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CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN

INTRODUCTION.

Charles Carleton Coffin had a face that helped one to believe in God.
His whole life was an evidence of Christianity. His was a genial,
sunny soul that cheered you. He was an originator and an organizer of
happiness. He had no ambition to be rich. His investments were in
giving others a start and helping them to win success and joy. He was
a soldier of the pen and a knight of truth. He began the good warfare
in boyhood. He laid down armor and weapons only on the day that he
changed his world. His was a long and beautiful life, worth both the
living and the telling. He loved both fact and truth so well that one
need write only realities about him. He cared little for flattery, so
we shall not flatter him. His own works praise him in the gates.

He had blue eyes that often twinkled with fun, for Mr. Coffin loved a
joke. He was fond to his last day of wit, and could make quick
repartee. None enjoyed American humor more than he. He pitied the
person who could not see a joke until it was made into a diagram, with
annotations. In spirit, he was a boy even after three score and ten.
The young folks "lived in that mild and magnificent eye." Out of it
came sympathy, kindness, helpfulness. We have seen those eyes flash
with indignation. Scorn of wrong snapped in them. Before hypocrisy or
oppression his glances were as mimic lightning.

We loved to hear that voice. If one that is low is "an excellent thing
in woman," one that is rich and deep is becoming to a man. Mr.
Coffin's tones were sweet to the ear, persuasive, inspiring. His voice
moved men, his acts more.

His was a manly form. Broad-footed and full-boned, he stood nearly six
feet high. He was alert, dignified, easily accessible, and responsive
even to children. With him, acquaintanceship was quickly made, and
friendship long preserved. Those who knew Charles Carleton Coffin
respected, honored, loved him. His memory, in the perspective of time,
is as our remembrance of his native New Hampshire hills, rugged,
sublime, tonic in atmosphere, seat of perpetual beauty. So was he, a
moral invigorant, the stimulator to noble action, the centre of
spiritual charm.

Who was he, and what did he do that he should have his life-story
told?

First of all, he was the noblest work of God, an honest man. Nothing
higher than this. The New Hampshire country boy rose to one of the
high places in the four