ch has since borne fruit in the creation of
the largest and most influential body of Christian churches, and the
great Doshisha University, in Kioto. These churches are called
Kumi-ai, or associated independent churches, and out of them have
come, in remarkable numbers, preachers, pastors, editors, authors,
political leaders, and influential men in every department of the new
modern life in Japan. It was at the meeting of the American Board,
held in Pittsburg, in the Third Presbyterian Church edifice, October
7-8, 1869, that the mission to Japan was proposed. A paper by
Secretary Treat was read, and reported on favorably, and Rev. David
Greene, who had volunteered to be the apostle to the Sunrise Empire,
made an address. The speech of Carleton, who had just returned from
Dai Nippon, capped the climax of enthusiasm, and the meeting closed by
singing the hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."

At one of the later meetings of the Board, at Rutland, Vermont, the
Japanese student Neesima pleaded effectually that a university be
founded, the history of which, under the name of the One Endeavor, or
Doshisha, is well known. In the same year that Neesima was graduated
from Amherst College, Carleton received from this institution the
honorary degree of Master of Arts.

Carleton could turn his nimble pen to rhyme, when his friends required
verses, and best when his own emotions struggled for utterance in
poetry. Several very creditable hymns were composed for anniversary
occasions and for the Easter Festivals of Shawmut Church.

Indeed, the first money ever paid him by a publisher was for a
poem,--"The Old Man's Meditations," which was copied into "Littell's
Living Age." The pre-natal life, birth, and growth of this first-born
child of Carleton's brain and heart, which inherited a "double
portion," in both fame and pelf, is worth noting. In 1852, an aged
uncle of Mrs. Coffin, who dwelt in thoughts that had not yet become
the commonplace property of our day, being at home in the immensities
of geology and the infinities of astronomy, made a visit to the home
in Boscawen, spending some days. Carleton was richly fed in spirit,
and, conceiving the idea of the poem, on going out to plough, put
paper and pencil in his pocket. As he thought out line upon line, or
stanza by stanza, he penned each in open air. At the end of the
furrow, or even in the middle of it, he would stop his team, lay the
paper on the back of the oxen, and write down t