io6
��Char/cs Carle/on Coffin.
��departure from Verona and Venice and was an opening in the lecture field and the Italians assume jiossession of those f(jr several years he was one of the pop- cities. Upon the entrance of Victor ular lecturers before lyceums. In 1S69 Emanuel to Venice he enjoyed excep- he i)ublished Our New Way Round the tional facihties for witnessing the World, {o\\o\\(t(\\)y \\-\(t Scat of Empire, festivities. Caleb Crinkle (a story ) Boys of 76, He was present at the coronation of Story of Liberty, Old Times in the Colo- the Emperor and Emjiress of Austria, nies. Building the Nation, Life of Gar- as King and Queen of Hungary, /r/^/, besides a history of his native town.
��Through the courtesy of Mr. Motley, then Minister to Austria, he received from the Prime Minister of the em- pire every facility for witnessing the ceremonies.
��His volumes have been received with marked favor. No less than fifty co!)ies of the Boys of 'j6 are in the Boston Public Library and all in constant use.
Mr. Coffin has given many addresses
��At Pesth he made the acquaintance of before teacher's associations, and a
Francis Deak, the celebrated statesman course of lectures before the Lowell
— the John Bright of Hungary ; also, of Institute. During the winter of 1878-9
ArminiusVambrey, the celebrated Orien- a movement was made by the Western
tal traveller. grangers to bring about a radical change
At Berlin he had the good fortune in the patent laws. Mr. Cothn appeared
to see the Emperor William, the Crown before the Committee of Congress and
Prince, Bismarck, Van Molike, the for- presented an address so convincing,
mer and the present Czar of Russia, and that the Committee ordered its
Gortschakoff, the great diplomatist of i)ublication. It has been frecjuently
Russia, in one grouj). The letters written quoted u])on the floor of Congress
from Europe were upon the great events and highly commended by the ])resent
of the hour, together with graphic de- Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Lamar,
scriptions of the hfe of the common Mr. Coffin also appeared before the
people. Committee on Labor, and made an ar-
After spending a year and a half in gument on the " Forces of Nature as Europe, Mr. Coffin visited Greece, Tur- Affecting Society," which won high en- key, Syria, Palestine, Lgyj)t, sailing comiums from the committee, and which thence down the Red sea to Bombay, was ordered to be printed. The honor- travelled across India to the valley of ary degree of A. M. was conferred u])oa the Ganges, before the com])lelion of Mr. Coffin in 1870, by Amherst College, the railroad, visiting Allahabad, Benares, He is a member of the New England Calcutta, sailing thence to Singapore. Historical and Genealogical Society, and Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai. As- he gave the address \\\)0\\ the one hun- cending the Yang-tse six hundred dred and fiftieth anniversary of the set- miles to AVuchang ; the governor of tlement of his native town. He is the province invited him to a dinner, a resitlent of Boston, and was a From Shanghai he sailed to Jajjan, e.K- member of the Legislature for 1884, periencing a fearful typhoon upon the member of the Committee on Eiluca- passage. Civil war in Japan prevented lion, and reported the bill for free text- his travelling in that country, and he books. He was also member of the
��sailed for San Francisco, visiting ])oints of interest in California, and in Novem- ber made his way across the country seven hundred miles — riding five con- secutive days and nights between the ter- miniKS of the Central Pacific road at Wadsworth and Salt Lake, arriving in Boston, January, 1869, after an absence of two and a half years. Dn.ing that jier- iod the Boston Journal cuutamed every week a letter from his pen.
For one who had seen so much there
��Committee on Civil Service, and was ac- tive in his efforts to secure the jmssage of the bill. He is a member of the present Legislature, Chairman of the Committee on the Licpior Law, and of the special committee for a Metropoli- tan Police for the city of Boston. Mr. Coffin's i)en is never idle. He is giving his present time to a study of the late war, and is preparing a history of that mighty struggle for the preservation of the government of the people.
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