spiritual beauty. We assume that, under altered physical conditions, he would have retained his ideal characteristics. Perhaps he would; but let us be grateful for what we have, - a noble memory.

But forgive me for writing so much about our dead friend. I could not help it.

Yours sincerely,

O. B. FROTHINGHAM.

BOSTON, Jan. 31, 1887.

BON VOYAGE.

There's not an hour but from some sparkling beach
Go joyful men in fragile ships to sail,

By unknown seas to unknown lands. They hail
The freshening winds with eager hope, and speech
Of wondrous countries which they soon will reach.

Left on the shore, we wave our hands, with pale
Wet cheeks, but hearts that are ashamed to quail,
Or own the grief which selfishness would teach.
O Death, the fairest lands beyond thy sea

Lie waiting, and thy barks are swift and stanch
And ready. Why do we reluctant launch?
And when our friends their heritage have claimed
Of thee, and entered on it, rich and free,

Oh, why are we of sorrow not ashamed?

From "Sonnets and Lyrics," by H. H.

EDITOR'S NOTE-BOOK.

IN MEMORIAM.

We give a large part of our space this month to the honored and beloved memory of two men just gone from among us, in one of whom - by nature apparently the stronger the record of a painful and incompleted life-work commands almost equal admiration, from those who knew him best, with the calm, firm, patient, and broadly victorious achievement of the other. We have a few words to add in personal reminiscence of them both; for we hold that our pages cannot possibly be put to so good a use as when they are crowded with the life that belongs to nobly-tempered souls, and show the light of it in every variety of phase. And here we shall avail ourselves, as we have done before, of the more free and familiar form of correspondence:

It is now a great while ago - in fact, some years more than fiftythat I remember hearing read, in my father's vestry, a little tract which may be called the first sounding of the key-note of Unitarian missions in the West. It was in the form of a letter written from Ephraim Peabody to George Putnam. I believe it was the same tract which keenly interested Mr. Eliot, then completing his course in the Cambridge Divinity School. As I heard the account from his mother (long after, in my congregation at Washington), he resolved at once, with the tenacity of purpose characteristic of him, that the West should be his field; and it was not a call from without, or an invitation in any sense, but a study of the map of the United States, that first made him, in that early day of tedious and difficult travel, fix on a place so remote and unpromising as St. Louis. His friends were grieved and disappointed at this resolve, for he was very dear to them; and they had fond hopes of a Boston settlement, which would have kept him nearer, and given what seemed a more brilliant opportunity. Finding him inflexible, his father at length said to him: "Go where you think it is right. I will find you in clothes, and where you go, no doubt, you will have food and lodging; and God be with you, my son." At the beginning, he found an audience of thirty, at best, perhaps twice as many. At the end of six months, he had a congregation of nine, but, of these, seven were resolved to stand by him; and, by the end of the year, they were increased to two hundred. The result makes perhaps the most splendid chapter in our

This was, apparently, some time before the more business-like arrangement mentioned above by Mr. Heywood.

denominational history. When once, during the war, a brother of mine, visiting St. Louis on business of the Sanitary Commission, said to a friend, "I suppose that Dr. Eliot has done as much as any man to save Missouri to the Union and make it a free State," the reply was instant and prompt: “Dr. Eliot has done ten times more for that than any other ten men put together!"

There was a time-in 1847, I think—when it was proposed and voted to invite Dr. Eliot to serve as Secretary of the American Unitarian Association. Anti-slavery feeling at this time ran high, the action of religious bodies was jealously watched, and the Association was at once sharply attacked for putting its confidence in a man supposed to have some complicity with slavery,- nay, charged with being himself a slaveholder. The true story shows how cruel and unjust such charges sometimes were. For it appears, from the account his mother gave to me, that a certain gentleman, to whom he was under obligation for much kindness, had lived for a time in his family, bringing a servant-woman,— a slave,- to whom the family became much attached. Afterwards it happened that the gentleman failed in business; and, under the cruel law of slavery, the woman was liable to be seized for his debt, and sold to the Southern market. Full of distress, she appealed to Mr. Eliot, who paid out of his own means the price of her ransom, never took a title-deed or was her legal owner,- unless it might be technically, till her free papers could be made out,- and simply accepted her verbal assurance that her wages would go towards the payment of the sum advanced. Only a small part of this was ever repaid; for when, some time after, Mr. Eliot took a journey to Europe, he cancelled the debt, giving her a small house and a cow, and she lived thenceforth in comfort and independence. Such is the true story of his " slaveholding."

We are fortunate in being able to give, from a near and dear friend of Dr. Eliot, who was himself for near forty years a fellowlaborer in an adjacent field (Kentucky), what is a sympathetic study as well as a record of his extraordinary life-work. The career and character of Mr. Wasson have also been fitly drawn by one as well qualified as any man, through intellectual sympathy and long companionship, to speak his eulogy. We have in hand and may present as soon as our space will allow, some pages of the later work of Mr. Wasson's life, which have been kindly placed in our hands by his literary executor. Too much cannot be said or known of the true life of such a man while his memory is yet fresh. It is understood that for many years Mr. Wasson had labored upon a treatise, or essay, of political ethics, of which single chapters have been given to the public under various forms. An increasing severity of judgment, and perhaps the

lack of buoyancy of spirits,- an effect of his invalidism,- have checked the completion of this work, to the great disappointment of his friends. The languor, and the disposition to look for a more favorable season, characterizing the weary but delusive disease of which he died, also prevented — what they urged upon him more than once the gathering of his rare but choice productions in verse into a single volume. The last work of his pen, executed with great difficulty and delay by reason of sickness, was his review, in the February Atlantic, of Mr. Adams's Emancipation of Massachusetts; and, as to this, we happen to know that he felt more than once unequal to the effort, and even begged a friend to take the sheets of the book and complete the task for him. His writings have appeared in the Atlantic, the North American Review, the Radical, the International, and elsewhere; but the finest of his essays we can recall, in thought and style, are a series in the Christian Examiner, published during or near the time of the War. His title, "The Sword in Ethics," and a review of the career of Wendell Phillips, may perhaps recall to some persons these brilliant and strong essays. It was in connection with the composition of one of these that he said, in a letter to the present editor, that for every hour he gave to intellectual effort he had to pay by an hour of suffering. But that effort was the one great privilege, for which no cost was too dear. The physical affliction from which he suffered through most of his life has been rightly stated to be due to an injury to the spine in his early youth. But, as false tales have been circulated as to what occasioned it,― one of them, told in print, that it was the cruelty of a shipmaster under whom he served,— it seems fit that the correct account should be given :

I called upon Mr. Wasson, says our correspondent, some time last October, and found that he had had in September an attack which severely affected his lungs,- as was, indeed, very evident,- so that his family were apprehending then the rapid decline that followed. When I asked him of his condition, he said he thought it was "the old trouble," not knowing the judgment of the physician. I then said I had heard a certain "myth" as to the cause of that trouble, and asked him how much of it was true. He answered, None at all. The real cause was this: He was, at the age of seventeen, though not large in person, very vigorous and athletic, and, in particular, an alert and powerful wrestler. It chanced that, at some local gathering in the political campaign of 1840, he was challenged to "try a fall" by a powerful

young fellow, over six feet tall, of a quarrelsome clan, and, knowing the folly of it, at first refused. Under great pressure, he at length consented, on condition of having the usual advantage yielded to the smaller man,― putting both arms below those of his antagonist,— which was, however, denied. Then, for more than an hour, he submitted manfully to the taunts of the crowd, till it was offered that the two should stand as champions of their respective parties, when, in an evil moment, his better resolution gave way. Two falls out of three would give the victory. His opponent at first, as he expected, tried by leaping on him to crush him by sheer weight; but he "knew a trick worth two of that," and brought him in an instant to the ground. Then they grappled; and, clasping his hands behind Wasson's back, the other tried to bend him double. It was a desperate struggle. But, by a violent effort, our young David foiled his big antagonist, and threw him a second time to the ground, as he believed at the time, at the cost of his own life; and, indeed, for a fortnight after he could not so much as turn himself in bed.

The life-long consequences of this terrible wrench, and its effect, in particular, in crippling that brilliant and vigorous career, seem to justify the telling of this story in detail. The suffering and illness, however, did not prevent many a sturdy display of force in the exacting labors of public oratory, any more than the patient and resolute tasks he set himself as writer and thinker. Indeed, no very serious alteration in health was manifest till within some six years or thereabout, when his increasing blindness brought its special symptoms of infirmity. An operation for cataract, in the spring of 1881, was very successful in restoring the vision of one eye, which was, however, imperfect, having been hurt by the stroke of a cow's horn in boyhood, so that it seemed expedient to repeat the operation on the other eye. This, most unfortunately, resulted in the destruction of the organ and a summer's sickness with much suffering, and a permanent lowering of his general health. It was under these infirmities with the alleviation of friends, books, and the skilful culture of his little vineyard-that the last victories of his life

were won.

THE DIVINITY SCHOOL.

We are fortunate in being able to give our readers this month Prof. Everett's full, clear, and greatly needed account of the Harvard Divinity School, especially in its twofold relation to the denomination which founded and sustains it, and to the University of which it forms a part.