ith a wholesome moral and spiritual
environment of supreme advantage. To a weak nature it would
very likely mean only failure, but to a man of the heroic
mould of Mr. Coffin it meant opportunity, and it only nerved
him to more strenuous effort; and it was everything to him
that the atmosphere in the home, the community, and the
church was what it was,--so warm, so Christian, so
spiritual, so sympathetic, and so suited to furnish just the
right conditions for the moulding of his very responsive and
susceptible nature.

"And then he possessed what I think might very well be
called the spirit of aggressiveness, or, possibly better,
the spirit of sanctified self-assertion. He never thought of
self-assertion for his own sake, or for the sake of honor or
promotion, but he had in him a kind of push and an
earnestness of purpose--you might almost say audacity--that
somehow stirred him and prompted him always to be in the
place of greatest advantage at a given time for the service
of others. He seemed always to be just at the point of
supreme advantage in a crisis, just where he could give the
world, at the right time, and in the best way, the fullest
report of a battle, or a conference, or any other matters of
supreme moment. This was characteristic of him. It appeared
all through his New Hampshire life, and was indeed in part a
native endowment."

After an address by the author of this volume on "Charles
Carleton Coffin as a Historian," Dr. W. E. Barton, in
felicitous diction, reviewed the earthly life of him with
whose career many memories were then busy.

"Grief is no unusual thing. There is no heart here that has
not known it. There is scarce a home where death has not
entered. We weep the more sincerely with those that weep,
because the intervals are not long between our own sorrows.
The whole Commonwealth mourns to-day our chief magistrate.
God comfort his family! God save the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts! God bless him in whose elevation to the
Governor's chair Providence has anticipated the will of the
people.

"A very tender sorrow brings us here to-day, and we turn for
comfort to the Word of God.

"Text: With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my
salvation.--Ps. 91: 16.

"It is not because of