ffect on the moral
and mental fibre that seven years in a tanner's vat used to
have upon sole leather. How often I have known Adin, on some
great political occasion or crisis, to crush some sophistry
or compromise, or attempt to get things on a lower plane,
by indignantly flashing out with some old text, such as, "Righteousness
exalteth a nation," or "Sin is a reproach to any people,"
or answer, as he did once, to a gentleman who wanted him to
sacrifice some moral principle for the sake of harmony in
the Republican Party, "My friend, we will be first pure, and
then peaceable."

Adin Thayer was a member of the School Committee of Worcester
for some years. He was Senator from Worcester, I think, for
two years, in 1871 and 1872. He was appointed Collector of
Internal Revenue for the eighth district by President Lincoln
on August 26, 1862, and gave way to a successor appointed
by President Johnson, September 14, 1866. He was reappointed
by President Grant, June 22, 1872, and held the office until
January, 1877, when the eighth and tenth districts were consolidated.
He was appointed Judge of Probate by Governor Rice in the
fall of 1877, and held that office until his death. He was
Chairman of the State Committee in 1878. He gave to the public
three or four essays or speeches printed in newspapers, and
some of them in pamphlet form. They were, under one title
or another, treatises on the moral duties of citizenship
and appeals to the youth of the State to take their full and
patriotic share in its administration.

But his function in life was that of an organizer. He was
an ambitious man. But he never suffered his ambitions to
stand in the way of what he thought was the good of the Commonwealth
or of the party. Many and many a time, as there are plenty
of persons who can testify, it had been the expectation that
he would be the choice of his party for Senator or for Representative
of the district in Congress, or some important municipal office,
but when the time came, Mr. Thayer was the first to suggest
that victory and harmony or the public advantage would be
best attained by some other candidate, to whose service he
gave a zeal and efficiency which he never would have given
in his own behalf. He believed in party in politics, in organization,
in work in the ward and in the school district. But he believed
in those things because they were, in his judgment, essential
to the accomplishment of the highest res