Yale University Library

39002083051665

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

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A MEMORIAL

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT, D.D.

BY ,
Rev. HORATIO O. LADD.

" Honest love, honest sorroiv^
Honest -work for tke day^ honest hope for tke morrow.''

BOSTON :
A. WILLIAMS & CO.,
283 Washington Street.
1878.

Cb&%.1

TO THE
PARISHIONERS, PUPILS, AND FRIENDS
OF
Rey. John S, C, Abbott

f nef Ptmorial
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
BV ONR WHO HAS GRATEFULLY SHARED WITH THEM THE
GUIDANCE OF HIS COUNSELS, THE INSTRUCTION AND CHARM OF HIS WRITING.^
AND THE INSPIRING EXAMPLE OF HIS DILIGE.NT LIFE
AND CHRISTIAN FAITH.

Hopkinton, Mas.-;,,
Dec. 20, 1877.

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

John Stevens Cabot Abbott was born in Brunswick, Maine,
Sept. 1 8, 1805. He died at Fair Haven, Connecticut, June 17,
1877, in his seventy-second year.
Some time in the seventeenth century, the ancestor of the
Abbot family, who was a descendant of Maurice Abbot, young
est brother of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury from
1610 to 1633, emigrated to New England. With the proclivi
ties of eminent English families in that age, his children became
possessors of many thousand acres of land in the district of
Maine, and were honored among the families of the colonial
period. One of these children resided at the time of his death
in Brunswick, Maine. Hfs landed estates were inherited by
Jacob Abbot, his son, who 'was already married to Betsey Ab
bot, a cousin in another branch of the family, living in Con
cord, New Hampshire.
The family of Jacob and Betsey Abbot comprised five sons —
Jacob, John S. C, Gorham D., Samuel P., Charles E. — and two
daughters. Of the sons, Jacob and John became specially dis
tinguished as authors, Gorham, Samuel, and Charles, as educa
tors ; while the daughters, Sallucia, and Clara, the widow of
Rev. Elbridge Cutler, have shared not only the literary and edu
cational labors of their brothers, but the reverent love and
esteem, for many years, ofa large circle of neighbors and friends
in Maine.
It was one of the noted families of that young but enterpris
ing State at the beginning of the present century. Separated
but a few years before from Massachusetts, Maine, with its
dense forests, enchanting valleys, bold mountains, and island-
studded bays, with their twenty-five hundred miles of glistening

beaches, rugged shores, and deep and well-guarded harbors, was
a more attractive home for the venturesome sons of the colo
nies, or of Old England, than are now, to dwellers on Atlantic
shores, the broad, rich plains of Kansas, or the prairies and
slopes of the incipient States under the shadow of the Rocky
Mountains. John was the third child in this family. He owed his name to
personal associations, with which, however, he and his brothers
subsequently trifled somewhat, by increasing the letters in the
family name. Three or four years after his birth his father
removed to Hallowell, Maine. Here his boyhood was passed
in the clear frosty climate and amid the picturesque scenery
of the Kennebec valley. The grandeur of the mountains of
Maine, the wild scenes of its unbroken forests and lonely riv
ers, the Indian tribes roving in small bands among the settle
ments, the invigorating winters and Siberian snows, joined with
the hardy virtues and intelligence of Puritan life in and around
his home, left indelible impressions on his very sensitive nature.
He entered, with the zest of an ardent temperament, into the
scenes that rose around him like the enchantments of a story
teller. His nature, imbued as it was with the warm tints of an
Oriental clime, had also the hardihood to be stimulated rather
than stunted by the rigors of the Maine climate, so that he
drank in the pure delights of that new country, and with
quickened fancy participated in the sports that could wrest
enjoyment from harsh winds and drifting snows. There he
first caught the inspiration of glowing descriptions in histories
of American pioneer life, and prepared the way in his soul for
the intense picturing, in later years, of the battles of Napoleon
with the frosts and avalanches of the Alps or on the snow-
covered plains of Russia.
In Reminisce-nces of -my Childhood, written by Dr. Abbott
the last year of his life, the spirit of the boy is still manifest in
his weakened body, as he revives those early days.
" I often recall with great exhilaration those crisp and frosty
mornings of winter, which invested my childhood's home with
indescribable charms. I was never cold ; the warm mittens
which my mother knit me were amply sufficient, with ordinary
clothing, to protect the frame through whose veins youthful

blood was leaping. My loving dog would accompany me, bound
ing over the smooth expanse, where the snow was five feet
deep, concealing fences and stumps, and all minor roughnesses
of the ground. The crust was often so hard that a horse could
almost gallop over it without breaking through. Towzer seemed
to have found his heaven of delight. When upon my steel-shod
sled I would glide with railroad speed down some declivity, per
haps a quarter of a mile in length, Towzer would bound after
me, happy as his master, with his joyous barkings waking the
echoes of field and forest.
" After a heavy fall of feathery snow, creating drifts of from
ten to twenty feet in depth, who can imagine the delight we
boys felt in jumping from the roof of house or shed, and sinking
almost out of sight in the soft, white, yielding cloud which had
descended from the skies-, and which had spread itself out
beneath our feet, apparently for our special fun .'' Burrowing
in those grand drifts on the sides of the numerous gullies and
ravines in Hallowell, we were in the habit of carving out, like
the inhabitants of Petra from the solid rock, halls and corridors,
which enchanted us like the creations of the Arabian story
tellers. In these rooms we would have carpets of straw, and
even built fires, with snow chimneys to conduct the smoke
away, thus imitating the ice-cabins of the Esquimaux. We
built snow forts and laid in supplies of snow-ball ammunition ;
some of these balls, as large as one's head, we regarded as
bomb-shells, to be hurled down upon the heads of the assail
ants. The antagonistic parties generally consisted of imagi
nary British and American troops. The fortress would be
stormed and defended with wonderful valor."
Mr. Abbott has described frontier and Indian Hfe on many
hundred pages of his histories. With more sympathy and admi
ration than is usual, he pictures the American Indian waging
unequal warfare with the white man, who was ever encroaching
upon his domains and exciting his fury. Probably the peaceful
Penobscot tribes that in summer used to hover about the villages
of Maine impressed him more favorably as to the untutored sav-
asre than would now a band of Sioux on the Western frontier,
after half a century's demoralizing contact with the American
citizen. He often in his boyhood visited the Indian wigwams

8
on Winthrop Hill, in Hallowell, then covered with a dense for
est. These wigwams, constructed of tall saplings, sheathed
with birch bark, carpeted with soft hemlock twigs and the skins
of bears and otters, and lighted by a cheerful fire in the centre,
attracted his childish fancy. There he spent many silent,
dreamy hours, " listening to the musical and monotonous clat
ter of the Indian women, as, with nimble fingers, they wove
their brilliantly colored baskets from thin strips of the ash-tree,
or watching their babes, silent as mummies in their framework
caskets, gazing with black, brilliant, staring eyes, without a
motion or sound, upon the scene around them."
The author of The Mother at Home, and the eloquent delin
eator of womanly virtues in Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen
of Scots, Josephine, and the royal circles of every European
nation of old Rome and Greece, as well as eminent Christian
households of every age whether of noble name or untitled
worth in his own land, early had implanted in his mind a high
ideal of maternal character and domestic peace. He was in a
Puritan home of seventy or eighty years ago, but no stern or
unfeeling parents there inspired children with terror or cast
gloom upon their young hearts. His father, whom many still
living can remember as one of the most cheerful, genial, and
loving of men, could always omit the harsh word to wife and
children, but never remitted the morning and evening worship
or forgot the blessing and return of thanks at each meal. That
revered mother had a season each day when she prayed for
each child by name, and by her gentle words and loving com
panionship awakened in her children a fervor of devotion
which has illumined their long and useful lives. Sunday
schools were scarcely thought of then, but both those parents
were sweet singers, and the Sabbath was sacredly observed by
attendance at church, the singing and repeating of choice hymns
and the catechism, as the seven children gathered to receive
lessons not only for a mother's hearing, but to gild dark hours
in their future, when oppressed by the languor and solitudes of
enfeebled age. Thus early taught the value of integrity and
piety, those children knew that for them to be Christians, and
struggle all their days with adversity, was in their parents'
choice and prayer for them, " better than to have all the honors

of genius and all the wealth of millionnaires lavished upon thera
without piety."
Yet there was social light and cheer about that Puritan home
which could hardly be credited were we to trust the represen
tations of so many other New England households in history
or fiction. Kindred memories stir in many of our hearts, and
we look with all the more pleasure on these autumnal touches
of the bright picture of his early days : —
" Hallowell was a social place. There were many parties.
The simple entertainment of tea, coffee, and cake was prepared
by the lady of the house, aided by her hired help. There was
neither dancing nor card-playing. There was sufficient cul
ture, with both gentlemen and ladies, for them to enjoy a couple
of hours of conversation. Our parlor, with its floor painted
yellow, with its bookcase, tall mahogany clock, shining brass
andirons, and truly splendid fire of rock maple blazing on the
hearth, and lighted with mould candles, presented to my mind a
picture of elegance which was not surpassed in subsequent
years by the splendors of the saloons of the Tuileries, blazing
with their myriads of wax-lights. These parties almost invari
ably broke up at about nine o'clock, and at ten all the candles
were blown out.
" Our mothers often got up parties for us little children, between
the ages of five and twelve. We went at six and left at nine.
My father would not only join with us in playing hunt the
slipper and blind man's buff, but with his bass-viol would play
for us skipping over the floor in what we called a dance.
Sometimes one of the older boys would favor us with the music
of the flute. The world has made great advances since then,
but I do not think it has made progress in social enjoyment.
Never did children have richer pleasures than we enjoyed in
our Puritan home. Undoubtedly there were wretched homes
then as now. Undoubtedly there were then, as now, professing
Christians who exemplified in their conduct everything that
was hateful and of bad report. But there were many other
families whose loving hearts gilded the hours of this earthly
life. I could mention many names. These mothers, who joined
in the sports around the glowing rock-maple fire, were loved by
us children with an affection that can never die. And these

IO
mothers, without an exception which I can recall to mind, were
what are called Evangelical Christians. They met^ every
Thursday afternoon to pray that God would convert their sons
and daughters."
No father ever more imbued his sons with the practical value
of cheerfulness than did Jacob Abbot, the venerated father of
this family. " Squire Abbot," said his pastor, " had a remark
able talent for being happy." He sometimes took his sons into
the romantic wilds of the upper country of Maine, where, in
the townships of Weld, Temple, Madrid, and the region of Old
Blue Mountain, he owned large tracts of land. Overtaken with
cold, wet storms ere the journey was ended, or sheltered in the
settlers' cabins that had always a welcome for him, while the
tempests raged terrifically around them, he cheerily taught
them that it was not the comforts of the fireside but the early
endurance of hardships that could make out of his boys efficient
men. It was by such insights into the log-cabins of the hardy
Maine settlers, and drenching rides over rough and gloomy
roads, through the dense forests and over the ridges of that
rocky State, that the boy early caught the gleams which lured
his pen to describe so often the trials of the Pilgrims in his
Miles Standish, and the hardships and journeys of Western
adventurers and frontiersmen in La Salle, De Soto, Daniel
Boone, and a dozen other equally vivid accounts of early Amer
ican history. In the associations of his childhood was also
another element that fostered both Mr. Abbott's literary taste
and his marked admiration for the culture and social life in the
ranks of nobility which he afterwards delighted to describe in
the courts and castles of the kingdoms of the Old World. The
Abbots were on intimate terms with two families who had
brought with them to the banks of the Kennebec the refine
ment and tastes, with some of the exclusive tendencies, of the
best society of England. One of these families gave their
name to the flourishing and beautiful town of Gardiner, where
they had received a very extensive grant of land. There, when
the banks of the Kennebec and its tributaries were covered
with primitive forests of pine, they had established lumber and
grain mills for the convenience of the settlers ; yet they lived
themselves, by right of birth and custom, in the style of wealthy

II
British gentry. Another noted family, the Vaughans, consist
ing of three brothers, who had sought relief on these shores
from the annoyances which their opinions had brought to tliem
while holding high position in England, had occupied land four
miles above Gardiner at Hallowell.
These distinguished families exerted a strong influence on
the people who settled around them. Their buildings were
models of economical architecture. Their courteous and unas
suming manners won the confidence of the community, which
was thus attracted towards them, rather than alienated by their
wealth and gentility. Having through avowed sympathy with
the colonists in the Revolutionary struggle incurred the dis
pleasure of their acquaintance in England, they zealously en
gaged here in promoting the institutions which would elevate
the people with whom they had cast their lot. They united
extensive learning with religion and purity of life. Hallowell
Academy became celebrated for its high attainments through
their liberality and wise supervision. There, with the children
of the more influential families ofthe town, Mr. Jacob Abbot's
sons were first educated, while the choice library of the
Vaughans, containing over twelve thousand volumes, was open
to these boys, who were to furnish with their own facile pens
treasured libraries for the children of unnumbered homes in
America and Old England.
The Puritan pastor. Rev. Dr. Gillett, must not be omitted
from a view of that Hallowell home. A tall, slender, scholarly
looking man in black broadcloth, linen bands, and black silk
gloves in the pulpit, he could chase his little daughters at hide
and seek in his beautiful garden, while their playmates clam
bered on his shoulders in their play. With the rhetorical
elegance which his fastidious taste imparted to all his public
teaching, and an attractive voice which won attention from old
and young, this pastor did much to shape the minds of those
children for their widely reaching work on others.
It must be acknowledged that a rare combination of influ
ences fitted the subject of this memorial for his successful
career in authorship and ministerial labor. Well might he say
at the close of his life, " I esteem it the greatest blessing of my
life that I was cradled in the home of a Puritan father and
mother."

12

Jacob Abbot, Esq., returned to Brunswick with his family
in 1 8 19, to educate his sons at Bowdoin College. John was then
a boy of fourteen years, and Jacob had already been graduated.
John entered college in the famous class of 1825. Its members
became distinguished in nearly all the professions. The names
of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Cheever, and Abbott achieved a
national reputation, and have been entered upon the lasting
memorials of American literature. The honor and memory of
their Alma Mater and of their class will be perpetuated in
" Morituri Salutamus," one of the most celebrated and elegant
poems that Longfellow has written. This was a memorial of
their half-century class-meeting at Bowdoin College in 1875,
which excited the interest of the whole country.
Mr. Abbott was one of the youngest members of his class.
Nothing specially marked his four years in college, except the
universal esteem and favor with which he was regarded. His
uniform kindness and courtesy, and outspoken sympathy with
all that was honorable, honest, and upright, made him a great
favorite with his classmates, while his scholarship, though above
the average, never made him the mark of envy. So noticeable
was his character in these respects that one of his classmates,
Hon. S. P. Benson, who had himself honored that class as an
eminent lawyer and member of Congress from Maine, at the
memorial meeting already mentioned, gave this exceptional
testimony: "John never did a mean thing, he never said a
coarse thing, he never had an enemy while he was in college."
The following somewhat curious incident illustrates the un
certain promises of the college period for a young man's future.
Longfellow and Abbott were on the best terms as classmates
and friends, both being young and of congenial temperaments.
Having decided literary tendencies, it was good-naturedly pro
posed by some one that they should each write a poem under
given circumstances, and a committee of the class be appointed
to decide upon the merits of these productions. Accepting
the proposal in good faith, the two young men prepared for the
Olympic contest. As the two classmates, in their long literary
careers, never afterward came into competition, it will not be
ungracious to record that the laurel was given to Abbott. It
was his last attempt at verse-making. He might have taken

heart for a new trial, if he had known the lasting veneration
and fame which was awaiting, in the future, the most loved and
celebrated poet in America. It might be more difficult now,
however, alike for the severest critics and most ardent admirers
of the works of each, to judge whether the poet or the historian
has put the most history into poetry.
After graduating at Bowdoin, Mr. Abbott went to Amherst,
Mass., as principal of the academy in that town. He had not
chosen a profession, but had thought earnestly, and some
times with intense anxiety, upon the life before him. He had
pursued a blameless course in college, but it had not been a
professedly Christian life. Parental example and training had
strongly enforced upon his childhood practical Christianity.
He had reverenced religion in his young manhood and rendered
prayerful obedience to its behests, without throwing the influ
ence of an open confession of Christ into his college compan
ionship. At Amherst it was necessary that the exercises of school be
opened with prayer. Mr. Abbott quietly took up the duty
from the force of his early training, to do, at any cost, what was
right. From that time his life was steadily and consistently
conformed to the precepts of Christ, That year he united
with the Congregational Church at Amherst, and turned his
thoughts resolutely to preparation for the ministry which he
had often previously contemplated. He began his theological
studies at Andover Seminary in September, 1826.
During the second year of the seminary course, Mr. Abbott
engaged in missionary labors along the southern shore of
Cape Cod, organizing Sunday schools. This was a new form
of missionary enterprise, to the importance and efficiency of
which the churches had but recently awakened.
Returning by the way of New Bedford, he then formed an
engagement of marriage with Miss Jane Williams Bourne,
with whom he had maintained an intimate acquaintance from
boyhood. Her father, Mr. Abner Bourne, formerly an English
importer of Boston, had resided in Brunswick for ten years as
superintendent of a cotton manufactory, and was a highly re
spected citizen. Through the association of their families, the
acquaintance of youth had grown to an attachment, which was

14
to unite them in the love and service of a long and eventful
life. Mrs. Abbott shared the pastorate and literary labors of
her husband with unremitted devotion, and still, with seven of
their ten children, survives him.
Mr. Abbott graduated at Andover Seminary in 1829.
Among his well-known classmates were Nehemiah Adams,
J. W. Chickering, George Punchard, and George Trask.
A pastoral charge awaited him immediately after his gradua
tion. Having received a hearty call to the Central Calvinistic
Church at Worcester, Mass., he was there ordained and settled,
after afew months' ministry, on Jan. 28, 1830. Prominent
among the members and supporters of this newly established
church was Daniel Waldo, Esq., who, with his family, were
held by the pastor in close friendship and lifelong esteem.
Mr. Abbott was married in September, 1830, and went to meet,
with his young wife, the often-described experiences of an
Orthodox pastorate in Masschusetts fifty years ago. With
great flexibility of character, a kind and loving disposition, and
an attractive style of preaching, the pastor and no less his
warm-hearted wife soon won many friends. It was with the
great regret of his church and congregation that his pastorate
was there terminated by the prostration of Mr. Abbott under
an attack of bronchitis, which unfitted him for work for more
than a year.
But almost simultaneously with his ministry, began that
career in authorship which constituted a large part of his
earthly labors. A course of week-day lectures to the maternal
association of his parishioners, on parental life and duties, had
been received with much favor. They had drawn their practi
cal wisdom from the memories of the remarkable homes with
which he had been conversant. A previous successful venture
with a little story for children, in book form, had made him
raindful of other hearers than his own congregation. It oc
curred to him that these lectures would be useful to a larger
circle of parents and horaes, and under the title of The
Mother at Home, he offered thera for publication. Few books
were printed in those days, and the fact that they supplied
the people's wants, rather than the reputation of publishers
or the skill of subscription agents, gave them wide circu-

15
lation. There was found to be a remarkable demand for this
httle volume, which the publisher had hesitatingly accepted
Ten thousand copies were sold in six raonths, and through an
unknown number of reprints in this country and England and
translations into most of the languages of Europe and into
some of those of Asia, for the use of missionaries, it has had
an immense circulation. It may be truthfully said that this
remarkable book, with a similar one which immediately followed
it in 1834, was transcribed frora the author's own heart, where
it had been written for the world in early years by the honored
parents in the horae in which they had so successfully applied
religious principles to the rearing of children without the viola
tion of natural instincts.
Mr. Abbott had now fully entered upon his life service in the
threefold capacity in which his influence and usefulness were
exerted. Leaving here the narrative which this memorial has
presented thus far, we gather the effects of his life into the
three lines of activity into which, with varying intensity, his
energies were concentrated. These were, the tniizistry of
religious truth as a pastor, as an educator, and as an author in
history and biography.
Mr. Abbott held during his ministerial work five different
pastorates. From 1829 to 1834 he retained his first church at
Worcester, Mass. From 1835 to 1841 he was settled over the
Eliot Church in Roxbury, Mass. ; and from 1841 to 1844, over the
Congregational Church in Nantucket, Mass. He was pastor of
the Howe Street Church, New Haven, Conn., from 1862 to 1867;
and acting pastor of the Second Church in Fair Haven, Conn.
from 1870 to 1874. During the interval frora 1850 to 1862,
while engaged in literary work, he also rainistered as stated
supply to three other churches, in Freeport and Farmington,
Maine, and Cheshire, Conn.
The ministerial labors of forty years were thus divided among
eight different churches. In the first half of this century in
Congregational churches, the same period would ordinarily have
been filled by two or three pastorates ; there have been not a
few single settlements that have included raore years of service.
The greater usefulness of such protracted ministrations is an
open question in the history of most of our American churches.

ID

Mr. Abbott was not fitted, either in his own temperament or
in the special aims and character of his preaching, for long-con
tinued labor in one parish. He was quick in his sympathies,
sanguine in his disposition, and versatile in his tastes and powers
of illustrating truth, but also very susceptible to the influence
of new scenes and faces. He quickly awakened interest in his
preaching by the simplicity of his ideas of religion, united with
great freedom of illustration. His style of expression, through
a very active iraagination, was frequently too florid for the studi
ous and critical among his large audiences, but by this greater
numbers were attracted, and at the same time all were im
pressed with his earnestness on the one point of a personal ac
ceptance of salvation by Jesus Christ. As his varied literary
labors and habits of work indicated, he was constitutionally
fond of change, nor did his health, several times impaired and
shattered by intense toil, allow the monotonous strain of pas
toral responsibility and toil for raany years in one field.
Dr. Abbott's preaching did not tend to the philosophy of
religion. He had no special delight in speculative theology.
He cared more for the principles of practical piety than for
theories. He was not a metaphysican, but he was a sincere
Christian. He loved especially to hold up the religion of Jesus
Christ as a solace for the innuraerable sorrows of huraan
hearts. In this he ministered most effectively to multitudes out
of his own rich experience. He believed and taught that the
words of Christ and His inspired followers were the only safe
guide to men, a rebuke to self-living, and the only true light to
salvation for lost souls. The word of God revealed to him
eternal realities, which he accepted with unquestioning faith.
He rapturously embraced in the gospel the hopes of heaven,
in the realistic forms that are but shadows of what is earthly and
finite to other minds. He nevertheless made his hearers share
his longings for the fellowship of the saints of all ages in the
glorious home of the redeemed, which he ardently and con
fidently anticipated as the rest of his eager soul.
In his sermons to young men, — to whom he was very at
tractive in his ministry, — he drew many fine illustrations from
his biographical and historic studies, as he argued with them
on the reasonableness of a Christian faith and character.

17
During the last ten years, he was wont to address them with
all the affection and in the name of a father. Stirring them
by his paternal warnings from the wrecks and failures of illus
trious characters, with which he was so familiar, or inciting
them by their grand deeds and virtues, he led many young
men to be followers of Jesus, and to choose eternal life for
their portion.
As a pastor, Mr. Abbott never failed to inspire love and
confidence araong his people. He was very sensitive to the
coldness or discourtesy of his parishioners, but usually con
cealed it and sought every means to overcome it. He was
naturally a peacemaker. He hated a quarrel and even a discus
sion. He would avoid it if possible, and defer action, but was
very persistent in his opinions when once formed. His reraark
able courtesy of raanner made him always approachable. To
those in sorrow he could bring corafort ; to those of doubting
mind he was often a counsellor heart to heart, and his strong
personal faith availed to lead tbem to the blessed sureties of
Christian experience. He believed in the power of the truth
to save any one. One of his raost eloquent and effective ser
mons was written to convince and persuade an atheist nearly
seventy years old, who, as a member of one of his congrega
tions in Maine, had expressed to him, with unfeigned sadness,
the hopelessness of his raind concerning God and immortality.
It was on the astronomical argument for the Christian religion.
This sermon was subsequently repeated with raarked effect to
raany thousands in some of the largest cities of the Union.
Probably the two shortest pastorates of Mr. Abbott devel
oped the largest results in religious awakening and in the per
sonal power of his ministry. These were at Nantucket and
his last charge at Fair Haven.
It was at the beginning of the winter of 1841-42 that Mr.
Abbott and his family landed at Nantucket. This was then a
compact village of 10,000 souls. There were but two evangeli
cal churches, the Congregational, and a small Methodist Church.
The island was thirty miles out at sea, and the inhabitants had
no communication with the mainland in winter. Many of the
people were captains and mates of vessels. They were intelli
gent, with nothing to do, and were glad to be interested on any

i8
instructive therae. The church building was large, and the
lecture-roora, which was in fact the old church, would hold
eight hundred people. Mr. Abbott saw his opportunity, and
undertook to interest the people. " I made," he wrote once of
this work, " a great effort to erabellish every address with bio
graphical, historical, or scientific illustrations which would
instruct. My appeal was solely to reason, — raost studiously
avoiding all appeals to raere animal feeling." There had been
a low state of piety in the church. Mr. Abbott appointed on
the first Sunday a prayer-meeting in the lecture-room for Fri
day evening. In that first raeeting there were three men and
a dozen woraen, and only three of these could sing ; for in that
capacious lecture-roora the singers' seats were still retained.
In a few weeks the house was full at those evening raeetings
and the aisles were crowded. " The bell tolled to tell the peo
ple there was no raore roora," was their farailiar saying. There
was so much apparent interest in religious matters that an in
quiry meeting was appointed at the pastor's house for Monday
evening. Those were invited who, without being " inquirers "
in the usual sense, yet desired personal instruction about relig
ious truth. About twenty were present. After two or three
hours of conversation, three verses of the old tune of Hebron
were given out. As the lines
"Much of my time has run to waste,
And I perhaps am near my home,"
were sung, several were deeply affected, and a raighty work of
the Spirit seemed to begin. It swept the whole town. Many
an old and godless sea-captain took up the words of one of
their number, "I nail the Bethel flag at the mast's head,"
during the steady interest which for eight raonths filled the
old church to overflowing three times a week, besides the three
Sabbath services. During all this time Mr. Abbott was alone.
For eight months he did not see the face of a brother clergy
man of his own denoraination. The pressure was too great for
hira, and congestion of the brain threatened his life. It was a
great harvest for one reaper. The church records report fifty-
nine at one time who made public confession of Christ. In the
two years and a half of his ministry at Nantucket, one hun
dred and seventy-two were received into the church.

19
A similar and even greater blessing was given to his last
pastorate, in Fair Haven. His congregation, and the commu
nity generally, were of like character to those of Nantucket.
The spirit of those earlier years seemed to return to him as he
assuraed the supply of this church, whose interest and courage
for the Lord's work had in great measure declined. He was
then engaged in the raost exhausting literary work of his life,
and felt that his duty to the church was fulfilled when the two
best hours of the day had been devoted to the preparation
of sermons, and the regular raeetings of the church were
attended. His serraons were revivified and generally rewritten
for each Sunday. He seeraed to plead with, rather than preach
to, the people. His teaching, diversified and illustrated with
new power, repeatedly urged them, as if it were the last day
for all, to take God at His word, believe and be saved, love
Christ and obey His commands. The church was soon crowded
upon the Sabbath, and scores unused to observe the day were
found in the congregation. The Sunday and week-day prayer-
meetings, after a year of such appeals, filled the large audience-
room. There was great increase of the Sunday school, but
adults were especially awakened by the truth. There was
intensified interest and proportionate stillness and solemnity
in the meetings, to which only one evening more than usual in
the week was devoted. The Holy Spirit's influence settled down
upon the whole comraunity, and was felt by those who did not
corae near the services. One hardened sinner, whose occupation
was to watch the oyster-beds in the harbor, and who seldora
even carae to the shore, without any human agency, in his
lonely watch at night, was so impressed with his sinfulness
that he was forced, alone upon the water, to yield the struggle
and cry for raercy. A well-known citizen, notorious for his
wickedness, on a Sunday evening tremblingly rose to his feet,
and saying that " a week before, all the money in the banks of
New Haven could not have induced him to take this step," he
confessed his need of a Saviour and implored help to obtain
pardon. He was chosen by the Spirit for an effective witness
for Christ. Inquirers for many weeks sought Mr. Abbott at his
home at all hours of the day and evening. So greatly was the
community moved, without special iostrumentalities, that one

20

solemn yet joyous Sabbath morning one hundred and six con
verts, raostly of adult age, crowded the centre aisles of the
church to make profession of their faith. Twelve others united
at the same time by letter in that goodly company of witnesses
to the power of the truth in Jesus. The church, during all
Mr. Abbott's ministrations and under those of his successor,
became one of the most prosperous and fruitful in the region
of New Haven.
Those who enjoyed intimate friendship with Mr. Abbott
knew that he coveted greatly th& po-wer of eloquence, as one of
the preacher's best gifts. He longed above all things to atti-act
and at the same time persuade men to believe the truths of the
gospel. He studied the qualities in men which drew others to
hear them. " Men must be interested in what you have to
say," he often repeated, " or you cannot raake them hear the
truth or save them by it." " A pastor should concentrate all
his energies, physical and mental, upon his sermons," was his
frequent counsel to young raen in the rainistry. At a time
when he was drawing every Sunday, in Howe Street Church,
New Haven, audiences that filled every available foot in a spa
cious church, he thus expressed his own aims and motives in a
letter to a young pastor whom he loved : " I trerable to hear —
but hope that I ara misinformed — that you have undertaken
the superintendence of the Sabbath school. No raortal, unless
he is tame as a sheep, can preach twice on the Sabbath, keep
a Sabbath school, and attend a third service. Pardon rae for
reiterating that your great end and aira for the next five years
should be to acquire pulpit eloquence. You need the whole
concentrated energies of body and of soul for the two orations
you must deliver every Sabbath. Whatever energy you give
to any other work, you must detract frora that. It is a terri
ble loss. I never knew a rainister to succeed who attempted
to do everything. You want to concentrate your energies on
your two sermons, to preach with all your might. Heaven
save me from hearing a minister preach in the afternoon who
has followed up his morning sermon by teaching a Sabbath
school !
" Pardon me for writing so earnestly. What the world is now
hungering for is able preaching. There is precious little of it.

21

It IS not merely the writing of the sermon : one needs to
exhaust all the glowing energies of soul and body in the deliv
ery. Do not weaken your powers by diffusion. You cannot
do everything, and it is a great deal better to be a powerful
preacher than to scatter your strength all over the parish
Again I raust apologize for thus writing. But I am sure, if you
live to be sixty years of age, you will write to some young
preacher just as I am now writing to you."
Dr. Abbott was a conciliatory and sympathetic man in his
personal relations in the parish and in society, but in his pulpit
and on the lecture platform, where at some periods of his life
he was very popular, he fearlessly expressed his convictions,
and maintained his rights as a citizen. He was an outspoken
antislavery man in the eariiest years of that contest for free
dom in our land. He defended the poor and oppressed, and
suffered for thera, when to espouse the cause of the slave was
a disgrace in the eyes of erainent raen in the church. He was
an ardent patriot, and used all the influence of his pulpit and his
pen, during the Rebellion, to maintain the RepubHcan party and
the adrainistration of President Lincoln in their desperate
efforts to save the Union.
Dr. Abbott was also an unwavering advocate of the demo
cratic and Scriptural principles of our Congregational polity
and of the simple worship of the churches of our faith. He was
a peacemaker in the divisions of churches and councils, where
his apt words often, through their practical wisdom, solved diffi
culties and led to happy decisions. He loved the simpHcity of
our forms of worship, and had no sympathy with the mongrel
liturgies which have crept into Congregational churches here
and there, and blurred the distinctive character of their services,
while they bewilder the irregular worshippers whom only in
raost instances they are designed to attract and please. In an
article, published in the Christain Union after his death. Dr.
Abbott appeals to his brethren for the old-time Congregational
uniformity of worship, which in his view was unsurpassed by
any other ritual in winning souls to Christ. He describes his
own experience in rainistering to churches which, each, had a
different form : —
" Not long since I preached in one of the most important of

22
our metropolitan churches. The edifice was splendid, the con
gregation large, fashionable, intelligent. I sat prayerfully, I
may say tremblingly, in a little anteroom, waiting for the last
strokes of the toHing beH. One of the deacons came into my
room, and smiling very blandly said, that perhaps, as I might not
be familiar with the ritual which their pastor had introduced, he
had brought rae a printed progrararae. It was to me a formida
ble docuraent. I had but about two and a half rainutes to be
corae farailiar with this probably very admirable Congregational
liturgy. But it destroyed all ray peace of raind. I was in dis
may, and said to the deacon that I did not see how it would be
possible for me, with so short a tirae for preparation, to adopt
forms with which I was so totally unacquainted. He replied it
was very simple ; that as I had the printed progrararae before
me, aU I had to do was to follow it. Not much to my corafort, he
added that an inexperienced young man preached for thera a few
Sundays before, who became so erabarrassed as to render the ser
vice quite amusing.
"The bell ceased tolling, I entered the pulpit. How I suc
ceeded in working my way through the service I scarcely know :
but this I do know, that I passed an hour and a half of quite
severe suffering.
" A few weeks after this a deacon carae to ray study to engage
me to supply the pulpit in one of the leading churches of our
land. He said he would hunt up an order of exercises which
he would send me. My patience was exhausted. I said that
if he would allow me to conduct the service according to the
usages of our fathers, I should be happy to do so ; otherwise
he must seek for a supply somewhere else. He replied, with a
smile, that none would object to this. Since then I have inva
riably adhered to the time-honored custom of the Congrega
tional churches."
It is not possible in these pages to describe at length Mr.
Abbott's life as a teacher. CompeHed by the state of his own
health and that of Mrs. Abbott, he left Nantucket with his
faraily in December, 1843. He immediately united with his
brothers Jacob and Gorham in conducting a school for young
ladies in New York City. Soon after Mr. Gorhara Abbot't
separately organized the faraous Spingler Institute, which, with

23
the school of the Abbott brothers, were pioneer institutions for
the higher education of girls in Araerica. " Mr. Jacob " and
" Mr. John," as they were ever distinguished by their pupils,
continued their institution for about ten years. At no period
of their lives, perhaps, did their work inspire more grateful love
and respect. Their pupils came fiom the most intelligent fam
ilies and from all parts ofthe country. They found a Christian
horae with their teachers. It was indeed a large faraily school,
where all were treated and guided as daughters. Mr. Jacob's
marvellous tact for imparting knowledge, to which unnumbered
youth have since had cause to testify, and Mr. John's personal
enthusiasm in impressing scenes of history, the facts of science,
and the traits of character, as living pictures, upon the meraory,
were a rare corabination for the success and efficiency of their
school. Mr. John and his brother were already wielding an
increasing influence by their pens, in Araerlcan literature, and
the products of their study were given in lectures and farailiar
instruction to their pupils. It was there that Mr. Abbott began
writing the Life of Napoleon I, to which he owed rauch of his
celebrity as an author.
The three youngest children of Mr. Abbott's large family
were born in New York. He was led to return to Maine with
his faraily in 1853 by his love for his native State, and a desire
to educate his oldest son at Bowdoin College. With the pur
pose of devoting hiraself to literary work, in which he was
achieving reraarkable success, he purchased one of the homes
of his boyhood in Brunswick, where he resided several years, in
view of the coHege grounds and in intimate association with the
faculty of Bowdoin. Several of the faculty were his old instruc
tors, and he was himself a member of the Board of Trustees.
No place could have been found so favorable for his literary
toil. The large library of Bowdoin, exceedingly valuable in its
historic collections, and the rare paintings in its art gaHery,
bequeathed by the Bowdoin family, were at his coraraand. The
cultured society of Brunswick cordially received him, with his
wife and daughters, to their circles, and his own large and
bright-faced group of children, full of vivacity and venture, had
the freedom of a healthy country home. The life and charac
ter of Mr. Abbott's father were there reproduced in his own.

24
As he is remembered, not only by his chHdren, but by citizens or
students who were famfliar with his home life, no one would
wish to change a sentence in a description of his father, which
Mr. Abbott somewhere gives, if it were applied to himself —
"There was something in my father which commanded
respect as well as love. . . . Whenever in the winter he appeared
in the street with his sleigh, every boy felt at liberty to jump
on or in. They would sometiraes be clustered on his sleigh
like a swarm of bees. He would stop to let the little fellows
hitch their sleds to the runners. Often he would prolong his
route to give them a ride. I never knew one who lived more
constantly for others."
In an interesting sketch of Mr. Abbott's published works by
Rev. Edward Abbott, editor of the Literary World, there is
given the first catalogue ever raade of them. The figures
preceding the titles indicate, generally speaking, the place
belonging to each in chronological order of publication ; the
figures following give the date of pubHcation.
I. Juvenile.
2. The Child at Home. 1834.
7. The School Boy. 1839.
8. The School Girl. 1840.
9. A Visit to the Mountains. 1844.
40-51. American Pioneers and Patriots. 12 vols. Daniel Boone,
Miles Standish, De Soto, Peter Stuyvesant, Kit Carson, David Crockett,
Captain Kidd, Paul Jones, La Salle, Columbus, George Washington, Ben
jamin Franklin. 1 873-1 876.
II. Ethical and Religious.
I. The Mother at Home. 1833.
4. Fireside Piety. 1834.
6. The Path of Peace. 1833.
10. Memoir of Miss Elizabeth T. Read. 1847.
21. Practical Christianity. 1862.
III. Biographical and Historical.
II. Napoleon at St. Helena. 1855.
12. Kings and Queens. 1855.
13. 14. The History of Napoleon Bonaparte. 1855. 2 vols.
15. Confidential Correspondence of the Emperor Napoleon. 1856.
16. The French Revolution. 1859.

25
17-19- The Mo^archies of Continental Europe. 1859. 3 vols
Austria, Russia, Italy.
22,23. History of the Civil War in America. 1866. 2 vols.;
24. The Romance of Spanish History. 1869.
25. The History of Napoleon III. 1869.
26. Prussia and the Franco-Prussian War. 1871.
27. History of Frederick the Great. 1871.
28. History of Christianity. 1872.
29. History of Maine. 1875.
30. Lives of the Presidents of the United States. 1876.
31-39. 9 vols. Abbott's Illustrated Histories of Marie Antoinette,
Josephine, Queen Hortense, Madame Roland, Joseph Bonaparte, Louis
Philippe, Hernando Cortez, Louis XIV, Henry IV.

IV. Miscellaneous.
¦3. Scientific Tracts. 183- [probably]. Meteors, Man physically Con
sidered, Popular Superstitions, Northwest Passage, The Ocean.
5. New England and her Institutions. 1835.
20. South and North, i860.

This list is not quite complete ; several juvenile books are
omitted, notwithstanding more than fifty volumes are enumer
ated. It wHl be seen that Mr. Abbott's clairas to authorship
might, on the ground of the extent and variety of his volumes,
without regard to their iraraense circulation, disturb the conceits
of the flippant critics who have affected to ignore his influence
in Araerlcan literature. Others raay, in careful review of his
works, give Mr. Abbott just credit for what he has achieved of
literary worth, and a particular history of his works. Here we
give a record ofthe facts, the raethods, and influence ofhis life
and labors. All will accord to him the praise of rare industry,
that could acoraplish the literary work of between fifty and sixty
published voluraes, many of them nurabering, each, over six
hundred large octavo pages. To these might be added half as
many more volumes that would perhaps contain the unknown
number of magazine and newspaper articles, which he con
tinued to contribute tfll the last month of his life. There still
would remain, to complete the sum of his life, ten years of the
exhausting cares of a teacher, and the twenty-five unbroken
years of faithful pastoral and ministerial labors for large congre
gations in New England.

26
Only in part would Mr. Abbott wish appHed to hiraself the
favorite words of his classmate Longfellow : —
'' The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight ;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night."
Yet none familiar with his writings, which touched upon
almost every phase of history and every vital theme of human
character, can justly withhold frora him the large Hlustration of
another's thought : — " No life
Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife,
And all life not be purer and stronger thereby."
The responsibility of authorship is beyond measure when it
reaches such a vast number of minds, and sHently influences
character and conduct by its portrayal of the events and deeds
of the past. Mr. Abbott by his pen wrought far more than
by his voice. It was, however, the same noble aim,
" In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed,"
which inspired both.
It is the fashion of critics to search for what an author is noi.
Discoverers of this kind do not require candor or great intelli
gence. One could thus easily describe the fishes of the Ama
zon, without adding greatly to knowledge. It is also the weak
ness of critics to err in judgment. This may proceed from the
assumed infallibiHty of their consciousness and of their intu
itions of all truth without original investigation. By one or two
eminent and also hasty thinkers, Mr. Abbott was called, in a
few instances, "a falsifier of history." The charge involved
intentional raisrepresentation. He could in aU cases oppose
the authority of others, as trustworthy in their opinions as his
critics, to support his stateraents. He was, on the contrary, a
conscientious author. In the Preface of his last volume he
says, " I have written fifty-four volumes. In every one it has
been my endeavor to raake the inhabitants of this sad world
raore brotheriy, — better and happier," He chose authorities
which he judged good, and weighed the prejudices of others as
he did his own. Yet in ten thousand difficult cases of judgment,

27
he were not human if he did not soraetimes err. His disparage
ments of men in his histories are few. He hated the venora
of historic slurs. His conderanation of governraents and raen
is open. He would not withhold coraraendation when it could
truthfully be given. Once, lying becalraed in a sail-boat on
Casco Bay, he suddenly turned to one near him and said, " I
am greatly perplexed by two characters of whom I ara writing,
Mirabeau and Rousseau. I cannot understand the inexplica
ble wickedness of their acts, unless there was some hidden
motive, which justified them, at least in their own sight." At
another time, to one collecting materials for his use in an ac
count of a disastrous campaign in our civil war, he reraarked,
" Give him coraraendation where it is deserved, for he had
everything against hira."
" In estimating a great man," says a strong, modern writer,
" we should surely look to that wherein he was unique, individ
ual, exceeded his age, and added to it." When Mr. Abbott
began to write the Life of Napoleon I, for which he has been
so harshly judged, his countrymen were imbued with English
hatred of the man whom that nation so long feared. Who does
not know the strength of an Englishman's prejudice .' There
were few beside English histories of Napoleon in our land.
The following epitaph on Napoleon, which was in vogue on
Cape Cod forty years ago, is a fitting expression of the public
sentiment that generally prevailed in regard to him, and which
Mr. Abbott confesses he once shared : —
" Beside this stone, beneath the sod,
Lies Bonaparte, the scourge of God,
Virtue's detractor, Freedom's end,
Hell's benefactor, Satan's friend.
While here the tyrant sleeps in death.
Let us thank God he took his breath."
Such a sentiment would to-day be considered at least as far
from truth as the eulogies which Mr. Abbott honestly wrote of
Napoleon ! Few of the facts stated in that remarkable biogra
phy have been successfully controverted : the force of its argu
ments has been admitted by the clearest judicial minds. Their
effect in guiding to a correct estimate of the moral character
of Napoleon, and of his deeds, has often been deplored. For

28
that work and the equally elaborate and fascinating Life of
Napoleon HI, Mr. Abbott made the most careful investigation
of authorities in some of the best libraries in America and
France, and personally visited Paris under the reign of Louis
Napoleon, with whom he freely conversed on the principles of
the government, which he was then so successfully adminis
tering for France. The only recognition of his much-talked-
of services to the faraily of Napoleon was a gold medal worth
about fifty dollars, given in acknowledgment of the presenta
tion of a copy of the Life of Napoleon IH to the Emperor.
Aside frora Mr. Abbott's motives in writing, he was, in the
best years of his authorship, an unusually careful ^rit^x. His
remarkable perspicuity and beauty of style were the result of
careful elaboration of his sentences. Much of Napoleon I was
written three times, and nearly all of it twice. It was his habit
carefully to elaborate a whole sentence before it was committed
to paper. " Hard writing makes easy reading," was his daily
motto. What he once wrote of his Lives of the Presidents
was his repeated wish of all his larger works. " I wish," he
says, " to raake this the best book I have ever written." He
was a vivid and always popular author. " Genuine history,"
we are truthfully told, " is brought into existence only when the
historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of time, the living
man, toHing, impassioned, intrenched in his custoras, with his
voice and features, his gestures and his dress, distinct and cora
plete as he from whom we have just parted in the street."
Mr. Abbott is unsurpassed in Araerlcan literature in this qual
ity of a historian. He wrote history in a glow of raental
action, at once a delight to himself and the source of magnetic
power over his readers. This trait has been thus described by
Dr. Lyman Abbott : " In his work of composition he was ac
custoraed to read up' on the topic tHl he was thoroughly famil
iar with it. Then, closing his eyes, he would by a rare power
of historic imagination transport himself into the scene which
he was about to describe, and paint with his pen what he had
seen in a raental vision. He had a rare power of abstraction,
and, what is still more rare, a power of coming out of the past
and returning to it again almost instantly. His study was
always accessible ; his children came and went ; he never de-

29
clined himself to a caHer ; and however bu.sy he raight be, I
think he never regretted to see a friend. He would leave the
death-bed of De Soto or the battle-field of Napoleon, answer a
question about the household or give a greeting to a caller, and
go back to his unfinished picture without losing from it a figure
or a color."
Mr. Abbott wrote forthe people and easily comraanded their
attention. He was in the habit of keeping constantly before his
mind as he wrote sorae one who fairly represented the intelli
gence and honest character of the households throughout the
land, with which he had unfeigned sympathy and where his
words had such charm for old and young. He was unable fully
to meet the requests of publishers for his writings. His contri
butions to magazines or papers were never rejected. The
writer of this article had this reraarkable statement from Mr.
Abbott himself, only five years ago. His works had a large sale.
Of the first volume of the History of the Civil War in Amer
ica 100,000 copies were sold by subscription. The publishers
were embarrassed at the unremunerative price, on account
of the depreciation of the national currency, and repressed the
circulation of the second volume. The Harpers of New York
repeatedly affirmed the popularity of Mr. Abbott's book. His
Napoleon I g2ive to their new monthly magazine an immense
impetus. The editor of that magazine, after The Life of
Frederick the Great, which appeared anonymously at the
author's request, had been corapleted, gave the most emphatic
testimony to the rare and invaluable power which Mr. Abbott
possessed of attracting and interesting the people. His last
work, though unassociated with his narae or his fame, had
inceased their readers by thousands.
It was diligence, not haste, it was intense labor, not genius,
that accoraplished such large results in Dr. Abbott's life. He
did not work irregularly, but rather continuously. He did not
turn night into day, nor wait for moods and impulses to mental
exertion. For twenty of his most fruitful years, he spent from
eight to ten hours daily in study and writing. The interrup
tions to this incessant labor were few ; its monotony was
relieved by change of subject and composition. He usually
gave the first two hours to his serraons ; then the large historic

30
subject from four to six hours awakened his intense interest,
whHe the newspaper or magazine article or a friendly letter
varied the theme and style of expression. Three or four hours
of delightful talk with his family, or in social calls, closed the
day, and he early sought sleep. His only exercise of walking
or driving was very light. He ate but little, and his chief
recuperative was sleep, of which he would never wHfully deprive
himself Sorae of his best work was done two hours before the
breakfast of his household. Mr. Abbott kept no diary or jour
nal of his thoughts and labors ; but this very incoraplete sketch
of his literary life cannot have better or raore interesting
proof of its stateraents than brief extracts frora private letters
to the writer in the year 1870. Many sirailar confirraations
could be drawn frora the letters of other years.
April 14, 1870. — "As to rayself, I ara very busy indeed. I
am writing a monthly article for Harper on Frederick the
Great ; also the History of Louis XIV, four chapters of which
I have sent to the Harpers. For four raonths I have been act
ing pastor of the Second Congregational Church here. [Fair
Haven.J Every other Sabbath afternoon I preach a sermon
upon the History of Christianity. These sermons I rewrite
with much care. They draw a full house. I have been very
busy this week writing a sermon entitled ' A Plea in Favor of
attending Public Worship.' "
June 1 3, 1870. — "I have the full charge of not a small parish,
with all its pulpit and parochial labors. It is a rule with me
to prepare one new serraon every week. In addition to this I
prepare a monthly article of twenty pages for Harper s Maga
zine, and ara writing two books, one, the History of Louis
XLV, and the other. The History of the Christian Religion.
Last week I wrote the tenth chapter of this History. I have
sent the first four chapters of the History of Louis XLV to the
Harpers, and have four other chapters corapleted."
After such a week as this, Mr. Abbott again wrote : " Yes
terday I preached all day to unusually large audiences, for our
congregation is continually increasing. This raorning [Mon
day] I rested by going into ray study at seven o'clock and work
ing without intermission until one. In that time I prepared
six closely written pages upon Louis XIV. It is my rule, with

31
scarcely an exception, to go into ray study as soon as I rise in
the morning, and write until breakfast. I then continue to
write untH dinner-time at half past one. In the afternoon and
evening I read up. I have nothing whatever to do with house
or barn, but ara merely a boarder in my house. Your raother
spends the whole raorning in ray study with me. Sometiraes
I dictate to her, soraetiraes I write in abbreviations, and she
copies. I shall be sixty-five years old next Septeraber. Though
my health is wonderfully good, I cannot expect to preach very
much longer. I hope to lay up enough to give me a modest
competency in my old age. I do not expect any vacation this
summer, but must work with all ray raight. I think that in
my advancing years I can endure sedentary habits which would
kiO a young man."
The following estimate, by Dr. Leonard Bacon, of the suc
cess of Mr. Abbott's literary life is here reproduced frora his
funeral address : " The aira of his raany and various historical
works has been to popularize knowledge. In this he has suc
ceeded as no other writer. The books he has written have
had millions of readers. His Mother at Home, the earliest
of thera, has been a blessing in households too many to be
numbered. His college classmates, Longfellow, Hawthorne,
Cheever, are eminent in literature. Not one of them has had —
perhaps not all of them together have had — so many millions of
readers, and in so many languages of Christian and heathen
nations, as he. Some of Hawthorne's stories, many of Long
fellow's poeras, raay be counted among the classics of the
world's Hterature when the histories which he has written
shall have been superseded ; but he has made his mark broad
and deep upon the living generations, and that diffusion in
which he has been so great an instruraent will have its effect
on coming ages."
When Dr. Abbott had reached the age of seventy, he had
expended nearly all his bodily strength in the labors which
this incomplete record of his life can only indicate to those
acquainted with ministerial and literary toH. He soon suc
cumbed to the decay of bodily powers, while the lamp of his
mind stiU burned brightly. He had less disposition to leave
his horae, even for the slight exercise of walking to which he

was accustomed. Whenever it was possible he was employed
in his study on articles for papers and magazines, or the vol
umes for which editors and publishers made urgent request.
He clung to his pen tHl the last raonth of a sickness of fifteen
raonths. He was deeply affected by the death, at his own horae,
in March, 1876, of the wife of his deceased brother Gorham,
Mrs. Rebecca S. Abbott. She was a lady of rare intelligence
and piety and virtue, whose meraory is revered by thousands
in our land. Her departure seeraed to open the way into the
unknown raysteries which his spirit longed to penetrate. His
thoughts were thenceforth much upon his own release, and he
began to gather up all the loose threads of his life. His days
with the family now closed with the setting sun. His nights
were long and his rest broken. Many hours of the day were
spent upon his bed. Muscular decay was visible in all his
movements. With no special disease, he suffered, often acutely,
in different parts of his body. He would lose several days at
a time frora his work. A lady sat at his bedside and wrote for
hira as he dictated his last volurae on Benjamin Franklin. His
Reminiscences of Childhood and a few articles for religious
papers were written with pencil, at intervals of night or day,
on a tablet which was ever at his side. His mind was at these
times remarkably clear, and the desire to write irresistible.
Many letters of farewell were thus written to his relatives and
friends. They were unexaggerated pictures of the tranquillity
and peace, the hope, the sweet content, or the rapture of his
mind, as, with unfaltering trust, he waited for his Heavenly
Father's permission to join the throngs of the redeemed. So'
extremely weak was he several months before the last, that he
raany tiraes awaked in the morning feeling that it must be his
last day on earth. Thus he lingered, every want rainistered to
by the loving hands of his wife and daughter and his devoted
physician. It was a precious privilege of distant raerabers of
his faraily, and of his relatives and forraer associates, to visit
his chamber. There were no shadows there. The peace of
his soul entered the hearts of all who heard his words. They
shared the joy of his heavenly hope as they parted. Old pupHs,
classmates, parishioners, and friends, near to his home or from
far-off States and countries, sent hira words of encouragement

33
and gifts of love ere he took his journey toward the eternal
city. It is not often that one who has spoken to thousands so
eloquently of heaven and iraraortality, when in the full tide of
life, has been able so fully to testify at the last ebb, with clear
vision beyond Time's narrow bound, to the surety of aH the
promises in Christ.
It was said by the physician of an erainent English divine,
" His happiness in the prospect of death prolonged his life raany
months." One day, as Mr. Abbott, earnestly looking into Dr.
Stone's face, asked, " Doctor, why do I not die ? " he was
answered, " Mr. Abbott, you are too happy to die," It was a
new thought to him, and for raany weeks those words were
repeated by the patient to cheer his friends and himself in the
long waiting.
Of raany private letters which he wrote or dictated, none
wOl better indicate his condition during the last raonths of his
sickness, and the consolations of his soul, than one to his
nephew, the Rev. Edward Abbott : —
"There is sublimity in this midnight silence, and there is indescribable
rapture in the full conviction that, at any hour, a retinue of angels may
come to bear me to my heavenly home. I am every day drawing nearer my
departure, slowly, and yet by steps which I can easily estimate. I am gener
ally free from all pain. I do not well see how any one can be more happy
than I am now. The past is gone forever. The battle is fought. All
care seems to have vanished from my mind. The future is opening before
me with visions of beauty, grandeur, bliss, which no pen can describe.
" I cannot tell you, dear E., with what rapture I anticipate the arrival
of the angelic band to take me home. I have no doubt that there is such
-Siplace as heaven, the metropolis of God's limitless empire. Its gorgeous
towers rise far away in the abysses of space. Who can imagine the grandeur
of the journey, in the ' chariot' with angel companionship from earth to
heaven ?
" My sickness has been a wonderfully pleasant one. It is now, as I have
mentioned, midnight, yet my room seems full of sunshine. I am more
than happy. But when I try to express in words what I feel, I am painfully
impressed with the poverty of language. Three times, night before last,
I thought that I was going. It seems to me that my mind was never more
active. I have never a doubt of the reality of the religion of Jesus, which
I was taught from the lips of my sainted parents, and which for a lifetime
I have urged upon others. It is exactly the religion I want. It has guided
and blessed me during my pilgrimage of threescore years and eleven, and
in these sublime hours, when I am just entering upon eternal blessedness
it has indeed taken from death its sting."
3

34
A month before his release Dr. Abbott's sufferings became
acute, and yet he coraforted hiraself and others with hope.
" In a few days, perhaps a few hours," he said, " I shall he hap
pier than any man living." He refused the prescribed opiates
five days before the last, saying that he preferred to suffer. His
wife and two daughters were constantly near hira from this tirae.
On Wednesday he sent a raessage of love to all his children.
On Thursday he recognized his sainted mother's presence, and
said the angels were calling him, and from that time their
companionship did not leave him. He often mentioned their
names. On Saturday evening one, noticing the last change,
said to him, " Death has come." He looked up with a glad
surprise. He had often felt nearer to death than he did then.
But he began to breathe more heavily, then raore gently, and
without a struggle his spirit dropped its burden, and entered
into the joy of his Lord.
Dr. Abbott passed away just after raidnight, Sunday, a. m.,
June 17. Sorrow rested on the whole community of Fair
Haven. The stores and saloons were all spontaneously
closed on the afternoon of his burial. The people gathered to
a quiet, simple service in the Second Church of Fair Haven,
on Tuesday, the 19th. It was the scene of his last consecrated
labors in the ministry. Every period of his active life was
represented in those last rites. During the forenoon hundreds
had corae to take their last look at his peaceful face ; his fam
ily also had then parted with hira. There were left only sym
pathetic and tender words to be spoken by Dr. Bacon and the
pastor, Rev. Mr. Hovey. Two or three simple hymns were
sung, the was a prayer, and the remains were borne by his
nephews and sons-in-law out of the church. A large golden
sheaf of wheat, with the inscription, " The last tribute of affec
tion for Mr. John, frora one of his loving pupils," was laid upon
the coffin. A few flowers with ferns and vines from the woods
had also been scattered about it. The hearts of all were
silently blessing his meraory, as of the just. Accorapanied
only by his family to the cemetery in New Haven, with a
prayer by one of his sons, his body was committed to the
grave, whence the sadness of death seemed almost to have
been dispelled by Him who hath conquered death for His
redeemed.

35
With all that Dr. Abbott accomplished in authorship, so
excellent that his books have been transcribed into raany lan
guages and dispersed among peoples of both hemispheres, his
most intiraate friends are ready to say that his influence as a
Christian, whether by word or pen or personal character, was
his highest aim and the best work of his life. " I ara most
grateful for the success of my religious works," he said to the
writer in his last interview with him. " My History of Chris
tianity has greatly interested my Japanese friends. They
have carried it to Japan, and will try to circulate it araong those
thirty-three mHlions who are to be converted into a Christian
nation." " I feel, as I lie here waiting for ray release, that I
desire no earthly good like that of pleading with men to accept
salvation through Christ."
The weaknesses and faults in his life were those which arose
from an impulsive and generous nature, and frora the exactions
of his work upon nervous strength. He had too great confi
dence in human nature, and sometimes spoke to the public or to
his own comraunity through his pen as if all were his personal
friends and as high-minded as hiraself in their motives and
principles. Thus he occasionally betrayed hiraself to public
criticisra where only his best friends should have known his
thoughts, or witnessed his gratification frora the favor of those
in power. He had great self-restraint under provocations, and
was usually silent when he was sorely tried by criticisra or re
proach. " He has left the world poorer," wrote one of Mr. Ab
bott's forraer associates. " We shall go the more easily because
he is there."
There was a lovely light from his life in the home circle. A
devoted husband and father, no man was ever raore generous
to his children, none ever lived raore unselfishly for their hap
piness. He supported, in great measure by his literary labor,
a large family in the station to which his success as an author
had raised him. It was a tremendous venture to depend on an
author's hardly-earned royalties, and the usually stinted remu
neration of exhausting toH of the brain. It continued to be an
imperious necessity, whose service only love could raake light.
Publishers indeed grow rich, but authors are generally kept
poor. Few raen have corae into honor through keener trials
of heart and mind and body in his life of incessant toH.

36
In no respect is he ever known to have failed in personal in
tegrity and Christian honor. Blaraeless in youth, none could
reproach hira in age. In him was the soul of courtesy, — un
selfish love for men ; it continued with him to the last. It
never won the heart so rauch as on his dying bed. The hura
ble loved his recognition and his conversation, free frora ped
antry, as rauch as the cultured and powerful. His service to
God and his fellow-raen had left its irapress of gentleness, dig
nity, and integrity of bearing towards all, and it was a purified
and lovely character which enabled hira to welcorae heavenly
scenes and feHowship ere earth had passed away frora his sight.

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