John E. Hall, who was its editor for more than ten years, she continually aided him in his labours; and her contributions may readily be distinguished, as well by their vivacity as the classic purity of their diction. She survived but a few months that son, her eldest, whom she had encouraged and assisted in his various literary labours for about twenty years.
She studied the Scriptures with diligence, and with prayer—with all the humility of Christian zeal, and with all the scholar’s thirst for acquisition. By such means, and with the aid of the best libraries of Philadelphia, Mrs. Hall became as eminent for scholarship in this department of learning, as she was for wit, vivacity, and genius. Her “Conversations on the Bible,” a practical and useful book, which is now extensively known, affords ample testimony that her memory is entitled to this praise. This work is written with that ease and simplicity which belongs to true genius; and contains a fund of information which could only have been collected by diligent research and mature thought. While engaged in this undertaking, she began the study of the Hebrew language, to enable herself to make the necessary critical researches, and is supposed to have made a considerable proficiency in the attainment of that dialect. When it is stated that she commenced the authorship of this work after she had passed the age of fifty, she being then the mother of eleven children, and that during her whole life she was eminently distinguished for her industry, economy, and exact attention to all the duties belonging to her station, as the head of a numerous family, it will be seen that she was no ordinary woman.
In a letter to a literary lady in Scotland, written in 1821, Mrs. Hall makes the following remarks, which will be read with interest, as showing the change that has taken place in the last thirty years:—
“Your flattering inquiry about my ‘literary career’ may be answered in a word—literature has no career in America. It is like wine, which, we are told, must cross the ocean to make it good. We are a business-doing, money-making people. And as for us poor females, the blessed tree of liberty has produced such an exuberant crop of bad servants, that we have no eye nor ear for anything but work. We are the most devoted wives, and mothers, and housekeepers, but every moment given to a book is stolen. The first edition of the ‘Conversations’ astonished me by its rapid sale; for I declare to you, truly, that I promised myself nothing. Should the second do tolerably, I may perhaps be tempted to accede to the intimations of good-natured people, by continuing the history to the end of the Acts of the Apostles. Yet I found so much difficulty in the performance of the first part, having never written one hour without the interruption of company, or business, that I sent off my last sheet as peevishly as Johnson sent the Finis of his Dictionary to Miller, almost
