Edward Everett Hale.
Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, April 3, 1822, and after passing through the public schools entered the Boston Latin school. He was graduated from Harvard in 1839, and for two years acted as usher in the Latin school, studying theology in the meantime. On October 13, 1852, he married, at Hartford, Connecticut, Emily Baldwin Perkins. He has been a prominent promoter of Chautauqua circles and was the founder of the “Lend-a-Hand” clubs. He has probably traveled as much and delivered more lectures than any other man in this country. The fact that the catalogue of Harvard university lists more than one hundred and thirty titles of books and pamphlets on varied subjects of which he is the author shows how prolific has been his pen. Fiction, drama, narrative, poetry, theology, philosophy, politics—all are treated by him in a masterly way. He is never dull or common-place, but invariably suggestive and practical. One of his masterpieces is A Man Without a Country, which was written in war time. This story alone would have given him lasting fame. Yet it is not as an author, a great scholar, a great teacher, a great orator, or a great statesman that Dr. Hale will be remembered, but, as William Dean Howells has said, his name will go down in history as “a great American citizen.”