The equipment of Shawmut Church edifice made it a very homelike place of worship, and here, for a generation or more of Carleton's life, a noble company of Christians worshipped. The Shawmut people were noted for their enterprise, sociability, generosity, and unity of purpose. In this "South End" of Boston was reared a large proportion of the generation which to-day furnishes the brain and social and religious force of the city and suburbs. In Shawmut Church, gathered, week by week, hundreds of those who, in the glow of prosperity, held common ambitions, interests, and hopes. They were proud of their city, their neighborhood, and their church, yet were ever ready to extend their well-laden hands in gifts to the needy at home, and to send to those far off, within our own borders, and in lands beyond sea. The great fire in Boston, of which Carleton wrote so brilliant a description, which, beginning November 9, 1872, within a few hours burned over sixty-five acres and reduced seventy-five millions of property to smoke and ashes, gave the first great blow to the material prosperity of Shawmut Church. Later came the filling up, the reclamation, and building of the Back Bay district. About 1878, the tide of movement set to the westward, progressing so rapidly and steadily as to almost entirely change, within a decade, the character of the South End, from a region of homes to one largely of business and boarding houses. Still later, about 1890, with the marvellous development of the electric motor and trolley cars, making horse traction by rail obsolete, the suburbs of Boston became one great garden and a semicircle of homes. Then Brookline, Newton, and Dorchester churches flourished at the expense of the city congregations. Shawmut Church, having graduated hundreds of families, had, in 1893, to be reorganized. Of this church Charles Carleton Coffin, though not one of the founders, was certainly one of the makers. As a member, a hearer, a worshipper, a teacher, an officer, a counsellor, a giver of money, power, and influence, his name is inseparably associated with the life of Shawmut Church. When Carleton's seat was vacant, the chief servant of the church knew that his faithful ally was serving his Master elsewhere. After one of his trips to Europe, out West, or down South over the old battle-fields, to refresh his memory, or to make notes and photographs for his books, the welcome given to him, on his return, was always warm and lively.