, and skillful computer. Soon his employers saw how valuable he was, and they gradually increased his pay, till at last he drew a salary of six hundred dollars a year.

He stayed in the Cambridge Observatory till the year 1862. At that time the war had been going on for a year. The officers at the Naval Observatory at Washington had gone off into the service of either the North or the South. Men were needed to fill their places. Hall was recommended to fill a position there. It was a good opening. He went to Washington, passed an examination, and was offered a place. In the fall of 1863 he went down to Washington to begin his work. The city was then in a ferment. Many of the officeholders were from the South. All sorts of jealousies