CHARLES'FRANCIS-BARNARD 
 
 HIS LIFE AND Y/ORK 
 
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CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD 
 
 A SKETCH OF 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 FRANCIS TIFFANY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 ($lje i!^ttjer?ibe ^nU^ CambriDgc 
 
 1895 
 

 Copyright, 1895, 
 By AUGUSTA BARNARD. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press , Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Ca 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 Introductory 
 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 Old Boston 
 
 5 
 
 III. 
 
 Joseph Tuckerman 
 
 11 
 
 IV. 
 
 Birth and School Life . 
 
 23 
 
 V. 
 
 At Harvard College . 
 
 • 33 
 
 VI. 
 
 In the Divinity School . 
 
 39 
 
 VII. 
 
 Ordination 
 
 . 46 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Brief Married Life . 
 
 51 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Children's Church 
 
 . 55 
 
 X. 
 
 Plea for a New Building 
 
 68 
 
 XI. 
 
 Warren Street Chapel 
 
 . 78 
 
 XII. 
 
 New Ways with Children 
 
 93 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Setting Object Lessons 
 
 . 107 
 
 XIV. 
 
 <' The Dancing Parson " . 
 
 123 
 
 XV. 
 
 Thomas Starr King and Robert 
 
 C. 
 
 
 Winthrop 
 
 135 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Floral Processions 
 
 . 150 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Old Chapel Boys 
 
 166 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Inevitable Day . 
 
 . 176 
 
 XIX. 
 
 An Outing in the South . 
 
 185 
 
 XX. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 . 196 
 
 910320 
 
CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Whether the stor}^ of ..any, (*nterpri&e in 
 religious philanthropy is worth the telling 
 hinges mainly on a single point : Wii5;the 
 enterprise a simple repetition of what had 
 been done a hundred times before, or was 
 it fruitfully original in character? Were 
 its inspiring ideas seminal ? 
 
 When, for example, Charles L. Brace 
 founded in New York his Newsboys' 
 Home, he planted an organic seed, and 
 that in as literal a sense as the wheat or 
 maize the farmer sows in his field. To 
 start one more Sunday-school, in which to 
 try to make on the little waifs of the street 
 a few fleeting impressions, as speedily to 
 vanish as the dew under the glare of the 
 sun, was no object of his. What he aimed 
 
2 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 at was to substitute in the place of an 
 environment of outcast neglect, thriftless- 
 ness, gambling, and profligacy, an environ- 
 ment of friendliness, decency, stimulus to 
 economy and ambition, along with religious 
 suggestions of the ideal of a higher life. 
 Steadily the germ hidden in the project of 
 the home in the heart of the city for home- 
 less children expanded into that of ten 
 thousand genuine homes in farmers' fami- 
 lies all over tlie country. From city to 
 city the idea spread till thousands, who 
 otherwise would have perished morally 
 in an atmosphere of infection, were put 
 under permanent conditions of health and 
 purity. 
 
 Equally did this hold true of the foun- 
 dation in 1834 of Warren Street Chapel in 
 Boston. In aim and method it was the 
 conception of a distinctly original mind. 
 It constituted an epoch in the philanthropic 
 history of the city. It enlisted in its ser- 
 vice the enthusiastic and persistent devo- 
 tion of men and women of the most varied 
 kinds of ability. It went out into the 
 highways and hedges to compel in the 
 outcast, not to a feast of dry husks, but 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 to a festival of love, joy, and light, such 
 as Christ pictures in the scene where the 
 wedding garment of beauty is thrown over 
 every guest. Furthermore, it became the 
 prompter of numberless like enterprises in 
 other fields. And it owed alike its con- 
 ception and the spirit of consecrated en- 
 thusiasm with which it was sustained to 
 the fertile brain, the glowing heart, and the 
 rare power of enkindling others, of a single 
 man, Charles F. Barnard. For these rea- 
 sons is the story of the institution and of 
 its founder worth the telling. 
 
 In this world, however, nothing starts up 
 a purely isolated phenomenon. Every 
 institution has its roots in the past, while 
 drawing its nutriment for growth out of 
 the soil of the present. Human original- 
 ity is no power of creating something out 
 of nothing. It consists in capacity to be 
 the first to see what is already waiting to 
 be seen by him who has eyes. Without, 
 then, clearly reading and interpreting the 
 signs of the times immediately antecedent 
 to any new movement, it is impossible to 
 take in its significance, or justly to estimate 
 how far in reality it was a distinct contri- 
 
4 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 bution. For this reason, before describing 
 the life of Charles F. Barnard and the 
 work of Warren Street Chapel, it is neces- 
 sary to devote a preliminary chapter to the 
 social condition of Boston in the days of 
 his early youth, and to the vital spiritual 
 forces in play that would inevitably work 
 on one of his especial temperament 
 
IL 
 
 OLD BOSTON. 
 
 The Boston of Charles F. Barnard's 
 boyhood was a quiet Httle seaport town 
 of 40,000 inhabitants, steadily advancing, 
 however, to a population of 55,000 when 
 he began the work of his life. Memorable 
 changes had been silently going on in 
 thought and feeling. Insensibly, to the 
 old Puritan Calvinism had succeeded the 
 milder Arminian symbols of faith, these 
 almost insensibly passing on to avowed, 
 but not distinctly formulated, Unitarian- 
 ism, to which the great majority of the 
 influential churches of the city had gone 
 over. Through the growth of commerce, 
 far closer intellectual relations had been 
 opened up with the richer and more varied 
 cultivation of Europe, as indeed, through a 
 remarkable class of merchant sailors, even 
 with the thought of the Orient. Thus the 
 breath of a wider cosmopolitanism in liter- 
 
6 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 ature, art, and philosophy was beginning to 
 blow, prophetic of new movements in the 
 intellectual realm, which were to transform 
 the vigorous but narrow localism of thought 
 hitherto prevalent into something larger in 
 its appeal to all sides of human nature. 
 In a new consciousness of the whole range 
 of his being, man was coming to himself. 
 Already had Buckminster and Channing 
 been giving eloquent expression to a reli- 
 gion which should reconcile liberty of rea- 
 son with glowing hope for humanity and 
 fervor of piety. It was the dawn of the 
 day when Emerson should reveal the light 
 of a higher religious philosophy, and jus- 
 tice and mercy to the disinherited should 
 find heroic advocacy in a Garrison cham- 
 pioning the enslaved, a Howe the blind, 
 and a Dorothea Dix the insane. 
 
 The side on which a temperament of 
 the type of young Barnard's would feel it- 
 self quickened by these stimulating influ- 
 ences would inevitably be the religious 
 and philanthropic. Fervid piety and glow- 
 ing love of humanity were the dominant 
 elements of his nature ; and even before 
 he was ready for the work of life, a move- 
 
OLD BOSTON. 7 
 
 ment had been set on foot and a pioneer 
 had appeared that were to decide the espe- 
 cial field on which those elements should 
 come into play. As determining causes, 
 then, in shaping his subsequent career, it 
 is necessary that the character of this 
 movement and the spirit of this pioneer 
 should be brought vividly before the mind. 
 The population of Boston, say up to 
 1828, had been one of the most homogene- 
 ous in nationality, customs, and faith any- 
 where to be found. In its steel-cut die the 
 Puritanism of the past had stamped it in 
 rigid shape and in sharp outlines. Of its 
 13,000 families, 8,800 were regularly con- 
 nected with the churches of the city, and 
 progress in enlightenment went on inside 
 and not outside of these churches. Among 
 the 4,200 unchurched families, however, a 
 great amount of ignorance, poverty, and 
 vice had become developed. Puritanism 
 had an incisive way of its own in establish- 
 ing, even on earth, both its heaven and its 
 hell, — away inevitable in its working just 
 in so far as it patterned itself on the meth- 
 ods and on the image of its God. With 
 all its grand virtues, sympathetic appreci- 
 
8 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 ation of the wretched natural endowment 
 and terrible temptations of the outcast non- 
 elect was not its strong point. Relying on 
 a supernatural call as the one really efficient 
 agency in reformation, it formed few habits 
 of studying the influence of such second- 
 ary causes as decent tenements versus reek- 
 ing cellars, soap and water versus filth, 
 innocent social recreations versus rum and 
 gin. The abyss, then, between its strong, 
 respectable, and highly moral church-going 
 community and the feeble-minded, will-less, 
 and vicious outside element was one yawn- 
 ing wider year by year. Absolutely need- 
 ful, then, was it becoming that this theolo- 
 gical habit of disregarding what were called 
 secondary causes, — a habit traditionally 
 passed on to the generation that had really 
 outgrown the dogmas under which it was 
 shaped, — must be eradicated root and 
 branch, and these secondary causes be 
 made to flare out before the eye as primary 
 causes. 
 
 Not only, however, had Boston already 
 developed an element of its own kith and 
 kin in blood, rapidly tending to pass from 
 poverty and vice to chronic pauperism, 
 
OLD BOSTON. 9 
 
 but now a new evil was to accentuate the 
 danger. The tide of foreign immigration, 
 destined in a comparatively short time to 
 rise to such colossal proportions, was be- 
 ginning to bring in large numbers of 
 aliens, strangers in language, faith, and 
 customs to the native-born population. 
 Paupers already, many of them, and sure 
 through illness and ignorance of the ways 
 of a new country to furnish constant fresh 
 recruits even from the ranks of the more 
 competent, a problem of ever-growing 
 complexity was forced on all thoughtful 
 minds. Evidently the old methods would 
 no longer suffice. To quote the words of 
 Dr. Edward E. Hale : " So soon as the 
 miracle of foreign immigration began to 
 show its proportions, it became clear that 
 the machinery of the Church, as framed 
 by Cotton, Ward, Newton, and the rest, 
 was not adequate to the occasion. . . . 
 The Church, by that machinery, virtually 
 proposed to any stranger who might ar- 
 rive here with his family from Connaught 
 or Bavaria or Genoa, that he should pur- 
 chase a piece of property called a pew, 
 that he should lead his family there on 
 
lO CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Sunday at half-past ten in the morning, 
 and at a quarter-past two in the afternoon. 
 If he would do this, the Church was ready 
 on the other hand to give him religious 
 instruction. Such an offer, not made in- 
 deed with any urgency, was of course 
 never accepted." 
 
 If the mountain would not come to 
 Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to 
 the mountain. Such was the thought 
 which now took irresistible possession of 
 the mind of a providential man, Joseph 
 Tuckerman, to whose electric personality, 
 far-reaching views, and absolute consecra- 
 tion of spirit, it is necessary to devote a 
 separate chapter. 
 
Ill, 
 
 JOSEPH TUCKERMAN. 
 
 Joseph Tuckerman had graduated from 
 Harvard College as far back as 1798, in 
 the same class with the great divine Wil- 
 liam Ellery Channing, the great jurist 
 Joseph Story, and the great painter Wash- 
 ington Allston. Endeared to his class- 
 mates by his captivating social charm, he 
 yet seemed a creature born for pure en- 
 joyment of air and sunshine, exempt by 
 happy birthright from every call to the 
 serious duties of life. Enough for him 
 to live and give thanks in so beautiful a 
 world. Pure and innocent as a maiden, 
 no trace of vice soiled him, only so un- 
 speakably happy was he — a happiness he 
 carried with him to the latest day of life — 
 that his seemed the dower from heaven of 
 eternal childhood, free to float, at the will 
 of every passing breeze, like the clouds in 
 the blue sky. 
 
12 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Settled in 1801 in the ministry, in the 
 town of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a position 
 into which, on a simple tide of kindly and 
 devout feeling, he had drifted with no ade- 
 quate preparation for his work, he yet re- 
 mained there twenty-five years, till the age 
 of fifty, without really coming to himself 
 and finding what he was made for. Dili- 
 gent and faithful in his duties, he was 
 none the less dull and uninspiring as a 
 preacher. In the round of routine work 
 necessitated by ministering to a commu- 
 nity of well-to-do, respectable people, al- 
 ready constituting a sort of average, com- 
 monplace Kingdom of Heaven on earth, 
 his high - wrought emotional nature re- 
 mained a damped fire. 
 
 To bring out the Jesus element in him, 
 Joseph Tuckerman needed the appeal of 
 the publicans and harlots, needed the 
 awakening of the sense of the " joy among 
 the angels in heaven over one sinner that 
 repenteth more than over ninety and nine 
 just men that need no repentance." As 
 he looked out from his study windows in 
 Chelsea across the harbor and the widen- 
 ing bay white with sails, he would forget 
 
JOSEPH TUCKERMAN. 13 
 
 his books, forget his half-finished laborious 
 sermon, while his yearning soul took flight 
 with the sea-gulls circling round the in- 
 bound and outbound vessels, brooding, in 
 such sympathetic flight, over the lives of 
 the wandering sailors with no home nor 
 sanctuary but the brothel and the grog- 
 shop in every port. His first act, then, 
 in the direction of his new ministry of 
 mercy was to organize, in 181 2, the Sea- 
 man's Friend Society, in the chapel of 
 which was destined later to preach for so 
 many years the famous Father Taylor, a 
 man of so mighty a flood of devoutness 
 and love, allied with so resplendent a pic- 
 torial imagination, as to startle every 
 hearer with the sense that here stood one 
 descended not in name alone, but in di- 
 rect apostolic succession, from the poet- 
 divine Jeremy Taylor. 
 
 Health at last failing under the moping 
 influence of parish work. Dr. Tuckerman 
 finally determined, in 1826, to resign his 
 pastorate and devote himself wholly to a 
 ministry to the poor of Boston. From 
 that hour he was a new man. Finding 
 that the classes he wanted to get at would 
 
14 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 not go to the established churches, he 
 founded a chapel of his own in Friend 
 Street, known as the Circular Building, 
 for familiar religious services. Beginning 
 his wanderings through the city, " he 
 found the streets filled with idle children, 
 large families occupying the damp and 
 dirty cellars of Broad and Sea streets, 
 graduating regularly thence to the hospi- 
 tals and almshouses. Indefatigably visit- 
 ing from house to house, giving practical 
 counsel, apprenticing boys, procuring em- 
 ployment for adults, starting an infant 
 school, attending the courts, the whole 
 problem of poverty, ignorance, and vice 
 now absorbed him, heart and head. To 
 enlighten the public mind, paper after 
 paper was circulated by him, on ' Wages 
 of Poor Men and Women,' ' Slop-Shops,' 
 * Causes of Poverty,' * Classes of the 
 Poor,' ' Day Laborers in Winter,' * Fami- 
 lies that have known Better Days,' ' In- 
 termediate Schools for Dull Scholars.' 
 Finding ministers of religion afraid to cry 
 aloud to the rich men of Boston to desist 
 from renting their corner stores for liquor- 
 shops and their front cellars for tene- 
 
JOSEPH TUCKERMAN. 15 
 
 ments, he himself cried out so loudly as 
 to make the city ring again^ 
 
 "Appointed in 1832 by the Massachu- 
 setts House of Representatives member of 
 a special commission to report on pau- 
 perism, Dr. Tuckerman collected so care- 
 fully facts and figures that his report 
 served as the basis of reform in his own 
 State and was quoted by other legislatures. 
 Indeed, it made for him a European repu- 
 tation, for he had studied the whole sub- 
 ject in the parliamentary debates and rul- 
 ings of the English law courts from the 
 date of Edward III., as well as in those 
 of France and Germany." Thence the 
 hearty recognition of the great French 
 philanthropist, Baron Degerando, " This 
 man understands the difference between 
 poverty and pauperism." 
 
 Soon the work revealed itself as more 
 than any one man could do. " Dr. Tuck- 
 erman, however, had the distinguishing 
 faculty of great men, that he was able to 
 incite others. When he appeared before 
 
 ^ See, for an admirable account of the life and journals 
 of Tuckerman, two articles by Eber R. Butler, in the 
 October and December, 1890, numbers of Lend a Hand. 
 
1 6 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 the legislature, he was backed by the fore- 
 most men of the community, the Jacksons, 
 the Appletons, the Lawrences, the Per- 
 kinses of those days." Moreover, in his 
 more immediate daily duties he before 
 long associated with himself three devoted 
 young men, Charles F. Barnard, Frederick 
 T. Gray, and Robert C. Waterston. The 
 four thousand unchurched families should 
 thus be divided among four helpers. Their 
 business was to see that there should be 
 no nests of disease, moral or physical, in 
 the town, that the idle man should find 
 work, that existing dens of temptation, 
 into which strangers most readily wander, 
 should be abolished. 
 
 Nothing short of this was the belief of 
 Dr. Tuckerman in the practical power of 
 men and women of consecrated lives, hu- 
 mane feelings, intelligence, and good sense, 
 to stamp out poverty and vice, and to 
 bring in a kingdom of God on earth. A 
 period of fairly millennial expectation for 
 society had already been inaugurated by 
 the preaching of Channing, and welcomed 
 by many lofty spirits ; in truth, nothing 
 short of an exultant sense of the redis- 
 
JOSEPH TUCKERMAN, 17 
 
 covery and re-birth of the prophetic Jesus 
 of Nazareth after centuries of burial in 
 a mediaeval tomb. This day seemed the 
 Scripture fulfilled in their ears : " The 
 Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
 he hath anointed me to preach the gos- 
 pel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal 
 the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance 
 to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
 the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, to preach the acceptable year of 
 the Lord." Yet, though the millennium 
 came not, mighty works followed for the 
 pauper, the slave, the waif on the street, 
 the blind, the insane, the idiotic, and for 
 the emancipation of the community at 
 large from cramping traditions and gloomy 
 superstitions. Further, as on one line of 
 this widespread action Joseph Tucker- 
 man played so historic a part, it seems 
 fitting, in closing this chapter, to show the 
 light in which he shone before his own 
 day and generation. To this end, no 
 higher testimonial could be adduced than 
 a few extracts from the tribute paid to his 
 memory by Dr. Channing : — 
 
 " When I first met him in college, he 
 
1 8 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 had the innocence of childhood, but he 
 did not seem to have any serious views of 
 life. Three years he passed almost as a 
 holiday. . . . How often has he spoken 
 to me with grief and compunction of his 
 early wasted life ! . . . On leaving college 
 he gave himself to the Christian ministry ; 
 but with the unchastened inconsideration 
 of his youth, he plunged into its duties 
 with little preparation. The consequence 
 was a succession of mortifications, most 
 painful at the time, but of which he after- 
 wards spoke as a merciful discipline. Here 
 he became a student, a faithful, continu- 
 ous student, and accumulated much know- 
 ledge, and devoted no little time to the 
 thorny topics of theology. 
 
 " He was not, however, made to wear 
 out life in such pursuits. His heart was 
 his great power. Having laid a good 
 foundation by study, an unerring instinct 
 taught him that study was not his voca- 
 tion. His heart yearned for active life. 
 
 " At first he entered almost tremblingly 
 the houses of the poor where he was a 
 stranger, to offer his sympathy and friend- 
 ship. But ' the sheep knew the voice of 
 
JOSEPH TUCKERMAN. 19 
 
 the shepherd.' From the first moment a 
 relation of singular tenderness and confi- 
 dence was established between them. It 
 seemed as if a new fountain of love had 
 been opened within him. Cold, storm, 
 sickness, severe pain, could not shut him 
 up at home. No favorite of fortune could 
 have repaired to a palace, where the rays 
 of royal favor were to be centred on him, 
 with a more eager spirit and quicker step 
 than our friend hastened to the abodes of 
 want in the darkest alleys in our city. I 
 cannot forget one evening when, in con- 
 versing with the late Dr. Follen and my- 
 self on the claims of the poor, and on the 
 cold-heartedness of society, he not only 
 moved us, but filled us with amazement, 
 by his depth of feeling and energy of ut- 
 terance ; nor can I forget how, when he 
 left us. Dr. Follen, a man fitted by his 
 own spirit to judge of greatness, said to 
 me, 'He is a great man.' . . . He would 
 sometimes say that could he, on leaving 
 the world, choose his sphere, it would be 
 that of a ministering spirit to the poor. 
 In this there was no blinding enthusiasm. 
 He saw distinctly the vices which are often 
 
20 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 found among the poor, their craft, sloth, 
 and ingratitude. The coarsest realities 
 pressed him on every side. But amidst 
 these he saw, now the fainting signs, now 
 the triumphs, of a divine virtue. It was 
 his delight to relate examples of patience, 
 disinterestedness, piety, amid severest suf- 
 ferings. 
 
 " In carrying on this good work Dr. 
 Tuckerman did not stand alone. He be- 
 gan his labors under the patronage of 
 the American Unitarian Association. At 
 length, to insure the continuance of the 
 ministry at large, and to extend its opera- 
 tion, a union or, as it is called, a Frater- 
 nity of several chui-ches in the city was 
 formed, to take this important work under 
 its guidance and care. 
 
 " His religion was of the most enlarged, 
 liberal character. He did not shut himself 
 up even in Christ. But Christ was his rock, 
 his defense, his nutriment, his life. . . . 
 The horrible thought that certain portions 
 of society are to be kept down by appeals 
 to their superstition and fear has here 
 received a refutation very cheering to the 
 friends of humanity. Dr. Tuckerman car- 
 
JOSEPH TUCKERMAN. 21 
 
 ried among the poor his own highest views 
 of reh'gion, and often spoke to me of the 
 eagerness with which they were received. 
 He was, indeed, too wise a man to give 
 them in an abstract form, or in technical 
 language. They were steeped in his heart 
 before they found their way to his lips ; 
 and, flowing warm and fresh from this 
 fountain, they were drunk in as living wa- 
 ters by the thirsty souls of the poor. He 
 was naturally happy. There were next to 
 no seeds of gloom in his nature. From 
 these elements of his piety naturally grew 
 up a hope of future glory, progress, happi- 
 ness, more unmixed than I have known in 
 others. He would talk with a swelling 
 heart, and in the most genuine language, 
 of immortality, of heaven, of nearness to 
 God. His hope in such cases tended to 
 fulfill itself. His tones awakened a like 
 hope in the fallen. He did not break the 
 bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax." 
 Such, then, as he ever gratefully acknow- 
 ledged, was the man through vital contact 
 with whom Charles F. Barnard, the sub- 
 ject of this memoir, was kindled to the 
 master passion of his life. Years after 
 
2 2 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 he wrote of his first encounter with Dr. 
 Tuckerman : " The sight that evening, the 
 scenes that morning, have haunted me 
 ever since, and will till I die. From first 
 to last, my span of life and duty has borne 
 the impress of the evening and the morn- 
 ing of that first day. * If,' cried I, * these 
 are your flock and that is your chapel, let 
 me be your helpmeet ! ' ' For life .f* ' asked 
 he. ' For life ! ' added I. The hearers 
 were humble folks of the lowly sort, — 
 men and women hungry and thirsty for 
 the bread and water of life, whom any 
 lover of the Lord would proudly select for 
 His own among all the congregations of 
 the land. And then, when you beheld the 
 curtain lifted that had hitherto separated 
 you from your fellow-sufferers and fellow- 
 sinners, as you went from room to room, 
 up garret and down cellar, how Christ-like 
 seemed their visitor, counselor and com- 
 forter, healer and helper, whom heaven re- 
 vealed also to your own wondering, rever- 
 ing eye. ... So he meant when he cried 
 of a sinner to Channing, * I must have that 
 man's soul ! ' So he hoped when he cried 
 of Satan to Father Taylor, ' I want to try 
 love on him I ' " 
 
IV. 
 
 BIRTH AND SCHOOL LIFE. 
 
 Charles Francis Barnard was born 
 April 17, 1808, in Boston, Massachusetts, 
 the eldest child among three sons and one 
 daughter. His father, Charles Barnard, 
 was senior member of the old business 
 firm, Barnard, Adams & Co., on Commer- 
 cial Wharf. The family then lived in 
 South Street, now a crowded and noisy 
 thoroughfare of the city, but at that time 
 the court end of the town, where, under 
 the shade of great elms and horse-chest- 
 nuts, rows of handsome houses lined the 
 street. 
 
 As in the case with so many of the early 
 settlers of New England, the Barnards 
 came of a fine strain of Old England blood. 
 The first of the family to seek a perma- 
 nent home in the new world bore originally 
 the name of Vane, which he changed to 
 Barnard, the name of his wife's family, 
 
24 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 because his own father, Sir Henry Vane 
 of Barnard Castle in Durham, had been 
 arraigned for high treason, beheaded on 
 Tower Hill, June 14, 1662, and deprived 
 of his estates. This was the historic Sir 
 Henry Vane, once governor of the colony 
 of Massachusetts, whose virtues Milton 
 celebrates in his noble sonnet: — 
 
 " Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel, old." 
 
 On the maternal side, Charles Francis 
 Barnard was of the stock of the Middle- 
 tons of South Carolina, the first of whom 
 in America, Arthur Middleton, came out 
 under royal appointment as governor of 
 that colony. Through him the lineage 
 runs back in unbroken succession to Sir 
 John De Willoughby, a Norman knight, 
 Lord of Willoughby in Lincolnshire by 
 gift of William the Conqueror. 
 
 Though a more cordially democratic 
 spirit never breathed than Charles F. Bar- 
 nard himself, nor one who traced more 
 instinctively the descent of the most out- 
 cast straight back through Adam to God, 
 the founder of the whole family in heaven 
 and on earth, it is yet historically interest- 
 
BIRTH AND SCHOOL LIFE. 25 
 
 ing in this, as in so many other instances 
 in New England, to note the changes 
 wrought in modes of life and career by a 
 new and utterly different environment. 
 Neither — though it be held by many in 
 America to constitute an impertinent re- 
 flection on others to presume to have 
 descended from anyone in particular! — 
 should it be set down as gravely reprehen- 
 sible, even in a philanthropist, should he 
 have felt a certain sense of inward satisfac- 
 tion at having come of so distinguished a 
 lineage. No trace, however, of such feel- 
 ing was ever visible in the subject of this 
 memoir. None the less, blood will tell ; if, 
 certainly, in horses on the race track, why 
 not in men in the race of life ? 
 
 As a boy, Charles F. Barnard was forced 
 to follow a desultory course in his school 
 education, for, though muscular in frame 
 and abounding in animal spirits, he was 
 subject to intermittent congestive attacks 
 that rendered long-continued application 
 an impossibility. Happily, the means of 
 his father were ample enough to secure for 
 him frequent changes of air and scene. It 
 is not, however, till the year 1824, when he 
 
26 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 was receiving private instruction from the 
 master of the Boston Latin School in prep- 
 aration for college, that we come upon 
 any record of his actual thoughts and feel- 
 ings. He was then sixteen. 
 
 In those now far-back days it was a cus- 
 tom, descended from Puritan times, for 
 thoughtful young people to keep private 
 journals. Largely, these were highly sub- 
 jective in tone, records of daily moods of 
 feeling, romantic in strain, and in many 
 cases morbid. No trace, however, of this 
 last is visible in the journals which, from 
 this date, 1824, young Barnard began, and 
 assiduously carried on for many years. 
 They were written in thin copy-books, on 
 the opening page of the first of which 
 stands a device representing a globe with 
 an anchor suspended from it, and, be- 
 neath, the motto " Nil Desperandum," 
 translated, "Don't give up the ship!" — a 
 highly characteristic motto in this instance 
 as showing " the boy the father of the 
 man." 
 
 Purely objective in tone, these daily en- 
 tries brim over with enjoyment of every- 
 thing going on in the city or country 
 
BIRTH AND SCHOOL LIFE. 27 
 
 around about him. Here is manifestly an 
 open air constitution, instinctively seeking 
 sunshine, exercise, and fun. The sole 
 allusions to anything of a painful nature 
 are frequent, though always brief, refer- 
 ences to severe headaches. In these, how- 
 ever, there is positive biographic value, 
 showing as they do that here was a system 
 unfitted for confinement and protracted 
 study, and which would find its future 
 career largely determined by this constitu- 
 tional factor. Apart from this, the abid- 
 ing consciousness manifest is one of im- 
 mense capacity for joy, together with the 
 impulse to constant activity. 
 
 With only an occasional reference to the 
 Latin or Greek book, the algebra or geom- 
 etry, on which he is engaged in the Bos- 
 ton Latin School, it is mainly his keen 
 interest in outside objects, young Barnard 
 cares to jot down in his journals. If there 
 is a fire in the city, he is on hand ; if a 
 Dutch ship arrives in port, he is sure to 
 board her; if a new bank is to be built 
 with a portico of granite columns, it is the 
 huge wagon with hind wheels nine feet in 
 diameter, and drawn by thirty-four yoke of 
 
28 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 oxen, that secures him as an admiring 
 spectator. Furthermore, his exuberant 
 delight in natural scenery gets constant 
 expression, as well as in birds and flowers. 
 Evidently he finds the world a very fasci- 
 nating scene to live in, and is storing mind 
 and heart with a wealth of picturesque 
 sights and incidents that will make it the 
 delight of future children to hear him talk 
 to them. With such abounding spirits the 
 boy element will be sure to keep up its 
 play in him throughout life ; and is it not 
 always the grown-up boy who sympatheti- 
 cally understands, loves, and truly helps 
 the actual boy? 
 
 Let a few extracts from these school-day 
 journals serve as straws to show how the 
 wind was abidingly blowing in his mind. 
 
 "Aug. 1 6, 1824. The mayor of the city 
 taken up last week for cantering his horse 
 in the streets ; he was taken up by a truck- 
 man." Here is evidently a fine democratic 
 appreciation of the incident. That truck- 
 man could not be spared ! Mayors them- 
 selves must obey the laws they enforce on 
 others. 
 
 "Sept. 24, 1824. This morning General 
 
BIRTH AND SCHOOL LIFE. 
 
 29 
 
 La Fayette made a most splendid entree 
 into this metropolis." Boston had then 
 but 45,000 inhabitants, but the boy's soul 
 swells with too high civic pride to be con- 
 tent with a lesser name than metropolis. 
 Thenceforth, during all his stay, he tracks 
 the General round to Commencement Day 
 in Cambridge, to Phi Beta Kappa Day, to 
 Charlestown, and wherever else he goes. 
 
 " October 20, 1824. When in Roxbury, 
 I passed one of the columns of the bank 
 on its way to the city; there were thirty- 
 four yoke of oxen tugging at it. They 
 went very slowly. Oct. 21. Cattle show 
 to-day. The great column reached State 
 Street at noon. Professor Everett intro- 
 duced four members of the British Parlia- 
 ment to the Latin School this morning." 
 
 "Nov. 8, 1824. High fever, leeches ap- 
 plied at night, after which I felt better in 
 my head." Let this suffice as illustration 
 of his constitutional peril, tendency to 
 brain congestion, and only to be helped 
 by larger supplies of quoit-pitching, explo- 
 ration of lead mines, entrees of Marquis 
 La Fayette, and mayors arrested by truck- 
 men for cantering their horses on the pub- 
 lic street. 
 
30 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 "March 4, 1825. Inauguration of the 
 new President at Washington to-day. His 
 friends saw fit to make a deal of racket 
 and to have a great dinner at * Old Fun- 
 nel,' insomuch that the like wa's never 
 seen. Moreover, in the night time, the 
 men round about made many bonfires and 
 destroyed much wood which had better 
 been given to the poor.'' Although the in- 
 genuous boy had temporarily lost sight of 
 the context which puts this scriptural quo- 
 tation into the mouth of the Pharisee de- 
 nouncing the waste of the alabaster box of 
 precious perfume, he none the less meant 
 it honestly, as all his future life was to 
 show. 
 
 "June 19, 1825. We had a fine chance 
 of seeing the ceremonies of laying the cor- 
 ner-stone of a monument" (Bunker Hill) 
 " which is to be a memento of the most 
 important battle to be found on the pages 
 of American history. . . . After the stone 
 was laid, the company adjourned to an 
 amphitheatre which had been put up for 
 the occasion, where Mr. Webster delivered 
 a very eloquent address. I felt too hungry 
 to stay to hear it, especially as I had no 
 
BIRTH AND SCHOOL LIFE, 31 
 
 ticket for the great dinner which was given 
 on the occasion." 
 
 A final extract from these school-day 
 journals may have interest as illustrating 
 the difference between the examinations 
 for entering Harvard in those days and 
 the examinations of the present. 
 
 "Sept. 2, 1825. The opening of a new 
 chapter in my life! Bowditch and I (with 
 a raff of books) left town about five in the 
 morning. We reached Cambridge after a 
 short and chilly ride, put our horse up at 
 the stable, took the proper books under our 
 arms, and went to University Hall, where 
 (after waiting a few minutes) we were sep- 
 arated into divisions. We were first ex- 
 amined by Professor Farrar in Algebra, 
 having delivered our letters to him. We 
 then went to the tavern and took breakfast, 
 after which we were examined by Mr. 
 Channing in Sallust, Professor Hedge in 
 Cicero, and Professor Folsom in writing 
 Latin. We then took dinner. Next ex- 
 amined by Dr. Popkin in Greek grammar, 
 Mr. Hilliard in Virgil, Mr. Noyes in Greek 
 prose, Burnap in Greek poetry, and lastly 
 by Dr. Ware in Greek Testament. We 
 
32 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 finished at five p. m. Took supper at half- 
 past six, and at eight p. m. all assembled 
 in the yard before the President's house, 
 where we waited an hour or so, when the 
 first, second, and third divisions were 
 called for. We groped our w^ay upstairs 
 in 'fear and trembling,' and in a moment 
 after stood in the august presence of the 
 Faculty of Harvard University. Bow- 
 ditch, Blake, and myself received the wel- 
 come answer that we ' entered.' We 
 danced over to the tavern with hearts as 
 light as air, tumbled into our beds, and 
 soon were sound asleep." 
 
V. 
 
 AT HARVARD COLLEGE. 
 
 Young Barnard's Harvard examination, 
 described in the last chapter, had been for 
 admission to the sophomore class, ill-health 
 having prevented him from presenting 
 himself the year before as freshman. The 
 journals are still kept up, and with the 
 same keen zest for recording every inci- 
 dent with a flavor of life in it. They 
 moreover show him to have been an om- 
 nivorous, though desultory, reader of trav- 
 els, poetry, essays, history, in truth of 
 everything of a concrete character, a habit 
 that continued through life, whenever he 
 could procure leisure to indulge in it. 
 Whatever seized hold of his imagination 
 in the way of picture was vividly remem- 
 bered, and ever after on call in illustration 
 of any principle he wished to light up. 
 At the same time — though there is no 
 evidence that he shared any actual part in 
 
34 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 them — he never fails to take a pictur- 
 esque interest in the various escapades of 
 his fellow-students in the way of burning 
 tar barrels, smashing tutors' windows, 
 breaking in the doors of recitation-rooms, 
 and even at times indulging in explosions 
 of gunpowder. " The proper study of 
 mankind is man" was always a maxim 
 with him. 
 
 For people disposed to contrast the 
 Golden Age of the past with what they 
 call the Bronze or the Iron Age of the 
 present, it may be instructive to compare 
 the ways of the Harvard student in 1827 
 with those of his grandsons in 1895. Only 
 a couple of years ago, and most rightly, a 
 hue and cry was raised in the public press 
 over the barbarity of the initiation prac- 
 tices in vogue, on the reception of new 
 members into certain of the college socie- 
 ties. How much did they differ for the 
 worse from what follows ? 
 
 "Feb. 2"], 1827. In the evening I at- 
 tended a very interesting meeting of the 
 Euphrodians. It conferred an honorary 
 degree upon a Dutchman, — in sport of 
 course. He took it all in earnest and 
 
AT HARVARD COLLEGE. 35 
 
 thanked us very politely for the honor we 
 had shown him. Poor fellow, he knows 
 little of the Yankees. This Dutchman, 
 by name Van Beerenstyn, has been in 
 Cambridge some time, during which he 
 has contrived to get acquainted with sev- 
 eral students. Being in one of the stu- 
 dents' rooms, he was persuaded to send a 
 challenge to Mr. Baci, the Italian tutor, 
 with whom he happened to be offended. 
 In a few minutes the challenge was re- 
 turned accepted. Mr. Van then began to 
 shake, but by dint of much persuasion was 
 finally brought to the fatal spot. All pre- 
 liminaries being settled, his antagonist 
 fired first, but without success. Full of 
 hope, the Dutchman raised his hand, drew 
 the trigger, and down dropped Baci. The 
 victor took to his heels without delay. 
 However, he was soon overtaken by a con- 
 stable with his writ, who kept him in dur- 
 ance vile until bonds were given for his 
 appearance in court. For the information 
 of those who never went to college, I will 
 add that the constable and Baci were per- 
 sonated by students. The poor fellow 
 was so alarmed that early this morning he 
 
36 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 walked across the fields to avoid arrest. 
 Being very anxious to obtain his diploma, 
 he came out after dark disguised in a 
 white coat and green specs. I think the 
 joke was carried too far and became no 
 joke at all." 
 
 "Oct. 25, 1827. Tar barrel in college 
 yard this evening. I heard that it was to 
 take place, and was over in Holworthy to 
 see. Passed a couple of hours in Rogers' 
 room, laughing till my sides ached. By 
 the way, I admire to laugh." 
 
 As bringing out the more serious side of 
 young Barnard's character, the succeeding 
 extract from these journals will suffice : — 
 
 " October i, 1827. Walked up to the 
 Botanic Garden with Rogers and Bow- 
 ditch. There was a fine display of fall 
 flowers, whose deep rich colors I always 
 prefer to the gaudy tints of spring and 
 summer. It seems as though Nature put 
 forth all her splendor to grace her depart- 
 ure, and, joining to her glory all that can 
 remind man of his frailty, appears to tell 
 us plainly he must die, — must be forgot- 
 ten, — but stop and think before you write 
 that word ! " 
 
AT HARVARD COLLEGE. 37 
 
 As already has been stated, the real in- 
 terest of young Barnard's mind centred 
 rather in reading of a multifarious charac- 
 ter than in his regular class studies. Fre- 
 quent entries in his journals bear witness 
 to this. " To-day began Tasso's ' Jerusa- 
 lem Delivered.' " " Finished my labors 
 with Botta. Taking copious notes, I ren- 
 dered it quite a task, a long but not un- 
 pleasant one." " To-day Disraeli's ' Curi- 
 osities of Literature.' " " Read ' Lalla 
 Rookh,' one of the most beautiful poems 
 I ever came across." "March 19. Read 
 
 * Martinus Scriblerus,' Byron's ' Cain,' and 
 part of ' Sardanapalus.' " " Finished Con- 
 greve's works to-day, his comedy of the 
 
 * Double Dealer ' most capital ; began on 
 a translation of Goethe's ' Wilhelm Meis- 
 ter,' also Middleton's ' Life of Cicero.' " 
 " Finished Bacon's ' Advancement of 
 Learning,' rich in philosophy and gilded 
 thick with capital quotations." To so 
 varied a literary bill of fare was added the 
 careful reading from beginning to end of 
 such voluminous histories as Gibbon's 
 " Decline and Fall," Hallam's " Middle 
 Ages," and Mitford's " Greece," while to 
 
38 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 books of purely abstract thought there is 
 scarcely a reference. 
 
 Spite of the fact, however, that the reg- 
 ular curriculum took far less hold on his 
 mind than haphazard reading of what- 
 ever illustrated human life, young Barnard 
 maintained a good standing in his class 
 and graduated with honors. It was a class 
 later to be distinguished by such reputa- 
 tions as those of Robert C. Winthrop, 
 George S. Hillard, Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, Thomas B. Fox, Henry I. Bow- 
 ditch, and James Freeman Clarke, all of 
 whom through years to come were to ren- 
 der hearty and efficient service to their 
 friend in his philanthropic work. 
 
VI. 
 
 IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL. 
 
 " I HAVE now taken up my residence at 
 Cambridge, to pursue a course of studies 
 that shall in part fit me for the duties of a 
 Christian instructor, — in part, I say. . . . 
 May the God of all grace so favor the 
 means, to which I am about applying my- 
 self, that I may become a blessing to my 
 friends and a benefit to my fellow-men." 
 So begins, September 7, 1828, the new 
 journal. 
 
 Eminently characteristic of the young 
 man was the " in part, I say." For minute 
 textual criticism, proofs of the being and 
 attributes of God, systematic bodies of 
 divinity, he cherished but a traditional 
 respect, and not very much even of that. 
 As to prolix discussions of the genuine- 
 ness of the Gospels, they were, in the only 
 sense in which he cared for the word, so 
 uniquely genuine in life and spirit, that 
 
40 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 doubtless he would have replied as did 
 George III. to Bishop Sherlock, on the 
 presentation of his "Apology for Chris- 
 tianity," " Why, God bless my soul, I did 
 not know before it needed to be apolo- 
 gized for." All this in no spirit of dero- 
 gation from the real value of such studies, 
 but only in witness that here was a youth 
 of such fervid humanity and glowing 
 piety that the simple vision of the beauty 
 and joy of a kingdom of God on earth, as 
 Jesus flashed it forth, set him all aflame. 
 He wanted, indeed, to go through the 
 Divinity School, but very much for the 
 same reasons that actuate certain medical 
 students in going through the Medical 
 School, namely, to get into position to 
 try what is theoretically taught there on 
 actual typhus and smallpox. Accordingly, 
 one of the first entries in the new journal 
 runs as follows : " Read a fine tract called 
 ' The Final Tendency of Religious Con- 
 troversy.' I never was much inclined to 
 religious disputes. Religious disputes ! 
 what a phrase. Professor Norton has 
 written a book in favor of controversy, 
 which Fox says I ought to read. I mean 
 
IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL. 41 
 
 to, but I dare to think the professor will 
 not convert me." 
 
 The miscellaneous reading still went on, 
 but now more on lines of whatever in 
 the manners and customs of men, particu- 
 larly in the Orient, would help to make 
 the gospel story more vivid to imagina- 
 tion. Reading and study alike, however, 
 were perpetually broken in upon by excur- 
 sions into the living world of the day, to 
 see for himself what was going on for the 
 practical relief of misery or for the uplift- 
 ing of the degraded. As an example of 
 this, let the following extract serve : " I 
 passed the remainder of the day with G. 
 Haskins, who has been appointed chap- 
 lain of the House of Industry. Saw the 
 female inmates at their dinner. I had 
 thought such faces and such forms dwelt 
 only in the imagination of Cruikshank, but 
 there they were, living, moving, and eating 
 rice pudding. It being late and rainy, I 
 concluded to stay till the morrow with 
 him. I woke several times during the 
 night, and, in spite of the toothache, 
 laughed heartily at the idea of sleeping 
 in an almshouse, — the which oddity, how- 
 ever, may again occur." 
 
42 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 During his three years' stay in the Cam- 
 bridge Divinity School, a philanthropic 
 society was formed among the students, 
 of which young Barnard w^as the most 
 active spirit. On all sides, signs were 
 manifest of a resolute determination to 
 make practical application to the worst 
 evils of society of the sublime visions of 
 the future of humanity, with which the 
 preaching of Dr. Channing had inflamed 
 so many minds. In those days, Dr. Chan- 
 ning stood forth clad in the robes of in- 
 spirer and prophet. Through the lumi- 
 nous beauty of his eyes shone the light 
 and through the tones of his voice thrilled 
 the emotions that revealed a diviner realm 
 of life to others. But frail in health, and 
 with a body so etherealized as to " serve 
 but as a pretext for keeping his soul a 
 little longer on earth," he was incapable 
 of the physical strain involved in flinging 
 himself against the hard realities and into 
 the rough and tumble melee of practical 
 philanthropic work. Nor was this called 
 for, more than for the captain of the ship 
 to desert his charts and sextant, or the 
 steersman his compass and wheel, to brace 
 
IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL. 43 
 
 the halliards. Hundreds of physically 
 tougher men and women, of men and wo- 
 men organized by nature for the active 
 rather than the contemplative life, were 
 getting ready to come to close quarters 
 with drunkenness, slavery, pauperism, in- 
 sanity, and to try to make the blind see, 
 the dumb speak, and the lame walk. Chan- 
 ning's part was it to supply the vision and 
 the sacred passion. 
 
 Already now was Dr. Tuckerman en- 
 grossed body and soul in the work of car- 
 rying into the slums of the city this high 
 religious idealism. Quite as eagerly, too, 
 was he on the lookout for young men 
 cordially sympathetic with his own high- 
 wrought sense of the privilege of dedi- 
 cating their lives to such a service. 
 
 Certainly, the last thing young Barnard 
 was looking forward to was a pulpit in 
 a city church, or indeed in any church, 
 where he should minister simply to the 
 well-to-do. It was to the disinherited he 
 felt a call to minister, and especiall}^ as al- 
 ready he was beginning to feel, to disin- 
 herited children exposed to every form of 
 the worst temptation. Instinctive as his 
 
44 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 love of birds was his love of children, his 
 yearning, too, to fling wide the doors of 
 the imprisoning cages of narrow dogma 
 and harsh discipline, and set them free to 
 wing it under the blue sky and warm sun- 
 shine, heirs of all the beauty of the world. 
 " I have often thought," he breaks out in 
 his journal, "that there would be few things 
 more delightful than to take a young child 
 and open to his mind the glorious truths 
 of Christianity. Philosophers have longed 
 to watch the breaking of natural light upon 
 an eye reclaimed from blindness, but the 
 experiment is naught, compared to the un- 
 folding of Christianity to a living soul." 
 
 Truer words of self-criticism were never 
 written than these. Throughout life their 
 writer felt the same enthusiastic delight in 
 cultivating the child-soul as the horticul- 
 turist in cultivating roses and lilies. Not 
 a question of soil, temperature, sunshine, 
 moisture, protection from frost, insect, and 
 blight, but was as vital to the one as the 
 other. True, the word "environment" had 
 not yet been invented in those early days, 
 at least in the technical sense in which 
 it has been so perpetually, and perhaps 
 
IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL. 
 
 wearisomely, used since the publication of 
 Darwin's " Origin of Species." But no 
 more than Darwin did young Barnard be- 
 lieve in the old-fashioned idea of the per- 
 manence and immutability of species, — 
 most especially in the permanence and 
 immutability of the species bad boy as ver- 
 sus the species good boy. In the whole 
 controversy between the champions of 
 inherited and the champions of acquired 
 characteristics, as determinative of char- 
 acter, he took sides emphatically with the 
 latter. The influences emanating from 
 one's habitual surroundings, these, he felt, 
 are the magic forces that shape him ; and 
 the glory of human effort and the pledge 
 of its ultimate triumphant success lie in 
 the transcendent variety and richness of 
 the means put at man's command — if 
 only he will see and use them — for cre- 
 ating a new environment. All this stood 
 out as clearly before the mind of the young 
 man, as in matters of physical health be- 
 fore that of the physician when he sends 
 away a puny, emaciated child from the con- 
 finement of the hot city to breathe in the 
 iodine of the seashore or the balsam of the 
 pine-clad mountain top. 
 
VII. 
 
 ORDINATION. 
 
 On completing his course, September, 
 1 83 1, in the Cambridge Divinity School, 
 the magnet that proved strongest in at- 
 traction for Charles F. Barnard was, as 
 already has been stated. Dr. Joseph Tuck- 
 erman, whom he now began to accompany 
 in his daily rounds through the worse 
 quarters of the city. Under these circum- 
 stances was it that occurred the short but 
 decisive interchange quoted farther back: 
 " * If,' cried I, * these are your flock and 
 that is your chapel, let me be your help- 
 meet ! ' ' For life ? ' asked he. ' For life ! ' 
 added I.' " Already had two other devoted 
 young men, Frederick T. Gray and Robert 
 C. Waterston, associated themselves with 
 the veteran pioneer. The charge of the 
 poor of the city was now to be divided 
 among the four, in the resolve that, God 
 helping them, ignorance, disease, pauper- 
 
ORDINATION. 47 
 
 ism, and irreligion should be abolished. 
 With no less fervid hope than this was the 
 work begun. 
 
 Not until November 2, 1834, was it, how- 
 ever, that, adequate trial having been made 
 and measures matured by the Fraternity of 
 Churches, actual ordination to the minis- 
 try at large was conferred on two of these 
 young men, Charles F. Barnard and Fred- 
 erick T. Gray. The service took place in 
 the presence of a crowded congregation 
 in Federal Street Church, Dr. Tuckerman 
 preaching the sermon, and the charge be- 
 ing given by Dr. Channing. Here was a 
 work that lay very close to Dr. Channing's 
 heart. Not his, the too common feeling 
 that in the ministry to the poor and igno- 
 rant no especial mental ability is called for, 
 or that tinsel rhetoric and plenty of super- 
 stition will prove far more congenial than 
 clear reason and high feeling. In ^F^sop's 
 Fables, which every child could enjoy and 
 yet feel the depths of. Dr. Channing recog- 
 nized as great an exercise of intellectual 
 insight as in many a lofty tragedy or pro- 
 found treatise of philosophy. To him the 
 simple parables of Jesus were as imme- 
 
48 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 diate a divine creative act as the lilies of 
 the field or the birds of the air they illus- 
 trated and glorified. Therefore was it that 
 he charged so emphatically the young men 
 before him never for an instant to confuse 
 simplicity with shallowness of thought, or 
 to give in to the idea that all that was 
 expected of them was commonplace nutri- 
 ment for commonplace minds. 
 
 " We charge you, my friends," Dr. 
 Channing urged, " to beware of this com- 
 mon error. Do not dishonor your high 
 calling by supposing it to require little 
 force of thought and feeling. The poor 
 are generally ignorant, but in some re- 
 spects they are better critics than the rich, 
 and make greater demands on their teach- 
 ers. They can only be brought and held 
 together by a preaching which fastens 
 their attention, or pierces their consciences, 
 or moves their hearts. They are no critics 
 of words, but they know when they are 
 touched or roused, and by this test, a far 
 truer one than you find in fastidious con- 
 gregations, they judge the minister and 
 determine whether to follow or forsake 
 him. 
 
ORDINATION. 49 
 
 " Their minister must reach the under- 
 standing through the imagination and the 
 heart. He must appeal to the simple, uni- 
 versal principles of human nature. . . . 
 Take your texts, as your Master did, from 
 scenes, events, objects, which are pressing 
 on the notice of your hearers. Better for- 
 sake your ministry than make it a monot- 
 onous repetition of the common modes of 
 teaching and action. 
 
 " You must not wait for the poor in the 
 church. Go to them in their houses. Go 
 where no others will go. . . . Feel an 
 attraction in what others shun, in the 
 bleak room open to the winter's wind, in 
 the wasted form and the haggard counte- 
 nance, in the very degradation of your race. 
 . . . You will be told to arm yourself with 
 caution, to beware of deception, and the 
 lesson is important ; but prudence and 
 caution are only defensive armor. They 
 will be security to yourselves; they give 
 no power over misery, poverty, and vice. 
 . . . The only power to oppose to evil is 
 love, strong, enduring love, a benevolence 
 which no crime or wretchedness can con- 
 quer, and which therefore can conquer all. 
 
50 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 . . . Do not go to the poor as the repre- 
 sentatives of the richer classes, to keep 
 them in order; but go, in the name of 
 Christians, to make them partakers of the 
 highest distinctions and blessings in which 
 any of us rejoice." 
 
 It was a high commission that was 
 lifted up before the eyes of the young man 
 in these words of Dr. Channing, and fully 
 did his heart respond to them. The ser- 
 vice, however, stood to him personally but 
 as an anointing, in the presence of a sol- 
 emn assemblage, to a work to which he 
 was already consecrated heart and soul. 
 Perhaps the deepest significance of all lay 
 in the crowded congregation, and in the 
 firm persuasion that it was made up of so 
 many noble men and women ready to co- 
 operate in patient, self-denying, year-long 
 toil in the blessed cause. Apart from 
 them, how little could have been expected. 
 But there they were, asking only for an 
 inspiring leader, to be swift with a gener- 
 ous response. 
 
VIII. 
 
 BRIEF MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 As already said, Charles F. Barnard for 
 eighteen months previous to his ordina- 
 tion had been embarked on the full tide 
 of work. The city had granted him the 
 use of Ward Room No. ii, to be used in 
 his service as minister at large, and had 
 made him a director in the House of In- 
 dustry. He kept incessantly engaged in 
 visiting the poor and studying their needs, 
 in consoling them in their sorrows and 
 counseling them in their difficulties. How 
 happy he was in these rounds of grate- 
 ful duty finds constant expression in his 
 journals. 
 
 " The little tots at South Boston came 
 running to me, calling me by name. I 
 could not but feel for them, the lone or- 
 phans in a poorhouse. I smiled on them 
 and patted their cheeks. As I left the 
 room, I turned round and saw them all 
 
52 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 running about and saying, ' Oh, he likes 
 me ! ' and ' He likes me ! ' and ' He likes 
 me too ! ' 
 
 " Saw old Mrs. Cook again. It always 
 does me good to see her, — so poor and 
 feeble, and yet so happy and trustful. ' I 
 want nothing now,' said she, 'but good- 
 ness, and I shall never say I don't want 
 that' It seems sometimes that if we could 
 only once get people into the field, they 
 would all be ministers at large. Is it not 
 meant that they should be } " 
 
 To crown his happiness, he had for some 
 time been engaged to a young woman of 
 rare ideality of character, who entered with 
 enthusiasm into all his hopes and schemes, 
 — Miss Adeline M. Russell. Their house 
 at No. 686 Washington Street had been 
 made ready for them, and a week after the 
 ordination. May 26, 1834, they were mar- 
 ried, and there set up their home. " I feel 
 now the whole of life's great mystery," he 
 writes ; " I am conscious of the full pulse 
 of true existence." But before a month 
 had passed she was lying dead, and he 
 was left alone. 
 
 To a man of such emotional intensity, 
 
BRIEF MARRIED LIFE. 53 
 
 the shock was terrible. He sought relief 
 by devoting himself in an even more con- 
 secrated spirit to his work, and by seeking 
 forgetfulness of his private sorrow in the 
 vast sorrow of the world. It is the bless- 
 edness of natures so full of love as his, 
 and in which love supplies rich material of 
 vision to imagination, that under its spell 
 the sharpest woes of life become transfig- 
 ured. The exaltation he always experi- 
 enced in the presence of nature and the 
 imagery it supplied for vivid conceptions 
 of the yearned-for heaven now came to his 
 relief with a power he never felt before. 
 It was, then, in a strain of religious feel- 
 ing like this which follows that he could, 
 later on, write of a visit to the seashore at 
 Cohasset. 
 
 "How much they lose who lose the 
 majesty of night. We had first a fine sun- 
 set, followed by a broad pink column of 
 zodiacal light. Star after star was lit up 
 to gem the vault of the great temple, and 
 the Milky Way was flowing from north to 
 south as a wreath of incense. The mete- 
 ors dropped through our atmosphere as 
 from another world. The Northern Lights 
 
54 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 continued very bright, now burning in 
 brilliant spots, now streaming as vast organ 
 pipes into the upper air. The east grew 
 brighter and brighter, the moon rose slowly 
 and threw her chaste light upon all around 
 us. How full the murmur of the ocean 
 was of her I Such things fill my life with 
 solemn pleasure. I can sit on the sand 
 and enjoy our life of love over again, while 
 the power of God moves before me on the 
 waters, and eternal life is echoed in their 
 incessant beat." 
 
IX. 
 
 THE children's CHURCH. 
 
 Familiar enough is the pathetic con- 
 fession of Martin Luther's Hfe-long friend 
 and co-worker, PhiHp Melancthon, of the 
 pain that struck home to his heart when 
 on going forth, his soul aflame with the 
 " glad tidings of great joy " he longed to 
 proclaim to his fellow-men, he was met by 
 them with apathy or disdain. Yet it is 
 a confession repeating itself in every fresh 
 generation. Short and terse was the 
 phrase in which the disheartened preacher 
 summed it up : "I found that Old Adam 
 was too strong for young Melancthon ; " 
 but it stood for the all of the inevitable 
 moral shock involved in the first encounter 
 of a mind, nurtured on the highest aspi- 
 rations and most radiant hopes of elect 
 spirits, with the accumulated evils, brutali- 
 ties, and deceits ingrained in the lower 
 strata of society. 
 
56 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 In all such high -wrought idealism as 
 that of Dr. Charming there lies a peril, as 
 well as an inspiration, to the ardent hearer. 
 Such a preacher "knows man, but not 
 men," knows the divine element in human 
 nature, but not its animalism and moral 
 degradation. He sees visions and he 
 dreams dreams. So ravishing are they, 
 such an opening wide of the gates into a 
 visible heaven, that fired with their spirit- 
 ual beauty, kindred minds believe for the 
 hour that they need only go forth to pro- 
 claim them, and forthwith the new revela- 
 tion will be greeted with thanksgiving on 
 every hand. Many the impulsive spirits 
 that listen with gladness to such strains 
 as Channing's, and then seeking to bring 
 them home in all their glory to fighting 
 Tom, and drunken Mary, and lying Bill, 
 " immediately are offended, and having no 
 root in themselves, endure but for a while 
 and then wither away." 
 
 This was the trial now before young 
 Barnard. His heart was bruised and sore 
 over his own personal affliction, and yet 
 comforted and uplifted by exalted religious 
 faith. It was not suffering, but unsolaced 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 57 
 
 suffering, that seemed to him the burden 
 of humanity ; and so he set to work with 
 renewed consecration, able at last, he felt, 
 to speak as one having authority through 
 his own baptism of pain. But now in his 
 letters and journals occurs many a passage 
 of deep inward depression. 
 
 " I meet," he writes a friend, " with con- 
 tinual disappointment among the objects 
 of my ministry. They deceive me in every 
 point to get assistance from me, and, worse 
 than all, they lead me into false hopes as 
 to their moral and spiritual advancement. 
 But I feel that insensibly I am getting 
 used to it, and that it is leading me to 
 read better and hold faster the great rules 
 of prudence and caution. I am getting to 
 be more distrustful of myself, — my feel- 
 ings, — the appearances of things, — and 
 feel that I must use all means, the most 
 humble and the most remote, of ascertain- 
 ing the true character and the real claims 
 of those who may apply to me, — thus 
 making human nature, under its various 
 phases, the study of my life. Meanwhile 
 I keep, or try to keep, always at work, 
 instant in season and out of season, from 
 
58 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 the firm belief that such is my positive 
 duty, and that such a course of untiring 
 exertion is absolutely required of me by 
 my Heavenly Father." 
 
 More and more evident was it becom- 
 ing that his interest in his work was in- 
 creasingly centring in neglected children. 
 His own was preeminently a child nature, 
 impulsive, enthusiastic, spontaneous, open- 
 eyed with wonder as in a new world. For 
 an efficient worker among a population of 
 ignorant and degraded adults, a man really 
 needs in his make-up a rare and subtle 
 combination of the detective and the saint. 
 But of the detective there was little or 
 nothing in Mr. Barnard. Impulsive be- 
 nevolence ran away with him, and he was 
 easily imposed on. To spend day after 
 day like a consecrated ferret, tracking out 
 all the intricate windings in the rat-holes 
 of deceit, was utterly repulsive to him, and 
 would have left him little wiser in the end 
 than when he set out. But with children 
 he was at home. He could make them 
 happy. He could win their love. He 
 could open up to them a new world of 
 life and beauty. Even in his own sorrow, 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 59 
 
 he found them his best consolers. " I can 
 hardly tell you," he writes his friend 
 Thomas B. Fox, " how much of my com- 
 fort has sprung from my children of the 
 Sunday-school and chapel. You saw their 
 tears. I have felt all their deep, lively 
 interest betrayed in every look and act 
 toward me. I have almost wept for joy in 
 the streets on noticing their manner of ap- 
 proaching me, on hearing the sweet tones 
 of their voices subdued and mellowed to 
 the accents of truest affection." 
 
 Already, as far back as November 11, 
 1832, the beginning had been made in the 
 parlors of Miss Dorothea L. Dix — later 
 the devoted benefactor of the insane — of 
 a movement that was destined to grow 
 into a veritable " Children's Church," — 
 original and unique in character, pregnant 
 with far-reaching results. It started with 
 a class of three pupils seated on a little 
 green bench, which is now kept in War- 
 ren Street Chapel as a historic memorial 
 of the Child Hegira. Before a month had 
 passed, so rapidly had the numbers in- 
 creased that Miss Dix's parlors would no 
 longer hold them. While there, all by 
 
6o CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 themselves, Mr. Barnard had been able to 
 make the service replete with interest and 
 charm to the children. Now, however, 
 for lack of ample quarters, he was forced 
 to unite his school to that of Rev. John 
 Pierpont in the Hollis Street Church, " he 
 assuming the office of minister to the chil- 
 dren for a special service, but agreeing 
 that they should likewise attend the regu- 
 lar ministration to the adults." 
 
 Of course, to a staid, old-fashioned con- 
 gregation like that of Dr. Pierpont, there 
 were features in this new departure which 
 seemed closely allied to " an irruption of 
 the barbarians," — and not unnaturally. 
 Seats were assigned the children in the 
 gallery during the church service, and it 
 was complained that the tattoo of their 
 heels on the pew-boards seriously disturbed 
 the devotions of the worshipers. More- 
 over, when an actual transfer of the dis- 
 turbers to the vestry for a service of their 
 own was decided on, still the arrival and 
 departure of the pupils, together with the 
 sound of their singing, were inevitable 
 sources of annoyance. 
 
 Upon Mr. Barnard's mind, on the other 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 6l 
 
 hand, that tattoo of heels on the pew- 
 boards acted as inspiringly as the beat- 
 ing of the morning reveille drums on the 
 sleeping soldiery. It was simply an em- 
 phatic proclamation of nature that preach- 
 ing so admirably adapted as Dr. Pierpont's 
 to thoughtful adults was pure torment to 
 children. Their heels went because their 
 abounding nervous forces, concentrated 
 neither in mind nor heart, must work off 
 at the extremities. Strict justice compels 
 one to say that here was a case in which 
 " Wisdom was justified in both her chil- 
 dren," — in Dr. Pierpont's congregation in 
 devoutly wishing to get rid of so much 
 racket, and in Mr. Barnard's reacting con- 
 viction that a new and decided step must 
 be taken in the religious nurture of chil- 
 dren. Meanwhile, as a makeshift till some- 
 thing better could be done, a rather dismal 
 hall over the old engine house in Common 
 Street, where the Brimmer schoolhouse 
 now stands, was occupied for about a 
 year. 
 
 Already, into the "Children's Church" 
 established in the Hollis Street Vestry, had 
 Mr. Barnard succeeded in bringing to- 
 
62 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 gether no less than two hundred and fifty 
 boys and girls, a part of them regularly 
 connected with Dr. Pierpont's society, and 
 the rest personally attracted to him in the 
 course of his work of ministering to the 
 poor in the lanes and cellars of the city. 
 From the start he had showed a happy 
 faculty for "getting in " with street boys. 
 Though grave in aspect, tall and angular 
 in stature, and with a voice and manner 
 rather blunt than sentimental, not at all 
 the typical St. Vincent de Paul of the Ital- 
 ian pictures, yet children never for an in- 
 stant mistook his hearty, human nature 
 for the pious disguise of an atrabilious 
 minister, surreptitiously bent on decoying 
 them in to a festival of dreary catechisms 
 or spectral tracts. Out of the grave face 
 would soon leap a smile and out of the set 
 lips a jest, all the more attractive for a 
 something behind them that commanded 
 respect. Abruptly would he stop on the 
 street before a group of boys pitching cop- 
 pers and, instead of asking them if they 
 " knew where they would be sure to go to," 
 should they continue such sinful practices, 
 manifest a thoroughly human interest in 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 63 
 
 the game. Then by degrees he would ask 
 them whether they had ever seen the old 
 elm in Cambridge under which Washing- 
 ton first drew his sword ; or, if he ques- 
 tioned them as to the books they read, be 
 much more apt to dilate with rapture on 
 the pleasure to be derived from the " Ara- 
 bian Nights " than from " Harvey's Medi- 
 tations among the Tombs." Step by step 
 he thus drew them on to hear him talk 
 about his chapel, where there were nice 
 books to read, and from wWch went out 
 chestnuting many a merry party, or on 
 excursions down the harbor ; the now at- 
 tractive discourse terminating with a hearty 
 invitation that they should come round 
 next Sunday morning and try for them- 
 selves how they liked it. Many and many 
 the boy or girl who was thus skillfully 
 hooked ; while proselytes in plenty were 
 tolled in through the enthusiastic way in 
 which the praises of the chapel were sung 
 by the children who, in their own slang, 
 had " sampled " it themselves. 
 
 However, the hall in Common Street 
 proved anything but what satisfied Mr. 
 Barnard's ideal of the right surroundings 
 
64 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD, 
 
 for a " Children's Church." Underneath it 
 was the engine house, where gathered every 
 Sunday a crew of loafers, smoking, drink- 
 ing, and making such a hubbub that even 
 in hot weather it was necessary to keep 
 the windows shut to secure stillness enough 
 to render the services audible. Moreover, 
 during week days the hall was used for a 
 primary-school room, necessitating ardu- 
 ous preparation to get things ready for 
 Sunday, and rendering futile every attempt 
 to give it an attractive appearance. Be- 
 sides, it was crowded to overflowing. 
 
 So popular, none the less, had the ser- 
 vices become, and so many superior and 
 charming men and women had Mr. Bar- 
 nard's enthusiasm enlisted in his aid, that 
 numbers of children of richer parentage 
 from the old established churches insisted 
 on deserting the sacred feast, dry as the 
 remainder biscuit, served in their own par- 
 ishes, and on joining heart and soul in a 
 movement so much more congenial with 
 their time of life. So far as such mingling 
 of rich and poor went, Mr. Barnard heart- 
 ily approved of it. He felt it was good for 
 both. The last thing he believed in was 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 65 
 
 a church composed of the exclusively poor 
 or the exclusively rich, whether children or 
 adults. " Freely ye have received, freely 
 give," was his maxim respecting the favored 
 classes. " Of such is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven" was his equal sense of the nat- 
 ural, hearty, unconventional way in which 
 children take to one another, regardless of 
 questions of birth, dress, or the quarter of 
 the town lived in. 
 
 None the less, this exodus from the older 
 churches awakened great jealousy on the 
 part of their pastors, and Mr. Barnard was 
 sharply taken to task for seducing the 
 children from their natural relations to 
 their ancestral churches. In vain he 
 pleaded that he had never in this way so- 
 licited a single child. Then must he for- 
 bid them to come and positively refuse 
 to receive them. This he declined to do, 
 agreeing, however, to admit none but with 
 the written consent of their parents. Still, 
 so thoroughly interested were large num- 
 bers of children, as to find no difficulty in 
 obtaining such written consent from fathers 
 and mothers, only too glad to see their 
 boys and girls heartily enlisted in anything 
 
66 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 good. '' If ministers do not want their 
 children to roam abroad," said Mr. .Bar- 
 nard, " they must make it attractive to them 
 at home. Bees will go where the honey- 
 suckles bloom. None come to us," he 
 added, " from King's Chapel, for Mr. 
 Greenwood makes it so pleasant there for 
 his children that they do not want to stray 
 off anywhere else." 
 
 Ideas are revolutionary, as much so in 
 the case of children as of grown people. 
 That the whole attitude of the church 
 toward the religious education of children 
 must be revolutionized now became Mr. 
 Barnard's deep and even fiery conviction. 
 Religion in the way in which it is presented 
 is made a burden to them. It is offered 
 them in abstract, lifeless propositions. It 
 has no affinities with their free, happy na- 
 tures. It does not smell of the clover, 
 sparkle with the sunshine, carol with the 
 birds. Invite them to the open festival 
 of sky, lily, spontaneous joy, and love, as 
 Jesus proclaimed it, and you will create a 
 church whose genuineness will reach on 
 and emancipate all other churches. 
 
 How intensely this feeling had now 
 
THE CHILDREN'S CHURCH. 6 J 
 
 taken hold of Mr. Barnard's mind is evi- 
 dent in a letter he wrote about this time to 
 one of his brothers. " At the bottom," he 
 says, " I have little or no faith in our pres- 
 ent churches or in any of our other admin- 
 istrations of Christianity. I do not find 
 my idea of my Master realized in them. 
 We are too formal, too pharisaical, too cold 
 and heartless. The religious life should 
 be as spontaneous, simple, and easy as the 
 natural life. Jesus, to my apprehension, 
 was not a priest, nor did he have a pulpit. 
 He lived among people, he understood 
 their wants, he was always ready to show 
 his sympathy and good will. . . . Let a 
 man at the present day tread the same 
 path and be conversant and familiar with 
 man in the market, at the shop, by the fire- 
 side, and at the sick-bed, — let him do all 
 this out of the abundance of his heart and 
 with untiring devotion, as simply and 
 quietly too as he breathes, — and the same 
 blessed gospel will be uttered over again." 
 
X. 
 
 PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. 
 
 As stated in the previous chapter, the 
 noise, crowding, and general discomfort 
 inevitably bound up with such a gath- 
 ering-place as the hall over the engine 
 house had brought Mr. Barnard to the 
 settled conviction that he must have larger 
 and more commodious accommodations, 
 or give up the hope of establishing such 
 a " Children's Church " as he yearned to 
 see in happy operation. Accordingly, he 
 addressed a long and earnest appeal to 
 the Central Board of the Benevolent Fra- 
 ternity of Churches, under which he held 
 commission as a minister at large, pray- 
 ing that a suitable building might be 
 erected for the purposes he had in view. 
 
 The whole number of families uncon- 
 nected with any parish, in the quarter of 
 the city assigned to his charge, he put 
 down at four hundred and fifty-seven, three 
 
PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. 69 
 
 hundred and three of these families com- 
 posed of the worst classes of our poor, 
 reckless, improvident, debased by intem- 
 perance and kindred vices. Friend Street 
 Chapel, in which he preached to such of 
 them as he could collect on Sunday even- 
 ings, he described as a place so close and 
 hot " that it always had to be closed dur- 
 ing the summer months; " adding, " I have 
 often preached there when I should have 
 been ashamed to have carried my friends 
 with me, the air was so bad. I trust we 
 shall be equally careful of the feelings and 
 comfort of the poor." Quite as strong 
 objections could be brought against the 
 engine house in which the children were 
 gathered. 
 
 What was needed, he now insisted, was 
 a commodious building, conveniently sit- 
 uated, embracing an audience- room for 
 three or four hundred people and smaller 
 rooms for classes, — " in every way worthy 
 to take rank among the permanent insti- 
 tutions of the city." Further, " we must do 
 more than provide such places for the 
 poor. We must go with them, we must 
 share in their devotions, we must show by 
 
70 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 our presence at the altars raised for their 
 benefit that we are interested also in the 
 sacrifice to be offered thereon. I am glad 
 to believe that God will never smile upon 
 the attempt to carry the distinctions of 
 the world into the house of his worship. 
 The Friend Street Chapel has always re- 
 ceived important aid from those members 
 of the wealthier classes who have attended 
 its services. Whenever such attendance 
 was diminished, I observed the ill effects 
 among the poor. They spoke of it them- 
 selves with feelings of regret. Should it 
 ever cease, the attendance of the poor 
 would cease with it. My own audience 
 at the South End is of a mixed character. 
 Were it not so, it would never have been 
 as large. I pray that through the blessing 
 of Heaven it may always continue the 
 same." 
 
 For reasons easily comprehensible, Mr. 
 Barnard's appeal to the Central Board was 
 adversely reported on. The whole experi- 
 ment of the ministry at large was com- 
 paratively a new one, and had not yet 
 gained the confidence of the community. 
 Even under existing conditions, it was 
 
PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. 71 
 
 hard to raise the needful funds to carry it 
 on. Therefore, propositions inevitably en- 
 tailing further outlay were listened to with 
 dread, even by the conscientious and de- 
 voted men who had charge of its affairs. 
 Besides, Mr. Barnard had already aroused 
 feelings of coolness, if not of personal 
 enmity, among laymen and among his 
 clerical brethren, as men of his impetuos- 
 ity of temperament are always sure to 
 do. Unintentionally he had made inroads, 
 as has been seen, on the young lambs of 
 their flocks ; and altogether there was a 
 fire, an immensity of demand and expecta- 
 tion, an alarming novelty in methods, about 
 him, that older, and perhaps more expe- 
 rienced, men could not keep pace with. 
 So far, the ministry at large had been con- 
 ducted on certain definite lines imprinted 
 on it by the philanthropic genius of its 
 original inspirer. Dr. Tuckerman, an inno- 
 vator speedily transformed by his ardent 
 converts into an impassable barrier, as is 
 always the unwilling fate of such men. 
 And now this impetuous young cavalier 
 of humanity was charging outside of es- 
 tablished lines. Especially did certain 
 
72 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 really excellent men become more than 
 half afraid of him, as they saw him con- 
 centrating his interest with increasing 
 ardor on the unheard-of idea of a " Chil- 
 dren's Church," and insisting with such 
 pertinacity that in the administration of re- 
 ligion the poor stood in quite as vital need 
 of beauty of surroundings and of variety 
 and charm of ministrations as the rich. 
 
 There is a world-old puzzle which has 
 exercised and bewildered the wits of 
 countless generations of children, namely, 
 which came first, the hen or the ^g^. 
 Yet it is a puzzle that does not lose a whit 
 of its perplexity when raised by adults in 
 questions of philanthropy. " There could 
 not have been a hen without an ^^^ to 
 be hatched out of," say the bafHed little 
 ones, " and there could not have been an 
 ^ZZ without a preliminary hen to lay it." 
 Equally did Mr. Barnard find himself 
 summoned, in his dealings with the poor, 
 to wrestle with this obscure conundrum : 
 Shall I work first on the parents, so many 
 of them already confirmed in bad habits, 
 in the hope of having them bring in the 
 children, or shall I work first on the chil- 
 
PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. jt, 
 
 dren, and so through their young eager 
 life of hope and aspiration react on what 
 remains of higher feeling in the parents ? 
 Does not the sheep follow her young lamb 
 in the arms of the shepherd, and is not 
 the same principle an all-powerful one in 
 human nature ? The most abandoned, are 
 they not touched when they see their chil- 
 dren placed under influences of higher 
 wisdom and purity than have guided their 
 own lives ? Unhesitatingly, Mr. Barnard 
 answered the philanthropic conundrum in 
 favor of the egg as over the hen. 
 
 Seeing, then, that the opposition of the 
 Central Board could not be surmounted, 
 Mr. Barnard made up his mind to go for- 
 ward in his own independent way. In 
 other words, he now determined that have 
 a chapel of the kind he wanted, he would. 
 Like all successful innovators, he was am- 
 ply endowed with the combative energies 
 requisite to push his ideas to the front. 
 So forthwith he issued the following ap- 
 peal to the public : — 
 
 The building which I occupy at pres- 
 ent as a chapel in my ministry among the 
 
74 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 poor is too small for the audience and 
 very inconvenient in many other respects. 
 I am very desirous of procuring a new 
 building, and I beg to lay before you the 
 steps I intend to take toward effecting 
 this. An estate bounded upon Warren 
 and Pleasant streets can be procured for 
 about six thousand, five hundred dollars. 
 Such a building as I wish can be erected 
 upon it for the same sum. This building 
 is to be of brick, two stories high, and 
 measuring fifty feet by sixty. The lower 
 floor will be divided into two schoolrooms, 
 to be let for private schools during the 
 week, and to be used for the Sabbath- 
 school classes on that day. There will 
 remain upon this floor two parlors, with 
 bedrooms, closets, etc., for my own resi- 
 dence. In these I shall be able to live in 
 the centre of my sphere among the poor. 
 I can maintain a constant and pleasant 
 connection with the children under my 
 charge, and all plans that promise to be 
 of service can readily be put into opera- 
 tion. The upper story will be thrown into 
 a single hall, to be used as a place of wor- 
 ship and religious instruction, and to be 
 
PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. 75 
 
 open for the Thursday evening lecture on 
 Natural History, or for any other means 
 of enlightening, elevating, and sanctifying 
 both parents and children of the poorer 
 and neglected classes. Thirteen thousand 
 dollars will be needed for the above pur- 
 pose. This sum I hope to raise in the 
 following manner : I will subscribe a 
 thousand dollars, and a friend of mine 
 five hundred, which we will connect per- 
 manently with the concern, so that, in 
 case of my death, or any accident, that 
 shall threaten a depreciation of the prop- 
 erty, these fifteen hundred dollars shall 
 pass to the credit of the other subscrib- 
 ers of the stock. The remaining sum of 
 eleven thousand, five hundred dollars I 
 propose to raise among my friends. The 
 estate will be mortgaged for the several 
 sums they may advance. Five per cent, 
 per annum will be paid them in interest, 
 and I will keep the building insured and 
 in good repair. The estate is one which 
 Mr. Francis Jackson thinks will for many 
 years continue to advance in value. The 
 building proposed could easily be con- 
 verted into a dwelling-house or disposed 
 
76 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 of in some other way without a material 
 loss, should it become necessary to do so. 
 Mr. Charles Barnard, Israel Munson, Esq., 
 Mr. Wm. Sturgis, and Mr. F. Stanton 
 have subscribed a thousand dollars each. 
 I have taken the liberty of asking your 
 attention to this plan. 
 With great regard, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 C. F. Barnard. 
 
 So great was the personal interest Mr. 
 Barnard had inspired in many minds that 
 this circular, issued purely on his own ac- 
 count, met with immediate acceptance. 
 Men of the standing of William Sturgis, 
 Robert G. Shaw, James Jackson, Charles 
 Jackson, William Prescott, Nathan Apple- 
 ton, Patrick T. Jackson, Ebenezer Francis, 
 John L. Emmons, Abbott Lawrence, came 
 forward at once with subscriptions of from 
 five hundred to one thousand dollars ; while, 
 in smaller amounts, large numbers of the 
 best men and women of the city were repre- 
 sented on the list. As highly capable busi- 
 ness and professional men, wary enough 
 of yielding in charitable El Dorados to any 
 
PLEA FOR A NEW BUILDING. 77 
 
 lure of dazzling investments, it was no 
 doubt far more the enthusiasm of the pro- 
 jector of Warren Street Chapel that moved 
 them than the aerial mirage of five per 
 cent, interest. His own fervid conviction 
 that he was to found an institution that 
 would " lay up treasure in heaven " carried 
 the day with them, awakening in their 
 breasts a class of sentiments that would 
 have lain dormant had it been a practical 
 question of establishing a new bank or 
 cotton-mill. 
 
XL 
 
 WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 
 
 The corner-stone of Warren Street 
 Chapel was laid July 23, 1835, Dr. Tuck- 
 erman adding, in his own handwriting, 
 to the inscription to be put under the 
 stone the words, "primarily for children." 
 Mr. Barnard was now supremely happy. 
 Hardly did the Jews returning from the 
 Babylonian Captivity watch with more 
 eager delight the rebuilding of the temple 
 on its old desolated site, than now he and 
 his flock of boys and girls the rearing of 
 this humble building. It was to be their 
 own church, the church of the boys and 
 girls; and it is averred that not a brick 
 was laid or a nail driven but that some 
 juvenile eye was on it to make sure that it 
 was done in a workmanlike way. Already 
 were preparations rife among the little 
 ones for a big balloon to be sent up on the 
 completion of the august temple. 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 79 
 
 Certainly, thus far Mr. Barnard^s cher- 
 ished idea of making the children enthu- 
 siastic over their religious home was show- 
 ing fruit. As a symbol of thanksgiving 
 on a grave ecclesiastical occasion, a big 
 balloon might not have been strictly canon- 
 ical, but it was far better, it was genuine 
 and right out of the heart. Nor was it, 
 after all, — from the child point of out- 
 look, — so reprehensible a view of the 
 spiritual privileges of departed souls in 
 heaven, when one celestially favored little 
 boy told how he " dreamed the other night 
 that he was living in heaven, but, all the 
 while he was there, he could look down 
 on earth and see the little chapel." 
 
 How very naturally such a dream as 
 this might have been imaged out in the 
 brain of a sleeping child is vividly illus- 
 trated in a life-long memory, revealed 
 nearly fifty years later in a tribute to 
 Charles F. Barnard by Thomas Hills, 
 Esq., once a pupil and afterwards for many 
 years a devoted worker in the chapel. " I 
 remember," said Mr. Hills, " as if it were 
 but a few weeks ago that, playing with my 
 cousin in the neighborhood, Mr. Barnard 
 
8o CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 stopped as he was passing, and, pointing 
 to this spot, said, ' Boys, there is where 
 we are going to build. Soon you will see 
 those old wooden buildings torn down, and 
 in their place our chapel will stand ! ' He 
 made us, members of his infant class, feel 
 that the chapel did not belong to grown 
 people like our fathers and mothers, and 
 that it was not a place to which we were 
 sent as to our day school, or to which we 
 were permitted to come, but that it was 
 our chapel, and that, with him and our 
 teachers, we had an interest in it. And 
 when we assembled upon a beautiful July 
 morning at the laying of the corner-stone 
 ... it was with a conscious feeling of 
 ownership by our great family, of which 
 he was the head and we were members. 
 And when the hymn of dedication first 
 made these walls resound with vocal music, 
 it was easy for us to understand that we 
 had a home other than that in which we 
 ate our daily bread, and could comprehend 
 that, with the affection and respect we felt 
 for our minister and teacher and the re- 
 gard he had for us, it was possible that we 
 had a Father on whom we could rely when 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 8 1 
 
 death should break the circle of our fire- 
 sides." 
 
 On the last Sunday of January, 1836, 
 the new building was open for services. 
 Seven hundred and thirty children re- 
 sponded to the call, and the four rooms 
 set apart for the Sunday-school exercises 
 soon doubled to eight. In addition, morn- 
 ing and afternoon church services were 
 regularly held in the large hall, the after- 
 noon one crowded to excess. 
 
 " The Service for Children," now wrote 
 Mr. Barnard to a friend, " is working 
 wonders. It outruns all my anticipations, 
 and those, you know, were always most 
 sanguine. It has already worked a most 
 happy change among my poor. Religion, 
 with all its hopes, now awakens an interest 
 in many a parent's bosom, where it long 
 slumbered in unbroken repose. The chil- 
 dren are full of the matter. Their little 
 eyes sparkle, and their little mouths speak 
 their strong feeling. ' Oh ! we shall be at 
 the meeting next Sunday. Who is going 
 to preach ? What shall we hear .f* ' fall upon 
 my ear wherever I go. Many, who know 
 no better, ascribe it all to novelty. The 
 
82 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 outward form is novel. The thing itself 
 is as old as man's creation. Pray for us 
 that we may have wisdom from on high 
 to bear Heaven's message to Heaven's 
 children." 
 
 It is to be kept constantly in mind that 
 the parish, so to speak, over which Mr. 
 Barnard now presided stood in absolute 
 contrast with that of an established, trained, 
 and highly organized community of men, 
 women, and children. The question of 
 questions with him was what is best and 
 most hopeful in view of the especial class 
 I am called on to deal with, and not at all 
 what is best for those who have comfort- 
 able homes, plenty of books, instruction, 
 and amusement, careful guardianship to 
 keep them out of the streets and to save 
 them from evil companionship. 
 
 What Mr. Barnard saw clearly before 
 his eyes was wretched tenements with, too 
 often, ignorant, slatternly, and drunken 
 fathers and mothers as moral examples, 
 and the fascination of haunting the wharves 
 on Sundays as a school of initiation into 
 idleness, profanity, vulgarity, and pilfering. 
 On these data was it that his mind was 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 83 
 
 made up, and that he uncompromisingly 
 took what was, in those days, an entirely 
 original stand, familiar as it has since 
 become. With perfect accuracy did Dr. 
 Edward E. Hale declare, twenty-five years 
 later, on the occasion of the Silver Birth- 
 day of Warren Street Chapel : " The his- 
 torical step was taken, — the new principle 
 of work was solved, — when Mr. Barnard 
 saw that with the persons with whom he 
 dealt, the Sunday-school " (started origi- 
 nally in Miss Dix's parlor), " instead of be- 
 ing accessory to something else, was, in 
 itself, the whole thing. Do not let us hide 
 it in a barn or cellar. Do not let us hud- 
 dle these children together on crowded 
 benches. . . . But let us provide for their 
 Sunday worship, since we know they have 
 no other. ... It was out of such a resolve, 
 wholly new, as I believe, in history, that 
 this chapel was founded." 
 
 In the now far-back days in which this 
 fell, it was brought as a reproach against 
 Protestant churches that, while open on 
 Sundays for stated services, they were yet 
 kept hermetically sealed during the rest 
 of the week; their chill and dreary silence 
 
84 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 broken only by the buzzing of swarms of 
 flies. Positively the most ghostly of places, 
 the best adapted of all to call up the sense 
 of a haunted house, was a Protestant 
 church on week days. All this could not 
 fail to suggest a damaging contrast be- 
 tween such deserted temples and the Cath- 
 olic churches in which mass was said every 
 day, and whose doors stood ever open to 
 the prayers of the faithful. That no such 
 reproach should be brought against the 
 " Children's Church " was Mr. Barnard's 
 resolve from the start. Primarily for this 
 reason did he want to take up his own res- 
 idence in the building, to be on hand as 
 much as possible when the little ones 
 should run in, and to meet them in the 
 most familiar way. The chapel should be 
 made the centre of activities of every kind, 
 — activities industrial, literary, mechanical, 
 social, as well as religious. Severe, in- 
 deed, was the tax thus imposed on the 
 time and strength of his zealous co-work- 
 ers, and nothing furnishes such strong 
 proof of the inspiring quality inherent in 
 their leader as the ready response, on Sun- 
 days and week days, year in and year out. 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 85 
 
 of SO large a band of superior men and 
 women, eager to dedicate to the service of 
 the disinherited their special gifts of teach- 
 ing, drawing, singing, lecturing, reciting. 
 
 There was no article of faith more fer- 
 vidly embraced by Mr. Barnard than that 
 of the duty of the rich in culture and 
 opportunity to share their higher privileges 
 with the poor and neglected. He did not 
 want a class of well-meaning, but dull and 
 uninteresting, helpers in his work. He 
 wanted women of the greatest refinement 
 and charm, to hold up before the boys and 
 girls an ideal of attractive dignity. He 
 wanted men of business ability, lawyers, 
 doctors, retired sea-captains, men who 
 would command respect for superior know- 
 ledge and character. Nothing was too 
 good for children to whom was now to be 
 opened up a new sense of the richness of 
 the world and the possibilities of human 
 nature. 
 
 There, for example, was his classmate. 
 Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, newly returned 
 from completing his medical studies in 
 Europe, with a head full of science and a 
 heart full of humanity. What a man to 
 
86 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 talk to boys ! How like bees over a flower- 
 bed would they swarm to suck the honey 
 out of his experience of strange cities and 
 customs. " Was it not a real providence," 
 now wrote Mr. Barnard to a friend, " that 
 when we were in college, I put Bowditch 
 up to keeping a journal, just as I did my- 
 self } Now, what blessings I am reaping 
 out of the journal he kept in Europe, and 
 from which he takes his texts for talks to 
 the children ! " 
 
 All through life, here was the principle 
 on which Mr. Barnard acted, and one 
 which contributed immensely to his suc- 
 cess. As years went by, not a Jenny Lind 
 or a Madame Sontag could come to Bos- 
 ton, that he did not know how to persuade 
 her to come and sing to his Warren Street 
 boys and girls. " No one knows how 
 much of latent talent lies hidden in these 
 neglected children," Mr. Barnard often 
 emphatically said. " Let them see and 
 hear the best, and this will bring it out ! " 
 His prescience was justified when, in later 
 years, some of the finest vocalists of the 
 country, and many of the foremost patrons 
 of art, gratefully acknowledged that they 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. B>J 
 
 owed their first awakening to the oppor- 
 tunities thus afforded them of coming into 
 contact with what was beautiful and in- 
 spiring. 
 
 On taking charge of the work of War- 
 ren Street Chapel, Mr. Barnard was still 
 in the service of the Benevolent Fraternity 
 of Churches, receiving from them a salary 
 of a thousand dollars. For some time, 
 however, the relation on either side had 
 been growing strained, and soon was it 
 destined to become more so. The scheme 
 of operation insisted on by the Fraternity 
 involved the holding of three services on 
 Sunday for adults, the children to accom- 
 pany their parents, besides being provided 
 with special instruction in the Sunday- 
 school. Mr. Barnard, however, had in the 
 morning and afternoon entirely reversed 
 this, making the children's service the chief 
 attraction, and seeking to draw in the par- 
 ents on the principle of the lamb leading 
 the sheep, and not the sheep the lamb. 
 The evening service for adults he still 
 kept up. But his heart was not in it as it 
 was in the children's service. He could 
 not make it as natural and spontaneous. 
 
88 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 It came at the end of the day, when his 
 forces were spent, and the weary headache 
 which, with him, so generally accompanied 
 exhaustion, was on. His health, he felt, 
 could not long stand such excess of work 
 and excitement. So the third service 
 would have to be abandoned, — for a time, 
 at any rate. 
 
 Very naturally, to the directors of the 
 Fraternity, this seemed a total departure 
 from the methods they had at heart. They 
 were accustomed to the old-fashioned 
 ways, and had no such belief in children 
 as he, no such faith in a free, joyous, 
 democratic administration of religion as 
 would make it delightful as well as improv- 
 ing to their young minds and hearts. So 
 courteously, but firmly, they wrote to Mr. 
 Barnard that they considered he was not 
 carrying out the purpose for which the 
 Fraternity was founded, but exactly re- 
 versing it. 
 
 Just on the contrary, to his mind, the 
 idea of going back to the old methods 
 seemed going back to tedium and hum- 
 drum. To him individually it would have 
 been so. As, fifty years later, his friend, 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL. 89 
 
 Dr. Henry I. Bowditch said, " Mr. Barnard 
 was very obstinate in carrying through what 
 he determined upon ; and this was one of 
 his merits. I would not give a farthing 
 for anybody's service in a good cause who 
 is not obstinate." But he was more than 
 obstinate. He was inspired with an infal- 
 lible instinct. He was original with the 
 insight of a great, hospitable child heart, 
 and as genuine in his faith in his own lov- 
 ing way as Jesus when he cried, " Suffer 
 the little children to come unto me ! " 
 
 The difference, then, that had arisen 
 between Mr. Barnard and the council of 
 the Fraternity was an irreconcilable one. 
 Much could honestly have been urged on 
 either side. Already had the success of 
 Mr. Barnard's personal appeal to the pub- 
 lic for the sinews of war with which to 
 build Warren Street Chapel proved a 
 stimulus to the Fraternity to make an 
 equally successful appeal for funds with 
 which to build commodious chapels for 
 Rev. Frederick T. Gray and Rev. John 
 T. Sargent, the other representatives of 
 the ministry at large, — chapels in which 
 admirable work was going on in the old 
 
90 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 established way. No doubt there was de- 
 mand enough in the city for both methods, 
 even if they could not be carried on in ac- 
 cordance with the constitutional provisions 
 of one presiding body. So Mr. Barnard, 
 with the advice of his own stanch friends, 
 resigned his former position under the Fra- 
 ternity, and took his stand alone. 
 
 It was far better so. He was no man 
 to work to advantage under the direction 
 of others. By nature he was too original, 
 too fertile in new ideas, too unconvention- 
 ally daring, too dictatorial, — at times too 
 willful, — to take the word of command 
 from anybody else. He believed, indeed, 
 in discipline, but in discipline under him- 
 self as general and planner of the cam- 
 paign, holding his high commission direct 
 from God, " the Father of the fatherless." 
 Yes, it was far better so. 
 
 Mr. Barnard's resignation as agent of the 
 Fraternity once accepted, the " Commit- 
 tee of the Contributors to Warren Street 
 Chapel " brought forward and carried a 
 resolution that he should receive for his 
 services a salary of twelve hundred dol- 
 lars a year, and that a further sum of four 
 
WARREN STREET CHAPEL, 91 
 
 hundred dollars should be raised by sub- 
 scription for the other expenses of the 
 institution. 
 
 Alas ! the story of purely independent 
 movements, cut off from the support of 
 strong organizations, is ever the same. 
 Always are they doomed to a hard and 
 ofttimes bitter struggle for life. It is the 
 old experience of the volunteer force as 
 over against the regular, the pioneer mis- 
 sionary as over against the incumbent of 
 the established and wealthy church. All 
 through the history of Warren Street 
 Chapel, as expenses increased, the strain 
 to make the two ends meet was a painful 
 and at times a pitiful one. Mr. Barnard's 
 own immediate family, indeed, his father 
 and brothers, year in, year out, contributed 
 self-denyingly in money and personal ser- 
 vice. Still, to meet constantly recurring 
 emergencies, a thousand expedients had 
 to be resorted to, — expedients, however, 
 which, as is so often the case, called out an 
 amount of sacrifice, ingenuity, and hearty 
 cooperation that proved a blessing in the 
 end. 
 
 Through his marriage, however, with 
 
92 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Miss Sarah Homes, which took place 
 January 4, 1837, Mr. Barnard was before 
 long to find refuge from a throng of petty 
 cares in eminently happy domestic rela- 
 tions. With Miss Homes he had long 
 been associated in his philanthropic work, 
 and throughout life it was his favored lot 
 to find in her a loving companion to help 
 and cheer him in his toil, as well as a de- 
 voted mother of their children. 
 
XII. 
 
 NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 
 
 In the building of the chapel Mr. Bar- 
 nard had now achieved the dearest wish 
 of his heart. Free and untrammeled, he 
 could act out his whole nature and em- 
 body in positive institutions the dream of 
 his life. What did he mean to do with his 
 opportunity ? 
 
 The answer to this lies in a series of re- 
 ports continued for many years, and con- 
 stituting a little library in themselves. But 
 a series of reports cannot be incorporated 
 into a memoir, nor would they furnish en- 
 tertaining reading. All that can be done 
 is to gather from them data, wherewith 
 to illustrate the constant aims he kept in 
 view, and the enthusiasm and fidelity with 
 which he and his devoted helpers pursued 
 them. From beginning to end these re- 
 ports are a confirmation of the statement 
 of Rev. Eber R. Butler — a Warren Street 
 
94 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 boy by birthright, and many years later 
 the head of its activities — that " Mr. Bar- 
 nard's originality colored, and to-day over- 
 shadows, his institution." 
 
 Chief of all Mr. Barnard's contributions 
 to the work he achieved was the contri- 
 bution of Charles F. Barnard himself, — 
 the contribution of a grown man sympa- 
 thetically capable of looking on a child 
 from the child's inside point of view. It is 
 one of the rarest of endowments. Of all 
 the dreary performances one is called on 
 to witness, can a drearier be named than 
 to watch the ponderous infelicity of the 
 attempt of many a speaker — a man, per- 
 haps, of large experience, great knowledge, 
 and really kindly heart — to interest in an 
 address a gathering of children } The first 
 fly that begins to buzz on a window-pane 
 at once captures his entire audience, and 
 rivets attention on something at last felt 
 to be worth listening to. Curiously one 
 asks, was this poor man ever a boy him- 
 self, or — as he could not have been a girl 
 — did he ever have a little sister .^^ Did 
 he ever thumb and finger a marble, go 
 skating, catch a bullpout, have a fight, run 
 
A'EW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 95 
 
 races on a beach, witness the burial of a 
 little mate, have a mother who nightly 
 heard him say his prayers ? If so, why 
 do not lively recollections of all these put 
 him in touch with the little ones before 
 him, and make him, now on the spot, yearn 
 to enjoy a genuine sympathetic time with 
 them, out of a heart made young once 
 more through all this imagery of fairy- 
 land, while yet a heart deepened by an ex- 
 perience that should enable him helpfully 
 to interpret all for their good ? 
 
 Alas ! the moral improvement mania 
 has taken such overmastering possession 
 of him that before he has resorted to any 
 promising measures toward luring and 
 hooking his little fish, he insists on split- 
 ting, smoking, and, so he trusts, eternally 
 preserving him. Never a thought is given 
 to bait of any kind, much less to that live 
 bait which alone will tempt a rise out of 
 the sprightlier kinds of fish. 
 
 It was the consciousness of this that 
 made logical, broad-browed Dr. Wayland 
 once say to James Freeman Clarke, that 
 "he regarded it as the greatest possible 
 compliment to his sermon, if a child was 
 
96 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD, 
 
 interested in it." No doubt, for the great 
 divine must always have had before his 
 eyes the fear of Goldsmith's hit at ponder- 
 ous Dr. Johnson, that, should he attempt 
 a fable, he would make the little fishes talk 
 like whales. Upon all which Dr. Clarke 
 wisely comments : " In talking to children, 
 there are two dangers, that of going over 
 their heads and becoming unintelligible, 
 or, in trying to avoid this, of becoming 
 trivial and commonplace. * Milk for babes,' 
 — yes ; but the milk should be good, rich 
 milk, not milk and water. When Jesus 
 thanked God that the things hidden from 
 the wise and prudent had been revealed to 
 babes, he certainly did not refer to any- 
 thing shallow or anything commonplace. 
 ... As I remember Charles Barnard in 
 his teachings, this was his method. I see 
 him standing in his chapel, with flowers 
 and busts and pictures around him, hold- 
 ing in his hand some curiosity of nature 
 or art, on which he is giving a religious 
 object lesson to the children. This was a 
 cheerful, happy scene. There was no for- 
 mality in his discourse ; but he talked 
 pleasantly, with references to what he had 
 
NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 97 
 
 seen and heard during the previous week 
 and what had happened in the city." 
 
 Now, in the New England of 1836-37, 
 children — especially children of the less- 
 favored classes — were not half as well 
 understood as they are to-day. Just as 
 much as the slaves needed a Garrison 
 to emancipate them from their peculiar 
 shackles, did the boys and girls of the poor 
 need a Barnard to emancipate them from 
 the shackles of too much dry catechism, 
 too much memorizing of Scripture dates, 
 too monotonous a moral diet unrelieved 
 by beauty or poetry. As one looks over 
 the books, religious or secular, prepared 
 in those days for their improvement, one 
 thinks perforce of Howells's description of 
 the ascetic New England farmer family, as 
 they sat drinking the most acrid kind of 
 Japan tea, on the apparent principle that 
 it combined the maximum of stimulus with 
 the minimum of pleasure. 
 
 That there was any quicksilver in chil- 
 dren's blood, any power hidden in birds or 
 flowers to lend wings to their spirits or 
 breathe fragrance through their souls, any 
 refining or inspiring influence in art to 
 
98 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 nurture higher ideals, was, especially in 
 the case of the children of the poor and 
 ignorant, considered something bordering 
 on weak, if not dangerous, sentimentality. 
 Reverence for Scripture, indeed, forbade 
 any application of such disparaging com- 
 ment to the jubilee outburst of Jesus over 
 the lilies of the field : " Verily I say unto 
 you that Solomon in all his glory was not 
 arrayed like one of these!" No doubt, 
 serious people felt, this was all right 
 enough in the Holy Land, nay, that here 
 was an emotion which might be innocently 
 indulged in even in America, — out-of- 
 doors. But the bare idea of flowers in the 
 church or on the pulpit ! Here was some- 
 thing sacrilegious. It took away its sanc- 
 tity from the sacred desk, and degraded it 
 to the level of the dining-table. It ban- 
 ished the thought of worship, and substi- 
 tuted for it a mere tickling of aesthetic 
 sensibility. 
 
 To-day all people smile at this, and wide 
 enough would the little children open their 
 eyes in wonder, if told by their teachers 
 that once roses and lilies and salvias and 
 heliotropes were warned like lepers, out of 
 
NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 99 
 
 the sanctuary, as liable to communicate 
 diseases infectious to piety. Yet just here 
 lies the use of the biographies of pioneers. 
 Charles F. Barnard was the first man in 
 Boston to dare to take the ban off flowers 
 and pronounce them pure and innocent 
 enough, as well as dear enough to the heart 
 of God, to be admitted to the privilege of 
 helping to celebrate the Sunday service. 
 Yes, and he would have the hardihood to 
 hold one of them, a rose or geranium, in 
 his hand, and actually to discourse about 
 it to the children on Sunday, as free from 
 any fear of spiritual contagion as though it 
 were a tract. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, it took a great 
 deal of courage to do this at that period. 
 It exposed one to ridicule and was thought 
 namby-pamby. " Another specimen of 
 Barnard's skim-milk for babes ! " contempt- 
 uously was said of it. Very differently, 
 however, did the children feel. Soon they 
 grew eager to cultivate pots of flowers in 
 their homes, or to collect everything that 
 grew wild, from the first dandelions of 
 spring to the last aster or goldenrod of 
 Fall, — not to speak of great glorified 
 
lOO CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 branches, scarlet, gold, or purple, of autumn 
 leaves, all to lend charm to their chapel. 
 And so, after all, the flowers did really 
 prove contagious. Rapidly, in various 
 quarters, the infection spread; at first 
 breaking out — so as not to cause too much 
 consternation — in inobtrusive little bou- 
 quets on various city pulpits, and finally 
 blossoming into the rich floral ovations 
 that to-day voice the Creator's praise in all 
 our churches. Might it not be well now 
 and then, while sharing in the sanctuary 
 the sense of Jesus' rapture over the lilies, 
 to breathe a benediction on the name of 
 the first religious teacher in Boston who 
 had in his own heart enough of the self- 
 same Jesus rapture over the flowers of the 
 field to insist on their being brought in to 
 the church to help all to glorify God ? 
 
 Again, at the time in which Mr. Barnard 
 began his work in Warren Street Chapel, 
 comparatively little interest was felt in 
 works of art, in the shape of pictures and 
 statues. Pictures and statues, as elements 
 either of education, or of refining and ele- 
 vating pleasure, were by the majority looked 
 down upon as very much on a level with 
 
NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. lOI 
 
 flowers, — indeed, on tihe X^hpW, as ^„pjcetty 
 axiomatic gauge o£-the degrae^oQf . ^ebl»3- 
 mindedness and sickly- sehtimeritality to be 
 looked for in those who made much of 
 them. 
 
 There was, it is true, a small and select 
 class of cultivated men and women who 
 felt otherwise, and to them had been due 
 the foundation of the gallery of pictures 
 and of casts from the antique sculptures, 
 in the Boston Athenaeum. But by the far 
 larger number of citizens this gallery was 
 severely let alone. The idea that in any 
 way it might prove helpful toward the ele- 
 vation of the children of the poorer classes 
 would have seemed as absurdly high-flown 
 to most people as a deliberate proposition 
 to lift the standard of the cuisine of the 
 poor by the introduction of terrapins and 
 truffles. 
 
 When, therefore, it got noised about 
 that Rev. Charles F. Barnard was in the 
 way of striking up talks with any chance 
 group of idle boys he met on the street, and 
 to end off these talks with an invitation to 
 go with him to the Boston Athenaeum, 
 to see some beautiful pictures and statues, 
 
I02 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 many an e^'ebro^* was lifted high in deri- 
 ♦si6fo,v -'The moral pocket-handkerchiefs for 
 Congo negrbes, so' ridiculed by Dickens, 
 seemed but a mild effusion of sentimen- 
 tality in comparison with bringing up street 
 waifs on Raphael and Phidias: " By such 
 proceedings Mr. Barnard is forfeiting the 
 respect of sensible people and seriously in- 
 juring his influence," was an ejaculation fre- 
 quently heard in those days. There was 
 a meaning at the time in the phrase " to 
 injure one's influence," — a meaning the 
 depth of which was soon found out, to his 
 own social and financial cost, by anybody 
 who had the courage to speak an honest 
 word on the new criticism of the Bible, or 
 on behalf of the negro slaves. Such an 
 one "injured his influence " by compelling 
 people to set him down as a free thinker 
 or a fanatic ; Mr. Barnard, by compelling 
 them to set him down as weak and silly. 
 
 None the less, in divine obstinacy Mr. 
 Barnard kept on his ordained way. He 
 meant to introduce pictures and statues 
 into his own little chapel, and teach the 
 children to enjoy the highest creations of 
 the highest minds. His thoughts, how- 
 
NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 103 
 
 ever, went out far beyond this humble 
 spot. In this chapel would he set Boston 
 an object lesson, and, through the beauty 
 and fruit of it, spread a kindred influence 
 over the public schools and the churches 
 of the land. To him everything was reli- 
 gious if seen in God; everything full of 
 the wisdom and love of God. This was 
 the foundation-stone of his creed. To be 
 capable of a rich worship, the mind must 
 live in a rich world. Music was worship 
 of the divine harmony, drawing and paint- 
 ing were worship of the divine beauty, 
 dancing itself was worship of the divine 
 grace and courtesy, the fusion of vulgar 
 egotism with the charm of social unity. 
 
 It was the moral greatness of this man 
 that he could believe all this of the es- 
 pecial classes with which he was dealing, 
 and that no amount of rudeness, poverty, 
 or narrow ignorance could dishearten his 
 soul, or damp the fire of his faith that, after 
 the exalted and rapturous image in which 
 Jesus conceived it, he could create a bit of 
 the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, right 
 there in humble Warren Street Chapel. 
 Indeed, the people who laughed superiorly 
 
I04 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 at him would have laughed equally — had 
 not mechanical tradition restrained them 
 
 — over the whole spirit and imagery of 
 Christ's parable of the prodigal son. For 
 what, in the parable, does the happy father 
 do when he has got back his once dissi- 
 pated but now penitent son, but rejoicingly 
 to send round for his humble peasant 
 neighbors, and call in the village band, 
 and bid them strike up the music for — 
 God save the mark! — dancing; all to 
 give vent to the jubilee of his heart over a 
 son that " was dead and is alive again, was 
 lost and is found " ? Think of the fate of 
 any old-fashioned divine of by-gone days, 
 who — commissioned to submit to his 
 Board a tract on the " Forgiveness of Sin" 
 
 — should have ventured to indulge in such 
 profane imagery as that, instead of ending 
 off the story with the calling together of a 
 dreary prayer-meeting. Think further of 
 his daring to add insult to injury by ap- 
 pealing to the example of Jesus in warrant 
 of such a proceeding. Would it not have 
 been pronounced " wresting the Scrip- 
 tures to his own damnation," and would 
 he not have been sternly rebuked for the 
 
NEW WAYS WITH CHILDREN. 105 
 
 demoralizing influence such a tract would 
 exert on the young? Such is it to "have 
 eyes and see not, ears and hear not." 
 
 In contrast now with the ridicule show- 
 ered on certain features of this inaugura- 
 tion of a new spirit in dealing with chil- 
 dren, how touching the grateful tribute 
 uttered in retrospect nearly fifty years later 
 by one, Mr. Thomas Hills, who, a Warren 
 Street boy, could, after a long and honor- 
 able career in a position of high trust, say 
 of his old teacher that no words could 
 express the debt of gratitude " of those of 
 us who grew up as his children, and who 
 imbibed a love for art from his decora- 
 tions of the walls of our chapel home and 
 from the works of great masters which he 
 viewed with us ; as well as for the beauti- 
 ful in nature from the flowers he placed 
 constantly before us, and from the open 
 landscape of the country to which he led 
 his children. And when the chill winds 
 checked our outdoor pleasure, the ample 
 rooms of this building were bright with 
 children amused with innocent games and, 
 under careful direction, joining in the 
 graceful dance. How he moved among 
 
I06 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 US with his grave smile and such a quiet 
 dignity that, even in our play, it seemed as 
 impossible to be rude or boisterous as 
 when he looked down upon us from the 
 pulpit! With what zeal he animated his 
 teachers and their classes, making of all of 
 us a body of helpers ! In the long weeks 
 of preparation for the floral procession of 
 each returning Fourth of July, what miles 
 were traveled by parties in search of moss 
 for the baskets that by the thousand were 
 made by patient workers in our upper 
 room! And, as the day drew near, the 
 evening work was added to that of the day, 
 until the night was added to the evening 
 at last." 
 
XIII. 
 
 SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 
 
 In the last chapter, exclusive emphasis 
 was laid on a single feature of Mr. Bar- 
 nard's idea of a religious home for neg- 
 lected children, and, along with them, of 
 such children as were not neglected except 
 in the sense of being kept on too prosaic 
 and joyless a regimen. This religious 
 home he would make bright and cheery; 
 a scene in which they who had freely re- 
 ceived should freely give ; in which cul- 
 ture should meet ignorance, and refine- 
 ment rudeness ; in which the youngest and 
 poorest should find opened to them the 
 privilege of service to others. 
 
 A glowing ideal, however, is one thing; 
 the making it real under the conditions of 
 our poor humanity quite another. No end 
 of hard, patient work was called for. It 
 had to become " Blessed be drudgery ! " 
 with large numbers. And the astonishing 
 
I08 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 thing in the case of Warren Street Chapel 
 was that so many could be found, culti- 
 vated women and men with heavy business 
 responsibilities, to stand by year after year 
 in close and crowded rooms, in the day 
 time and in the evening, working on a 
 mass of humanity that sometimes would 
 meet what was done with gratitude, and 
 sometimes drive the most patient mind to 
 desperation. It is the law of this world 
 that the abnegation of duty on the part 
 of the shiftless, ignorant, and heartless 
 shall be atoned for, not by themselves, 
 but through the extra burdens imposed 
 on the conscientious and loving. 
 
 Of course there was the inevitable sew- 
 ing-school, so commonplace in name, and 
 yet so indispensable a preliminary to the 
 coming of any domestic kingdom of heaven 
 on earth. Great ado is made over the 
 needle that guides the mariner across the 
 deep, or which, where it fails to keep true 
 to the pole, wrecks him on the reef. But 
 it plays for good or for ill a far inferior part 
 in human life — especially in the life of 
 the poor — to that of the needle the little 
 girl learns deftly to use, or grows up igno- 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 1 09 
 
 rant of how to ply. Of this Mr. Barnard 
 was clearly convinced, — more and more 
 clearly every day, as he made his rounds 
 through the lower quarters of the city. 
 Therefore, in his first report, he empha- 
 sizes the importance of introducing regular 
 instruction in sewing into the public 
 schools, saying that " a salute of cannon 
 ought to be fired on the day on which it 
 should be done." Gunpowder has been 
 wasted on far less worthy objects of con- 
 gratulation. 
 
 " Meanwhile, whatever we can do in 
 this way," he says, " supplies a very serious 
 defect in the system of public instruction. 
 A slight knowledge of the classes for 
 whom it is intended will satisfy any one 
 that acquamtance with the use of the needle 
 is fully as important to these girls as read- 
 ing and writing. Their domestic habits 
 and character, in many cases their future 
 innocence and peace, depend upon their 
 acquiring it." Over and over again does 
 Mr. Barnard repeat this conviction. " A 
 man is in rags, — his children are in tat- 
 ters, — his home is a scene of unthrift and 
 disorder, — and is it surprising that he 
 
no CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 seeks other places and companions, or lays 
 hold on any means of oblivion ? Will men 
 ever be any better till women are made bet- 
 ter, till every girl at every school is better 
 fitted to perform her whole and honorable 
 part as sister, wife, and mother?" 
 
 One hundred and twenty girls, under 
 twelve teachers, in time to increase to two 
 hundred and fifty and three hundred, were 
 brought together every Saturday after- 
 noon, and while the work was going on 
 interesting books were read aloud. As a 
 comment on the neglect that might come 
 on this especial branch of secular learning, 
 Mr. Barnard states, " Two of our pupils 
 come from a family that owns but one 
 needier Still, the actual work accom- 
 plished with the girls was as nothing to 
 the general example set. To the excellent 
 results achieved in schools like this and 
 those of the Fraternity of Churches was 
 due the later introduction of sewing into 
 the public schools of the city as an in- 
 dispensable branch of instruction. The 
 first thing was to give an effective object 
 lesson. 
 
 In his rounds among the poor, Mr. Bar- 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 1 1 1 
 
 nard was forcibly struck with the disad- 
 vantages, in the way of earning anything, 
 such mothers were at who had infant 
 children to look after. To loan them 
 temporarily to a neighbor was not always 
 easy, while to lock them up in a room 
 while the mother was away at a job of 
 washing was to invite serious danger. So, 
 as a second example of a greatly needed 
 reform, an infant school was opened in 
 one of the basement rooms. " This is in- 
 tended," Mr. Barnard says in his first 
 report, " for those who are too young for 
 the primary schools. It is carried on 
 rather as a dame's school, or well-regulated 
 nursery, than as a place of formal instruc- 
 tion. We hope that while it presents a 
 safe and pleasant asylum for the little ones 
 each day, it may lengthen the mothers' 
 hours of work and lessen their applications 
 for charitable relief. Its expenses are de- 
 frayed in part by the parents, in part by a 
 committee of ladies who have the direc- 
 tion of it, and in part by myself." In 
 these later days, people have grown so 
 accustomed to such institutions as to take 
 them for a matter of course and to think 
 
1 1 2 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 they must always have existed. They are 
 indeed one of the most touching embodi- 
 ments of Jesus calling the little children 
 unto himself and laying his hands upon 
 them. But here, as in everything else 
 that is good, an object lesson had first to 
 be given in a very humble way. 
 
 In this same opening year of the chapel 
 was it that Mr. Barnard, with the help 
 of several gentlemen, started an evening 
 school twice a week, for boys who were 
 in stores or at work during the day. It 
 began with twenty pupils, who rapidly 
 increased to sixty, and went on to five 
 hundred. "No pains were required to 
 collect them," he says; "they came of 
 their own accord, or at the invitation of 
 those previously admitted." In other 
 words, the movement met a real want. 
 " Our public school system," he later says, 
 "is not sufficiently pliant as yet to adjust 
 itself to particular wants. The existence 
 of the class embraced in our evening school 
 is readily accounted for. Most of the boys 
 are employed during the day in families, 
 offices, stores, or factories. Circumstances 
 compelled them to begin their own sup- 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 113 
 
 port at an early age, and long before their 
 education was completed. They are in 
 danger of losing the little they have ac- 
 quired. Some of them have never gone 
 to school. Few of them possess any other 
 means of instruction. What greater bene- 
 fit can we give them than to afford them an 
 opportunity to attend an evening school t 
 It will at least keep them out of the streets 
 after dark, and thus remove a prolific 
 source of evil in all large towns. It may 
 so far quicken and enlighten their intel- 
 lect as to secure most important results in 
 after years, both for the individual and the 
 community. It is fearful to think how 
 much talent in each generation is suffered 
 to go to waste, like fertile seed scattered 
 upon the barren ocean. Is it not one of 
 our most sacred duties to prevent this 
 loss? Who can duly estimate the value 
 of a single mind rescued from darkness, or 
 led to the streams of truth and knowledge 
 that have been opened for it by the all- 
 wise Creator } " 
 
 Here again Mr. Barnard was the first 
 to set an example of a movement, later 
 taken up also by the Fraternity, that was 
 
114 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 destined to exert a wide-reaching influence, 
 and finally to become incorporated into 
 the system of the public schools, with 
 ample funds to carry it on thoroughly. 
 The marked originality of the man who 
 sees with his own eyes, instead of being 
 blindly led by routine, displayed itself in 
 this as in so many other ways. It was his 
 way of translating into vernacular Boston 
 the Palestinian precept, " Gather up the 
 fragments, that nothing be lost ! " While 
 to most men of his day the text read but as 
 a kind of Poor Richard's Almanac illustra- 
 tion of the value of economizing the scraps 
 after a feast, — the relation of to-day's 
 crusts of bread to the possible chance of 
 a scant meal for the poor to-morrow, — 
 he saw its living application to the way of 
 providing spiritual food for the educational 
 waifs of humanity, who, by reason of small 
 means, ill health, or personal fault, had 
 been shut out from the original feast of 
 knowledge ; nay, saw that these poor waifs 
 themselves were the very fragments to be 
 gathered up, that nothing should be lost. 
 
 With ladies for teachers, a similar school 
 was now started, on Wednesday and Sat- 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. II5 
 
 urday afternoons, for girls at service in 
 families or at work in factories, — "a class 
 equally in need with our boys of the ele- 
 ments of instruction." The response at 
 first was large, but it was found difficult to 
 appoint hours for the purpose that would 
 not interfere with their hours of work. 
 The attendance accordingly diminished, 
 though still remaining sufficient to warrant 
 carrying on the school. 
 
 Still another project very near to Mr. 
 Barnard's heart as a means of education 
 was the establishment of a cabinet of nat- 
 ural history. No man felt more strongly 
 the importance of opening children's eyes 
 in admiration and wonder to the manifold 
 richness of the mineral, vegetable, and 
 animal kingdoms of the earth they live on. 
 For the lack of any stimulus to this, of 
 how many children — particularly poor 
 children in a city — does it hold true that 
 a primrose is to them a yellow primrose, 
 nothing more. The eye gets no training. 
 A stone remains merely a stone, whether 
 of quartz, slate, marble, iron ore, or native 
 copper. A tree remains merely a tree, 
 whether of oak, beach, maple, or birch. A 
 
Il6 CHARLES FHANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 fish remains merely a fish, oblivious of all 
 family divisions into cod, haddock, smelts, 
 or lowly sculpins. 
 
 Now, Mr. Barnard had too eager an eye 
 to entertain much respect for a Creative 
 Power that should have been content 
 with ushering into existence such barren 
 abstractions as stone, tree, and animal. 
 They would have proved tediously mpnot- 
 onous. The mind would have exhausted 
 the divine resources at a glance. Neither 
 did he believe it possible to rise to any 
 enthusiastic worship of the Creative Power 
 except through the contemplation of an 
 infinite variety and richness of types that 
 should call out the outcry, " Oh, the depths 
 and the heights both of the knowledge 
 and the wisdom of God ! " But to awaken 
 such feeling, the types must be before the 
 eye. Then talks must be given about 
 them, and the delight of the teacher must 
 be imparted to the child. 
 
 This, too, — the cabinet of natural 
 history, — was ridiculed at first as one of 
 " Barnard's fads." No salvation for poor 
 children, he thinks, but in making miner- 
 alogists, botanists, and physiologists out of 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 1 1 7 
 
 them ! In reality, no thought was farther 
 from his mind. He was neither one of 
 these himself, but he was a far happier 
 man, and dwelt in a much more marvelous 
 world, for the little he knew about such 
 things. Why should the children of the 
 poor be shut out of their rich inheritance 
 and doomed to live in a narrow, monoto- 
 nous, colorless world t A taste for beetles 
 and butterflies has saved many a man from 
 a taste for alcohol. Get a child interested 
 in making a collection of such objects, and 
 he is just so much farther on the road to 
 the kingdom. 
 
 Many were the letters, full of grateful 
 thanks for what the little cabinet had done 
 to enrich the world to them, which Mr. 
 Barnard later on received from men and 
 women in various walks in life. Such 
 cabinets" are in all our public schools to- 
 day ; but in those days they were not. 
 This was another of the Warren Street 
 Chapel object lessons. At that date ab- 
 stractions were believed in far more than 
 the open book of nature. Slate and mar- 
 ble, oak and maple, eagle and wren, were 
 taken to have been made, to afford the 
 
Il8 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 basis for a magnificent generalization of 
 all their impertinent varieties into mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal. This mastered by 
 the child, he had the whole thing " in a 
 nutshell," while " counting himself king of 
 infinite space." 
 
 Already, in his very first report, was 
 Mr. Barnard exercised over another ques- 
 tion, that of opening to all a free library 
 and a free reading-room, and nothing pre- 
 vented his establishing these, on however 
 limited a scale at the outset, but the beg- 
 garly expenses of fire and light. So much 
 he saw that he wanted to do, and which 
 ought to be done, but that alas ! his hands 
 were tied. Later on, these objects were 
 accomplished, and " he opened a large, 
 free public library in the chapel, which, 
 until the foundation of the City Public 
 Library, was widely useful." What a need 
 this evinced of pioneers who could fore- 
 cast the future and at least plant the seed 
 for a coming harvest ! In truth, almost 
 all the wants that are now so amply pro- 
 vided for in the Young Men's Christian 
 Associations of the day were anticipated 
 and met with cordial furtherance through 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 1 19 
 
 the philanthropic foresight of this one 
 man. 
 
 Finally, the influence for good of mu- 
 sic was a subject of which, from the out- 
 set, Mr. Barnard was one of the most 
 ardent advocates. Of course, there was 
 music in all churches and all Sunday- 
 schools in those times, but of its power 
 as a daily exercise in the public schools 
 in the way of inspiring and elevating 
 childhood, no adequate sense was felt in 
 the community. 
 
 Here again the same spirit of practical 
 contempt that has been spoken of with 
 regard to flowers and works of beauty in 
 art held sway. All these were no doubt 
 very pretty, very romantic even, but arith- 
 metic and grammar were solid realities, 
 while the others were only airy dreams. 
 Of the powerful stimulus that lies in song 
 to the sentiments of patriotism and wor- 
 ship, little was comprehended. The old 
 Greek saying, " Let me make the songs 
 of a people, and I care not who makes 
 their laws," would have found but feeble 
 echo. Further, of the foundation idea of 
 all music in concert, that it means the rever- 
 
I20 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 ential subordination of egotism and vulgar 
 self-assertion to a higher divine harmony, 
 there was small appreciation. And yet 
 the trained orchestra is the loftiest symbol 
 so far vouchsafed to man of what church 
 and state might be, were they pervaded 
 by a like spirit. No schismatic, no dema- 
 gogue, is for a moment tolerated in the 
 orchestra, — no one, in fine, who does not 
 sink his private individuality in the gen- 
 eral whole, who does not lose his life to 
 find it. All for the greater glory of Beet- 
 hoven, Handel, Mozart, — the divine mas- 
 ters before whom, for the hour, every knee 
 shall bow ! 
 
 To-day, in our public schools, it is a de- 
 light to every visitor to listen to the sing- 
 ing of hymns, patriotic songs, and chants 
 in the praise of nature. The most beauti- 
 ful compositions of music are married to 
 the most inspiring selections of poetry. 
 But in those days silence reigned instead. 
 Even in his first report, Mr. Barnard called 
 attention to this. " We regret," he said, 
 " that, both for its intellectual and moral 
 advantages, singing has not been intro- 
 duced into the public schools of the city. 
 
SETTING OBJECT LESSONS. 121 
 
 We have reason to hope that it will not 
 long continue to be thus overlooked. In 
 the mean time, we are happy to do all 
 we can to recommend and extend its 
 practice." 
 
 Fortunately, here as in his other under- 
 takings, Mr. Barnard had at command a 
 high order of ability in his volunteer as- 
 sistants. Notably under Mr. Ezra Weston, 
 the musical training of the boys and girls 
 was indefatigably carried on for years, and 
 wherever, even among the poorest, any 
 special gift of voice or ear was noted, kind 
 friends were at hand to secure for its pos- 
 sessor the best advantages of musical edu- 
 cation then possible. In this " gathering 
 up of the fragments, that nothing be lost," 
 more than one of Boston's famous singers, 
 who in after years held all ears spellbound 
 in the rendering of Handel's " Messiah " 
 at Christmas, was discovered and helped 
 on to a career. 
 
 Here, then, from the very start was 
 sketched out for little Warren Street 
 Chapel, and set in operation, a large pro- 
 gramme. It certainly shows that Mr. Bar- 
 nard's idea of a church was not that of 
 
122 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 a building open for stated service twice 
 every Sunday and then closed for a week, 
 but that of a building which should be a 
 bee-hive of religious and humanitarian ac- 
 tivities, humming with life and storing up 
 honey all the time. 
 
XIV, 
 
 "the dancing parson." 
 
 Notwithstanding the incessant strain 
 of work his various enterprises entailed 
 on Mr. Barnard, work of so exhausting a 
 kind that it ought to have made clear the 
 essential seriousness and self-denial of his 
 character, — none the less, during the first 
 ten years of his ministry, he continued to 
 be the subject of virulent attacks in the 
 religious, and sometimes in the public, 
 press, on the score of being a profane 
 trifler and a patron of pernicious amuse- 
 ment. These attacks emanated from per- 
 sons no doubt conscientious in their views, 
 but ignorant and bigoted to a degree. 
 
 Truly, it would be laughable, were it not 
 so disheartening, to see how monotonously 
 each new generation repeats the precise 
 phases of narrowness and rancor of the 
 Judean generation that lived two thousand 
 years ago. Just as the Master he so dearly 
 
124 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 loved was characterized by ascetic religion- 
 ists as a "gluttonous man and a wine-bib- 
 ber," so Mr. Barnard, too, was dubbed by 
 their lineal apostolic successors of his own 
 day the " dancing pahon." If only there 
 had been a returning ark of the covenant 
 to dance before, after the very public man- 
 ner of King David, his procedure might 
 have been upheld as strictly canonical ; 
 but as, profanely and with no fear of God 
 before his eyes, he substituted, instead of 
 rough-and-tumble games of bull-in-the-ring 
 and of promiscuous kissing for forfeits, so 
 immoral a practice as orderly and graceful 
 dancing, — to him the best of schools in 
 courtesy and refinement, — he was set 
 down as a dangerous character. At all 
 this, the "dancing parson," one of the 
 gravest of men in his demeanor, laughed 
 his hearty laugh and went his way. 
 
 None the less, the epithet stuck, and 
 created prejudices against him among peo- 
 ple who ought to have known better. 
 Very curious is it, accordingly, to look 
 over files of the newspapers of those days, 
 and to read the comments, pro and con, 
 that were indulired in over the new math- 
 
THE DANCING PARSON. 125 
 
 ods. The one which follows, though 
 written somewhat later for the " Boston 
 Transcript," and by a manifest upholder 
 of Mr. Barnard's ways, will give a good 
 idea of the feelings enlisted. 
 
 " In a lonely street of our city two 
 women met, the one a charitable person 
 of the olden school of doing good, and 
 extremely intolerant of all new systems. 
 Every attempt at amelioration of the con- 
 dition of the poor, connected with enjoy- 
 ment, she stoutly resisted, treating the 
 projectors as romanticists and visionaries. 
 Moreover, being sufficiently eloquent, she 
 defended her narrow doctrines in a power- 
 ful way. . . . The other woman believed 
 that our Heavenly Father permits the sun 
 to shine on all alike, and that those whose 
 unhappy destiny obliges them to vegetate 
 in dark and squalid dens, which cannot be 
 called homes, should be brought forth to 
 bask in its blessed rays. 
 
 " The latter, carrying in her hands a pot 
 of tea-roses, was abruptly addressed by the 
 former in the following words : — 
 
 " * Where are you going to with that 
 rosebush } ' 
 
126 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 " ' I have bought it for a friendless, bed- 
 ridden sufferer and am taking it to her,' 
 was the reply. 
 
 " * Nonsense, what do poor people care 
 for flowers ? Give them bread ! ' 
 
 " ' That has already been abundantly 
 supplied/ 
 
 " * Then sufficient has been done. I 
 sicken of all these new-fangled projects. 
 There is your bepraised Mr. Barnard, 
 turning the heads of all the poor people, 
 inviting them to drive about in his car- 
 riage daily : what will happen next } ' 
 
 " ' Do you know who are the occupants 
 of Mr. Barnard's carriage 1 ' 
 
 " * Not exactly, but I know he does no 
 positive good. I do not approve of the 
 Warren Street Chapel, and never shall, 
 but shall say no more to one of its decided 
 partisans.' 
 
 " * No partisan ; simply a heartfelt be- 
 liever in this charity.' 
 
 "And they parted, Mr. Barnard's op- 
 ponent sailing away majestically, and evi- 
 dently rejoicing that she had administered 
 a salutary rebuke to her silly acquaint- 
 ance ; its recipient proceeding on her way 
 
THE DANCING PARSON 12 J 
 
 nowise disturbed or deterred from the 
 prosecution of her object. She reached 
 her destination. On the bed lay a young 
 woman dying of consumption. Hardly 
 offering the customary greeting to her 
 ever-welcome visitor, she exclaimed, ' Oh ! 
 that blessed rosebush, how very kind, how 
 very kind ! give it to me to kiss ! ' and kiss 
 it she did rapturously. As she was entirely 
 dependent upon her poor neighbors for the 
 little care they could bestow upon her, it 
 was truly her only companion during the 
 daylight ; and in the solitary hours of the 
 night, when lying restless and w^akeful, she 
 hung over her idolized flower, and blessing 
 the donor, unconsciously reenacted the 
 charming story of ' Picciola.' " 
 
 So long as, in the street dialogue just 
 quoted, contemptuous allusion was made 
 to Mr. Barnard's " turning the heads of the 
 poor by inviting them to drive about in 
 his carriage daily," it may be well here to 
 call up a picture of the " leathern conven- 
 iency," — the public nickname conferred 
 on this especial carriage, — which was sup- 
 posed to be setting so reprehensible an 
 example. Who first christened it " the 
 
128 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 leathern conveniency," tradition does not 
 report, but it was for years a familiar object 
 on the streets of Boston and throughout 
 the surrounding country. In reality it 
 was a very plain carryall, covered, top and 
 sides, with leather curtains, to be rolled up 
 when it was fair and let down when it was 
 rainy, and drawn by a sober-minded and 
 extremely moderate horse, apparently 
 under a strong sense of moral responsibil- 
 ity that it was his mission in life to carry a 
 class of people so full of aches and pains 
 that it would be cruelty to jolt them. The 
 especial turnout was a gift to Mr. Barnard 
 from his father. 
 
 Fortunately there remains a description 
 of this carryall, and of its ways of going 
 on among the poor, a considerable portion 
 of which, though written years later from 
 vivid memory, may fitly be quoted here. 
 It was from the pen of Mrs. L. Bennett, in 
 her earlier days a member of Mr. Barnard's 
 flock, and in later life one of his stanchest 
 helpers and most loving admirers. 
 
 Before, however, giving the extract from 
 Mrs. Bennett, this seems the most nat- 
 ural place in which to record the inci- 
 
THE DANCING PARSON. 129 
 
 dent that upon one occasion, on a rainy 
 day, the "leathern conveniency," its cur- 
 tains down and its usual freight inside, 
 came into such violent collision with the 
 carriage of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 that the whole top was knocked off it and 
 the peculiar quality of its human contents 
 displayed. No sooner had the witty doctor 
 taken in at a glance that no personal injury 
 had been done than he cried out to his 
 classmate, " Barnard, there 's no use in try- 
 ing to hide your light under a bushel ! Is 
 it not written, ' There is nothing covered 
 that shall not be revealed ' t " But to re- 
 turn to Mrs. Bennett. 
 
 " Fanny Fern once regretted that there 
 were no children's ministers. Where 
 could she have been all her days not to 
 know and admire our children's minis- 
 ter .? . . . The lover, helper, and friend of 
 our childhood ! The revered and God- 
 given friend of our maturer years ! 
 
 " There are few people in Boston who 
 have not seen our minister in his daily 
 rides through the streets. His ' leathern 
 conveniency ' is always full of the sick and 
 sorrowful children of God, who are thus 
 
130 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 enabled to leave their darkened homes for 
 a little time, and bathe in the glad sun- 
 shine, and taste God's free air, to have 
 their minds directed from unhappy medi- 
 tations and cankering cares, and, in the 
 cheerful society of the children's minister 
 and in the busy scenes before them, to 
 forget for a while their sorrow and pain. 
 Our children's minister forgets not the 
 ' old folks,' — but here goes his carriage, 
 and we will follow and overtake it. 
 
 " We get a friendly smile and cheery 
 word, and while old Charley jogs leisurely 
 along, we count his passengers, one, two, 
 three, four, and our minister to drive ! An 
 old, old lady, full of aches and pains, — a 
 younger woman on her way to the hospi- 
 tal to visit her sick parent, — a fair and 
 delicate young girl, upon whom the winds 
 must not blow too roughly nor the sun 
 shine too fiercely, lest she should faint by 
 the way, — a little fatherless child, whom 
 her often scant allowance of food and the 
 stifled atmosphere of the narrow city have 
 made feeble and joyless. 
 
 " Jog along, Charley, lazy old fellow ! 
 You have got no farther than the Public 
 
THE DANCING PARSON. 131 
 
 Garden, and now you stand quite still, 
 while your master points out the grand 
 display of good old-fashioned hollyhocks 
 that nod at us over the fence. ' And look 
 again,' he says, ' at that beautiful patch 
 of petunias ! ' And the old lady and the 
 younger, and the maiden and the child, 
 look gladly upon so fair a sight, and the 
 old lady says she ' remembers when that 
 garden was all water,' and so does the 
 minister, and the young girl looks incredu- 
 lous and wonders if the old lady is a rela- 
 tive of Methuselah. 
 
 " But here we are at the hospital gate. 
 Through a large room, with its many clean 
 beds, we walk, and many an aching head 
 turns wearily on its pillow, and many a 
 dim and heavy eye recognizes the manly 
 form and gracious presence of our minis- 
 ter ; but most of all and best of all a little 
 waxen-looking creature springs forward to 
 greet the friend he knew in happier days. 
 Poor, motherless little Johnny, with his 
 old young face, presses one thin, small 
 hand against his throbbing heart and ach- 
 ing side as, half-encircled by the kind arms 
 of his minister, he looks into the good 
 
132 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 face SO near his own, and tells him ' where 
 he is sick.' ' And would you not like to 
 take a ride, Johnny? ' asks the sick child's 
 friend; and Johnny gladly consenting, 
 kind friends soon make him ready, and he 
 is borne away to the carriage in the arms 
 of his minister, his eyes beaming with 
 delight. For a good half hour or more, 
 little Johnny, whose feet long since com- 
 menced their heaven journey, enjoys the 
 fragrant summer air, and most of all the 
 society of his minister and friend. 
 
 " The minister bids Johnny a kind 
 good-by, and tells him he will soon come 
 again and take him out if he is able to go, 
 but the child, who in his hospital life has 
 come to regard death as something more 
 than a mere possibility, shakes his wise 
 little head while his eyes linger lovingly 
 upon the dear face of his friend, and says, 
 ' Perhaps I shall be dead when you come 
 again ! ' 
 
 " Back again into the carriage, and the 
 old lady shakes her head and says, ' That 
 little boy won't live long, so wise an4 good, 
 just like a little man.' And they talk 
 
THE DANCING PARSON. 1 33 
 
 softly about him, as though he slept and 
 they were afraid of waking him. They 
 reach their homes, and old and young for- 
 get not to thank God for their children's 
 minister." 
 
 As one reads such an eye-witness ac- 
 count as this, he is struck with the thought 
 of how little most people comprehend 
 what a rare privilege it must be to be able 
 to keep a carriage. In the various capitals 
 of Europe, the tourist willingly pays his 
 shilling to be admitted into the royal sta- 
 bles, where are carefully preserved the 
 magnificently carved and gilded coaches 
 in which George the Third drove to his 
 coronation as King in Westminster Abbey, 
 or Napoleon to his as Emperor in Notre 
 Dame, or Pius Ninth to his as Pope in St. 
 Peter's. But if the standard of the New 
 Testament be the true one, who would be 
 surprised to learn that among the relics 
 treasured in the museums of the Ideal 
 Kingdom, that humble " leathern conven- 
 iency," with the stuffed skin of old Charley 
 still in the shafts, shines with far more 
 resplendent lustre; nay further, to learn 
 
134 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 that even old Charley himself — in what 
 Swedenborg calls his abiding interior — 
 has been translated to a realm where he 
 is forever welcome to lie down in the green 
 pastures of the equine paradise ! 
 
XV. 
 
 THOMAS STARR KING AND ROBERT C. WIN- 
 THROP. 
 
 In the attempt to portray the spirit and 
 character of Charles F. Barnard, and to 
 tell the story of the variety and persistence 
 of the humane work steadily going on in 
 Warren Street Chapel, it is very difficult 
 not to seem to over-emphasize the more 
 festive side of the enterprise. What is 
 there, indeed, that can be described at any 
 length in such patient, self-denying, se- 
 verely taxing work as, for example, in the 
 evening schools, went on year in, year 
 out ? It meant, none the less, on the part 
 of cultivated men and women, willingness 
 to deny themselves the comfort and repose 
 of home, and of many a social, literary, 
 and artistic pleasure congenial to their 
 tastes ; willingness to teach in hot, crowded, 
 ill-smelling rooms the very first elements 
 of knowledge ; willingness to come in con- 
 
136 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 tact with a press of forlorn and neglected 
 Irish, Swedes, Danes, Germans, French, 
 with often but a little broken English at 
 command, and with minds of the feeblest 
 and most untrained grasp ; and then pa- 
 tiently and lovingly to help them to over- 
 come the terrible disadvantages under 
 which they labored in the struggle of life. 
 
 The whole system, moreover, was car- 
 ried on under the pressure of a high ideal. 
 Never was the aim lost sight of that the 
 higher nature was at stake. To instill 
 some elementary acquaintance wuth the 
 history and institutions of our country ; to 
 awaken feelings of patriotism and the 
 sense of the personal responsibility of every 
 citizen ; to enlarge the mental, moral, and 
 religious horizon of minds so contracted ; 
 to be quick to see and encourage any spe- 
 cial aptitude, and to point out the means 
 by which it might be developed, — all this 
 involved something very different from 
 mere perfunctory work. 
 
 Just here lay the special value of the 
 system. No such priceless advantage can 
 fall to the lot of a maimed and stunted 
 mind — which has, none the less, some 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 137 
 
 unsuspected talent latent in it — as con- 
 tact with superior people who can reveal 
 to its possessor its real significance and 
 show him what it may grow to. There 
 can be no such education as this, for it 
 has all the potency of taking a starveling 
 plant out of the arid sand and setting it in 
 a generous soil. 
 
 But this is education of the costliest 
 kind, so far as the as yet too selfish devel- 
 opment of the more favored classes goes. 
 Only the rarest natures are capable of the 
 sacrifice involved in imparting it. Yet 
 this costly education was the only one in 
 which Mr. Barnard believed. He saw no 
 possible coming of Jesus' kingdom of 
 God on earth apart from the law, " Freely 
 ye have received, freely give," and that 
 " The greatest of all is he who is servant 
 of all." What society was suffering most 
 from seemed to him, not from the pov- 
 erty and niggardliness of nature itself, 
 but from the utter inadequacy of the 
 means of effective distribution, — distribu- 
 tion not of pecuniary wealth alone, but 
 distribution of the stored-up wealth of love, 
 culture, social charm, beauty, knowledge, 
 
138 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 health, high aim in life. To what purpose 
 that any given man or woman had become 
 a reservoir of refreshing water of life, un- 
 less that, connected with it and branching 
 out from it, in varied ramifications, — as 
 with a vast city reservoir, — was a great 
 system of iron arteries, veins, and capil- 
 laries, through which the vitalizing stream 
 should be made to pour itself into a thou- 
 sand homes, there to refresh the thirsty, 
 cool the lips of the fever-stricken, and 
 cleanse and purify the foul. To live and 
 act as such conduit pipe, even the tiniest, 
 seemed to him such joy. Why should not 
 all feel it ! 
 
 Later on, especial mention will be made 
 of some of the men and women who, in 
 spite of heavy business or household cares, 
 for years experienced vital joy in making 
 themselves a part in this system of living 
 distribution ; and no stronger proof of the 
 magnetic quality inherent in Mr. Barnard 
 need be adduced than the numbers of them 
 he permanently attached to the chapel, and 
 the number he on special occasions was able 
 to call in from outside. Are you a florist, 
 a painter, a naturalist, a machinist, an his- 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 139 
 
 torian, a singer ? — are you called Agassiz, 
 Parkman, Edward Everett, Starr King, 
 John Quincy Adams ? — then, in God's 
 name, come and talk to our Warren Street 
 children ! It will do you and do us a 
 world of good. It will enable you with 
 your capacious reservoirs to share the 
 function of serving as great mains or hum- 
 bler branch pipes in the divine work of 
 distributing the wealth of God's universe. 
 How heartily Agassiz responded to this 
 call, and how his great, loving face glowed 
 with joy on more than one occasion as he 
 addressed the children, and greeted in Mr. 
 Barnard a living exemplification of the 
 genial, exuberant kind of religion he be- 
 lieved in himself ! 
 
 This, then, in its immense hospitality 
 toward the less favored, was, after all, the 
 greatest of the object lessons Warren 
 Street Chapel set the city of Boston, and 
 this was it that led George S. Hillard jest- 
 ingly to say to Mr. Barnard, " You have 
 made the chapel a university." 
 
 When, in 1836, Mr. Barnard began, 
 under many a protest and many a sneer at 
 its weakly sentimentality, his own especial 
 
I40 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 work, he said, " Give me five years, and 
 then judge for yourselves!" He knew 
 himself, and he knew the men and women 
 behind him. How far, then, he ultimately 
 succeeded in carrying the judgment and 
 winning the admiring love of the foremost 
 people in the community is surely worthy 
 of record in any memoir of the man. Of 
 the hundreds of public testimonials to the 
 value of his work, limitations of space 
 forbid more than the citation of a few. 
 Perhaps no better selection can be made 
 than from the tributes of two men, stand- 
 ing so high in religious and in civic rank, 
 and yet of such contrasted temperaments, 
 as Thomas Starr King and Robert C. 
 Winthrop. Both spoke on the same pub- 
 lic occasion, April 27, 1851, fifteen years 
 after the founding of the chapel. 
 
 Between Thomas Starr King and Charles 
 F. Barnard there had existed for years the 
 most cordial friendship. Each had so 
 much of " the eternal child " in his tempera- 
 ment, each in him such a wellspring of 
 joy in the divine unity of truth and beauty, 
 as to make it inevitable that two such na- 
 tures should take lovingly to one another. 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 14 1 
 
 Mr. King's church always stood loyally 
 and helpfully by the chapel, and again and 
 again was he glad to bear in public his 
 hearty testimony in its favor. On the oc- 
 casion, then, of April 27, 1851, he spoke 
 thus : — 
 
 " The question of absorbing interest to 
 society itself is this, How shall the church, 
 which contains the regenerative elements 
 of truth, be brought from its serene and 
 comfortable elevation into redeeming con- 
 tact with the lanes, the alleys, and the cel- 
 lars of the world, with the Pariah caste in 
 our modern cities and towns, with the un- 
 civilized elements of our civilization, with 
 the wide chaos of irresponsible and neg- 
 lected vice that lies outside our order and 
 threatens to engulf it.? The question is, 
 Shall our light encroach upon the shadows 
 and dispel them, or shall the shadows close 
 in upon and absorb the light ? . . . 
 
 " I remember hearing, a year or two 
 since, the remark of one of our city mis- 
 sionaries, that we need very much in Bos- 
 ton a bridge from Beacon Street to. Broad 
 Street! This statement is a fine symbol 
 of our general social need. We want some 
 
142 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 passage, some bridge, some conductors — 
 and we must have them — between our 
 Christian light, means, and energies, and 
 the wide wastes of physical and moral des- 
 titution. . . . 
 
 " We know what the plan of Christian 
 philanthropy, so far as it has been directed 
 to the perishing classes, has hitherto been. 
 As a general thing it has been, the chief 
 hope has been, to save a few out of the 
 thousands that are suffered to drift stead- 
 ily to ruin. But plainly our aim and work 
 should be to buttress first. Christ said, 
 * Feed my lambs ! ' . . . 
 
 " We rejoice, Mr. Chairman, that this 
 chapel has been founded on the latter, 
 wiser, and more Christian plan. It seeks 
 to help to prevent from falling, to fortify, 
 to train, to furnish conservative elements, 
 through intellectual and Christian culture, 
 that shall hold the soul safe amid its pe- 
 culiar trials. It is our privilege to come 
 here, not to discuss methods, not to specu- 
 late and devise plans, but to celebrate a 
 fact. This Warren Street Chapel is an 
 institution and a fact, — an eloquent and 
 efficient fact. As was fitly and poetically 
 
THOMAS STARR KING. 1 43 
 
 said by one of the speakers in this place a 
 year ago, ' It is an island of fire in an 
 ocean of ice.' . . . 
 
 " If, sir, a traveler had gone, eighteen 
 hundred years ago, to Corinth in Greece, 
 or to Ephesus in Asia Minor, he would 
 have seen splendid temples, gorgeous pal- 
 aces, great theatres, temples of justice, and 
 palaces of art. But if he had a poetic or 
 a prophetic eye, he would have seen that 
 the most important and glorious edifice of 
 all was the humble abode where a Jew, 
 named Paul, worked daily and nightly 
 through the week as a tent-maker, to earn 
 a support that would enable him to preach 
 the Gospel without charge to the poor be- 
 lievers that gathered to hear him on the 
 Sabbath. And in Rome, thirty years after 
 the crucifixion, the house where Paul was 
 guarded was the centre of a greater glory 
 and of greater power than dwelt in the 
 emperor's palace and the senate hall. 
 For, from that lowly roof was steadily go- 
 ing forth the energy of a truth, unknown 
 to Nero, his consuls, and his court, which 
 would save human civilization from the 
 blight of heathenism and the corruption 
 
144 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 of the capital, which would be the only 
 remaining force to sustain society when 
 the Caesars' throne and all the witnesses of 
 that imperial grandeur should be swept 
 away. . . . 
 
 " In this city, too, we have great build- 
 ings, buildings that represent great forces 
 and great ideas : the proud temple of law 
 that crowns the summit of our highest 
 hill ; the halls of commerce that testify 
 to our industrial prosperity; the libraries 
 that bear witness to our taste and culture ; 
 the churches that enfold our stated and 
 orderly worship. But among them all, 
 none is nobler, none is grander, none is 
 doing such a work for society, civilization, 
 and Christ, as this humble chapel in which 
 we are gathered, that lifts no spire and 
 makes no pretension in the landscape of 
 the city. It is dearer, I have no doubt, to 
 the heart of the Redeemer than the most 
 costly church that has been reared in our 
 streets. . . . For one, I resolve, Mr. Chair- 
 man, to do more for it than I have done 
 heretofore, and I hope we shall all make 
 that resolution." 
 
 It was on the same occasion, the even- 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1 45 
 
 ing of April 27, 185 1, that Hon. Robert C. 
 Winthrop, a classmate at Harvard of Mr. 
 Barnard, followed Mr. King in an address, 
 a part of which is here quoted : — 
 
 " I need not assure you that I have lis- 
 tened with the deepest interest to the ac- 
 count which the report has given of the 
 progress and prospects of this institution. 
 No man, indeed, who has a heart within 
 his bosom — a heart either for the welfare 
 of man or for the glory of God — could 
 have listened to that account without emo- 
 tions deeper than he could readily find 
 words to express. For myself, certainly, 
 I know of few things better calculated to 
 touch and thrill the inmost susceptibili- 
 ties of a Christian soul than the precise 
 pictures presented to us in this paper ; the 
 picture of so many young children, rescued 
 from the snares of ignorance, idleness, and 
 vice; snatched, many of them, as brands 
 from the burning, and trained up to habits 
 of industry, to the love of truth, to the 
 practice of virtue, to the knowledge and 
 praise of God. And I may be permitted 
 to add, that I know of no person who has 
 secured for himself a prouder or more 
 
146 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 enviable distinction than one who, having 
 drawn such a picture with fidelity, and 
 having gracefully and modestly held it up 
 to the public view, can say with truth, 
 ' There are the fruits of my labors ; this is 
 the account of my stewardship.' 
 
 " It is now, I think, not far from a quar- 
 ter of a century since your secretary and 
 myself, with at least one other of those 
 whom I have seen at my side this even- 
 ing, having finished our collegiate course, 
 left the walls of the neighboring University 
 together. We had many classmates and 
 common friends, who were soon scattered 
 along the various paths of life and in vari- 
 ous parts of the country. Some of them, 
 indeed, of the richest promise, were struck 
 down at the very threshold of their career, 
 and others of them have since fallen in 
 more advanced stages of manhood ; but 
 the greater part have remained to this day, 
 and not a few have reached high degrees 
 of preferment in social, literary, or political 
 life. I hazard nothing, however, in saying 
 that there is not one of them who could 
 have been present here this evening and 
 listened to the account which my friend 
 
ROBERT C WTNTHROP. 1 47 
 
 has given of the work to which he has so 
 successfully devoted himself, without feel- 
 ing the comparative worthlessness of his 
 own pursuits, or without uniting with me 
 in admitting that while so many of us have 
 been careful and cumbered about many 
 things, our brother has chosen that good 
 part which shall not be taken away from 
 him. . . . 
 
 " I think it was related of an old philos- 
 opher that, on going into a schoolhouse 
 and seeing a band of ill-mannered and ill- 
 behaved boys, instead of finding fault with 
 the boys themselves, he inflicted a severe 
 chastisement upon the master. This was 
 rather a rough proceeding for a philoso- 
 pher, but it was a forcible illustration of a 
 true principle. If the boys in our land are 
 ill-mannered and ill-behaved, it is the fault 
 of their parents and teachers. It was only 
 this very afternoon that the services of the 
 sanctuary which I attended were disturbed 
 by the crash of a window, broken undoubt- 
 edly by one of those truant and trouble- 
 some boys which the secretary has men- 
 tioned in his report. My first feeling at 
 this incident was one of indignation at the 
 
148 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 act of the boy, and of a wish that he might 
 be caught and punished ; but my second 
 sober thought was one of pity for the boy, 
 and of regret, I had almost said indigna- 
 tion, that there were not more of these 
 Warren Street Chapels in our city, into 
 which boys of this character might be 
 brought, and where they might be trained 
 up under the magical influence of brother 
 Barnard, or others like him, to be devout 
 worshipers within the temple, instead of 
 rude rioters without." 
 
 It was an often repeated saying of The- 
 odore Parker, " I don't believe a bit in 
 waiting till a good man or a bad man is 
 dead, before saying a word in his praise or 
 condemnation. I mean to speak right out 
 in meeting when I see one of them before 
 me! The good man needs the hearty 
 flesh and blood congratulations of his fel- 
 lows as he goes along." On more than 
 one public occasion Parker acted on this 
 conviction with startling effect ; as when, 
 for example, at the funeral service of Cal- 
 vin Whiting, after saying, " I have seen 
 many of the philanthropists of this country 
 and of Europe, and I never saw one in 
 
• ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1 49 
 
 whom philanthropy bore so large a pro- 
 portion to the whole nature as in him," he 
 suddenly turned round and added : " Now 
 that he has ceased to be mortal, I know of 
 only one other man whom the needy of the 
 city would miss so much, and he sits here 
 [pointing straight at Charles F. Barnard]. 
 One was the right hand, the other the left, 
 — and I know not which was the stronger." 
 Still later on, in a sermon on the power 
 of education and of the strength of the in- 
 fluence exerted by the circumstances in 
 which the soul is placed, Theodore Parker 
 again bore a like testimony : " The cradle 
 is the place where we should start to move 
 the world, and education is the Archimedes 
 for that universal lift. Take a single ex- 
 ample! Look at the history of Warren 
 Street Chapel in this town, for the past five 
 and twenty years. . . . How many hun- 
 dreds, how many thousands, are now hon- 
 orable, noble, heavenly minded men and 
 women, simply because they were trans- 
 ferred from the cold, bleak atmosphere of 
 the street, where temptation lay in wait to 
 destroy them, and set in this greenhouse 
 of souls, where they ripened and blossomed 
 into fragrant flowers ! " 
 
XYI. 
 
 THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. 
 
 As the work of Warren Street Chapel 
 went on year by year, its leader and his 
 zealous helpers were cheered to the soul at 
 seeing idea after idea they had first origi- 
 nated and then faithfully illustrated, taken 
 up by the public at large. This held 
 good, as already has been stated, of sing- 
 ing in the public schools, of the teaching 
 of sewing, of the children's civic festivals 
 in Music Hall, of the later incorporation 
 of schools of art and design into the sys- 
 tem of public instruction, and of the inau- 
 guration at the city expense of evening 
 schools for those who had enjoyed no early 
 opportunities. 
 
 Out of this last humane enterprise of 
 Mr. Barnard was it further that grew, as 
 direct result, the praiseworthy action taken 
 by the Old South Church in building and 
 equipping Chambers Street Chapel, where, 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. 151 
 
 with the wealth at the command of so rich 
 a corporation, it became possible to carry- 
 on operations upon a scale to which the 
 limited resources of Warren Street could 
 make no pretension. Yet in after years, 
 during the civil war, Rev. J. M. Manning 
 gratefully wrote home from Camp Rogers, 
 near Newbern, N. C. : " May Chambers 
 Street Chapel long stand a testimony that 
 the funds of the Old South Society have 
 been wisely, nobly, and disinterestedly ex- 
 pended ; and may its friends never forget 
 their indebtedness to the Rev. Mr. Bar- 
 nard of Warren Street Chapel, whose ex- 
 cellent institution first suggested the idea 
 of a similar charity in the west part of the 
 city." 
 
 Heartily as Mr. Barnard rejoiced over 
 the abundant means at the disposal of the 
 Old South in carrying out a work so dear 
 to his own heart, he could not but at times 
 reflect with pain on the pecuniary hin- 
 drances that had so sorely beset him 
 throughout his long career. His was the 
 fate of most pioneers. Still, something 
 pathetic is there in the words with which, 
 in his old age, he gave expression to this 
 
152 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 feeling in the columns of the " Christian 
 Register:" "In truth, we share, in our 
 sense of satisfaction and entire approval at 
 least, in the whole pecuniary prospects of 
 Chambers Street. The embarrassments, 
 debts, and deficiencies of more than thirty- 
 two years in the field occur to us with 
 force and chastened delight as we observe 
 the different and better fortune of our 
 noble compeer. Have we not been strug- 
 gling on in the hope that, sooner or later, 
 the undertaking would justify any expen- 
 diture in its behalf } . , , We know of no 
 martyrdom to compare with that which 
 waits upon the sight of human suffering 
 without adequate and perpetual means in 
 one's hands for its relief. . . . The Old 
 South is rich, to be sure. So are other 
 churches, other communities that we might 
 name." 
 
 One other enterprise in which Cham- 
 bers Street Chapel freely acknowledged its 
 debt of obligation to the initiative set by 
 Warren Street was that of carrying on va- 
 cation schools, for a part of each day, dur- 
 ing the summer intermission of the public 
 schools. At first sight it might appear a 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. I 53 
 
 contradiction that such a lover of freedom 
 and joy for children as Mr. Barnard should 
 have the heart to shut up poor little crea- 
 tures in schoolrooms during the torrid 
 heats of an American summer. Neither 
 would it be a matter for grave reprehension 
 if even a New England volunteer con- 
 science should finally feel it the last straw 
 on the overladen camel's back, and go out 
 on a moral strike, when summoned, after 
 the long strain of the winter, to reenlist 
 for the dogdays in such trying service as 
 this. But even here Mr. Barnard found 
 willing and steadfast helpers. Clearly 
 enough he distinguished that, priceless as 
 long vacations are for children who can be 
 by the seashore or in the country, and 
 who there are carefully looked after and 
 provided with innocent recreation, none 
 the less these same vacations are to the 
 children of the poor, free to roam at will 
 through the city streets, an exposure to the 
 worst temptations, as well as a source of 
 largely increased care and anxiety to their 
 parents. Attracted for half the day into 
 a school where they are surrounded with 
 good influences, exercised only in slight 
 
154 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 tasks, and at intervals pleasantly amused, 
 they really enjoy the vacation far better, 
 while sensible relief is extended to their 
 fathers and mothers. 
 
 As far back as the year 1842, a charming 
 sight was to be witnessed on the Fourth 
 of July on Boston Common, in the shape 
 of tables profusely loaded with flowers and 
 attended by pretty little white-robed girls 
 with floral wreaths on their heads, and by 
 courteous little boys, — not so pretty, per- 
 haps, but attired in the same festal way, 
 and making up in cordial smiles what they 
 lacked in beauty. These were Warren 
 Street Chapel children, who had already 
 made alliances with the children of a large 
 number of Sunday-schools in the country 
 to send them from all quarters contribu- 
 tions of flowers, to be sold for the benefit 
 of the institution. Out of this germ grew 
 what for many years was one of the most 
 characteristic features, — as truly by far 
 the most beautiful, — of the celebrations 
 of the Fourth of July in Boston, — the 
 Floral Processions. 
 
 If there has been any one thing that at 
 times has disposed even the most patriotic 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. I 55 
 
 Americans to regret the Declaration of 
 Independence and to deplore the severance 
 of the ties that once bound us to the mo- 
 ther country, it has lain in the noisy vul- 
 garity with which the glories of the Fourth 
 of July have ordinarily been commemo- 
 rated. " A man's foes shall be they of his 
 own household." The day, alike in present 
 actuality, in gloomy retrospect, and in bod- 
 ing anticipation, had long been made a 
 terror, not to the British w^ho three thou- 
 sand miles away were out of sound of the 
 banging of cannon, the clang of cracked 
 bells, the ceaseless sputter and fusillade of 
 fire-crackers, but to the lineal descend- 
 ants of Adams and Jefferson and Prescott 
 and Warren, and all their compeers who 
 shed their blood or their speeches for what 
 they innocently believed would entail bless- 
 ing on their posterity. Now, against fire- 
 crackers exploded in due moderation, — 
 indeed, with this proviso, they shared 
 the approbation even of so sober and well- 
 regulated a mind as that of Confucius in 
 China, — nothing of course can fairly be 
 objected. But ah, in their Fourth of July 
 immoderation, what wear and tear of nerves 
 they entail before nightfall ! 
 
156 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Why can we not have ways of celebrat- 
 ing the day that are beautiful in themselves, 
 artistic and refining in their influence ? 
 This was Mr. Barnard's constant thought. 
 What so beautiful after all as troops of 
 children with wreaths and garlands and 
 banners, the one of whom shall personate 
 Flora, and another Ceres, and another 
 Pomona? What so happy a way of their 
 spending the day as to gather them in a 
 beautiful garden, where selected bands of 
 them may charm all on-lookers with grace- 
 ful floral dances, and where sports in the 
 way of swinging and archery shall be free 
 to all ? 
 
 Under the impulse of this idea was it 
 that the initial sale of flowers on the 
 Common grew rapidly into those floral 
 processions of the Warren Street children 
 that for years attracted into the city crowds 
 of delighted spectators. These processions 
 furnished to the rather prosaic Boston of 
 their day an entirely novel spectacle ; an 
 object lesson at once artistic, and yet voic- 
 ing a loving plea for beauty and joy as the 
 rightful atmosphere of childhood, such as 
 carried with it its own irresistible evidence. 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. 157 
 
 The hundreds and hundreds of happy- 
 children wreathed with flowers and bear- 
 ing flowers ; the charming variety of the 
 characters personated ; the moss-covered, 
 flower-starred cars on which some were 
 recHning while others stood waving pretty 
 banners ; the songs and choruses with 
 which the air rang as they marched along ; 
 the graceful dances engaged in when they 
 reached the inclosure which now consti- 
 tutes the Public Garden, and afterwards 
 the sale of flowers and ices at the hands of 
 charming little fairies, — was not this after 
 all something quite as patriotic, quite as 
 refining and elevating, as the perpetual 
 banging of fire-crackers? At any rate, 
 thousands were converted to the faith that 
 it was. 
 
 Now as at last, anniversary after anni- 
 versary, Mr. Barnard stood in the midst of 
 this scene of beauty, receiving delighted 
 congratulations on every side, the " dancing 
 parson," as he had once been contemptu- 
 ously styled, enjoyed his poetic revenge. 
 " If you ask for the only revenge I crave, 
 look around you ! " would have been no 
 idle travesty of Sir Christopher Wren s 
 
158 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 memorial in St. Paul's. Yet all along had 
 Mr. Barnard been encouraged by many of 
 the wisest and most humane of Boston's 
 citizens, of one of whom he gratefully 
 recorded: "Hon. Theodore Lyman never 
 met me, for years before his death, with- 
 out a word of faith and encouragement 
 in relation to entertainments for the 
 young. 'We have land, enterprise, in- 
 dustry, wealth, everything in America,' he 
 would say ; ' all we want is more happiness. 
 Our intelligence and virtue might be made 
 to grow under the proper pursuit of hap- 
 piness.' " Was there, then, anything but 
 justifiable exultation in the exclamation 
 with which, in one of his reports, Mr. Bar- 
 nard broke out ? — " Was it a boy's vain 
 dream, a young man's idle fancy, when the 
 preaching of Channing, the influence of 
 Ware, the example of Tuckerman filled me 
 beforehand with the idea, the yearnings, 
 the hope of all this t Have I walked more 
 than half my days in a cloud? I speak 
 openly. Personal questions are out of 
 sight. We are but the tools and servants 
 of a higher power. Circumstances evolve, 
 and, controlled by Heaven alone, support, 
 attend, and crown the end." 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. I 59 
 
 Of course the work entailed, in the prep- 
 arations for these floral processions of 
 seven or eight hundred children, upon the 
 teachers and friends of the chapel was 
 enormous. Volunteers by scores had to 
 be called for from other religious societies. 
 For weeks, moreover, before the appointed 
 day, the children themselves were scouring 
 the surrounding country for mosses and 
 evergreens, while, later on, enormous con- 
 tributions of flowers came pouring in from 
 their little mates in out-of-town parishes, 
 all heartily enlisted in the resolve that the 
 church " of the children, for the children, 
 and by the children, should not perish 
 from the earth." 
 
 To sustain the originality and charm of 
 the spectacle, fresh features of interest and 
 beauty had yearly to be added. So strong, 
 however, was the hold the exhibition had 
 taken on the public mind that at last the 
 city government — in this final instance as 
 in so many another, with regard to ideas 
 originated in the chapel — stepped in with 
 a proposition that, while remaining still 
 under the same control, the festival should 
 be raised to the rank of a civic one, due 
 
l6o CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 municipal appropriations being voted. The 
 invitation was promptly accepted. Mr. 
 Barnard and his teachers took the Public 
 Garden ; a mammoth tent, with a flooring 
 capable of accommodating i,ooo children 
 while dancing, was set up ; the Germania 
 Orchestra was engaged for the music; 
 swings, grace-hoops, and merry-go-rounds 
 were freely provided ; twelve of the chapel 
 children at different hours performed the 
 " French Peasants' Dance ; " while some 
 30,000 tickets were distributed among the 
 pupils of the public schools in Boston and 
 the adjoining towns. By the date of 1858, 
 it is estimated that at least 60,000 persons 
 were present at the festival. 
 
 It had now become clear that the in- 
 tended lesson had been sufflciently set, — 
 the lesson of substituting beautiful and re- 
 fining ways of celebrating the Fourth of 
 July for the old rude and barbaric ones. 
 Beginning in an unobtrusive way, the 
 movement had finally swollen to such pro- 
 portions as to be beyond the organizing 
 capacity of the little band of devoted men 
 and women who had for many years given 
 their time and strength to it. The floral 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. i6l 
 
 processions were accordingly abandoned 
 by them ; thenceforth surviving in the 
 Music Hall and similar festivities for chil- 
 dren, conducted under the auspices of a 
 thoroughly converted city government. 
 
 In describing these floral processions, 
 allusion more than once has been made to 
 the Boston Public Garden, where the chil- 
 dren were assembled. An entirely wrong 
 impression would be left, however, did this 
 reference call up before the mind's eye the 
 beautiful park of to-day with its blaze of 
 tulips and fragrance of hyacinths, its grace- 
 ful trees and wealth of flowering shrubs, 
 its lake and swan-boats laden with merry 
 children. When first Mr. Barnard set eye 
 on the spot as a convenient place for the 
 rendezvous of his boys and girls, it was a 
 rude, unfenced, unplanted stretch of half 
 marsh-land, the property of the city, but 
 already surveyed and plotted into house- 
 lots in view of their ultimate sale. With 
 prophetic foresight Mr. Barnard grasped 
 from the outset its capabilities for a public 
 garden as an addition to the Common, — 
 not, indeed, a simple repetition and exten- 
 sion of the Common, with its grass and 
 
1 62 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 shadowing elms, but, in the finer sense of 
 the word, a garden, planted with the rich- 
 est variety of flowering shrubs, its sward 
 lit up with beds of gorgeous color, and em- 
 bracing a conservatory for the cultivation 
 of the tenderer exotics. 
 
 Now, to a prudent city government and 
 to many leading members of a community 
 highly enlightened in matters of real estate, 
 a proposition like this was regarded in pre- 
 cisely the same dry light as the " breaking 
 of the alabaster box of precious perfume " 
 in the days of Scripture. " To what pur- 
 pose is this waste } " Stretched out, as 
 Boston then was, on a narrow peninsula, 
 and before the days when the enormous 
 growth of railway facilities revealed the 
 feasibility of dumping the Brighton hills 
 into the water and flats of the Back Bay, 
 and thus of creating immense areas of new- 
 made land, the bare idea of sacrificing the 
 solid revenue to be derived from blocks of 
 houses to the physical and aesthetic rev- 
 enue accruing from breathing sweet air 
 and smelling flowers seemed the wildest 
 of vagaries. None the less, Mr. Barnard 
 had the obstinacy of his own sublimely 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. 163 
 
 impracticable convictions. Cut up into 
 house-lots and covered with brick and mor- 
 tar, that tract of land — already shining 
 in his mind's eye in the vista of a glorified 
 future — should not be, if there was any 
 power in him to help it. 
 
 Indefatigably, therefore, did he now work 
 the press, writing article after article in de- 
 scription of the public gardens of Europe, 
 and quoting the testimonials of physicians, 
 mayors, naturalists, and police commission- 
 ers to their value to the public health, 
 morals, education, and opportunities for 
 innocent recreation. Associating himself 
 with the most widely traveled, or, by na- 
 ture, beauty-craving of Boston's citizens, 
 again and again was the city government 
 memorialized on the subject. 
 
 More than all, Mr. Barnard finally pro- 
 ceeded to a practically aggressive step, 
 namely, to the exercise, in a purely aes- 
 thetic spirit, of what was then — in the 
 language of rough Western humor — char- 
 acterized as "squatter sovereign right." 
 Getting permission to have the tract sur- 
 rounded by a plain wood fence, he at 
 once went on to build a conservatory for 
 the public sale of flowers, the first Boston 
 
164 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 had ever known. In this conservatory he 
 beheld the ideal " squatter sovereign," 
 who was resolutely to plant himself right 
 there, and hold on till he should have es- 
 tablished in the taste and delight of the 
 public so strong a proprietary charm that 
 it would never suffer him to be ejected. 
 His own father furnished the money for 
 the conservatory, and was to get the ample 
 pecuniary returns the son saw in the near 
 millennium, out of the profits from the sale 
 of flowers. 
 
 Of course there never were any profits, 
 at least of exchangeable value on State 
 Street. Pioneer conservatories, like pio- 
 neer missionaries, have to "do good and 
 lend, hoping for nothing " except the " ex- 
 ceeding great reward " of so breathing 
 abroad the fragrance of the grace of God 
 that some day a grateful succeeding gen- 
 eration will repent as sincerely as the 
 Scotch over poor Robbie Burns, that, 
 before he actually died, they did not give 
 him enough to keep alive on. In a few 
 years, the Barnard conservatory died, too, 
 of poetic asphyxia. But it rose again out 
 of the hearts it had converted, and stands 
 to-day, in the resurrection to a larger and 
 
THE FLORAL PROCESSIONS. 165 
 
 more bountiful life, in the midst of that 
 charming bit of paradise in which it began 
 its humble swamp existence. Many are 
 the still surviving citizens of Boston, famil- 
 iar with the history of the matter from the 
 start to the finish, who insist that, more 
 than to all others, Boston owes its beau- 
 tiful Public Garden to the foresight, the 
 indomitable persistence, and the personal 
 audacity of Charles Francis Barnard. It 
 was a case — like so many others illus- 
 trated by the same man — in which pre- 
 mature real estate had first to lose its life 
 to find it again in ideal estate. In the 
 full knowledge of all this was it that 
 Thomas W. Parsons, the translator of 
 Dante, wrote his tribute : — 
 
 *' Rightly call it Barnard's Garden ; 
 Without him it had not been ; 
 He no statue needs, — a pardon 
 Hardly, — for he had no sin. 
 Of a handsome race, if homely, 
 His best beauty is within. 
 
 " Let him have no more memorial 
 Than the flowers he loves so well, 
 As full many a blooming oriel, 
 Many lilied windows tell ; 
 Gentle Charles, thy sweet remembrance 
 Should be hyacinths, asphodel ! " 
 
XVII. 
 
 OLD CHAPEL BOYS. 
 
 The story of the life and work of 
 Charles Francis Barnard, as embodied in 
 the pride and joy of his heart, the Warren 
 Street Chapel, is now mainly told. All 
 along it has seemed better to treat the 
 subject, not in simple chronological order, 
 but rather in the way of taking up pro- 
 ject after project as each originated in its 
 author's fertile brain and glowing heart, 
 and then going on with it to its final out- 
 come. Thus alone was it possible to con- 
 front with hard practical reality the ideal 
 Jacob's dream, in which the enthusiastic 
 youth saw in vision " a ladder set up on 
 the earth, and the top of it reached to 
 heaven, and behold the angels of God as- 
 cending and descending on it." 
 
 Indeed, in an unbroken dream, — as 
 certain practical minds that boast them- 
 selves the only wide awake would call it, 
 
OLD CHAPEL BOYS. 167 
 
 — did alike the ardent youth and toiling 
 man of maturity ever live, a glorifying 
 dream that cast on the homeliest realities 
 the light that never was on land or sea. 
 Of how many of the angels of God he 
 saw ascending and descending on the 
 shining ladder, would the average hard- 
 headed observer have said, " Why, man, 
 these are but so many knee -patched, 
 penny - pitching wharf boys, or so many 
 frowzy-headed, freckle-faced. Broad Street 
 girls ! " But see these boys and girls 
 twenty years later, and read the letters of 
 thanks that poured in on their dear old 
 pastor from all quarters of America, yes, 
 and from far off China and India, and one 
 would feel forced to revise his criterion of 
 inborn capacity for recognizing and enter- 
 taining angels unawares. 
 
 Take a specimen of these letters, writ- 
 ten forty years later by a man who had 
 achieved wealth and honorable position, 
 and in whom the germ of the love of 
 beauty his old pastor had been so eager to 
 foster had developed into a passion that 
 resulted in one of the rich art collections 
 of New York ; and see how vivid are the 
 
1 68 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 memories of the dear old times in Warren 
 Street. The letter — only one out of hun- 
 dreds like in strain — was addressed to 
 Samuel Weltch, Esq., of Jamaica Plain, 
 Mass., once the teacher and afterwards 
 the life-long friend of the writer : — 
 
 Dear Sam, — I want always to continue 
 to call you " Sam," as, in our younger 
 days, I never knew you by any other 
 name. Cousin Eber brightens our dinner- 
 table every Tuesday evening, and we have 
 many a good talk about old times, espe- 
 cially about the old chapel times. A few 
 weeks since he mentioned that another 
 anniversary was coming about. How 
 quickly they get round now ! 
 
 In writing, I really did want to go back 
 to the beginning of the thing, away to 
 the time when our good old parson, in 
 those days the young, handsome, black- 
 haired student, espied, in his walk up 
 Warren Street one afternoon, Jim Black, 
 myself, and two or three other little fel- 
 lows sitting on the curb. He stopped and 
 had a pleasant word with us. He then 
 asked if we would like to join his Sunday- 
 
OLD CHAPEL BOYS. 169 
 
 school and chapel which he was just start- 
 ing. It was forty years ago. And I re- 
 member how I ran home and told my 
 mother that a real Beacon Street man had 
 been talking to me (you know that you 
 and I did not lay claim to much blue 
 blood), and wanted me to join his Sunday- 
 school. After much solicitation she con- 
 sented, and I went to the chapel Sunday- 
 school then held in Hollis Street Church, 
 and when we arrived we all felt it was our 
 church, ours, boys and girls that we were. 
 There we heard sermons we could u^ider- 
 stand, and singing sweeter than any we 
 have since heard, by Miss Anna Stone, 
 the Emmons girls, the Faxon boys, Gus 
 Dix, Gil Clark, and the others. 
 
 How vividly I recall the incidents of 
 the morning of the laying of the corner- 
 stone, — rather a chilly morning, you re- 
 member. My woolen pants were patched, 
 but I thought I must make a good appear- 
 ance on that occasion, so I drew over them 
 a pair of white pants (a little out of season, 
 perhaps, but the best I could do). So we 
 watched the building from corner-stone to 
 roof, until it was dedicated and opened. 
 
lyo CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 I wanted to write you about the good 
 people we met there, the best people of 
 Boston, the Misses Everett, their brothers, 
 the Williams family, Mrs. Gammage and 
 her two devoted daughters, Miss Mendum, 
 Miss Shattuck, the Misses Pratt, and that 
 loveliest of them all (she never dreamed 
 how lovely she was !), our dear old Aunt 
 Judith Bazin, with her sisters. 
 
 I wish I had the ability to portray wor- 
 thily all Aunt Judith's saintly virtues. 
 And think of the cultivated and scholarly 
 gentlemen we met in those days. I well 
 remember whom I first met in the class 
 alcoves of the upper room, Messrs. Jarvis, 
 Bowditch, Dupee, Billings, Vose, Call, 
 occasionally Dr. Flagg. And later the 
 class formed by James M. Barnard, when 
 we had many of us almost become men. 
 No man ever gave more earnest work to 
 a good cause than did he, and few have 
 seen more gratifying results. 
 
 Of course I cannot forget a single one 
 of the early boys who have since grown 
 up to manhood. Some of them, you know, 
 have arrived at honorable distinction ; 
 many have done well in a more humble 
 
OLD CHAPEL BOYS. 171 
 
 way ; all, I think, have become good, hon- 
 est citizens. And who ever heard, before 
 the existence of the chapel, of those happy 
 country excursions which are now so gen- 
 eral, and of the elegant floral processions ? 
 What a feature they were on the Fourth 
 of July ! And the merry games we used 
 to have in the chapel parlors ! I dare say 
 you don't forget them ! Could you now 
 go through the performance of the Grand 
 Mufti ? 
 
 I cannot close without expressing to 
 you and your Siamese twin, Tom Vose, 
 the great admiration I feel for your life- 
 long and earnest participation in this good 
 work of developing and elevating the 
 "young idea." You two and Mr. Emmons 
 made a self-sacrificing trio of philanthro- 
 pists, whom many a boy and girl has called 
 " blessed," as they loomed up into matu- 
 rity. I question, my dear Sam, if any seed 
 of Christianity was ever planted which has 
 been more prolific of precious results than 
 the Warren Street Chapel. 
 
 As ever yours. 
 
 One of the Old Chapel Boys, 
 
 James F. Drummond. 
 
172 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Kindred in spirit with the tone of this 
 letter, as revealing the sentiment ever kept 
 warm in the hearts of its pupils toward 
 their dear old chapel and its presiding 
 genius, an anecdote cited by Rev. William 
 R. Alger, from the far-away gold-fever 
 days of California, has a touching interest. 
 " Far off into the setting sun, where the 
 Californian gold mines lie, on the Fourth 
 of July, behold two young men reclining 
 upon the grass. One says, * What do you 
 think they are doing at the chapel now.^*' 
 The other, not recognizing an old fellow 
 pupil within these walls (in which I am 
 addressing you now), but still perceiving the 
 unmistakable reference, exclaims, 'What 
 do you know about the chapel ? ' * You 
 come to my tent and see,' continues the 
 first. Immediately obeying, he finds pinned 
 up over the sleeping-blanket a picture of a 
 portion of this room, given the other when 
 he left by one of the teachers here. It was 
 as fit and efficacious a stimulant, shrine, 
 and guardian, I venture to say, as any one 
 of those wooden images of the Virgin, or 
 leaden saints, which the papal peasants or 
 the serfs of the Greek Church carry with 
 
OLD CHAPEL BOYS. 173 
 
 them as amulets, or install in their houses 
 as patron angels." 
 
 If, therefore, one were asked to sum up 
 in a single phrase what was the greatest 
 and most fruitful of all the object lessons 
 set by Warren Street Chapel and its great- 
 hearted founder, it would be "the lesson 
 of faith in the Divine Hospitality." 
 Truly, of all the mistakes made by narrow- 
 minded philanthropists, the most fatal is 
 the mistake that there is any class in the 
 community, however poor or ignorant, 
 who in after life will ever say grace rap- 
 turously over recollections of an early diet 
 of moral bran or sawdust. If all the phy- 
 sical forces of nature — light, heat, elec- 
 tricity, gravitation, attraction, repulsion — 
 are on hand in every drop of water, then 
 surely all the divine forces are equally 
 latent in every child of humanity. A clear 
 perception of this was it that led Hon. 
 Edward Everett, at the close of an elo- 
 quent address, to pay the tribute which 
 follows to the method of education that 
 makes appeal to the whole compass of 
 human nature. 
 
 " And thus, my friends, we are brought 
 
174 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 to the moral of my remarks, — the supe- 
 riority of the Warren Street system, which 
 aims to reHeve suffering by raising the 
 intellectual, moral, and religious character 
 of the poor ; not only for the sake of giv- 
 ing them, in this way, greater facilities 
 toward earning a livelihood, but for the 
 sake of imparting to them that self-respect 
 which is the great safeguard against a life 
 of dependence. This is the great benefit 
 of all education, not the positive know- 
 ledge it bestows, however useful and con- 
 venient, but the elevation of mind and the 
 sense of character derived from the pos- 
 session of any kind of useful knowledge ; 
 from being placed in conscious communion 
 with nature, with kindred mind, with the 
 spiritual world, with God himself. 
 
 " On the other hand, the utterly igno- 
 rant person leads the existence of a brute 
 beast, of a poisonous weed, of a dull clod. 
 Napoleon said that he supposed there were 
 persons buried in the gloomy depths of 
 Paris who had never heard his name, or 
 had no distinct idea who or what he was. 
 I fear that there is many a poor creature 
 roaming our streets who has no idea, I do 
 
OLD CHAPEL BOYS. I 75 
 
 not say of the history or geography of the 
 land in which he lives, but no idea of moral 
 relations, — none of the duties of parent 
 and child, of magistrate and citizen, — no 
 idea of life, of time, of eternity, of Christ, 
 or of God. 
 
 " Who does not feel that, so long as this 
 is the case, true charity is not to feed the 
 hungry, but to impart spiritual food to the 
 starving soul ? This, sir [pointing to Mr. 
 Barnard], is the great object of your insti- 
 tution and your labors ; an object compared 
 with which the benevolence which begins 
 and ends in almsgiving deserves not the 
 name of charity." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 THE INEVITABLE DAY. 
 
 At the time of the firing on Fort Sum- 
 ter in 1 86 1 and the outbreak of the civil 
 war, Warren Street Chapel had been 
 steadily doing its work for twenty-five 
 years. Now, suddenly, a severe extra 
 strain was brought to bear on Mr. Barnard 
 himself and on the faithful band of men 
 and women who year in, year out, had stood 
 so stanchly by him. Those were the days 
 of extemporized sanitary commissions, be- 
 fore as yet, through the patriotic genius 
 of Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Frederick 
 Law Olmstead, the great National Sanitary 
 Commission had been organized. Night 
 and day was the work carried on of forward- 
 ing to the front hospital necessities of every 
 kind. The chapel, moreover, became and 
 continued to be an active recruiting office, 
 consecrating itself further to the work of 
 corresponding with and faithfully looking 
 
THE INEVITABLE DAY. 177 
 
 out for those it had sent into the army in 
 the resolve to prove " a watchful, waiting, 
 loving mother" to all who should return 
 sick or wounded. Mr. Barnard himself 
 was on fire, calling upon his flock from 
 the pulpit and in the evening schools to 
 enlist in the sacred cause. 
 
 The response to the fervor of these 
 appeals was just what might have been 
 expected of an institution conducted in 
 such a spirit ; so that, at the close of the 
 war, the next annual report could announce 
 with a pride fully justified : " Our hum- 
 ble chapel has put five hundred men, pu- 
 pils and graduates, into the army of our 
 Union. Its free, wide, and welcome em- 
 brace, in Sunday-school and service, of 
 such throngs as the days that are gone fa- 
 vored us with, its broad sweep of equally 
 large hosts in charity school, evening school, 
 and the ministry at large, enabled it to do 
 its recruiting to this proud degree. Long 
 before the crisis came, even from the very 
 outset, if we mistake not, certain patriotic 
 fires have blazed upon our lowly altars, 
 which warmed our lads and all their com- 
 rades to the cause of the country. It could 
 
178 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 not be otherwise. We were wiser than we 
 knew. And now our roll of honor is a 
 long and goodly one indeed." 
 
 All here was exultation in Mr. Barnard's 
 tone. How soon, alas! was another note 
 to be struck. To well-nigh every human 
 life, most especially in the experience of 
 high - wrought and compassionating na- 
 tures, there comes inevitably its tragic 
 hour. At some one juncture the outward 
 pressure proves too crushing and the in- 
 ward spirit breaks. Then the soul knows 
 its Gethsemane. 
 
 Signal faults of his own temperament, 
 signal excesses of his own qualities, had 
 Charles F. Barnard, as, indeed, have almost 
 all men who achieve anything marked in 
 the world. From the start, as has been 
 clearly indicated farther back, there went 
 along with his exuberant capacity of joy 
 and radiant vision of a redeemed humanity, 
 that drop of black blood in the veins which 
 ever means reaction into deeps of gloom, 
 or into a torture-house of ragged nervous 
 misery. 
 
 Endowed with a vitality of constitution 
 that enabled him to withstand the wear 
 
THE INEVITABLE DAY. 179 
 
 and tear of work kept up for long periods 
 under high pressure, none the less through 
 overaction had he been steadily preparing 
 for himself the severest physical and men- 
 tal penalties. Of his own institution not 
 merely founder but perpetual inspirer, the 
 stamp of his own personality was set upon 
 everything bound up with it. Its pecuni- 
 ary affairs had involved him in constant 
 anxieties, while his high-pitched ideal of 
 what it should be as foster parent to all 
 who had come under its influence had 
 entailed an enormous correspondence with 
 old pupils all over the country and in for- 
 eign lands. Moreover, by day and night 
 for years had he been breathing a vitiated 
 air necessitated by the close quarters to 
 which, spite of enlargements from time to 
 time of the building, he was doomed. 
 
 For several years before the outbreak of 
 the Civil War, it was already becoming 
 evident that Mr. Barnard was an over- 
 wrought man, but with the extra strain of 
 excitement and work now suddenly precip- 
 itated, this became increasingly more clear. 
 He had already sought retirement and 
 change in the country, in West Newton, 
 
l8o CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 and given up attendance on the night 
 schools ; and it was hoped that this relief 
 would suffice to restore his health. It 
 failed to do so. 
 
 Increasingly, even to Mr. Barnard's 
 stanchest and tenderest friends, was it 
 now evident that his mind had lost bal- 
 ance, and that his schemes were assuming 
 shapes too visionary for practical success. 
 Insane he was not, then or at a later pe- 
 riod. But the emotional oscillation from 
 extremes of exaltation to extremes of de- 
 pression was assuming a perilous intensity. 
 
 Never, in his best days, had he had 
 much idea of what business men call " the 
 value of money," at any rate in their sense 
 of the extreme difficulty of making it. Of 
 the " value of money " as a means of reliev- 
 ing distress and organizing new schemes 
 for elevating the neglected and ignorant, 
 he entertained, indeed, the most exalted 
 conceptions, finding great difficulty in so 
 much as understanding why it should be 
 prized for anything else. Now, however, 
 it was plain that on this subject his prac- 
 tical judgment was becoming too much 
 impaired to make him longer a* safe admin- 
 
THE INEVITABLE DAY. i8l 
 
 istrator. The moment his heart was ap- 
 pealed to, he would act on the spot, regard- 
 less of consequences, thus running the in- 
 stitution into debt. Moreover, under the 
 pressure of nervous restlessness, his power 
 of continuity was greatly weakened, and 
 he would pass without due reflection from 
 one hastily devised scheme to another. 
 When to all this is added the fact that the 
 immense insistency of will, and the readi- 
 ness to shoulder responsibility, which had 
 been the very conditions of his success, 
 now took the shape of autocratic pride and 
 refusal to brook contradiction, it will be 
 clear that here was but one more example 
 of that " last infirmity of noble mind," an 
 overwrought nature become the victim of 
 the " excess of its own high qualities." 
 
 Mr. Barnard, however, could recognize 
 nothing of this in himself. In the fever of 
 exaltation, never did his mind seem to him 
 so fertile in resources, never the future he 
 meant to open up to his institution so ra- 
 diant. But to his firmest friends and co- 
 workers, the men and women who loyally 
 and at such self-sacrifice had stood, year 
 in, year out, at his side, it looked so differ- 
 
1 82 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 ent They loved and revered him. Not 
 for the world would they cause him pain. 
 Most willingly would they have given him 
 a colleague, a younger man, who should 
 bear the brunt of the work. But this was 
 sheer impossibility. Not even in his ear- 
 lier days — still less in his present state of 
 mind — was he a man to work in double 
 harness, where his own striding pace would 
 have to accommodate itself to the time or 
 reach of another's. Therefore reluctantly, 
 and with great sadness, was the conclusion 
 arrived at by the committee of the chapel 
 that, for his own best good and for the 
 future of the institution, his relation with 
 it must be brought to an end. 
 
 The blow to Mr. Barnard was a terrible 
 one, and for a time nearly bereft him of 
 reason. He could see nothing in it but 
 the cruelest ingratitude. The act tore him 
 away from relations cemented in his heart's 
 blood. By night and day for nearly thirty 
 years he had no existence apart from the 
 beloved chapel. He had rocked its cra- 
 dle, watched over its growing youth, shared 
 a glorious pride in its maturity. From foun- 
 dation to capstone, it and all it stood for 
 
THE INEVITABLE DAY. 183 
 
 had been his original idea. And now, 
 when it had become the honor of Boston, 
 the parent of hke institutions in many 
 cities of the land, the quickener of the pub- 
 lic schools and of churches, the spot sought 
 out for study by philanthropic travelers 
 from Europe, the sacred hearthstone of 
 grateful memories to thousands of its 
 pupils scattered over the wide world, — 
 now to be thus torn from it and set adrift 
 on what seemed a homeless void, his " oc- 
 cupation gone," — this, to his distracted 
 heart was nothing short of a death sen- 
 tence. Painful would it be to dwell fur- 
 ther on the subject. The step had to be 
 taken. Years after, at Mr. Barnard's fu- 
 neral service, the whole issue was summed 
 up with perfect justice by Dr. James Free- 
 man Clarke in a single sentence : " It was 
 a sad thing that he had to leave the chapel, 
 though I suppose it was unavoidable, and 
 I do not think that he or any one else was 
 to blame." 
 
 None the less, how often are the strictly 
 unavoidable events of life, those for which 
 nobody is to blame, the most tragic of all 
 to poor humanity ! The inexorable law is 
 
184 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD, 
 
 there, but the reason does not grasp it; the 
 loving kindness is there, but the tortured 
 heart does not feel it It is the pathetic 
 story over again of so many household 
 experiences, when the day comes in which 
 sons and daughters who have revered, 
 nay idolized, a parent, find themselves 
 imperatively called on, through growing 
 infirmity on the parent's part, to restrain 
 the will before which heretofore they have 
 bowed in devout obedience. Torture is it 
 to them to take the stand, but to the par- 
 ent it is the shock of moral revolution, the 
 sacrilegious overthrow of the most sacred 
 laws of God and man. No one is to 
 blame ; only, the father cannot be made to 
 feel how the children's hearts are bleeding, 
 while they have to bear his imprecation, — 
 
 " How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child ! " 
 
XIX. 
 
 AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 At the time of the cessation, in 1864, of 
 Mr. Barnard's connection with Warren 
 Street Chapel, its lands and tenements 
 were held in trust by Charles Barnard (the 
 father) and John L. Emmons of Boston, 
 merchants. From this date it was deemed 
 expedient that " the voluntary association 
 heretofore existing for the support of War- 
 ren Street Chapel should be organized as 
 a corporation, for the more effectual pros- 
 ecution of the objects and purposes of the 
 said association." Accordingly this was 
 done, and the lands and tenements were 
 conveyed to the said new corporation as a 
 new trustee. After an interval. Rev. Wil- 
 liam G. Babcock was appointed superin- 
 tendent, remaining in charge till 1881, 
 when he was succeeded by Rev. Eber R. 
 Butler, an old chapel boy from near the 
 start, steeped in its best traditions, and the 
 most loyal of lovers of its founder. 
 
1 86 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 It lies outside the province of this 
 memoir to follow the later fortunes of 
 the chapel. In strict justice, however, 
 one point in relation to it is worthy of 
 emphasis. Of too many an institution 
 founded by the peculiar genius and sus- 
 tained by the powerful will of a single 
 innovating mind is it found to hold true 
 that on his removal or death the whole 
 fabric goes to pieces. Built up and kept 
 alive by one-man power, that power taken 
 away there remains nothing to fall back 
 on. In contradiction of all this, ever had 
 it been the signal merit of Mr. Barnard 
 that he so inspired and trained a little 
 army of co-workers as to leave them fully 
 equipped to fight on in the good cause 
 without his personal leadership, — a little 
 army in which, indeed, such leadership in 
 actual presence had passed on into spir- 
 itual leadership, — into identification with 
 him, heart and soul, in the same humani- 
 tarian enthusiasm. Such men as Samuel 
 Weltch, John L. Emmons, Josiah Thomas 
 Vose, Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, James Al- 
 exander Dupee, and others their peers, — 
 men of large business capacity, sustain- 
 
AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH. 187 
 
 ing high trusts in the community, and yet 
 one in their love and loyalty to the chapel, 
 — these, together with the band of devoted 
 women, now rallied with fresh resolve 
 around the old flag. New features were 
 from time to time added to the activities 
 of the institution, as, with the progress in 
 methods of industrial training, it seemed 
 desirable to give any of them a fair trial or 
 to set a new object lesson for the benefit 
 of the community at large. As a sin- 
 gle example here, at the expense of Mrs. 
 Pauline Agassiz Shaw was introduced a 
 large kindergarten, as well as classes for 
 instruction in the Sloyd system of carpen- 
 try and wood-carving, — classes in which 
 one hundred and fifty grammar and pri- 
 mary school teachers were trained under 
 capable Swedish teachers of the system. 
 
 To leave this matter, however, and to 
 return once more to the immediate sub- 
 ject of the memoir, it is pleasant to record 
 that in 1865, the year following all the pain 
 of the rupture of Mr. Barnard's ties with the 
 chapel, a delightful outing was prepared 
 for him through the devotion of his own 
 family circle. One of his sons was officer 
 
1 88 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 in a Union regiment then in Georgia, — 
 a regiment, moreover, in which a number 
 of the dear old chapel boys were enlisted, 
 who would be sure to give their beloved 
 pastor a royal reception. Moreover, those 
 were the high carnival days of the eman- 
 cipation of the slaves, the days in which, 
 in their enthusiastic minds, all American 
 history was translated into a new Book of 
 Exodus, in which the Egyptian bondage, 
 the Red Sea, Moses, and Miriam fur- 
 nished halos of light and color for the 
 transfiguration of the more realistic shapes 
 of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman. Hap- 
 pily, the scenes enacting furnished to so 
 highly emotional a temperament as Mr. 
 Barnard's just the reaction into love and 
 joy needful for the healing of his wounded 
 spirit. A few extracts from his letters to 
 the " Boston Transcript " and the " Com- 
 monwealth " will make this clear : — 
 
 Port Royal, St. Helena Island, 
 P^bruary 13, 1865. 
 
 Yesterday was Sunday, and I should 
 like to tell you how we passed it. No 
 holier, happier day ever blessed me. This 
 forenoon I rode to the church. It was a 
 
AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH, 189 
 
 plain, large building of brick, erected in 
 1855. White men used to hold forth here, 
 under the master's eye, in slavery times, to 
 whites and blacks, the former railed off 
 from the latter in ways that must have 
 looked strange to the Maker of them all. 
 Around the house was a grand and beau- 
 tiful grove of live-oaks, in their evergreen 
 foliage and draped with silvery, sweeping 
 moss. We went in. The officers of the 
 church found seats for us in the crowded 
 pews and aisles. But oh, what an assem- 
 bly it was, so hushed, so rapt, so calm, so 
 exalted ! The minister, a venerable col- 
 ored brother, was deaconing out a hymn. 
 The whole congregation sang after him 
 and with him, two lines at a time. But 
 the singing was such as I had never known 
 before. How can I describe it? You 
 would have said there must be some great, 
 wonderful organ or orchestra to produce 
 those tones. No, it was merely God's vox 
 humana stop. With it there mingled what 
 seemed to be the song of birds, or, as our 
 tears started, the sounds of beloved voices 
 far away from us now on earth, far above 
 us now in heaven. 
 
IQO CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 Another account of a service in a negro 
 church furnishes a humorous illustration 
 of how hard it was in those days for Af- 
 rican enthusiasm to confine itself to a 
 Quaker regime of sacred silence : — 
 
 To the Editor of the " Commonwealth^ 
 
 We heard of the surrender of Charles- 
 ton, on the 19th of February, in a crowded 
 colored church in Savannah. It was Sun- 
 day. The day and the scene we shall never 
 forget. Our colored brother, the minister 
 of the congregation, seeing several white 
 folks among his hearers, apologized to 
 them for the absence of preaching, as it 
 was their day 0/ discipline, and sermonizing 
 must be laid aside. Alas for his scheme! 
 He read the account in the Book of Joshua 
 of the capture of Ai, and it was so perti- 
 nent to our times that, before he knew it, 
 he preached a capital military sermon. 
 
 General Littlefield then arose and read 
 an extra which had just reached him, be- 
 ginning, " Charleston is ours ! " We were 
 in the pulpit, and could oversee the whole 
 house. What a sight it was! Such smiles 
 and tears, such signs of joy and devotion, 
 
AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH. 191 
 
 it was never ours to witness before. We 
 then took our turn. Two colored chap- 
 lains followed. The last of them, brother 
 to Thomas Simms of historic name, was 
 to our mind the best preacher of us all. 
 He closed his truly eloquent address by 
 alluding to an earlier and prouder hour 
 when his bones burned within him as he 
 heard how an old, strange man — crazy 
 fellow, as they called him — struck a blow, 
 far up toward the North, which shook 
 Virginia and every slave State. " Now," 
 cried he, "John Brown's body lies moul- 
 dering in the grave, and we '11 go marching 
 on!" The pent-up feelings of the whole 
 assembly only needed such a vent as this, 
 and swept forth at once in a full and hearty 
 chorus. We left the church after a ses- 
 sion of three hours and a series of five 
 sermons, — pretty well for a day of disci- 
 pline, 
 
 A final extract will show the rare privi- 
 lege Mr. Barnard enjoyed in being per- 
 mitted to enter the harbor of Charleston 
 in the steamer Planter, under comm.and, 
 as captain, of the same colored man, Rob- 
 
192 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 ert Small, who had with such splendid 
 audacity sailed her out in 1862 under the 
 guns of Fort Sumter, and handed her over 
 to the Federal fleet. 
 
 " It was indeed a privilege to enter 
 Charleston, as we did recently, through 
 the courtesy of Major-General Saxton, in 
 such a steamer as the Planter, and with 
 such a captain as Robert Small. It was 
 their first appearance in the harbor since 
 the memorable morning of their departure 
 in 1862. The fog detained us for a few 
 hours when we arrived at the bar. When 
 it cleared away, you can imagine with what 
 cheers our anchor came up, and with what 
 smiles of satisfaction the vessel and her 
 commander swept by the silenced and dis- 
 mantled Sumter, and hauled in to the 
 waiting, wondering wharves of the ruined 
 city. Whenever we went on shore, we 
 had only to say to the colored people, 
 ' The Planter and Captain Small are at the 
 dock,' and away they all hurried to greet 
 the well-known guests. ' Too sweet to 
 think of,' cried one noble-looking old man, 
 who had evidently waited long for the 
 good news of the day." 
 
AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH. 193 
 
 On his return, in 1865, from the South, 
 Mr. Barnard continued to reside in West 
 Newton, Massachusetts. Nearly nineteen 
 years were still before him till his death 
 in 1884. They were years of alternation 
 between seasons of joy and periods of 
 dejection and darkness. In his perpetual 
 love of nature, and in a return to his early 
 habits of miscellaneous reading, he found 
 great solace. Moreover, the warmth and 
 variety of the greetings he constantly re- 
 ceived from those he had befriended in 
 the past were living proof to him that he 
 had not lived in vain. But to a nature of 
 such abounding vitality and prodigality of 
 benevolent instinct, and after a life spent 
 in such a whirl of philanthropic action, his 
 enforced separation from the idol of his 
 heart remained his " thorn in the flesh " 
 that to the end would not " depart from 
 him." Under uncontrollable restlessness, 
 h^ more than once sought to resume his 
 former work, taking charge for a time of 
 a somewhat similar institution under the 
 auspices of the Harvard Church in Charles- 
 town, Massachusetts. But he was not suc- 
 cessful there. No longer was he the same 
 
194 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 man, neither had he the same devoted 
 backing from a host of able and self- 
 sacrificing co-workers. No, his life-work 
 was done. 
 
 From time to time, as notably on his 
 seventieth birthday, pleasant ovations came 
 to him from his hosts of still -surviving 
 friends. On this special occasion they 
 flocked in troops to Warren Street Chapel, 
 and there, in the midst of the trophies of 
 his former success, welcomed him with 
 loving hearts ; the feeling of all present 
 voicing itself in a memorial poem by Rev. 
 Augustus M. Lord, now of Providence, 
 Rhode Island: — 
 
 " Up from dark lanes and alleys, 
 Up from the noisy street, 
 Comes a murmur of thanksgiving, 
 As of voices young and sweet. 
 
 " And a crowd of joyful faces 
 Above him seem to bend, 
 As they whisper a benediction ^ 
 
 O'er the children's loving friend, — 
 
 "He who so oft has rekindled 
 In the pallid cheek its bloom. 
 He who has let in the sunlight 
 To so many a darkened room ; 
 
AN OUTING IN THE SOUTH. 1 95 
 
 "He who has stilled the throbbing 
 Of so many troubled hearts, 
 And wiped away the tear-drop 
 That to sorrow's eyelid starts ; 
 
 " He who has spent his lifetime 
 For the good of his fellow-men, 
 Till the tides of time have measured 
 His threescore years and ten ; 
 
 " Again the murmur rises, 
 
 And I join the crowd and pray, 
 ' God love him, bless him, crown him, 
 On this his natal day.' " 
 
XX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Some months before his death, at the 
 age of seventy-six, Charles Francis Bar- 
 nard voluntarily sought retreat in the 
 McLean Asylum, Somerville. " He had 
 been feeble for a long time, and although 
 his mind was not affected, he desired to 
 enter some refuge where he could have 
 complete rest." There, November 8, 1884, 
 he quietly passed away. The funeral ser- 
 vices, held in the Unitarian Church in 
 West Newton, were conducted by his 
 classmate. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and 
 by Dr. Edward Everett Hale, each of 
 whom paid touching tributes to his life 
 and work. 
 
 At a later date, a memorial service was 
 held in Warren Street Chapel, at which 
 Dr. Henry I. Bowditch and other old as- 
 sociates recorded their grateful testimony 
 to his signal services. Dr. Bowditch, emi- 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 nent alike as physician and philanthropist, 
 spoke with touching feeling of his life-long 
 relations with his early classmate. On his 
 own return from Europe, upon the com- 
 pletion of his professional studies, he said 
 he found himself out of touch with the 
 then existing churches in Boston. None 
 of them were congenial to him. The non- 
 sectarian church he craved, he found at 
 Warren Street Chapel, and at once pro- 
 posed to Mr. Barnard to assist him in con- 
 ducting it, provided, with his avowed be- 
 liefs, he could be free to teach a perfectly 
 natural religion. To this his friend cor- 
 dially consented, and they worked together 
 in entire harmony till 1844. Then a tem- 
 porary rupture, growing out of the anti- 
 slavery agitation, took place between them. 
 Dr. Bowditch insisted that the subject of 
 slavery and of the relation of the United 
 States to it should be made part of the 
 instruction and exhortation given the chil- 
 dren. Mr. Barnard absolutely opposed 
 this, insisting that it was foreign to his 
 peculiar work, and that he had already all 
 the burden he could stagger under. . None 
 the less, Dr. Bowditch felt that not to take 
 
198 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 this stand would involve the forfeiture of 
 his sense of independence as a teacher, and 
 make him subservient to the slaveholders' 
 interest. And so, like Paul and Barnabas, 
 the two fiery apostles parted asunder. 
 
 Later in life, however, they came cor- 
 dially together again, and to the end Dr. 
 Bowditch remained a faithful supporter of 
 the chapel work. " Mr. Barnard," he said, 
 " was a very obstinate man in carrying 
 through what he had determined upon, 
 and that was one of his merits. I would 
 not," continued he, "give a farthing for 
 anybody's service in a good cause who is 
 not obstinate. Whatever mistakes he may 
 have made were trivial in comparison with 
 the great good he did in the community. 
 He was the friend and helper of the poor. 
 He visited and ministered to them. The 
 distinctions of religious belief were naught 
 to him in such matters. If there was an 
 unbeliever in the neighborhood, his chil- 
 dren were sure to be sought out and in- 
 vited in. He was a good and true man, 
 and his memory must be honored. The 
 best way to do that is to perpetuate the 
 work he began and so long continued in 
 
CONCL USION. 1 99 
 
 the chapel, which, for myself, I hope, will 
 hereafter be called the ' Barnard Chapel 
 for Children.' " 
 
 Easy would it be to multiply to any extent 
 the glowing tributes paid after his death to 
 the character and services of the subject of 
 this memoir. They would prove, however, 
 but repetitions of one another. Better is 
 it, then, to close with a single one, an ex- 
 tract from a memorial sermon preached by 
 Dr. James Freeman Clarke from the text, 
 " If thine eye be single, thy whole body 
 shall be full of light:" — 
 
 " In speaking to you to-day of Charles 
 F. Barnard and his work in Boston, I have 
 taken this text as an appropriate motto ; 
 for Mr. Barnard seems to me to be a strik- 
 ing illustration of its truth. Singleness of 
 purpose, a sincere conviction, the absence 
 of side-ends and inferior motives, tend to 
 superior insight. A double-minded man, 
 on the contrary, is unstable in all his ways. 
 Singleness of purpose is a great power. 
 Thus one man fixes his whole mind on the 
 condition of the prisoner; another on that 
 of the slave, or of the blind, or the insane, 
 or the poor, and so each becomes a leader 
 
200 CHARLES FRANCIS BARNARD. 
 
 and an authority in his own special depart- 
 ment of thought and work. 
 
 " The Warren Street Chapel was his 
 pride and joy. It was his discovery. Into 
 it he put the best part of his life, and, I am 
 told, a large part of his means. It was a 
 sad thing that he had to leave it, though I 
 suppose it was unavoidable, and I do not 
 think that he or any one else was to blame. 
 But I wish to repeat here what I said at 
 his funeral, that, sad as that separation 
 was, it proved that his heart was not in his 
 position but in his work; for he did not 
 retire from his ministry, but continued it 
 in another place and in a humbler way. 
 Personal disappointment did not chill his 
 enthusiasm. Whenever I saw him, to the 
 end of his life, his heart was still in the 
 cause to which he had given his youth, his 
 manhood, and his age. 
 
 " ' After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.' 
 He has gone to join the company of the 
 modern saints. Our day has seen saints 
 of a new order, canonized, not by the de- 
 cree of a pope or the vote of a council, but 
 by the love of the human heart. To the 
 glorious company of apostles, the goodly 
 
CONCLUSION. 20 1 
 
 fellowship of prophets, and the noble army 
 of martyrs, our period has added the gen- 
 erous friends of mankind. The early 
 Christian ages saw the saints of rapt devo- 
 tion and lonely piety, — those who went 
 apart from men as anchorites and monks, 
 to lead a life of prayer. Those ages saw 
 the saints of self-denial and renunciation ; 
 those who renounced the joys of life, cruci- 
 fying the flesh with its desires and affec- 
 tions. But our time has added the saints 
 of philanthropy, who imitate their Master 
 in going about doing good; who follow 
 Him in teaching the blind to see, the lame 
 to walk, and in soothing the demonized 
 spirits of the insane, leaving them clothed 
 and in their right mind. To this class our 
 friend belongs ; among them he has his 
 place with Oberlin and Howard, with Hor- 
 ace Mann and Dr. Howe, with Florence 
 Nightingale and the great brotherhood 
 and sisterhood of charity. These are the 
 saints of good works, followers of St. 
 James, visiting the fatherless and widows 
 in their affliction, and having for their 
 motto the saying of Abou Ben Adhem : — 
 
 " Write me as one that loves his fellow-men ! " 
 
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