gret had been expressed, and some expostulation that it was an unusual occurrence for the neighborhood, father relieved the concern of the listeners by saying, "I killed those hens myself!"

Looking back at father's life, I am impressed by the variety and range of his mental interests. He was a prompt, eager champion of the metric system, had a fairly complete set of weights and measures, which many of you have seen in his study, and was active in bringing it into the schools. Aluminum, in its practical uses, was another subject which attracted him, and upon which he lectured. Geology was a favorite study, and Rev. Mr. Wright and he took many a geological excursion together. Father was a firm believer in evolution at a time when many clergymen looked at its teachings askance, for his own reading and observation had prepared him for this line of thought.

Of natural objects in which he took interest, I suppose the first place, after garden and apples, should be given to precious stones. For a minister of moderate income he had a really excellent collection both in value and in range of specimens. He used frequently to give lectures on these gems, and I remember his going to the Concord Reformatory and passing them freely and without loss among the prisoners, but exercising much more care when exhibiting them in a fashionable young ladies' school south of Boston. It was rather characteristic that in his office, among a fine array of paper weights of agate and petrified wood, upon his mantel (some dozen handsome specimens), he kept one piece of old burnt out coal from the furnace of the Congregational House, and he would listen with quiet amusement to the interested comments of his callers, who failed often to recognize what it was.

Out-of-door objects were his delight, especially anything connected with a pleasing landscape, or the orchard or garden. One day last spring while confined to the bedchamber, he said: "I have much to be thankful for with this large room, and as fine a view as there is in town, and with a grape vine, maple trees, and apple trees, and pear trees; everything but a plum tree!"

The interest which Mr. Rice took in history showed itself in frequent historical sermons. Upon Thanksgiving Day he usually chose some theme from early Massachusetts times. His addresses to the Grand Army ran along similar lines. I remember well one Sunday evening when Forefather's Day was being celebrated, and different men were assigned poems to

read. To Deacon George Tapley was given the poem of Bryant, beginning "Wild was the day, the wintry sea." The poem had four stanzas. But when it was read, behold, Mr. Tapley had added a fifth stanza, in order to give it a little more religious or orthodox flavor, and you could scarcely have recognized any difference between the verse composed by Mr. Tapley and the original. Which shows that historical sermons in the pulpit tend to produce poetry in the pews!

The afternoon when President Garfield was shot, if my boyish memory is correct, was Saturday. Father was haying in the field, when a neighbor came with the dreadful news. Father hurried the hay in as fast as possible, and prepared a special sermon. I remember, too, that the next morning, he asked one of the men in the church porch-a man who was supposed to take the Sunday papers, (and in those days many people looked askance at the practice)-what the report was from the President. I will not embarass any of the man's relatives by telling who was so lax thirty-three years ago.

Probably his best historical-biographical sermon was the one preached after General Grant's death, in which he described the slow progress and discouragements of the long war, until a "Voice" was heard at Fort Donelson, calling for "Unconditional Surrender." You who remember father's voice as he used to call the cow from the pasture, or as it rang out like an alarm bell the night the old church burned, will appreciate the thrill which went through us all, as father spoke of that Voice which called at Donelson, Vicksburg and Appomatox for "Unconditional Surrender." My father once said that he thought perhaps his most effective public address was made in Danvers at the Armory. It was at a Republican jollification-probably in 1888- and it did not seem to him that the right note had been struck in the speeches. When father's turn came to speak, he called to mind those lofty principles of union and freedom for which the party had stood in its early days. That was a theme very dear to his heart.

Like every minister father had some sermons which were not at his best level. One afternoon he came back from preaching at the Danvers Hospital, walked up stairs to the study, opened the stove door, and deliberately put his sermon into the fire. We children exclaimed, aghast, "Why what is the matter, father?" Father explained that it was a poor sermon. We refused to believe this and said: "But, father, did anyone tell you so?" He answered in his dry way: "I did not need to have anybody tell me it was a poor sermon."

Mr. Rice was judicial in temperament; in the years of my observation, conservative in disposition, and always broad and democratic in his sympathies. His love of the oppressed made him an early Republican, as has been already stated. But his judicial temperament, aided no doubt, by his legal reading, made him cautious. He was never an extreme Abolitionist.

One of his last conversations with me was about circulating a pamphlet of Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, claiming that Garrison and Phillips had done more harm than good to the Antislavery cause by their extreme attacks upon the South and the virulence of their language. Father believed that the combination of idealist and opportunist-men of more moderate type, such as Lyman Beecher, Seward, and Lincoln-were the true helpers of freedom. I once heard him say with reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which of course, he thoroughly approved, that at the time, his only fear was lest it had been issued too soon, before public opinion was ripe to support it.

Questions of public welfare were approached by him from the viewpoint of a citizen, rather than from a conventional ministerial standard. He was not ecclesiastical but human in his sympathies. He tried to look at things from the out-ofdoors point of view. In the legislature this was his distinct aim, and it was noticed and favorably commented on by his fellow-members. He had a great dislike for the religious agitator, and for the minister who felt that somehow his profession made him necessarily wiser on all reform and moral questions than the rank and file of men. Quite characteristic of this attitude was his strong stand when on the school committee, against any racial or religious discrimination against any teacher. It was fitting also that the last article from his pen, printed in the Salem News in June, 1913, was a plea for total abstinence, a recognition of the good work done by the Catholic Total Abstinence Society, and a re-statement of his belief that personal effort rather than external legislation, should have the first place in human betterment.

Father's last article, accepted but not published on account of his death, was a vigorous remonstrance against the effort made by some ministers to set up personal standards of eugenics, other than those required by law, before they would perform the marriage rite. Father regarded the state and human society as also from God, no less than the church. This was the Puritan view. And in his opinion the carefully considered and expressed public action of an intelligent body of citizens

was quite as likely to reflect the true will of God as the selfproclaimed standard of some Congregational minister, or group of ministers, who undertook to prescribe additional requirements before they would perform their duty as magistrates in solemnizing the marriage. Few things annoyed father more than to have a body of ministers as ministers, set themselves apart from, or above, the common people in practical matters, and imagine that by doing so they had some halo of moral authority. He believed that a minister should be a prophet, a moral force, and an interpreter of Divine truth and life, and should walk in lowliness of heart as a Christian. But he did not believe that the position of minister thereby made a man superior in practical or civic matters to other conscientious thoughtful men.

For at

Of the religious work done by Rev. Mr. Rice outside of Danvers at least a word should be spoken. For many years he was a director of several of the leading denominational societies, state and national, such as the Congregational Education Society, the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society, and the Massachusetts Board of Ministerial Relief. least a dozen years he gave much time, as a trustee to Colorado College, and in the days when its very existence was in peril from financial difficulties, he devoted himself unsparingÎy to its relief and welfare. In recognition of his services, the college later gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. He never made much account of degrees, however, and it was quite in keeping with his character, that though Bowdoin College honored him with the degree of Master of Arts, his son found out the fact only by accident, after many years. The work which father gave to religious causes outside the labors of the pastorate at the Center could hardly have averaged less than one or two full days a week for the thirty years while he was at the old parsonage, and this does not include at least a half day a week in the school work and visiting, for which latter he received compensation. But the outside religious work was wholly gratuitous.

In the year 1894 the Congregational churches of Massachusetts established something entirely new in Congregational administration; namely, a Board of Pastoral Supply. The work was to be fashioned along wholly new lines, and without any precedent in our denomination. Those of you who are members of strongly centralized churches, will hardly realize the immense practical difficulties involved in this new work to which Dr. Rice was called as secretary. It required

the looking up of the credentials of theological students and of ministers all over the country. It involved the impartial recommendation of pastors for vacant churches; it demanded as far as possible, the avoidance of misfits and of the unhappy mating of church and minister. All this had to be done with no authoritative power to appoint, for the only authority the secretary had was such as might come from the honesty, fairness and wisdom of the recommendations themselves. When you consider how few large churches there are in Massachusetts, compared with the number of worthy and capable men, who might naturally desire and might truly deserve a larger or a better place, you will see how difficult was the task of making these adjustments. Yet the result was markedly to increase the friendly spirit and contentment of both ministers and churches. Since my father's death we have had numerous letters from ministers who had been wont to drop into the office discouraged or discontented, and who always went away cheered. Indeed, people with no special business at all would come in just for the heartening voice, and the word of jollity and cheer.

The work which this secretary began grew to large proportions, and at the time of his death he had careful statements and records concerning 3,600 living Congregational ministers in the United States. It was somewhat of a surprise to his children to see how readily our father adapted himself to this work. We would never have thought of doubting his fairness or wise judgment, but the readiness with which at sixty-five years of age he undertook and successfully carried through the creative executive labor of establishing this new board, with its demands for originality and also for exact detailthis was a surprise to us. Father had the satisfaction of seeing the principles of his work widely followed by Congregationalists in America. His plan was used as a model by the Baptists of New York State, and when the Congregationalists of England wished to undertake a similar work, they found that what father had established in Massachusetts was exactly what they needed for their national board.

At the time when father took the secretaryship, he moved from the old parsonage to Lindall Hill, and in the following year, September 24, 1895, he married Miss Henrietta Hyde Stanwood, of Boston, one of the editors of the Congregationalist. Father had loved the labors of the pastorate, and he was deeply attached to the "ancient church." But he also found the secretaryship, with its variety, very enjoyable, and I have