American littérateur, born March 31, 1837, at Troy, NY; was graduated from Hobart College, New York, in 1857; studied for two years at the Alexandria Theological Seminary, in Virginia. In 1861 he took orders in the Episcopal Church, and from then until 1870 had charge of churches in Bridgeport, CT, and Philadelphia, and of Grace Church at Providence, RI. He was professor of English literature and history in the University of Kansas till 1874, when that institution conferred on him the doctorate of divinity. He then returned to Philadelphia as the rector of one of his former parishes. He was a founder and the first secretary of the Philadelphia Charity Organization Society, in 1878. In 1880 he removed to Vineland, NJ, abandoning the ministry for literary pursuits. He was on the editorial staff of the Providence Evening Press, the Philadelphia Press, and a contributor to the Penn Monthly, the American (Philadelphia), and the Atlantic Monthly, and other periodicals. He was on the editorial staff of the Standard Dictionary, and the compiler of an index to the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., and the editor of the Supplements to the Werner and Sommerville editions of the same Encyclopædia.
