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HE Honorable P. A. Collins, late mayor of Boston, was a conspicuous example of the self-made man. Few such have had more reason to look upon their work and pronounce it good. He was a New Englander in the best sense of the word for he well represented that sturdy, self reliant, manly spirit which has gone forth with energy as one attribute and fair dealing as another and made the term New Englander honored and respected the world over. Success in his chosen profession was his; political preferment, more than he cared to accept, was offered to him, and the posts which he filled were at once honorable and conspicuous, yet his highest honor was in the spontaneous tribute that men high and low pay to his sterling integrity. To this tribute there is no dissenting word. In the early days of New England many portions of it were. settled by pilgrims of Irish birth and some of its towns still retain the names given them in affection by these early Irish settlers. The latter day population of these six states has been steadily increased from the same source. Early in the '40's came a great wave of Irish emigration and it brought with it a child of four, son of poor parents, who was destined to rise through his own worth and tireless energy to eminence and success. This was the late P. A. Collins and few men have had to undergo a severer early struggle in the making of a career than he.

The story of such of such a man's early struggles, of his difficulties and how he overcame them, his tempta

tions and how he put them aside, is a lesson which cannot be too often repeated, an example which cannot be too often held up to the youth of the land where he fought his battles and where the honors which he won came to him. For six years he went to school; then he went to work. He found employment in various ways in and around Boston. He went with his stepfather to the coal fields of Ohio where he learned what labor it is to work with pick and shovel in the coal drifts from dawn until dark. If you have once lived in Boston the smell of the east wind becomes as the breath of life to your nostrils. Hence "once a Bostonian always a Bostonian" has a right to become a proverb. The youth came back to Boston from the coal fields of Ohio. Better things were calling him already, and at the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to an upholsterer. Here his innate determination to make something of himself counted. Skill as a workman, trustworthiness and close application to business gradually raised him above his fellows, and at the age of twenty he was foreman of the shop.

While he was working at the bench in the upholsterer's shop he was not unmindful of the curtailment of his school life. So he proceeded to supplement the brief training he received at school by close study during evenings and leisure hours. He was then, as in later life, an omnivorous reader. He joined debating societies, and here, as elsewhere, he took a leading part. He spoke fluently, with no little elo

quence and wit, and he found, in the interest of these encounters, a fresh stimulus for more extended study. From the debating arena he proceeded to the lecture platform, and was in considerable demand as a lecturer before lyceums and other social organizations.

His ambition during all this time was directed toward the study and practice of law. He began to read law when he was only twenty-one years of age, and continued at it both privately and in a law office until he entered for the Harvard lectures and was finally admitted to the bar. The same energy and determination which had carried him through the early struggles of his youth he employed in conquering the difficulties which a young man without social or financial influence must necessarily meet at the threshold of any profession. He gradually won a place at the bar.

If you have Celtic blood in your veins you are a politician by instinct and the young man's abilities and ambitions early set these instincts astir. From the respect and confidence of your fellows, fostered in the lyceum and the debating society, to the political arena, is no step, you glide thither insensibly. Interest in politics came early to the student and speaker, self-taught and keen in the affairs of the day. He was elected to the House of Representatives at the age of twenty-three, and at the age of twenty-five he was elected to the Senate. In both branches of the Legislature he won a high reputation as a debater and as a sound and con

structive legislator. After his retirement from the Legislature, he did not again engage in any contest for public office until 1882, when he became a candidate for Congress in the old fourth district. He repre

sented this district for six consecutive years, and represented it with his usual and characteristic energy and fidelity. Meanwhile, he was engaged in the activities of political life in the State, having served for over six years as chairman of the Democratic State Committee, and devoting much of his time to the framing and exposition of the issues. of the campaigns. He travelled much throughout the country country making speeches in behalf of the national and congressional candidates of his party and was in constant demand by State and national committees. He was chosen to preside over the national convention at St. Louis in 1888, when Grover Cleveland was nominated for the second time. 1893 Mr. Cleveland offered him the position of consul general at London. He accepted, and served for four years with distinction. Returning from Europe in 1897, he resumed the practice of law in Boston, and practically decided that he would not enter public life again. But, in 1900, the Boston Democracy selected him as its standard bearer in the municipal contest of that year, and his subsequent career was one of steady growth in the honor and admiration of the citizens of the city he served so well.

It takes more than oratorical power, more than mere ambition and a ready wit, to win honors such as these and keep them. P. A. Collins died in the harness. There were greater honors and preferments waiting for him in the coming years had he lived. How had he deserved them?

First of all the key no e of his character was honesty. This like his Irish wit was inborn and instinctive. In the complications cf municipal politics it often happens that

men of assumed good moral principles tolerate abuses or wink at corruption because they seem to be the accepted order of things. Mayor Collins had no such weakness. He did not need to have his conscience stimulated and he was known as an energetic and courageous reformer of abuses. He was quick and vehement in his assertion of what he believed to be the truth or to be honest public policy.

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Second was his untiring energy and his quick perception of what a young man most needs in the upbuilding of character and the furtherance of a career. The long hours of work in his youth never dulled his ambition or his faith in himself. "If I have achieved any success in life," he said on his sixtieth birthday anniversary "it is due hard and unremitting work. unremitting work. Any man who will make up his mind early in life that to be a success he must work hard, be industrious and honest, and stick to that idea, must, in the end, win." That theory he demonstrated as office boy in Boston, as a farmer's boy in the West, as a coal-miner and engineer. It took him ten years to get his foothold, to get his chance to begin the study of law.

Meantime only the greatest determination held him to his self-appointed task of getting ahead in the world. While he was working at his trade as an upholsterer in Boston the workman's "day" was eleven hours long; but all the while he was reading, studying, planning to lift himself up in the world. The hour of 6.30 in the morning found the young upholsterer at his bench in the North End ready to begin his task. At 6.30 P. M. he started for his home in South Boston. He acquired the walking habit early in

life, and never gave it up. Every morning in later years one might see the mayor striding in from his Brighton home to City Hall and walking home at the close of business hours. When he was a workman he always walked to and from his work. Eight P. M. found the young man at the Public Library, poring over borrowed books; 10.30 P. M. found him at home ready for bed, and this routine he kept up for years. While others wasted their time in idleness or worse, he was acquiring knowledge, and fitting himself for professional life.

He was ambitious, and the result of that ambition to better his social and intellectual condition in life was strikingly illustrated in his official communications, transmitted to the city government-models of clear, sound reasoning-unanswerable in their deductions, putting to flight his opponents, and pointed to with. pride by his admirers. For most people who did not know Patrick A. Collins intimately, it was difficult to believe that self-education could be brought to such a high state of excellence as he possessed. One could not converse with him long before discovering the wealth of his knowledge, the scope of his learning and the extent of his wide reading. He made no claim to distinction as a linguist, but his English was as pure as that of his fellow-countryman Swift, and he could read a German newspaper or a French novel with equal facility. Knowing the value of books in his early days, he had a rule of long standing, of keeping his library down to one thousand volumes. He was a great book buyer, but only retained standard works. Those of passing interest he gave away to deserving institutions or promising young people.

Patrick A. Collins read law in the office of James M. Keith, and in course of time saved enough money to enter the Harvard Law School. After two years of study there he was graduated with honors, and his admission to the Suffolk bar dates from April, 1871. The young man was marked for a brilliant political career rather than the dull plodding of an office lawyer, however. Polities was his natural preoccupation, and before he began practice he was counted among the most promising of the younger men of the Democratic party in Boston. While working at his trade he had won local fame as a public speaker; while he was yet a student at law he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he served two terms, 1868-69; and the next two years, 1870-1871, he was a member of the Senate. He proved to be

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excellent parliamentarian; he was patient and thorough in affairs, a skillful debater, and, when opportunity offered, an eloquent orator. Meanwhile he was exceedingly popular, being endowed with the natural courtesy of a kind heart, and gifted with the magnetic sense of humor.

A third attribute was patience. His ability to wait served the young statesman well. When he was sure that he was equal to the demands of an office he took it not before. Upon his admission to the bar Mr. Collins resolved not to take any elective position for ten years, but to devote himself to his profession. While he held firmly to this resolution, however, his personal interest in and hold on politics did not relax. He was chairman of the Democratic City Committee in 1873-74, and in the next year Governor William Gaston rewarded his services by

making him judge advocate general on his staff. He also was a member of the Massachusetts delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1876, 1880, 1884, 1888 and 1892. In these great gatherings he made a name for himself no less than in the speaking campaigns that followed them. In 1884 he was a potent leader in the convention, and took a foremost part in the memorable campaign of that year. Of the next national convention-1888-he was the permanent chairman, and distinguished himself by making one of the shortest of opening addresses and one of the best-brilliant, cleancut and true. In that of 1892 he made a great speech seconding the nomination of Grover Cleveland, and he went heart and soul into the campaign. From 1884 to 1891 he was chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee.

To work with singleness of purpose, to do one's best in the field of duty nearest at hand without thought of future rewards, generally brings those rewards unsought. Collins's eloquent and vigorous speech in the nomination of the then leader of the democracy of the country, his equally forceful and capable work in the furtherance of the campaign which elected Grover Cleveland to the presidency of the United States, gave such certain evidence of marked ability that the post of Consul General at London was offered him. This is the most responsible post in the consular service and there were grave doubts at the time of the way in which the appointment would be received by the British Government. England had no reason to love the new Consul General. A New Englander by adoption, a representative in his own personality of the best of those traits which New Englanders