At one of the later meetings of the Board, at Rutland, Vermont, the Japanese student Neesima pleaded effectually that a university be founded, the history of which, under the name of the One Endeavor, or Doshisha, is well known. In the same year that Neesima was graduated from Amherst College, Carleton received from this institution the honorary degree of Master of Arts. Carleton could turn his nimble pen to rhyme, when his friends required verses, and best when his own emotions struggled for utterance in poetry. Several very creditable hymns were composed for anniversary occasions and for the Easter Festivals of Shawmut Church. Indeed, the first money ever paid him by a publisher was for a poem,--"The Old Man's Meditations," which was copied into "Littell's Living Age." The pre-natal life, birth, and growth of this first-born child of Carleton's brain and heart, which inherited a "double portion," in both fame and pelf, is worth noting. In 1852, an aged uncle of Mrs. Coffin, who dwelt in thoughts that had not yet become the commonplace property of our day, being at home in the immensities of geology and the infinities of astronomy, made a visit to the home in Boscawen, spending some days. Carleton was richly fed in spirit, and, conceiving the idea of the poem, on going out to plough, put paper and pencil in his pocket. As he thought out line upon line, or stanza by stanza, he penned each in open air. At the end of the furrow, or even in the middle of it, he would stop his team, lay the paper on the back of the oxen, and write down the thought or line. Finished at home in the evenings, the poem was read to a friend, who persuaded the author to test its editorial and mercantile value. "I shall never forget," wrote Mrs. Coffin, October 13, 1896, "with what joy he came to me and showed me the poetry in the magazine, and a check for $5.00." The last three stanzas are: "He sails once more the sea of years So wide and vast and deep! He lives anew old hopes and fears-- Sweet tales of love again he hears, While flow afresh the scalding tears, For one long since asleep. "He sees the wrecks upon the shore, And everything is drear; The rolling waves around him roar, The angry clouds their torrents pour, His friends are gone forevermore, And he alone is here. "Yet through the gloom of gathering night, A glory from afar Streams ever on his fading sight, With Orient beams that grow more bright, The dawn of heaven's supernal light From Bethlehem's radiant star."