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, h