THE LATE BISHOP HUNTINGTON
At the Head of His Diocese for Thirty-five Years

The Leonard Library

WptUltt College

Toronto

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Register

MEMOIR AND LETTERS

OF

FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

MEMOIR AM> LETTERS
FREDERIC D,\> HI NTINGTON

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iiUNTINGTON

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MEMOIR AND LETTERS

OF

FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

ftrot -Gteljop of Central jfteto port

BY

ARRIA S. HUNTINGTON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

({) ftitiersi&e press, Cambridge
1906

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ARRIA S. HUNTINGTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published November /po6

PREFACE

In the preparation of this Memoir the endeavor
has not been to construct a complete Biography, or
to include in a comprehensive record the many in
terests, the acquaintances, and the correspondence of a
long life. Bishop Huntington s early religious experi
ence was unusual, and that is given in his own words.
Other considerations beside the inadequacy of the
editor for theological and historical labors were
taken into account in confining the work to a limited
space. It would not have been consistent with the
personality portrayed to reproduce, merely for the
honor paid to their subject, the noble and eloquent
tributes rendered him in press and pulpit, and only
those are here preserved which throw a direct light
upon traits of character.

The writings of Frederic Huntington, in the course
of two generations, have reached people in all lands
who never saw his face or heard his voice. In the
field of education alone thousands of teachers have
drawn help and inspiration from the little book,
" Unconscious Tuition." His sermons and devotional
volumes continue to awaken to righteousness, and
bring spiritual consolation to earnest souls. For such
as these, for the Clergy of his own Diocese, and the
flocks who loved ancf revered their Chief Pastor, as
well as for the old Parishioners who cherish his mem
ory, these imperfect recollections are gathered up.

CONTENTS

I. HERITAGE AND YOUTH 1

II. THE DIVINE COMMISSION 44

III. THE FIRST CALL 67

IV. A NEW PATH 110

V. SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 153

VI. DIVINE GUIDANCE 182

VII. THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 212

VIII. THE KING S MESSENGER 250

IX. ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 279

X. THE ROYAL LAW 323

XI. THE ROAD UPHILL 365

XII. THE JOURNEY ENDED 422

APPENDIX 427

BIBLIOGRAPHY 431

INDEX . 433

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BISHOP HUNTINGTON 1887 . Frontispiece

PORTRAIT OF FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON AT THE
AGE OF TWENTY-SEVEN, FROM A CRAYON POR
TRAIT IN 1846 BY SETH CHENEY . . 86

BISHOP HUNTING-TON S BIRTHPLACE AND SUMMER
HOME AT HADLEY . . ^74

BISHOP AND MRS. HUNTINGTON 1895 . 412

MEMOIR AND LETTERS OF
FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

CHAPTER I

HERITAGE AND YOUTH

" In this place there was a record kept of them that had been pil
grims of old."

ON the first day of the past century a wedding took
place in the old family mansion at Hadley, Massa
chusetts, which may well be memorable to the many
descendants of Dan Huntington and Elizabeth Whiting
Phelps. The alliance was entirely suitable, in view of
the position of the bride and bridegroom, their an
cestry, kinsfolk, and education. Both came from a
lineage of distinguished Connecticut forefathers; on
one side the Huntington founders of the town of Nor
wich, the Metcalfs, and the Throops; on the other
the early settlers of the towns of Northampton and
Hadley, sons of Hartford and Windsor colonists,
brave and gentle folk who landed in the Mary and
John at Dorchester in 1630 and made their way
across the wilderness a few years later.

The bride s grandfather, Moses Porter, 1 lost his life
as captain of a militia company in the tragic Battle

1 See notes in Appendix.

2 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

of the Morning Scout at Crown Point in September,
1755, leaving a widow and little girl in the house then
newly erected two miles north of Hadley village. His
wife was descended from Rev. John Whiting, a grad
uate of Harvard College in 1653, a godly and esteemed
minister of Hartford, who seems to have been, in the
long line of ancestry, excepting Rev. Dan Huntington,
the only progenitor from whom the future bishop in
herited an inclination towards the calling of a preacher. 1
Elizabeth, daughter of John Whiting and Phoebe
Gregson, became the wife of Nathaniel Pitkin, 2 son of
William Pitkin, 3 who held high office in the Hartford
Colony. Their daughter, Elizabeth, married Captain
Moses Porter, and of this marriage there was but one
child, Elizabeth. She became the wife of Charles
Phelps, descendant of Nathaniel Phelps, who was a
founder of the town of Northampton and one of the
first deacons of the church there. The offspring of
this union were a son and daughter: Moses, whose
name was changed to Charles Porter, born August,
1772, and Elizabeth Whiting, born February 4, 1779,
who became the bride of January 1, 1801.

Of distinctly Puritan stock, without any mixture
on either side, the history for six generations is that of
stout-hearted men of action, with established religious
convictions, faithful to church and state, upright in
morals. Public service was rendered in those times
as part of social obligation, and more often at personal
sacrifice than for any expected recompense. Such is
the record of early days gathered from the reminis
cences of Rev. Dan Huntington, written in old age, of

1 See notes in Appendix. 2 See notes in Appendix.

3 See notes in Appendix.

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 3

his home in Lebanon, Connecticut, and of the relatives
and neighbors Huntingtons, Wolcotts, Trumbulls,
Throops, Metcalfs, Masons, Wheelocks.

William Huntington, father of Dan, enlisted under
General Putnam, served with him in the beginning
of the Revolution, and was in command of a company
of militia when New London was burned by the
regulars ; an incident well remembered by his young
est son, then a child, who saw the smoke of the con
flagration from their home.

Dan Huntington graduated from Yale College in
1794, with the first honors. He became a tutor at
Williams College, then just established, but was
recalled to a similar position at Yale, which he held
for two years, pursuing his studies in theology with
the president, Dr. Timothy Dwight. This gentleman
published in his celebrated "Travels" 1 an account of
the Hadley estate, which he pronounced "the most
desirable possession of the same kind and extent
within my knowledge;" going on to describe at some
length its attractions. It was on a visit to its owner,
Charles Phelps, that he met the daughter Elizabeth
Whiting, and was much impressed with her charm of
person and of character. He did not fail to mention
these attractions to his favorite tutor, with a suggestion
that the young man might find in her all the qualities
most desirable in a minister s wife. Not long after
wards, Rev. Mr. Huntington, having been asked to
occupy the pulpit at the Hadley meeting-house on a
Sunday, was invited on the following Tuesday to
drink tea with the family of Squire Phelps. The ao

1 Dr. Edward E. Hale calls this "the first guide-book of New
England, excellent reading to this day."

4 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

quaintance thus begun (whether by chance or contriv
ance, who can tell ?) ripened into a mutual affection,
and the marriage was celebrated the following year.

In his "Family Memorial," written as an octo
genarian, Rev. Dan Huntington says that at this time
he was much attracted by the current setting towards
what was then called "the West," the Connecticut
reserve lands in Ohio. But the place of assistant
minister at Litchfield, Rev. Mr. Champion having
become disabled, was offered to him. He accepted,
and was ordained to the work of the ministry in Sep
tember, 1798. This "delightful village" was, as he
himself describes it, " on a fruitful hill, richly endowed
with schools, both professional and scientific, and
their accomplished teachers ; with its learned lawyers,
and senators, and representatives, both in the National
and State departments; and with a population en
lightened and respectable. Litchfield was now in its
glory. I came among them without patrimony; but
with their assistance, in a handsome settlement, I soon
found myself in a way to be comfortably at home
among them, with a neat domicile of my own."

The house which he built for himself was burned in
1861, but the stepping-stones remaining are the same
over which the family were wont to pass, and some
of the original fruit-trees, preserved by grafts, have
been remembered as the "minister s pear," to the
present generation. Through the pious commemoration
of a townsman, a fine portrait, copy of a miniature,
painted on ivory, at the period of Rev. Mr. Hunting-
ton s pastorate, has been placed in the chapel of the
church, among those of the other deceased ministers,
Rev. Lyman Beecher being his immediate successor.

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 5

To this home and parish, possessing attractions to an
unusual degree, was introduced the bride of the new
century, after " a long journey over frozen ground,
through snow-banks, and amid the storms of winter."
Writing to his grandchildren in old age, her hus
band says playfully: " On this, as on all other subjects,
all is well that ends well. If you would know more
about it, my dear children, try it for yourselves when
the time comes. What say you to a courtship of a
year or two without an engagement ? the heart, without
the hand ? the apparent affection, but not the promise,
anterior to the marriage vow ? "

The character of the young minister was genial and
cheerful; even in his declining years one who knew
him well testifies: "Never were ears less open than
his to listen to the Crack of doom, never was tongue
less ready than his to be a prophet of coming disaster.
Every village stir was not in his opinion a crisis. He
waked and slept, and waked again and the Lord sus
tained him. He was willing to labor and to wait and
pray.

"The manners of our friend were gentle and his
words well chosen. Had he found it necessary to go
into a King s Palace we should have felt no concern
as to his bearing. He would have carried himself with
a singular grace, without any amazed awkwardness,
and as one who had somehow been there before."

We learn from such a tribute, given by an intimate
friend of the subject of this memoir, 1 how largely the
youngest son owed to his Huntington blood a kindly
and genial instinct, and a simplicity of character
which especially distinguished him.
1 Rev. Rufus Ellis.

6 FREDERIC DAN HTJNTINGTON

There is no doubt that from his mother Frederic
inherited a strain so opposite to the sanguine and the
optimistic, so austere and so reserved, that an effort
must be made to portray faithfully the remarkable
character which she possessed.

Elizabeth Whiting Phelps was an only daughter.
Her childhood was spent mostly at home under refined
and happy influences. Mrs. Phelps, the mother, was
an active, clear-minded, cheerful person, keeping an
open house, administering the affairs of a large estate
with justice and generosity, social, neighborly, and
unaffectedly religious. Her disposition shows itself
through the pages of her diary, kept from her six
teenth year, and was in contrast with that of her hus
band, who was more inclined to moods. In his family
some singularities have been traced back to an ances
tress Grace Martin, who married Nathaniel Phelps of
Northampton in 1676, herself recently come from Eng
land. Early annals speak of her as " of great resolution
and perseverance and a little romantic withal." In her
descendants one finds a tinge of melancholy, reticence,
and reserve, and that indifference to the opinion of
others which borders on eccentricity. There was also an
idealism, and a tenacity of opinion which showed itself
strongly in the life of the elder Charles Phelps, in his
vision of a great university on the Vermont hills, and the
dogged resolution with which he resisted the formation
of that state and its separation from New York. 1

From such antecedents Elizabeth Phelps inherited

a strong character, high ideas, passionate self-devotion.

Like her mother she had a keen sense of humor and a

quick wit, but she did not share the same sprightly

1 Under a Colonial Koof-tree.

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 7

nature, and in her Journal an unusual seriousness
manifests itself. Beginning at the time when she made
an outward confession of religion in 1798, her entries
soon go beyond the customary scrupulous record of
each Sunday s sermon and text; prayers, meditations,
self -questionings are poured out as the natural expres
sion of a sensitive and highly spiritual soul.

On her wedding day she writes : " Is this the closing
scene of my single life ? the time which for more than
a year I have been anticipating and for which prepara
tion of mind ought to have been made?" And on
reaching Litchfield : " I am now settled in my dwelling ;
now am I under the inspection of an attentive town
but this intimidates me not, the eye of the Lord is upon
me, therefore let me fear before Him."

Birthdays of all her children were marked by special
prayer. Of a maidservant born in the house she writes :
" Elvira is eighteen years old to-day. I would entreat
Almighty God to forgive all that has been amiss in
my treatment of her and my intercourse with her;
help me in time to experience more meekness, forbear
ance, longsuffering, gentleness."

From the first, when she became mistress of the
Litchfield Parsonage, there was nothing plaintive or
timorous in the way she met the world and its duties.
Children came fast and were welcomed, and with these
cares were added those of her position: visitings and
tea-drinkings ; associations of ministers and clerical
exchanges, demanding frequent hospitality; visits
from her honored parents and consequent entertaining.
The limited income of a country parson was neces
sarily supplemented with a liberal hand by Mr. and
Mrs. Phelps, who were not too far removed to send

8 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

wagon-loads of fruit and stored across the Connecticut
hills. In the constant correspondence between mother
and daughter there is no recognition of stint or de
pendence, although the demands of a growing family
finally compelled Rev. Mr. Huntington to remove to
Middletown, where for a while he added receipts from
boarding-pupils to his income. In 1816 Mrs. Hunt-
ington s father died, having completed an upright and
useful career, one of his latest services to the com
munity being a care for the erection of the meeting
house, in Hadley, to this day in good preservation and
a model of Puritan architecture. 1 His estate was di
vided between the son and daughter, the latter retain
ing the old homestead and buildings adjoining, with
a farm of so considerable extent that it would afford
provision for a large family. It seemed wise and pru
dent for the Rev. Dan Huntington to remove thither,
he himself continuing to preach at intervals in different
places. In May, 1819, the eleventh and last child, the
seventh son, was bom. We find this record in his
mother s journal a little homemade book of nar
row sheets of note paper, clear, firm, and accurately
indited.

June 27, 1819. HADLEY.

Sabbath Evening.

The 28th day of last month, about eleven o clock
in the morning, I was made to rejoice in the birth of
another son ; never can I admire and adore the good
ness of God for his mercy to me in this time of distress,
anxiety and danger how much better did he deal

1 This edifice was erected in 1808 in the West Street of the village,
and removed to its present site in 1841. The weather-cock was
brought from England for the earlier building in 1752.

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 9

with me than I feared. I am ashamed of my unbelief
and of my shameful distrust of Thee, O my Covenant
God, why is it that I am so favored ? Thou art gra
cious and merciful to the evil and unthankful. I be
seech thee to enable me to spend my future life more
in thy service and to Thy glory, make me more diligent
and active in instructing those around me, and espe
cially my dear children in the things of salvation, and
wilt Thou crown my exertions with Thy blessing.

In particular would I plead at this time for the
precious little one just brought into the world. I have
been the means of giving him a sinful, corrupt nature.
I can do nothing to effect his salvation, without the
influences of Thy Spirit, O be pleased to help me, and
especially dwell in his heart, by Thy grace, and suffer
him not to go in the way of sin ; renew his heart early
in life if it may consist with Thy will and prepare him
to be a blessing in the world and blessed at last in Thy
heavenly kingdom. Thou hast enabled me O Lord,
to wait upon Thee in Thy house and to dedicate him
to Thee in Baptism, now may we feel that he is not our
own, but may we be careful to bring him up for Thee,
who has so kindly dealt with us.

This was the day of the baptism of Frederic Dan,
just a month after his birth. The entry is inscribed in
the hand of the old pastor, Rev. John Woodbridge, in
the records of the Church of Christ, Hadley; a fact not
of itself of any significance except for the connection
of this rigid old Puritan with what became a largely
controlling influence in the life of the child whom he
had admitted into the Christian fold.

Not two years after Frederic s birth the same re-

10 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

gistry sets down minutes of a church meeting at which
a letter of petition was presented by the Reverend Dan
Huntington.

Although a clergyman in the Congregational body, he
had become interested, through correspondence and
study, in the movement towards Unitarianism. He was
beginning to associate himself with other little groups
of thinking people in the towns of western Massa
chusetts. Joined with him in the letter was his brother-
in-law Charles Phelps, lately removed from a Boston
law practice to a new house on the family estate. That
the attitude of these minds was not one of entire sep
aration from the covenant of their forefathers seems
evident from the fact, attested in the pastor s own hand,
that the letter to be considered requested from its
writers communion with the church "as Unitarians"
and " the same privilege for their children, who desire
it with the same views of Gospel which they themselves
entertain."

The place of worship at Hadley was the nearest to
the family residence, situated in the neighboring vil
lage. It was there that Elizabeth Phelps, before her
marriage, had united with the confessed followers of
Christ. She herself had the full right of participation
in the sacrament, and her husband desired it for him
self and the sons and daughters growing up around
them. The request was refused, in a tone which be
trays all the bitterness of ecclesiastical controversy.
The reply, after remarking that " it is a novel and un
precedented thing for persons having no communion
with a Church to solicit a participation in its privileges,"
goes on to state the differences as shown in the Unita
rian writings: "It is one of their favorite objections

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 11

against the system that it strips the most high of every
thing amiable, and clothes him with all the odious at
tributes of a Tyrant. In their estimation the religious
worship we pay is offered to a being of the most ma
lignant character and to one who is dependent as we
are for his existence and all of his attributes. How if
this imputation be just we can deserve to be called
Christians it is difficult to imagine. If the Church
should comply it would seem that an assent to the con
fessions of faith is not essential to membership."

"It would imply that the doctrine of the Lord s
divinity is less essential than it is." Very natural ob
jections were raised that it would tend to disunion and
might lead to proselyting; "that it would open the
door to other errors in belief."

The summing up was as follows: "For these rea
sons the Committee believe that the applicants should
place themselves under our watch by a transfer to us
of their special relations to the Church of which they
are respectively members." The expression " under
our watch " is the key-note to an inquisition henceforth
practiced towards Mrs. Huntington. Knowing how
many of the " First Churches " of the Calvinistic strong
hold were deliberately renouncing its doctrines and are
to-day Unitarian places of preaching, it is not strange
that rugged characters of Puritan descent should adopt
measures which seemed warranted by the taint of
heresy.

The inclinations, associations, and views of the Hunt-
ingtons had become well known. Rev. Dan Hunting-
ton traveled up the valley and over the hills, frequently
taking with him some member of his family, preaching
to the small flocks of ardent disciples of the " Liberal

12 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

Christianity" which was to them mercy and not
wrath.

Elizabeth Huntington at home read Channing and
Martineau and Dewey and Henry Ware, and the
" Monthly Religious Magazine." On the Puritan Sab
bath she took her children to sit with her under the old
pulpit from which issued vivid pictures of future retri
bution. The youngest child, Frederic, never lost the
impression of those anathemas. To his wondering
mind the streaming tears of the minister were as inex
plicable as the threats of impending doom. He used to
say in later life that it became fixed in his mind that the
preacher s habit of crying visibly and audibly in public,
was " because he was afraid too many people would be
saved." At regular intervals appeared the officers of
the church, making long visits, searching, questioning,
arguing with the saintly woman whom they held sub
ject to inquiry. To the high-strung, thoughtful boy,
loving his mother passionately, believing her the best
and purest of beings, it was a puzzle which he could not
explain. He knew that his mother fasted and prayed
and sorrowed for daily sin ; kept tender watch over her
children; perused eagerly the literature in behalf of
the abolition of slavery and the establishment of uni
versal peace, and extended her practical sympathy to
the inebriate, the oppressed, the slave.

The result is on record in her own handwriting.

"August 17th, 1828. A week ago yesterday Deacon
J. Smith and Deacon Hopkins made me the second
visit. The Monday after Mr. Woodbridge sent me a
letter requesting me to meet the Church the next day
to answer to the complaint laid against me which is
that I have not attended the sacrament of the Lord s

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 13

Supper with them for five years the reason of this
was that Mr. Woodbridge said I ought to be excom
municated for being a Unitarian the inference which
I drew from this was that I ought not to disturb his
feelings nor those of his charge by attending, tho
I did attend his church-meeting and to-day he has
been laboring with his Church to persuade them to the
duty of excommunication and church discipline the
Lord direct them in the way of duty.

" Nov. 2nd, 1828. The Church have withdrawn their
watch and fellowship from me by public act and a copy
has been sent me.

"Nov. 2nd, 1828. As I am dismissed from the
Church in Hadley, I have concluded to unite with the
Church in Northampton.

"Nov. 23rd, 1828. Attended meeting; Mr. Wood-
bridge preached, also Thanksgiving Day.

"Dec. 13th, 1828. Last Sabbath Whiting, Bethia,
Frederic and I attended meeting at Northampton, the
two first and myself were admitted to the Communion,
as I had been dismissed from the Church in Hadley I
thought it best to unite there tho I do not agree in
every particular with Mr. Hall, yet as he requires
no particular creed and he seems to be a serious and
conscientious man, I hope it may be acceptable to my
Maker to follow this course.

" Dec. 27th. Last Sabbath went to meeting in town
(Hadley) Mr. H. is to preach to-morrow in the Central
School House. What a blessing it would be to have a
place of worship where we could go regularly and
pleasantly attend but Thou O Lord must make all
things for our good."

It will be remarked that with quiet dignity Mrs.

14 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

Huntington continued at intervals to attend Mr. Wood-
bridge s services and to maintain her connection with
the church from whose communion she was excluded.
It became the family custom for some members to at
tend worship either in the nearer village of North Had-
ley or in the Hadley meeting-house, while as many as
could be conveniently conveyed drove to the Unitarian
gathering in Northampton. In that same memorable
year of the excommunication, we read in her diary
that she visited Boston with an older son and heard Dr.
Channing and Dr. Gannett, then both in the full glory
of their fame and influence.

The effect of the intolerance so unusually manifested
was no doubt strongly a personal one to the young boy,
who, finding it unintelligible, grew up with a sense that
a blow had been struck wantonly against his mother,
in herself a model of piety and Christian forbearance.
It led him in his youth to seek inspiration in those writ
ings which were to her the sources of joy and high re
flection. But beside this inclination towards the liberal
thought of the day, there was for many years deep
down in his being a repulsion towards that creed which
he then believed inevitably associated with actions
fraught with deliberate ill-will. In an article in the
"Monthly Religious Magazine" for September, 1845,
on " The Religious and Theological Interests of Har
vard College," he alludes to the experiences of his boy
hood in seeing " a noble-hearted, devout woman, in an
advanced period of her useful, honorable and bene
ficent life, on account of a deliberate and well-weighed
change of opinions, followed after, persecuted, threat
ened, warned by menaces most terrible to a woman s
sensitive, trustful, affectionate nature, at last roughly

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 15

excommunicated from a Church of which she had been
for years an untiring benefactor, and which her blame
less spirit had so long adorned.

" The tears and anxiety we used to see with our child s
eyes, after those impudent deacons and sly ambassa
dors, or their spiritual dictator, had withdrawn from one
of those cruel interviews, left an impression that will not
lose its horribleness while we remember anything. This
was in the heart of our old Massachusetts, in the
midst of its hills and valleys and free air, some of the
loveliest scenery in the world, indeed, but not beautiful
enough to move and soften the gloomy features of that
stern, forbidding, unrelenting Calvinism." Many years
after, Bishop Huntington referred again to this incident
in an article entitled From Puritanism Whither ? 1

" So the cruel Christianity presented itself to a very
juvenile observer, somehow, doubtless by the saintli-
ness of the victim, without twisting him into an infidel.

"Instances of this sort were neither very common
nor extremely rare. It is unfair to judge a theological
scheme, any more than a tool in the hand, merely by
its capacity for abuse. We are put here upon the task
of defining the effect of a religious institution and party
in New England, at the beginning of this century, on
a mind in search of a Christian faith and home. The
defects were not those of unprincipled intolerance or
indifference to truth, but of narrowness and dispro
portion. It is impossible that any denomination built
on a dogma or group of dogmas, and not on the fact of
the life of God manifest in the person and acts of Christ,
should represent Christianity.

" It may revere the son of God in one or more of His
1 The Forum, June, 1886.

16 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

offices or characters, hut it cannot receive Him as He
chose to call Himself, the son of Man. It cannot re
unite the life of the human race with God s life. It
cannot bear the test of comprehensiveness or Catholi
city, or cover the experience of all souls and nations, or
satisfy the wants of integral man, in spirit, mind, body.
No great Christian cause has lived on a subjective
revelation, or a sentiment, or an idea, or the issue of a
process of ratiocination. Congregational Orthodoxy
believed in Christ, but it was Christ in the past and the
future and in Heaven, not where living and tempted
men most need Him."

This retrospect was in the calmer mood of age. As
time passed much was softened in connection with the
painful experience. In his last years Rev. Dan Hunt-
ington and his daughter Bethia were received into full
participation with the Russell Church in Hadley,
where under a milder construction of its tenets the old
clergyman enjoyed the privileges of the Orthodox
communion in which he had been reared.

In "Anniversary week," May, 1831, then just twelve
years old, Frederic accompanied his parents and a
sister to the city, himself driving the family " carryall "
and pair of horses, a leisurely journey of a hundred
miles. One object was to attend the Governor s elec
tion, an occasion at which Rev. Mr. Huntington him
self had preached the sermon in 1821, as he had in
Connecticut in 1814. One of the sons, John Whiting,
was at this time a student at Harvard. The mother
attended the philanthropic gatherings, especially
meetings in the interest of the Peace Movement and
Abolitionist agitation. The father took his family to
see his ministerial friends, among them the venerable

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 17

Eliphalet Porter, of Roxbury, and his young colleague,
Rev. George Putnam. Social visits were paid at the
house of William Parsons, an eminent merchant resid
ing on the corner of South and Summer Streets, and a
connection by marriage; and to Major Thomas Melvill,
in Green Street, who had been a member of the Boston
" Tea Party " and is said to have found some of the tea
in his boots afterwards. He has been remembered as
the last man in the community to wear smallclothes.

The party returned to Hadley by way of Connecticut,
making a stay among the large circle of Huntington
kinsfolk in Lebanon. There were relatives in Norwich
also and among them was Carey Throop, an uncle of
Rev. Dan Huntington. One of his townsmen recalls
that when a boy he was crossing Mr. Throop s field
early one Lord s day and, meeting the old gentleman,
inquired of him if he had seen anything of a swarm of
bees passing in that direction the night before. Uncle
Carey drew himself .up to his full and not inconsider
able height, and answered solemnly, "Young man, I
am surprised that you should speak of such a thing
as bumble-bees on Sunday morning."

But in spite of the serious views of life, and the then
unrelaxed Puritan observances, family intercourse on
the farm of " Forty Acres," as it was originally called,
was happy and cheerful. The remoteness of situation,
and perhaps some differences in religious sympathy
with their neighbors, threw the children upon them
selves greatly for diversion. The only playfellows
were their cousins at "Pine Grove," the large house
lately erected by Major Phelps on the southern portion
of the paternal estate. Of the ten brothers and sisters,
five were still at home when Frederic began to study

18 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

Latin with his sister Bethia. Three sons went to Har
vard, the others to schools or academies in neighbor
ing towns ; the girls were sent to the famous Seminary
in Troy, the founder and head, Mrs. Emma Willard,
being a friend and connection. Her sister, Mrs. Lincoln,
also an accomplished educator, married John Phelps,
a cousin of Mrs. Huntington.

One of the daughters, visiting her sister Elizabeth,
then married to George Fisher and residing in Oswego,
received from Frederic the following letter, which gives
a little glimpse of the family life.

HABLEY, Jan. 14, 1834.

To MARY DWIGHT HUNTINGTON, OSWEGO, N. Y.

Dear Mary : Your letter to Theodore we received
to-day.

In speaking of the Concert you do not inform us
whether you performed the Solo that you were requested
to or not; though perhaps we ought to infer that you
did, as a thing of course. I am truly glad that you have
an opportunity of exercising your singing powers, as
you appear to have in the choir of Mr. Parker. Last
evening Father and Mother went to Amherst, and
made Dr. Humphrey a visit. It was a very pleasant
day and evening, indeed we have had fine weather for
almost a fortnight until to-day. It commenced raining
this morning and continues to do so yet, so that this
deep snow settles, and evaporates quite fast at present.
It must be a great disappointment to many, for Ed
ward who was here last evening, told us that he was
expecting with about sixty others of the male and fe
male gentry of Northampton to go to Springfield for a
sleigh ride this afternoon; the young people of the

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 19

Upper Mills also were expecting to make up an excur
sion of pleasure to " Muddy -Brook," but their enjoy
ments are nipped or rather dissolved, I am afraid, by
this unexpected rain.

Mr. Harding called here last night in the evening and
remained till ten o clock this morning. He has a horse
that will match with our grey colt and wishes to have
Pa and Theophilus go out there this week and see if
they can trade so as to bring them together. He wished
them to take with them Bethia or Ma. If it should be
pleasant perhaps they will go. Last Sunday we almost
all of us attended meeting at the Mills. Mr. Payson
delivered two excellent sermons, one upon " The Good
Man," the other upon " Covering Sin."

Theophilus and Theodore intend to worship at Had-
ley this year with Father. Mother, Bethia and myself
intend to go to Northampton when it is convenient.

Uncle Phelps is filling the new ice-house with ice
from the river. Edward last week made the family
here a present of a patent cooking-stove like that which
Charles has in his kitchen. It is furnished with a large
tin cover to bake under; a tin oven made for the purpose
to set under it and roast in ; a boiler to boil clothes
in and other boilers; a small crank turns any part of
it near the fire that may be wished. It is perfectly con
venient for every purpose of cooking and a large armful
of wood one and a half feet long will warm the kitchen
as warm as the sitting room. The settle stands before
the old fireplace. You can hardly imagine how differ
ently the kitchen appears from what it used to.

We hear frequently from William. All well as usual
and unite with sending love with your brother,

F. D. HUNTINGTON.

20 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

At the end of the letter is written in the mother s
handwriting :

DEAR MART: If you find yourself in need of any
article of dress and your purse has become empty, let
us know, and we will endeavor to supply you with cash,
for though we have nothing to waste in ornament and
superfluities, thanks to our great Benefactor, we have
enough to make us comfortable. Far more of this
world s goods than was sufficient for Him who came
from heaven to show us the way thither.

Surely we may well blush at the shameful distance, at
which we follow Him.

With much love to parents and children, and dear
Mary,

from her mother,

E. W. H.

The gray colt referred to was probably matched, for
a pair of white horses grew old in the service and on one
occasion took Mr. and Mrs. Huntington on a journey
to Oswego and back, to visit their daughter and her
family there. The barouche in which they drove was
preserved until a later generation, large, roomy, and
with steps to let down and fold up again, the delight of
the grandchildren. The ride of five miles to North
ampton, to church or visiting, was more of a circum
stance in those days than now. In Frederic s childhood
a bridge, with its curved floor of ancient pattern,
spanned the Connecticut River at the south end of the
farm, led across to Hatfield, and so by a good road to
the county town. But this bridge was burned and
never replaced, and for many years after travelers were

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 21

obliged to take a ferry at the end of Hadley street. A
Boston and Albany stage passed through the village
to Northampton and thence westward, and by this
and the Erie Canal visits between the households in
Hadley and Oswego were exchanged.

The boys occupations were various. They made ex
periments in the culture of bees and they seem to have
attempted the cultivation of peanuts, sending orders
for them and for horse-chestnuts in the letters to Bos
ton, which traveled then usually by private hand, and
getting them fulfilled through some obliging neighbor.

The "Farmer s Almanac" was eagerly welcomed
and read. Regular work out of doors was expected of
them and this was seldom distasteful to Frederic, who
all his life recalled with enthusiasm the days spent on
the slopes of the hills, on the breezy meadows, or in the
woods in winter.

In cold weather he helped in cutting and drawing the
firewood for the house, often taking entire charge of
two "yoke" of oxen, driving the teams down the
mountain side, unloading and returning. At one
time it was bark for the tannery which he hauled daily
from the clearing to Fort River at the south. Years
later, making an address before an agricultural so
ciety, Mr. Huntington said: "I rode plough, as they
say, a good many times round before I ever stepped into
a pulpit, retaining to this day an especially clear
recollection of being pitched over the horse s neck
once, in a great quagmire, at the foot of Mt. Warner
yonder, a sort of * slough of despond which my
father, with no despondency at all, but notions that
seemed to me, at the time, excessively Utopian, insisted
on converting into an arable cornfield, making us boys

22 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

partial instruments in the work; and long before I
began to dig roots in the Greek Grammar, under Pro
fessor Tyler, in term-time, I used to weed ruta-bagas in
vacation."

His earliest letter to a sister, at the age of nine, says :
"To-day I have been ploughing the piece under the
bank with the black colt alone."

Besides this active physical exercise the deeper as
pects of nature undoubtedly made an impression upon
the contemplative mind of a boy developing under
such influences. He ever counted it one of the chief
blessings in his lot that the wonderful beauty of the
valley of his birth and the graceful and imposing fea
tures of its scenery were so familiar to him. The dis
tinct outlines and forest-clad summits of Mount Hoi-
yoke and Tom on the south, of Toby and Sugarloaf on
the north; the long ranges of hills rising one behind
another to the westward across the winding Connecti
cut ; the luxuriant loveliness of the meadows, with their
magnificent elms; the surpassing splendor of the sun
sets and the majesty of the thunder clouds ; all these
bred in him an abiding love of the nobler features of
the world around. Throughout his life his intense
enjoyment of such scenes amounted to a passion.

In contrast to this existence of enjoyment, and per
haps owing to a sensitive disposition, there were phases
of morbid apprehension unusual in a child, but which,
in the form of nervous imagination connected with
disease, occured at periods throughout his life. When
only twelve years old he was possessed in this way, and
replying to what was perhaps good-natured raillery
from his brother at college, he says :

" Your subject for me to write to you upon, I think

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 23

was, What is the best cure for Hypo ? I do not think
there is any use in trying to get rid of it before the time
comes."

His mother calls these "fidgety fears," but they
were so real to the child that he never forgot the dis
tress he suffered in the spring of 1830. It took one
form as a dread of being poisoned, especially through
food which might have been contaminated with his
touch, a premonition of the infection of microbes, then
probably unheard of. After he had washed his hands
before meals, his little sister, knowing his apprehension,
would open all the doors for him until he reached the
table. This especial folly was cured by heroic treat
ment. One evening at supper, he had consumed the
usual tale of doughnuts prompted by a boy s healthy
appetite, tucking under the rim of the tea-tray, as too
fatal to swallow, each end which he had held in his
fingers. By some chance his mother became aware of
the expedient for avoiding contamination. She imme
diately filled a cup with milk, broke into it the rejected
food and bade him eat it. With only a mournful
" Mother, I will do it, but I shall die," he obeyed.

It was, of course, the end of this particular phase of
the malady, but perhaps in consequence, his parents
in the summer of 1831 gave him an opportunity for
change of scene by accepting an invitation for him to
visit his brother, and take lessons in Latin and math
ematics, in the neighboring town of Northampton. The
eldest son had settled there, opened a law office and
begun that honorable career, which was summed up in
later times by Judge Hoar, in his reminiscences of the
Anti-Slavery party, where he speaks of " Charles Hunt-
ington, the Judge, the Advocate, the stainless gentle-

24 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

man." This young man had married early a daughter
of Elisha Hunt Mills, one of the conspicuous citizens
of the town, and not long after built himself a house
at the foot of Round Hill. It was through this home,
in what was one of the most delightful towns in New
England, the seat of unusual culture, taste, and refine
ment, that the young people of the Hadley farm found
their pleasantest social connections.

But at the age of twelve Frederic was too young to
realize anything but the absence from his home. He
was pitifully unhappy. In a letter to his sister Mary at
school her mother says: "When we left Frederic he
looked very sorry. He feels it a great evil that he can
not live at home, but your Pa has told him that it may
be possible he may not have to stay there longer than
you are at Troy and that has given him some relief."
Writing himself to Mary he says of his homesickness,
" I find that the best way to get rid of it is to keep em
ployed about something."

Before many months passed his parents decided
wisely not to insist upon a separation which really
brought suffering. In July his brother John Whiting
died suddenly at home, a few days before the time set
for him to graduate from Harvard College. The young
man had shown great promise, was of an elevated and
serious disposition, and seems to have had an unusual
influence in his brief career.

In a letter to their mother from Cambridge, seven
years after, Frederic writes :

" I met lately with a very affectionate and touching
tribute to the character of our Whiting. Among what
are called the Bowdoin Prize Dissertations, bound and
preserved in the College Library, is one by Bellows,

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 25

now of New York, written during the year after he
graduated. On a blank leaf of the manuscript he had
written the following words :

" * In secret memorial of a man of un defiled heart,
sound mind and gentle manners, cut off in the dew of
youth devoted to God and usefulness, This humble
effort of one whom he loved and labored to benefit is
dedicated to the memory of John Whiting Huntington,
classmate and chum of the author.

" It implies, what I suppose is very true, that Mr.
Bellows ascribes his first religious impressions, that
have led him to his present useful and distinguished
position, 1 to the example and efforts of his room
mate."

Up to 1831 the education of the young children had
been at home under the supervision of father, mother,
and an older sister. Later in life Frederic expressed
his gratitude for the care thus given him, and attributed
largely to it his love of study and of letters. Learning
was a pleasure and he was early inspired with a desire
to become wise, not for the sake of competition, for
there was none, but for its own reward. It was the
habit of the entire family to spend their leisure hours
in reading. They were supplied with the best books of
the day and with standard literature. He says himself :

"I began to read Channing s and Dewey s and
Martineau s writings when I was a child. Living in the
country, I read them often in the open air, and they
are associated with running streams in the woods, with
apple blossoms, with clear hill tops, and with wide spaces
of earth and sky. To these thoughtful and devout au
thors I have always felt more indebted, perhaps, for
1 Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D.

26 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

first arousing the life of my mind and heart than to
any others, except the inspired men of the Bible, and
Sir Thomas Browne and Burke and De Quincey. It
was because, like many others, I found them when I
seemed to need them. Parted from their guidance
afterwards, in interpreting some of the great meanings of
revelation and history, I yet have never forgotten
my unpaid obligation."

When Mary and Frederic entered school they at
tended Hopkins Academy in Hadley, generally walking
the two miles morning and evening and carrying their
luncheon. This historic seat of learning was founded
from a fund left by Gov. Edward Hopkins of Connecti
cut, whose wife was the daughter of David Yale, for
whose grandson, Elihu Yale, Yale College was named.
The apportionment of the bequest to the town of Had
ley was made through the influential settler, William
Goodwin, for whom the present village library is
named. The instruction in the academy was good.
Rev. Dan Huntington was at one time a preceptor, as
were also other men of learning, and young people
from neighboring towns were attracted thither in con
sequence. It was there that Frederic made his prepa
ration for college, with but one intermission which
occured in the following manner: In the summer of
1834, in a public examination, the boy lost his pre
sence of mind during a recitation from Cicero s Orations
and his memory suddenly forsook him. One of the
blunders he always vividly recalled, was in the nomina
tive singular of the substantive legibus. After several
mistakes and guesses he gave it up, to the great morti
fication of his father, one of the examiners. Such a
dereliction in a pupil who had been well grounded in

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 27

Latin was deemed to merit pointed rebuke, and Fred
eric was told that he might pass the next few months
as a merchant s clerk in the employ of his brother
Edward in Northampton. This edict implied a for
feiture, perhaps forever, of a scholar s life, and was a
severe blow to an ambitious and really studious
youth. But after having submitted to the discipline
and proved his attachment to the classics by devot
ing his leisure hours to Virgil, he was allowed to come
home in November and for the rest of the winter his
father himself superintended his lessons. If this was
too stern dealing with the result of a momentary
embarrassment, it nevertheless had the effect of en
hancing the value of learning to the boy, who found
himself deprived of the jopportunities liitherto freely
accorded him. His purposes were concentrated and
after a further term at the academy, with some
exercises in algebra and Greek under his brother
William, then practicing medicine in Hadley, he
was easily fitted for entrance to Amherst College in
July.

Before we chronicle his departure from the home
which in its associations was to be endeared to him
for sixty years more, we pause to give its picture in his
own words written in old age.

"The outward frame and scene survive still, with
nearly unchanged features, in a New England valley;
domicile, old-fashioned furniture, open fireplaces and
andirons, the clock that has ticked the seconds of a
Century and closed many a frolic of children with
the stroke of nine; garret, cellar, Indian relics, elm
trees, garden, well, orchard, cornfields; the brook
behind the hill, the indoor heirlooms of six genera-

28 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

tions, all invested and hallowed with traditions and
reminiscences that repeople every nook and corner
of the place and bring tears to the eyes."

Even the homely toil, performed as it was in those
days by mothers and daughters bred in dignity and
refinement, assisted by handmaids reared in the house,
had its aroma of poetry. Writing, when a Boston
clergyman, to his sister, in remonstrance against some
proposed household changes, he said : " But as to the
old kitchen and all that, that is a matter that
touches me in a vital point. Can it be that I am to
see those dear old nooks and corners in their wonted
position never again ? Potash kettle ! Buttery ! Milk-
room! Precious, venerable, beloved, hallowed by a
thousand tender associations and sacred recollections.
Am I to see you no more as you were, wearing the
familiar and homelike look, forever ?

" I tell you, Bethia, it is a very serious matter. Did
I not use to take sweet and holy counsel with the best
and purest of mothers, by the twilight, many and
many a time, in that shady old milk-room ? Milton
may talk about the dim religious light of Gothic
cloisters; it never was half as impressive as the light
that used to shine in at sundown, not exactly, to be
sure, thro storied windows richly dight, but through
panes stained with age as art could not do it. I say
again nobody has any business to meddle with those
walls."

The festival of Thanksgiving, enjoyed by a large
family, on the generous scale with which the house
hold had always been maintained, was one which he
never ceased to recall with pleasure. The preparation,
for days, the initiatory feast of chicken pie the night

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 29

before, the bewildering variety spread on the festal
board, the roasting turkey suspended from the big
fireplace, the table full of sons and daughters gath
ered to give thanks he held " a picture of that de
parted jubilee among the treasures of a grateful
memory."

It was a home of which religion was the mainspring.
The mother especially felt an obligation to keep fasts
as well as feasts, although the strict following of Cal-
vinistic observances had been set aside. Her daily
intercourse with the Almighty inspired the round of
care, and with prayer was mingled praise. Sunday
evenings she would sing hymns, to the accompani
ment of a guitar.

In the records of the Evangelical Association of a
neighboring county it appears that its members met
at the house of the Rev. Mr. Huntington of Hadley.
The morning sessions were held at sunrise. This little
knot of earnest believers, following a way which seemed
to them to lead into fuller truth, thus imitated the
example of the primitive Christians. At one of these
gatherings at Northampton in 1827, " Mr. Huntington
acted as Moderator and opened the meeting with
prayer. Mr. R. W. Emerson preached from the text,
Pray without ceasing.

In a letter to his wife from New York Mr. Hun
tington says :

" I was told, I suppose it was to inflate my vanity,
that yesterday I had a fuller house than had ever at
tended the preaching of any other man in it, except
Dr. Channing. I presume it was accident. I have not
the most distant thought that the preaching of the old
Hadley plough-jogger can have in it anything very

30 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

enchanting in the City of New York, and why I am
here I absolutely know not. But here I am, and
whatever I am and whatever I have I will endeavor
to devote to the service of my blessed Lord and
Master."

In 1835, at sixteen years of age, Frederic was ad
mitted, by the Rev. Oliver Stearns, into communion
with the Church of Christ, in Northampton, where he
had been brought up under the preaching of the Rev.
E. B. Hall, for many years the family pastor. This
step was taken deliberately. It had been often affec
tionately and solemnly urged by his mother, whose
constant prayer for her children, that their souls might
be awakened to the spiritual life, was answered in the
case of every one ; all but the youngest daughter, who
died at the age of thirteen, becoming open witnesses
to their faith.

Frederic was from his earliest infancy a child of the
covenant, brought up as a member of the visible
church, and this act of communion with the Christian
body in which he had been nurtured was natural and
harmonious. That it proved a strong security we have
his own testimony, though his temperament and dis
position led him easily towards moral excellence.
Doubtless his high purposes were largely due to the
fact that he lived much in the companionship of older
persons, themselves of elevated character. This in
fluence, of which he was aware, led him to the pre
paration of a manual for teachers which has been
probably more widely read than any other of his pub
lished writings. In "Unconscious Tuition" he em
bodied his own experiences as well as his established
theories on an important side of education. In his own

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 31

home neither corporal nor any degrading punishment
was found necessary; the teachings pervading it
were good examples and pure conversation, the com
panionship of gentle sisters, honorable brothers, a
wise father, and a dear and holy mother whose
intercessions never ceased to be offered for her
children.

Notwithstanding all these safeguards, no youth
who is allowed any liberty can grow up without some
exposure to evil. One summer, an evil-minded com
panion was thrown much in the boy s way and this
and one or two similar experiences in college caused
him to look back with repugnance to what came near
becoming sources of hidden corruption. But owing
to the more beneficent influences over him he came out
of the trial with a strengthened integrity.

The question as to the choice of a college was left
undecided up to the last moment. Elizabeth Hunt-
ington, who had already sent six sons out into the
world, showed an unusual reluctance to part with this
one. It might have been that the loss of his little sister
Catherine caused her to cling more closely to her
youngest child. But she dreaded to have him exposed
to new impressions in a distant place. One who prays
for her loved ones with such constant and personal
intercessions as hers is gifted with deep spiritual
insight, but there was much that was especially sym
pathetic in mother and son. He had inherited that
longing to get away from one s fellows which sent his
great-grandfather, Charles Phelps, from the busy town
up to the Vermont hills. Frederic said himself of his
boyhood, that although living in the companionship
of others he spent days in a sense of solitude. These

32 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

moods went with him through life and gave him his
strong distaste to publicity, to crowds and functions
and external expressions of the deep realities,. The
austerity of a long line of Puritan forefathers had left
its impress. And to one who watched with a mother s
solicitude, the first contact of such a nature with
the great world of humanity was a critical time. It
was not strange that she desired to keep a lad of
sixteen under her own influence until he became more
mature.

Therefore, after some deliberation, his parents de
cided that he should enter Amherst College, not more
than three miles distant. His three elder brothers had
all attended Harvard College, and the tendencies of the
family were so distinctively liberal that the choice
of a stronghold of orthodox congregational theology
seemed unusual. However it may be, his own love of
home coincided with the choice, and gave him for four
years longer that free enjoyment of rural life which
ever distinguished him. At the same time his social
instincts were so naturally expanded, under the genial
associations of college life, that the periods of painful
isolation of spirits from w T hich he suffered in his boy
hood seemed to pass away.

The day after the determination was made, he was
examined, by special permission, and admitted to
Amherst College, with the class of 1839. He passed
the three months of subsequent leisure, largely on the
farm, in out-of-door work, which was ever a congenial
occupation, in company with his brothers, Theophilus
and Theodore.

A few days after his final departure from home his
mother writes :

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 33

ELM VALLEY, Oct. 3, 1835,

Thursday evening.

To FREDERIC D. HUNTINGTON, STUDENT, AMHERST

COLLEGE.

My dear Frederic: I am going to do what I recom
mend to you to do, keep a sort of record of the events
of the day; and when I have a convenient opportunity
send it to you, that you may not lose all knowledge of
us, or interest in us. We have visited you several
times to-day in spirit, and in conversation, and I ima
gine you have arranged your furniture, and swept and
dusted your room and find yourself with your room
mate very comfortably situated, and ready and able
to go on with your studies to advantage. I am quite
happy in the persuasion ; because we read in the Book
of books, this direction and promise united : " Commit
thy way unto the Lord and he shall give thee the desire
of thy heart; in all thy ways acknowledge Him and
He shall direct thy paths."

The two brothers have gone into town to collect,
if they can, seventy persons who will be willing to
unite in forming a singing-school to be taught by Mr.
Kingsley. Your father is quite down with a cold, is
now sitting by the kitchen fire to avoid the chattering
of five females; yes, five without your mother; by
this you will understand that Mary and Harriet Mills
returned before dinner with Theophilus who went this
morning to Northampton on business.

Saturday evening: half past ten. All gone to bed in
peace and comfort; what obligations are we under to
our guide by day and our guard by night ! the pillar of
cloud and the pillar of fire that attend us, tho too often
unnoticed.

34 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

We miss you often at our social meals, and our
social fireside; at the morning and evening sacrifice,
and also as we gather around our Saturday evening
table, with our religious books, and elevating employ
ment. But thanks to God, we would not mourn your
absence; we may hope for a meeting in this life. Some
of our members have reached the end of their journey,
when it was but just begun ; and we are permitted to
think of them as the inhabitants of a world of purity
and peace and love, where no discordant passions
agitate the bosom, and no doubts or fears interrupt the
Communion of the blessed society May the Lord
of the Sabbath give us all a Sabbath blessing!

On Saturday afternoon our girls, Harriet, Eliza
beth, 1 and Mary visited Mt. Warner. For want of a
better conveyance they rode with Theodore part of the
way in the old red wagon. Elizabeth came home much
delighted with the refreshing sight of the Colleges and
particularly of the door of the Chapel, as she thought
possibly you might be standing in it. Wednesday
forenoon : This morning your father, Theophilus, and
Ben. have gone to the mountain to pick up apples.
Theodore stayed at home, is husking corn, I believe.
Your father and mother last night had an invitation
to drink tea this evening with widow Major Smith, in
company with Doctor Brown and lady. This morning
Mrs. Doctor Porter sent a note requesting our com
pany and Bethia s at their house to meet friends at
tea to-day, what a pity, as calls of this kind are so
rare, that there should be two for the same time!

I intend to leave this at Dr. Porter s store, to be sent
to you. I hope soon to receive a long letter from you.
1 Elizabeth Fisher a granddaughter.

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 35

I feel a kind of satisfaction in the tho t that your writ
ing desk is the same which was used by your brother,
who is now a glorified spirit, and is perhaps permitted,
as he himself hoped might be the case, to witness your
faithful efforts in duty, and even assist you in the
arduous work.

With the most earnest desire for your happiness
and improvement,

I am as ever your affectionate mother,

ELIZABETH.

In February Frederic received his first letter from
his father.

" Why may I not have the pleasure of writing a little
letter ? But this is a pleasure, I believe, which I have
never yet had. And though I do not remember that you
have ever asked me to write, I have not a single doubt
but you will be just as glad to have me. Where there
is a well-regulated affection, such as I hope subsists
among the several branches of our family, formality,
jealousy, distrust, and indifference can have no place.
And because, in your absence from us, Providence has
kindly cast your lot not far from home, am I, on this
account, never to have the pleasure of writing you or
receiving a letter from you ? This would be making a
wrong use of the indulgence. And though I hear no
bad account of you, in your absence no idleness, pro
fligacy, insubordination, vice of any kind, nor want of
scholarship, nor even of heresy, I cannot persuade
myself that this is any reason why I should not now
and then take pen in hand, and be a little sociable, if
it is only to encourage you in the way of well doing.
Mount Warner, with its formidable heights, indeed

36 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

may lie between us ; but even these may be surmounted.
Tho ts are free as air. We may send them over moun
tains, across oceans and deserts, to the ends of the earth,
to the stars and to the end of time, in an instant."

The sly allusion to heresy was characteristic of the
old gentleman, whose turn for pleasantry was far more
in evidence than any really controversial spirit. In
point of fact Frederic s position as the only Unitarian,
with the exception of his roommate, in the whole
college, was never in any way a marked one. So far
from finding himself an object of suspicion, he always
expressed gratitude for the circumstances of his college
career. The fact that in his religious opinions he stood
alone had a tendency to redouble his efforts towards
scholarship and exemplary conduct. He was always
treated with courtesy by the faculty. After the first
months his Sundays were largely passed with his
family, when he accompanied them to their place of
worship in Northampton.

On the other hand, a few years after, he refers in a
letter to his mother to a threatened act of neighbor
hood oppression, and the playful allusions are an evi
dence of the good-humored spirit of tolerance for
ecclesiastical ostracism which prevailed in the house
hold. When the new bridge was erected over the
Connecticut a question arose as to collecting tolls on
Sunday. To the Huntington family, who drove back
and forth each week to church across the river, the
exaction seemed unnecessary and arbitrary.

Undoubtedly with the village people this remon
strance was less to be considered because of the feeling
excited by having a household of some prominence
pass the meeting-house and go on to an alien place of

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 37

worship. A contemporary used to recall to her grand
children seeing the large carriage drive down the
West street and turn into the Northampton road, and
it aroused a sense of religious differences which in
those days were far more keenly deplored than at
present.

"You speak of Colonel , and his little-souled

coadjutors. Probably he feels, when he has turned
upon us the key of that toll-gate, like another St. Peter
who has laudably locked out a reprobate from Paradise.
There is a bridge that Milton speaks of

" Of wondrous length,

From hell continued reaching to the orb

Of this frail world; which the spirits perverse

With easy intercourse pass to and fro.

except whom God and good angels guard by special grace.

" For this bridge I presume he would admire to give
us a contract gratis, and probably he thinks it is the
only one we have a right to pass. However, as you
say, if we trust Providence perhaps he will provide a
passage way, when the pure keen air, the piercing
spirit of the North shall visit us unjust as the just,
and the incrusted surface shall upbear our steps.
Why might not we give ice a new name, and call it
the heretics bridge?"

His father continues his epistle, filling three pages
with excellent advice.

."In the multiplicity of your engagements, give
yourself time to think. Think a great deal and think
closely when you read, lay by your book and think
what you have been over think what you have
heard and seen, in the common intercourse of life."

The system of instruction in that day was not

38 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

adapted to lead the mind from the technicalities of
grammar and text-book to the higher play of thought
and imagination. In later reminiscences the student
of the "thirties" was wont to describe the barren
and mechanical field on which classical literature and
history were pursued. Not a word of illustration or
reference was added to the subject to arouse that
interest which gives so largely the charm to a modern
lecture room.

At an alumni dinner Dr. Huntington told the tale
of one unlucky instructor. Speaking of the college he
says : " From the first breath of its infancy Amherst
College has never tasted a whiff of any other than New
England air. If foreign ideas have ever arrived and
dismounted at this door, it has fared with them a good
deal as it did with the polite and amiable French
master that came, in the summer of 36, to teach our
class, when we were sophomores, the French pronuncia
tion. There were two windows and they always hap
pened to be accidentally open, on the north side of the
recitation room, and from the moment the roll was
called a silent process of waste began on that end of
the seats, till, somehow, when the hour was up, through
the doorway along with the unobservant and smiling
tutor, only three angels issued where threescore
went in. "

The resource of the more active intellects was found
in debate, then very popular, and in the different
societies. Among these were the "Alexandrian," of
which he was president, the "Chi Delta Theta," the
" N. L. D.," and the " Alpha Delta hi." To the latter
Frederic s allegiance was strong through life, and in
his last will and testament he bequeathed his pin, with

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 39

its insignia, to a daughter. Young men, members of
the fraternity, who made themselves known to him
were most cordially received. It happened more than
once, in later years at the Hadley homestead, that
students, paddling down the river in a canoe, would
beach their craft under the willows, and cross the
meadows to call upon him, and he delighted to wel
come them in behalf of their alma mater.

He was one of the editors of the periodical " Horae
Collegianae," conducted by a committee of seniors. In
that appeared in November, 1837, his first printed ar
ticle, entitled "The Hours of Life." Its heading was
the quotation from a sun dial near Venice, " Horas
non numero nisi serenas," a sentiment which at
tracted the boy, and was ever characteristic of a taste
which found its deepest satisfaction in tranquil con
templation, in the calm and soothing aspects of nature,
in a social intercourse free from criticism and con
tention.

In spite of the fact that he passed through the four
years curriculum without a mark in the scale of de
portment, for absence or any breach of discipline, he
entered with zest into occasions of merriment and
joined his companions in open-air diversions; not in
those days athletic sports, but rambles along stream
and through the woods, with gun or fishing rod.
He formed acquaintance readily, and his quick sense
of humor made him foremost in wit and chaff and
repartee.

His roommate, Dexter Clapp, was a man of rare
loveliness of character. They attended the Hadley
Academy together, were natives of the same county,
entered the divinity school and the sacred ministry at

40 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

the same time, and maintained an unbroken intimacy
until the death of Rev. Mr. Clapp, after pastorates
at the Unitarian churches in Spring Street, Roxbury,
and in Salem, Massachusetts. With such companions,
his college time was delightfully passed. Generosity,
good cheer, and loyalty to each other characterized the
intercourse of the set of students thus brought to
gether, and proved a bond of affection in after-life.

In the winter of 1837, following a fashion of the time,
and partly for the purpose of helping meet his expenses,
Frederic took a position as teacher in South Amherst.
He had never attended a district school, and it was
his first experience as an instructor, but he had a nat
ural taste for the occupation and experienced no diffi
culty in fulfilling what was required of him. Like
many others similarly placed, he learned, as he writes
his sister Mary, that " boarding round is not the pleas-
antest mode of living; rather precarious as respects
reading, study, lodging, keeping, &c., &c."

Here, as in college, his thoughts constantly turned
to what in writing to Edward he speaks of as " home,
the best place in my estimation in this little world."

In another letter he says :

" Your epistle came to hand I was at the time in a
state of quiet, so to speak. A few of us were gathered
about the step-stones at the South door at eventide, a
hallowed spot and hour, a few of us, I say Cousin
Eunice Phelps, sister Mary, Amelia Judkins and my
self. Speaking of Cousin Eunice, you probably recol
lect her a lady of talent and refinement a teacher in
Troy Female Seminary, spending a part of her vaca
tion with us. But perhaps you are wondering how I
happen to be in Hadley. The fact is the term closes

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 41

next Wednesday, Commencement Day. The exam
ination has closed already and we are free at that
time, we have a vacation of six weeks.

"The Social Union Society, whose business it was
to engage an orator this season, failed in their attempt,
after applying to Webster, J. Q. Adams, Judge Story,
Dr. Channing, Frelinghuysen, Dr. Cox, Mr. Sprague,
George Bancroft and others, &c., &c. Too great
men in my opinion, at least many of them. The term
has been exceedingly pleasant studies conic sec
tions, Cicero de Oratore, Longinus, the book of Reve
lation and French, quite easy. Have been reading
Irving s Rocky Mountains, Sartor Resartus, Red
Rover. "

There were occasional social festivities in Amherst
among families connected with the college. Among
the friends of that time, and on terms of intimacy,
Mr. Huntington enjoyed an acquaintance with Emily
Dickinson, later distinguished as a poet.

The centre of social and intellectual life in North
ampton at this time was the hospitable home of Judge
and Mrs. Lyman. Their pastor afterwards said that
there was no image in his mind of their front door
ever being closed early or late. The daughter writes in
her Recollections of Mrs. Lyman:" 1 "When winter
came on, her thoughts would turn naturally to the two
families of Huntington and Phelps, whose beautiful
homes near Hadley were her delight in her summer
hours, but whose young inmates she felt were sadly
cut off from social privileges in the long winters."

Together with his sisters, Frederic was a privileged

1 Recollections of my Mother : Mrs. Anne Jean Lyman, of North
ampton, by Susan J. Lesley.

42 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

guest, and frequently made one of the lively company
gathered around the hostess, herself the wittiest of
them all, a " queenly woman," as Mr. R. W. Emerson
called her, "with flowing conversation, high spirits
and perfectly at ease."

Shakespeare readings were a favorite evening enter
tainment. " When my mother took the part of Portia,
and Mr. Frederic D. Huntington, then a youth, that
of Bassanio, in the Merchant of Venice, every one
that could came to listen." Frederic found another
pleasant visiting place at the " Gothic Seminary " for
young ladies, the objective point of many a sleigh
ride and serenading party from Amherst College, eight
miles away. He often refers to " the Trio," his special
friends and correspondents, in letters to Mary, his
" sister dear," while she was passing the winter at her
brother s residence near by. On Round Hill, above
the old town, flourished the famous school, which num
bered among pupils and teachers George Bancroft,
John Lothrop Motley, and Benjamin Peirce.

In the four years of a college course Frederic s tastes
had ripened, his character had become formed. Con
centration of purpose, steady habits of industry, founda
tions of knowledge clear and defined, are gained in a
curriculum such as he had pursued, and they are
those which he himself ever set at a high value. His
existence had been led in a narrow channel but it ran
deep. In the small circle of his student life his chosen
comrades were men like himself, pure, refined, intellec
tual, and to this association he owed much. The tender
affections of his home encouraged his nature in un
reserved and spontaneous expression. Ha rd work on
the farm in vacations toughened his frame and in-

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 43

spired him to healthy activity, while at college a regi
men which exacted daily attendance at chapel at six
o clock in the morning implanted a hardy indifference
to bodily ease. Love of nature, fondness for books,
high ideals, all these the boy had carried with him
when he entered Amherst College. He left its halls
with an increased manliness, established principles,
and the consciousness of intellectual power which was
acquired by his practice in writing and debate.

At the termination of the college course he suffered
from the only serious illness of his life, an attack of
typhoid fever. In spite of these hindrances and of the
term spent in teaching, he easily held first rank in
scholarship for four years and on graduation was
awarded the highest appointment an English oration
with the valedictory address. This was largely pre
pared on a sick bed, during his convalescence, and
delivered when he could barely stand, on Commence
ment Day, August 28th, 1839. His subject was
"The Brotherhood of Scholars." Among the other
parts were "Materials for Poetry in Hebrew His
tory," Richard Salter Storrs; "The Ideal of Art,"
Nathaniel Augustus Hewitt ; " Devotion to Principle, "
Henry Grant DeForest. These three, who became the
distinguished preacher, the founder of the Paulist
Fathers, the influential citizen, together with Edward
B. Gillett, later a lawyer of distinction in western
Massachusetts, made up a group of intimate com
panions, whom Frederic Huntington held as valued
friends all through his life.

CHAPTER II

THE DIVINE COMMISSION
" It is the King s Highway we are in."

THE visitation of fever which passed over the Con
necticut Valley in the summer and autumn of 1839
proved a grave infliction. Three in the Huntington
household and four in the Phelps were attacked, and
in each occurred a death. The long strain of anxiety
and bereavement began with Frederic s illness. He
was tenderly cared for by mother and sisters. As he
lay in the darkened room, his parching thirst aroused
memories and longings for the little brook flowing
behind the hill across the road, and his soul sought for
spiritual refreshment. During his convalescence there
was leisure for reflection, for humble dependence and
for a reconsecration to a religious life. It was then
that his decision to enter the sacred ministry took
definite shape, a calling to which in a measure he had
looked forward from the beginning of his academic
studies. With all his heart, earnestly and prayerfully,
he set himself towards his chosen career.

There was no question as to a choice in theological
instruction. Although the religious influences of his
boyhood were those of the "Standing Order" of
Orthodox belief, his parents had been banished from
their former communion. Its ecclesiastical yoke

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 45

seemed to him one of intolerance and bigotry. " Its
aspect was uninviting. The culture was undeniably
rude. There was an ever-increasing impression of
unreality. Naturally the immense problem and mys
tery of the unseen world come before a youth in public
worship, and at those points where the instituted
ministration touched the chief things of life birth, the
act of uniting with the Church, wedlock, death and
burial. Here this touch seemed to H. to be neither
strong nor gentle. Again and again he asked himself,
why this solemn performance might not be less rough
and raw. Why should it not manifest in some fair mea
sure the glory of that realm where, as all were agreed,
the perfection of beauty shines ?

" In vacations and holidays he wandered with his
fowling-piece in sweet-scented woods and along the
river banks, wondering why all the deep meanings of
splendor and shade, the living forms and harmonies,
the innumerable and vivid witnesses to a beauty-
loving Maker and order-loving Designer should be
so far apart from that other thing called religion. Why
should the weekly Sabbath shut the door on all these
divine disclosures, and open a door into a bare room
of unsightly woodwork and blank plastering without
color, symmetry or significance ? " This he wrote
fifty years later of his own boyhood. 1

On the other hand the Unitarian doctrines seemed
to him full of beauty and simplicity. He had been
taught to reverence the Scriptures and commit them
to memory, to worship the Saviour of mankind and
trust His love and redeeming power. Like his mother
he longed ardently for a creed which would gather in

1 The Forum, June, 1886.

46 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

rather than exclude, which would win rather than de
nounce. " At Northampton, near by, two generations be
fore, Jonathan Edwards, though he so preached that the
older people clutched the sides of the pews to keep
them from sliding into the pit, failed to persuade the
young to live in chastity and decency, gave the attempt
up in despair and went away leaving the town unclean."

With the echoes of these imprecations still in his
ears, witnessing a church discipline which demanded
public penitential confessions of immorality, under a
pulpit which omitted all ethical application, there was
a charm in the contrast offered by Dr. Channing s
gentle and exalted utterance on " the dignity of human
nature." Frederic s convictions were the result of
early impressions, of environment and reaction against
ecclesiastical intolerance, but they were none the less
seriously considered and prayerfully determined. One
feeling was predominant when he sent his request for
admission to the Harvard Divinity School, that his
mind should be kept open towards all new light and
all new truth which might enter it.

In order to regain his strength after the weeks of
fever he took a short excursion into Connecticut with
his parents and elder sister, and then accepted a position
to teach in the charming hill town of Warwick, in
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border. The
healthful air was one object, to aid his convalescence,
and another a desire to provide for himself in the ex
penses of a professional course. He found a pleasant
welcome from the Rev. Preserved Smith, a man emi
nent for his interest in education.
^ Writing to his mother September 14th, 1839,
Frederic says :

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 47

" Mr. Smith s family make me very welcome there
and it seems more like home than any other place. He
has a superior library, and music of a tolerable quality.
The old lady is particularly kind, one of the earth s
excellent. Of the scenery the external world, as it
strikes my fancy, I cannot say enough in the way of
admiration. It is romantic, perhaps not beautiful yet
the immediate vicinity is neat and cultivated. But the
mountains, and they are close by, are glorious; their
sides covered with dense green forests or rich pasturage,
and their rounded tops much of the time covered with
sunlight, while the valleys are shaded. I revel in the
wildness of scenery mingled with the cultivated, morn
ing, noon and night.

" By making regular divisions of my time I accom
plish out of school, no inconsiderable amount of read
ing, both in English, Latin and French, besides walk
ing, and rambling over the hills. I must not omit to
tell you that I have been requested by the Franklin
County Board of Education to give a lecture in four
towns in this vicinity this Autumn. My fellow lecturers
are Rev. Mr. Everett and Rev. Mr. Smith. I hesitated
awhile on account of the tallness of my company, but
they were urgent and I accepted. My subject is Moral
Instruction.

The pupils in the academy were bright young
people, and the families with whom their schoolmaster
thus became acquainted remained valued friends.
Throughout his life the memories of those pleasant
weeks in Warwick with the Pomeroys, Lathrops,
Balls, Spooners, Wheelocks, and Russells were among
those which he loved to recall, and in his later years
Bishop Huntington made a journey each summer to

48 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

* renew with some of the few who remained, the friendly
intercourse of the past.

The month of October of the year 1839 proved a sad
one for the home household. Nearly every member had
suffered from the prevailing fever since midsummer.

October 9th, his mother writes: "Thanks to the
Father of our Mercies we are all able to walk about
the house and to walk out of doors a little, and to ride
out in this delightful Autumnal air, all excepting our
dear Mary who has at last been obliged to quit her
labors of love and care of the sick and herself to be the
object of our solicitude."

Five days later the beloved sister was taken, as her
mother writes of her, "rich in faith, rich in hope,
rich in good works her mind is clear as light. Her
life how pure and excellent."

To the favorite brother, whose aspirations she had
often kindled, whose high-souled sympathy had
responded to hers, it was an especial loss. In a letter to
his brother Edward, October 21st, he says: "Is it not
an evidence that our family affections are a part of
religion that they are immortal that while other
objects lose their fascination and we seem to take a
firmer hold on futurity, even then our attachment to
each other becomes deeper ? "

The term in Warwick closed before Thanksgiving.
That annual festival Frederic passed with his family
in their bereaved home and then joined the junior
class at the Cambridge Theological School.

DIVINITY COLLEGE.
CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 5th.

MY DEAR MOTHER : Finding myself somewhat
settled, I thus comply with your earnest request, and at

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 49

the same time discharge a positive duty. The journey
was not rendered very disagreeable by the tempestuous
weather without, the cars being provided, as you
know, with all the comforts of a parlor. Mr. Child *
was extremely entertaining. His extensive travels,
his close habits of observation, his peculiar views in
politics and domestic economy, his thorough and
practical education all combine to make him a man
of remarkable powers in conversation. A truer aboli
tionist I suspect never lived.

Here I am in old Harvard. It is the place of all
places, for study. My room has a pleasant location,
looking towards Charlestown and Boston hand
somely furnished, carpeted and papered. The articles
I brought are coming into very valuable use, though
the sheets and pillowcases are superfluous, these
being supplied by a benevolent sisterhood in Cam
bridge. All the men in the Hall seemed gratified to
see me and things wear a very kindly aspect. The peo
ple I have seen are the families of Dr. Ware, Jun.,
and Mrs. Howe; I shall call at Prof. Pierce s soon.
In one week s time I hope to stand square with my
classmates in the studies meantime I recite with
the rest. I have just been to hear a lecture from Mr.
Adam the distinguished Orientalist.

As the season opened he describes Cambridge,
"becoming with the rich foliage and full blossoms of
the Spring a perfect Paradise. Do not allow your
selves any sort of anxiety respecting my habits of
exercise. Our hall is surrounded by a very salubrious

1 The husband of Lydia Maria Child, the well-known author of
anti-slavery literature.

50 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

as well as a very spiritual atmosphere. And we do not
allow ourselves here to forget the care of the physical
man. A game of ball occupies us an hour or two of
every day. Our gardens furnish us with plenty of
amusement besides, and two or three walks weekly to
Boston three and a half miles distant, and elsewhere,
make up you will perceive, quite a little amount of
labor. I never felt more vigor in my life. Even the sea
winds, which to other dwellers on the coast are so dis
agreeable, are to me only fresh and pleasant breezes.

" I find our secluded spot as calm, as favorable to
study and devotion as ever. If one does not practice
the virtues and draw near to God, here, where there
is no collision of passions and so few of the temptations
that beset our busy life, I don t know where he can
expect to do it. In study, however, I am aware, there
are dangers likewise dangers that spring from the
study itself.

" May strength be given us to resist them success
fully. There is One who is strong and ready to give
counsel and guidance and wisdom itself."

The country youth had entered a new intellectual
world. Through practice in the Amherst debating
clubs, he had become a master in forensic oratory
and his soul was fired with interest in the subjects of the
day, especially the reforms which were then fresh in
men s minds and dividing society into hostile camps.
In the curriculum of the Divinity School Friday even
ing discussions on stated subjects were prescribed.
Among the set of men who gathered there enthusiasm
did not flourish. Educated in the calm and cultivated
atmosphere of Boston Unitarianism, they felt no such
hot antagonism to Calvinism as that which stirred one

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 51

who was reared under its forbidding aspects. Hunt-
ington distinguished himself among them, not only
by the brilliancy of his style, but by his intense ardor
for the side he espoused and his aptness in utterance.
One element in the persuasiveness of his eloquent
words was their fine intonation and perfectly modu
lated delivery. Long afterward a fellow student re
called vividly the impression of a summer afternoon,
in the shade and stillness of Divinity Avenue, when
sitting in his room he became spellbound, listening
from across the hall to the rich musical inflections of
Huntington s voice, as he read aloud one of Marti-
neau s sermons. Successful as he then proved himself
to be in extemporaneous speaking, it was a gift which
in after years he held to be fraught with danger, and
those whom he instructed in pulpit methods will recall
the warnings, which increased in old age, against
preaching without most careful preparation.

In spite of his early readiness in disputation, he never
showed a taste for controversy for its own sake. His
chief endeavor was to state a subject clearly, and he
cared less to overthrow an adversary, or to convince
an audience by a process of reasoning, than to enforce
by lucid and persuasive exposition the appeal which
the truth makes to the conscience of men. In the in
tellectual atmosphere of the university the charm of
literature cast its spell around him. He drank deep at
the sources of noble English. Coleridge, De Quincey,
and Carlyle were the new writers who were influencing
the minds of that generation, and their works impressed
him profoundly.

Much poetry, now familiar to us, was then a delight
fully new experience. To his mother, bereaved in the

52 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

loss of the beloved daughter, he writes, asking her to
accept a volume just published.

"Its very title promises something like sympathy
to the mourner. Yet, solemn as are the Voices of the
Night, they breathe comfort and encouragement for
the labors of the day. Many of them I have committed
to memory. In many respects I like the piece called
Flowers, better than any other in the book." This
was a favorite to the end of his life, and his fondness
for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow s poems and for
William Cullen Bryant s, carrying with them early
associations, never yielded to the great masters of
verse, across the sea. From youth to old age, even to
a few weeks before his end, "The Waning Moon"
was frequently repeated with deep feeling.

The first real contact of the young man with sinning
souls came through the work in the city institutions,
which was part of the training of the divinity students.
This formed the only outlet for active sympathy, in a
rather isolated course of study and reflection.

CAMBRIDGE, April 4, 1840.
To EDWARD PHELPS HUNTINGTON.

In that you study serenely and are absorbed thereby
you resemble me. More and more I become careless of
society. When I look at it I see little but a subject of
pity or laughter. Having discovered where the springs
are I hope by and by to make an effort to touch them.

Criticism, Evidences, Pulpit Oratory, these are our
regular topics at present. I am engaged just now in a
course of Civil History somewhat extended. The
walks about here are delightful, and I improve them.
Esq. Time is leading Spring in, in a very gentlemanly

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 53

way, and though winter occasionally blusters and
sprinkles a little snow in his laughing sister s pathway,
she enervates him with one of her warm sighs.

My room has a Western view very fine, embra
cing the garden belonging to the school, the village of
C., high grounds beyond with pleasant villas, and then
the blue of the mountains melts into the softer blue of
the sky that embraces them. The garden we have the
privilege of cultivating.

Our preaching is of the highest order. Of course
we can find such hereabouts. Dr. Walker and Dr.
Channing are the two great ones and Prof. Ware is not
far behind. I usually attend in the City in the morning,
as I instruct every Sabbath before the services in one
of the Prisons. I find many characters there that in
terest me; humanity although in ruins, and Faith
hidden under a mass of degradation. The men seem
quite willing to learn and to think the women are
doubtful.

The Transcendental Movement had its attractions.
It is interesting to compare the impressions of the
youth with the ripe judgment of the scholar fifty years
later.

CAMBRIDGE, May 16, 1840.

MY DEAR MOTHER: In his late kind letter Father
alludes to the agitation of new opinions that now so
extensively occupies the attention of liberal Christians.
It is emphatically the great Theological question of the
day. It is not altogether, though too much, a question
of words and quiddities. I am satisfied in my investi
gations thus far that there is truth, some new truth in
this system of self-styled spiritualism.

54 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

Do not imagine I am at all beguiled with the tinsel,
the pretended intellectual character of German Tran
scendentalism. I never was so far from that as at this
moment. I only wish to make it a subject of fair,
honest, intelligent inquiry. It will hardly do to call
Transcendentalists fools, for they number some
able minds. I find that the system was first drawn out
by Kant in Germany the most unexceptionable
man in doctrine that the sect has perhaps contained.
In the hands of Fichte, Hegel and Schelling it became
more atheistic. In England it has been more a subject
of philosophy than of Theology. Coleridge like Goethe
has interwoven it in his poetry. Carlyle acknowledges
an idealistic Pantheism and probably Emerson would
do the same. There are few such however among
American Spiritualists. They still hold to the strict
Personality of the Deity and other essential features
of Christianity. They have their meetings conversa
tions etc., about here, often calling themselves Philoso
phers.

Emerson and Alcott mystify, Ripley spiritualizes,
Stetson jokes, Very poetizes etc., Norton stands out
against them and receives pamphlets and other squibs
with perfect composure. I fear he is not altogether
charitable, however. I have met Rev. T. Parker once ;
he preaches in a Church in Roxbury, is a Spiritualist,
a distinguished scholar and clever man.

Nearly half a century later Bishop Huntington
wrote: "From 1835 to 1840, a movement was felt
which was to affect palpably American thought, lit
erature and faith. Its influence was exerted primarily
in Unitarian circles, but reached thinking men in

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 55

New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. Under the
name of Transcendentalism it introduced, chiefly
from German Schools, the intuitional Philosophy,
not only discrediting experimentalism, and the de
ductive process generally, but proposing inevitably a
new method in the evidences of Christianity, Biblical
criticism, the testing of creeds, and the spiritual life.
Naturally enough the incoming wave found easy ad
mission in Unitarian ranks, where liberty was already
a cardinal principle. Immediate fruits were the Norton
and Ripley debates on Spinoza and Pantheism, the
Dial, Theodore Parker s transfer from the suburbs
to a Boston lecture hall, the coterie grouped about
Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and a division of the
Unitarian preachers and people into a conservative
and progressive party. A remoter and better conse
quence, as the way of Providence is apt to be with
sincere reforms, was a permanent modification of
theological habits in various Protestant leaders, a
widening of the grounds of Christian belief, a fresh
ening of dry fountains of discourse, and the dismem
berment of a barren cause. Such attending phenomena
as individual or partisan extravagance, over-statement,
ill-temper, a provincial cant, an imitative Germanized
style corrupting good English would be transient.

" To eager and open-minded young scholars those
were interesting days. Every week brought some new
contribution to the local excitement. Emerson preached
his aphoristic sermon before the graduating class of
the Divinity School. Was it Pantheism or not ? Henry
Ware and his coadjutors said it was little or no better.
Doctors Francis, Stetson, Ripley and others said it
was a sure prophecy from a divine oracle. Clubs

56 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

met and sat up late. Translations from German meta
physics, poets, and commentators were on parlor centre-
tables. Bright women recruited the intuitional contin
gent. Brook Farm attempted to apply the foreign
illumination to Yankee industry and the solution of
labor questions by an improved Fourierism, drawing
companies from the region round about to brilliant
symposia, but under a financial necessity presently
folded its tents and silently stole away. Sartor Re-
sartus and Carlyle s subsequent writings were then
and for some time after the popular reading for under
graduates and self-educated students all over the land.
More than that, they were stirring in multitudes a sense
of the radical difference in all moral and religious and
social action between appearance and reality, letter
and spirit, make-believe and self-forgetful earnestness.
The increase was not all solid gold. When much rub
bish is suddenly cast out, there is always risk that some
new rubbish will be taken in." l

The letter written to the Hadley home, May, 1840,
called forth some words of warning from his father, to
which he replied at length.

CAMBRIDGE, May 30.
To THE REV. DAN HUNTINGTON.

My dear Father: This has been the week of
Anniversaries in the City. Many of them I attended
with interest. Of course the Conference of Unitarian
clergymen was the most important in my view. The
information laid before that body was cheering, the
spirit manifested was excellent, the discussions able
and candid. Among other questions that of "New

1 The Forum, June, 1886.

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 57

Views" came up and was freely discussed by Revs.
Ripley, Hedge, Osgood and Stetson, from the new
party; and Gannett, Pierpont, Hall and Hill from the
old.

I thank you sincerely for the excellent cautions in
your late letter and I took the liberty of reading them
to a friend or two. As to the merits of the questions
at issue, I know as yet, but little. I wish to examine
both sides cautiously, intelligently and fairly. At the
present point, I can say that I think there is truth in
all views that the excesses and marked peculiarities
of Transcendentalism are all humbug; not however
because they are new, for I suppose new truths will be
forever breaking upon men s souls, and that men should
always stand ready to receive them.

The weather here has been extremely hot this week,
the thermometer mounting to 96. It must be fine
weather for crops. H. told me the other day that he
never saw the river valley more beautiful. Would that
I could look in upon it!

You inquire kindly about funds. I am in no want
at present. Expenses here are small. Perhaps I had
best take a school in the Fall, though that term will be
a very interesting one here on many accounts and im
portant too.

Please express yourself more fully respecting what
you think best for me. I am your boy still, though I
was twenty-one day before yesterday.

With the truest love and the most affectionate re
membrance of all, your dutiful son, FREDERIC.

The privilege of hearing eminent preachers was one
which the young student especially valued. Among

58 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

these whom he enjoyed, in addition to others already
mentioned, were Dr. Orville Dewey, Dr. Ezra Stiles
Gannett, Dr. Francis Greenwood, and Dr. George
Putnam.

He was at first much impressed by Theodore Parker,
" so much talked of now, a noble man, eloquent, bold
and in earnest, and a scholar withal and as spiritual-
minded as the best of his frightened accusers." This
in July, 1840. The following year, July, 1841, he writes
his mother : " Nothing agitates the community in this
region at present so deeply as Parker s sermon. My
own unimportant view of the matter, so far as I have
thought upon it is this. Mr. Parker was unfortunate,
if not blamable, in selecting, as the occasion of bring
ing out opinions so new, an ordination of a minister
by other ministers of an existing sect whose opinions
he must have known to differ materially from his own.
He has embarrassed the Unitarian body gratuitously
and without right or authority to do so." He was, how
ever, at that time, impressed with Theodore Parker s
fervor and eloquence and ready to give him credit
for fearlessness and sincerity.

To his brother he sends an account of experience in
another line of doctrinal utterance.

DEAR NED : I might have been seen, a few even
ings since in one of the galleries of Park St. church.
Persons were one by one quietly taking their places
in the different parts of the house. The few lamps that
were lighted burned somewhat dimly and waveringly.
I had just concluded an animated whisper conversa
tion with a young German Mystic, dismissed now from
respect to gathering assembly, Then the deep double

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 59

bass of the organ, with a full choir pealed forth the
following, imitating the idea of the third and fourth
lines, till the building shook to its foundations:

" See the storm of vengeance gathering

O er the path you dare to tread !
Hear the awful thunders rolling,

Loud and louder o er your head !
Turn O sinner ! "

And now rose the elegant form of the celebrated
Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Kirk. Of him it is
enough to say he is an eloquent man, a man of superior
talent, but a poor theologian.

In the same epistle he concludes: "The Fourth
with its foolery, its flags, its parades, its false patriotism
and its pitiable confusion has gone away; and it has
been succeeded by the holier hours on which we cele
brate a nobler than a nation s birth even a world s
the calm, the peaceful commemoration of the resur
rection of the Prince of Peace and of the birth of man s
hope of immortality. To the spirit of that mighty Mes
senger of the Message he brought, I cannot help con
sidering the shoutings and shootings as directly opposed.
They breathe of war and passions, of the senses and sin,
of forgetfulness of the spiritual element of our nature.

" Our term is nearly finished. I think I may say, I
never accomplished a greater amount of work in the
same time. On casting up the pages I have read and
studied since the first of March, I find they amount to
about eleven thousand, besides writing, debating and
other things. A vacation is quite in place and I am de
lighted with your proposition to move among the hay
makers. On Saturday I intend to go to Northampton.

60 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

Cannot we meet the week after ? Keep cool. The Lord
bless you. Yours changelessly, one of the friends whose
pride you are."

The course which the student of divinity pursued at
Cambridge was, as he himself afterwards recalled it,
one " of which it may be safely said that at that time a
favorable opportunity for outlook and quiet study was
the chief advantage, rather than the curriculum and
the chairs." During the spring of 42 he writes to his
parents : " Judging from present appearances we are
likely to be left in the school, as is apt to be the case
here, very much to the guidance of our own impulses.
Is it not well that we are such safe young men ? "

Dr. Henry Ware had become emeritus. His son,
Dr. Henry Ware, Jun., an excellent and distinguished
man, was in failing health, and this was the last class
which had the benefit of his instruction. In October,
1840: "Our new professor Dr. Noyes has com
menced his duties. He seems to be a thoroughly schol
arly man, and will doubtless be much liked." In
ecclesiastical history the students seemed quite inde
pendent. "My plan is to take a single idea, a single
thought, as for example, the idea of the freedom of the
will, the idea of a Catholic Church, of the Trinity, of
the Reformation, of Quakerism, and trace it first to
its original starting-place as nearly as possible and then
follow out the history of that idea, in all its develop
ment and modifications and applications through all
the periods of Church History. I think it is most phil
osophical to follow such a course, and the knowledge
thus gained is more available."

Although it was out of the regular system for students
to preach while at the Divinity School, permission

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 61

was granted to do so in certain cases and Mr. Hunt-
ington seems to have given his first sermon at the
House of Correction in East Cambridge, March 22nd,
1841.

During the following summer he ministered to a
little flock of " Liberal Christians " who gathered in a
lonely schoolhouse on the hills above the Connecticut
Valley. The building still stands in the town of
Leverett, as humble and remote as it was sixty years

ago-
Several years after, when the young minister of the
South Congregational church in Boston was in the
height of his activity, his father writes of this worthy
little band to whom he himself had been ministering:
"They have given very good attendance. A number
of them have spoken of you in a very friendly manner.
They seem to take something to themselves for having
broken a colt, that bids so fair to run a good race. I
hope their honest pride may be duly appreciated."

Huntington was at this same time teaching for a
second autumn term in the neighboring village of
Warwick, renewing his old associations, riding daily
one of his father s horses and laying aside means to
complete his theological course. He delivered some
educational and lyceum lectures in the adjoining
towns, and during the following winter vacation
preached occasionally in the small Unitarian parishes
on the river, where his father was in the habit of sup
plying the pulpit.

At times he assisted at King s Chapel in Boston by
reading the service for Rev. Dr. Greenwood. This was
his earliest acquaintance with a liturgical form of
worship.

62 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

CAMBRIDGE, April 8, 1842.

DEAR EDWARD : All your criticisms upon per
formance in the pulpit and upon the clerical office are
full of interest to me. You cannot well imagine the
eagerness with which I look about for different styles
and the success, the excellencies, the blemishes in each.
Putnam of Roxbury is our greatest preacher now in
the country. He is simple, direct, nervous, chaste,
eloquent. James F. Clarke is one of the best and most
original thinkers.

Our class are preaching Sunday evenings in the
village church here. My connection with Mr. Young s
Sunday-school is a source of a great deal of interesting
and, I trust, profitable labor. If I were employed with
the children I should feel myself to be taken from my
more important studies. But my office concerns rather
the teachers whom I meet at their houses on the
evenings of week-days for conversations, religious,
theological, critical. They are unrestrained, sociable
and sensible. Some of these ladies (there is only one
gentleman and he is silent as a post) are very talented
and very cultivated belong to the " first circles "
(a horrid expression) and often write beautiful essays.
To be the instructor of such persons requires a man
to have his wits about him, at least.

During the senior year at the Divinity School he
served as superintendent of. the Sunday-school con
nected with the society of Rev. Alexander Young,
at Church Green in Boston. In this position he was
the successor of Rufus Ellis, one year in advance of
him at Cambridge. Rev. Mr. Ellis became pastor of the
household at Elm Valley, during his ministry at the

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 63

Unitarian church in Northampton. Of his first visit to
the town, with his friend Huntington, he afterwards
wrote in strains of delightful retrospect.

" It was a beautiful day in the earliest autumn,
when two of us, fellow students at C. climbed up to
the seat behind the driver on the old Putts-Bridge
Stage, which made the connection in those days be
tween the Western Railroad and Northampton. Long
ago in my earliest childhood, I had seen Holyoke and
Tom, but the visions had passed into dreamland, out
of which they seemed to come naturally enough that
refulgent summer; and when we drew up at length at
the Mansion House, after crossing the ferry at Hock-
anum and driving none too slowly through the rich
unfenced meadows, came back the associations of the
time when it was filled with summer strangers and the
parents of Round Hill scholars. . . .

" How many walks, how many Sundays followed !
How many houses became homes, and would still, I
think. Shall I ever have time to carry on these chapters ?
to -take some one with me to my first Association,
(pronounced then by the elders in that region without
the second syllable, Assciation ) to go over in some
congenial company to see those dear old saints in Had-
ley; that calm old man, quietly farming and theologiz
ing upon his broad rich meadow, not knowing what a
stir the son who returned on that Saturday for his va
cation was destined to make in our Zion; that true
Christian woman his wife, that courtly and melancholy
and wise and large-minded gentleman under the ever
greens in the brown house opposite." *

The two households thus affectionately mentioned
1 Memoir of Rufus Ellis.

64 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

by one who was their minister for ten years, were those
of Rev. Dan Huntington and Major Charles Phelps.
The latter, Mrs. Huntington s only brother, had
passed some years of his life in Boston, where he mar
ried first a niece and then a daughter of Chief Justice
Theophilus Parsons. He was admitted to the bar,
elected a representative of the General Court from
Boston, and served as commander of the celebrated
company of cavalry, the Hussars, his immediate pre
decessor being Josiah Quincy. In 1816 he removed his
family to Hadley, where he built a commodious house,
"Pine Grove." In the town and county he distin
guished himself as an influential public officer, member
at different times of both houses in the legislature,
a valued counsellor and an upright .and honorable
gentleman. It was by him that the "Oliver Smith
Will" was drawn, leaving a large fortune to be in
vested for charitable purposes, which are widely
known as " The Smith Charities." The suit instituted
by the heirs to break the will became famous through
the celebrated lawyers engaged by the opposing parties.

Daniel Webster, with his majestic presence and his
overpowering weight of argument, won the case, but
the brilliant eloquence of his opponent, Rufus Choate,
and his glowing description of the scenery of the
Connecticut Valley, was never forgotten by those who
crowded the Northampton courthouse that sum
mer s day of 1847. It was an occasion which Mr.
Huntington, an interested listener, often afterwards
described with inimitable effect.

Major Phelps spent the later years of his life at his
Hadley home in complete retirement. Through their
connections in Boston, and educational advantages,

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 65

as well as owing to their tastes and temperament, his
children grew up to be a family of unusual culture and
proved congenial neighbors to the cousins at Elm
Valley. Two sons, Francis, a successful teacher of
boys, and Arthur, who was for some time connected
with the customhouse, became leading members of
the New Church (Swedenborgian) in Boston. The
third daughter, Caroline, married Stephen Greenleaf
Bulfinch, a Unitarian clergyman, son of the eminent
architect and himself a scholar and poet.

It was not without some struggles and inward ques
tioning that Huntington remained to complete his
course in Cambridge. The Divinity School was in a
transition state, his resources were restricted, and only
through extra work and close economy could he avoid
becoming an expense to his father. At the same time
there were attractive opportunities already open to one
who was gifted in speech and eager to enter active
life in the world. But sober judgment won the day,
setting the true value upon thorough and painstaking
preparation for service. In after years his sympathies
were especially stirred for young men struggling to
secure an education through their own exertions.

The annual visitation of the Divinity School took
place July, 1842, on which occasion he received the
certificate of a theological education and read a dis
sertation entitled, "The Comparative Prospects of
Romanism and Protestantism." At the request of Rev.
Dr. Gannett, then editor of the " Monthly Miscellany
of Religion and Letters," the paper was afterwards
printed in that magazine.

His character had matured in these three years of
study. He had entered as a country youth, little ac-

66 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

quainted with the great world of letters and of men.
From books and study he had gained much, to men
of learning he had listened attentively and profited
by their teaching. But his convictions were acquired
through independence of thought, and he carried away
from his theological course the same open spirit with
which he had entered it. If one word could sum up
the quality of his nature, it would be reality. He was
eager in his search for truth and single-minded in his
purpose to interpret honestly the message revealed to
him.

An evidence of this direction of his intellectual
aspiration is found in the subject he selected for the
"Master s Oration" which he delivered at Amherst
College: "A Sincere Belief the Source of a True Life."
It was at this Commencement, July 28, 1842, that he
received his degree of A.M. , a few weeks after his final
departure from Cambridge.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST CALL

" There are two things that they need to possess who go on pilgrim
age : courage and an unspotted life."

IT has been made evident that there was no hesitation
in Mr. Huntington s mind, after his choice was first
determined, as to his calling to enter the sacred min
istry. His inclinations were equally distinct toward
parish work. The seven years of study, happy as they
were, prepared him to enter all the more eagerly upon
the active life of a pastor. From the beginning he was
earnest to reach the souls of poor as well as rich, to
come near the toiling masses ; and his father s proposal
to him to take charge of a little flock in one of the
pleasant villages of the Connecticut Valley, did not
accord with this ideal.

It was not in his character to look out for a set
tlement, or to concern himself as to the best open
ing for the future. But there were members of
the Unitarian denomination in Boston already in
terested to retain in that vicinity a promising can
didate. The first entry in the record of Sunday minis
tration, kept afterward without break for sixty-two
years, is :

"After leaving the Divinity School, July 17, 1842.
Jamaica Plain A. M. and P. M."

68 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

This might have led to a permanent engagement,
in accordance with the plans of friends, if he had
not already agreed to furnish a temporary supply for
some weeks at the South Congregational society.
This parish, situated on Washington Street at the
South End, was reduced in numbers and prosperity,
but it offered an opportunity for future growth. It
was placed among comfortable homes, and yet near
the crowded districts of the poorer tenements. The
region towards Roxbury was a pleasant one, but it did
not possess the oldtime attraction of the North End,
or the social prestige of Beacon Hill. Although the
edifice was not situated in a public centre, within
near reach of city crowds, it was on a main thorough
fare, was sufficiently spacious, and well adapted to
parish work. To this field an invitation was extended
on August 7, 1842, before Mr. Huntington had com
pleted the term of his temporary charge. It was a
call to usefulness, and he accepted without long delay,
entering upon his duties a few weeks later.

UNITED STATES HOTEL,

July 19, 1842.

To EDWARD PHELPS HUNTINGTON.

Dearly beloved Brother: Last Sunday I preached
for the first time as a real preacher, at Jamaica Plain.
Such a world of artistic and natural beauty I am sure
I never was in before. They invited me from one coun
try seat to another, and from one garden of fruits and
flowers to another, till I was almost bewildered, as if
in fairyland. The famous Community too, near there,
was looked at. Dwight hoes corn Sundays. Some sail,
some walk, some hear Parker preach. The general

THE FIRST CALL 69

feeling with which I came away was one of sadness and
commiseration.

Nearly forty years later Bishop Huntington wrote
of the Brook Farm experiment: "This was .a sanguine
attempt of Mr. Ripley, and a few of his friends, to
embody in a mc/dified form, on a large tract of land,
some of the better suggestions of the French Com
munists, to give everybody something to do in some
bucolic fashion, to afford a convenient rally ing-place
for the symposia of the coming reformers of religion,
literature, society, and so to offer a model of respectable,
cultured Christian Fourierism, with Fourier and much
of his nonsense left out. Fine times they had there
beyond question, with much that was pure and sincere
and lofty in aspiration and conversation, and much
that was sentimental, crude and ridiculous. Theodore
Parker used to come often across the pastures to talk
with such good company, the farm lying within the
precincts of his parish. Of an evening the group would
include very much the same persons, not a few of them
already or afterwards eminent, that had been accus
tomed to gather in the parlors of Mrs. Farrar in Cam
bridge, Mrs. Parkman in Boston, or at Mr. Emer
son s own house in Concord, or that contributed prose
or verse, or Orphic sayings which were neither, to the
pages of the Dial. Central in the circle, and always
oracular in speech, each on a separate tripod, were
Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Mr. Emerson.

"Hawthorne occasionally looked in, in his silent
observant way, but did not commit himself. Of the
young listeners and enthusiastic seekers were Wheeler
and Bartlett, Jones Very, J. S. Dwight the musician

70 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

and the lady he married, George W. Curtis and a few
foreigners. So the experiment went on, hastening to
dissolution and moribund from the start. If there were
affinities, so were there antipathies and repulsions.
Queer people, impracticable people, disagreeable peo
ple, in short bores and dunces, always attach themselves
to novel combinations of that sporadic sort. Mr. Ripley
was no quartermaster, organizer or financier. The
turnips and potatoes languished while the builders
of the Future cultivated literature on a little oatmeal.
The weeds grew rank while the unanxious husband
men discussed the Vedas, recited Schiller, laid down
the principles of every one of the fine arts, or pondered
the problems of the universe. Before very long that
pleasant place of cattle and corn and poultry knew
them no more. The leader of the enterprise went to
the Tribune office, Mr. Curtis in due time to his
editorial chair, the rest hither and thither to seek their
bread. Another was added to the long list of com
munistic failures, God having clearly ordained that
his sons and daughters shall dwell in families, and that
the laws of life and duty, labor and thrift, responsi
bility and increase, shall not be abrogated by the
dreams of dreamers, however amiable or honest or
gifted they may be."

It has been seen that neither literary nor social in
clination led Mr. Huntington among the followers of
Transcendentalism. He threw himself from the first
heart and soul into the work of building up his church,
and beyond his parish visits his leisure was spent in
an acquaintance which ripened into something deeper
than friendship. The Bible class which he had con
ducted during the winter of 1842 in Rev. Mr. Young s

THE FIRST CALL 71

society proved to be of supreme personal importance
since it was here that he first met his future wife,
one of the teachers in the Sunday-school and an ear
nest member of the congregation. The engagement
which took place in September could not fail to arouse
a good deal of interest, as it followed so closely the
young minister s introduction to his field of labor.

Hannah Dane Sargent was only nineteen years old,
and one of a large family of brothers and sisters. In
communicating his happiness to his brother Edward,
Mr. Huntington writes : " Her father, Epes Sargent, is
a merchant in the foreign trade. Her brothers you
must know something of, Epes is a literary man by
profession former editor of the New World,
author of Velasco, and many other things. John O.

has been the editor of the Courier and Inquirer and

, *

of the Boston Atlas is now a lawyer in New York.
The family is large, refined, affectionate and a little
proud. Gen. Lincoln of the Revolution was her great
grandfather."

The letter announcing to his parents his prospects
of marriage was entrusted to his brother Charles, at
that time a member of the General Court, to take back
when he returned to his home in Northampton. These
were still the days when it was an object to send mis
sives by private hand. Delays and disappointments
naturally resulted from the system of entrusting cor
respondence to the chance transportation of friends and
neighbors. One often finds in reading the old epistles
that some recognition or word of sympathy eagerly
looked for by the absent one was hindered by a slight
circumstance or a change of plan of the travelers
going back and forth. For some years Rev. Dan Hunt-

72 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

ington held the office of postmaster in the village of
North Hadley, employing the assistance of his sons,
for a nominal salary which included the privilege of
sending mail matter exempt from postage, an item of
importance to so large a family.

The parents from Hadley had visited Boston during
" Anniversary Week " of the previous spring, enjoying
as usual the gatherings for philanthropy and religious
objects, but they made the journey again in October, to
meet their son s promised bride and to attend his
installation.

The ordination services of Mr. Frederic D. Hunt-
ington, as pastor of the South Congregational Church
and Society, took place on the evening of the 19th of
October, 1842. The introductory prayer was by the
Rev. Chandler Robbins; selections from Scripture
were read by Rev. James F. Clarke 1 ; the sermon was
delivered by the Rev. George Putnam; prayer of
ordination offered by Rev. N. L. Frothingham; the
charge by the Rev. Dan Huntington, the venerable
father of the candidate ; the right hand of fellowship
was extended by Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, an intimate
friend and classmate at Cambridge ; the address to the
society made by Rev. George E. Ellis, and the conclud
ing prayer offered by Rev. H. W. Bellows.

The young pastor s active sympathies and strong
sense of social responsibility rendered the calls of a
city parish inspiring, and his spiritual nature found
deep satisfaction in the opportunity for kindling souls
to the higher life.

He wrote to his brother: "The ordination exercises,
as you will learn by the Transcript and the Times,
were interesting and eloquent to a most unusual degree.

THE FIRST CALL 73

Father s charge seems to have been quite the lion of the
occasion. Boston people think him a splendid gentle
man of the old School. The hymns were compiled by
me, principally from Bryant, Kirk White, Norton,
Frothingham and Pierpont.

" No longer am I, as heretofore, my own man. God
help me to be a servant of my people and of his Truth.
My introductory sermons are on The influence of
worship on duty and The mission and office of the
Christian minister, in the present age. "

October, 1842.

DEAR AND KIND MOTHER: Your letter, full of
comfort and pleasing and strengthening and enliven
ing words, must receive but a short reply. I have never
known before what real duties are. All the day I have
been attending to the printing press (preparing the
Ordination exercises for the public) and visiting the
sick and afflicted. I take these first in my parish calls,
because I think they have the first claim. A sermon is
yet to be written before Sunday, and a child on that
day is to be baptized in the church.

Wednesday, the girl in whom "new wisdom every
hour I see " and who certainly has a depth of spiritual
beauty and gentle feeling and refined thought that I
did not half understand when I first gave myself to her
rode with me to Hingham. The occasion at Co-
hasset was well. Thursday we came back. Her friends
the Lincolns, 1 have just such a home as our own,

1 The mother of Hannah Dane Sargent was Mary Otis Lincoln,
a grand-daughter of General Benjamin Lincoln whose ancient man
sion in Hingham is above referred to. It was then, and is still the
property of one branch of the family.

74 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

the same air of comfort and ease and old-fashioned
enjoyment and furniture.

U. S. HOTEL,
BOSTON, Jan. 18, 43.

MY DEAR MOTHER : I am not quite so much hur
ried, I hope I never shall be as to cut me off from
communing with my friends. Among all my duties and
engagements 1 I imagine I shall always keep one va
cant place sacred at least for my mother and father, and
I should be rather surprised if it should not be kept
large enough to include my sisters and brothers.

I send the "Examiner" containing an excellent
article by Mr. Henry Ware, on Peace. It belongs to
Edward and is sent to you because I know you would
like to read it.

In the parish we seem to labor not altogether in
vain ; if we grew in grace as rapidly as in numbers, we
should soon come to the perfect measure. Last Sab
bath evening my Missionary sermon was followed up
by a meeting, and a Committee of ten chosen to visit
the whole congregation and solicit subscriptions. We
shall have a contribution besides from those who don t
like to subscribe. The whole day Communion
Sunday was peculiarly happy and prospered. We
have social Teachers meetings once a month and
meetings for religious instruction and conversation, of
all who will attend, once a fortnight. These are at
tended with great interest at private houses. Last
Monday, a stormy evening, the house was full to over-

1 During the winter of the year 1843 Mr. Huntington was chap
lain of the Legislature, in connection with Rev. Edward N. Kirk, it
being the policy at that time to select one from the Unitarian and
one from the Orthodox denominations.

THE FIRST CALL 75

flowing. The exercise consists principally of a familiar
lecture extemporaneous from myself on the N.
T. We have commenced the Gospel of John. Some
one told me that the poorer people felt ashamed to
come. Last Sabbath therefore, in as delicate a way as I
could, I gave them a particular invitation, and told the
rest of the Society somewhat bluntly, that if any of
them came to exhibit fashion or taste or any external
accomplishment they would better dress in the plainest
garb they could find or stay away altogether.

The correspondence between the two brothers had
been a close one since Frederic s college days, in spite
of the fact that Edward was the senior by twelve years.
He had not taken a college course, but had engaged in
business and was most happily married in the year
1841, and settled near Springfield. His tastes were
literary, and he entered with deep sympathy into the
details of professional work. To the great sorrow of
his family he was taken away, in a rapid decline, less
than six months after the following letter was written.
The occasion was a call to New York, from the Church
of the Messiah, inviting the Rev. Frederic Huntington
to become an associate to the Rev. Dr. Dewey, who
was out of health.

CABOTVILLE, March 1, 1843.

DEAR FREDERIC : Mr. Mills a few evenings since
made a remark illustrative of the confidence in men of
the power of money for any end, however base, which
was truly shocking. Speaking of his parish, and the
propriety of going to another in Boston to supply the
vacancy he said he had no question. The parish that

76 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON

could give the most offer the greatest inducements
was entitled to the man. This idea wants to be prac
tically contradicted. Men should be disabused of this
pernicious doctrine; and it would be worth one life
to show men that other things are paramount. Are
such things esteemed folly? So is true wisdom even.
It is not tempted by a view of this world and their
glory. The proposal has been made public as if tri
umphantly, a bauble no one could refuse. The eyes of
the world are on the decision and the world says " he ll
go." But this is nothing compared to the test.

Your opportunities for study and usefulness which
are indeed things of highest regard are quite equal.
Go there and in five years you will either break down
or burn out. You know my doctrine has always been
that it is better that a man make his place shine than
that a place make the man shine. Act calmly, use
reason, take counsel of conscience and God s word.
Act so as best to promote the interests of the Gospel
you preach, not only in probable results but immediate.
God guide you: very affectionately,

EDW. P. HUNTINGTON.

The inducements and arguments to accept the in
vitation to New York could not be lightly set aside.
Miss Sargent s two brothers, Epes and John O., were
living in New York. They realized the opportunity
in that city for a young man whose talents had built
up a city parish to such unexpected numbers and
financial prosperity in a few months. The salary of
fered was comparatively large and the position a con
spicuous one in the Unitarian denomination. Rev.
Dr. Bellows, in common with influential New York

THE FIRST CALL 77

laymen, made a plea as much for the cause of liberal
Christianity as for the parish itself. It was an opening
which appealed to ambition and offered many attrac
tions. But the claims in Boston were such that Mr.
Huntington could not long hesitate. He decided that
his duty lay in the field which he had entered so short
a time before, and with a people who had generously
responded to his plans.

He writes, March 4, 1843, to John O. Sargent:

"Any man could have gone with an easier con
science than I. As it is, all is well. . . . Here my re
lations are perhaps more agreeable than before. Our
people are full of enterprise and hope and growth."

The expressions of confidence and affection for their
preacher were indeed such as to encourage him to
remain. Still preserved are letters written at that time
by three men, Jonathan Ellis, John Nazro, and David
Reed, who in urging him to stay by them gave a pledge
of hearty support which never failed. Of his people,
their pastor could say in fa