V.
ELECTRICITY AND JOURNALISM.
The modern age of electricity was ushered in during Mr. Coffin's early manhood. The telegraph, which has given the world a new nervous system, being less an invention than an evolution, had from the labors of Prof. Joseph Henry, in Albany, and of Wheatstone, of England, become, by Morse's invention of the dot-and-line alphabet, a far-off writer by which men could annihilate time and distance. One of the first to experiment with the new power—old as eternity, but only slowly revealed to man—was Carleton's brother-in-law, Prof. Moses G. Farmer, whose services to science have never yet been adequately set forth.
This inventor in 1851 invited Mr. Coffin to leave the farm temporarily, to construct a line of wire connecting the telegraphs of Boston with the Cambridge observatory, for the purpose of giving uniform time to the railroads. In this Carleton was so successful that, in the winter and spring of 1852, he was employed by Mr. Moses Farmer to construct the telegraph fire alarm, which had been invented by his brother-in-law. The work was completed in the month of May, and Charles Carleton Coffin gave the first alarm of fire ever transmitted by the electric apparatus. The system was a great curiosity, and many distinguished men of this country, and from Europe, especially from Russia and France, came to inspect its working.
Commodore Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy, who had returned from his brilliant expedition in Antarctic regions, but who had not yet made himself notorious by a capture of the Confederate commissioners, proposed to use this electric system in ascertaining the velocity of sound. Cannon were stationed at various points, the Navy Yard, Fort Constitution, South Boston, and at the Observatory, in front of which was an apparatus and telegraph connecting with the central office. Each cannon, when fired, heated the circuit. Each listener at the various points was to snap a circuit key the moment the sound reached him. In the central office was a chronograph which registered each discharge in succession. The distances from each cannon muzzle had been obtained by triangulation. In the calm, still night, Commodore Wilkes and Professor Farmer stood in the cupola of the State House with the chronograph, holding their watches, and noting the successive flashes.
The experiments were not very satisfactory. Mr. Coffin, perhaps, possibly, because he was not a skilled artillerist, had the mortifying experience of seeing the apparatus in front of his cannon blown into fragments, but he made notes of the other reports. After a series of trials, the approximate result was obtained, that in a moderately humid atmosphere the velocity of sound was a little under nine hundred feet per second.
The exactions of the fire alarm service, owing to its crude construction, which compelled the attendants to be ever on the alert, told severely on Carleton's' nervous system. He therefore resigned in October, and went to Cincinnati to get the system introduced there. Herds of hogs then roamed the streets, picking up their living around the grain houses, and in the gutters. After three weeks of exhibition and canvassing, he found that Cincinnati was not yet ready for such a novelty, and so he returned to Boston.
The following winter was passed in Boscawen without financially remunerative employment, but in earnest study, though in the spring a supply of money came pleasantly and unexpectedly. He undertook to negotiate a patent for an invention of Professor Farmer's, and after considerable time disposed of it to a New York gentleman. Carleton's net profits were $1,850.
This was an immense sum to him, and he once more resolved to try Boston, and did so. He made his home, however, in Malden, renting half of a small house on Washington Street. Having inked his pen on agricultural subjects, descriptive pieces, and even on a few poems, he took up newspaper work. Entering the office of the Boston Journal he worked without pay, giving the Journal three months' service in writing editorials, and reporting meetings. This was simply to educate himself as a journalist. At that time very few reporters were employed on the daily papers. What he says of this work had better be told in his own words:
"It was three months of hard study and work. I saw that what the public wanted was news in condensed form; that the day for stately editorials was passing away; that short statements and arguments, which went like an arrow straight to the mark, were what the public would be likely to read. I formed my style of writing with that in view. I avoided long sentences. I thought that I went too far in the other direction and clipped my sentences too short, and did not give sufficient ornamentation, but I determined to use words of Saxon rather than of Latin or Norman origin, to use 'begin,' instead of 'commence,' as stronger and more forcible.
"I selected the speeches of Webster, Lord Erskine, Burke, and other English writers, for careful analysis, but soon discarded Brougham and Burke. I derived great benefit from Erskine and Webster, for incisive and strong statement—also Shakespeare and Milton. At that time I read again and again the rhapsodies of Christopher North, Professor Wilson, and the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' and found great delight, also, in reading Bryant's poems.
"It was the period of white heat in the anti-slavery struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace—red hot—white hot—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that period. When men were feeling so intensely, and speaking with a force and earnestness unknown in these later years, a reporter would insensibly take on something of the spirit of the hour, otherwise his reports would be limp and lifeless. I was induced to study stenography, but the system then in use was complex and inadequate—hard to learn. I was informed by several stenographers that if I wanted a condensed report it would be far better to give the spirit, rather than attempt the letter."
During the summer of 1854, Mrs. Coffin being in poor health, they visited Saratoga together, passed several weeks at the Springs, and visited the battle-field where his grandfather, Eliphalet Kilborn, had fought. Carleton picked up a bullet just uncovered by the plow, and in that bright and beautiful summer's day the whole scene of 1777 came back before him. From the author's map in "Burgoyne's Defence," giving a meagre sketch of the battle, he was able to retrace the general lines of the American breastworks. This was the first of scores of careful study on the spot and reproduction in imagination of famous battles, which Carleton made and enjoyed during his life.
He was also present at the International Exhibition in New York, seeing, on the opening day, President Franklin Pierce and his Cabinet. The popular idol of the hour was General Winfield Scott, of an imposing personal appearance which was set off by a showy uniform. He was the hero of the two wars, and expected to be President. In personal vanity, in bravery, and in military science, Scott was without a superior, one of the ablest officers whose names adorn the long and brilliant roll of the United States regular army.
Carleton wrote of General Scott: "A man of great egotism, an able general, but who never had any chance of an election. He was the last candidate of a dying political party which never was aggressive and which was going down under the slave power, to which it had allied itself."
Mr. Coffin writes further: "The passage of the Compromise Measures of 1850 gave great offence to the radical wing of the anti-slavery party. The members of that wing were very bitter towards Daniel Webster for his part in its passage. I was heart and soul in sympathy with the grand idea of anti-slavery, but did not believe in fierce denunciation as the best argument. I did not like the compromise, and hated the odious fugitive slave law, but I nevertheless believed that Mr. Webster was sincere in his desire to avert impending trouble. I learned from Hon. G. W. Nesmith, of Franklin, president of the Northern railroad, that Mr. Webster felt very keenly the assaults upon him, and the manifest alienation of his old friends. Mr. Nesmith suggested that his old-time neighbors in Boscawen and Salisbury should send him a letter expressive
