and dedicated to the memory of his wife, had long
been the object of his heart's desire. 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 show-
ing the circumstances and influence which were
instrumental in developing his character. Aside
from the discipline of a pious and refined home.
APPENDIX 243
and aside from the stimulating effect of life at Col-
lege Point under the devout and imaginative Muh-
lenberg, there were public events occurring in his
youth which must have profoundly 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 im-
plied and the literature which they evoked, — The
Christian Year, Stanley's Life, the Oxford Tracts,
Pusey's Sermons, — must have been among his ear-
liest impressions, and their influence may be easily
traced through the succeeding years. But there is no
opportunity now to enter upon this part of the sub-
ject ; 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 Howland Coit, D. D., was
rector of St. Andrew's Church. In 1832 his fam-
ily went to Plattsburgh, N. Y., his father having
been elected rector of Trinity 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. I., under Dr.
Muhlenberg. In due course he went to the Univer-
sity 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
244 APPENDIX
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 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 ordination to the priesthood
followed one year later, in 1854, in Plattsburgh,
Bishop Horatio Potter officiating. 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 Trus-
tees 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.
Ill
No attempt will be made here to present an or-
derly 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.
APPENDIX 245
One of the most striking things in the multitude
of letters which have reached the school is 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 reverenced him more than any
man I ever knew." No lapse of time, no associa-
tion with other men, seemed to alter their feelings
toward him. And now that he is gone, what a
flood of recollections pours in upon the mind!
How vividly will be called up the old school days :
the manifold ways in which the Doctor's influence
was brought to bear upon them ; the Thursday
night lectures, the Sunday evening hymn ; the
Confirmation class ; the closing address of the
year, always strong and apposite ; the Doctor's
study, the chapel, and, above all, the weekly ser-
mons 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 base
or low. Then there was his big, loving heart, which
246 APPENDIX
always went out tenderly to the offender, no
matter how much it scorned the offense. Finally,
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 indefin-
able something which colored everything he did
or said, a something which every one recognized,
and which gave the note of distinction to the most
trivial acts. His detei-mination to aim at the high-
est 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 feeling, 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
marvelous power is equally apparent. His han-
dling of the great charge conmaitted to him might
fairly be called statesmanship. No one who has
never been connected with a great school can form
any adequate conception of the labor, the unbroken
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
APPENDIX 247
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 unre-
servedly for those who were confided to his care.
And he was a very wise man. He knew how to
disregard things essentially trivial and unimpor-
tant, and to concentrate his efforts upon what was
vital. In his dealings with masters this was most
noticeable. He did not condescend to petty inter-
ference 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 devoted or loyal
assistants. They felt that he really cared for them,
and that the bond between them was not contin-
gent 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 sympathy 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 com-
munity of men and boys that no one felt that he
was merged in the crowd, or that he could pursue
248 APPENDIX
his own way, either for good or evil, quite unob-
served.
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-
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
APPENDIX 249
the moral, had no interest for him; for him im-
pure art was always bad art, and to read a vicious
book for style, as people are sometimes recom-
mended 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 expression always persuasive, often humorous,
sometimes with a keen and searching irony that
was irresistible. Old boys will agree with the
writer that this Thursday talk was a very impor-
tant 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
250 APPENDIX
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 marvelous 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 follow-
ing of it, as we have ever known.
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 possibility
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,
APPENDIX 251
and it is an error to suppose that lie modeled St.
Paul's School after any English type. His educa-
tional 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 extraor-
dinary tone and the noble Christian traditions
which his splendid genius inspired. Let no one
say that a large school cannot be kept compara-
tively free from vice in all its forms, for St. Paul's
men know that it has been done.
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
252 APPENDIX
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-
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.
B. DR. HENRY A. COIT.
LETTER FROM THE REV. GEORGE WILLIAM DOUG-
LAS, D. D.; IN THE NEW YORK "EVENING
POST."
If any man in America deserved a public funeral,
it was the late rector of St. Paul's School. And yet
I cannot but feel that there was something singu-
larly appropriate in the privacy and loneliness with
\
APPENDIX 253
which, from sheer stress of weather, so far as
friends from a distance were concerned, his re-
mains were laid to rest. The three hundred school-
boys on the spot must, indeed, with their teachers,
have formed an imposing retinue at the burial ;
yet these were but a part of the vastly larger num-
ber that, under ordinary circumstances, would have
thronged about the bier. Very many of us older
boys found it to be simply impossible to reach Con-
cord in the blinding, drifting blizzard that pre-
vailed last Friday, blocking all roads and delaying
railway trains.
Nevertheless, as my mind goes back to the old
days when I was a schoolboy there, it seems, I say,
quite in keeping with the character of our dear
dead master, that his burial should be thus apart
and lonely, hidden by the snow. For was there
ever a great man who more instinctively shrank
from publicity than Dr. Coit? Never, from start
to finish, was it he that put himself forward ; it
was his work that thrust him into prominence.
Never once, in any way, did he advertise either
the school or himself. Nay, he recoiled from every-
thing that savored of notoriety with the simple
delicacy of a girl. He hated to show himself in
strange places, to speak or write in them. The only
place where he was thoroughly himself was at his
own school, among his own boys, — there he was
at home. It was his boys and under-masters, as
far and wide they scattered to their homes, that
254 APPENDIX
advertised him ; as St. Paul said of his disciples,
" Ye are my epistle."
There is hardly time, as yet, to measure Dr.
Coit's position among our great educators and
administrators, or to tell the whole story of his dis-
tinguished career. His high position is incontest-
able, — so great that we can only appreciate it
properly after the lapse of years, and by contrast
with others who have worked in the same field.
Just now, in the shock of his unexpected death, his
old boys dwell naturally upon the more distinct-
ively spiritual aspects of his character. I find
recurring again and again to my memory a verse
of the Psalmist : " They shall go from strength to
strength, until unto the God of gods appeareth
every one of them in Sion." This was one of his
favorite texts. As my mind runs back to the little
chapel, — the first one of the earliest days, — I
recollect how that text used to crop out again and
again in his sermons. I did not care much for ser-
mons in those days, but somehow there was hardly
ever a Sunday, if "the Doctor" preached, that
some sentence of his did not fasten on me. Though
he often repeated himself, the connections of his
thought were so various and suggestive that I did
not find the repetitions tiresome ; and I well re-
member how surprised and interested I used to be
when Sunday after Sunday this same text would
once more slip into his thoughts : " They shall go
from strength to strength." This was the very
APPENDIX 255
thinjr that he wanted us to do : it was what he had
done himself.
Beginning with the three boys in the carriage
that brought him to Dr. Sbattuck's country-house,
bit by bit, he had built up that great school, and
had built up himself with it, — himself the stronger
as his school waxed strong, — all the poetry and
the sentiment of his rarely gifted nature broaden-
ing down into the fine virility of the tested man.
We used to think him narrow sometimes, but I am
not sure that, as we ourselves grow older, we are
not coming to perceive that what we then esteemed
" narrowness " was ultimate truth of insight. It is
not given to many men to be thoroughly religious
from the outset to the end of their lives. The heart
of most men roams restlessly for a long time before
it rests at last in God. But Dr. Coit was religious
always. There was no humbug about him. That
is why he had such power over us, in spite of our-
selves. From class-room and playground to the
Thursday evening talks and the daily chapel, that
is the sort of a man he was, — the religious man.
Here, in very truth, was a man who was " alive
unto God." It seemed as if he never opened a
book, nor touched a topic, nor met a boy or man,
without having " God in all his thoughts." And
somehow he never bored us. Other men bored us
boys with their religiousness, but " the Doctor "
never did. Rather, it appeared as if he had merely
gotten on ahead of us, and that very likely we
256 APPENDIX
should try to catch up with him by and by. The
pathos, the beauty, the risks, the awfulness and the
joy, the prospects and the power of the sincere
religious life of the human soul, — they have been
realized in our lifetime by this man whom we have
known, whom we have called our master. It rests
with us to follow, or to repudiate, the " secret of
Jesus," for which he lived and died. This, I think,
is the final impression which every St. Paul's boy,
whether of the older time or to-day, has derived
from intercourse with that great schoolmaster
whose earthly remains were laid to rest last Fri-
day, in the pure New Hampshire snows.
Tuxedo Park, N. Y., February 9, 1895.
LETTER FROM A BOSTON ALUMNUS IN THE " TRAN-
SCRIPT," FEBRUARY 12.
We are accustomed to accept without reserve
the statement that the formation of character
should be the chief end of all education, but it is
seldom that we apply this test in estimating the
value of the work of an individual teacher. It is
by this test, however, that the life just ended at
St. Paul's School must find its true measure ; and
judged by this standard the name of Henry A.
Coit will be remembered as one of the great edu-
cators of our time, long after distinctions based on
mere methods of instruction and discipline have
lost the importance now attributed to them.
APPENDIX 257
There are scholars still remaining to whom the
classics are something more than the means of pur-
suing philological research, there are other preach-
ers of equal eloquence and earnestness, and there
are men who can follow the onward moving thought
of the times with better success than he, who found
in the past so much to reverence and love. There
will, however, be found no leader with equal power
to make the idea of obedience to his Master seem
no mere religious platitude, but the actual motive
and inspiration for the everyday life of a whole
working community.
St. Paul's School drew its pupils from all parts
of the Union ; its alumni are scattered over a still
wider field. Wherever the news of Dr. Coit's
death shall reach one of these men it will bring
sorrow that seldom comes save at the loss of a
parent. Each man will feel the loss of one to whom
he, as a boy, was no mere object for routine instruc-
tion, but a living soul to be loved and saved, of one
to whom he could send back no good news without
giving pleasure and no ill news without giving
pain.
The great school that he built may seem to the
world the chief evidence of his ability, but to these
old boys the stamp of his character set on their
lives and enduring unchanged amid the passing
influences of later years will be the great proof of
his worth as servant of God and leader of men.
258 APPENDIX
C. A GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL-
MASTER
EDITORIAL FROM "THE CHURCHMAN"
The character of the useful and successful school-
master in England has been a tradition for years,
as so many things are traditions where office and
character descend in the grooves of precedent and
prescription. Arnold, Thring, Farrar, are in their
different ways examples of great teachers of boys,
and guardians of children. But each of these men
was supported in his work by a vast accumulation
of experience, by all the force of a local tradition ;
by the prestige which clings to such names as
Rugby, and by a definite idea of what the Church
and the Universities expected them to do. They
were backed by the pride of the English upper
classes, and by the memory of that reputation
which the English public school had hitherto made,
and must maintain in the " schools " at Oxford and
Cambridge. The great public schools in England
are unique among the educational institutions
of the Eastern world. Yet they have sometimes
been considered narrow, exclusive, and opposed
to modern intellectual progress. Most great Eng-
lish jurists, statesmen, and soldiers have played
in the playgrounds of these ancient foundations.
They have been the early nurturers in religion and
learning of great ecclesiastics. Any one, however.
APPENDIX 259
who crosses the Atlantic for the purpose of visiting
Eton or Winchester will find in the life and usages
of these scliools something strangely antiquated.
Even the best of English public schools could not
bear transplantation to the atmosphere of New
England. Yet America has as high an appreciation
for noble, manly life, for religion, learning, and
manners as is found on the shores of the mother
country.
How to cherish this manly life, this religion and
learning, apart from the encumbering traditions of
an older society, was the problem which had pre-
sented itself to those who favored high education
for boys in the years before the late Henry A. Coit
undertook the founding of St. Paul's School, Con-
cord, in 1856. For from this year is dated the
arrival of the American " public school " as an
institution which rivals in success and usefulness
even the venerable foundations of Wykham and
Edward VI. In art, imitation is a confession of
weakness ; in all educational methods, mere imita-