had been for many years
in the Treasury. Having constructed the telegraph fire-alarm, and done
something in engineering, I thought I was competent to become an
examiner in the patent office. I made out an application, which was
signed by the entire Massachusetts delegation, recommending me. I
dropped it into the post-office, and that was the last I saw or even
thought of it, for the great crisis in the history of the country was
so rapidly approaching, and so evident, that,--newspaper man as I
was,--accustomed to forecast coming events, I could see what many
others could not see.

"I was walking with Senator Wilson up E Street, on a bright moonlight
night. The moon's rays, falling upon the unfinished dome of the
Capitol, brought the building out in bold relief."

"'Will it ever be finished?' I asked. The senator stopped, and gazed
upon it a moment in silence.

"'We are going to have a war, but the people of this country will not
give up the Union, I think. Yet, to-day, that building, prospectively,
is a pile of worthless marble.'"

[Illustration: Yours truly Charles Carleton Coffin]

CHAPTER VII.

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.

When the long gathering clouds broke in the storm at Sumter, and war
was precipitated in a rain of blood, Charles Carleton Coffin's first
question was as to his duty. He was thirty-seven years old, healthy
and hearty, though not what men would usually call robust. To him who
had long learned to look into the causes of things, who knew well his
country's history, and who had been educated to thinking and feeling
by the long debate on slavery, the Secession movement was nothing more
or less than a slaveholders' conspiracy. His conviction in 1861 was
the same as that held by him, when more than thirty years of
reflection had passed by, that the inaugurators of the Civil War of
1861-65 were guilty of a gigantic crime.

In 1861, with his manhood and his talent, the question was not on
which side duty lay, or whether his relation to the question should
be active or passive, but just how he could most and best give himself
to the service of his country. Whether with rifle or pen, he would do
nothing less than his best. He inquired first at the recruiting office
of the army. He was promptly informed that on no account could he be
accepted as an active soldier, whether private or officer, on account
of his lame heel. Rejected here, he thought that some other department
of public service might