HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 FIRST RECTOR OF 
 
 SAINT PAUL'S SCHOOL 
 
 CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES CARTER KNOX 
 
 MASTER AND FORMER SCHOLAR AT SAINT PAUI/S 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1915 
 
L-D ?5C I 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 
 BY JAMES CARTER KNOX 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Henry Augustus Coit Frontispiece 
 
 From a Photograph. 
 
 Henry Augustus Coit .... facing page 92 
 From a daguerreotype about 1854* 
 
 Facsimile of Inscription, written 
 
 by Dr. Coit " " 
 
 M113335 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
HENEY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 " One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, 
 One lesson which in every wind is blown. 
 One lesson of two duties kept at one 
 Though the loud world proclaim their enmity 
 
 Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity; 
 Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
 Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose, 
 Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. 
 
 Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 
 Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, 
 Still do thy quiet ministers move on, 
 
 Their glorious tasks hi silence perfecting; 
 Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil; 
 Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone." 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 /^ARLYLE begins his Life of Sterling by 
 \^S remarking that "a true delineation of 
 the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage 
 through life is capable of interesting the great- 
 est man." This generalization simply puts in 
 epigrammatic form the well-known fact that 
 
 [3] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 a, true transcript of any man's life and char- 
 acter, if sufficiently searching and intimate, will 
 be likely to interest all men. But it must be a 
 " true delineation," and any attempt at a sketch 
 of a man's life, where either defect in truth 
 or excess in laudation becomes the dominant 
 note, would be a failure, just as the lack of 
 verisimilitude spoils a novel. The writer will 
 endeavor to avoid overstatement of every kind, 
 but may fairly begin by saying that Henry 
 Augustus Coit was generally conceded to be a 
 great man both in character and achievement. 
 The press notices and resolutions that appeared 
 at the time of his death leave no doubt as to 
 his place in public estimation. The real " scene 
 of his pilgrimage " was St. Paul's School, Con- 
 cord, N. H., and his life the forty years of ardu- 
 ous toil spent in her borders. For we can 
 safely neglect his boyhood and early education, 
 or at least leave them in other hands, as being 
 without incident or real significance. Doubt- 
 less many a clue to his character could be found 
 in the details of his childhood in his pious home 
 at Plattsburg, N. Y., and of his adolescence 
 [4] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 under the devout and imaginative Muhlen- 
 berg at College Point, Flushing; but details 
 are lacking, and there is literally no one alive 
 who can supply them. A few lines, taken 
 from the "Horae Scholasticae " of March 8, 
 1895, will give us the main facts of his life up 
 to the date of his call to the Rectorship of 
 St. Paul's School. 
 
 "Dr. Henry Augustus Coit was born Janu- 
 ary 20, 1830, at Wilmington, Del., where his 
 father, the late Rev. Joseph Rowland Coit, 
 D.D., was rector of St. Andrew's Church. 
 In 1832 his family went to Plattsburg, N. Y., 
 his father having been elected rector of Trin- 
 ity Church in that city. There his youth was 
 passed until his fifteenth year, when he was 
 sent to the well-known boarding-school at 
 College Point, Flushing, L. L, under Dr. 
 Muhlenberg. In due course he went to the 
 University of Pennsylvania, but, his health 
 giving out, he spent a winter in the South, 
 chiefly in Georgia. On his return, he ac- 
 cepted the position of assistant professor of 
 the ancient languages at St. James's College, 
 
 [5] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Maryland. He remained there about two 
 years, and then, in 1851, assumed charge of a 
 large parish school under the direction of Dr., 
 afterwards Bishop, Bowman at Lancaster, Pa. 
 There he met Miss Mary Bowman Wheeler, 
 to whom he was subsequently married. 
 While at Lancaster he was ordained Deacon 
 by Bishop Alonzo Potter, the ceremony 
 taking place at St. James's Church, Phila- 
 delphia. His ordination to the priest- 
 hood followed one year later, in 1854, in 
 Plattsburg, Bishop Horatio Potter officiat- 
 ing. He was at this time serving efficiently 
 as missionary at Ellenburgh and Centreville, 
 Clinton County, N. Y., having recently left 
 his charge at Lancaster. Here he remained 
 until, having been invited by the Trustees of 
 St. Paul's School to become its first Rector, 
 he came to Concord, April 3, 1856. His 
 marriage had taken place one week earlier, 
 March 27, in the Church of the Epiphany at 
 Philadelphia." 
 
 As the public life of Dr. Coit was wholly 
 uneventful, and as his contribution to history 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 was limited to his long term of intensive 
 labor in an atmosphere almost conventual, 
 it is obvious that our task will be to deal 
 with character rather than action, with 
 character as illustrated in the functions of 
 administrator, teacher and pastor. And yet 
 one hesitates to analyze Dr. Coit too inti- 
 mately; it seems almost unfair. In his life- 
 time no one ventured to discuss him in 
 public; in his presence it would have been 
 impossible. He had the secret of modesty, 
 and his great reserve smothered all efforts at 
 probing. Moreover, any attempt to explain 
 Dr. Coit to one who had never seen him will 
 be difficult, for he combined qualities that 
 are not often found together. John Jay 
 Chapman's rather transcendental picture of 
 his old school-master in his monograph en- 
 titled "School Influence," is a true one on 
 the whole, and is indeed a great tribute, 
 supplementing in its idealism and loftiness 
 of vision the more commonplace apprecia- 
 tions of the rest of us. But such a picture 
 is incomprehensible to most men, and lifts 
 
 [7] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 its subject to such a degree that Dr. Coit 
 seems to walk across the distant horizon of 
 school life with a spectral effect not unlike 
 that of the Wandering Jew in Sue's novel, 
 or of Moses in Georg Ebers' "Uarda." No, 
 Dr. Coit was a real man, with defects and 
 limitations, and he would have been greatly 
 astonished that his character needed anato- 
 mizing of any sort; it was all very simple to 
 him. Such a consideration, however, will not 
 deter us from the effort to bring out what 
 was really great in him, what lifted him head 
 and shoulders above most men of his type. 
 
 Surely, the basis of Dr. Coit's character is 
 to be found in his Puritanism. His ancestors 
 on both sides were evangelical, Bible-reading 
 New Englanders, and his passion for right- 
 eousness was a natural result of birth and 
 environment. On such a stock was grafted, 
 as time went on, the emotional and romantic 
 temperament of the ecclesiastic, such as the 
 Oxford movement begot in men of historic 
 sense and native mysticism. This is a strong 
 combination, and to it can be traced most of 
 
 [8] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 the features of Dr. Coit's spiritual outfit. An 
 alumnus writing about his old master will in- 
 evitably recall the qualities that touched him 
 individually, that most affected his own life. 
 He may feel that he owes a great debt to 
 the man that presided over the scene of his 
 boyhood life at St. Paul's, and yet he has 
 perhaps never analyzed nor confessed it. 
 What was it that hypnotized boys and 
 prodded their consciences? Well, the feeling 
 of an old boy towards Dr. Coit and the old 
 school is compacted of the sum of many 
 memories, of memories of good things freely 
 given and unconsciously received, of learn- 
 ing imparted, of high principles absorbed, of 
 shelter from evil, of happy days and healthy 
 sport, in short, of a fine ideal which time and 
 adversity cannot destroy even though they 
 obscure. Out of this general welter will 
 emerge the figure of the Doctor, who vital- 
 ized it all: his alert intuitions that pene- 
 trated the most callous nature; his insight 
 into motive; his fanatical purity, his probes 
 to vanity, utter routing of the forward and 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 bumptious, his irony, sometimes cruel, for 
 the self-complacent and pragmatic, his aggres- 
 sive challenge to duty, gentle self-revelation 
 to the over-shy and reticent, compelling sym- 
 pathy, sustaining hand to the weak, apprecia- 
 tion of ability and talent with cautionary 
 signals; and, beyond all, a pervasive atmo- 
 sphere of life lived in an empyrean, well 
 above the sordid and u terre a terre." All 
 this may sound strange to some ears to-day, 
 but it did not sound so at the time of Dr. 
 Coit's death, for it was the burden of all 
 utterances about him from press and pulpit. 
 Canon Douglas, in a letter to the New York 
 Evening Post, declared that "if any man in 
 America deserved a public funeral, it was the 
 late Rector of St. Paul's School." Bishop 
 Doane averred that Dr. Coit had laid the 
 "deepest foundations and built the best 
 superstructures that have been laid or built 
 for the Christian training of boys." And 
 this from a writer in the Boston Transcript: 
 "The great school that he built may seem 
 to the world the chief evidence of his ability, 
 [10] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 but to these old boys the stamp of his char- 
 acter set on their lives and enduring unchanged 
 amid the passing influence of later years will 
 be the great proof of his worth as servant of 
 God and leader of men." Dr. Roberts, in 
 the Concord Monitor, said that "the charac- 
 ters of men who have come from St. Paul's 
 School were forged in his heart." Dr. Fergu- 
 son dwelt on "his almost awful righteousness 
 and his enthusiasm for righteousness in 
 others." Dr. Hall Harrison attributed the 
 secret of his influence to the "spirituality 
 and unworldliness of his nature. He lived 
 close to the cross of his Redeemer." The 
 Trustees of Groton School declare in formal 
 Resolutions that "he has given to American 
 teachers, especially those in Church schools, 
 a great and noble ideal of their office. 
 Through the influence of his leadership 
 other schools have been founded, and to 
 his memory Groton turns with deep grati- 
 tude." The Manchester Union says that 
 "The state will mourn his death as that of a 
 benefactor, for, in the work which he has done 
 
 EH] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 and perpetuated by a wise establishment, he 
 has honored New Hampshire with exceed- 
 ing great honor." Finally, an editorial in 
 The Churchman pronounces him greater than 
 Arnold. 
 
 The comparison between Arnold and Coit 
 is inevitable; they had worked in kindred 
 fields and had made a like contribution to 
 the cause of secondary education in their 
 respective countries. Yet the men were in 
 some respects unlike, and the parallel is use- 
 ful chiefly in enabling us to interpret a less 
 known person through contrast with a better 
 known person of the same general type. 
 They agreed in a common enthusiasm for the 
 moral education of youth, and in the con- 
 viction that the Humanities furnished the 
 best medium for the training of the mind. 
 But the stage, the methods and the motives 
 were different. Dr. Arnold devoted fourteen 
 years of his life to reforming a corrupt and 
 custom-ridden school of 400 years' standing; 
 Dr. Coit gave forty years to founding and 
 
 [12] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 orienting a new one on lines almost novel 
 in this country. The roles were different 
 and each showed masterly wisdom. Had po- 
 sitions been exchanged, neither might have 
 succeeded. Dr. Arnold worked in a fixed 
 society and in an ancient system; Dr. Coit 
 labored amid crude social conditions and 
 created a type of school, at first deemed an 
 exotic, but now become popular. Dr. Arnold 
 was a notable scholar, historian and publi- 
 cist; Dr. Coit, though unquestionably a 
 scholar, never wrote a book. Dr. Arnold had 
 a consuming interest in outside questions and 
 took a prominent part in many famous con- 
 troversies; Dr. Coit confined himself in an ' 
 extraordinary degree to his one mission. Dr. 
 Arnold was a Latitudinarian and a radical, 
 with a temperament prone to doubt. Dr. 
 Coit was conservative to the backbone, with 
 a fiery faith that fed on the Greek Testament 
 and Thomas a Kempis. And yet these two 
 men met on the common ground of passion- 
 ate zeal for righteousness, and of firm con- 
 viction that education is worthless without it. 
 
 [13] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Like Arnold, too, and like his still more 
 eminent son, Matthew, Dr. Coit accepted as 
 a settled dogma that Latin was the eternally 
 proper instrument of mental training, quite 
 forgetting that, when Dean Colet, Erasmus 
 and other Humanists made it the basis of 
 secular education, they had no choice but 
 to select that tongue which not only was the 
 Esperanto of scholars, but which at the Re- 
 naissance treasured beneath its symbols all 
 extant knowledge, whether fact or philosophy. 
 In truth, Dr. Coit and both the Arnolds be- 
 long a little to the pre-scientific era of educa- 
 tion. We shall have occasion to refer to Dr. 
 Arnold more than once in the development 
 of our subject. 
 
 It is now nearly sixty years since the 
 founding of St. Paul's School, a period of 
 time long enough to afford perspective and 
 data adequate for impartial generalization. 
 The original trustees are long since dead, 
 and, with a few exceptions, their immediate 
 successors and co-workers are old and pass- 
 ing. Memories are imperfect, experiences 
 
 [14] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 vary, and temperaments are diversely sus- 
 ceptible. If the intention and spirit of the 
 Fathers is to be caught from living lips, 
 there is no time to be lost. A separate 
 "paper" might well be devoted to Dr. Shat- 
 tuck and the Boston group of Trustees. 
 The school was indeed fortunate in her 
 founder, George Cheyne Shattuck, the dis- 
 tinguished physician. His own education had 
 been liberal and thorough, and partook of 
 the best that could be given at the Boston 
 Latin School, the Round Hill School at 
 Northampton and Harvard College. Pos- 
 sibly as a Round-Hiller he may have im- 
 bibed through George Bancroft a little of 
 the community feeling of Brook Farm. At 
 all events, he determined to found a school 
 in the country, where the training of body, 
 soul and spirit should be equally accom- 
 plished; where, as he said, "green fields and 
 trees may be used to teach of Him who 
 made them," and where fraternal peace may 
 be the proper fruit of comparative isolation. 
 The school once fairly launched, Dr. Shattuck 
 
 [15] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 modestly retired into the background. Al- 
 though he was never a Trustee, for nearly 
 forty years he was the constant upholder of 
 the first Rector in all his plans, and the 
 pressure of his rare elevation and singleness 
 of heart must have been felt in all the 
 initial development of the place. 
 
 Over such a projected school, beginning 
 with three boys, Henry Augustus Coit was 
 invited to preside. "He was told, 'You 
 have possession of land and buildings, but we 
 cannot promise you a salary, and you must 
 derive your support from the fees of schol- 
 ars.' He began the work under these con- 
 ditions. It was emphatically a work of 
 faith." He was but twenty-six years of age, 
 and had had no special training for academic 
 life, if we except a short term of service at 
 St. James's College and three years at a 
 parish day-school at Lancaster, Pa. Perhaps 
 he was secured at the psychological moment; 
 a few years later, and his retiring, studious 
 nature might well have led him to decline 
 the appointment. But fate willed that he 
 
 [16] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 should be "taken at the flood/' and the 
 growing school speedily furnished scope for 
 all his powers. 
 
 Of Dr. Coit's intellectual equipment for his 
 task a few words may be said here, although 
 it will naturally be disclosed everywhere in 
 the course of this study. He had received 
 the usual classical education of boys of his 
 time, along with the special advantage of 
 study under the direction of a learned 
 father. He must have been a hard reader 
 from the beginning. No American boy of 
 the period could hope to get the foundation 
 that came so easily to his brothers across the 
 water, which developed in Arnold an idolatry 
 for Aristotle, which put Gladstone at the feet 
 of Homer, and made Dean Church "keep a 
 throne apart for Lucretius." But Dr. Coit 
 had had far more than the routine grounding 
 in Latin and Greek, and possessed in a 
 marked degree the divine fury of the clas- 
 sics. Not a critical scholar in the German 
 sense, he was very strong on the cultural 
 side, and, as we shall see later, his enthu- 
 
 [17] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 siasm kindled an answering flame in the 
 minds of his immediate pupils. 
 
 In modern languages he was not strong. 
 His French was the classic French of the 
 "Provincial Letters," of Racine and Moliere, 
 and perhaps, of Massillon and Lacordaire. 
 I/ Abbe Constantin doubtless appealed to 
 him, but the modern French realistic novel 
 was in his eyes an abomination, something 
 to be taken up carefully with a pair of tongs 
 and tossed into the fire. As for German, it 
 was scarcely taught in his boyhood, and, 
 although he made sporadic attempts to study 
 it, he virtually never knew it. His reading 
 of German poetry or of the German theo- 
 logians was in his vernacular. He was not 
 ignorant of science and mathematics; he 
 could and did teach the latter in early days 
 when it was necessary to fill a master's place 
 temporarily. Of what are called accomplish- 
 ments, he once told the writer that he had 
 none, that they did not run in his blood. 
 And yet he played the piano well enough to 
 enable him to take the organist's place at 
 
 [18] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 the old chapel organ occasionally. But the 
 simple chants and hymns were very quaintly 
 rendered, and with a staccato touch and roll- 
 ing arpeggio treatment. It may be added 
 also that he took his time in beginning each 
 canticle, since he would allow nothing to 
 interfere with his complete devotional sur- 
 render to the prayers and lessons. One can 
 hardly say that he was artistic in tempera- 
 ment; his ethical side was almost too strong 
 for that. The Dresden Madonna no doubt 
 was his delight, but Rubens, with his frank 
 animalism, was far too gross. He must find 
 the moral and religious in anything worth 
 admiring. Dr. Arnold went much further in 
 this direction than Dr. Coit. It is said that 
 none of the cathedrals of continental Europe 
 ever evoked a word of enthusiasm from him, 
 or stirred an emotion, with the exception of 
 Cologne. And so of the other plastic art; 
 Dr. Coit's Greek studies gave him a Greek 
 feeling for poetry, but scarcely for sculpture. 
 The writer remembers on a very hot Sunday, 
 many years ago, when he was standing by 
 
 [19] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Dr. Coit on the bank and watching the boys 
 bathing, that the Doctor said rather shyly, 
 "The human form is not beautiful, is it?" 
 This is certainly not very Greek. Accord- 
 ingly, a Madonna, a Pieta, a Moses, possibly 
 the Apollo Belvidere, would win his indorse- 
 ment; but a Venus de Milo, or a Cupid and 
 Psyche, never in the world! In fact, he was 
 morbidly sensitive to the suggestion of any 
 divorce between art and ethics. With him, 
 all impure art was bad art, and to read 
 authors like Flaubert and De Maupassant 
 for style, as sometimes people are recom- 
 mended to do, seemed to him absurd as well 
 as wrong; he would as soon have consorted 
 with Satan for manners. Probably it was 
 not art itself that appealed directly to his 
 esthetic sensibility, but something about art 
 which he thought ennobling and which made 
 for culture. Raphael, Phidias, and Beet- 
 hoven were names to conjure with, but they 
 carried perhaps a little of the aroma of the 
 famous "Du grec, O ciel!" in "Les Femmes 
 Savantes." 
 [20] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 However, it would not be just to dogma- 
 tize in this matter, for there was little in this 
 country, in the early days of St. Paul's 
 School, to evoke the latent art-feeling of 
 anybody. It would, indeed, be history as 
 well as justice to say, that the arrival of 
 Augustus Swift as a master in 1874 brought 
 the first real contribution in the direction of 
 the fine arts. His many esthetic gifts and 
 aggressive joy in the employment of them 
 operated like an April shower upon the rather 
 arid soil of our puritan foundation. Hence- 
 forward the beautiful was to be a part of 
 our endowment. Not that his taste was 
 impeccable, but he loved music and painting 
 and poetry, and lived in the atmosphere of 
 them. And back of these tastes there was 
 so warm and Christian a nature that his 
 rather sensuous contribution did not strike 
 us as altogether too Pagan. His early death 
 was a great loss, and caused genuine grief 
 in the hearts of all connected with St. Paul's. 
 
 From what has been said one might natu- 
 rally expect to find on the school estate a 
 
 [21] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 certain evidence of indifference to artistic 
 form, a disregard of exterior effect in the 
 early architecture of buildings, in groupings, 
 and in the arrangement of roads, banks and 
 streams. Certainly, no building could claim 
 any great beauty prior to the erection of the 
 new Chapel in 1888. Utility had been the 
 great consideration, and back of utility had 
 always lain the moral and intellectual welfare 
 of the boys. This was Dr. Coit's obsession, 
 and everything else might well wait. Could 
 there have been a more fortunate obsession? 
 Could anything else have laid so strong a 
 foundation for the great school which he was 
 destined to create? And the years rolled on, 
 and Dr. Coit grew with his work. Beyond 
 all expectation came scholars from all parts 
 of the country, and fresh scholars demanded 
 enlarged accommodation and more instructors, 
 until, at the death of the first Rector, the roll 
 of the school was nearly what it is now. 
 Three hundred and forty boys constitute, 
 according to the ingenious mathematics of 
 Edward Thring, both the limit and the ideal 
 [22] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 number of boys that can be handled in safety 
 by one man; and our present rather homo- 
 geneous accommodations, as they suffice for 
 this, seem happily to invite us to this as a 
 reasonable policy. 
 
 What Dr. Coit contributed to the cause of 
 education in the forty years devoted to St. 
 Paul's School is, not so much a system, as a 
 life; what is implicit in the best secondary 
 education became explicit in him. He was 
 not much given to organization, and like 
 Arnold regarded the processes of education 
 as dynamical rather than mechanical. But 
 he gave himself to the full. He almost never 
 left the place, and with difficulty could be 
 persuaded to preach in a city pulpit. Prob- 
 ably his natural shrinking from publicity had 
 much to do with this. The writer has a 
 vague remembrance of his rushing into print 
 at some lively moment of the Civil War in de- 
 fence of Dr. Dix of Trinity Church, New York, 
 and of his being rewarded with a volley of 
 abuse from the local press, terminating in the 
 words (horribile dictu): "Go it, Coit!" 
 
 [23] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Such a complete absorption in his mission 
 was not without its disabilities. A man loses 
 much from not rubbing up against his fellows; 
 without exchange of views, without the cor- 
 rectives of opposition and rebuke there is a 
 condition of mental isolation from which he 
 must suffer. Of course there are compensa- 
 tions. Some loss of time, the penalty of so- 
 cial intercourse, is escaped, and a habit of 
 decision, without excessive judicial weighing, 
 is fostered. In any event, ultimate responsi- 
 bility cannot be shared. A strong man can- 
 not uncover all his secrets, take counsel of 
 every one; were he to do so, he might 
 win more affection, but he would have 
 less authority; a smug peace would pre- 
 vail, but the institution would suffer. Dr. 
 Coit was executive and cabinet combined, 
 and he patiently bore his own burdens. 
 But burdens they were. Without money 
 or endowment, and without the accessories 
 that to-day make for popularity, he gradu- 
 ally fashioned the great school and the 
 great body of devoted alumni which are 
 
 [24] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 his monument. And in his great effort, he 
 shortened his days. 
 
 If the first Rector had been willing to 
 share with others his responsibilities, if he 
 had made a little more use of modern aids 
 and short-cuts, and had mingled a little more 
 relaxation with his continuous labor, he might 
 have served ten years longer. But, as we 
 look at it now, it is quite conceivable that 
 further service would not have added to the 
 value of his work. Perhaps his contribution 
 was fully made. He was spared the sorrow- 
 ful consciousness of any decline in his powers; 
 no one has ever said that his grip was loosen- 
 ing. "Felix in opportunitate mortis.*' 
 
 The circumstances of Dr. Coit's death have 
 always seemed to the writer a little out of re- 
 lation to his life. One would have expected 
 that a life so full of piety, so marked by 
 strict performance of religious duties and ob- 
 servances, would be followed by a death of 
 calm serenity, featured with all the consola- 
 tion of sacrament and scenes of intimate love. 
 But it was far different. Somehow, the aus- 
 
 [25] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 tere soul, that had made, in the philosophical 
 sense of Socrates, a death of life, did not find 
 a great change in death itself. He simply, 
 like Jacob, "gathered up his feet into the 
 bed" and was gone. A short week, without 
 suffering, without talk, without a message; 
 that was all! The dramatic was wholly lack- 
 ing. How easy it would be, after the manner 
 of the pious mediaeval annalists, to give a 
 different turn to it all! His life lends itself 
 easily to the myth, and one might make the 
 wish father to the thought in constructing a 
 legend, that one had learned from a witness 
 that his end was something like the follow- 
 ing: "A few minutes before he breathed his 
 last, he opened his eyes and said in a clear, 
 firm voice: 'I leave the administration of the 
 place which I have loved so dearly to my 
 brother Joseph and to my faithful helpers, 
 in perfect confidence that they will bring to 
 full fruition the ideals which I have so poorly 
 and imperfectly begun/ ' This was no doubt 
 about the way he felt, but, for some reason, 
 his lips were sealed. Surely a life of such 
 [26] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 self-renunciation, and such blamelessness mer- 
 ited well of Death, and it is a matter of real 
 thankfulness that he escaped all that was 
 sordid and humiliating, and could pass 
 quickly to the other world, as one "folding 
 his tent." 
 
 "I have been dying for years, and now I 
 shall begin to live." 
 
 [27] 
 
II 
 
 ADMINISTRATOR 
 
 A FORMAL history of St. Paul's School 
 can be compiled at any time by any 
 one who will devote himself to working over 
 the material that may be drawn abundantly 
 from five sources. These sources are: "Me- 
 morials of St. Paul's School" by Joseph How- 
 land Coit, D.D.; "An Account of St. Paul's 
 School," by James M. Lamberton; "Mem- 
 ories of a Great School-Master," by James P. 
 Conover; the "Horae Scholasticae " in forty- 
 eight volumes; and finally, the "Rural 
 Record," a diary of daily events, which has 
 been kept with considerable minuteness by 
 one and another recorder from the earliest 
 days of the school. It seems to the writer 
 that such a history, except for its encyclo- 
 pedic value, would answer no popular appeal, 
 and is scarcely called for as yet. The cur- 
 [28] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 rent events of school life are, at best, of pa- 
 rochial interest only, and may be found at 
 need in the several records mentioned above. 
 In an unusual degree the life of Dr. Coit is 
 the history of the school. To few men is it 
 given to lay the foundation and prescribe the 
 regulations of an institution, and then to ad- 
 minister these regulations for the first forty 
 years. It is like the inventor of the aero- 
 plane, first planning his machine, and then, 
 with full knowledge of each screw and rivet, 
 trying it out by frequent and continuous use. 
 In both cases the handling is the vital point. 
 It has already been intimated that Dr. 
 Coit was no innovator; his theory of secular 
 education was not materially different from 
 that which prevailed generally in the New 
 England of his day. He felt that educa- 
 tional training rested on few and simple 
 principles. In his system Diligence and Duty 
 covered pretty much all that was necessary on 
 the boy's part, while, on the teacher's part, 
 sound knowledge, with the will and capacity 
 to impart it, constituted the whole equipment. 
 
 [29] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Fortunately for his temperament the modern 
 passion for analysis and organization had not 
 begun to get in its perfect work. Books on 
 pedagogy probably bored him, as they did 
 both the Arnolds. He was willing to spend 
 himself and all who served under him to the 
 full, provided the ideal that he set before 
 himself was furthered thereby; if the engine 
 was running smoothly, he did not worry 
 much over the expenditure of fuel. The con- 
 sequent unscientific waste was God's affair. 
 What he would have made out of the modern 
 Gospel of Efficiency, we can only surmise. 
 Some one has said that every man is born 
 
 either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. The 
 
 * 
 
 explanation of Dr. Coit lies in the fact that he 
 had a consuming sense of the value of the hu- 
 man soul; every other consideration was sub- 
 ordinate to this. Organization and material 
 improvements at the school were but means. 
 Though systematic in his personal habits, he 
 was perhaps a little too scornful of system in 
 education. His own gifts as an educator 
 were so remarkable that he may easily have 
 [30] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 forgotten the value of system to the less 
 gifted. Good organization makes for econ- 
 omy of moral effort; and moral force, while 
 unquestionably the noblest of endowments, is 
 comparatively rare. It might, therefore, be 
 said, with some truth, that St. Paul's School 
 of the first forty years was a place unscien- 
 tifically organized but splendidly adminis- 
 tered. Buildings were put up when needed, 
 and paid for out of gifts and savings which 
 rightfully belonged either to masters' sal- 
 aries or proper hygienic accessories. No great 
 attention was given to any future develop- 
 ment of the premises as related to these 
 buildings. The new chapel should be beauti- 
 ful as becomes the House of God, but the 
 main thing would always be what went on 
 within it. A new infirmary came in due 
 time, but Dr. Coit's mind was concentrated 
 upon the moral and professional qualifica- 
 tions of the doctor and nurses rather than 
 upon the arrangement of rooms, fireplaces, 
 baths, absence of germ-harboring corners, 
 and all that modern science deems essential. 
 
 [31] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Sickness, he thought, came from God, or, at 
 least, was permitted by God, and he had 
 perhaps more confidence in prayer than in 
 the doctor. It is doubtful whether he 
 thought any one could catch cold in Chapel 
 if he was truly devout. Such a flaming faith 
 as this implies will bring a smile to sophis- 
 ticated lips, but it is scarcely an exaggerated 
 statement, and it explains the man. 
 
 He would not have rejected the implica- 
 tions of, what H. G. Wells calls, "that blessed 
 word Efficiency," if he were allowed to define 
 it. But he would have insisted that the two 
 terms of the problem should be properly ar- 
 ticulated, that there was such a thing as a 
 proper waste of force as well as a proper 
 economy, that things spiritual are not to be 
 handled like things material. For instance, 
 he regarded time as a trust not to be squan- 
 dered, but he would cheerfully surrender his 
 precious hours, hours that other educators 
 husband for study or devote to outside 
 propagandism, to work over individual boys. 
 Always in his Study, he never denied him- 
 
 [32] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 self to any one, boy or master, that needed 
 help or advice. And yet he was a man who 
 loved a book with a rare passion; but duty 
 and love were still stronger passions. No 
 sacrifice on his part was too great, if one 
 boy could be saved. This is certainly not 
 sound Efficiency doctrine. 
 
 He probably would have made merry 
 and he had a dangerous talent for irony 
 over the word Efficiency, and would have 
 poked fun at those who make a fetish of it. 
 He might have asked seriously whether there 
 was not a danger of destroying the very things 
 that make life worth living, when one regards 
 the amount of product as the chief measure 
 of success, and makes the laborer, whether 
 with the hand or head, a mere machine or 
 formula. The quality of the product was to 
 be considered along with the amount, and 
 was of far greater value. Dr. Coit was 
 never ambitious for a large school, but he 
 was extremely anxious that St. Paul's should 
 be a good school; the school grew simply 
 because it was a good school. Specious sue- 
 
 [33] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 cesses, such as prominence in athletics, com- 
 mendation in the Press, social importance, big 
 gatherings and speeches, did not appeal to 
 him. He knew what kind of a foundation 
 it was wise to lay, if the institution was to 
 endure, and his wisdom has been amply justi- 
 fied. The doctrine of Efficiency, in its zeal 
 for practical results, may easily overlook 
 something; in fact, it has no scales in which 
 to weigh things spiritual. Test some great 
 historical events by the law of efficiency, 
 efficiency meaning "effectual agency." Would 
 any one have said beforehand that the Ref- 
 ormation or the French Revolution, with 
 their waste of blood and treasure, with 
 their toll of sorrow and suffering, would be 
 in the line of Efficiency? And yet the prin- 
 ciples of religious and political freedom had 
 to come, and the resultant blessings are worth 
 it all. A plausible case may be made out 
 for the statement that the introduction of 
 Christianity by inculcating the virtues of 
 submission and humility, by its transference 
 of happiness to the world to come, checked 
 [34] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 for 1500 years the development of material 
 civilization for which the Greeks from Aris- 
 totle down had in numberless ways furnished 
 the preliminary studies. And yet no material 
 progress could have compensated the ab- 
 sence of the spiritual and ethical forces 
 that have glorified modern times. The real 
 efficiency had a different goal. Take the 
 Incarnation itself. The consistent worship- 
 per at the shrine of Efficiency must have 
 long since observed the lack of proportion 
 between the sacrifice of the Son of God, the 
 infinite one, and the salvation of the human 
 race. And yet the mystery of it all does 
 not preclude our belief in its necessity and 
 beneficence. The emancipation of the Ameri- 
 can negro was not a measure of economic 
 efficiency, but no one is much troubled over 
 that redoubtable fact. 
 
 The above reflections are made, not with 
 the idea of proving anything, but simply to 
 illustrate the fact that moral ideals are sui 
 generis and carry their own sanctions with 
 them. And so our first Rector, although he 
 
 [35] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 did not leave a school bristling with up-to- 
 date ideas, did something far more potential; 
 he left a subtle moral deposit in the hearts 
 of 3,000 young Americans, which has already 
 made its mark upon our country. 
 
 No attempt will be made here to expound 
 the system of St. Paul's School; there is 
 nothing specific about it; least of all is there 
 anything markedly English. Naturally, the 
 modern scientific spirit, which has laid its 
 hand on every human question, has modified 
 the original scheme. We are no longer under 
 the spell of a passion which led Dr. Coit to 
 write in lead-pencil on the fly-leaf of the first 
 volume of the " Rural Record " St. Augustine's 
 words, "'Jube quod vis, meus Deus, et da quod 
 jubes; ' ' Command what Thou wilt, my God, 
 and grant what Thou commandest.' This is 
 the whole system of St. Paul's." But the 
 quotation is interesting as showing the mo- 
 tives that lay at the base of customs and 
 regulations which made St. Paul's a little 
 different from other schools. Without en- 
 larging upon these details we shall confine 
 
 [36] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 ourselves to pointing out Dr. Coit's attitude 
 towards a few of the prominent questions 
 that confront educators. 
 
 In the matter of athletics he was Athenian 
 rather than Spartan. A rigid subordination 
 of sport to study was obviously an elemen- 
 tary principle with a man who regarded the 
 body as something to be kept under, as some- 
 thing which had to be tolerated as a necessary 
 but temporary clog upon the soul. And yet 
 in practice, he was friendly to all measures 
 that conduced to healthy athleticism among 
 the boys. He had a keen appreciation of the 
 moral value of sport, even though its rough- 
 ness and pagan frankness were somewhat for- 
 eign to his puritan reserve. Personally, he 
 had no athletic gifts or tastes; one can 
 scarcely imagine him in the act of running, 
 or of tossing a ball; no one had ever seen 
 him with his coat off. A modern foot-ball 
 game, with its stadium accessories of roar 
 and blood, would have been placed by him 
 in the category of things appropriate to 
 Dante's Inferno. His presence on our playing- 
 
 [37] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 fields during great contests was an obligation 
 of his office, but his interest was aca- 
 demic; no doubt he was glad when the gong 
 sounded and no one was killed. And yet 
 how kindly and courteously he welcomed the 
 boys at the Rectory at the traditional suppers 
 after the annual boat-races, with tactful 
 recognition of success, and with considerable 
 knowledge of individual prowess. He never 
 failed in such duties. Perhaps nothing was 
 really irksome to him when it came in the 
 line of duty and furthered the end he had at 
 heart. And he was too wise not to see that 
 modern athletic sports have achieved in a 
 wholesome and appealing way for the masses 
 what the entire scheme of Christian ethics had 
 achieved for the elect only, namely, a grow- 
 ing respect for the sanctities of the human 
 body. He would have been the last to re- 
 fuse the co-operation of a moral agency that 
 teaches the humblest newsboy the connection 
 between temperance and the success of his 
 hero of the National League. 
 
 But he was too jealous of the ultimate 
 
 [38] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 religious sanctions of virtue, such as are in- 
 culcated by the Beatitudes, to be willing to 
 shift from his own shoulders the burden of 
 personal responsibility for the lives of his 
 own boys. Anything approaching the current 
 fad of teaching sex-hygiene to the young in 
 classes wholesale was absolutely foreign to his 
 conception of the philosophy of education. 
 He would not have scoffed at mere pruden- 
 tial chastity, but he was convinced that it 
 presented no sure defence against the argu- 
 ments of the flesh, if the religious motive was 
 absent. He had a very keen scent for the 
 presence of what was low and vile in the 
 mind of a boy, and he never shrank from 
 the delicate duty of personal guidance and in- 
 struction. In fact, his own aggressive purity 
 was contagious. But, both in his sermons 
 and in his wonderful Thursday night talks, his 
 instinct led him, if he had occasion to touch 
 upon this delicate subject, to dwell rather 
 upon the beauty and joy of the clean life, 
 and thus to aim at accomplishing by indirec- 
 tion what other educators of less imagination 
 
 [39] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 try to accomplish by the aid of a physician. 
 He knew that a sense of right and wrong is 
 implanted in every human being, that the 
 youngest child is under no real illusions 
 about fundamentals; and he was willing to 
 risk a few failures, under the generous aspira- 
 tion that the great majority might enjoy a 
 comparatively innocent adolescence and be 
 spared the sorrowful sense that the whole 
 world is hopelessly prone to sin. He felt 
 that the Christian religion, backed by home 
 influences and the manly compulsions of 
 physical sports, is all that is necessary for 
 the proper training of the young. And he 
 would not admit that the change from school 
 to college involved any fresh point of view or 
 any new rules. Anywhere and everywhere, 
 it was the human soul that was at stake, and, 
 although the boy should be warned against 
 the peculiar temptations of college life, Dr. 
 Coit always prescribed to him, as the only 
 unfailing guarantee of winning out, the strict 
 observance of his religious duties, the habit 
 of never intermitting prayer, Bible-reading, 
 [40] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 and one service, at least, in Church on Sun- 
 days. Doubtless, his advice in numberless 
 instances was not followed, but many who 
 read this will inwardly confess that even the 
 advice was bracing. The writer remembers 
 the case of an old boy, over fifty years of age, 
 who asseverated to him that he had never 
 failed to read a few verses of the Bible at 
 night, even under the most unfavorable cir- 
 cumstances, and once when he was so mud- 
 dled with alcohol that he scarcely knew what 
 he was doing; and he did not himself regard 
 this performance as hypocrisy, but rather as 
 prompted by an intuition akin to that which 
 impels a drowning man to grasp at anything 
 that offers. It is needless to add that many 
 an alumnus, who conspicuously failed to live 
 up to these ideals, was deterred from visiting 
 his old school out of sheer unwillingness to 
 face the Doctor's scrutinizing eye. 
 
 The school-historian of twenty-five years 
 hence will probably characterize the present 
 moment as a period of transition, when St. 
 Paul's was gradually passing from paternal 
 
 [41] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 to institutional government. He will recog- 
 nize that a sufficient number of the older 
 masters, " wedded to their idols, " remained in 
 their places long enough to obstruct a too 
 rapid change of methods. He will then pro- 
 ceed to comment upon the eternal strife 
 between the conservative and the radical 
 temper, and the steady and sober gain to civ- 
 ilization resulting from their painful collisions. 
 But he will be complacent over the changed 
 conditions, and will fortify his contention by 
 remarking that under no circumstances can 
 Progress stay her hand, that the past must 
 give place to the present; and, if he is dis- 
 posed to illustrate, he will take the city of 
 Rome to task for clinging to her ruins, alleg- 
 ing that hygiene demands the removal of 
 rubbish. He will aver that no sane public 
 opinion can tolerate the retention of medieval 
 fever-ridden districts in order that a few tour- 
 ists may dream morbidly over rotting beauty. 
 Or, in accepting meekly the final disappear- 
 ance of the classic tongues from our school 
 curriculum, he will applaud the words of 
 [42] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Emile Faguet a propos of the neglect of 
 the French vernacular: "Vous n'allez pas 
 interrompre le cours de la civilization pour 
 ramener les hommes a Vttude de la langue 
 frangaise." Finally, he will note the survival 
 of a number of forms and usages, some quite 
 stripped of meaning, that alone mark the 
 fiery trail of the first Rector. 
 
 But while we are still of the present mo- 
 ment, while we are part of the process of 
 transformation from a one-man school to an 
 institution, and are still partially under the 
 spell of the past, let us fix certain points of 
 school history. 
 
 The early days of St. Paul's could scarcely 
 be other than paternal in administration. 
 Dr. Coit had a free field; St. Paul's was all 
 aim and no means. And for better or worse, 
 the dominating character of Dr. Coit, with 
 its prevailing note of conviction and im- 
 peccability, was to have the fashioning of 
 it. This autocratic quality in the person- 
 ality of Dr. Coit, with all that it implies, has 
 always been a thorny question in the minds 
 
 [43] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 of those who otherwise would rank him among 
 the saints. It is obvious that no analysis, no 
 generous interpretation, can ever make the 
 exhibitions of imperious will anything but 
 unlovely spectacles; such exhibitions may 
 even be wholesome, but they are not strictly 
 graces of character. Most people are offended 
 by them. And yet there are two kinds of 
 will, the will of a Napoleon and the will of a 
 St. Francis, the will of self and of ambition, 
 and the will that has its roots in moral con- 
 viction. They usually deal with different 
 questions, and there is little doubt as to 
 which is the stronger. Dr. Coit was like a 
 wall, if a principle was involved; and natu- 
 rally parents and masters, not to mention 
 boys, were occasionally wounded, and some- 
 times alienated. But there was nothing stud- 
 ied or conscious in the dominating manner of 
 Dr. Coit, nor did it appear in petty ways or 
 devious methods. Consequently it was over- 
 looked or forgiven for the sake of the large 
 and generous qualities that lay behind. Had 
 his autocratic will extended to little tyrannies 
 [44] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 he never would have held the body of strong 
 men that he gradually gathered about him. 
 Moreover, a certain attitude of assured con- 
 viction is one thing in the conduct of the 
 unequipped and inexperienced, and quite 
 another in that of him who has been ripened 
 by time and training; Dr. Coit was re- 
 markably sure in his judgments and intui- 
 tions. His decisions were warped neither by 
 vanity nor by ambition in the ordinary sense, 
 and his unselfish disinterestedness is suffi- 
 ciently attested by the fact that, after forty 
 years' control of the school finances, he had 
 never been able to reconcile it with his con- 
 science to lay by a dollar out of the School's 
 income. He died without property of any 
 sort. This will not be regarded by the world 
 as the mark of prudence; but it was charac- 
 teristic of the man absorbed in his mission, 
 part mystic, part monk and part stoic. And 
 this temperamental indifference to worldly 
 success and to the satisfactions that most 
 men prize may have unconsciously fed a 
 sense of superiority over men less eman- 
 
 [45] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 cipated from the body than^he. It is in- 
 evitable that one who had no taste for the 
 conventional dissipations of life, who had 
 never been inside a theatre, who could hardly, 
 when dying, be induced to take a spoonful 
 of stimulant, who never seemed to require 
 the most innocent relaxation of body, and 
 whose daily life had been, to the best of our 
 knowledge, conformable to these austere 
 standards, it is inevitable that such a one 
 should be conscious of a plane of living 
 somewhat higher than that of the average 
 man. If this is self-righteousness, it is cer- 
 tainly venial. Dr. Coit once remarked to 
 the writer that no man over twenty-five was 
 justified in eating or drinking anything that 
 might disagree with him. He also said that 
 any Christian man ought to be able to read 
 a poem like "Venus and Adonis" without an 
 emotional ripple. The notable thing about 
 this last remark is that he should have 
 found Shakespeare's famous poem a classic 
 instance of salaciousness. 
 
 It is probable, therefore, that this habitual 
 
 [46] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 appeal to so lofty a standard, a standard 
 which he by no means exacted of his boys, 
 gave him an air of superiority, which perhaps 
 only veiled the reserved and humble follower 
 of Jesus Christ. And in quitting this subject, 
 it may be added that really valid and un- 
 sophisticated characters were not very much 
 disturbed by his manner; perhaps at bottom it 
 was only " amour propre " that suffered. It is an 
 open question whether "amour propre" is not 
 the cause of most of the quarrels and mis- 
 understandings that have marked the world's 
 history. 
 
 Dr. Coit's chief weapon in dealing with 
 boys was persuasion. Rules and penalties 
 were necessary, but, if possible, were to be 
 anticipated. Dr. Arnold had said that in 
 ruling a great school the "first thing is 
 * words/ the second thing is * words/ and 
 the third thing is * words/' Without doubt, 
 back of the "words" there was implied 
 punishment, and, if necessary, expulsion. 
 
 The historic Thursday Evening Talks, 
 sometimes called Dr. Coit's Lectures, devel- 
 
 [47] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 oped gradually out of his need of getting in 
 touch with the boys on all burning topics 
 of school life. He had a singular power of 
 winning them over to his own point of 
 view, and, in the process, he made use of all 
 his gifts of speech, running the gamut from 
 the most serious note down to the ironical 
 and humorous. The merely facetious found 
 no place in his rhetoric. The writer never 
 heard him make a pun, though he could 
 enjoy one even when with mock gravity he 
 reproved the perpetrator. Of real humor he 
 had full store, and his sense of the incon- 
 gruous saved him from many a blunder that 
 dogs the fate of the best of men. This sense 
 of humor, combined with the taste which was 
 the reward of his cultural studies in the 
 Humanities, was a sure bulwark against the 
 crudities of educational theories. He in- 
 stinctively shrank from a new panacea or 
 short-cut; hard work in his opinion could 
 alone make the scholar or the saint. And 
 diligent work was a duty, not to be coaxed 
 by too many rewards. Prizes were few, and 
 [48] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 were, therefore, greatly desiderated. The 
 school medal, in his day, was a precious 
 possession; and events have proved that 
 few mistakes were made in the bestowal of 
 it. Perhaps it may be thought wise some 
 day to abandon this prize, which causes 
 heart-burnings and which, as virtually de- 
 nominating the finest boy in VI Form, can- 
 not logically be given to any boy who works 
 for it and deems himself worthy of it. And 
 yet the long line of worthy holders of the 
 medal would seem to belie any such mis- 
 givings, and it would probably be a mistake 
 to interrupt a succession that connotes so 
 noble an ideal. 
 
 The attitude of the first Rector towards 
 the Sixth Form was certainly not that of a 
 Head Master of Eton or Rugby. Perhaps 
 it was not a wise attitude, but he had no 
 leaning towards government by Prefects. 
 Worthy and responsible members of the 
 Sixth Form he always took into his confi- 
 dence and used as ancillary forces in the 
 school republic. But he was suspicious of 
 
 [49] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 the immaturity of youth under twenty, and 
 he felt that his younger pupils were confided 
 to his care with the implicit understanding 
 that they were to be guided and influenced 
 by masters who should be men of proved 
 character and experience. Moreover, we 
 fancy that he distrusted anything mediate in 
 his own influence; he desired to have nothing 
 between himself and the boys. Finally, he 
 was not sure that the position of prefect was 
 quite wholesome. Was it not possible that, 
 although the system saved labor for masters, 
 and promoted an exterior order, it was a 
 strain on character and had a tendency to 
 make prigs? It certainly is not altogether 
 American. The Sixth Form in his day never 
 had much organization, and, being dis- 
 tributed in various houses, did not bulk very 
 large in the eyes of the rest of the school. 
 Unquestionably, there is room for a very 
 different point of view here, and we are 
 inclined to suspect that Dr. Coit could not 
 tolerate any prominence that militated in 
 the least against his own supremacy. "In 
 [50] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 statu pupillari" and "In loco parentis" were 
 living phrases with him, and he was not dis- 
 posed to regard even his oldest boys as any- 
 thing but boys. And for this reason he was 
 jealous of any encroachment of the college 
 spirit upon the simple habitudes of the school 
 life. Exchange of civilities and interscho- 
 lastic sports were not to be thought of. 
 Hence our wholesome system of home ath- 
 letics, with the minimum of perfervid excite- 
 ment and the maximum of real enjoyment, 
 and one might in fairness add, with the loss 
 of perfect attainment which such isolation 
 would entail. There was to be no preferred 
 college; no great school could properly be a 
 feeder for any one institution. Not that he 
 had no preference nor ever showed it. He 
 was in reality deeply prejudiced, and, not- 
 withstanding his imposed prudence, he occa- 
 sionally allowed criticisms to escape him 
 that were resented in quarters that need not 
 be named. As a Trustee of Trinity College 
 he would naturally have been pleased to see 
 his boys enter that excellent home of learn- 
 
 [51] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 ing; but he used no undue influence, realiz- 
 ing that parents had the decision, and that 
 boys usually follow their fathers' footsteps 
 in the path of knowledge. 
 
 Of the use of influence, which is the teach- 
 er's prerogative and business, Dr. Coit was 
 extremely conscientious. He knew that boys 
 are born hero-worshippers and too readily 
 catch the tone of their environment. With 
 their limitations in view he treated them with 
 great respect. "Maxima debetur puero rever- 
 ential He felt the responsibility of the right 
 or wrong word at the critical moment. And 
 so he uttered words of encouragement as 
 often as those of rebuke. It was rather char- 
 acteristic of him to use both at the same 
 time. Could not many an alumnus conjure 
 up in memory a specific scene to illustrate 
 this generalization how, after being sum- 
 moned to the Doctor's study, how, after 
 being reduced to pulp and rendered thor- 
 oughly contrite, he was sent off by a few 
 words of affectionate appreciation in a glow 
 of determination to do better? 
 
 [52] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 Indeed, Dr. Coit held it for a principle 
 never to let a boy, if it could be helped, leave 
 his presence in a rebellious spirit, somewhat 
 as Jacob, wrestling with the Angel, would not 
 let go his hold until the Angel had blessed 
 him. A recent writer in the Century Maga- 
 zine has said that "It is perhaps the final 
 test of a gentleman, his attitude toward 
 children." Without pressing too far this 
 aphorism, we may remark that there is cer- 
 tainly a "juste milieu" between the severe 
 neglect or intolerable condescension shown by 
 our forefathers towards the young and the 
 affected air of equality that prevails to-day, 
 and that his attitude will always mark the 
 manner of the instructed adult. A boy does 
 not even desire to be treated like an equal, 
 but he does covet serious attention, and, in 
 most cases, responds quickly to sympathetic 
 encouragement. He likes to feel that his 
 efforts are noticed. Dr. Coit never seemed 
 to lose an opportunity of commending dis- 
 creetly a boy who was showing progress in 
 work or conduct, and more than frequently 
 
 [53] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 marked his approbation, and sometimes his 
 disapprobation, by the gift of some wisely 
 selected book. This was one of his uncon- 
 sciously happy devices, and we doubt not 
 that there are scores of these books at the 
 present moment resting on the shelves of 
 their grateful possessors. If present-day 
 school-masters are not aware of the stimulus 
 exerted by such practical expressions of ap- 
 proval and regard, they had better begin the 
 experience. The ''largesse 99 is, indeed, a legiti- 
 mate instrument in education, a blessing to 
 him that gives as well as to him that takes. 
 To the boy it seems quite natural that a per- 
 son who has such plenary powers in all vital 
 matters should be also the dispenser of good 
 things; and in his generous imputation of all 
 virtues to his master, he finds it easy to im- 
 pute riches to him also. 
 
 And this temperamental interest on the 
 part of Dr. Coit in the welfare of the boys 
 was scarcely more noticeable than his attach- 
 ment to the masters. They were his friends, 
 and once landed at St. Paul's School, and 
 
 [54] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 squarely identified with it, unless they had 
 failed to make good, there was no thought of 
 a separation; they were part of the work. 
 It is true that he held them up to a high 
 standard, but there was no nagging, and they 
 had full chance to succeed or fail. The 
 school-master's lot is not always a happy one, 
 and his art is not always easy to learn. 
 Sometimes in a certain bitterness of soul, 
 when smarting from the rebuffs with which 
 vulgar and robust natures, whether in boys 
 or men, repay gentle handling, he is tempted 
 to think that one cannot be at once a suc- 
 cessful school-master and a gentleman. But, 
 fortunately, such moods are evanescent, and 
 to the truly discerning school-master there 
 can be no manner of doubt as to the value 
 of breeding as an asset in the equipment of 
 the perfect educator. Dr. Coit may be said 
 to have settled the question. 
 
 "Nature never rhymes her children," and 
 we are not likely to duplicate him in this 
 country nor an Arnold in England; such men 
 are the product of their epochs and meet 
 
 [55] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 certain needs. A weak copyist would be 
 fatal. Dr. Coit would be a dangerous man 
 to imitate. What was real would be shoddy 
 in a less genuine person; his gentleness would 
 be effeminacy; his dignity, pomposity; his 
 piety, hypocrisy; his autocracy, an effective 
 working policy; his spiritual elevation, a pre- 
 tence; his moral domination, a tyranny; his 
 graciousness, patronizing condescension; his 
 delicate probing of the conscience, an abuse 
 of the confessional; his playful irony, a calcu- 
 lated weapon. If the first Rector could be 
 translated in such terms, the work wrought 
 by him would have long since proved a 
 Frankenstein, taking vengeance on his cre- 
 ator and then disappearing like all unrealities. 
 
 And how have his boys fared in the busi- 
 ness of life? This is a question that can- 
 not be answered with precision, but a glance 
 at the quality of the men that find them- 
 selves united at our large Alumni gatherings 
 should reassure the sceptics. All professions 
 and callings are represented, and the failures 
 are conspicuously few. Sixty clergymen and 
 
 [56] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 seven bishops testify to the subtle though 
 never compelling influence of the religious 
 school of the first forty years. A notable 
 body of lawyers, physicians, novelists, his- 
 torians, and publicists, illustrate the intel- 
 lectual impulse. Hosts of others bear in 
 their sober lives the stamp of their training 
 under Dr. Coit. As far as we are aware, 
 none of his boys have been in prison or in 
 an asylum; this may sound like a strange 
 statement, but it has a meaning in these 
 days of lawlessness and neurasthenia. He 
 did not leave a perfectly organized institu- 
 tion, but he left it free from debt, and with 
 a foundation, the stronger for being purely 
 moral, on which his successors could build 
 as time and circumstance should demand. 
 Froude says, on the last page of his History 
 of England: "The worst legacy which princes 
 or statesmen could bequeath to their country 
 would be the resolution of all its perplexities, 
 the establishment once and forever of a fin- 
 ished system, which would neither require nor 
 tolerate improvement." 
 
 [57] 
 
Ill 
 
 TEACHER 
 
 DR. ARNOLD, in a letter to an old boy, 
 has said: "I call by the name of wis- 
 dom, knowledge rich and varied, digested and 
 combined, and pervaded through and through 
 by the light of the spirit of God." Nothing 
 better could describe Dr. Coit's ideal. It is 
 the wisdom of the ages that he revered, not 
 the facts from which it is garnered nor any 
 particular method of acquisition. He had no 
 especial predilection for a book as such; no 
 particular edition, no choice binding aroused 
 any great enthusiasm. Life was too short 
 and too serious for such irrelevancies. Hall 
 Harrison handled a book as a young father 
 handles his first baby; a book was a book 
 and therefore precious. The only book that 
 Dr. Coit treated with idolatry was the Bible; 
 it had its place apart, and no other book was 
 suffered to rest on top of it. Many bibles 
 [58] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 there were and much theology in his per- 
 sonal library, which was large and constantly 
 augmented regardless of expense, and the 
 secular side was not neglected. Doubtless 
 the range in literature was conditioned some- 
 what by the demands of his profession, for 
 he made great use of his reading, in class 
 and out of it. Those of us who had the 
 privilege of reading the Greek and Latin 
 classics under him owe him more than we 
 are wont to admit for the first dawn of real 
 interest in general literature. The phrase, 
 "inspiring teacher/' has become a familiar 
 common-place, but it can very properly be 
 applied to Dr. Coit. Not satisfied with 
 securing an exact knowledge of text, gram- 
 mar and allusions, he freshened the time- 
 worn subject matter by constant reference 
 and illustration both in the classic tongues 
 and in the vernacular. There are not many 
 of the Alumni who can revert to the meridian 
 charm of the first Rector's teaching and cor- 
 roborate the writer's impressions; yet there 
 are some who may recall, as if it were their 
 
 [59] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 first initiation into the magic of words, the 
 quotations that follow. The writer, in his 
 Upper Sixth Form year, read the Eclogues, 
 Georgics and every word of Horace with Dr. 
 Coit. There were but two in the class, and, 
 alas! one, Henry Skelton Carter, is now gone. 
 Under such informal conditions, the teacher 
 had a free hand. How well the writer re- 
 members the various tomes at that date 
 regarded with awe that were brought down 
 from their shelves in the Doctor's Study, and 
 pillaged of their beauties for our inspiration. 
 The music of these lines, even after forty 
 years, still echoes in the mind. 
 From Shelley : 
 
 "Arethusa arose 
 From her couch of snows 
 In the Acroceraunian mountains; 
 From cloud and from crag 
 With many a jag, 
 Shepherding her bright fountains." 
 
 From Pope: 
 
 "Yet e'en in death Eurydice he sung, 
 Eurydice still trembled on his tongue; 
 Eurydice the woods, 
 Eurydice the floods, 
 Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung." 
 
 [60] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 From Milton: 
 
 "Alas! what boots it with incessant care 
 To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, 
 And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? 
 Were it not better done as others use, 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade 
 Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? " 
 
 Milton was after his own heart, though he 
 probably placed Dante higher as a poet. His 
 theological bias and his breadth of reading 
 made him tolerant of the concrete mysteries 
 of Dante, but his Puritan reserve found more 
 congenial food in the restrained tropes of Milton. 
 He would read aloud with manifest joy such 
 passages as the following, and with full classic 
 feeling for the sorcery of the proper names. 
 
 "As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
 Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds 
 Close sailing from Bengala, or the iles 
 Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring 
 Then- spicy drugs; they on the trading flood 
 Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape 
 Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed 
 Far off the flying Fiend." 
 
 or from Paradise Regained: 
 
 "See there the olive grove of Academe, 
 Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird 
 Trills her thick- warbl'd notes the summer long; 
 
 [61] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound 
 Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites 
 To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls 
 His whispering stream." 
 
 From Wordsworth: 
 
 " In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched 
 On the soft grass through hah* a summer's day, 
 With music lulled his indolent repose: 
 And, in some fit of weariness, if he, 
 When his own breast was silent, chanced to hear 
 A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds 
 Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, 
 Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, 
 A beardless Youth, who touched a golden lute, 
 And filled the illumined groves with ravishment. 
 The nightly hunter, lif ting a bright eye 
 Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart 
 Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed 
 That timely light, to share his joyous sport: 
 
 "And hence a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs 
 Across the lawn and through the darksome grove, 
 Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes 
 By echo multiplied from rock or cave, 
 Swept in the storm of chase." 
 
 Or else some fragments that linger in the 
 memory, and are yet too trifling to claim an 
 author: 
 
 " Call me Daph ^e, call me Doris, 
 Call me Lalage or Chloris, 
 Only, only call me thine." 
 
 "And still 't is Jupiter who brings whate'er is great, 
 And Venus who brings every thing that's fair." 
 
 [62] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 The atmosphere of these quotations is not 
 scientific, but it had its value, and bred 
 scholars. Yet, it must not be inferred that 
 such was the main staple of Dr. Coit's 
 method in teaching the classics. He was 
 most exacting in regard to the mastery of 
 every linguistic detail in the book, whether 
 prose or verse, that was being studied. 
 Every day's lesson was to be learned, and 
 no boy ventured to come to his class unpre- 
 pared, or half-prepared. Dr. Coit insisted 
 on hard work as the only basis of sound 
 learning; the responsibility rested on the 
 boy, and good teaching could do little more 
 than guide and inspire. He had no leaning 
 toward the analytic methods which are much 
 in vogue to-day, and preferred to store boys' 
 minds with many fine passages in literature 
 rather than to dissect a few of them, realiz- 
 ing that memory is the precious possession 
 of youth and that excessive analysis is a 
 bore. He knew that a boy craves certitude, 
 and that his attention flags if balanced 
 alternatives are presented to him in place of 
 
 [63] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 categorical statements. Hence he undoubt- 
 edly made some unqualified assertions in 
 literary matters which our later reading has 
 not quite confirmed, but for which we are 
 none the worse off. He did not wish his 
 opinions challenged, and we remember very 
 vividly the lofty way in which he would 
 wave off any boy who ventured to cite a 
 dictionary as counter-authority to his own 
 translation or pronunciation. He was by no 
 means impeccable in his English; this is no 
 unusual thing with fine scholars, and comes 
 often from early home associations. No one 
 could explain his habitual use of the collo- 
 quialism, "Was you there?", but no one 
 cared to correct him. Possibly he was aware 
 that this was fair usage in the later Eigh- 
 teenth Century, but he would not have 
 worried over the necessity or propriety of 
 any defence; his speech no more than his 
 act was a debatable question. It may be 
 said that his language in general was slightly 
 Euphuistic, though the habit was uncon- 
 scious and temperamental. When he broke 
 [64] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 his leg, it was not pain but "anguish" that 
 he suffered. Things were "reassuring," not 
 "encouraging"; other things were "all very 
 poor," when the ordinary person would have 
 found more expressive language. "Servants" 
 were "domestics." Such a tendency in the 
 use of speech as we are noting will be attrib- 
 uted by some people to the inevitable emer- 
 gence of the pedagogic manner, to the 
 difficulty of descending from the pedestal 
 where circumstances placed him. However, 
 it did not appear at all in any public utter- 
 ances, such as his sermons, in the prepara- 
 tion of which, it may be added, he had a 
 little of the Port Royal notion that excessive 
 conscious elaboration was incompatible with 
 the collaboration of God. 
 
 His vocabulary was rich, and the apt word 
 rarely failed him. This came naturally to one 
 who dwelt habitually in the company of the 
 great writers of the past, and to whom 
 translation was a daily habitude. The Eng- 
 lish Bible, his Greek Testament, and the 
 classic poets, these were his preferred 
 
 [65] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 friends. And it was these that he held up 
 to his boys as models. Notable passages 
 were to be committed to memory, which 
 would serve, not only as models, like the 
 masterpieces of the fine arts and industrial 
 arts, for authority and imitation, but still 
 more as fountains of emotional power. He 
 laid great stress in general on the utility of 
 memorizing famous words; they were the 
 abiding possession of a life-time. And then 
 he was a fine translator, giving to the English 
 rendering of Homer and Virgil a swing, with 
 a diction at once literal and equivalent, that 
 readily invited the ambitious to imitation; 
 we used to think the phrases fell from his 
 lips into iambic pentameters fit for the 
 printer. The classics were so much a part 
 of his intellectual baggage, and were so real 
 to him, that he made us share in his enthu- 
 siasm. And yet the reality was that of the 
 idealist. He could be pleased that Third 
 Formers under the supervision of John T. 
 Wheeler should set themselves to construct- 
 ing a model of Caesar's bridge, with minute 
 [66] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 attention to the Latin text, but the veritable 
 structure had no meaning for him as a 
 mechanical product of the first century be- 
 fore Christ; it was interesting because asso- 
 ciated with the name of the celebrated 
 Roman. As for making the bridge himself, 
 it is doubtful whether he could have pru- 
 dently essayed to drive a nail. Then, again, 
 he would gravely accept such a statement as 
 that Hannibal used vinegar to melt the rocks 
 lying in his way over the passes of the Alps; 
 for the word, was it not "acetum," and was 
 not "acetum" a Latin word, and^was not the 
 assertion found in Livy? That was enough 
 to quiet any latent scepticism. 
 
 Indeed, his entire knowledge of the past 
 was deeply colored by his imagination. His 
 acquaintance with the city of Rome was inti- 
 mate and accurate, but it was the Rome of 
 Long's Classical Atlas. In 1868, he had an 
 opportunity of realizing his dreams, and veri- 
 fying his impressions, but he spent only ten 
 days in the imperial city, and, as far as one 
 can remember, he never had much to say 
 
 [67] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 about the experience. Probably, he was dis- 
 appointed; it was not what it was reputed to 
 be. Certainly, he would have been shy of 
 the Papacy, and Medievalism uncovered would 
 have been sordid enough. And as to the 
 Rome of the Caesars and the Roman poets, 
 the pages of whose works he had so lovingly 
 fingered, could he have met Horace on the 
 Via Sacra, we are sure that he would have 
 snubbed him as a "soulless Epicurean." 
 
 So also with the Holy Land, which perhaps 
 fortunately he did not visit. He was never 
 tired of expatiating on the peaceful reaches 
 of the hills of Galilee, on the beauty of the 
 lake of Gennesaret, on Bethlehem and on 
 Olivet; but these places were the magic 
 names of his New Testament. The barren 
 wastes of Judaea and the dirty oriental 
 towns might have disquieted [him unspeak- 
 ably. He would have harked back to his 
 Bible and have been pained at the difficulty 
 of articulating his visions with the dry 
 realities. 
 
 As might be expected, Dr. Coit was no 
 
 [68] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 more fond of specific methods in his teaching 
 than in his administration; in his view, the 
 way to master a subject was to master it. 
 If the subject were Latin, the grammar was 
 to be drilled into the boy with store of rules 
 committed to memory, and then the approved 
 writers were to be read in large volume and 
 in no choppy manner. Examinations were 
 useful, and considerable emphasis was laid on 
 the oral as well as the written. He appre- 
 ciated the moral value of an exercise that 
 trained a boy to stand up and give "a reason 
 for the faith that is in him with meekness 
 and fear." Marks also were necessary, but 
 they did not necessarily indicate a boy's com- 
 plete achievement. The doctrine of the fi- 
 nality of percentages did not impress him 
 greatly; nor was he eager to make such 
 statistics the measure of a master's success. 
 In his day a master might be successful with- 
 out even knowing it. Much work and read- 
 ing was done outside the curriculum, and 
 enthusiasts were known to steal from the 
 jealous domain of sleep a few precious hours 
 
 [69] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 and in company with the equally zealous 
 master, to 
 
 "let their lamps, at midnight hour, 
 Be seen in some high lonely tower." 
 
 The Upper School of the present day is not 
 often the scene of any scandals of this kind, 
 for the esteemed principles of hygienics and 
 athletics equally forbid such a strain on 
 efficiency. But thirty years ago, less atten- 
 tion was paid to the body, and a boy might 
 spend his spare time in the Library without 
 having his temperature taken; he might even 
 have a literary hobby without being a 
 "freak"; perhaps know his daily lesson 
 without being regarded as a "shark." A 
 little unclassified information was not thought 
 harmful. On the contrary, it was esteemed 
 an asset. Voltaire has a pregnant phrase: 
 "Le superflu 9 chose tres necessaire." May we 
 not, in the last analysis, regard the fine flavor 
 of Dr. Coit's training and influence as the bit 
 of superfluity which has created a type of 
 its own, and which, in so doing, has added a 
 valuable note to the educational processes 
 [70] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 that turn out our happy and wholesome body 
 of American youth? 
 
 St. Paul's School, at no period of its his- 
 tory, could measure up, perhaps, to Carlyle's 
 description of Rugby in Arnold's time as the 
 "Temple of industrious peace." But indus- 
 try was, certainly, one of the marks of the 
 place during its early decades, and Dr. Coit's 
 boys, even if all were not scholars, had a 
 serious attitude towards culture. Judged by 
 pragmatic standards, his dream of "pouring 
 wisdom into the minds of boys who are in- 
 capable of receiving it" has not wholly failed. 
 After fifty years, and especially among his 
 pupils of fifty years of age and over, the mark 
 of the old-fashioned scholarship is notably 
 conspicuous. It would be glory enough to 
 have set in motion half-a-dozen men of the 
 calibre of Marion Crawford, Owen Wister 
 and William Roscoe Thayer, the brilliant 
 author of "Cavour"; but these names do 
 not exhaust the list. Nor would any list, 
 however inclusive, take account of the still 
 larger number of Alumni who, whether in 
 
 [71] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 business or in the professions, not a few 
 being teachers, owe their love of things intel- 
 lectual and spiritual to fruitful days spent at 
 the cloistered school among the hills of New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 Perhaps this would be the proper place in 
 an appreciation of Pauline contributions to 
 education to extend a little the range of 
 credit and to associate four or five other 
 names with that of the subject of this study. 
 For, although it is just to credit Dr. Coit 
 with the major streams of influence, even in 
 intellectual matters, it would not be true to 
 say that he had a monopoly of the teaching 
 function. It has always seemed to the 
 writer that the arrival, in 1865, as masters 
 at the school, of Joseph Rowland Coit and 
 Hall Harrison, marked an epoch. They 
 brought a breadth of culture and a training 
 somewhat different from that which ob- 
 tained at the time, and their presence was 
 at once felt. Mathematics and Letters 
 for it was in general literature rather than 
 in Greek that Mr. Harrison made his contri- 
 
 [72] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 bution immediately received an impulse. 
 Dr. Joseph Coit was a rare teacher of mathe- 
 matics, of great competence and of ample 
 knowledge. Two years in the laboratories 
 of Paris had qualified him in chemistry and 
 physics also, though there was little room at 
 the St. Paul's of 1865 for expansion in the 
 direction of the physical sciences. But it 
 stood for something to have among the mas- 
 ters a man who was abreast of the rising 
 questions of the day in the scientific world, 
 and the boys appreciated the fact then as, 
 if alive, they appreciate it to-day. This is 
 not the place to dwell at length upon the 
 role that Dr. Joseph Coit played in thie his- 
 tory of St. Paul's School during his long 
 service; suffice it to say that in very many 
 ways he was the peer of the first Rector, 
 but lacked perhaps the touch of genius which 
 makes a man great, and without which no one 
 ever is great. 
 
 Here, also, we should record the long and 
 devoted service of Dr. J. Milnor Coit, the 
 younger brother of the first two rectors. A 
 
 [73] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 layman and man of business, he was drawn 
 rather accidentally, like many others, into 
 the activities of St. Paul's and for thirty 
 years occupied a very prominent place in 
 her councils. Though he will be remembered 
 chiefly for his devotion to the Infirmary and 
 for his unfailing kindness to the sick and con- 
 valescent, yet his contribution to the ex- 
 panding interests of the school was notable 
 and varied. The Scientific side of our cur- 
 riculum was greatly developed by his zeal, 
 and the present laboratory with its admirable 
 equipment is largely his work. In general, 
 his great energy, freely expended in every 
 emergency, was always an element of strength 
 to the place, and as Vice-Rector and Acting 
 Rector at a critical period in the history of 
 St. Paul's, he measured up to his task in a 
 manner that will not be forgotten. 
 
 Mr. Augustus Muhlenberg Swift has al- 
 ready been mentioned as one of the early 
 masters who made a distinct contribution to 
 the more imaginative and esthetic side of the 
 St. Paul's tradition. And, to include one fur- 
 
 [74] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 ther name, as representing a still existing 
 influence, we are sure we have the full appro- 
 bation of the Alumni, when we say that the 
 school owes a debt to Mr. Charles Sigourney 
 Knox, who during forty-two years has stood 
 for the highest standard of attainment, and 
 the pressure of whose exact scholarship has 
 been bracing to all who have come into 
 relations with him. But we must resist the 
 temptation to wander from our subject and 
 enlarge upon several other men who have 
 been the spiritual benefactors of St. Paul's. 
 
 It is a happy thing when the mature judg- 
 ment of later years confirms the generous 
 enthusiasms of youth. A man is often for- 
 tunate if he can wholly endorse his pro- 
 nouncements of the preceding lustrum. But 
 in the case of Dr. Coit the years have brought 
 no serious disillusion, and the writer not only 
 has no inclination to modify his warm eulo- 
 gies pronounced at the time of Dr. Coit's 
 death, but in general has no apologies to 
 make for still being only a slightly chastened 
 "laudator temporis acti." The good old times 
 
 [75] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 still seem good. Doubtless, there is, in his 
 mental picture, a trace of the glamour that 
 time is fond of lending to everything in the 
 past. Perhaps, too, although the central 
 figure remains about the same, the setting 
 has changed a little. A careful study of the 
 catalogues of early days does not quite con- 
 firm his impressions as to the quality of the 
 boy found at the school in those days. The 
 material can hardly be called better than 
 that of to-day; there was much that was 
 commonplace. On the whole, the general 
 level both of intelligence and character is 
 probably higher at the present time. The 
 cause is not altogether easy to state, but the 
 increase in wealth and the consequent free- 
 dom from the grinding cares of life has un- 
 doubtedly bred a race somewhat gentler and 
 more polished, in a superficial sense, than 
 that which existed in the times of the Civil 
 War. Fathers have more time to give to 
 their boys, and the intimacy thus engendered 
 would seem to be wholly good. Finally, the 
 reactions of school and college life cannot 
 [76] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 but tend to the uplift of the general intelli- 
 gence. Before the war a college education 
 was by no means the accepted thing that it 
 is now; fine boarding-schools were scarcely 
 to be found, and the poor ones were a men- 
 ace. Now, good secondary schools are nu- 
 merous, and they seem to challenge one 
 another in generous rivalry for the best 
 things in mind, manners and morals. 
 
 What changes are in store for St. Paul's 
 School in the matter of curriculum cannot be 
 foreseen. She can hardly fail to share meas- 
 urably in the movement that would substi- 
 tute the so-called practical studies for the 
 Humanities. Dr. Coit, at the time of his 
 death, twenty years ago, would not even 
 listen to propositions involving any assault 
 upon the sovereignty of the classic tongues. 
 His historic and religious instincts, as well as 
 his sense of mental values, impelled him to 
 subscribe with enthusiasm to the doctrine 
 contained in these prophetic words of warn- 
 ing from Thomas Arnold: " Expel Greek and 
 Latin from your schools and you confine the 
 
 [77] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 views of the existing generation to them- 
 selves and their immediate predecessors; you 
 will cut off so many centuries of the world's 
 experience, and place us in the same state as 
 if the human race had first come into exist- 
 ence in the year 1500." But, although such 
 were Dr. Coit's convictions and aspirations, 
 he was too wise to attempt to fasten them as 
 a binding creed upon the future of the school; 
 he was only concerned to do the work in 
 hand as he understood it. The working out 
 of his plans, educational, as well as religious, 
 he left with fanatical faith in the hands of 
 God. As he said passionately at the close 
 of one of his chapel sermons: "Shall we give 
 up the ideal we have had before us, or lower 
 and shape it to suit a self-willed, faithless 
 and superficial age? Ah, no, never, by the 
 help of God, never! This place belongs to 
 our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He 
 is and shall be its true Light and 
 King." With its religious side safeguarded, 
 he concerned himself very little about 
 the destiny of minor developments of the 
 [78] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 school over which no control on his part 
 was possible. 
 
 The mould in which St. Paul's was cast 
 is of no benumbing rigidity; and expansion, 
 when necessary and wise, will meet no fatu- 
 ous obstacles; she has never been out of 
 touch with the realities. And no one need 
 ever cite as applying to her the dictum of 
 one of her most gifted sons: "The conflict 
 between dead forms and living needs is the 
 tragedy of Institutions." 
 
 [79] 
 
IV 
 PASTOR 
 
 "How very hard it is to be 
 A Christian! Hard for you and me." 
 
 BROWNING 
 
 IT is a hard thing to be a Christian. This 
 very trite observation has been labored 
 in many tongues and under manifold meta- 
 phors for two thousand years, and at the 
 present time there is apparently no ground 
 for softening the statement. It is a hard 
 thing for the individual, and doubly hard 
 for an aggregation of individuals. 1 Deeply 
 
 1 The following passage, touching upon the religious implica- 
 tions of the war, need not be regarded as foreign to the subject of 
 this study. The writer was detained one month in Switzerland 
 by the outbreak of hostilities, and thereafter he shared in the 
 obsession common to all American travellers. So absorbing was 
 the surrounding atmosphere of tragedy that in attempting to 
 treat the pastoral and more reposeful side of Dr. Coit's work, 
 there was a pardonable confusion in his mind as to which was the 
 real digression, the war or Dr. Coit. Every interest in life seemed 
 to be cast into the alembic of this world-catastrophe, to be tested 
 as to its validity, Dr. Coit and St. Paul's School along with the 
 
 [80] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 significant is the fact that, in the appalling 
 cataclysm of Christian nations, this year of 
 our Lord 1914, no appeal is heard which 
 derives from Christianity. We hear much of 
 a monopolized God, but nothing of Christ 
 nor of his message as embodied in the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. No sophistry can elim- 
 inate from his teaching the essential note of 
 humility and voluntary suffering, and yet, 
 under the momentary despotism of the beast 
 that is in all of us, this note is silent. Even 
 the belief in God is threatened. A Roman 
 Catholic priest is reported to have said re- 
 cently in the pulpit of a church in Paris: 
 "If France is again crushed in the present 
 struggle, then there is no God." This utter- 
 ance may perhaps be discounted as the par- 
 rest. For the moment the literary handling of the pastoral work 
 of a humble minister of the Gospel of Peace had an air of absurd 
 unreality; accordingly the business of composition was suspended. 
 And in resuming the essay after his return to this country, the 
 writer felt the need of some hyphen to connect him once more with 
 the world of quiet things. Hence, the war digression with its 
 implied ultimate victory of things spiritual. Such a victory would 
 have been Dr. Coit's conviction, whatever might be the fortunes 
 of war, or his own personal sorrows. His faith in the Christian 
 revelation would have remained unshaken. 
 
 [81] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 donable counsel of despair, but it betrays a 
 tendency. About the same date, the second 
 week of the war, a higher plane was reached 
 in the passionate declamation of Canon 
 Alexander at St. Paul's Cathedral, who said: 
 "If England is defending an unrighteous 
 cause, may God break the sword in her 
 hands, and make her name a by-word among 
 the nations." This last utterance is splendid, 
 but as an appeal to justice it rises no higher 
 than the Cardinal Virtues. Even of these 
 virtues, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and 
 Fortitude, the fourth is alone wholly in favor; 
 temporarily the other three are in abeyance, 
 stored away for approval after the passions 
 have been fully satisfied. Perhaps the near- 
 est approach to Christian doctrine and prin- 
 ciple is found in the fine saying of Secretary 
 Bryan that, 'If one is to further peace, he 
 must expect to suffer measurably/ Patience 
 and long-suffering are, indeed, notable badges 
 of Christianity, and neither material science 
 nor human pride will ever rid the world of 
 the necessity, as well as the duty, of prac- 
 [82] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 tising these ethics. Mankind for ages 
 thought it could get on very well with the 
 four Cardinal Virtues, but time and again 
 history and the human heart have proved 
 their inadequacy. The Greek moralists sus- 
 pected this want, and philosophy in all lands 
 and ages has groped for the Christian com- 
 plement. Even healthy childhood, which is 
 nothing if not gorgeously pagan, vaguely feels 
 the need of a deeper principle. Very re- 
 cently an ingenuous little boy at St. Paul's 
 School showed that he was feeling out for 
 something better than mere pagan rectitude 
 when, on being asked to name the cardinal 
 virtues, he stumbled over the fourth, but 
 thought that it might be "Chastitude." 
 
 In the general bewilderment which has 
 succeeded to the initial shock occasioned by 
 the world-war, the leading minds of our race 
 have difficulty in recovering their equanimity. 
 Something has happened. They are not 
 quite so sure of their position. Some great 
 things seem small, and some neglected things 
 bulk large. The "Paradoxians" and other 
 
 [83] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 faddists are likely to be among the unem- 
 ployed for a while, or will be obliged to bend 
 their faculties to things that really matter. 
 Possibly the Superman, the Futurist, and 
 the Vorticist may disappear altogether. No 
 prophet can foretell the issue, in regard to 
 things spiritual, of a catastrophe which has 
 never had a parallel in history. In what 
 condition will the human mind emerge from 
 a desolating war of three or four years' 
 duration? Will ideals be the same? Will 
 such a word as patriotism have the same 
 connotation? At this moment, in six coun- 
 tries at least, the blood tingles at the glori- 
 ous words of Shakespeare: 
 
 SIWARD. "Had he his hurts before?" 
 
 Ross. "Ay, on the front." 
 
 SIWARD. "Why then, God's soldier be he! 
 
 Had I as many sons as I have hairs, 
 
 I would not wish them to a fairer death." 
 
 But events are moving fast, and men are 
 thinking; and the utter horror of it all may 
 provoke a cry that will rend the barriers, 
 more or less artificial, of nationalism, and 
 make operative the brotherhood of the human 
 [84] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 race. How local and partial the sentiment of 
 patriotism really is may be seen from the 
 rapidity with which a little injustice and a 
 little geography converts the English patriot 
 Washington into the American patriot Wash- 
 ington. We certainly would not impugn even 
 remotely the absolutely proper conduct of 
 our national hero, but it is conceivable that 
 the time may come when the sentiment of 
 loyalty may have another outlet, since men 
 will then respect the all-inclusive command- 
 ment to "Love one another." 
 
 In the meantime, the sorrowful limitations 
 of human nature will assert themselves. 
 Priests shall thunder forth the Sixth and the 
 Tenth commandments, but the war will still 
 continue, and the great Christian inconsist- 
 ency place itself on record. Surely no Ger- 
 man, English, French or Russian missionary 
 can henceforth find much standing in heathen 
 countries. The least sophisticated savage of 
 the South Sea islands will politely decline his 
 good offices, on the ground that he has his 
 own traditional mode of slugging, and prefers 
 
 [85] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 it. His confusion of mind will be still fur- 
 ther augmented by being told that war is a 
 "biological necessity," even though in the 
 same breath he is taught to say: "Vergib uns 
 unsere Schulden, wie wir unsern Schuldigern 
 vergeben." And yet, it is through these con- 
 tradictions intensified by the glare of burning 
 towns that the minds of men are being 
 brought back from the shallows of a material 
 age to the deep facts of existence. We all 
 know in our hearts that we are capable of 
 every conceivable form of crime, but we had 
 forgotten it. We have constantly asserted 
 in our formularies that we are "by nature 
 born in sin and the children of wrath," and 
 we do not believe it. But the Christian 
 Church believes it, and has consistently 
 taught it notwithstanding the lapses of her 
 practice; and to-day she offers to a bewil- 
 dered world Love and Forgiveness as the only 
 economic forces potent enough to meet on 
 their own ground the hateful passions of 
 mankind. She says to-day, as she has said 
 through the ages, though often with a lisp- 
 [86] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 ing accent, that the spirit of the Beatitudes 
 is the only panacea for the heart-breaking 
 sorrows of life, and that the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation is the only solution of the mys- 
 tery of existence. The entire world desires 
 peace, but there can be no peace if the indi- 
 vidual will is set on its own selfish ends. 
 No man can be a just man, much more, a 
 Christian man, if his major note is vindic- 
 tiveness. The "things that belong unto 
 peace" are individual rather than gregarious, 
 and come from a habit of mind rather than 
 from an impulse. Peace-meetings and peace- 
 litanies are wholly good, as tending to create 
 the atmosphere that will promote peace. 
 We pray because we are bidden to do so. 
 But God's ways are inscrutable, and there 
 is a species of cant in ascribing to Him at 
 the present crisis an assured disciplinary 
 function. We cannot without hypocrisy say 
 that we are grateful for the chastening effect 
 of this dreadful war. We naively sympa- 
 thize rather with the intuitions of the little 
 culprit who was punished by his human 
 
 [87] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 father, and who said, when his father averred 
 that the chastisement hurt him more than 
 it did the boy, that he was very contrite at 
 the thought of obliging him to suffer so much. 
 
 And yet it may well be that the present 
 unspeakable agony of the entire world is to 
 furnish the greatest practical argument of the 
 ages in behalf of the truth of God's moral 
 plan for his creatures. The frightful carnage 
 and waste of every sort, along with the con- 
 sequent despair in countless homes, will lead 
 men to look beneath the surface of trivial 
 things in order to find some reason for liv- 
 ing. And they will find it in the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, and they will find peace in the 
 consolations which the Church, notwithstand- 
 ing her occasional aberrations, has always 
 offered in her offices and ministry. 
 
 It was such a genuine Christianity, in the 
 full historic sense, that possessed the soul of 
 Henry Coit. "His master-motive was the 
 love of Christ, the love of souls and a burn- 
 ing zeal for the service of that Church 
 in which he believed are garnered up the 
 
 [88] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 treasures of grace, with all that comes to us 
 from a primitive antiquity, and the long line 
 of Truth's witnesses and a divine succession 
 of the benefactors of the human race." The 
 pastoral heart, which was his dominant note 
 through life, developed early, and its direc- 
 tion became manifest in the conduct of his 
 charge of the parish school at Lancaster, 
 Pennsylvania, in the three years from 1851 
 to 1854. He was but twenty-four years of 
 age, and yet the entire Henry Coit of later 
 years was there potentially. The following 
 letter, which was addressed to his boys as a 
 holiday monition, is strikingly characteristic 
 of the wise and loving pastor in his prime. 
 
 "My DEAR BOYS: 
 
 "Though what is good for one vacation is 
 good for another also, yet I am quite sure 
 that it will not be amiss for -me to send you 
 a second letter, if only to assure you that I 
 have you all in remembrance, and to remind 
 you of those hints and directions which I 
 have already given, to enable you to make 
 this vacation a good one. 
 
 [89] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 "Do not begrudge a little of your present 
 leisure to voluntary work. The useful read- 
 ing or study which you do now of your own 
 accord will be worth twice as much to you 
 as the same amount performed in the regular 
 course of school duties. Take up some book 
 of history, biography, or travels suited to 
 your capacity, and read it carefully through. 
 If you set apart a fixed hour every day for 
 this purpose you will be much more likely 
 to be systematic and to accomplish what you 
 undertake. The time which you spend in 
 active manly exercise as riding on horse- 
 back, boating is not lost. Those hours 
 only are lost, and lost to your lasting injury, 
 which you waste in listless lounging. Loung- 
 ing at home is bad for your mind and trouble- 
 some to your friends. Lounging in the streets 
 is bad for mind and morals both. Make 
 your time pass swiftly and happily by keep- 
 ing mind and body in healthful exercise. 
 Have the manliness to keep out of the way 
 of idle, worthless boys, of whom there are so 
 many here and everywhere whose words 
 are profane and vile whose actions are low, 
 vulgar, mischievous and corrupting. About 
 such company say, in the words of one better 
 and wiser than any of us: "O my soul, come 
 
 [90] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 not thou into their secret; unto their as- 
 sembly, mine honor, be not thou united." 
 It is these "evil communications" which "cor- 
 rupt good manners," which make me dread 
 the holidays for you, and against which no 
 one can guard you successfully but your- 
 selves. 
 
 "If you attend to what is said above, then 
 I am sure you will return to school after va- 
 cation improved and strengthened in mind 
 and body. I hope none of you will forget 
 to read your chapter daily. If any of you 
 have neglected it so far, be persuaded to be- 
 gin now, not for my sake only, but for your 
 own good. Do not think there can be a 
 vacation from what is right. There is never 
 a day on which we can lawfully take vaca- 
 tion from prayer to our Heavenly Father. 
 Why should we ever wish for one? Begin 
 and end these days of rest by asking God's 
 care and blessing. Do not make your vaca- 
 tion Sundays vacations from going to 
 Church. Rather use them well now, that 
 your well-spent Sundays may shed their light 
 over all the days that follow. 
 
 "I wish that I could help you all by some 
 more effectual means than words, to spend 
 this season well. Besides these my words of 
 
 [91] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 affectionate counsel and persuasion, you shall 
 have my hearty prayer. May God bless you 
 all, and keep you both now and ever from 
 forgetting your duty to Him. 
 
 "Your affectionate and faithful friend, 
 
 H. A. COIT. 
 
 St. James's School, Lancaster, July 13, 1854." 
 
 It must have been at about this date also 
 that the daguerreotype picture fronting this 
 page was taken. Recently found, along with 
 the letter printed above, it is a boon indeed 
 to all of us who care for the truth of things, 
 and, who, though surprised at the fresh, 
 youthful visage and quaint attire, are not 
 shocked at the thought that the grave Doctor 
 could ever have faced life with so fearless and 
 care-free a gaze. Such a face is its own in- 
 terpretation, and may well be a symbol of 
 the valorous attitude that should mark all 
 the efforts of St. Paul's, 
 
 "To take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them." 
 
 The story of Dr. Coit's personal relations 
 with his boys on the religious side is an inti- 
 [92] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 From a daguerreotype about 1854- 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 mate one and must be treated with due re- 
 serve; in no event will it appeal to all readers. 
 Doubtless many letters could be collected, 
 and many moving anecdotes could be re- 
 lated, but nothing would be gained by lift- 
 ing the veil from the deep things of life; 
 and the slightest exaggeration or indiscre- 
 tion would weaken the argument. Every 
 genuine old boy will bear testimony in his 
 heart to the tireless efforts of Dr. Coit to 
 bring out the best that was in him. Indeed, 
 it is only for convenience that the pastoral 
 side of the first Rector is made a sub-division 
 in this essay; it was in reality his one ab- 
 sorbing side. Everything with him seemed 
 to have a spiritual quality. 
 
 The first two decades of the school history 
 were lived in an atmosphere which might 
 fairly be called theological. Not a few of 
 the masters were studying for the ministry, 
 and theological text-books were much in evi- 
 dence. The writer was necessarily won over 
 to the compelling interests of his friends, Hall 
 Harrison, John Hargate, Robert A. Benton, 
 
 [93] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 George B. Johnson and Charles A. Morrill. 
 Ordinations were not infrequent, and church 
 questions were burning subjects. We did not 
 always agree, but a moderate and reasoned 
 high-churchmanship prevailed. One could 
 not but become familiar with the books most 
 in vogue: "Pearson on the Creed," "Browne 
 on the Articles," "Butler's Analogy," "Bull 
 on the Incarnation," "Andrewes' Sermons," 
 "Jeremy Taylor," not to speak of the 
 "Fathers," Cornelius a Lapide and the 
 "Commentaries." The writer at about this 
 date read St. John's Gospel in Greek with 
 Dr. Coit, and contracted a living conviction 
 of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. He 
 has no quarrel now with any particular 
 theory of inspiration, but, at the time, from 
 out his twenty years, he felt a great awe at 
 the thought of any trifling with a Greek 
 letter, and was wholly with Dr. Coit in 
 ascribing a sort of moral obliquity to Dean 
 Alford when he made Iva denote purpose 
 when it should be result, or result when it 
 should be purpose. The boys naturally had 
 [94] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 no direct share in the labors and aspirations 
 of their guides, but they caught much of the 
 prevailing tone. Many were sincerely relig- 
 ious. Dr. Coit differed (uncompromisingly 
 with Arnold in his estimate of the capacity 
 of the boy for religious training. Dr. Arnold 
 had said in a letter to a friend, "My object 
 will be, if possible, to form Christian men, 
 for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to 
 make. I mean that from the naturally im- 
 perfect state of boyhood, they are not sus- 
 ceptible of Christian principles in their full 
 development and practice." But Dr. Coit 
 boldly aimed at making Christian boys, and 
 he was willing to risk their turning out 
 Christian men. Doubtless he felt with Plato 
 that Virtue is Knowledge and can be taught; 
 he certainly believed that boys are capable 
 of genuine religious faith and devotion. And 
 yet, we fancy that Arnold and Coit were not 
 very far apart after all in their practice, for 
 Arnold himself was reproached by his critics 
 for an over-emphasis on moral thoughtful- 
 ness and introspection in his boys. 
 
 [95] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 The agencies which will recur to the minds 
 of alumni as chiefly developing the religious 
 and moral tone of the St. Paul's boy in Dr. 
 Henry Coit's time are: the weekly Sacred 
 Studies, the Confirmation class, the Sunday 
 morning sermon, regularly by the Rector, 
 and the chapel services; to which may be 
 added the Thursday Night Talk, "Causerie 
 dujeudi." These agencies are in every church- 
 school, and, formally, are about the same 
 thing. The great point is that they should 
 be instinct with life and meaning. Dr. Coit, 
 as might be surmised, was not particularly 
 systematic or dogmatic in his handling of 
 sacred lessons. Very sensitive as to text- 
 books, he was inclined to make his own man- 
 uals, basing the junior instruction on the 
 Church Catechism, and the more expository 
 teaching of the Seniors on the Collects and 
 Gospels for each Sunday. In later years 
 text-books of Bible history were introduced. 
 For a long time he taught all the classes in 
 person, esteeming this to be his peculiarly 
 clerical and responsible work. As the school 
 
 [96] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 grew in numbers, this work had to be shared, 
 but he was always solicitous that it should 
 be performed in a dignified manner, setting 
 it apart from the secular studies of the week 
 and stripping it of the perfunctory. No 
 written examinations in sacred studies were 
 thought of in the earlier days, but the for- 
 midable oral examination in the Catechism, 
 which took place twice a year in the School 
 Chapel, dates back to the beginning of things. 
 This public function has been the secret 
 terror and the utter undoing of the best of 
 us since time was. 
 
 It has been objected by some of the faith- 
 ful that our religious teaching here has never 
 been definite enough, that our boys are not 
 technically fortified against criticism and 
 assaults of unbelief. If this were in a meas- 
 ure true, and if it were due to the quality 
 of Dr. Coit's instruction, it would not sur- 
 prise those who had lived close to him. 
 For his belief seemed of the kind that had 
 got beyond the evidential stage and was 
 wholly absorbed in the contemplation of its 
 
 [97] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 object. He did not seem to crave, at least 
 in the days of his best work, a remorselessly 
 logical statement of all dogmas that divide 
 men. He would not teach more definitely 
 than he thought. We remember very well 
 his quoting with warm approval, in one of 
 his addresses at Communicants' Meeting, 
 the cautious words of Queen Elizabeth re- 
 garding the Eucharist: 
 
 " Christ was the word that spake it; 
 He took the bread and brake it; 
 And what His word did make it, 
 That I believe and take it." 
 
 V 
 
 But his theology does not concern us 
 directly here, even if we felt able to assess it; 
 elsewhere a separate paper might well be 
 given to Dr. Coit's theological position in 
 the Church. Such a paper has already been 
 suggested to his eldest son, the Rev. Charles 
 Wheeler Coit, who would treat the subject 
 with perfect competency, and who would, 
 undoubtedly, stress a certain yearning for 
 what is termed catholic truth that marked 
 Dr. Coit's later years. 
 
 [98] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 A cursory reading of the single volume of 
 the first Rector's sermons, published by 
 Moffat, Yard & Co., will begin by puzzling 
 and presently by reassuring any one who 
 heard them delivered year after year. At 
 the moment of delivery, they went straight 
 to their mark, reinforced by the personality 
 of the speaker; our memories pronounce 
 them great. We cannot now, when no longer 
 under the spell of living voice and manner, 
 say that they are great as literature; but 
 perhaps they were better than literature. 
 Written for the adolescent and the immature, 
 often in haste and amid constant interrup- 
 tions, with little conscious effort at form or 
 style, these sermons must not be compared 
 with the formal utterance of men whose 
 business is preaching. And yet, they seem 
 to the writer not unworthy to stand this 
 comparison, if the proper object of preaching 
 be to stimulate the conscience and direct the 
 will. Dr. Coit aimed at scarcely more than 
 this. Not infrequently there are passages of 
 great beauty and strong imagination, but 
 
 [99] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 they were spontaneous and not studied. A 
 pulpit style, "travaille," as the French say, 
 was as foreign to his literary habits as to 
 his nature. We cannot easily imagine him 
 polishing his phrase, and, as to epigrams, 
 they did not readily pass the door of his lips. 
 His method of composition was patterned 
 after the Port Royalist dictum: "Une seule 
 fois, sous Vceil de la Grace," and the further 
 injunction: "Arroser son ouvrage par des 
 prieres." And thus fortified, his chief quali- 
 fication was his unrivalled knowledge of the 
 human soul and his deep sympathy with 
 the problems of boys, whom he did not 
 aim at probing by writing down to their 
 level, but by pulling them up to his own 
 standards. 
 
 After these sympathetic premises, it is at 
 some risk that one proceeds to cite illustra- 
 tions. We shall quote, however, two pas- 
 sages from these sermons, taken almost at 
 random, which seem to represent fairly his 
 habit of practical preaching, though they are 
 not, perhaps, in his most brilliant manner. 
 
 [100] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 (1) 
 
 "There is a helpful use of the imagination. 
 We may call upon it to aid us in laying out 
 the work of our lives, or rather in laying that 
 basis of principle which gives ground for hope 
 that our work, whatever it is, will, some of it, 
 be lasting. Try to make such use of this 
 gift of God now. Imagine one of you, who 
 have been scholars here during this last year, 
 coming back fifty years hence in 1939 
 to see the scenes where several years of his 
 life were passed, and those, as he would then 
 realize, by no means the least important. Of 
 course, I ask you to prop your imagination 
 with the hope and confidence that the School 
 itself may live and grow stronger with the 
 flight of time; that while many outward 
 features are changed, still some landmarks 
 will remain. This holy place, for example, 
 mellowed by the lapse of years, its tower 
 completed, the windows filled with storied 
 panes, a glorious reredos in its proper place, 
 the Saints of all ages looking down from 
 window, niche, and screen, or gathered above 
 the altar around their Lord, their strength 
 and refuge. It is the last Evensong of the 
 last Sunday of the term. The bells chime out 
 
 [101] 
 
AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 the long file of boys, masters 
 and clergy enters. With curious, mingled 
 sensations he, who to-day sits here a lad, but 
 then a man, with a large experience of life, 
 whose struggle is nearly over, looks on, and, 
 as he looks, almost loses the present in the 
 past so far away. Again he hears the organ's 
 glorious voice, and the old prayers and psalrns 
 said by strange lips, in tones that are strange 
 to him. He strains his eyes and memory 
 along the seats and stalls, and beyond the 
 chancel arch, but sees not one face of all so 
 familiar to him now. He pauses and thinks 
 of this one and that one, gone; their roll of 
 life ended and folded up and laid away. One 
 lies in the bed of ocean, the graveyards 
 through the land hold of most of the others 
 the mouldering dust. Several of the younger 
 here, he afterwards may learn, are still, with 
 whitening hair and ripening wisdom, carrying 
 on the work. Several in older manhood, it 
 may be (God grant it!), are doing His work 
 in the Church in high or lowly office, in parts 
 of the world still unwon to Christ, or in those 
 nearer home, where what is known by multi- 
 tudes of saving truth only becomes their con- 
 demnation. He will think of some he knew 
 here who had started life poorly and inade- 
 [102] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 quately, and then, by God's grace, remem- 
 bered their better lessons, and turned to Him 
 with all their hearts; and of others who still 
 went on reckless of good, neither hearing nor 
 heeding the warning voice, and of whom none 
 may say, "Their witness is in Heaven, and 
 their record is on high." But of the larger 
 number of those who are gathered here to- 
 day the history of their earthly lives will by 
 that time be over. Cold hearts and tender 
 hearts, the corrupt body and the body unde- 
 filed, will alike be wasting away as fast as 
 the action of natural forces can waste them; 
 only the spirits will live on, and fifty years 
 hence will be as living and as conscious of 
 their identity as is each one at the present 
 moment. Suppose this visitor to have drawn 
 the obvious inferences from the experience of 
 life. It will occur to him that some stay is 
 needed for a man in presence of this fact of 
 continual decay and change, something to 
 compensate for the losses, to uphold and 
 secure one amid such shocks and disasters of 
 time. It is no consolation to know that these 
 earthly bodies will, after a little, be taken up 
 and distributed through the material universe, 
 and find their involuntary perpetuation in 
 grasses and vapors, in trees and meadow 
 
 [103] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 flowers. Where meanwhile is the part to be 
 that never dies? that in us which lives and 
 loves, and does not and cannot forget? Is 
 there nothing to hold by, when all men have 
 forgotten that such a being as I ever was? Is 
 there no memory in which I may live on, 
 save that which is now registering, though 
 unheeded, all my neglects of duty and all my 
 misdeeds? 
 
 Our visitor (you will remember he is one 
 of you), with fifty years added to his mental 
 and physical development, goes back in 
 thought to what he himself has known and 
 observed. He has had his share of what is 
 called pleasure, social enjoyments and dis- 
 tinctions, gayeties and sights, and keen physi- 
 cal excitement, and gratification of the senses, 
 ease and travel, books and pictures and art, 
 the love and appreciation of which is in so 
 many cases a mere sham and pretence. 
 What comfort or relief comes from these 
 delights, when the real storms break and the 
 spirit is thrown back upon itself for peace 
 and inward satisfaction? What support will 
 even the more innocent and less selfish pleas- 
 ures give, when the body, the link between 
 our true selves and this outer world, lies a 
 wreck on the graveyard shore, and the im- 
 
 [104] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 material world here becomes the real one, 
 and our only fellowship is with good and 
 holy spirits, or with spirits of evil? Suppose 
 one to have been greatly favored in the 
 accumulation of riches. It requires ability 
 in a man to amass wealth, and there is an 
 intellectual gratification in planning and suc- 
 ceeding in its acquisition. And its possession 
 counts in the world; it gives power and 
 worship among men. Its right and wise use 
 enrolls one among the benefactors of mankind. 
 Its accompaniments may do much to ennoble 
 and exalt one, if not perverted to merely 
 selfish ends. But the richest of men comes 
 to a moment when all that wealth can pur- 
 chase is worthless to him. Even now, it 
 never wins true love and loyalty, but is 
 rather a stumbling-block to these, and in 
 the hour of death it avails nothing, nor 
 gives one courage or covert for the exigen- 
 cies of that new and untried existence. It 
 may make it harder to leave this world, but 
 it does not help one in doing so. And as to 
 honor and position among men, this is the 
 conclusion at which a really great man ar- 
 rived: "Years fly swiftly, and it is full time 
 to be reasonable, and to look on life no longer 
 dazzled by the sunbeams of youth. Let us 
 
 [105] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 be just towards God. He has not created 
 men that they may attain celebrity, a thing 
 which few ever reach, or care for when they 
 have reached it. God knows the littleness of 
 the world too well to give His creatures so 
 poor an aim as that. He created the stars 
 in order to disgust us with it. Glory is the 
 illusion of childhood and of some men who 
 never quite grow out of childish ways. A 
 soul really capable of glory does not think 
 about it; he is too great for that." So muses 
 the man of nearly seventy years, as he re- 
 visits the scenes of his boyish failures or suc- 
 cesses. Where are those whom he knew in 
 these far-off days? What has been the issue 
 in this and the other world of these lives? 
 Of their training here and elsewhere for good 
 or evil? Did they sow to the flesh, of the 
 flesh to reap corruption? Or, with all mis- 
 takes and hindrances, to the spirit, to reap 
 life everlasting? For surely as men sow, 
 they reap, and none can think that pleas- 
 ures or riches or honors or any other earthly 
 props will stand the sweep and pressure of 
 Eternity." 
 
 [106] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 (2) 
 
 "Look at the picture in the parable. It is 
 drawn by Everlasting Truth. It shows us 
 how the imagination, the memory, the power 
 of association are Divinely given to help us 
 against our temptations; in the words of the 
 Litany, "To strengthen us when we do stand, 
 to raise us up when we fall, and finally to 
 beat down Satan under our feet." The youth 
 in the parable whom we all call the prodigal 
 son, though he is not called that in the Gos- 
 pel, has had a sorrowful experience. He has 
 cast off restraint, the restraint of love and 
 duty, of home and conscience of law, social 
 and Divine. To use a late phrase, he has 
 wearied of the stagnation of comfort, the 
 quiet order, the loving care of his father's 
 house. Like so many, he has undervalued 
 the sweetness of innocence, of lying down 
 at night and rising in the- morning in health 
 of body and mind, with no black stain in 
 the memory, no frenzied grip at some base 
 indulgence, which has come to grief in the 
 possession, just as an apple of painted glass 
 would in the hands of a child. The hot 
 blood surges through his veins, and cries 
 out for freedom to have his own and do 
 
 [107] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 what he will with it. The daily round of 
 prayer and blessing is irksome. Any daily 
 round is irksome. He chafes at his moth- 
 er's gentle remonstrances and his father's 
 firm refusals. He has taken the privileges 
 of his childhood as of course, with no 
 thought of gratitude to the Giver of all 
 good things. The peace and plenty of his 
 home, the innocent enjoyments, the sun- 
 shine of parental love, the opportunities for 
 training in every good, useful, noble pursuit 
 have no value in his eyes. He will have none 
 of them. He tires of them all. Innocence 
 is stupid. Goodness is life on a dull level. 
 O for the wilderness and the sea! To try 
 things for one's self, to pluck at will the 
 poisonous wild flowers, to lose his way in 
 the trackless desert, to stray into the portal 
 and chambers of moral death! This is what 
 A., B., and a great many more, are doing. 
 And why not I? His short sight does not 
 reach the final stages, or his self-confidence 
 imagines that he can hold back from that 
 uttermost downfall. What he wants is life, 
 without conscience, without duty, without 
 God. This he fancies is to live like a man, 
 with some dash and swing and sparkle in 
 life, although he shatters a father's hopes 
 [108] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 and breaks his mother's heart. In the true 
 history of the Gospel, the waste and riot 
 and the infinite folly are traced to their end. 
 A far-off land of desolation, a region of the 
 shadow of death, desertion of summer friends, 
 utter, abject want, the soul's famine, the 
 body's starvation, complete degradation, only 
 to be expressed by feeding on swine's food 
 and the feeding of swine such is the issue 
 of swinish standards of living and swinish 
 pleasures. Is it not absolute bondage? Where 
 is the fancied freedom? The emancipation 
 from the bonds of duty to follow one's own 
 will? Is it not the worst of slaveries? Then 
 when the inevitable hour comes, and the fires 
 of passion are spent, and the precious gifts of 
 life exhausted, memory becomes an avenger. 
 The thought of the past is an awful reproach, 
 The early days, before vice had taken root, 
 come back to him, when the morning land 
 was fresh with the verdure and blossoms of 
 spring, when the voice of parents was sweet 
 in childish ears, and the chances of happiness 
 and blessing, of noble, unselfish action, of life 
 rising higher and higher to all things virtu- 
 ous and lovely and of good report, still lay 
 in the near distance, and ignorance of evil 
 was indeed bliss. All this rises before the 
 
 [109] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 mind of the broken, remorseful, hopeless 
 spendthrift. What might have been! That is 
 the barbed arrow that rankles in the wound. 
 While his choice was still in his hands, and 
 the lovely helps of home, and the means and 
 encouragements God devises to win us to 
 His service were still his, how had he tossed 
 them away! And now where ana I? and 
 what am I? Compare this and that. The 
 swinish pleasures and the swinish companion- 
 ship; the loathesome conversation, the beg- 
 garly end of it all; and there in the dear old 
 home were cheerful gladness, and tender 
 greetings, and plenteous food for mind and 
 heart as well as body the Bread of Life 
 was and is there! "How many hired ser- 
 vants of my father's have bread enough and 
 to spare, and I perish with hunger!" Alas! 
 In the majority of cases, the lost soul stops 
 here. I must warn all of you younger ones 
 who are before me that it is not safe to count 
 on rising like the prodigal in our Blessed 
 Lord's parable from the thought of what 
 might have been to the hope of what yet 
 may be. Vicious indulgence, sinning against 
 light and knowledge, paralyzes the moral 
 powers. The long disuse of prayer incapaci- 
 tates one for praying. Reason and experi- 
 [110] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 ence may enter their unanswerable protests, 
 memory and association may call from the 
 years long past, but the will may be hope- 
 lessly weakened. As I have seen again and 
 again, the man may have no excuse to offer, 
 he is miserable and knows it and owns it, 
 but he dreads moral effort. When he tries 
 to rise, his chains weigh more heavily; when 
 he makes a step forward, they rattle, he loses 
 heart; the Tempter is always close by to 
 whisper, "It is of no use." And so in the 
 fearful language of St. Peter: "The dog is 
 turned to his own vomit again; and the 
 sow that was washed to her wallowing in 
 the mire." Very likely he may have already 
 provided himself with a reason for inaction. 
 He has no faith. He has taken up with some 
 form of plausible error. He has discovered 
 that the Scriptures are found unworthy of 
 credence. There is no logical foundation for 
 the Gospel history. It is full of legendary 
 accretions. Therefore, there is no Saviour, 
 no Precious Blood poured freely out to cleanse 
 him from his sins, no intercession, and no 
 Intercessor. Everything is uncertain and un- 
 provable. If there is a God, He is too far 
 away or too kind to mark my infirmities, or 
 to hold me to account for them. It is all a 
 
 cm] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 chance or a fatality. I cannot help myself. 
 And so, the day of grace passes, and the 
 shadows lengthen, and that night comes on, 
 in which there is no possibility of self -deceiv- 
 ing and no opportunity for repentance, though 
 one sought for it carefully and with tears. 
 Many of us here may feel that this is an 
 extreme case; that it does not apply to us; 
 that we have not strayed far from the paths 
 of righteousness; that still sweet in our ears 
 sound the Church bells of our home; that 
 we have not utterly broken with our child- 
 hood. But, if we are conscious that inno- 
 cence of evil is no longer ours; if we know 
 of some easily besetting sin; if we find our 
 prayers, whether in public or private, tedious 
 and unprofitable; if we are glad of an excuse 
 to omit them; if we set little value on that 
 Bread of Life which is broken on these 
 earthly Altars for our souls* salvation; if 
 our preparation for It is very slight, and our 
 sense of need of It numbed and callous 
 then make sure we should contrast what 
 might have been with what is, and before it 
 is too late, while youth and time are ours 
 (or if not youth, still some measure of health 
 and some little time), to think of what may 
 be, of that full return of heart and soul and 
 [112] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 mind to himself, to which our Lord calls us. 
 Think of those blessed privileges of his 
 House to which we are so indifferent, of His 
 merciful promise of welcome and forgiveness, 
 if we come pleading our unworthiness and 
 His all-sufficient Sacrifice. 
 
 ' In my hand no price I bring, 
 Simply to Thy Cross I cling.' " 
 
 It was inevitable that Dr. Coit should 
 make much of The Lord's Day; the Sunday 
 was to him what it was to Henry Vaughan: 
 "Heaven once a week." He loved hymns 
 like "O Quanta Qualia," 
 
 "O what the joy and the glory must be, 
 Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see! " 
 
 and the quaint lines of Herbert and Vaughan 
 were often on his lips. He loved such verses 
 as the following, not only for their piety, but 
 for their poetry: 
 
 SUNDAY 
 
 O DAY most calm, most bright! 
 The fruit of this, the next world's bud, 
 The indorsement of supreme delight, 
 Writ by a Friend, and with His blood; 
 The couch of time; care's balm and bay; 
 The week were dark, but for thy light: 
 
 Thy torch doth show the way. 
 
 [113] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 The Sundays of man's life, 
 Threaded together on time's string, 
 Make bracelets to adorn the wife 
 Of the eternal glorious King. 
 On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope; 
 Blessings are plentiful and rife, 
 
 More plentiful than hope. 
 
 This day my Saviour rose, 
 And did enclose this light for His: 
 That, as each beast his manger knows, 
 Man might not of his fodder miss. 
 Christ hath took in this piece of ground, 
 And made a garden there for those 
 
 Who want herbs for their wound. 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT 
 
 SON-DAYES 
 
 BRIGHT shadows of true rest! some shoots of blisse; 
 
 Heaven once a week; 
 The next world's gladnesse prepossest in this; 
 
 A day to seek 
 
 Eternity in time; the steps by which 
 We climb above all ages; lamps that light 
 Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich . 
 And full redemption of the whole week's flight! 
 
 HENRY VAUGHAN 
 
 The spiritual atmosphere of these verses is 
 certainly not very common to-day, nor has it 
 ever been possible to make such an atmos- 
 phere a medium in which any large com- 
 munity of boys can breathe naturally and 
 
 [114] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 normally. Moreover, Dr. Coit was no Sab- 
 batarian; his preferred Sunday was some- 
 thing between the Puritan Sabbath and the 
 Continental Sunday. Happiness for his boys 
 he unquestionably aimed at, but he insisted 
 that the first day of the week should be set 
 apart and devoted to things that concern 
 the final end of man. There was to be no 
 secular work, and, alas! no games or sport. 
 No boy could don his sweater or duck- 
 trowsers; Sunday-clothes were to be worn 
 throughout the day and a seemly hat. The 
 general tone of the school was to be one of 
 peace and quiet. Musical instruments were 
 taboo, and a phonograph would have been a 
 painful intrusion. Apparently such rules and 
 traditions prevail to-day in the great English 
 public schools, but with us in America some 
 modification of Puritan propriety was bound 
 to come. Our ideals are not favorable to the 
 strain of ultra-decorum, and it may be said 
 in general that the American boy has a fine 
 democratic indifference to a certain sense of 
 form that is characteristic of his English 
 
 C 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 cousin. Too much neatness in attire is a 
 manifest bore, and a little excessive heat or 
 bodily languor suggests a prompt recourse to 
 tropical fashions in dress. He would have a 
 lofty scorn for such a policy as is indicated 
 by the following notice taken from a London 
 paper of July, 1914: 
 
 HARROW AND THE HEAT 
 
 RELAXATION OF THE DRESS RULES FORBIDDEN 
 
 No relaxation of the sumptuary laws of Harrow School is being 
 allowed by the authorities, the hot weather not being held to be an 
 excuse. Apparently some would-be pioneers have attempted 
 dress reform, for the following announcement has been issued: 
 
 "The school are reminded that the rules relating to school 
 dress must be strictly observed. 
 
 "On all occasions when the black tail coat or jacket is worn, a 
 stiff collar must also be worn. 
 
 "The flannel shirt must be worn buttoned to the top by all 
 boys passing through the streets when changed for games." 
 
 But difficulties and reactions are not argu- 
 ments in themselves, and a sober Sunday 
 was a part of Dr. Coit's conception of Chris- 
 tian discipline in a Church school. Doubt- 
 less the impressions of Alumni will differ 
 greatly in regard to the old Sunday observ- 
 ance at St. Paul's. Choir-boys, of whom 
 
 [116] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 there have been nearly a thousand, were so 
 occupied and usually so much interested in 
 the musical parts of the chapel service that 
 Sunday for them probably passed happily 
 and quickly. But the average boy, with his 
 constitutional repugnance to inaction and 
 dulness, could not be expected to find an 
 appeal in the notion of "endless sabbaths." 
 Dr. Coit, however, waived the question of 
 appeal. He stressed the doing of certain 
 things from a sense of duty alone, and did 
 not force the thesis that enjoyment is a 
 necessary element in really edifying worship. 
 If the sermon were dull, then "God takes a 
 text and preach eth patience." The boys 
 were invited to consider it a valuable bit of 
 training to learn to sit still, and for one day 
 in the week to rest both body and mind. 
 And so, Dr. Coit claimed that, apart from 
 the purely religious function of Sunday, a 
 strict observance of the day sent each boy 
 back to the routine of Monday's work with 
 a certain freshness of attack, as if from a 
 secular holiday; for twenty-four hours, at 
 
 [117] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 least, his mind had lain fallow. This was 
 the more true from the fact that no news- 
 paper was opened on Sunday, and the range 
 of reading was limited to a prescribed collec- 
 tion of books called the Sunday Library. 
 And yet the day was not gloomy, except to 
 those who were determined to find it so. 
 Every Sunday in the year was a feast-day, 
 and even Lent did not involve an exception 
 for those boys who tried to pass it faithfully. 
 Sundays in Lent were brightened and some- 
 what glorified for a few of the boys, because, 
 having fasted a little on the week-days (and 
 Dr. Coit did not dilute "fasting" into mere 
 self-denial), they felt that they could feast 
 on Sundays. It will readily be inferred that 
 the Lord's Day, though not devoted to toil, 
 was a fairly active day for the whole school, 
 with its prescriptions and options extending 
 from an "Early Celebration" in Chapel be- 
 fore breakfast to the formal "Good Night" 
 at 8.30 p. m. in the School Room along 
 with the hymn, "Now the day is past and 
 gone." 
 [118] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 But busy as Dr. Coit was with his respon- 
 sible charge, he made Sunday a special time 
 for looking after the people of the neighbor- 
 hood. In the first years of St. Paul's, the 
 farmers and residents of the vicinity at- 
 tended Chapel along with the scholars. 
 Later, with the growth of the school, it was 
 necessary to provide special services. After 
 the completion of the new chapel in 1888, 
 the old chapel was practically handed over 
 to the local congregation. The body of 
 worshippers, though not large, was devoted 
 to the Rector; many of our neighbors were 
 his close friends. He baptized many and 
 buried many. Few functions, whether fes- 
 tal, ferial or funeral could dispense with his 
 ministrations, and his memory to-day is 
 cherished up and down the country-side. 
 Though he rarely walked for exercise, his 
 tall form striding along the country roads, 
 or in his old buggy with Mrs. Coit, when he 
 was engaged in some errand of cheer or ease- 
 ment, was a picture very familiar to boys on 
 their afternoon tramps. 
 
 [119] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 This extra-clerical work Dr. Coit regarded 
 as a part of his ministry, and its influence 
 will be long felt in the environs of Concord. 
 With the city itself he was not very closely 
 identified, though his relations with life-long 
 friends of the school were very cordial, and 
 his personal attachment to Bishop Niles and 
 the clergy of Concord was deep and sincere. 
 And so his personality was not without wit- 
 ness in the capital city and throughout the 
 state of New Hampshire; and, in a very 
 true sense, it abides there to-day in the 
 small body of spiritually-minded priests of 
 the church, who, with Bishop Parker at their 
 head, are conscious that they drew much of 
 their best inspiration as former St. Paul's 
 boys from the First Rector. 
 
 In a school of a thousand boys, like Eton, 
 the religious and moral influence of the Head 
 Master must necessarily emanate from the 
 pulpit; he can come into personal relations 
 with but few of his charge. St. Paul's has 
 not, as yet, coveted a roster of pupils beyond 
 the supervision and personal knowledge of a 
 
 [120] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 single man. Dr. Coit never admitted that 
 three hundred boys were more than he could 
 account for. Even after the time when years 
 and sorrow began to tell upon his powers, his 
 zeal for the welfare of each boy did not abate, 
 and it is safe to say that no boy quite es- 
 caped his loving scrutiny up to the end of 
 his mission. And nothing claimed more im- 
 periously his energetic interest than each 
 boy's attitude towards what he considered 
 the greatest thing in the world. And so, 
 the Doctor must know, as each boy arrived 
 at a responsible age, how he stood in regard 
 to the Christian religion. The Confirma- 
 tion class of each year was an obvious chal- 
 lenge to the Christian choice, and it lay very 
 close to the Rector's heart. There was, we 
 think, no compulsion of any sort, and, 
 naturally, some boys never yielded to the 
 gentle moral pressure that led the majority 
 to take upon themselves the vows of Con- 
 firmation. We doubt whether any one ever 
 really regretted the step, even though a few 
 may have ostentatiously, under stress, attrib- 
 
 C 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 uted their subsequent lapses to the reactions 
 of early over-stimulation of their moral na- 
 ture. Of prigs there were very few. Dr. 
 Coit was too wise and too manly to be satis- 
 fied or deceived by any exterior manifesta- 
 tion of simulated piety. Thorough in his 
 training, penetrating in his intuitions, he 
 prepared each boy, as if he were the only 
 boy, and made him feel that the choice he 
 was making was the most momentous step 
 of his life. Perhaps in some cases, it was 
 the best moment of life. There was a 
 strange and isolating atmosphere that hung 
 over the few days preceding the Ascension 
 Day on which a boy was confirmed. No 
 one talked about his approaching confirma- 
 tion, and very few of the school at large 
 were aware, previous to the public ceremony, 
 of the identity of the candidates. And when 
 it was all over, life seemed to begin afresh. 
 
 However, Dr. Coit was no sentimentalist, 
 and he realized only too keenly that Con- 
 firmation was but a beginning, and that the 
 future of his boys was an untravelled country 
 
 [ 122] 
 
FACSIMILE OF INSCRIPTION 
 
 Written by Dr. Coit 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 as full of disillusions and surprises as that 
 traversed by the pilgrim of John Bunyan. 
 He never seemed to be complaisant over the 
 large number of communicants that St. Paul's 
 has added to the Church, a number greatly 
 augmented in the twenty years since his 
 death. He must have been conscious that 
 he was the instrument, but he was not given 
 to dwelling on the satisfactions of his re- 
 sponsible office. With some hesitation we 
 have had reproduced here a typical inscrip- 
 tion, taken from the fly-leaf of the Greek 
 Testament which he gave to a member of 
 his Confirmation class. The book in ques- 
 tion came into possession of the writer on 
 the death of Mr. Swift, and he is sure that 
 old boys will be glad to refresh their mem- 
 ories with the sight of the Doctor's hand- 
 writing, though of a formal type, and at the 
 same time, associate affectionately the donor 
 with the recipient of the Greek Testament. 
 The most enduring impressions of Dr. 
 Coit's pastoral work gather chiefly about the 
 Old Chapel; he ministered but seven years 
 
 [123] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 in our present beautiful building, and his 
 preaching was perhaps less effective there 
 owing to the size of the auditorium and the 
 limitations of his voice. But the fervor and 
 content of his work were no-wise different. 
 There was a little more ceremonial; the 
 choir was vested, and the various offices 
 were a little more stately. He never really 
 laid stress on "functions," and we fancy that 
 he always felt a little uncomfortable in pro- 
 cessions. And, yet, an impressively ordered 
 service was the rule in the chapel of his day. 
 It was one of his convictions that the quiet, 
 habitual performance of a religious duty, 
 under forms that become familiar, is the 
 true way to create habits that will endure, 
 though he was no slave to routine, and al- 
 ways gladly availed himself of the aid of 
 outside preachers who had the prophetic 
 gift. Many such can be recalled. He dis- 
 trusted the sensational; and the idea of the 
 Christian Religion adapted to modern re- 
 quirements had small meaning for him. 
 And his taste was correspondingly severe. 
 [124] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 That his instincts and ideals in these matters 
 were valid would seem to be indicated by 
 the fact that his ways have proved accept- 
 able, and an alumnus returning to the school 
 to-day finds himself at home in the Chapel 
 as perhaps nowhere else. He hears the 
 same prayers and hymns, and is conscious 
 of the same spirit of reverent devotion. No 
 old boy of any judgment is looking for 
 progress, so-called, in the simple matters of 
 religion, and so he is always comforted to 
 find that we still sing on Saturday night the 
 time-honored "My days unclouded, as they 
 pass," and at the end of each term, "Saviour, 
 source of every blessing." These words are 
 part of the St. Paul's legend, though the for- 
 mer hymn encountered in its early days one 
 change of tune. Tunes, after all, are the 
 winsome powers that make boys sing, and 
 the best of words cannot long bear up under 
 the load of a dull or difficult setting. We 
 Americans have tried pathetically to sing the 
 Star Spangled Banner, but, owing to the ex- 
 cessive range of the music, its rendering, on 
 
 [125] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 sea and on land, notwithstanding a swelling 
 patriotism, has never been anything but 
 lame, and often to our great, if amused, 
 humiliation. 
 
 But, if Dr. Coit aimed at adhering to a 
 dignified and protective ritual, he had no 
 thought of standardizing the type of the 
 youthful worshipper. Each one must be 
 won and directed according to his endow- 
 ment. Accordingly, not being omniscient, 
 he had to take the risk of failure, and some 
 of his boys have not turned out well. But 
 he did not altogether let go his grip, and 
 his letters pursued them affectionately. His 
 boys certainly will bear no malice for this, 
 and many of them have returned to their 
 Christian allegiance. 
 
 The new Chapel, with its twenty-seven 
 years of what for this country means antiq- 
 uity, is, as far as material things go, the 
 historic monument of the first Rector. His 
 marble effigy lies there, though his body 
 rests on the hill in the school cemetery along 
 with his brother, Joseph Rowland Coit, and 
 
 [126] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 John Hargate. It had long been his dream 
 to see realized the plans for a really noble 
 building of satisfying beauty, that should 
 house the entire body of boys and lend 
 itself sympathetically and appropriately to 
 the forms of worship which he loved. And 
 this dream was more than fulfilled, when 
 boys and alumni took up the project and 
 enthusiastically carried it to a successful 
 conclusion from sheer devotion to the man 
 that had made their school. No tablet on its 
 walls records that the chapel was erected in 
 his honor, but the names on the memorials, 
 the scenes and inscriptions looking down 
 from the windows, the grave faces in niche 
 and on pedestal, are a cloud of witnesses to 
 the fact that those who builded and those 
 who are built into the structure compose, as 
 it were, the spiritual coterie of the first 
 Rector. They belong to his tenancy, and 
 they close an epoch. 
 
 And time, the final arbiter of reputations, 
 is giving Henry Coit his assured place among 
 Educators. Some divided voices may be 
 
 [127] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 heard, but they do not count; what a man 
 really is can scarcely be other than the 
 haunting verdict passed on him by the ma- 
 jority of those that know. As in the son- 
 net that precedes this article and serves as 
 its text, he belongs to the class of "quiet 
 ministers," of "laborers that shall not fail 
 when man is gone." Even his type is rare, 
 apart from his individuality. There are many 
 classes and many temperaments in the great 
 vocation of the school-master, and there is 
 room for them, though the risks of failure 
 are so obvious that one wonders often at the 
 attraction which it exercises over the young 
 and ambitious. What is the subtle spell 
 that drives a man into the teaching profes- 
 sion, that invites him to pass his days among 
 the eternally immature, to forego the honors 
 and emoluments of life, and to accept cheer- 
 fully a social status in the world which, if 
 not secondary, is, at least, ambiguous? With- 
 out attempting to answer this general ques- 
 tion, we may say that the case was very 
 simple with Dr. Coit. He was early drawn 
 [128] 
 
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT 
 
 to the Christian ministry; his lot fell among 
 boys; and he devoted himself to his task as 
 being the first duty at hand. Putting duty 
 and sacrifice first, without worldly ambition, 
 without whims or hobbies, little affected with 
 the fever of diversion, he got his happiness 
 out of his work and his boys; and it was a 
 life of work from first to last. We are con- 
 fident that a just compensation rewards him 
 now, and that his great pedagogic heart finds 
 its rest in the satisfying presence of the 
 Supreme Head Master of all men. 
 
 [129] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
notice of Dr. Coit, which appeared in 
 - the Horae Scholasticae, March 8, 1895, is ap- 
 pended, not as a part of the Appreciation, 
 but rather for the purpose of adding a little 
 warmth to the colder generalizations of twenty 
 years later. The First Rector is now but a 
 name to a large number of the Alumni of 
 St. Paul's School, and yet as the virtual 
 creator of what is best in their Alma Mater, 
 he will always claim an interest, and no true 
 details of his life and death will be consid- 
 ered irrelevant. 
 
THE RECTOR 
 
 THE event in the history of St. Paul's School, 
 so long foreseen, so keenly apprehended, has 
 occurred: our Rector, in God's own time, has 
 been taken from us. There will come a day when 
 we shall look back and say that all was right, 
 that the end was glorious; that, spared a sever- 
 ance from his charge by long illness or gradual 
 decay of powers, he died fittingly, his work done, 
 the final impress given, his aspirations measurably 
 fulfilled; but to us now the sense of loss is over- 
 whelming; to us now Dr. Coit seems to have died 
 ten years too soon. 
 
 The alumni will be eager to learn something of 
 the details of the sad scenes through which we 
 have been passing, and the writer has been asked 
 to contribute this notice to the "Horse." It is 
 reassuring to him to feel that to write of Dr. 
 Coit to them is like writing a letter to personal 
 friends; their absorbing interest is as his own, 
 their grief qualified only by the tempering effects 
 which time and separation bring. The world at 
 large will never quite comprehend our feelings 
 toward the man who has just passed away, how he 
 
 [133] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 was to most St. Paul's boys their hero, their ideal 
 of what is best worth striving to be; and this 
 article, therefore, is written mainly for those who 
 knew and loved its subject, and who will see no 
 exaggeration in the warm appreciations of an 
 alumnus who may claim an intimate knowledge 
 of that about which he speaks. Fortunately, the 
 four weeks which have elapsed since the sad 
 events will afford some perspective, however 
 slight, and will enable him to. write more soberly 
 than would have been possible earlier. 
 
 When the school reopened after the Christmas 
 holidays, the Rector seemed to be in his usual 
 health. It is true he had taken no rest. While 
 others were off on their vacation, getting the 
 much-needed change and recreation, he still re- 
 mained at work, engaged in writing letters to 
 parents and attending to the multitude of school 
 details incidental to the closing of one term and 
 the beginning of another. It is said that he wrote 
 five hundred letters during the short three weeks. 
 But his work for the school was by no means his 
 only occupation. The vacation was his great op- 
 portunity for looking after the affairs of the neigh- 
 borhood, and this Christmas, as usual, he spent 
 
 [134] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 himself lavishly in behalf of the country people 
 who attended the Old Chapel, and of all who in 
 any capacity were connected with the school and 
 remained there during the holidays. He preached 
 on the Sundays, and at a special service the last 
 night of the year, when we are told that his ser- 
 mon was sad and depressing, treating of death as 
 though foreboding it. But notwithstanding this 
 poor preparation for the cares and labors of our 
 hardest term, he was bright and cheerful when we 
 came together, and no one had a misgiving as to 
 what was in store. 
 
 The boys returned to work on Wednesday, Jan- 
 uary 9. The Rector attended to all his duties 
 until the week begining January 20. On that 
 day he preached for the last time in chapel. 
 During the ensuing few days he became unwell, 
 and remained at the rectory, though not confined 
 to his bed. However, on St. Paul's Day, January 
 25, he occupied his stall in chapel, and it is a coin- 
 cidence that the anniversary of our patron saint 
 should have been the occasion of his last public 
 appearance in the place he loved so dearly. Only 
 once again did he set foot within its walls, and 
 this was at the early celebration of the Holy 
 Communion, upon the following Sunday, January 
 27, when he occupied a seat in the choir. But 
 this effort was too much for him, and, after com- 
 
 [135] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 municating, he was obliged to withdraw, making 
 his way all alone to the vestry, where he was 
 presently found in a fainting condition. On Mon- 
 day he revived somewhat, and insisted on going 
 over to his study in the schoolhouse for a few 
 hours, but he was worse at night, and it was 
 becoming evident that Dr. Coit was a very sick 
 man. He never left his bed after that night, 
 and, as the week went on, all the symptoms be- 
 came more unfavorable. His disease, a form of 
 influenza, developed into pneumonia, and was 
 pronounced such by Dr. George B. Shattuck, son 
 of the founder, on Saturday, February 2. His 
 enfeebled constitution could make but little resist- 
 ance to the deadliness of the attack, and in three 
 days all was over. The end came in the early 
 morning of Tuesday, February 5, at half past 
 three o'clock. 
 
 The morning of February 5, 1895, will never 
 be forgotten by any one who was a member of 
 the community of St. Paul's School on that 
 day. The blow fell like lightning out of a clear 
 sky. The short week's illness had prepared no 
 one for the catastrophe. The boys, especially, 
 had not realized in the least that their revered 
 master was in danger of death; so that when it 
 was whispered about in the various houses at 
 breakfast time that the Rector was dead, they 
 
 [136] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 were terribly shocked. They could not believe 
 it. As they filed into the dining-room of the 
 school, there was dead silence instead of the 
 usual murmur of voices. Who will forget the 
 Morning-Chapel that followed: the depressed air 
 of the boys; the look of mingled grief and con- 
 sternation on the faces of the masters; the hymn, 
 "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," not strong- voiced as 
 is wont, but feeble and timeless; the prayer for 
 a community in affliction; the vacant stall; the 
 extreme solemnity of the exit? Then came the 
 formal announcement by the Vice-Rector in the 
 big school-room. 
 
 As the days wore on towards the funeral, the 
 excitement was less, but the appreciation of what 
 had happened was more marked. A mass-meeting 
 was held by the boys in the auditorium, over 
 which Mr. Parker was asked to preside. Speeches 
 were made, and the resolutions which are pub- 
 lished elsewhere in this number of tfie "Horse" 
 were passed. Great feeling was manifested, and, 
 indeed, it may be said that throughout this trying 
 ordeal the record of the boys, on the whole, has 
 been what one would wish and what one would 
 expect; they have stood their test well. 
 
 The funeral took place on Friday, February 8. 
 The demonstration of feeling from the outside 
 world was so great, as evidenced by the great 
 
 [137] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 number of telegrams and letters, that careful 
 arrangements had to be made to receive a large 
 gathering of mourners. There were one hundred 
 and ten of the alumni present, including the resi- 
 dents, a remarkable number when one considers 
 that the greatest storm of the winter was raging. 
 A full account of this most impressive event is 
 given elsewhere. Owing to the storm, very few 
 of the boys were allowed to go to the cemetery, 
 but many of the alumni followed the carriages 
 through the deep snow on the Hopkinton road, 
 to be present at the last rites. The scene at the 
 grave was extraordinary. The school burial-place 
 lies on an eminence, and the rising ground afforded 
 no shelter against the elements, which were in a 
 tumult. The wind blew fiercely, the snow was 
 drifting heavily; it was a sort of riot like a storm 
 at sea. But there was something magnificent in 
 the ruggedness of it all, not altogether alien to the 
 great soul that had battled unceasingly for the 
 good while on the earth, and then, when sum- 
 moned, had austerely left it without regret and 
 without a word. Surely, this was to be no com- 
 mon burial. It seemed as though Nature were 
 herself taking part in so notable a funeral. 
 
 But the summer will come, with the green grass 
 and the leaves and flowers, and then it will be 
 seen that the spot where the Rector has been, laid 
 
 [138] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 to rest is beautiful, and in every respect appro- 
 priate. It overlooks the school, and commands a 
 lovely prospect of the chapel tower, which, so re- 
 cently built and dedicated to the memory of his 
 wife, had long been the object of his heart's de- 
 sire. That plot of ground, already hallowed by 
 tender memories to many at St. Paul's has now 
 become a sacred place, the shrine of St. Paul's 
 pilgrims, whither, for years to come, the old boys 
 will find their way, to gaze on the spot where 
 "the Doctor" lies. 
 
 II 
 
 When a memoir or life of Dr. Coit shall be 
 written, there will be much material connected 
 with his early life that will be of great interest as 
 showing the circumstances and influence which 
 were instrumental in developing his character. 
 Aside from the discipline of a pious and refined 
 home, and aside: from the stimulating effect of life 
 at College Point under the devout and imagi- 
 native Muhlenberg, there were public events 
 occurring in his youth which must have pro- 
 foundly stirred him. He was but twelve years 
 of age when Arnold died at Rugby, and fifteen at 
 the time of the secession of Newman and the 
 culmination of the Oxford movement. These 
 events, with all that they implied and the litera- 
 
 [139] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 ture which they evoked, The Christian Year, 
 Stanley's Life, the Oxford Tracts, Pusey's Ser- 
 mons, must have been among his earliest im- 
 pressions, and their influence may be easily traced 
 through the succeeding years. But there is no 
 opportunity now to enter upon this part of the 
 subject; it will be sufficient to give the main 
 facts of the Rector's life prior to the St. Paul's 
 School period. 
 
 Dr. Henry Augustus Coit was born January 20, 
 1830, at Wilmington, Del., where his father, the 
 late Rev. Joseph Rowland Coit, D.D., was rector 
 of St. Andrew's Church. In 1832 his family 
 went to Plattsburgh, N. Y., his father having 
 been elected rector of Trinity Church in that 
 city. There his youth was passed until his fif- 
 teenth year, when he was sent to the well-known 
 boarding-school at College Point, Flushing, L. I., 
 under Dr. Muhlenberg. In due course he went 
 to the University of Pennsylvania, but, his health 
 giving out, he spent a winter in the South, 
 chiefly in Georgia. On his return, he accepted 
 the position of assistant professor of the ancient 
 languages at St. James's College, Maryland. He 
 remained there about two years, and then, in 1851, 
 assumed charge of a large parish school under the 
 direction of Dr., afterwards Bishop, Bowman at 
 Lancaster, Pa. There he met Miss Mary Bowman 
 
 [140] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Wheeler, to whom he was subsequently married. 
 While at Lancaster, he was ordained Deacon by 
 Bishop Alonzo Potter, the ceremony taking place 
 at St. James's Church, Philadelphia. His ordina- 
 tion to the priesthood followed one year later, in 
 1854, in Plattsburgh, Bishop Horatio Potter offici- 
 ating. He was at this time serving efficiently as 
 missionary at Ellenburgh and Centreville, Clinton 
 County, N. Y., having recently left his charge at 
 Lancaster. Here he remained until, having been 
 invited by the Trustees of St. Paul's School to 
 become its Rector, he came to Concord, April 3, 
 1856. His marriage had taken place one week 
 earlier, March 27, in the Church of the Epiphany 
 at Philadelphia. 
 
 in 
 
 No attempt will be made here to present an 
 orderly or complete account of Dr. Coit's work 
 and character, or to estimate his place in Church 
 and country. One feels that in this school paper 
 a due reticence must be observed in regard to one 
 "to whom all personal praise was at once pain 
 and punishment." But we shall endeavor to 
 recall to the minds of the alumni those traits and 
 qualities which made him a power. 
 
 One of the most striking things in the multi- 
 tude of letters which have reached the school is 
 
 [141] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 the sense of personal loss that they indicate. 
 Although the great loss to the school is fully 
 understood, it is the personal note that prevails. 
 Every one feels that he has lost a friend, that a 
 great influence for good has been withdrawn from 
 his life. "He was the one man," writes one of 
 the most eminent of the alumni, "who had most 
 influenced me in life." Says another, "I rever- 
 enced him more than any man I ever knew." 
 No lapse of time, no association with other men, 
 seemed to alter their feelings toward him. And 
 now that he is gone, what a flood of recollec- 
 tions pours in upon the mind! How vividly 
 will be called up the old school days: the mani- 
 fold ways in which the Doctor's influence was 
 brought to bear upon them; the Thursday night 
 lectures, the Sunday evening hymn; the Confir- 
 mation class; the closing address of the year, 
 always strong and apposite; the Doctor's study, 
 the chapel, and, above all, the weekly sermons 
 in the Old Chapel! His influence was aston- 
 ishing. No boy ever escaped it. Why or how it 
 should be so, there might be difference of opinion, 
 but no one questioned the fact. If one were dis- 
 posed now to seek the explanation, several causes 
 suggest themselves at once. First of all, there 
 was his enthusiasm for goodness: here was a man 
 in whom there was no compromise with things 
 [142] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 base or low. Then there was his big, loving heart, 
 which always went out tenderly to the offender, 
 no matter how much it scorned the offence. Fi- 
 nally, there was an inflexibility and steadfastness 
 of will, which, in a world where vacillation is the 
 rule, not only controlled but upheld those with 
 whom he came in contact. Back of all these was 
 an indefinable something which colored everything 
 he did or said, a something which every one recog- 
 nized, and which gave the note of distinction to 
 the most trivial acts. His determination to aim 
 at the highest and never to be pulled down to the 
 world's standards had a bracing effect upon his 
 colleagues as well as upon the boys. To the latter 
 he was a sort of conscience; they could not face 
 him in a question of right and wrong. Indeed, his 
 old boys never wholly rid themselves of this feel- 
 ing, and it would be quite true to say that many 
 an alumnus has been deterred from visiting the 
 school when his course of life was such that he 
 could not safely brave an "interview with the 
 Doctor." 
 
 If one turns from his relations with individuals 
 to his administration of the school in general, his 
 marvellous power is equally apparent. His hand- 
 ling of the great charge committed to him might 
 fairly be called statesmanship. No one who has 
 never been connected with a great school can form 
 
 [143] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 any adequate conception of the labor, the un- 
 broken strain, the burden that devolves upon the 
 head master: he is the responsible person; he is 
 the one that can never afford to neglect anything 
 or any one, or to overlook the most insignificant 
 of the enormous mass of details. But Dr. Coit 
 was equal to all this. His patience and courage 
 seemed invincible. Never in a hurry, always calm, 
 alert against every emergency, he spent himself 
 unreservedly for those who were confided to his 
 care. And he was a very wise man. He knew 
 how to disregard things essentially trivial and 
 unimportant, and to concentrate his efforts upon 
 what was vital. In his dealings with masters 
 this was most noticeable. He did not condescend 
 to petty interference with their methods, and 
 rarely indulged in personal criticism; they had full 
 scope to succeed or fail. If he had to rebuke, he 
 had a unique power of veiling his censure under 
 some broad generalization, which, however, went 
 straight to its mark. Certainly, his method worked 
 well, and no head of a school ever had more de- 
 voted or loyal assistants. They felt that he really 
 cared for them, and that the bond between them 
 was not contingent upon success. The one thing 
 he demanded was a faithful discharge of duty, and 
 that, not merely for the interests of the school, 
 but on the broader ground of principle. His sym- 
 [144] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 pathy and great appreciativeness called forth what 
 was best in them. They knew that their efforts 
 and sacrifices for the good of St. Paul's were noted. 
 Indeed, it was a striking characteristic of this large 
 community of men and boys that no one felt that 
 he was merged in the crowd, or that he could 
 pursue his own way, either for good or evil, quite 
 unobserved. 
 
 The ethical quality in Dr. Coit's equipment was 
 so strong and dominating that one might be led, 
 especially at this time, to overlook the intellectual 
 side. But it is obvious that no man could have 
 been the power that he was without a powerful 
 understanding. It was the mind of genius, only 
 genius consecrated. For many years past he had 
 done but little teaching, owing to the stress of 
 other work, but in the early days of the school he 
 always took the higher classes in Latin and Greek. 
 Who, that had the privilege of reading Horace or 
 Homer under him, will ever forget those delight- 
 ful and stimulating lessons? He was a perfect 
 master of terse and happy translation. We used 
 to think that the rendering came from his lips in 
 iambic pentameters quite ready for the press. He 
 knew the standard classics through and through, 
 had absorbed them, and had that culture which 
 seems to come from nothing else so well as from 
 the study of the dead languages, and which is cer- 
 
 [145] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 tainly its best fruit. This culture was the founda- 
 tion of a literary instinct that rarely failed. His 
 judgments about books and literature were won- 
 derfully sound and penetrating. He hated trash. 
 No amount of public approbation could influence 
 his opinion about a book which seemed to him 
 worthless, especially if it was impure or irreligious. 
 In fact, the merely intellectual, when divorced 
 from the moral, had no interest for him; for him 
 impure art was always bad art, and to read a 
 vicious book for style, as people are sometimes 
 recommended to do, seemed to him absurd as well 
 as wrong. His own reading had been wide and 
 deep, and furnished material to an unusual faculty 
 of illustration. This appeared in his sermons and 
 addresses as well as in class work. The weekly 
 Thursday night talk to the boys, familiarly known 
 as the Rector's Lecture, was one of the most con- 
 spicuous examples of his masterly power of deal- 
 ing with the boys in a body. There was never 
 anything dull about it, but, whether the subject was 
 a general school topic, or else some special tendency 
 or abuse that needed correction, he brought to 
 bear all his wonderful discernment of boy character, 
 and pressed it home with a force of expresssion 
 always persuasive, often humorous, sometimes with 
 a keen and searching irony that was irresistible. 
 Old boys will agree with the writer that this 
 [146] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Thursday talk was a very important factor in 
 maintaining the tone and tradition of St. Paul's. 
 
 In speaking of his sermons, one is on different 
 ground. That he was a preacher of great spiritual 
 force could never be doubted by those who listened 
 to him Sunday after Sunday, whose hearts were 
 touched, and whose consciences were stimulated 
 by the words of beauty and power that fell from 
 his lips. We think he would have been a great 
 preacher, even in the world's opinion, had his lot 
 fallen in public places, with pastoral work his first 
 duty. As things were, it seems marvellous that he 
 found time to write sermons at all, when one 
 remembers his custom of preparing the Sunday 
 "instruction," as he would sometimes call it, on a 
 Saturday morning in his study, with the door wide 
 open, amid constant interruption from boys or 
 masters on school matters. 
 
 Indeed, he was rarely absent from his Study, for 
 he felt that it was the head master's duty to be at 
 the centre of his work and accessible to his boys at 
 all times. What wonder that forty years of such 
 toil, such routine, such patient threshing over of 
 the same matter with generation after generation 
 of strenuous youth, should at last wear him out! 
 Dr. Coit's premature death was a sacrifice to as 
 high a sense of duty, and to as consistent a fol- 
 lowing of it, as we have ever known. 
 
 [147] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 He will be remembered as the great School- 
 master. The parallel with Dr. Arnold is an obvi- 
 ous one, but the two men were, in most respects, 
 quite dissimilar. They were alike in this: they 
 had shown, each for his own country, the possi- 
 bility of herding large numbers of boys in 
 community life without the vicious and sordid 
 accompaniments that had hitherto been thought 
 necessary evils, and of inspiring a genuine religious 
 tone to the utmost extent that the undeveloped 
 nature of the young will admit. But Dr. Coit was 
 an imitator of no one, and it is an error to sup- 
 pose that he modelled St. Paul's School after any 
 English type. His educational ideas were not 
 novel; we should say that they were substantially 
 those that were held by most American educators 
 fifty years ago. Like all born leaders of men, he 
 had strong convictions; all questions were not 
 open ones to him, and among these questions one 
 he regarded as settled, namely, that the study 
 of the dead languages is the best and only basis 
 of a sound education. What was novel about 
 the school he created was the extraordinary tone 
 and the noble Christian traditions which his splen- 
 did genius inspired. Let no one say that a large 
 school cannot be kept comparatively free from 
 vice in all its forms, for St. Paul's men know that 
 it has been done. 
 
 [148] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 From his inner life we may not venture to re- 
 move the veil; this side of his character must be 
 left untold. It was apparent to all where lay the 
 true source of his wonderful power, whence came 
 both the sweetness and the strength; he literally 
 went from his knees to his work. In the last few 
 years, those who knew him best felt that, though 
 the energy and vigor were unimpaired, there was 
 a growing detachment from the things of this 
 world. His natural asceticism seemed to be inten- 
 sified. His love for literature and the classics was 
 waning, and a greater absorption than ever in the 
 Bible and works of devotion was noticeable. Even 
 his interest in the New Chapel, the completion of 
 which had been so gratifying to him, and the value 
 of which as an aid to true religion he so fully 
 appreciated, was that of one whose mind was 
 dwelling on "the story of the other side." Surely 
 his heart was half in the other world. We might 
 have fancied him lonely had we not known who 
 his Companion was. And so the end came; and, 
 as we return to the thought with which this notice 
 of the Rector was begun, let us assure ourselves 
 that his death is not really premature, but rather 
 the noble crown of a noble work, which, coming 
 thus suddenly, has thrown the flash-light upon the 
 preciousness of the life lived. And his memory is 
 no mere sentiment, but a mighty stimulus to per- 
 
 [149] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 severe, to be patient and wise and courageous in 
 carrying on the work which he began. 
 
 My Brethren of the Alumni, it rests with you, 
 as well as with us here, to see to it that this work 
 endures. 
 
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