American clergyman and author, born at Oswego, IL, on the 7th of June 1857. He was educated at Princeton (A.B. 1874), Union Theological Seminary (1874–77), and the Harvard Divinity School (1881–82). Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1877 he was a pastor in Nebraska, Nevada, and California (1877–81). He became a Unitarian minister in 1882, called to Brattleboro, VT (1882–86), St. Paul, MN (1886–94), and Cambridge, MA (since 1894). An inspiring preacher and a very popular public speaker, he won a still wider audience by his essays, which recall the quaint humour of Charles Lamb.
Among his best known volumes are the following: The Gentle Reader (1903); The Understanding Heart (1903); The Pardoner’s Wallet (1905); The Endless Life (1905); By the Christmas Fire (1908); Oliver Wendell Holmes and His fellow Boarders (1909); Among Friends (1910); Humanly Speaking (1912); Three Lords of Destiny (1913); Meditations on Votes for Women (1914) and Pleasures of an Absentee Landlord (1916). See also “Free Trade vs. Protection in Literature.”
