EDWARD ATKINSON. 763 



seeing them all prepared in the garden, I think that his standard of 

 poverty came very near to luxury. 



Mingled with these things in later years was introduced another 

 valuable department of instruction. He was mors and more called upon 

 to give addresses, especially on manufactures, before Southern audiences, 

 and there was no disposition to criticize him for his anti-slavery record. 

 There could hardly be found another man whose knowledge of manu- 

 facturing and of insurance combined made him so fit a man to give 

 counsel in the new business impulse showing itself at the South. He 

 wrote much (1877) on cotton goods, called for an international cotton 

 expedition, giving an address at Atlanta, Ga., which was printed in 

 Boston in 1881. 



Looking now at Atkinson's career with the eyes of a literary man, it 

 seems clear to me that no college training could possibly have added to 

 his power of accumulating knowledge or his wealth in the expression of 

 it. But the academic tradition might have added to these general state- 

 ments in each case some simple address or essay which would bring out 

 clearly to the minds of an untrained audience the essential points of each 

 single theme. Almost everything he left is the talk of a specially trained 

 man to a limited audience, also well trained, — at least in the particular 

 department to which he addresses himself. The men to whom he talks 

 may not know how to read or write, but they are all practically versed in 

 the subjects of which he treats. He talks as a miner to miners, a farmer 

 to farmers, a cook to cooks ; but among all of his papers which I have 

 examined that in which he appears to the greatest advantage to the 

 general reader is his " Address before the Alumni of Andover Theo- 

 logical Seminary " on June 9, 1886. Here he speaks as one represent- 

 ing a wholly different pursuit from that of his auditors ; a layman to 

 clergymen, or those aiming to become so. He says to them frankly at 

 the outset, " I have often thought [at church] that if a member of the 

 congregation could sometimes occupy the pulpit while the minister 

 took his place in the pew, it might be a benefit to both. The duty has 

 been assigned to me to-day to trace out the connection between morality 

 and a true system of political or industrial economy." 



He goes on to remind them that the book which is said to rank next to 

 the Bible toward the benefit of the human race is Adam Smith's 

 " Wealth of Nations," and that the same Adam Smith vsrote a book on 

 moral philosophy which is now but little read. He therefore takes the 

 former of Smith's books, not the latter, as his theme, and thus proceeds: 



" I wonder how many among your number ever recall the fact that it 

 has been the richest manufacturers who have clothed the naked at the 

 least cost to them ; that it is the great bonanza farmer who now feeds the 



