Charles Carleton Coffin: War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman

Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. Author's spelling has been maintained.

C. Carleton Coffin.
Author of Matthew Calbraith Perry, Sir William Johnson, and Townsend Harris, First American Envoy to Japan.

Boston Estes and Lauriat 1898
Copyright, 1898 By Sallie R. Coffin
Colonial Press. Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U. S. A.
Dedicated to The Generation of Young People whom Carleton Helped to Educate for American Citizenship.
Among the million or more readers of Carleton's books, are some who will enjoy knowing about him as boy and man. Between condensed autobiography and biography, we have here, let us hope, a binocular, which will yield to the eye a stereoscopic picture, having the solidity and relief of ordinary vision.
Two facts may make one preface. Mrs. Coffin requested me, in a letter dated May 10, 1896, to outline the life and work of her late husband. Because, said she, you write in a condensed way that would please Mr. Coffin, and because you could see into Mr. Coffin's motives of life.
With such leisure and ability as one in the active pastorate, who preaches steadily to town and gown in a university town, could command, I have cut a cameo rather than chiselled a bust or statue. Many good friends, especially Dr. Edmund Carleton and Rev. H. A. Bridgman, have helped me. To them I herewith return warm thanks.