FROM ANVIL TO PULPIT.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 9016, 2 December 1907, Page 1

FROM ANVIL TO PULPIT.

Leeds University has conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters on a. remarkable man in tiio person of the Rev. Robert Collyer, of New York. now on a visit to England. | There was a very large attendance, the Rev. R. Collyer being a _ Yorkshire ma o by lurtn. and well known in the West Riding. Ho was born at Keighley, and is still halo and hearty. ‘ Professor Walter R. Phillips said Mr Collyer was born 84 years ago at Keighley. Ho first worked in a factory,'hint worked as a blacksmith at Ilkloy, and as a theologian, blacksmith and horse doctor lie had in England distinguished himself, ' emigrating in 1850 to, the United States. There (he was "welcomed by the intellectual’ aristocracy of the nation, and as a minister in connection with the Unitarian body he attained considerable eminence. He became, the friend of Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, and was now a solitary survivor of that interesting group. The professor recalled tiio literary efforts of Mr Collyer. especially, “flkley, Ancient and ‘Modern. ’’ Dr. Collyer, who spoke with some emotion, referred to the vicissitudes of his chequered career. His life in the factory, ho said, was a sore burden. He could never forget that, and as ho came to-day to the great centres of labour in his motherland, and found how the hours of labour had been cut down, how the Saturday afternoon also wa« a holidav. how’the great working forces of Leeds and the towns all I through England rushed off to the green lands and the seaside, he said, thank God that they lived now. “Oil!” he remarked, “if I could have had such a childhood and youth, shouldn't 1 have been another man! Well. 1 don’t know about that after all. (Hear, hear.) The old bell that rang mo out at halfpast five in the morning, when I would have affirmed that I had not been asleep rive minutes, was the most infernal old hell, 1 think, that over broke the silence of the heavens —(laughter) —but I had to get up, and then at eight o’clock at night it rang mo out.” Ho told how he became possessed of the old boll, which was now at a university in America, whore he found its sound was “sweet and musical.-” Ho recalled the fact that in England and Pennsylvania he had worked at the. anvil and in other ways for SI years. One of Ids first books was “Whittiugou and His Cat, ” which ; lie bought for a penny, preferring it j to sugar candy, of which lie was ; particularly fond. Ho did not know Latin, and’was much puzzled with what had been read out that afto r noon. Hut when lie was blowing the bellows in the smithy ho was always reading books. Even in courting he read, all the books in the house whom his sweetheart lived. Books had been his companions and friends, his dearest friends, next to the friends of human kind. The address was followed by deafening applause, and a great many of the audience remained at the entrance of the university to shako the doctor by the hand.