To the end of his life, he seemed to present, in his carriage and person, some of that New Hampshire ruggedness, and even rustic simplicity, that attracted and lured, while it foiled and disgusted those hunters of human prey who, in every large city, wait to take in the wayfaring man, whether he be fool or wise. Because he wore comfortable shoes, and cared next to nothing about conformity to the last new freak of fashion, the bunco man was very apt to make a fool of himself, and find that he, and not the stranger, was the victim. In Boston, which of late years has been so far captured by the Irishman that even St. Patrick's is celebrated under the guise of "Evacuation Day," matters were not very different from those in New York. Carleton, while often conducting parties of young friends around Copp's Hill, and the more interesting historical, but now uncanny houses of the North End, was often remarked. Occasionally he was recognized by the policeman, who would inform suspicious or inquiring fellow foreigners or adopted sons of the Commonwealth, that "the old fellow was only a countryman in town, and wouldn't do any harm."

Lest some might get a false idea, I need only state that Mr. Coffin was a man of dignified dress, and scrupulously neat. He was a gentleman whose engaging presence might suggest the older and more altruistic, rather than the newer and perhaps brusquer style of manners. His was a "mild and magnificent" blue eye in which so many, who loved him so, liked to dwell, and he had no need to wear glasses. The only sign of ornament about him was his gold watch-chain and cross-bar in his black vest buttonhole.



CHAPTER XXIII.

SHAWMUT CHURCH.

Shawmut Church, in Boston, stands at the corner of Tremont and Brookline Streets. Its history is one of unique interest. Its very name connects the old and new world together. A Saxon monk, named Botolph, after completing his Christian studies in Germany, founded, A. D. 654, a monastery in Lincolnshire, on the Witham, near the sea, and made it a centre of holy light and knowledge. He was the friend of sailors and boat-folk. The houses which grew up around the monastery became Botolph's Town, or Boston. "Botolph" is itself but another form of boat-help, and the famous tower of this English parish church, finer than many cathedrals, is crowned by an octagon lantern, nearly three hundred feet above the ground. It serves as a beacon-light, being visible forty miles distant, and, as of old, is the boat-help of Saint Botolph's Town. This ecclesiastical lighthouse is familiarly called "Boston Stump," and overlooks Lincolnshire, the cradle of Massachusetts history. At Scrooby, a few miles to the west, lived and worshipped the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers. From this shire, also, came the English people who settled at Shawmut on the 17th of September, 1630.

The Indian name, Shawmut, was that of the "place near the neck,"[1] probably the present Haymarket Square. The three-hilled peninsula called Tremont, or Boston, by the white settlers, was connected with the main land at Roxbury by a long, narrow neck or causeway. The future "South End" was then under the waves. After about two centuries of use as a wagon road, this narrow strip between Boston and Roxbury—so narrow that, at high tide, boys were able to leap from the foam of the South Bay to the spray of the waters of the Charles River—was widened. Suffolk Street, which was one of the first highways west of Washington Street to be made into hard ground, was named Shawmut Avenue. About the middle of the nineteenth century, much land was reclaimed from the salt mud and marshes and made ready for the pile-driver, mason, and builder. Two splendid districts, the first called the "South End," and the second the "Back Bay," were created. Where, in the Revolutionary War, British frigates lay at anchor, are now Beacon Street and Commonwealth and Massachusetts Avenues. Where the redcoats stepped into their boats for disembarkation at the foot of Bunker Hill, stretch the lovely Public Gardens. The streets running east and west in the new districts, beginning with Dover and ending with Lenox, are named after towns in the Bay State. About midway among these, as to order and distance, are Brookline and Canton Streets.

[Footnote 1: Other good authorities interpret Shawmut as meaning "living waters."]

On a chance space of hard soil around Canton and Dedham Streets, in this marshy region, a suburban village of frame houses had gathered, and here a Sunday school was started as early as 1836. In January, 1842, a weekly prayer-meeting began at the house of Mr. Samuel C. Wilkins. On November 20, 1845, a church was formed, with fifty members. In the newly filled up land, the pile-driver was already busy in planting forests of full-grown trees head downward. All around were rising blocks of elegant houses, with promise of imposing civic and ecclesiastical edifices of various kinds. In the wider streets were gardens, parks, or ample strips of flower-beds. This was the land of promise, and into it pressed married couples by the hundreds, creating lovely homes, rearing families, and making this the choicest part of the young city. For, though "Boston town" is as old as Mother Goose's rhymes, the municipality of Boston was, in 1852, but thirty years old. The congregation of Christian people which, on April 14, 1849, took the name, as parish, of The Shawmut Congregational Society, and, as a church, one month later, the name of the Shawmut Congregational Church, occupied as a meeting-house first a hall, then a frame building, and finally a handsome edifice of brick, which was dedicated on the 18th of November, 1852. This building is now occupied by the Every Day Church, of the Universalist denomination. The tide of prosperity kept steadily rising. The throng of worshippers increased, until, in the very midst of the great Civil War, it was necessary to have more room. The present grand edifice on Tremont Street was erected and dedicated February 11, 1864; the Rev. Edwin Bonaparte Webb, who had been called from Augusta, Maine, being the popular and successful pastor.

Boston was not then noted, as she certainly is now, for grandeur or loveliness in church edifices. Neither excellence nor taste in ecclesiastical architecture was, before the war, a striking trait of the city or the people. To-day her church spires and towers are not only numerous, but are famed for their variety and beauty.

Fortunately for the future of Boston, the people of Shawmut Church found a good architect, who led the van of improvement in church architecture. The new edifice was the first one in the city on the early Lombardy style of architecture, and did much to educate the taste of the people of the newer and the older town, and especially those in the fraternity of churches called Congregational.

Both its architecture and decoration have been imitated and improved upon in the city wherein it was a pioneer of beauty and the herald of a new order of church architecture. It is a noble vehicle of the faith and feelings of devout worshippers.

The equipment of Shawmut Church edifice made it a very homelike place of worship, and here, for a generation or more of Carleton's life, a noble company of Christians worshipped. The Shawmut people were noted for their enterprise, sociability, generosity, and unity of purpose. In this "South End" of Boston was reared a large proportion of the generation which to-day furnishes the brain and social and religious force of the city and suburbs. In Shawmut Church, gathered, week by week, hundreds of those who, in the glow of prosperity, held common ambitions, interests, and hopes. They were proud of their city, their neighborhood, and their church, yet were ever ready to extend their well-laden hands in gifts to the needy at home, and to send to those far off, within our own borders, and in lands beyond sea.

The great fire in Boston, of which Carleton wrote so brilliant a description, which, beginning November 9, 1872, within a few hours burned over sixty-five acres and reduced seventy-five millions of property to smoke and ashes, gave the first great blow to the material prosperity of Shawmut Church. Later came the filling up, the reclamation, and building of the Back Bay district. About 1878, the tide of movement set to the westward, progressing so rapidly and steadily as to almost entirely change, within a decade, the character of the South End, from a region of homes to one largely of business and boarding houses. Still later, about 1890, with the marvellous development of the electric motor and trolley cars, making horse traction by rail obsolete, the suburbs of Boston became one great garden and a semicircle of homes. Then Brookline, Newton, and Dorchester churches flourished at the expense of the city congregations. Shawmut Church, having graduated hundreds of families, had, in 1893, to be reorganized.

Of this church Charles Carleton Coffin, though not one of the founders, was certainly one of the makers. As a member, a hearer, a worshipper, a teacher, an officer, a counsellor, a giver of money, power, and influence, his name is inseparably associated with the life of Shawmut Church.

When Carleton's seat was vacant, the chief servant of the church knew that his faithful ally was serving his Master elsewhere. After one of his trips to Europe, out West, or down South over the old battle-fields, to refresh his memory, or to make notes and photographs for his books, the welcome given to him, on his return, was always warm and lively.

First of all, Mr. Coffin was a good listener. This man, so fluent in speech, so ready with his pen, so richly furnished by long and wide reading, and by habitual meditation and deep thinking, by unique experience of times that tried men's souls, knew also the moments when silence, that is golden, was better than speech, even though silvern. These were not as the "brilliant flashes of silence," such as Sidney Smith noted as delightful improvements in his friend "Tom" Macaulay; for Carleton was never a monopolist in conversation. Rather, with the prompting of a generous nature, and as studied courtesy made into fine art, he could listen even to a child. If Carleton was present, the preacher had an audience. His face, while beaming with encouragement, was one of singular responsiveness. His patience, the patience of one to whom concealment of feeling was as difficult as for a crystal to shut out light, rarely failed.

In Japan there are temples, built in memoriam to heroes fallen in war. These are named Shrines for the Welcome of Spirits. They are lighted at sunset. Like one of these that I remember, called the Soul-beckoning Rest, was this listener, Carleton, who begat eloquence by his kindly gaze. Nor was this power to lift up and cheer—this winged help of a great soul, like that of a mother bird under her fledgling making first trial of the air—given only to the professional speaker in the pulpit. This ten-talent layman was ever kindly helpful, with ear and tongue, to his fellow holder-in-trust of the one, or of the five, talents; yes, even to the little children in Christ's kingdom.

The young people loved Carleton because he heard and loved them. To have his great, kindly eyes fixed on some poor soldier, or neighbor in distress, was in itself a lightening of the load of trouble. Unlike those professional or volunteer comforters, who overwhelm by dumping a whole cart-load of condolence upon the sufferer, who is unable to resist or reply, Carleton was often great in his power of encouraging silence, and of gentle sympathy.

Bacon, as no other Englishman, has compressed in very few words a recipe for making a "full," a "ready," and an "exact" man. Carleton was all these in one. He was ever full. In the Shawmut prayer-meeting, his deep, rich voice was the admirable vehicle of his strong and helpful thoughts. Being a man of intense conviction, there was earnestness in every tone. A stalwart in faith, he was necessarily optimistic. A prophet, he was always sure that out of present darkness was to break forth grander light than former days knew. This world is governed by our Father, and God makes no mistakes.

That rhetorical instrument, the historical present, which makes the pages of his books tell such vivid stories, he often used with admirable effect in the prayer-room, impressing and thrilling all hearts. No little one ever believed more confidently the promises of its parent than did this little child in humility who was yet a man in understanding. Yet his was not blind credulity. He always faced the facts. He was willing to get to the bottom of reality, even though it might cause much drilling of the strata, with revelation of things at first unpleasant to know. I never knew a man whose piety rested less on traditions, institutions, persons, things, or reputations taken for granted. To keen intuitions, he was able to add the riches of experience, and his experience ever wrought hope. Hence the tonic of his thought and words. He dwelt on the mountain-top of vision, and yet he had that combination, so rare, yet so indispensable in the prophet,—vision and patience, even the patience of service.

Naturally his themes and his illustrations, so pertinent and illuminating, were taken largely from history. It is because he saw so far and so clearly down the perspective of the past, that he read the future so surely. "That which hath been, is that which shall be,"—but more. "God fulfils himself in many ways." To our friend, history, of which the cross of Christ was the centre, was the Heavenly Father's fullest revelation. Many are the ways of theophany,—"at sundry times, and in divers manners,"—to one the burning bush, to another the Urim and Thummin, to another the dew on the fleece, to one this, to another that. To our man of the Spirit, as to the sage of Patmos, human history, because moved from above, was the visible presence of God.

The war, which dissolved the old world of slavery, sectional bigotry, and narrow ideals, and out of the mother liquid of a new chaos shot forth fresh axes of moral reconstruction, furnished this soldier of righteousness with endless themes, incidents, illustrations, and suggestions. Yet the emphasis, both as to light and shading, was put upon things Christian and Godlike, the phenomena of spiritual courage and enterprise, rather than upon details of blood or slaughter. Neither years nor distance seemed to dim our fellow patriot's gratitude to the brave men who sacrificed limb and life for their country. The soldierly virtues, so vital to the Christian, were brought home to heart and conscience. He showed the incarnation of truth and life to be possible even in the camp and field.

Having been a skilled traveller in the Holy Land, Carleton frequently opened this "Fifth Gospel" to delighted listeners. There hung on the wall of the "vestry," or social prayer-room, above the leader's chair, a steel-plate picture of modern Jerusalem, showing especially the walls, gates, and roadways leading out from the city. Carleton often declared that this print was "an inspiration" to him. It recalled not only personal experiences of his own journeys, but also the stirring incidents in Scripture, especially of the life of Christ. Having studied on the soil of Syria, the background of the parables, and possessing a genius for topography, he was able to unshackle our minds from too close bondage to the English phrase or letter, from childhood's imperfect imaginations, and from our crude Occidental fancies. Many a passage of Scripture, long held in our minds as the hand holds an unlighted lantern, was often turned into an immediately helpful lamp to our path by one touch of his light-giving torch.

For many years, Carleton was a Bible-class teacher, excelling in understanding, insight, explanation, and application of the divine Word. Many to-day remember his teaching powers and their enjoyment at Malden; but it was in Boston, at Shawmut Church, that Mr. Coffin gave to this work the fullness of his strength and the ripeness of his powers.

Counting it one of the noblest ambitions of a man's life to be a good teacher, I used to admire Carleton's way of getting at the heart of the lesson. His talent lay in first drawing out the various views of the readers, and then of harmonizing them,—even as the lens draws all rays to a burning-point, making fire where before was only scattered heat. Carleton was one of those superb teachers who believe that education is not only putting in, but also drawing out. In his class were lawyers, physicians, doctors of divinity, principals of schools, heads of families, besides various specimens of average humanity. Somehow, he contrived, within the scant hour afforded him, often within a half hour, to bestow not only his own thought, but, by powerful spiritual induction, to kindle in others a transforming force. After the teaching had well begun, there set in an alternating current of intensity that wrought mightily for the destruction of dead prejudices, and the building up of character.

In his use of helps and commentaries he had a profound contempt of those peddlers of pedantry who try to make the words of eternal truth become merely the lingo of things local and temporary. He was fond of utilizing all that the spade has cast up and out from the earth, as well as of consulting what the pen of genius has made so plain. He believed heartily in that interpretive, or higher criticism, which has done so much in our days to open the riches of holy Scripture. From the very first, instead of fearing that truth might be injured by an examination of the dress in which it was clothed, or the packages in which it was wrapped, Carleton was in hearty sympathy with those scholars and investigators who, by the application of literary canons to the Hebrew and Greek writings, have put illuminating difference between traditions and the original message. He believed that, in the popular understanding of many portions of the Bible, there was much confusion, owing to the webs which have been spun over the text by men who lived centuries and ages after the original writers of the inspired word. Though he never called himself a scholar, he knew only too well that Flavius Josephus and John Milton were the makers of much popular tradition which ascribed to the Bible a good deal which it does not contain, and that there was often difficulty among the plain people in distinguishing between the ancient treasure and the wrapping and strings within which it is now enclosed. Hence his diligent use of some of the strong books in his pastor's and other libraries.

Above all, however, was his own clear, penetrating, spiritual insight, which, joined with his rich experience, his literary instincts, and his own gift of expression, made him such a master in the art of communication. While his first use of the Bible was for spiritual benefit to himself and others, he held that its study as literature would scatter to the wind the serious objections of sceptics and unbelievers.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FREE CHURCHMAN.

Carleton was a typical free churchman. He was not only so by inheritance and environment, but because he was master of the New Testament. His penetrating acumen and power to read rightly historical documents enabled him to see what kind of churches they were which the apostles founded. With the open New Testament before him, he did not worry himself about the validity of the ordination of those who should preach to him or administer the sacraments, though there was no more loyal churchman and Christian. He believed in the kind of churches which were first formed at Jerusalem and in the Roman cities by the twelve whom Jesus chose, over which not even the apostles themselves ventured to exercise authority; but rather, on the other hand, submitted to the congregation, that is, the assembled believers. In the New Testament, Carleton read that the members of the churches were on the same level, all being equal before their great Head and risen Lord, no member having the smallest claim to any kind of authority over or among his fellow members. In such churches, organized to-day as closely as possible after the New Testament model, he believed, and to such churches he gave his heartiest support, while ever deeply sympathetic with his fellow Christians who associated themselves under other methods of government.

His strong faith in the essential right and truth held by independent churches in fraternity, never wavered; and this faith received even increasing strength because of his trust in human nature when moved from above. He believed in the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, as leading Christians unto the way of all truth. He thought the centuries to come would see a shedding off of many things dogmatic theologians consider to be vital to Christianity, and the closer apprehension by society of the meaning of Christ's life and words. He believed not only that God was, but that he is. Though reared in New England, he had little of that provincial narrowness which so often mars and cramps the minds of those who otherwise are the most agreeable of all Americans,—the cultivated New Englanders. No sermon so moved Carleton, and so kindled responsive radiance in his face, as those which showed that God is to-day leading and guiding humanity and individuals as surely as in the age of the burning bush or the smoking altar. He believed that neither the ancient Jews nor the early Christians had any advantages over us for spiritual culture, or for the foundation and increase of their faith in God, but rather less. He heartily approved of whatever pierced sectarian shams and traditional hypocrisies and revealed reality.

Hence his coolness and impartiality in controversy, whatever might be his own strong personal liking. His profound knowledge of human nature in all its forms, not excepting the clerical, professional, and theological sort,—especially when in the fighting mood,—enabled him to measure accurately the personal equation in every problem, even when masked to the point of self-deception. His judicial balance and his power to see the real point in a controversy made him an admirable guide, philosopher, and friend. His vital rather than traditional view and use of the truth, and his sunny calm and poise, were especially manifested during that famous period of trouble which broke out in that noble but close corporation, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Through all the subsidiary skirmishes connected with the prosecution of the Andover professors, and the great debates in the public meetings of the American Board, Carleton was in hearty sympathy with those opinions and convictions which have since prevailed. He was in favor of sending men and women into missionary fields who showed, by their physical, intellectual, and spiritual make-up, that they were fitted for their noble work, whether or not their theology stood the test of certain arbitrary standards in vogue with a faction in a close corporation.

Carleton was never averse to truth being tried on a fair field, whether of discussion, of controversy before courts, or, if necessary, at the rifle's muzzle. He was not one of those feeble souls who retreat from all agitation. He had once fronted "a lie in arms" and was accustomed to probe even an angel's professions. He knew that in the history of man there must often be a storm before truth is revealed in clearness. No one realized more fully than he that, among the evangelical churches holding the historic form of Christianity, the part ever played and perhaps yet to be played by Congregationalists, is that of pioneers. He knew that out of the bosom of this body of Christians had come very many of the great leaders of thought who have so profoundly modified Christian theology in America and Europe, and that by Congregationalists are written most of the books shaping the vanguard of thought in America, and he rejoiced in the fact.

In brief, Charles Carleton Coffin was neither a "mean Yankee," nor, in his general spirit, a narrow New Englander. He was not a local, but a genuinely national American and free churchman. He believed that the idea of the people ruling in the Church as well as in the State had a historical, but not absolutely necessary, connection with New England. In his view, the Congregational form of a church government was as appropriate to the Middle and Western States of our country, as to the six Eastern States. Ever ready to receive new light and to ponder a new proposition, he grew and developed, as the years went on, in his conception of the origin of Congregational Christianity in apostolic times, and of its re-birth after the release of the Bible from its coffin of dead Latin and Greek into the living tongues of Europe, among the so-called Anabaptists. Through his researches he had long suspected that those Christians, whom prelates and political churchmen had, besides murdering and attempting to exterminate, so vilified and misrepresented, were our spiritual ancestors and the true authors in modern time of church government through the congregation, and of freedom of the conscience in religion. He often spoke of that line of succession of thought and faith which he saw so clearly traced through the Lollards and the weavers of eastern England, the Dutch Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the Pilgrims. He gave his hearty adherence to what he believed to be the demonstration of the truth as set forth in an article in The New World, by the writer, in the following letter, written February 27, 1896, only four days before his sudden death and among the very last fruits of his pen. Like the editor who prints "letters from correspondents," the biographer is "not responsible for the opinions expressed."

Alwington, 9 Shailer Street, Brookline, Mass.

Dear Dr. Griffis:—I have read your Anabaptist article,—once for my own meditation, and once for Mrs. Coffin's benefit. I am glad you have shown up Motley, and that toleration did not begin with Roger Williams. Your article historically will dethrone two saints,—Williams and Lord Baltimore. You have rendered an invaluable service to history. Our Baptist and Catholic brethren will not thank you, but the rest of the world will. It is becoming clearer every day that the motive force which was behind the foundations of this Republic came from the "Lollards" and the "Beggars." I hope you will give us more such articles.

Having been for many years an active member of the Congregational Club, of Boston, Carleton was in 1890 elected president, and served during one year. This parent of the fifty or more Congregational Clubs scattered throughout the country was organized in 1869, and has had an eventful history of power and influence. Some of the topics discussed during his administration were "Relations of the Church to Politics," "Congregationalism in Boston," "Bible Class Study," and "How shall the Church adapt itself to modern needs?" It was under his presidency, also, that the Boston Congregational Club voted unanimously, February 24, 1890, to appoint a committee to obtain the necessary funds and erect a memorial at Delfshaven in honor of the Dutch Republicans and the Pilgrim Fathers,—both hosts and guests. When the suggestion to raise some such memorial, made by the Hon. S. R. Thayer, American Minister at the Hague, was first read in the meeting of the Club in October, 1889, and a motion made to refer it to the Executive Committee, Carleton seconded and supported the motion with a speech in warm commendation. He was among the very first to make and pay a subscription in money. The enterprise still awaits the happy day of completion, and the responsibility of the enterprise lies, by its own vote, upon the Boston Congregational Club. The Forefathers' Day celebration of the Club was of uncommon interest during the year of Mr. Coffin's presidency. A leading feature was the display on a screen of views of Pilgrim shrines in England which Mr. Coffin had obtained on a visit two years before.

Except his membership in the various historical and learned societies and in religious organizations, Mr. Coffin was not connected with secret, benevolent, social, or mysterious brotherhoods. He did not believe in secret fraternities, but rather considered that these had much to do with weakening the Church of Christ, and with making men satisfied with a lower standard of ethics and human sociability than that taught by Jesus. He held that the brotherhood instituted of Christ, in an open chapter of twelve, and without secrets of any kind, was sufficient for him and for all men. More than once, when going abroad, or travelling in the various parts of his own country, which is nearly as large as all Europe, he was advised to join a lodge and unite himself with one or more of the best secret fraternities, for assistance and recognition while travelling. All these kind invitations he steadily declined. He was not even a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, though often invited to join a Post. He never became a member, for he did not see the necessity of secrecy, even for this organization, though he was very often an honored guest at their public meetings. The Church of Christ was to Carleton an all-sufficient society and power.



CHAPTER XXV.

CITIZEN, STATESMAN, AND REFORMER.

One can hardly imagine a better school for the training of a good American citizen than that which Carleton enjoyed. By inheritance and birth in a New Hampshire village, he knew "the springs of empire." By actual experience of farming and surveying in a transition era between the old ages of manual labor and the new aeon of inventions, he learned toil, its necessity, and how to abridge and guide it by mind. In the acquaintance, while upon a Boston newspaper, with public men, and all kinds of people, in the unique experiences as war correspondent, in wide travel and observation around the whole world, in detailed studies of new lands and life in the Northwest, in reading and research in great libraries, and in the constant discipline of his mind through reflection, his knowledge of man and nature, of society and history, was at first hand.

Intensely interested in politics from boyhood, Carleton sought no public office.

When, in his early manhood, he revolved in his mind the question of attempting this or that career, he may have thought of entering the alluring but thorny path of office-seeking and "practical" politics. It cannot be said that his desire for public emolument lasted very long. He deliberately decided against a political career. Even if the exigencies of the moment had not tended to forbid the flight of his ambition in this direction, there were other reasons against it.

He was a school commissioner in Malden, faithfully attending to the details of his duty during two years. The report of his work was given in a pamphlet. As we have seen, before the breaking out of the war, when in Washington, he sought for a little while government employment in one of the departments, but gave up the quest when the larger field of war correspondent invited him. He never sought an elective office, but when his fellow citizens in Boston found out how valuable a member of the Commonwealth he was, so rich in public spirit and so well equipped to be a legislator, he was made first, for several terms, a Representative, and afterwards, for one term, a Senator, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. Carleton sat under the golden codfish as Representative during the years 1884 and 1885, and under the gilded dome as Senator, in 1890.

Faithful to his calling as a maker of law, Carleton was abundant in labors during his three terms, interested in all that meant weal or woe to the Commonwealth; yet we have only room to speak of the two or three particular reforms which he inaugurated.

Until the year 1884, Boston was behind some of the other cities of the Union, notably Philadelphia, in requiring the children in the public schools to provide their own text-books. This caused the burden of taxation for education, which is "the chief defence of nations," to fall upon the men and women who reared families, instead of being levied with equal justice upon all citizens. Carleton prepared a bill for furnishing free text-books to the public schools of Boston, such as had been done in Philadelphia since 1819. Despite considerable opposition, some of it on the part of teachers who had severe notions,—bred chiefly by local Boston precedent, which had almost the force of religion,—Carleton had the happiness of seeing the bill passed.

The administration of municipal affairs in the "Hub of the Universe," during the seventies and early eighties of this proud century, was one not at all creditable to any party nor to the city that prides itself on being distinctive and foremost in fame. The development of political life in New England had been after the model of the town. Municipal organization was not looked upon with much favor until well into this century. While the population of the Middle States was advancing in the line of progress in government of cities, the people in the Eastern States still clung to the model of the town meeting as the perfection of political wisdom and practice. This was done in the case of Boston, even when several tens of thousands of citizens, dwelling as one political union, made the old system antiquated.

Before the opening of the 19th century, all the municipally incorporated cities of the Northern United States, excepting Albany, lay along a line between the boundaries of Manhattan Island and Philadelphia. It was not until 1830 that "Boston town" became a city. For fifty years afterwards, the development of municipal enterprise was in the direction of superficial area, rather than according to foresight or genius. It is very certain that the fathers of that epoch did not have a very clear idea of, certainly did not plan very intelligently for, the vast growth of our half of the century. Added to this ultra conservatism, came the infusion, with attendant confusion, of Ireland's sons and daughters by myriads, a flood of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities from Canada, and the flocking of large numbers of native Americans from the rural districts of New England. Nearly all of the newcomers usually arrived poor and with intent to become rich as quickly as honesty would allow, while not a few were without limit of time or scruple of conscience to hinder their plans. The Americans of "culture and character" were usually too busy in making money and getting clothes, houses, and horses, to attend to "politics," while Patrick was only too glad and ready to develop his political abilities. So it came to pass that a ring of powerful political "bosses"—if we may degrade so good and honest a Dutch word—was formed. Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, who were simply the creatures for the most part of corrupt politicians, were too frequent to attract much notice. That conscientious wearer of the blue and the star who enforced the laws was either discharged or sent on some unimportant suburban beat. The relations between city saloons and politics were as close as hand and glove, palm and coin. The gambler, the saloon-keeper, the masters of houses of ill-fame, were all in favor of the kind of municipal government which Boston had had for a generation or more.

An American back is like the camel's,—able to bear mighty loads, but insurgent at the last feather. So, in Boston, the long-outraged moral sense of the people suddenly revolted. A Citizens' Law and Order League was formed, and Charles Carleton Coffin, elected to the House of Representatives for the session of 1885, was asked to be their banner bearer in reform. With the idea of destroying partisanship and making the execution of the laws non-partisan, Carleton prepared a bill, which was intended to take the control of the police out of the hands of the Mayor and Common Council of the city, and to put it into the hands of the Governor of the Commonwealth.

When Mr. Coffin began this work, Boston had a population of 412,000 souls. From the "Boston bedrooms," that is, the suburban towns in five counties, one hundred thousand or more were emptied every day, making over half a million people. In this city there was an array of forces all massed against any legislation restricting their power, while eager and organized to extend it. These included 2,850 licensed liquor sellers, and 1,300 unlicensed places, besides 222 druggists; all of which, and whom, helped to make men drunk. To supply the thirsty there were within the city limits three distilleries and seventeen breweries. To show the nature of the oligarchy, we have only to state that there were twenty-five men who had their names as bondsmen on no fewer than 1,030 licenses, and that eight men signed the bonds of 610 licenses. These "bondsmen" of one sort controlled the votes of from 15,000 to 20,000 bondsmen of a lower sort. The liquor business was then, as it is now, the great incentive to lawlessness, helping to make Boston a place of shame. Ten thousand persons and $75,000,000 capital were employed in work mostly useless and wicked.

"Boston's devil-fish was dragging her down." The Sunday laws were set at defiance. The clinking of glasses could not only be distinctly heard as one went by, but the streams of young men openly filed in. The laws, requiring a certain distance between the schoolhouse and the saloon, were persistently violated. Of two hundred saloons visited by Carleton, one hundred and twenty-eight had set the law at defiance. While six policemen were needed in one Salvation Army room, to keep the saints and sinners quiet, often there would be not one star or club in the saloons.

Carleton began by arming himself with the facts. He visited hundreds of the tapster's quarters in various parts of the city. In some cases he actually measured, with his own hands and a surveyor's chain, the distance between the schoolhouse and the home-destroyer. He talked with scores of policemen. He then prepared his bill and reported it in the Judiciary Committee, the members of which, about that time, received a petition in favor of a non-partisan metropolitan board of police commissioners, in order to secure a much better enforcement of law. On this petition were scores of names, which the world will not willingly let die. Yet, after reading the petition, seven of the eleven members of the Committee were opposed to the bill, and so declared themselves. Carleton was therefore obliged to transfer the field of battle to the open House. When he counted noses in the Legislature, he found that in the double body there were but four men who were heartily in favor of the apparently unpopular reform. The bill lay dormant for many weeks. Almost as a matter of course, the Sunday newspapers were bitterly hostile to it. They informed their readers, more than once, that the reform was dead. By hostile politicians the bill was denounced as "infamous."

Nevertheless, the minority of four nailed their colors to the mast, "determined, if need be, to sink, but not to surrender." Behind them were the State constitution, the statutes of the General Court, and the whole history of Massachusetts, whose moral tonic has so often inspired the beginners of better times in American history. When the day came for discussion of the bill, in public, Mr. Coffin made a magnificent speech in its favor, March 17, 1885. Despite fierce opposition, the bill finally became law, creating a new era of hope and reform in the City on the Bay.

In a banquet given by the Citizens' Law and Order League, at the Hotel Vendome, to talk over the victory of law, about two hundred ladies and gentlemen were present. Among them were President Capen, of Tufts College, president of the League, and such grand citizens as Rufus Frost, Jonathan A. Lane, and Dr. Henry Martin Dexter; the Honorable Frank M. Ames, Senator, and Charles Carleton Coffin, Representative, being guests of honor. Carleton, being called upon for an address, said, among other things:

"There are no compensations in life more delightful and soul-satisfying than those which come from service and sacrifice for the welfare of our fellow men.... It has never troubled me to be in the minority. If you want real genuine pleasure in a battle, go in with the minority on some great principle affecting the welfare of society."

In his speech he had said: "The moral sense of this community is a growing quantity, and no political party that ignores or runs counter to the lofty ideal can long stand before us."

The Honorable Alanson M. Beard had already paid a merited tribute when he said that Carleton had "lifted up this question above the domain of party politics into the higher realm of morals, where it belonged."

No one who knew Carleton need be told that, during all these weeks of uncertainty of issue, he was in constant prayer to God for light, guidance, and success. From all over the Commonwealth came letters of cheer and sympathy, especially from the mothers whose sons in Boston were tempted beyond measure because of the non-enforcement of law. To these, and to the law-loving editors of the newspaper press, the statesman afterwards returned his hearty thanks.

Carleton was a man ever open to conviction. To him, truth had no stereotyped forms. His mind never became a petrifaction, but was ever growing and vital. At first he was opposed to civil service reform; but after a study of the subject, he was convinced of its reasonableness and practicality, and became ever afterwards a hearty upholder of this method of selecting the servants of government, in the nation, the State, and the city.

He was a friend of woman suffrage. On the occasion of a presentation of a petition from twenty thousand Massachusetts women, though four thousand of them had petitioned against the proposed measure, he made a strong and earnest plea for granting the ballot to women. Among other things he said: "No fire ever yet was lighted that could reduce to ashes an eternal truth." He believed that women, as well as men, form society, and "the people, who were the true source, under God, of all authority on earth," were not made up wholly of one sex. He quoted from that pamphlet, "De Jure Regni," published by George Buchanan in 1556, which was burned by the hangman in St. Paul's churchyard,—where so many Bibles and other good books have been burned,—which declared that "the will of the people is the only legitimate source of power." He declared that the "lofty ideal of republicanism is the Sermon on the Mount." Of women, he said, "Wherever they have walked, there has been less of hell and more of heaven."

After an ex-mayor, in his speech, had referred to Carleton's bill, which changed the appointing power of the police from the Mayor and Common Council, and, by putting it in the hands of the Governor and Executive Council, placed it on the same foundation as the judiciary, as "that infamous police law," Carleton said: "Make a note of it, statesmen of the future. Write it down in your memoranda, politicians who indulge the expectation that you can ride into power on the vices of society,—that moral forces are marshalling as never before in the history of the human race, and that the women of this country are beginning to wield them to shape legislation on all great moral questions. Refreshing as perfume-laden breezes from the celestial plains were the words of encouragement and sympathy that came to me from mothers in Berkshire, from the Cape, from all over the Commonwealth."

In 1890, in the Massachusetts Senate, there was an attempt made to divide the town of Beverly. Into this, as into so many of the pleasant towns, villages, and rural districts around Boston, wealthy Bostonians had come and built luxurious houses upon the land which they had bought. Not content with being citizens in the place where they were newcomers,—thus securing release from heavier taxes in Boston, where they lived in winter,—they wished to separate themselves, in a most un-American and un-democratic manner, from the older inhabitants and "common" people, and to make a new settlement with a separate local government for those who formed a particular class living in luxury. Carleton, hostile to the sordid and unsocial spirit lurking in the bill, vigorously opposed the attempted mutilation of an old historic town, and the isolation of "Beverly Farms." He opposed it, because it would be a bad precedent, and one in favor of class separation and class distinction. His speech embodies a masterly historical sketch of the town form of government.



CHAPTER XXVI.

A SAVIOUR OF HUMAN LIFE.

While Carleton enjoyed that kind of work, ethical, literary, benevolent, and political, which appealed to sentiment and aroused sympathy to the burning point, he was an equally faithful coworker with God and man in enterprises wholly unsentimental. He who waits through eternity for his creatures to understand his own creation, knows how faithfully good men can cooeperate with him in plans which only unborn and succeeding generations can appreciate.

Out of a thousand illustrations we may note, along the lines of electric science, the names of Professor Kinnersly, who probably first led Franklin into that line of research which enabled him to "snatch the sceptre from tyrants and the lightning from heaven," and Professor Moses Gerrish Farmer, who broke new paths into the once unknown. As early as 1859, Mr. Farmer lighted his whole house with electric lights, and blew up a little ship by a tiny submarine torpedo in 1847, and in the same year propelled by electricity a car carrying passengers. Yet neither of these names is found in the majority of ordinary cyclopedias or books of reference.

Familiar with such facts, both by a general observation of life, and by a special and critical study of the literature of patents and inventions, Carleton felt perfectly willing to devote himself to a work that he knew would yield but little popular applause, even when victory should be won,—the abolition of railway level or "grade" crossings.

During a brief morning call on Carleton, shortly after he had been elected Senator in the Massachusetts Legislature for the session of 1890, I asked him what he proposed especially to do. "Well," said he, "I think that if I can get all grade crossings abolished from the railroads of the whole Commonwealth, it will be a good winter's work."

Forthwith he set himself to study the problem, to master resources and statistics, to learn the relation between capital invested and profits made by the railway corporation, and especially to measure the forces in favor of and in opposition to the proposed reform.

About this time, the chief servant of Shawmut Church was studying an allied question. While the "grade crossing" slew its thousands of non-travelling citizens, the freight-car, with its link-and-pin coupling, its block-bumpers, its hand-brakes, its slippery roofs, its manifold shiftings over frogs and switches, slew its tens of thousands of railway operatives. On the grade crossings, the victims were chiefly old, deaf, or blind men and women, cripples, children, drunkards, and miscellaneous people. On the other hand, the freight-cars killed almost exclusively the flower of the country's manhood. The tens of thousands of hands crushed between bumpers, of arms and legs cut off, of bodies broken and mangled, were, in the majority of cases, those of healthy, intelligent men, between the ages of eighteen and fifty, and usually breadwinners for whole families. The slaughter every year was equal to that of a battle at Waterloo or Gettysburg. Fairy tales about monsters devouring human beings, legends of colossal dragons swallowing annually their quota of fair virgins, were insignificant expressions of damage done to the human race compared to that annual tribute poured into the insatiable maw of the railway Moloch. Every great line of traffic, like the Pennsylvania or New York Central Railway, ate up a man a day. Sometimes, between sunrise and sunset, a single road made four or five widows, with a profusion of orphans.

Yet two men, each of the name of Coffin, and each of that superb Nantucket stock which has enriched our nation and carried the American flag to every sea, were working in the West and the East, for the abolition of legalized slaughter. Lorenzo Coffin, of Iowa, a distant cousin of Carleton's, whom so many railway men always salute as "father," had been for years trying to throttle the two twin enemies of the railway man, alcohol, and the freight-car equipment of link-and-pin coupler and hand-brake. It was he who agitated unceasingly for national protection to railway men, and to the brakeman especially. He and his fellow reformers asked for a law compelling the use of a brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in winter, and for couplers which, by abolishing the iron link and pin, would save the constant and almost certain crushing of the hands which the shifting of the cars compelled when coupled in the old way.

For a long time Lorenzo Coffin's efforts seemed utterly useless. This was simply because human life was cheaper than machinery, and because public opinion on this particular subject had not yet become Christian. It was Jesus Christ who raised the value of both the human body and the human soul, abolished gladiatorial shows, raised up hospitals, created cemeteries, even for the poorest, made life insurance companies possible, and put even such value on human life as could be recovered in action by law from corporations which murder men through sordid economy or criminal carelessness. Lorenzo Coffin wrought for the application of Christianity to railway men. When finally the law was passed, compelling safety-couplers and air-brakes, and when, in the constitution of New York State, the limit of five thousand dollars replevin for a human life destroyed by a corporation was abolished, and no limit set, there were two new triumphs of Christianity. In these phenomena, we see only further illustrations of that Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by Christ, and illustrated both in the hidden leaven and the phenomenal mustard-seed.

A sermon by the pastor of Shawmut Church, on "Lions that devour," depicted the great American slaughter-field. It set forth the array of figures as given him in the reports of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, sent by his friend, the Hon. Augustus Schoonmaker, of Kingston, New York, and then in Washington, one of the Commissioners. There was considerable surprise and criticism from among his auditors, and the facts as set forth were doubted. There were present, as usual on Sunday mornings in Shawmut Church, men of public affairs, presidents of banks, the collector of the port of Boston, a general in the regular army, a veteran colonel of volunteers, several officers of railway companies, and, most of all, Mr. Charles Carleton Coffin. He and they thought the statements given of the slaughter of young men on railroads in the United States must be incredible. Even Carleton had not then informed himself concerning that great field of blood extending from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, which every year was strewn with the corpses or mangled limbs of twenty-five thousand people. He thought his friend in the pulpit must be mistaken, and frankly told him so.

On the following Sunday, having received the figures for the current year, from the best authority in Washington, the preacher was able to say that his statements of last Sunday had been below reality, and that, instead of exaggerating, he had underestimated the facts. This gave Mr. Coffin, as he afterwards confessed, fresh impetus in his determination to get grade crossings abolished in Massachusetts.

Having first personally interviewed the presidents of several great railroads leading out from Boston, and finding one or two heartily in favor of the idea, two or three more not in opposition, and scarcely a majority opposed, he persevered. He pressed the matter, and the bill was carried and signed by the governor. It provided that within a term of years all grade crossings in Massachusetts should be abolished. This will require the expenditure of many millions of dollars, the sinking or elevating of tracks, and the making of tunnels and bridges. The work was nobly begun. At this moment, in May, 1898, the progress is steadily forward to the great consummation.

Though his measure for the protection of human life received very little popular notice, Carleton counted it one of the best things that God had allowed him to do. And certainly, among the noble and truly Christian measures for the good of society, in this last decade of the century, the work done by Lorenzo Coffin in Iowa, as well as in the country at large, and by Senator Charles Carleton Coffin in Massachusetts,—a State whose example will be followed by others,—must ever be remembered by the grateful student of social progress. Surely, Carleton proved himself not merely a politician, but a statesman.

The welfare of the city of Boston was ever dear to Carleton's heart. He gave a great deal of time and thought to thinking out problems affecting its welfare, and hence was often a welcome speaker at club meetings, which are so numerous, so delightful, and, certainly, in their number, peculiar to Boston. He wrote for the press, giving his views freely, whenever any vital question was before the people. This often entailed severe labor and the sacrifice of time to one who could never boast very much of this world's goods.

When the writer first, in 1886, came to Boston to live, he found the horse everywhere in the city; when he left it in 1893 there was only the trolley. The motor power was carried through the air from a central source. It is even yet, however, a test of one's knowledge of Boston—a city not laid out by William Penn, but by cows and admirers of crookedness—to understand the street-car system of the city. Most of the street passenger lines fell gradually into the hands of one great corporation, which vastly improved the service, enlarging and making more comfortable, not to say luxurious, the accommodations, and by unification enabling one to ride astonishing distances for a nickel coin.

From the peculiar shape of the city and the converging of the thoroughfares on Tremont Street, fronting the Common and the old burying grounds, the space between Boylston Street and Cornhill was, at certain hours of the day, in a painful state of congestion. Then the stoppage of the cars, the loss of time, and the waste of temper was something which no nineteenth century man could stand with equanimity. How to relieve the congestion was the difficulty. Should there be an elevated railway, or a new avenue opened through the midst of the city? This was the question.

To this subject, Carleton gave his earnest attention. He remembered the day when the now elegant region of the Back Bay was marsh and water, when schooners discharged coal and lumber in that Public Garden, which in June looks like a day of heaven on earth, and when Tremont Street stopped at the crossing of the Boston and Albany railway. Even as late as 1850 the population included within the ten-mile radius of the city hall was but 267,861; in 1890, the increase was to 841,617; and the same ratio of increase will give, in 1930, 2,700,000 souls. In 1871, seventeen million people were moved into Boston by steam; in 1891, fifty-one millions. At the same ratio of increase, on the opening of the twentieth century, there will be 100,000,000 persons riding in from the suburbs, and of travellers in the street-cars, in A. D. 1910, nearly half a billion.

Carleton, the engineer and statesman, believed that neither a subway nor an elevated railway would solve the problem. He spoke, lectured, and wrote, in favor of a central city viaduct. For both surface and elevated railways, he proposed an avenue eighty feet wide, making a clear road from Tremont to Causeway Streets.

Moreover, he believed that the city should own the roads that should transport passengers within the city limits. He was not afraid of that kind of socialism which provides for the absolute necessities of modern associated life. He expected great amelioration to come to society from the breaking up and passing away of the old relics of feudalism, as well as of the power of the privileged man as against man, of wealth against commonwealth. He believed that transportation within city limits should be under public ownership and control. He therefore opposed the subway and the incorporation of the Boston Elevated Railroad Company.

One of his most vigorous letters, occupying a column and a half, in the Boston Herald of July 17, 1895, is a powerful plea for the rejection by the people of an act which should give the traffic of the streets of Boston and surrounding municipalities into the hands of a corporation for all time. He considered that the act, which had been rushed through the legislature in one day at the close of the session, was a hasty piece of patchwork made by dovetailing two bills together, and was highly objectionable. He wrote:

"Why shall the people give away their own rights? Do they not own the ground beneath the surface and the air above the surface?... What need is there of a corporation? Cannot the people in their sovereign capacity do for themselves all that a corporation can do? Why give away their rights, and burden themselves with taxes for the benefit of a corporation?

"Does some one say it is a nationalistic idea? Then it is nationalism for Boston to own Quincy Market, the water supply, the system of sewerage. Far different from governmental ownership of railroads, with the complications of interstate commerce, is the proposition for public ownership of street railways. A street is a highway. Why shall not the subway under the street, or the structure over it, be a highway, built and owned by the people, and for their use and benefit, and not for the enrichment of a corporation?"

After forcibly presenting the reasonable objections to the bill, he closed by pleading that it be rejected, and that the next legislature be asked to establish a metropolitan district and the appointment of a commission with full power to do everything that could be done under the bill, "not for the greed of a corporation, but for the welfare of the people."



CHAPTER XXVII.

LIFE'S EVENING GLOW.

Carleton's biographer having resigned the pastorate of Shawmut Church at the end of 1892, the work was continued by the Rev. William E. Barton, who had been called from Wellington, Ohio. He began his ministrations March 1, 1893. As so very many families forming the old church, and who had grown up in it from early manhood, youth, or even childhood, had removed from the neighborhood, it was necessary to reorganize to a certain extent. The great changes which had come over the South End, and the drift of population to the more attractive neighborhoods in the Back Bay, Brookline, Dorchester, Newton, Allston, and other beautiful suburbs of Boston, caused much derangement of previously existing conditions. The tremendous development of the means of transportation by the steam, horse or electric railways, to say nothing of the bicycle, had caused a marvellous bloom of new life and flush of vigor among the suburban churches, while those in the older parts of the city suffered corresponding decline. The Shawmut Church, like the Mount Vernon, the Pine Street, and others, had to pass through experiences which make a familiar story to those who know Philadelphia, New York, and London. The work of the old city churches had been to train up and graduate sons and daughters with noble Christian principles and character, to build up the waste places and the newer societies. Like bees, the new swarms out from the old hives were called to gather fresh honey.

The exodus from rural New England and from Canada enlarged Boston, and caused the building up and amazing development of Brookline. With such powerful magnets drawing away the old residents, together with the multiplication of a new and largely non-American and Roman Catholic population into the district lying east of Washington Street, the older congregations of the South End had, by 1890, been vastly changed. Several had been so depleted in their old supporters, that churches moved in a body to new edifices on the streets and avenues lying westward. In others the burdens of support fell upon a decreasing number of faithful men and women. Where once were not enough church edifices to accommodate the people who would worship in them, was now a redundancy. In the city where a Roman Catholic church was once a curiosity are now nearly fifty churches that acknowledge the Pope's supremacy.

These things are stated with some detail, in order to show the character of Charles Carleton Coffin in its true light. After a laborious life, having borne the heat and burden of the day in the churches where his lot was cast, withal, having passed his three score and ten years, one would naturally expect this veteran to seek repose. Not a few of his friends looked to see him set himself down in some one of the luxurious new church edifices, amid congenial social surroundings and material comforts.

Carleton sought not his own comfort. When the new pastor and the old guard, left in Shawmut Church to "hold the fort," took counsel together as to the future, they waited with some anxiety to hear what choice and decision Mr. Coffin would make. He had already selected the ground and was making plans for building his new home, "Alwington," at No. 9 Shailer Street, Brookline,—several miles away from his old residence in Dartmouth Street. It was naturally thought that he would ally himself with a wealthy old church elsewhere, and bid farewell, as so many had done, to their old church home, taking no new burdens, risks, or responsibilities. During the conference in the Shawmut prayer-room, Carleton rose and, with a smiling face and his usual impressive manner, stated that he should give his hopes and prayers, his sympathy and work, his gifts and influence to Shawmut Church; and, for the present at least, without dictating the future, would cast in his lot with the Shawmut people. A thrill of delight, unbidden tears of joy, and a new warmth of heart came to those who heard. As time went on he so adjusted himself to the change, and found Dr. Barton such a stimulating preacher, that any thought of sacrifice entirely vanished.

When the first Congregational Church of Christ in Ithaca, N. Y.,—the city named by Simeon DeWitt after his Ulysses-like wanderings were over,—sent out its "letter missive" to the churches of the Central Association of New York State, and to Shawmut Church in Boston, the latter responded. It was voted to send, as their messengers, the pastor, Rev. Dr. Barton, and Mr. Coffin; Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Coffin accompanied them. These four came on to the Forest City and its university "far above Cayuga's waters." With the delight of a boy Carleton enjoyed the marvellously lovely scenery, the hills robed in colors as many as though they had borrowed Joseph's robe, and Cayuga, the queen of the waters in New York's beautiful lake region. Most of all he visited with delight that typical American university which, Christian in spirit, neither propagates nor attacks the creed of any sect.

With its stately edifices for culture, training, research, and religion, it had risen like a new city on the farm of Ezra Cornell. This far-seeing man, like Mr. Coffin, had, when so many others were blind, discerned in the new force, electricity, the vast future benefits to commerce, science, and civilization. Ezra Cornell had helped powerfully to develop its application by his thought, his money, and his personal influence. Ezra Cornell, in Irish phrase, "invented telegraph poles." Moses Farmer, the electrician, invented the lineman's spurred irons by which to climb them.

Besides attending the Church Council in the afternoon, Carleton made an address in the evening that was to one flattering and to many inspiring. Later on, the same night, he attended the reception given to the Faculty and new students at the house of President J. G. Schurman. He was delighted in seeing the young president, with whose power as a thinker and writer he had already acquainted himself.

Carleton's last and chief literary work, done in his old home on Dartmouth Street, was to link together in the form of story the Revolutionary lore which he had gathered up from talks with participators in "the time that tried men's souls." From boyhood's memories, from long and wide reading in original monographs, from topographical acquaintance, he planned to write a trio or quartet of stories of American history. He wished to present the scenes of the Revolution as in the bright colors of reality, in the dark shadows which should recall sacrifice, and with that graphic detail and power to turn the past into the present, of which he was a master.

As he had repeatedly written the story of the great Civil War from the point of view of a war correspondent actually on the ground, so would he tell the story of the Revolution as if he had been a living and breathing witness of what went on from day to day, enjoying and suffering those hopes and fears which delight and torment the soul when the veil of the future still hangs opaque before the mind.

His first instalment, "The Daughters of the Revolution," was published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., in a comely and well-illustrated volume. It deals with that opening history of the eight years' war with Great Britain which at the beginning had Boston for its centre and in which New England especially took part.

In his other books, "Building the Nation," "Boys of '76," and "Old Times in the Colonies," Carleton had not ignored the work and influence of the "home guard" composed of mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, and grandmothers; but in this story of the "Daughters" he gave special prominence to what our female ancestors did to make the country free, and to hand down in safeguarded forms that which had been outraged by King and Parliament.

How widely popular this volume may have been, the writer cannot say, but he knows that one little maiden whom he sees every day has re-read the work several times.

In a subsequent volume of the series, Carleton proposed to repicture the splendid achievements of the colonial army in northeastern New York. Here, from Lake Champlain to Sandy Hook, is a "great rift valley" which lies upon the earth's scarred and diversified surface like a mighty trough. It corresponds to that larger and grander rift valley from Lebanon to Zanzibar, through Galilee and the Jordan, the Red Sea, and the great Nyanzas, or Lakes of Africa. As in the oldest gash on the earth's face lies the scene of a long procession of events, so, of all places on the American continent, probably, no line of territory has witnessed such a succession of dramatic, brilliant, and decisive events, both in unrecorded time and in historic days, from Champlain and Henry Hudson to the era of Fulton, Morse, and Edison.

In the Revolution, the Green Mountain boys, and the New York and New England militia under Schuyler and Gates, had made this region the scene of one of the decisive campaigns of the world. Yet, in the background and at home, the heroines did their noble part in working for that consummation at Saratoga which won the recognition and material aid of France for the United States of America. Besides Lafayette, came also the lilies of France, alongside the stars and stripes. The white uniforms were set in battle array with the buff and blue against the red coats, and herein Carleton saw visions and dreamed dreams, which his pen, like the camera which chains the light, was to photograph in words. He had made his preliminary studies, readings, personal interviews, and reexamination of the region, and had written four or five chapters, when the call of the Captain to another detail of service came to him.

Life is worth living as long as one is interested in other lives than one's own. "Dando conservat" is the motto of a famous Dutch-American family. So Carleton, by giving, preserved. In the summer of 1895, after Japan had startled the world by her military prowess, Carleton went down to Nantucket Island, and there at a great celebration delivered a fine historical address, closing with these words:

"Thus it came to pass that he who guides the sparrow in its flight saw fit to use the sailors of Nantucket, by shipwreck and imprisonment, as his agents to bring about the resurrection of the millions of Japan from the grave of a dead past to a new and vigorous life. Thus it is that Nantucket occupies an exalted position in connection with the history of our country."

Of this he wrote me in one of his last letters, February 27, 1896:

"I have read 'Townsend Harris' with unspeakable delight. I love to think of the resurrection of Japan in connection with the Puritans of Massachusetts,—the original movement culminating in Perry's expedition having its origin in the shipwrecking of Nantucket sailors on the shores of that empire." Mr. Coffin brought out this idea in his earlier and later address which he gave at Nantucket.

Having lived over thirteen years, from 1877 to 1895, at No. 81 Dartmouth Street, and feeling now the need for a little more quiet from the rumble of the trolley-car, for more light and room, for house space, for the accommodation of friends who loved to make their home with a genial host and his loving companion, and to indulge in that hospitality which was a lifelong trait, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin began looking for a site whereon to build in Brookline. No yokefellows were ever more truly one in spirit than "Uncle Charles and Aunt Sally." Providence having denied them the children for whom they had yearned, both delighted in a constant stream of young people and friends. Blessed by divine liberality in the form of nephews and nieces, rich in the gifts of nature, culture, and grace, neither Carleton nor his wife was often left lonely.

The new house was built after his suggestions and under his own personal oversight, the outdoor tasks and journeys thus necessitated making a variety rather pleasant than otherwise. Here, in this new home, his golden wedding was to be celebrated, February 18, 1896. The house was in modern style, with all the comforts and conveniences which science and applied art could suggest. While comparatively modest and simple in general plan and equipment, it had open fireplaces, electric lights, a spacious porch, roomy hallways, and plenty of windows. It was No. 9 Shailer Street, and named Alwington, after the ancestral home in Devonshire, England.

Mr. Coffin's study room was upon the northeast, where, with plenty of light and the morning sun, he could sit at his desk looking out upon Harvard Street, and over towards Beacon Street; the opposite side of the street, fortunately, not being occupied by buildings to obscure his view. At first he was often allured from his work for many minutes, and even for a half hour at a time, by a majestic elm-tree so rich in foliage and comely in form that he looked upon it with ravished eyes. It was in this room that he wrote the chapters for his second book, which was to show especially the part which American women had played in the making of their country.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE HOME AT ALWINGTON.

It was a remarkable coincidence that Mr. Coffin was to exchange worlds and transfer his work in the very year in which the issues of the Civil War were to be eliminated from national politics, when not one of the several party platforms was to make any allusion to the struggle of 1861-65, or to any of its numerous legacies. In this year, 1896, also, for the first time since 1860, Southern men, the one a Confederate general, and the other a Populist editor, were to be nominated for possible chief magistracy. Mr. Coffin, with prescience, had already seen that the war issues, grand as they were, had melted away into even vaster national questions. He had turned his thoughts towards the solution of problems which concerned the nation as a whole and humanity as a race. His historical addresses and lectures went back to older subjects, while his thoughts soared forward to the newer conditions, theories, and problems which were looming in the slowly unveiling future. In literature he turned, and gladly, too, from the scenes of slavery and war between brothers. With his pen he sought to picture the ancient heroisms, in the story of which the people of the States of rice and cotton, as well as of granite, ice, and grain, were alike interested, as in a common heritage. In Alwington, surrounded by old and new friends, genial and cultured, he hoped, if it were God's will, to complete his work with a rotunda-like series of pen pictures of the Revolution.

This was not to be, though he was to die "in harness," like Nicanor of old, without lingering illness or broken powers. While he was to see not a few golden days of A. D. 1896, yet the proposed pictures were to be left upon the easel, scarcely more than begun. The pen and ink on his table were to remain, like brushes on the palette, with none to finish as the master-workman had planned.

Months before that date of February 18th, on which their golden wedding was to be celebrated, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin had secured my promise that I should be present. Coming on to Boston, I led the morning worship in the Eliot Church of Newton, which is named after the apostle of the Indians, the quarter-millennial anniversary of the beginning of whose work at Nonantum has just been celebrated. In the afternoon, I had the pleasure of looking into the faces of three score or more of my former Shawmut parishioners in the Casino hall in Beaconsfield Terrace.

Mr. Coffin had, from the first, fully agreed with the writer in believing that a Congregational church should be formed in the Reservoir district, which had, he predicted, a brilliant and substantial future. He was among the very first to move for the sale of the old property on Tremont Street, and he personally prepared the petition to the Legislature of Massachusetts for permission to sell and move. Afterwards, when the new enterprise seemed to have been abandoned, he listened to the call of duty and remained in Shawmut Church. When he became a resident in Brookline, feeling it still his duty to work and toil, to break new paths, to make the road straight for his Master, rather than to sit down at ease in Zion, he cast his lot in with a little company of those who, though few and without wealth, bravely and hopefully resolved to form a church where it was needed. On November 3d, they first gathered for worship, and one year later, November 4, 1896, the church was formed, with Rev. Harris G. Hale as pastor, and taking the historic, appropriate, but uncommon name, Leyden. Their first collection of money, as a thank-offering to God, was for Foreign Missions.

On that afternoon of February 16th, Carleton was present, joining heartily in the worship. As usual, he listened with that wonderfully luminous face of his and that close attention to the discourse, which, like the cable-ships, ran out unseen telegraphy of sympathy. The service, and the usual warm grasping of hands and those pleasant social exchanges for which the Shawmut people were so noted, being over, some fifteen or twenty gathered in the hospitable library of M. F. Dickinson, Jr., whose home was but a few rods off, on the other side of Beacon Street. After a half hour of sparkling reminiscences of the dear old days in Shawmut, all had gone except the host, Mr. Coffin, and the biographer, who then had not even a passing thought of the work he was soon to do. As Carleton sat there in an easy chair before the wood-fire on the open hearth, his feet stretched out comfortably upon the tiles, and his two hands, with their finger and thumb tips together, as was his usual custom when good thinking and pleasant conversation went on together, he talked about the future of Boston and of Congregational Christianity.

Interested as I was, a sudden feeling of pain seized me as I noticed how sunken were his eyes. I am not a physician, but I have seen many people die. I have looked upon many more as they approached their mortal end, marked with signs which they saw not, nor often even their friends observed, but which were as plain and readable as the stencilled directions upon freight to be sent and delivered elsewhere. After a handshake and an invitation from him to dine the next night at his house, and to be at the golden wedding on Tuesday, we bade him good afternoon. On returning with my host in front of the fire, I said, "I feel sad, for our friend Mr. Coffin is marked for early death; he will certainly not outlive this year."

Nevertheless, I could not but count Charles Carleton Coffin among the number of those whom God made rich in the threefold life of body, soul, and spirit.

The old Greeks, whose wonderfully rich experience of life, penetrating insight, powers of analysis, and gift of literary expression enabled them to coin the words to fitly represent their thoughts, knew how to describe both love and life better than we, having a mintage of thought for each in its threefold form. As they discriminated eros, phile, and agape in love, so also they put difference between psyche, bios, and zoe in life.

What other ranges of existence and developments of being there may be for God's chosen ones in worlds to come, we dare not conjecture, but this we know. Carleton had even then, as I saw him marked for an early change of worlds, entered into threefold life.

1. The lusty boy and youth, the mature man with not a perfect, yet a sound, physical organization, showed a good specimen of the human animal, rich in the breath of life,—psyche.

2. The long and varied career of farmer, surveyor, citizen, Christian interested in his fellows and their welfare, with varied work, travel, and adventure, manifested the noble bios,—the career or course of strenuous endeavor.

3. The spiritual attainments in character, the ever outflowing benevolence, the kindly thought, the healing sunshine of his presence, the calm faith, the firm trust in God, gave assurance of the zoe.

These three stages of existence revealed Carleton as one affluent with what men call life, and of which the young ever crave more, and also in that "life which is life indeed," which survives death, which is the extinction of the psyche or animal breath,—the soul remaining as the abode of the spirit. In body, soul, and spirit, Charles Carleton Coffin was a true man, who, even in the evening of life, was rich in those three forms of life which God has revealed and discriminated through the illuminating Greek language of the New Testament.

True indeed it was that, while with multiplying years the animal life lessened in quantity and intensity, the spiritual life was enriched and deepened; or, to put it in Paul's language and in the historical present so favored by Carleton, "While the outward man perisheth, the inward man is renewed day by day."



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE GOLDEN WEDDING.

Thus, amid happy surroundings, in the new home, in the last leap-year of this wonderful century, came the time of the golden wedding. God had walked with these, his children, fifty years, while they had walked with one another. Providence seemed to whisper, "Come, for all things are now ready." The new home was finished and furnished, all bright and cheerful, and suffused with the atmosphere of genial companionship. The bride of a half century before, now with the roses of health blooming under the trellis of her silvery hair, with sparkling eyes beaming fun and sympathy, welcome and gladness, by turns, was at this season in happy health. This was largely owing, as she gladly acknowledged, to regular calisthenics, plenty of fresh air, and complete occupation of mind and body. The thousand invitations in gilt and white had, as with "the wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold," flown over the city, commonwealth, and nation. On February 18th, the house having been transformed by young friends into a maze of greenery and flowers, husband and wife stood together to receive congratulations. In the hall were ropes of sturdy pine boughs and glistening laurel, with a huge wreath of evergreen suspended from the ceiling, and bearing the anniversary date, 1846 and 1896. In the reception-room one friend had hung the emblem of two hearts joined by a band of gold above the cornice. Dining-room and library were festooned with smilax. In the archways and windows were hanging baskets of jonquils and ferns. "An help meet for him," the bride of fifty years was arrayed in heliotrope satin with trimmings of point lace, making, as we thought, with her delicate complexion and soft white hair, a sight as lovely as when, amid the snow-storms of New Hampshire, a half century before, Charles Carleton Coffin first called Sallie Farmer his wife.

Of Washington it has been said, "God made him childless that a nation might call him father." In the home on that day were scores of nieces and nephews, and children of several generations, from the babe in arms, and the child with pinafore, to the stately dames and long-bearded men, who, one and all, called the bride and groom "uncle and aunt." From a ladies' orchestra, on the top floor, music filled the house, the melody falling like a lark's song in upper air. In the dining-room, turned for the nonce into a booth of evergreens, where everything was sparkle and joy, new and old friends met to discuss, over dainty cups and plates, both the happy moment and the delights of long ago.

It was not only a very bright, but a noteworthy company that gathered on that February afternoon and evening. Massachusetts was about to lose by death her Governor, F. T. Greenhalge, as she had lost three ex-Governors, all friends of Carleton, within the previous twelvemonth, but there was present the handsome acting-Governor of the Commonwealth, Roger Wolcott. Men eminent in political life, authors, editors, preachers, business men, troops of lifelong friends, men and women of eminence, honor, and usefulness, fellow Christians and workers in wonderfully varied lines of activity, were present to share in and add to the joy. Among the gifts, which seemed to come like Jupiter's shower of gold upon Danae, were two that touched Carleton very deeply. The Massachusetts Club, which has numbered in its body many Senators, Governors, generals, diplomatists, lawyers, authors, and merchants, whose names shine very high on the roll of national fame, sent their fellow member an appropriate present. Instead of the regular cup, vase, or urn, or anything that might suggest stress, strain, or even victory, or even minister to personal vanity, the Club, through its secretary, Mr. S. S. Blanchard, presented the master of Alwington with a superb steel engraving, richly framed. It represented the Master, sitting under the vine-roof trellis at the home of Lazarus, in Bethlehem. "You knew just what I wanted," whispered the happy receiver.