"Do you know 'Bob' Collyer, sir?" familiarly inquired one Sunday evening passenger of another in a North Side Chicago street-car a few years since. The querist was an animated countryman spending the Sabbath in the city; and, reckless how the rest of the day spun through his fingers, at the hour of worship he was on the zealous hunt for religious curiosities. He recognized the garb and air of the city about his fellow-passenger, and inferred that he, of course, would know something of Mr. Collyer.

"F. P." turned his head and eyed the stranger, with a grain of astonishment; for Western absence of formality does not extend to familiarity between strangers in Chicago street-cars-not as a common luxury, at least. Still, he slowly replied, "Oh, y e-s; I know 'Bob' p-r-e-t-t-y well."

"Heard him preach, I s'pose?"

"Y-e-s, quite a number of times. My family have a pew in his church." "W-e-ll, mister, please, what do you think of him?" pursued the pump-handle.. "Think of him! Humph! Not so much as some folks profess to. Still, I don't wish to say anything against him. He's always been kind to my wife and children. He's a pretty fair sort of preacher, too, after all; and he behaves himself through the week like a gentleman, never getting drunk nor into jail."

"Anyhow," concluded the stranger, "I'm going to hear him to-night. I've been told such. great things of him, as the chap who quit shoeing horses to go a-preaching, that, seeing I'm in town. over Sunday, I'll try him on."

Town and Country stepped from the Clark street car together, crossed the little open park at the east, and entered Unity Church. The one was seated by the usher. The other, now becoming broad with ill-concealed merriment, took his rolling gait to the end of the aisle, and helped himself to the wide-armed, high-backed pulpit chair.

The countryman heard "Bob" Collyer, and stopped at the close to say he liked him; and the jovial Robert will tell you the story with a relish for two.

Not long before he left Chicago, I asked him why his name had no "handle." He replied that no school had ever been rash enough to "handle" him, and he didn't know as he should submit to the weld, if one made him a tender of the theological trinket. He is no "doctor"; but he is "Robert Collyer," the manner in which he is commonly spoken of, and is popularly addressed as "Mr. Collyer." He cares not to run away from the phrase of plain people. He is not displeased to know even that the unreverential often refer to him as "Bob."

If Robert Collyer shall have a place in history, it will be as the leading Unitarian divine of Chicago and the West through a score of years. He began there when the city was comparatively small ('58), and he was but the seed of his present self. The two grew together, and each filled a large space in public importance. His career is identified with hers. He cannot so graft himself upon New York and the East. He was more than the pastor of Unity Church; he was a distinguished citizen of Chicago, alive to aid her every good interest. Why did he leave the West? In a more than orthodox confession at parting, he said that he was in search of a new people to preach old sermons to. But to the observant about him there appeared a desire to be where he had no past for unfavorable comparison with the present. No man enjoys the wane, like the crescent, of fame. Events had combined to advertise local "stars" of later rising as shedding a brighter light, and he lost the transient, stranger throng, which is always enthusiastic before a popular pulpit-a source of cheer that he seemed to deeply miss, as would any man of large heart.

Come back with me two or three years to see if some symptoms of loss do not appear. As I look

listen to accents so like some grand woman's, am enrapt with sacred solos, and watch an Indiansummer sun project through the window scenes down upon the people, I wonder that not all these inviting pews have even fair-day friends. For, of the sixteen hundred sittings, it is very generous to say that half are in use. Yet, five and ten years earlier his lines of Sabbath carriages were uniformly the longest, and his aisles occupied. Was something of this change the preacher's mistake ? Many of his parishioners felt thus. They said they lost appetite for stale sermons. And, indeed, the honest gentleman told the writer as no secret, that his habit was to compose but one sermon weekly, culling for the evening from what he thought "forgotten lore." But his steady-goers murmured that, having once heard his work, they forgot it "nevermore.

Let us call upon Mr. Collyer in the elegant and home-like home he had in Chicago. There he is unique, if not peerless, as husband, father, host. We meet a man of splendid frame, one that might still lay hammer to hot iron and not weary, full in breast and broad in shoulder, tall enough, and strong of limb, innocent of a day's sickness, ignorant of a stomach, yet a modest consumer, though scaling two hundred and forty. In the closelyshaven face of ruddy-brown hue sit princely good nature and great heart. We need not watch for these benisons there; the face is their perpetual playground. Keen, but kindly, blue eyes look quickly through surrounding men and things, exposing the soul that is loving toward all that is lovely, and tolerant toward much that is not. Speaking of his nine children, he explains that four of them are awaiting him in heaven. He is early up and early in bed. He frolics with the little folks, is social with all who know him, is a Samson in conversation with a few friends, and the life and digestion of the dinner-party.

He delights in a specially pleasant Sunday dinner, graced with a congenial guest or two. To such he once invited Lawrence Barrett and several members of the Chicago press. The ladies sought to so lay the plates that the strangers should each be flanked by members of the family. Returning from church an hour before his friends arrived, Mr. Collyer was led into the dining-room and instructed in the sandwiching plan. And to assist his local memory of men and china that he might

not mis-seat the company, bits of paper bearing their names were laid by the plates. Like an overgrown school-boy, he stood and took his task in silence. But no sooner was the company comfortably seated than he very innocently remarked:

"If any of you find a slip of paper by your plate with your name on, it doesn't mean any thing; it's not a handwriting on the wall; but the ladies love to see your name in writing."

The gentlemen kept in countenance as the solemn false-face put on by their host left them to doubt if he spoke jest or fact; for the mnemonic slips had, of course, been removed. But some of the ladies blushed, and then the guests began to feel awkward indeed. The host couldn't hold the strings longer; he tore off his mask with a laugh. Everybody felt better, but the strangers looked still as if there was an uncracked conundrum in the room. Then the host recounted the the table drill he had been put through as the poor fellow not master in his own castle. This gave license to the ladies' tongues, and they mercilessly told of his table blunders till he appealed te his guests for pity and protection. After the social ice was thus shattered, all that was mental melted, and everybody felt at home. This is one of Mr. Collyer's ways. Subsequently, Mr. Barrett remarked, "I'd rather be guest to Collyer than to the king."

His home by the lake gave its latch-key to all intimates to come and go at pleasure. All traveling Englishmen of note called upon him, as well as many curious or admiring Americans; and few declined to break bread with him. Fully three hundred days of the year his house gave hospitality to passing friends.

Suppose, now, we walk back to Unity Church to see and hear Robert Collyer through with the thirty-minute sermon we lately saw him opening. He begins worship with the prayer of the Son to the Father, and his first soprano follows his sermon with the same in song. His original prayer is His original prayer is addressed wholly to the Father, and is the affectionate, familiar request of child to parent. But when he reads the Bible I am surprised that he gets so little out of it; that he makes the Word of the Father so small a factor in ninety minutes of worship. For he hurries carelessly through the chapter like a boy in grammar school. This is the only unpalatable cutlet he hands down to the

pew. It is garnished with no sprig of rhetoric or of reverence.

I say this kindly, and not with harshness; for runs not his caution thus: "Do me modestly, and tie a napkin over no fault"? I take him at his word. He who cannot be so taken is not great.

In prayer his right hand grips the edge of the desk, while his left toys with one corner of the open Bible. He speaks upward, his face beams, and the rapid swaying of his body, coupled with his countenance of hope, suggests a sort of lovewrestle with the Lord.

His sermon, Mr. Collyer reads with an enthusiasm all his own. It is now that, in the pulpit, he is best, and uses to an advantage that is fascinating just a sweet hint of that rude dialect of Yorkshire his tongue was born to. Save in haste, his voice swells out full and smooth. His gestures from the shoulder are few and heavy, with arms bent and hands clenched-the habit of the hammer still upon them. But with his head and complete person he beats very regular time, standing and swinging upon one predestined little flower in the carpet. His eyes vibrate rapidly between paper and people. His utterance quickens. His perennial smile in speech illuminates him. He leans over the desk, throwing hasty glances hither and thither, till each listener thinks he is personally spoken to. And I epitomize his pulpit manners as those of the enthusiast favoring a group of friends with a good story.

Mr. Collyer's discourse is very pleasant entertainment; but it is not supreme preaching. In it is much of heart, but little of the heroic. It is an array of bright banners and burnished steel on peace parade, not the resolute column men follow in the battle of life. Men are not inspired by it, and their Enemy takes his ease under its wing. He does the agreeable of oratory well, but will his client get the verdict? His spirit is as gay and glad as the affianced maiden's, becoming the bridal more than the burial-the aurora rather than the sunset of life. His discourse is fragrant with flowers wild and tame, plucked from many arts and a wide range in literature; it showers you with the incense of a rare personal presence, a vocal charm, wit and anecdote in profusion; and, at Unity, it was bracketed between anthems worthy of an hour's walk in a storm. But it deals lightly in logic and the unpleasant truths of Scripture; it does not convict you of mistakes, nor

start you on campaigns in original thought; it does not fertilize your fallow moral spots. It is too loyal to things as they are. Amid pansies and poetry of its strewing, it finds the present a garden so full of satisfaction that to look beyond looks idle. It is wise to keep the Commandments; but then God is good-all goodness; he is your Father; don't trouble yourself about your future state; He will care for you then; He loves you too much to bolt the door against you forever. Thus, Mr. Collyer. Indeed, he privately assures me that he has but one theme-the Fatherhood of God; that he finds all religious else growing from this root; and that its interpretation to men is the one aim of his teaching.

"Give God that service," says he, "which gladdens you most. If my best friend thinks he can be happier with worshiping in yonder Romish cathedral than here, I will give him hearty benediction at parting."

"What is your age, please, Mr. Collyer?" "Guess me."

"Fifty-seven next birthday. But some guess me sixty-five or over; and then my Yorkshire metal is edged, for, though a grandfather, I am still a boy."

Nor is his full, fresh, frank, smooth face wholly unlike a well-fed boy's at twelve. And good health's thick aftermath of iron-gray that covers his large head is left long and much to itself— another mark of boyhood, perhaps.

You would hardly think him bashful. But he says blushing at trifles and before beauty was the plague of his young life. And now he is diffident, shrinking from strange surroundings and dreading surprises. At such moments he is likely to say, or do, the most untimely and awkward things. And this explains conduct sometimes unaccountable and even painful to all but intimates.

The year before the great fire his people accorded himself and wife a long vacation for a visit to England. On the evening before their departure a farewell gathering filled the church parlors. Suddenly, in the midst of pleasant social chat, the ubiquitous church committee confronted them with grave formality of words and elegant gifts to each.

"How will Mr. Collyer get out of this?" thought a bystander, who knew his weakness.

He stood blushing, hunching his shoulders and

griping his embarrassment with both hands, a most unlikely-looking selection for a great man. A response redolent of thanks was anticipated. But this was all: "If wife likes it, it's all right.”

It was that, or play the baby and break down trying to say more, he afterward intimated. At such times his extreme sensibility, his womanly delicacy of feeling, unmans him; and as he does something ridiculous, people think he might do very much better. Hence, some of his blunt, harsh words that wound.

But come into Mr. Collyer's study, please, and chat with him a moment among his books. It is aloft in the church, large, light, and its appointings pleasant. Here, I think, was the finest collection clerical in the Garden City, though his father's library could muster but four books. Many of his volumes are brands from the burning in '71, having been hustled from the study to the park opposite. Their charred bindings he touches affectionately, remarking, "I will never have these old friends rebound; I wish them to fall to the children in their old, scorched clothes. Their theology has repelled fire well." And then he adds, "The books I read for love, I keep at home."

It is Thursday morning, and he has but now begun turning soul and ink into sermon. But he smiles at interruption, brushes aside the moist. pages and assumes neither acidity nor greatness. Here he sits, tilted back in his easy-chair, a plain, hearty, genial, happy man, smoking a fragrant cigar, and wearing a salt and pepper coat that looks as if it had kept his books company through the fire.

Sometimes he dictates his sermon to an amanuensis. And if he tires in the midst of composition, he has that Napoleonic command of his nerves whereby, dropping upon a sofa, he falls asleep to order, and, twenty minutes later, comes up fresh as the morning-glory.

Mounted before a window is the oddest-looking bit of library bric-a-brac you would care to seethe large, two-horned anvil, whereat, for twelve years, worked young Robert Collyer, the village blacksmith of Ilkley, England. Yes, it does look queer; but it's a piece of the man. One of his Chicago parishioners paid a visit to the old shop, and paid two new anvils for the old one. Its conspicuous presence among his books marks the man's iron love for things, as well as persons, that

Mr. Collyer reads much; and much of his reading is fiction. Among the philosophers, he cultivates a few pets, especially Mr. Emerson. On nationality of authors, he prefers American. He says they are bolder, challenge you to dare think for yourself; their spirit is more prophetic, sculpturing the future into form, not forever whitewashing the tombstone of the past; not so tied to old institutions as are the Germans; not so careful as the English of what the Reviews may say. He has himself planted several modest slips of authorship; but they give no sign of coming great cedars. Rather are they little evergreens beside life's every-day garden-walk.

"Mr. Collyer, will you tell me why you dropped Wesley's hand to take Channing's?"

"Well," says he, "a little, great woman, and the African, had much to do with my swapping workshops; that is, Lucretia Mott and the slave. Two years in England I had been a Methodist local preacher, and the same eight or nine years in this country, working in the hammer factory near Philadelphia through the week, and speaking religiously to the people on Sunday. I preached because I loved the cause, not for money. I think all I ever received as a Methodist preacher aggregated $7.50. Mrs. Mott lived near by. She came to hear me preach; she came into our little lyceum and spoke for emancipation. I thought her grand, and I grew in favor with her; I was made the welcome guest of herself and husband. We talked much on the nature of the atonement and future punishment. I came into new views of these great issues. But as I became also a convert to immediate emancipation, perhaps half the motive to change was that I was ashamed and confounded, in those years just before the war, that my Methodist desk was not high enough for sermons against slavery and for liberty, but that the Unitarian was. I thought Christ stood beside the slave, and I turned toward that light."

"But you do not cherish cruel thoughts toward your early pulpit home?"

His response, done in his mellow Yorkshire, falls on my ear as quaint and very beautiful: "If I were not married to my wife, I would go back and live with my mother."

Soon after his second conversion, the kindly commendations of Dr. Furness prevailed upon

Chicago in charge of Western mission interests. He organized Unity Church with seven members and the people heard him gladly."

They so heard him for a long time, many always. But some will tell you that in his later ministry he became too much a law unto himself, shunning advice, though bent on giving it; that he insisted on the luxury of finding fault as an exclusive perquisite of the pulpit.

And this lies close to his counsel at the recent installation of his Chicago successor. His part was "the charge to the people," and he said: "If you have fault to find with your pastor, do not tell him on Monday, for then he is blue; nor on Tuesday, for then he is pulling out; nor on Wednesday, for then he is getting ready for his sermon; nor on Thursday, for then he is writing it; nor on Friday, for then he is finishing it; nor on Saturday, for then he is getting ready for Sunday. And if you don't tell him before Saturday night, you'll not tell him at all."

On that occasion, too, he seemed to give complexion to the theory of the querulous that he is prone to privately disappointing people-accepting invitations to parties, then failing to appear.

The installation occurred on Wednesday evening. Mr. Collyer then announced that on Thursday evening a reception would be given in the church, that he wanted to see everybody, and that all Unitarians in the city were invited. Many went miles to meet him; but at 3 P.M. of Thursday, with no apparent cause, he took the train for New York, and, if he had any apology, carried it with him.

He often drops thoughtless remarks that hurt some friend. Always manifesting in the pulpit a deep anxiety for those who are absent, a faithful attendant, who missed a Sunday, met his pastor on Monday and began: "Brother Collyer, I wasn't at church yesterday"-and was about to tell him why, when Mr. Collyer broke in with, "Who cares!"' A year later the two were discussing empty pews, and the layman said, "Well, I don't care whether folks go to church or not, since you told me you didn't care when I was absent."

"Did I say that ?" "Of course you did.”

"I didn't know it; but if I said it I ought to be whipped."