One can hardly imagine a better school for the training of a good American citizen than that which Carleton enjoyed. By inheritance and birth in a New Hampshire village, he knew "the springs of empire." By actual experience of farming and surveying in a transition era between the old ages of manual labor and the new aeon of inventions, he learned toil, its necessity, and how to abridge and guide it by mind. In the acquaintance, while upon a Boston newspaper, with public men, and all kinds of people, in the unique experiences as war correspondent, in wide travel and observation around the whole world, in detailed studies of new lands and life in the Northwest, in reading and research in great libraries, and in the constant discipline of his mind through reflection, his knowledge of man and nature, of society and history, was at first hand. Intensely interested in politics from boyhood, Carleton sought no public office. When, in his early manhood, he revolved in his mind the question of attempting this or that career, he may have thought of entering the alluring but thorny path of office-seeking and "practical" politics. It cannot be said that his desire for public emolument lasted very long. He deliberately decided against a political career. Even if the exigencies of the moment had not tended to forbid the flight of his ambition in this direction, there were other reasons against it. He was a school commissioner in Malden, faithfully attending to the details of his duty during two years. The report of his work was given in a pamphlet. As we have seen, before the breaking out of the war, when in Washington, he sought for a little while government employment in one of the departments, but gave up the quest when the larger field of war correspondent invited him. He never sought an elective office, but when his fellow citizens in Boston found out how valuable a member of the Commonwealth he was, so rich in public spirit and so well equipped to be a legislator, he was made first, for several terms, a Representative, and afterwards, for one term, a Senator, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. Carleton sat under the golden codfish as Representative during the years 1884 and 1885, and under the gilded dome as Senator, in 1890. Faithful to his calling as a maker of law, Carleton was abundant in labors during his three terms, interested in all that meant weal or woe to the Commonwealth; yet we have only room to speak of the two or three particular reforms which he inaugurated.