C. C. HINE AND HIS TIMES.
This second part is intended to cover as well as may be the period of time beginning with the opening of Woodside as a residence section. During these years Mr. Charles Cole Hine took such an active interest in the welfare of the neighborhood and was so wrapped up in and identified with its best interests that its history is his biography, consequently I feel that it will be proper to give here a brief outline of his life previous to the year 1867, when he settled in Woodside.
When women could lift their little children up to “take a last look at the best friend they ever had”, as was done while the people passed by the coffin of Mr. Hine as it lay in the church, such as did not come in direct contact with the man may to some extent understand what a feeling of love he inspired in those who knew him.
For me he had a living reality that death has never removed; it was years before I could accept the situation. Concerning no one else have I ever had the same feeling. Death has removed others and I have accepted the condition as final, but for a long period after the death of my father I had a feeling amounting to momentary conviction that he had opened the office door and was coming toward me, and have looked up from my desk many a time to welcome him. This could not have been a matter of local association, for I was occupying an office which he never saw. What it was I do not know.
“Thy voice is on the rolling air,
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.”