Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/385

Rh relations always existed between him and the members of the Unitarian Association. He usually attended the Monday Ministers' meeting at the Unitarian headquarters on Beacon Hill, and would often go out with one or two fellow-preachers and sit down to a lunch and a lengthy theological argument. Perhaps the same evening he would gather up several young newspaper men and go to an opening night at the theatre, pouring forth between the acts such a stream of anecdote, discriminating criticism, and reminiscence, that the young critics felt the morning's "notice" of the performance growing beneath their hands. After the last curtain Mr. Wiggin frequently went back to the dressing-rooms to exchange stories and recollections with the older performers and to give encouragement and suggestions to the younger ones. Mr. Wiggin's love of the theatre came about very naturally: his uncle had been from boyhood a friend of Charlotte Cushman's, whom the nephew himself knew and concerning whom he once wrote a delightful paper for The Coming Age.

Mr. Wiggin, with Edward Everett Hale, Professor William J. Rolfe, and a score more, was one of the organisers of the Playgoers' Club of Boston, before which he used often to lecture upon the old days of the Boston Museum and the remarkable stock work done there. Horace Lewis, William Warren, Mrs. John Drew, Adelaide Phillips, and Sol Smith Russell were among his many warm professional friends, and esteemed his suggestions and criticisms. He was becomingly fond of the comforts of the table, and delighted to gather a party of young writers and actors about him at supper and entertain them with stories of the great artists whom he had heard in