My deepest sympathies at that time were with England.  When England is humiliated the Christian standards of the world are humiliated.  Her throne during Queen Victoria’s reign was the purest throne in all the world.  Remember the girl Victoria, kneeling with her ecclesiastical adviser in prayer the night before her coronation, making religious vows, not one of which were broken.  I urged then that all our American churches throughout the land unite with the cathedrals and churches in England in shouting “God Save the Queen.”  England held the balance of the world’s power for Christianity in this crisis abroad.

About this time, in February, 1878, Senator Pierce presented a Bill before the Legislature in Albany for a new city charter for Brooklyn.  In its reform movement it meant that in three years at the most Brooklyn and New York would be legally married.  Instead of Brooklyn being depressed by New York, New York was to be elevated by Brooklyn.  Already we felt at that time, in the light of Senator Pierce’s efforts, that Brooklyn would become a reformed New York; it would be—­New York with its cares set aside, New York with its arms folded at rest, New York playing with the children, New York at the tea table, New York gone to prayer-meeting.  Nine-tenths of the Brooklynites then were spending their days in New York, and their nights in Brooklyn.  In the year 1877, 80,000,000 of people crossed the Brooklyn ferries.  Paris is France, London is England, why not New York the United States?

The new charter recommended by Senator Pierce urged other reforms in a local government that was too costly by far.  Under right administration who could tell what our beloved city is to be?  Prospect Park, the geographical centre, a beautiful picture set in a great frame of architectural affluence.  The boulevards reaching to the sea, their sides lined the whole distance with luxurious homes and academies of art.  Our united city a hundred Brightons in one, and the inland populations coming down here to summer and battle in the surf.  The great American London built by a continent on which all the people are free; her vast populations redeemed; her churches thronged with worshipful auditories!  Before that time we may have fallen asleep amid the long grass of the valleys, but our children will enjoy the brightness and the honour of residence in the great Christian city of the continent and of the world.

It was this era of optimism in the civic life of Brooklyn that helped to defeat the Lafayette Avenue railroad.

It was a scheme of New York speculators to deface one of the finest avenues in Brooklyn.  The most profitable business activity in this country is to invest other people’s money.  It seemed to me that the Lafayette railroad deal was only a sort of blackmailing institution to compel the property holders to pay for the discontinuance of the enterprise, or the company would sell out to some other company;