Chapter VII…

Chapter VII

Amherst College—Private Journal—Testimony of Classmates—Tutor’s Delight—Begins his Anti-Slavery Career—Spiritual Darkness—Engagement—Letters of his Mother—Experiences in Teaching School—First Sermons—Lecturing—His Reading—The Record.

Henry Ward Beecher entered Amherst College in 1830 in a class of forty members. Although prepared for the Sophomore year, yet, following the advice of his father, he entered as a Freshman in the class of ’34. On the cover of a very commonplace-looking copy-book, brown and yellow with age, which we have in our possession, he has written with a great many flourishes “Private Journal,” and then has added with equal emphasis, “Not to be looked into.” But since he afterwards drew his pen through both clauses, we have taken the liberty not only to look but also to make extracts from its contents.

The pages appear to have been written for the most part with reference to a correspondence which he was then carrying on with his brother Charles, referred to in the previous chapter, many of the questions being apparently argued, and incidents in the diary noted with him in view. As a whole it forms a rather odd mixture of excellent sentiments, religious doctrines, questions and arguments, studied illustrations and daily incidents, showing an alert mind, and one that, while awake to observe the smallest events, was equally ready to grapple with the largest subjects. A list of eleven “Tracts French” on half the first page is followed on the blank spaces of the remainder with careless pen-scrawls in which the name of “Nancy” appears with attempts at monograms, showing the pleasant fancies that possessed his idle moments.

“Tracts English” heads the next page, which is ruled for names and numbers; but for some reason, perhaps because the list was too great or the selection too difficult, the plan was never carried out and not a single entry was made—a failure so human, so common, that it at once brings him into the sympathies of thousands who remember how often they have done the same thing.

“Occasional Thoughts” comes next, printed with the pen in small caps in the middle of a page, and surrounded with the usual artistic pen-decorations. On the opposite page the thoughts begin. The first is “Proof of a Hell.” “I prove first that there must be a hell, and then it will appear evident that there must be a judgment.” Six pages of proof-texts and argument follow, when we come to the next question: “Who will enjoy heaven most?” When this has been answered, somewhat more briefly than the former, but apparently to his own satisfaction, he opens the next subject:

“I wish to ask you [evidently addressed to his brother], not as a question, but for my own information, what you think about the devil? Now, this of itself is quite a curious question, but what I wish to ask in this particular is, Do you think that he is at all under the divine direction as we are?”

Several pages of pithy sayings and illustrations follow, of which the first three are fair samples:

“God’s plans are like a hive of bees, for they seem to go on without any order till they are accomplished, but then you can see a great plan. Each one seems to be pursuing something for itself, but, like the bees, they at the end help to form one elegant edifice.”

“A half-way Christian has too little piety to be happy in the next world, and too much to be happy in this.”

“Religion, like fire, will go out nearly as soon if no fuel is added to it as if water is poured on it.”

These are not quotations, but original, and show thus early a habit already formed and a power already being educated of illustrating religious truth by natural objects and processes.

The last half of the book is used as a diary, written mostly with a lead-pencil, and opens with an account of his journey from Boston to Hartford on his way to enter college:

“I started from Boston Tuesday eve at ten o’clock, and, riding all night, I arrived in Hartford in time to dine. I took passage in the United States mail-stage. It can hold but six passengers inside, it being made light in order to travel fast. I think that we travelled very fast, for we went one hundred miles in about fifteen hours. After I got into Hartford I started off to find Mary. I went to her house, and sent word that I wished to see Mrs. Perkins. After waiting awhile she came down-stairs, and did not know me, and I had to tell her who I was. About five o’clock I went to see Harriet and Catharine. Catharine knew me, but Harriet did not. She could not think what to make of it when I went up and kissed her.

“I shall now begin my journal:

“Catharine wishes me to go to her levée to-night. Don’t want to much, but conclude that I will. Went before any of the company came. Went into Catharine’s room and sat till it was time to go down. The company began to come in, at first ladies, like flocks of pigeons, stringing along through the parlors; soon also the gentlemen began to come in. In the meantime I was sitting by the side of the pianoforte, alone and ‘unbefriended,’ looking at the different groups of persons talking. At length Harriet came and sat down by me, and I had quite a talk; but she wishing me to go with her into the other parlor, where a great many young ladies and no gentlemen were sitting, I refused, whereupon she kept pressing me, till at length, when she got up to go and speak with some one on the other side of the room, I seized the opportunity, and very quickly started for the door, but unluckily ran against a gentleman, knocked him half-over, made an apology, and got into the entry. Nor did my scrape end here; for, getting my hat, I perceived that they saw me from the parlors, and, getting the other side of the entry to hide myself from them, I espied six or seven young ladies seated on the stairs, watching to see what I was a-going to do. Well, I went back to the table where I had taken my hat, and from there whipped out of the door. After I had got home I sat and talked with Aunt Esther and Mary for a few moments, and then I went out to get a lamp. The stairs, I thought, were in this shape: but instead of that they were in this way:

You know when they are moved round in that way there are four or five steps that meet in one point, a, and branch at b, so you cannot step on them except at b. Well, I stepped down at a and fell five stairs head-first—stretching my hands forward saved my cranium—and tumbled the rest of the way, to the no small annoyance of my shins and knees. So much for running away from the levée.”

“Catharine and Harriet came to tea, after which I went home with them, when Harriet put her curls on to my head and her bonnet, Catharine a cloak and neck-handkerchief, and then called the young ladies in, and they all thought that I was Harriet; and then, to cap all, Harriet put on a man’s cloak and my hat, and she looked exactly like you [Charles]!”

Such was Henry Ward Beecher at the age of seventeen, on the eve of entering college—bashful, smooth-faced, and changing rapidly in appearance, so that his own sisters did not know him. The penmanship shows as yet an unformed hand, but in its main features is like that of a later date.

He carelessly leaves out a word or a letter here and there, and markedly in places continues the old habit of his early school days—poor spelling. Nothing appears that indicates any talent superior to the majority of young men on their way to college, unless it be a certain enthusiasm, straightforwardness, and simplicity.

The college at this time was but nine years old, having been established in 1821. Rev. Heman Humphrey was president. It was small and poorly endowed, as well as young, but the chairs of instruction were ably filled; and since it had been founded by the orthodox Congregationalists as, in fact, an antidote to the Unitarianism of Harvard, and with especial reference to the education of young men for the ministry, its orthodoxy was unquestioned and its religious spirit pronounced and active.

By reason of his excellent preparation and the admirable mental training he had received, either of two courses were open to Henry Ward. He might aspire to lead his class in scholarship, become a “high-honor” man, and possibly take the valedictory, or use the time which he had at his disposal in following out those studies and readings that were to his taste.

He chose the latter, and, while giving sufficient study to the college course to preserve a respectable standing in his class, gave his greatest effort to carrying out his own plan of development and culture.

“I had acquired by the Latin and mathematics the power of study,” he says. “I knew how to study, and I turned it upon things I wanted to know.”

The beauty of the Greek and Latin classics did not attract him; it seemed cold and far away, belonging to another time and another order of mind; but our English classics, with their warmth of feeling, their lofty imagination, their delicate sentiment, their power and eloquence, seemed akin and near to him; they had to do with the present, and he gave himself to their study with a whole-hearted enthusiasm that rendered him peculiarly open to their influences.

Inspired and fed by them as to what to say, he also gave especial attention to the manner of saying it. Rhetoric and oratory were diligently pursued throughout his college course. In these departments he seems, according to the testimony of his class and college mates, to have excelled then almost as markedly as he has since.

Says Dr. Thomas P. Field: “The first thing I particularly remember about him in college was this: I went into our class prayer-meeting on Saturday evening, and young Beecher gave an exhortation. He urged us to a higher life and more constant activity in religious work. I heard him a great many times after he became a famous preacher, but I think I never was more moved by his eloquence than in that boys’ prayer-meeting. In the regular routine of our studies I always was aroused and astonished by his extemporaneous debates. He surpassed all the rest of us then in extemporaneous power of speech as much as he did in his after-life. There was where he seemed to me particularly to excel as a student. In mere recitation of mathematics or languages many of us could surpass him, but in extemporaneous debates he could beat us all. I was always greatly interested, too, in his written essays. We were in the habit of reading our essays to the professors in the class-room. Your father always had something to say that was fresh and striking and out of the beaten track of thought—something, too, that he had not gotten from books, but that was the product of his own thinking.”

Dr. John Haven, another classmate, says of him: “He was a great reader, and probably had more general knowledge than any one of his classmates when he graduated.”

Says Lewis Tappan, a classmate: “In logic and class debates no one could approach him. I listened to his flow of impassioned eloquence in those my youthful days with wonder and admiration.”

S. Hopkins Emery, another classmate, in answer to a letter, writes: “Nobody could be gloomy or desponding near your father. He made us all cheerful and happy. Do I remember him in college? Indeed I do—more than I have time to write or you patience, perhaps, to read. It seems but yesterday that I was reading a composition in the lecture-room of Professor Worcester. Beecher sat just behind me. I had finished reading, when I heard a friendly whisper in my ear: ‘Emery, your porch is too large for the house.’ It was a good criticism. In such college studies which had to do with writing and speaking the English language your father excelled. The dead languages and mathematics never seemed to suit his taste. He might have excelled in them if he had been so minded. He was equal to anything he undertook. No one was his match in extemporaneous talk or debate.”

This power and its exercise upon one memorable occasion was fraught, according to a college mate, Rev. S. W. Hanks, with very marked consequences:

“In the annual Sophomore and Freshman fray the former found themselves engaged with a force that was more than a match for them, and their pranks upon the Freshmen got repaid with much more than the usual interest. In consequence of this a meeting of all the classes in college was held to protest against the barbarities of this customary war, in which the smoke of the battle usually found its way into the Freshmen’s rooms. At this meeting a leading member of the Junior class, finding the Sophomores a little wanting in courage and speaking talent, volunteered to act as their attorney, and made a telling and crushing speech against the Freshmen class for their hard handling of the Sophomores, who had only followed an old custom in their treatment of the Freshmen. At the close of this speech by the ‘leading Junior,’ Beecher arose and said he wished to say a word on the other side, whereupon he ‘went for’ the Junior in a speech full of wit and point, which altogether ‘turned the tables’ to the great amusement of all present and the great annoyance of the ‘leading Junior.’ When the meeting broke up the Goliah of the Junior class found himself suffering from a wound which the little smooth stone from the sling of the hitherto unknown Freshman had made. This was a new experience for the proud Junior, and the wound rankled.

“It seems never to have been forgotten. Time passed on and the ‘leading Junior’ became a leading lawyer, jurist, judge, and Democratic politician, and when the great scandal arose volunteered a very strong argument against Mr. Beecher. It had great weight in some quarters, but was less convincing to those parties who remembered that this judge was eagerly embracing the first opportunity that had offered of paying off an old score of their college days.”

“He was whole-souled and hearty, humorous in the extreme but without a particle of viciousness, a reformer and an earnest man.” This is again the testimony of his classmate, Dr. Field.

“We would often gather on the steps of the chapel, a number of us incidentally, and if your father was in the gathering we always had much wit and sparkling repartee, and anecdote and description, all of which seemed to be infused by your father, and of which, indeed, he was the greater part. He always seemed full of health and hilarity, and yet, after all, there was a prevailing seriousness, an earnest purpose, a determination to be a good and true man. I never knew anything of him but what was good, and great, and orderly, and becoming a Christian. I have heard persons say he was wild in college. Nothing more untrue. I never heard him utter a word, and never heard of his doing a deed, that was contrary to the rules of morality and propriety. He would criticise some things in college studies, etc. I remember his maintaining very decidedly that the study of mathematics was not a good discipline for the mind, but he never set himself against college rules of order. He was a strong temperance man, and was very bold to rebuke his fellow-students in anything he thought to be wrong.”

Of his social and humorous qualities Mrs. Stowe says:

“In fact, Mr. Beecher was generally the centre of a circle of tempestuous merriment, ever eddying round him in one droll form or another.

“He was quick in repartee, an excellent mimic, and his stories would set the gravest in a roar. He had the art, when admonished by graver people, of somehow entrapping them into more uproarious laughing than he himself practised, and then looking innocently surprised.

“Mr. Beecher on one occasion was informed that the head tutor of the class was about to make him a grave exhortatory visit. The tutor was almost seven feet high, and as solemn as an Alpine forest. But Mr. Beecher knew that, like most solemn Yankees, he was at heart a deplorable wag, a mere whited sepulchre of conscientious gravity, with measureless depths of unrenewed chuckle hid away in the depths of his heart. When apprised of his approach he suddenly whisked away into his closet the chairs of his room, leaving only a low one which had been sawed off at the second joint, so that it stood about a foot from the floor. Then he crawled through the hole in that study-table which he had made after a peculiar plan of his own, and, seated meekly among his books, awaited the visit.

“A grave rap is heard. ‘Come in.’ Far up in the air the solemn dark face appears. Mr. Beecher rose ingenuously and offered to come out. ‘No, never mind,’ says the visitor; ‘I just came to have a little conversation with you. Don’t move.’

“‘Oh!’ says Beecher innocently, ‘pray sit down, sir,’ indicating the only chair.

“The tutor looked apprehensively, but began the process of sitting down. He went down, down, down, but still no solid ground being gained, straightened himself up and looked uneasy.

“‘I don’t know but that chair is too low for you; do let me get you another,’ said Beecher meekly.

“‘Oh! no, my young friend, don’t rise, don’t trouble yourself; it is perfectly agreeable to me; in fact, I like a low seat.’ And with these words the tall man doubled up like a jack-knife, and was seen sitting with his grave face between his knees, like a grasshopper drawn up for a spring. He heaved a deep sigh and his eyes met the eyes of Mr. Beecher; the hidden spark of native depravity within him was exploded by one glance at those merry eyes, and he burst into a loud roar of merriment, which the two continued for some time, greatly to the amusement of the boys who were watching to hear how Beecher would come out with his lecture. The chair was known thereafter as the ‘Tutor’s Delight.’”

He carried his usual sports with him into college life. “On Saturday afternoons,” says Lewis Tappan, “we often revisited the woods in the rear of our former home, on which occasion your father would climb the tallest trees and place a pillow-case over the holes where the flying squirrels were. I on the ground rapped the trees, startling the inmates, who were caught in their efforts to escape.

“Botanical and geological specimens were collected on the way, and in his room your father had a good collection of the latter.”

He joined a club of eight who boarded a mile from college, that the going and returning for their meals might give them six miles of exercise a day. This was done in part to save expense, the board being cheaper at that distance from the village. He also walked from college to Boston, more than a hundred miles, on his vacations, for the same reason. Yet, with all his care in economy, and although his board cost him but $1.50 a week, it was thought at one time impossible to keep him in college on account of the expense, as this letter, written by a friend of the family during his Freshman year, will explain:

“While Henry and Charles were in college your father and mother felt very much straitened for money. One evening particularly they were talking about it, and did not know what they should do to keep the boys along. At last your father said: ‘Well, the Lord always has taken care of me, and I am sure he always will.’ The mother lay awake, she told me afterwards, and cried. She cried because she did not see how they should get along; but what most troubled her was that her husband had so much faith and she had not any.

“The next morning was Sabbath morning. Some one rang at the door, and a letter was handed in containing a $100 bill and no name. They came up to tell me, as they always did, but they did not know, nor I then, who gave it. I found out afterwards it was Mr. Homes—a thank-offering at the conversion of one of his children.“

The following letter, written near the close of his Freshman year, shows the bent of his mind at this period:

”MY DEAR SISTER:

“I write principally to tell you that I have sent the ‘Book of Nature,’ and that it is probably at the stage-house.

“But I want to consult you on a plan that I have formed—for I possess real Beecher blood in the matter of planning. It is this: In my six weeks’ vacation, and in the four weeks’ one, I mean to attach myself as some kind of agent to the Bible, or Tract, or Education, or some other society, wherever I can, and travel round to the small towns at a distance, and collect funds or distribute Bibles and tracts, or something like that, or do something or other—of course I can’t tell what they may want me to do.

“I shall in a month or two be eighteen years old, and I think that that is old enough to begin to do something. I can get letters of the president and professors here and of gentlemen of Boston to establish my mission, so that folks will not think that I am collecting for my own purposes under the name of some society. Will you write to me about it? Tell C. that I have engaged one to hear me recite botany. I am going to establish a daily prayer-meeting here, and pray for a revival. Pray for us, too. Mount Pleasant is in a very bad state. Lotteries are here without number—five dollars is the highest prize—and books and everything else, morals and all, are going, I believe, and the masters (blind fellows) know nothing of it, although one of the monitors handed in to Mr. Fellowes a lottery scheme instead of his report in the division.

“Give my love to Mary and husband, Catherine, Cos. Elizabeth, and all who care for me, taking a goodly portion to yourself.

“Your Brother, “H. C. B.”

Lest we get a stronger impression of his sanctity at this time than the facts would warrant, we add this incident, related by himself, of one of his vacation experiences in Boston that has in it a very decided flavor of humorous and unsanctified humanity: “Looking for a friend, I rapped at the door where I thought he lived. The door stuck, but at last flew open after a good deal of tugging from the other side, and a very red-faced woman appeared and asked in a very cross tone what I wanted. ‘Does Mr. ——— live here?’ I asked very meekly. ‘No, he don’t!’ snapped the woman, and slammed the door in my face. I thought I would teach her a lesson; so, after I had walked a little ways to give her time to get to work, I went back and rapped again as if I wanted to tear the knocker off. And when the same woman opened the door I shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Who said he did?’ and then turned and walked away. When I reached the corner the woman was still gazing after me in amazed silence.”

It was at Amherst that young Beecher began his anti-slavery career, as he tells us in his sermon upon the death of Wendell Phillips:

“Fifty years ago, during my college life, I was chosen by the Athenian Society to debate the question of African colonization, which then was new, fresh, and enthusiastic.... Fortunately I was assigned to the negative side of the question, and in preparing to speak I prepared my whole life. I contended against colonization as a condition of emancipation—enforced colonization was but little better than enforced slavery—and advocated immediate emancipation on the broad ground of human rights. I knew but very little then, but I knew this, that all men are designed of God to be free, a fact which ought to be the text of every man’s life—this sacredness of humanity as given of God, redeemed from animalism by Jesus Christ, crowned and clothed with rights that no law nor oppression should dare touch.”

Of his religious life at this period we give the story in his own words:

“When I went to college there was a revival there, in which I was prodigiously waked up. I was then about seventeen years old, and I had begun to pass from boyhood to manhood, but I was yet in an unsettled state of mind. I had no firm religious ground to stand upon. I was beginning to slough hereditary influences without being able to take on more salutary influences, and I went through another phase of suffering which was far worse than any that I had previously experienced. It seemed as though all the darknesses of my childhood were mere puffs to the blackness which I was now passing through. My feeling was such that if dragging myself on my belly through the street had promised any chance of resulting in good I would have done it. No man was so mean that I was not willing to ask him to pray for me. There was no humiliation that I would not have submitted to ten thousand times over if thereby I could have found relief from the doubt, perplexity, and fear which tormented me.

“I went to Dr. Humphrey in my darkness of soul and said: ‘I am without hope and am utterly wretched, and I want to be a Christian.’ He sat and looked with great compassion upon me (for he was one of the best men on earth; if there is a saint in heaven Dr. Humphrey is one), and said: ‘Ah! it is the Spirit of God, my young man; and when the Spirit of God is at work with a soul I dare not interfere.’ And I went away in blacker darkness than I came, if possible.

“I went to an inquiry-meeting which Professor Hitchcock was conducting, and when he saw me there he said: ‘My friends, I am so overwhelmed with the consciousness of God’s presence in this room that I cannot speak a word.’ And he stopped talking, and I got up and went out without obtaining rescue or help.

“Then I resorted to prayer, and frequently prayed all night—or should have done so if I had not gone to sleep; I tried a great many devices; I strove with terrific earnestness and tremendous strength; and I remember that one night, when I knelt before the fire where I had been studying and praying, there came the thought to my mind: ‘Will God permit the devil to have charge of one of his children that does not want to be deceived?’ and in an instant there rose up in me such a sense of God’s taking care of those who put their trust in him that for an hour all the world was crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and I sprang to my feet and began to cry and laugh; and, feeling that I must tell somebody what the Lord had done for me, I went and told Dr. Humphrey and others.

“I endeavored, from that time out, to help those who were in trouble of mind like that in which I had been whelmed; and yet I was in a sort of half-despair.”

It was in one of these half-despairing moods, doubtless, that he sought counsel from Moody Harrington, of whose piety and wisdom in directing inquirers he has often spoken. Harrington’s room-mate writes:

“It was in the midst of this great religious movement that one day Henry Ward Beecher came to our room—how distinctly I remember it!—and, with a countenance betokening a mighty pressure upon his spirit, said substantially: ‘Harrington, I am in great distress, in spiritual darkness; I don’t think I have any religion. I’ve come to talk with you.’ My room-mate took him into his bedroom and talked and prayed with him a long time, and when the young man came out from that interview his face seemed radiant with hope and peace. Years after Beecher had become famous he would repeatedly speak of Harrington as having been to him a spiritual helper beyond that of any other man he had known.”

His first talk in a religious meeting outside the school or college is thus described:

“I think it must have been late in my Freshman career at Amherst College or in my Sophomore. My mind was much stirred and distressed at that time on the subject of religion. In the class above, one Moody Harrington took much interest in me. He was in some respects a remarkable man for profound religious feeling, for fervid imagination, and for remarkable eloquence in exhortation. He lifted me by his personal sympathy and his encouragement out of great despondency and set me on my feet with some tremblings of heart. On one occasion he asked me to walk with him one evening to Logtown to a little prayer and conference meeting. After Harrington had spoken for a while he turned to me all unexpectedly and asked me to make some remarks. I was confounded. I rose and said something—I do not know what, nor did I quite know then, for everything was whirling darkness while I was speaking, but it was the letting out of waters. I never ride past the Dwight house without going out of the cars to look over the place and to bring back to memory that dismal night, and that dismal speech, and the dismal walk back to college, ashamed and silent.”

Another important event took place in his Sophomore year, January 2, 1832. He became engaged to Eunice White Bullard, daughter of Dr. Artemas Bullard, of West Sutton, Mass. Of this event, the preceding and succeeding acquaintance, our dear mother has written in a paper entitled “Looking Back,” of which she says: “Of course all this is no help to you in preparing your father’s life, but I sit and dream of the past and write just as it rises before me, as fresh as if but yesterday, hoping by doing so something may come to me that will be of service to you.”

We shall give her notes just as she has written them, leaving it for our readers to judge whether or not they are of any service:

“LOOKING BACK.

“Fifty-seven years ago last May, 1831, my brother Ebenezer, then in his Freshman year in Amherst College, wrote: ‘The term closes this week. I shall walk home (fifty miles), and would like to bring two of my classmates with me. We shall start before the sun and hope to be with you by supper-time. Don’t be at any more trouble than if there were three Ebenezers coming home.’

“No; of course not! Sickness in the village made it impossible to get help that summer, and mother and I were doing the work alone for a very large family, so large that a half-dozen more or less made little difference.

“In good time for supper, weary and travel-soiled, my brother and his two friends made their appearance: one a tall, very dark-complexioned gentleman, the other a very verdant-looking youth, a Freshman of not quite eighteen—an age when one is prepared to find a young man awkward and painfully embarrassed, and to look with dismay on the prospect of trying to entertain and make him comfortable.

“But even then the roguish mouth, the laughing, merry eyes, the quaint humor and quick repartee, very soon put all such anxiety to flight. This was Henry Ward Beecher as I first saw him. Truth to tell, an exceedingly homely young man. But, in youth or old age, who ever thought of that, or, thinking, believed it after being with him an hour? Before that first evening was ended none of the family thought of him as a stranger; he was thoroughly at home with all. There were truly ‘only three Ebenezers there,’ each equally ready for quiet conversation, music, fun, repartee, or teasing; but the youngest of the three was the most expert in the latter accomplishment.

“After our outside work was done mother and I took knitting and sewing and sat down with them. I was going to wind a skein of sewing-silk (that was before spools were common), and, as was my custom, put it over the back of a chair. More gallant and thoughtful, apparently, than his older companions, this young gentleman insisted upon holding it for me to wind. For some reason—perfectly unaccountable if one judged only by his quiet, innocent face, without watching the eyes and mouth—that skein became as intricately tangled as if tied by Macbeth’s witches. ‘A badly tangled skein, is it not?’ said he, when I had lost half my evening in getting it wound. ‘Rather more troublesome, I imagine, than if I had kept it on the chair,’ I replied. ‘It was a good trial of patience, anyhow,’ was his response to the laugh that followed.

“Even my quiet mother was not exempt from some of his mirthful sallies, but he carried, in all his fun, such an inexhaustible store of gentleness and good-humor that I think she really enjoyed it. Often in after-years she used to say that Henry always made her feel young again.

“My father had been called out some distance to see a patient and had not yet met the ‘three Ebenezers,’ but came in just as we were all laughing heartily at some story Henry had told. He stood in the doorway, tall, dignified, and somewhat stern. When at last we became conscious of his presence brother at once came forward and introduced his classmates. Father received them courteously, but a little of the sternness still lingered on his face as he took the chair which, without the least appearance of boldness, somehow young Mr. Beecher was the first to bring him, yet in no way seeming to put himself forward. Little by little the same subtle influence that had pervaded the whole evening’s enjoyment began to steal over father. The little cloud seen at first vanished, and long before it was time to retire my father was telling stories and Henry following with another as freely as if they had been boys together.

“The others joined, but it was to young Beecher that father was most drawn. When the ‘good-nights’ were said, and while I went to the dairy to make some preparations for breakfast, father and mother took counsel together about the work for the morrow and various matters; but just as I returned father was saying: ‘He’s smart. If he lives he’ll make his mark in the world.’ ‘Who, father?’ I asked. ‘Why, young Beecher.’ (But father didn’t quite like the ‘mark’ he made a few months later—‘Nothing but a boy!’)

“The visit was prolonged some days, and there was no end to the fun and frolic. Your father was constantly investigating, and by no means lacked assistance from my brother and his other more demure classmate, who, however, stayed only part of the time.

“Mother and I were necessarily much of the time busy in the kitchen, milk-cellar, dairy, etc., but these young collegians found those places most attractive. The gentle way mother smiled at all the younger one’s mischievous pranks was a source of perpetual delight to him. He always said he fell in love with my mother, and, not being able to get her, took up with me.

“One day, in taking out the bread, pies, etc., from the old-fashioned brick oven with the long-handled shovel, she dropped some ashes on one of the pies, and called me from the dairy to get it off while she removed other articles. Your father sprang forward. ‘No, no; I will get it off for you,’ and, respectfully taking it from her hands, the three, without her seeing the mischief, marched off with it into the garden, and, seating themselves under a big apple-tree, ate it all up. This labor of love accomplished, the others rather held back from proclaiming it, but your father demurely walked in and handed mother the empty plate, saying: ‘There! see, we have cleaned the plate nicely!’

“One evening your uncle told him one of their classmates was engaged to Miss ———. ‘I don’t believe it,’ said young Beecher. ‘She knows nothing about singing, and I am sure F——— would never marry one who did not. I know I never would marry a woman who could not sing.’ Short-sighted mortal! In the evening brother asked him to get his flute and have some music. He did so, and after a short time asked me to sing. I replied: ‘I can’t; I never sang a note in my life.’

“In the summer and fall after first meeting your father I taught school in Clappville, South Leicester, Mass., and at the commencement of his fall vacation at Amherst Henry found it necessary to go from Amherst to Boston (thinking it shorter, perhaps!) via Clappville, and entered my school-room just as I was dismissing the school for the day. He spent the evening at Brother Jones’s, where I was boarding, and, incidentally of course, remarked that he understood I was intending to visit my aunt in Whitingsville during the winter. I replied that after my school closed I was thinking of having a play-spell before taking another, and might be there at least through December.

“After my school closed, while spending some time at home before my visit to my aunt, he called at father’s, and incidentally (again) remarked that he had been requested to teach the town school in Northbridge, and was to board at a Mr. Fletcher’s (Whitingsville was only a part of Northbridge, and he knew it all the time).

“‘Why,’ said my father, ‘that’s where Eunice will be. Now, child, you have been teasing to go to some academy this winter and go on with your Latin, but,’ turning to the demure, quiet-looking young man, who had not seemed to pay any attention to what was going on—‘but she has overworked the past few months, and I won’t let her go to school. Perhaps, as you are to board at her aunt’s and she will be there a short time, you might give her some help if she is in trouble with her Latin!’ Strange as it may seem, he didn’t appear to feel it an intrusion, but professed himself as very ready to render me any service. Even my clear-sighted mother saw nothing out of the way in father’s suggestion. ‘He was such a boy!’ as she said afterward. Neither did I, as I might have done had he been older; only, even though he was now a Sophomore, I didn’t believe he could help me much—I who had been a school-ma’am for three terms! And how young and boyish he did look! But (an after-thought) he might, after all, know much more than his looks led us to give him credit for.

“He came to uncle’s a week after I did, one Saturday, so as to be ready to begin school Monday. That evening (January 2, 1832) the young teacher, my cousin, a young lad who was to be under his care, and myself were all in the parlor writing. Uncle and aunt were out calling. He interrupted my writing by asking how far I had progressed in Latin. Was I perfect in the Latin grammar? Could I conjugate all the verbs? etc. I thought it a queer way to begin teaching, but I said, ‘Oh! yes; I think so.’ ‘Suppose you try some of them, and let me see how well you understand them.’ I laughed to myself, for I was sure I knew them perfectly, and rather thought I knew them as well as my teacher; but I respectfully conjugated the verbs as he gave them out, and at last, ‘Go through the verb “amo.”’ I did so, soberly, honestly, without a thought of any mischievous intentions. I went through it creditably, and was told that the lesson was perfect.

“I then turned to my writing, and soon after he slipped a bit of paper on to my writing-desk: ‘Will you go with me as missionary to the West?’ A few minutes after my cousin finished his studies for the evening and went to bed. Then some few short questions ensued and a few shorter answers not necessary to repeat. But, as the embarrassment consequent upon such abrupt and unexpected questions had somewhat diminished, he urged a more decided, definite answer from me personally. Simply referring him to my parents did not satisfy him, so I quietly remarked: ‘Why! I can’t sing, and only a short time since you said you would never marry a woman who could not sing!’ ‘Oh! that was six months ago, and I have changed my mind.’ ‘And in six months from now you may change it again.’ ‘No! I did change it the very minute you said that night that you never sang. There is no fear of my changing again.’

“The next day, Sabbath, uncle’s horse shied going to church, and tipped us all out of the sleigh; and Henry was so anxious to know if I were hurt, paying no attention to others, that he awakened uncle’s suspicions.

“That week at the week-day evening meeting (Preparatory Lecture) Henry was called to speak, and did wonderfully well, to the great surprise of all who heard that ‘young lad.’ After that, while he stayed at Whitingsville, he spoke at almost all the evening meetings, and always with increasing surprise and acceptance. I do not remember your father’s alluding to those meetings but once, and that, I think, was to an English friend who called when we lived on ‘The Heights.’ He said, smiling: ‘Whitingsville was my first pastorate. While teaching there one winter I spoke there several times and in some other places near by.’

“The next Saturday after giving me that momentous question on that little slip of paper, Henry rode to West Sutton and spoke to father and mother, to their infinite surprise. Mother was grieved, but father was very angry. ‘Why, you are a couple of babies! You don’t know your own minds yet, and won’t for some years to come,’ he repeated over and over again. (Fifty-seven years have given ample proof that we did.) But father was grieved, mortified, angry that he should have been so blind. But who could resist your father when he pleaded in earnest? Mother often spoke of it long after we were married. She said it was wonderful how he swayed that strong, proud man, my father, who winced at being outgeneralled by a boy. His extremely youthful appearance perfectly blinded them both. But mother was soon only a listener, charmed by the modest, manly, earnest manner, illumined occasionally by flashes of humor, with which he opened his heart to father and finally overcame him. From the first Henry’s youth and the long engagement was father’s only objection, and the fear that, as he grew older, he would repent of such imprudence.

“From the first hour father saw him he was drawn to him, and when he left after this conversation, and returned to Whitingsville, father said: ‘Boy as he seems, he will be true to Eunice; I have no fear on that score.’ Just before your father came to teach several branches he went a few miles out from Amherst and gave a lecture, I think on temperance (am not quite sure), for which he received five dollars. With it, among other things, he bought me Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest’—not a usual love-token—and some paper that was for me if his suit prospered. On the fly-leaf of the little book, in pencil, were the following lines:

‘Take it; ’tis a gift of love That seeks thy good alone; Keep it for the giver’s sake, And read it for thine own.’

“Before his next vacation he walked to Brattleboro’, Vermont, gave a lecture, received ten dollars, and then bought our engagement-ring, a plain gold ring, which was also my wedding-ring. With the remainder he bought books.

“The three years in college soon passed. We only met once in three months—vacations—and there was nothing unusual to record. The ‘young boy,’ ‘too young to know what he was about,’ as we were so often told, went on toward manhood, unshaken by opposition, laughing at all prophecies of inconstancy or change, and then we bade farewell for four years while Henry went to Lane Seminary, Walnut Hills, Ohio, for his theological course.”

Somewhere Father Beecher has described a “Saxon courtship” as “a grave and serious thing. It is a matter of consideration. I have known a proposal of love to be stated like a proposition, and calmly argued for and against with far less warmth than Luther would have felt in debating a thesis. Indeed, many courtships are like attempts at kindling fires with green wood—a few starveling coals are heaped together, a mere spark dances in and out upon the inhospitable charcoal, and disappears on one side as fast as it appears on the other. But by all manner of shavings and bits of paper—mere trinkets, as it were, and billet-doux—a slight flame is got up, which strives, with doubtful prospect, to convert the smoke into blaze. The bellows are called in, the fire is fairly driven up to its work, the green sticks begin to sizzle at either end; and though at last, when the heat triumphs, the fire is large and lasting, the poor fellow that kindled it had to work for it.”

Now, we never could bring ourselves to asking direct questions, and we do not suppose that we should ever have been any wiser if we had; but, from the references sometimes made to riding through covered bridges, from the comical look that would come to his face and the blushes that would be sure to come to her cheeks when the raillery around the table became hot and personal, we were led to believe that this was not their kind.

On two leaves of his diary, written probably while at his home in Boston in the vacation that followed his Freshman year, and during the summer in which he had made the acquaintance of Miss Bullard, we find the following:

“Sept. 3, 1831, Sab. morn.—I found the correspondence of my father and own mother this morning, and eagerly sought out her letters and read them. O my mother! I could not help kissing the letters. I looked at the paper and thought that her hand had rested upon it while writing it. The hand of my mother! She had formed every letter which I saw. She had looked upon that paper which I now looked upon. She had folded it. She had sent it. But I found out more of her mind than I ever knew before; more of her feelings, her piety. I should think from her writings that she was very amiable, lovely, and confiding in her disposition, yet had much dignity. She appeared to have a mind very clear, strong, yet not perceptible till brought out by her feelings. Her letter to father in which she treats of ‘love to God, whether we should love him because he has done us good or not,’ etc., I was much pleased with. And I could not help observing that her letters were superior, more refined and conclusive, than the corresponding ones of father’s. They corresponded upon subjects, it seems, as pride, dress, slander, etc., etc. Her piety was doubted by herself, although no one who reads her description of her feelings can doubt for a moment that Christ was found within her heart.

“The letter to father in reply, apparently, to one in which he had expressed his feelings toward her and urged for her permission to hope for a future union, pleased me much. There was much playfulness about it. I thought that I could see that she loved him while she was writing it, yet she tried not exactly to show it. I should think that at the conclusion she told her feelings frankly, from one line which I saw, but the rest was torn off. I suspect that father did it that no one might ever see it.”

In common with many other students of limited means, he taught a term of eight weeks during three of the four years of his college course, using the winter vacation, which was at first six weeks long, and borrowing two weeks from the winter term in college.

Of his experience in Hopkinton and some other matters, especially the fear of his friends concerning his engagement, the following letter to his brother William gives some interesting details:

“HOPKINTON, Friday eve, 1832.

”MY DEAR BROTHER:

“... I know not as you would have had a reply at all if it were not for something said on the first page. Now, I supposed that my good friends would find out all at once that my engagement had undermined all my habits of study and was ruining me, nor did it surprise me to have you write it. It is all false, as false as it can be. No term since I have been in college have I studied so much as the last term; no year accomplished so much as the last. I am not anxious, however, to vindicate myself; I am ready to have you all think so, if needful, for I expected it from the first.

“Soon after I began the school some of the boys began to be fractious—all of them larger and stronger than myself. Their parents set them on, and they determined to carry me out of the room. A large fellow disobeyed me before the whole school, and persisted in it. They hoped I would thrash him, and then they would rise. But I turned him out of the school forthwith. He came the next day. I had previously told the committee and asked them to take the business out of my hands. They approved, but said that they wished I would do it. The next day I saw that they had got another great fellow in to help them. I called two of the committee in, and then ordered this disobedient boy out. He refused, and I took a rule and beat him, and finally broke it over his head. He struck at me a number of times and I parried them. The large ones then rose. I seized a club of wood and struck the boy three times—tore the skin each blow. The committee had to take the other fellows to keep them off. I then dismissed the school; told the committee that I should not keep the school where I could have them stand by and see such a scene without doing something; that if they would see those fellows removed I would go on, if not I would not. They said that they would do it if they thought they had power. I settled it all very soon by saying that I would not keep the school, and set my face as though I would return to Amherst. But the next day, Saturday, it rained. The committee liked my school, and gave me a good dismission in writing. The scholars were pleased for the most part, and through them their parents. They wished me much to open a private school. I waited till I found they were in earnest, and then opened one, and now am comfortably teaching about thirty scholars. Besides this my time is loaded. Sunday noon, Sabbath-school; Sunday afternoon, five o’clock, I have a Bible-class of ladies; Wednesday and Saturday evenings, meetings in the centre of town; two other evenings in the districts, and, after this, Sunday evening in the vestry.... May God bless and prosper you.

“Your affectionate brother, “H. W. B.”

Of his preaching at this time he says:

“My earliest remembered sermons were delivered at Northbridge, Mass., where I taught school for three months in 1831. I conducted conference meetings almost every night, and a temperance address at Upton, Mass., where old Father Wood was pastor, and in his church. In the winter of 1832 I taught school in Hopkinton, Mass., and carried on revival meetings every night and preached on Sundays. The people were plain and simple and liked the effusions. During the winter of 1833 I again taught school at Northbridge, and made a formal sermon in a chapel over the new store built by Messrs. Whitings.”

It was in his Sophomore year that a number of students, Henry Ward among them, invited a college mate who had been reading up on phrenology to deliver a lecture upon that subject. They did it for a joke, but it ended in Henry Ward’s accepting this philosophy as the foundation of the mental science which he used through life.

It was during his college course that he began lecturing—that mode of communication with the people that afterwards became so popular, and in which for so many years he was the acknowledged leader. His first formal lecture for which he received pay was delivered in Brattleboro’, Vt. He was paid ten dollars, and walked the whole distance, nearly fifty miles each way, that he might have the whole sum to expend as he pleased.

Speaking of this period, he says:

“There stands before me a line of battered and worn books—English classics. Their history is little to them, but much to me. In part it is my own history. I wish I could lay my hand on the first book that I ever bought after the dim idea of a library began to hover in my mind! But that book is gone. Here, however, are others whose biography I can give. As early as 1832 I began to buy books—a few volumes, but each one a monument of engineering. My first books, if I remember correctly, were bought of J. S. & C. Adams, in Amherst, Mass. I used to go in there and look wistfully at their shelves. My allowance of money was very small—scarcely more than enough to pay my postage, when a letter cost twelve and a half or twenty-five cents. To take a two or three-dollar book from my five dollars of spending-money would have left me in a state of sad impecuniosity. Therefore, for many, many months I took it out in looking.

“As early as at sixteen years of age I had begun to speak a little in public—faint peepings, just such as I hear in young birds before they are fully fledged. For such service the only payment was a kind patience till I relieved them by finishing my crude efforts. But at that time—say 1832—I was sent by the college society as delegate to a temperance convention in Pelham, or Enfield, or somewhere else. I conceived a desire thereafter to give a temperance lecture. I have forgotten how I ever got a chance to do it. But I remember that there came an invitation from Brattleboro’, Vt., to lecture on the 4th of July. My expenses were to be paid! A modest pride warmed my heart at the thought of making a real speech in public. I smothered all the fears and diffidences with the resolute purpose that I would succeed! I remember the days of writing and anxious preparation, and the grand sense of being a man when I had finished my manuscript! But the most generous purposes are apt to be ruined with selfishness; and my public spirit, alas! had a financial streak of joy in it—my expenses were to be paid!

“Well, suppose I chose to walk and save all the expenses? I should have at least eight dollars of my own, of which I need give no account! That would be an era indeed. But grave scruples arose. Was it honest to take money for expenses which I had not really incurred? If I went by stage I might lawfully charge my fare and food; but if neither of them cost me anything, how could I honestly make a bill of expenses? I did not get any relief in reflecting upon it. I started off on foot, went up the Connecticut River valley, and reached Brattleboro’ by way of Greenfield.

“Every hour this question of honesty returned. My feet blistered with walking, but I stamped on them hard in the morning, and the momentary exquisite pain seemed to paralyze the sensibility afterwards. Whether it was the counter irritation that relieved my brain, or whether—as I fear that I did—I smothered conscience by saying to myself that I would settle the matter when the time came, I do not know. But I was relieved from even that struggle, inasmuch as not a word was said to me about expenses, or money in any form. Yet I had a charming visit. The rising of the moon from behind the mountain that hedges in the town on the east powerfully excited my imagination, and led to the writing of the first piece, I believe, that I ever printed. It was published in the Guest, a college paper, issued chiefly as a rival to another college paper whose name (alas!) has escaped me. And if anybody could send me a volume of that Guest I should be exceedingly beholden to him!

“But after reaching college again—no longer a mere student, but a public man, one who had made speeches, one who determined to be modest and not to allow success to puff him up—a very great and wonderful thing happened: the post brought me a letter from Brattleboro’ containing ten dollars. I could not believe my eyes. I forgot my scruples. Providence had put it to me in such a way that I got my conscience over on the other side, and felt that it would be a sin and shame for me to be raising questions and scruples on such a matter! But O that bill! How it warmed me and invigorated me! I looked at it before going to sleep; I examined my pocket the next morning early, to be sure that I had not dreamed it. How I pitied the poor students, who had not, I well knew, ten dollars in their pockets. Still, I tried to keep down pride in its offensive forms. I would not be lifted up. I would strive to be even more familiar than before with the plainest of my acquaintances. ‘What is money?’ said I to myself. ‘It is not property that makes the man; it is—’ Well, perhaps I thought it was the ability to deliver eloquent temperance addresses. But great is the deceitfulness of money. I felt the pride of riches. I knew every waking moment that I had money. I was getting purse-proud.

“I resolved to invest. There was but one thing to invest in—books. I went to Adams’s store; I saw an edition of Burke’s works. With the ease and air of a rich man I bought and paid for them. Adams looked at me, and then at the bill, and then at me. I never could make up my mind whether it was admiration or suspicion that his face expressed. But I wanted him, and panted to have him ask me, ‘Where did you get all of this ten-dollar bill?’

“However, I concluded that the expression was one of genuine admiration. With my books under my arm (I never to this day could get over the disposition to carry home my own packages) I returned to college, and placed on my table my volumes of Burke! I tried to hide from myself that I had a vain purpose in it, that I was waiting to see Bannister’s surprises and to hear Howard’s exclamation, and to have it whispered in the class-room: ‘I say! have you heard that Beecher has got a splendid copy of Burke?’

“After this I was a man that owned a library! I became conservative and frugal. Before, I had spent at least a dollar and a half a year for knickknacks; but after I had founded a library I reformed all such wastes, and every penny I could raise or save I compelled to transform itself into books!

“As I look back on the influence of this struggle for books I cannot deny that it has been salutary. I do not believe that I spent ten dollars in all my college course for horses or amusements of any kind. But at my graduation I owned about fifty volumes. The getting of these volumes was not the least important element of my college education. There are two kinds of property which tend to moralize life. What they are I will tell you some other time, if you will coax me.”

His reading, as we have said, was very largely of the old English writers, whom he studied until the flavor of their language had been so thoroughly appropriated that it is very plainly discernible in all his early public writings. An old poet, Daniel, who belonged to the times of Spenser and Shakspere, was a great favorite of his. In a sermon preached in 1862 he quotes the poem that especially pleased him. We quote it entire with his introduction, and venture to say that the mind that makes choice of such a poem is sound and healthy at the core:

“I remembered a poem that I had read in my youth, and that I used to hang over with great interest. It had a strange fascination for me then. The writer was born in 1562, and he wrote it somewhere between that time and 1600. It has had a good long swing, and it will go rolling down a great many years yet:

“‘He that of such a height hath built his mind, And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resolvèd powers, nor all the wind Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong His settled peace or to disturb the same— What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey?

“‘And with how free an eye doth he look down Upon these lower regions of turmoil! Where all the storms of passions mainly beat On flesh and blood; where honor, power, renown Are only gay afflictions, golden toil; Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet As frailty doth, and only great doth seem To little minds, who do it so esteem.

“‘He looks upon the mightiest monarch’s wars But only as on stately robberies; Where evermore the fortune that prevails Must be the right; the ill-succeeding mars The fairest and the best-fac’d enterprise. Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails: Justice, he sees (as if seduced), still Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.

“‘He sees the face of right as manifold As are the passions of uncertain man, Who puts it in all colors, all attires, To serve his ends and make his courses hold. He sees that, let deceit work what it can, Plot and contrive base ways to high desires, That the all-guiding Providence doth yet All disappoint, and mocks the smoke of wit.

“‘Nor is he moved with all the thunder-cracks Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow Of Pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes, Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks. The storms of sad confusion that may grow Up in the present for the coming times, Appall not him, that hath no side at all But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

“‘Although his heart (so near allied to earth) Cannot but pity the perplexèd state Of troublous and distressed mortality, That thus make way unto the ugly birth Of their own sorrows, and do still beget Affliction upon imbecility: Yet, seeing thus the course of things must run, He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.

“‘And whilst distraught ambition compasses, And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives, And is deceived: whilst man doth ransack man, And builds on blood, and rises by distress, And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, And bears no venture in impiety.’”

Such is the record of Henry Ward Beecher in college. It is one of which none need be ashamed. It may be pondered with advantage and followed with profit by every one standing himself upon the threshold of that eventful period in his own life. It is the record of a man who was loyal to duty, to truth and purity. Independent in his line of thought and study, yet obedient to the government of the college, industrious and aspiring, his course was essentially a period of education, a drawing out of his powers, a training-school of his whole nature, a fitting preparation for that high place which he came ultimately to fill in the confidence and affection of the nation and the world.

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Chapter VIII

Lane Seminary—Dr. Beecher Called—Home at Walnut Hills—Amusing Incidents—Family Meeting—Death of Mrs. Beecher—Extracts from Journal—First Mention of Preaching in the West—Experience in Ecclesiastical Matters—Despondency—Meeting of Synod—Influences of the Times—Revulsion—A Rift along the Horizon—“Full iolly Knight.”

At the close of his college course, after a two-days’ visit to Sutton with Miss Bullard, he started for Cincinnati to begin his theological studies at Lane Seminary, of which institution his father had been elected president and professor of theology, and whither he had moved with his family two years before. The Seminary, located at Walnut Hills, two miles out of the city, had been established for the sake of supplying preachers and pastors for the great and growing West. It was thought that the territory traversed by the Ohio and the Mississippi was “the valley of decision” for the great interests of our country and of the world. To meet the emergency and take possession of this broad domain for Christ, its rightful Lord, was felt to be the most important work that could occupy the attention of the Christian public. It had been decided that a theological seminary established at Cincinnati, in the very centre of this district, afforded the most effective means for attaining the great object in view; that the best man in the whole country should be secured to stand at its head; and that that man, all things considered, was Dr. Beecher. He would bring energy, enthusiasm, and practical wisdom; would secure confidence in the work among Eastern capitalists, and conduct the enterprise to assured success.

Out of this conviction sprang the Seminary and the call to Dr. Beecher to be its head. He was in perfect and enthusiastic sympathy with the object in view. He says of the project: “There was not on earth a place but that I would have opened my ears to for a moment.... But I had felt and thought and labored a great deal about raising up ministers, and the idea that I might be called to teach the best mode of preaching to the young ministry of the broad West flashed through my mind like lightning. It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it, and displaced everything else.”

Coming to this definite work under the inspiration of this great thought, from a church which had been for years in the midst of a continuous revival, he had naturally given the Seminary a markedly practical tone of spiritual earnestness. A strong man himself, he attracted men of like stamp; and there had come, soon after he took charge of the institution, “a noble class of young men, uncommonly strong, a little uncivilized, entirely radical, and terribly in earnest.”

Dr. Beecher’s method of instruction was peculiar and in harmony with his spirit and purpose. It was not so much of the formal lecture order as of the free conversational kind, in which questions were invited, objections were answered, thought was quickened, and feeling was awakened, with the result that the great truth which was the subject of the lecture was likely to be not only in a large measure comprehended but felt and appropriated by the students.

One of the professors, Calvin E. Stowe, for whom Henry Ward conceived one of those ardent friendships which distinguished him through life, helped him in the same direction. “He led him to an examination of the Bible and to an analysis of its several portions, not as the parts of a machine, formal and dead, but as of a body of truth instinct with God, warm with all divine and human sympathies, clothed with language adapted to their fit expression and to be understood as similar language used for similar ends in every-day life.” And we have now in our hands a roll of manuscript in which, in line with this idea, the young student wrote out during his theological course a careful analysis of the miracles and parables of the New Testament.

Without doubt this tone of the institution and method of instruction had an important and very beneficial influence upon him at this formative period of his professional life, giving him a genuine enthusiasm for his work, and training him to investigate carefully and analyze clearly the truths brought under examination.

And, that there might be lacking no element for his fittest training for the great work that was before him, the question of slavery had arisen among the students, creating such a disturbance that forty, under the leadership of Theodore Weld, had withdrawn just before he appeared on the ground.

Of the place, his coming, and some of the incidents in his life his brother, Rev. T. K. Beecher, says:

“By and by they two, Henry and Charles, came to study theology in Lane Seminary, a brick building in the woods of Ohio. The whistle of the quail, the scolding squirrels, once the heavy, busky flight of wild turkeys—my hero killed one and claimed a second—the soft thump and pat of a rabbit, the breezy rush of wild pigeons, were here heard.

“A foot-path led through the woods, over which came three times a day the heroes, shouting, exploding the vowel sounds, and imitating cows, frogs, and crows—a laughing menagerie.

“The Academy of Music, two miles off down-town—Henry primo-basso, Charles violin and tenor; and the little boy, at last an alto, permitted to run between the heroes and sing, while eyes feasted on Charles’s violin bow-hand, and ears were filled with Henry’s basso, are well remembered.

“The ‘Creation’ and ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ were our winter’s work, and Henry was off sometimes lecturing on temperance and phrenology. Sometimes on a Saturday morning, at family prayer, there were Catharine, George, Henry, Harriet, Isabella, Tom and Jim, Aunt Esther, and father still praying ‘Overturn and overturn,’ and singing by all hands:

“‘Awake and sing the song Of Moses and the Lamb; Wake, every heart and every tongue, To praise the Saviour’s name. Sing on your heavenly way, Ye ransomed sinners, sing! Sing on rejoicing every day In Christ the Heavenly King.’

Long, long discussions, lasting till past midnight and resumed at every meal, of ‘free agency,’ ‘sovereignty,’ ‘natural and moral ability,’ interpretations, and such.

“Charles could whittle graceful boats with sharp knife out of thick sticks.

“Henry had the full set of Walter Scott’s works.

“Charles took lessons on the violin of Tosso, in the city. Henry wrote something that Editor Charles Hammond printed in the Cincinnati Gazette. O wonderful Henry! They both wrote long, long letters to two far-away beings, and the little boy sometimes took them to the post-office and paid twenty-five cents, wondering what they could find to write such long, long letters about.”

His brother Charles says:

“The glorious old forest lay between the Seminary and father’s house, and we made it ring with vocal practice and musical scales and imitations of band-music. The house father occupied was of brick, and Henry whitewashed it with a kind of whitewash that was equal to paint, of a sort of cream color. I can see him now, on his tall ladder, with his spattered overalls, working away.

“One of our professors was B———, a nice, dapper, rosy little man, in the chair of history. We naughty boys made fun of him. Henry took notes. I would give something handsome for that note-book. B——— was fond of quoting authors with sounding names, Bochart among others, and Henry would have it ‘Go-cart,’ and made a hieroglyphic to that effect.

“We walked to and from the city, up and down the long hill, and attended father’s church, Second Presbyterian, on Fourth Street. Henry had a Bible-class of young ladies, for which he made preparation by writing.”

For three years young Beecher was again a member of the home-circle, from which he had been so long separated. This home had apparently lost none of that broad, open-doored hospitality and cheerful spirit that so markedly characterized it in Litchfield. “The house was full. There was a constant high tide of life and animation. The old carry-all was perpetually vibrating between home and the city, and the excitement of coming and going rendered anything like stagnation an impossibility.” “It was an exuberant and glorious life while it lasted. The atmosphere of the household was replete with mental oxygen, full charged with intellectual electricity. Nowhere else have we felt anything resembling or equalling it. It was a kind of moral heaven, the purity, vivacity, inspiration, and enthusiasm of which only those can appreciate who have lost it and feel that in this world there is, there can be, no place like home.”

Of two of its members and some of their make-shifts we have this account, copied from his journal:

“The Economical Family.—My father was an excellent man (for no one provided better dinners—soups, codfish, mutton-chops; even, upon great days, he has been known to have a turkey). He was a man of enlarged mind and great sagacity. He was before his age in his views, and always before his salary in his expenses. This was from no want of calculation: nobody ever was longer and shrewder in that. But he was aspiring, and by nature seemed to go beyond things seen, far into the region of things hoped for.

“His sister, an antique maiden lady, differed vastly from him and could in no sense be called enlightened. It was astonishing to see how his example and his reasoning were thrown away upon her. To the last she clung to those earthly, low notions which seem so peculiar to this world. She would persist in saying that no one should buy what he could not pay for, nor pay for any new thing until old debts were settled. Nor could she be brought to adopt an enlarged policy in respect to the family. We were obliged to wear clothes until they were worn out—at least out at the knees and elbows—altho’ the fashion should change a dozen times during that period. So that it was not uncommon to find one’s self two or three times the pink of fashion before a suit was fairly condemned as unseaworthy. In fact, we may be said always to have set the fashion at such times, since we were seen wearing the proper cut before even the leading beau. But if this was comfortable it was but little amends for the days of darkness which ensued. One day we revelled (?) in our glory; the next every one gaped at our uncouth fashion. We might properly be likened to a ship riding gracefully upon the water, but suddenly left by the tide sticking in the mud, stiff and immovable. I used to comfort myself, when laughed at, by saying, ‘Never mind; you laugh now, before six months you’ll be imitating me.’ And so it often proved, till I began to think I was a prophet.

“But it is of the family I write and not of myself, for be it known that I am not under vassalage. I am free from both authority and—money; the latter condition as no reproach. I have often noticed that these two kinds of independence are closely allied. True independence seems always in the lurch.”

One amusing incident that grew out of the half country-farm life which they then lived he used often to refer to.

Living in the outskirts of the city, where the fences were poor and straying cattle often gave them great annoyance, Henry one day, to his immense disgust, found a cow quietly resting in the middle of the barn floor. With the accumulated indignation aroused, by numerous chases, which these poachers of the highway had led him, by many tramplings across flower-beds and destruction of the garden vegetables, he drove her out and chased her down the street. Coming in hot and tired from his run, he threw himself upon the sofa, saying: “There, I guess I have taught one old cow to know where she belongs!” “What do you mean?” said the doctor, looking up apprehensively from his paper. “Why, I found another cow in the barn, and I have turned her out and chased her clear down the street, and I think she will stay away now.” “Well,” said Dr. Beecher, “you have done it. I have just bought that cow, and had to wade the Ohio River twice to get her home, and after I have got her safely into the barn you have turned her out. You have done it, and no mistake.” And the chasing of that cow was renewed.

His humor bubbled out at all times and in all places, finding its occasion even in so staid a matter as chapel prayers. He roomed with Prof. Stowe, who was the soul of punctuality, and was continually pained at the failure of his young room-mate to be on time at morning prayers in the Seminary chapel.

Having done his best to wake him up one morning, apparently without success, he had gone down-stairs with many expressions of disgust. No sooner was he out of the room than Henry sprang up, dressed himself as only college students can, ran to the Seminary by a back way, and when the professor entered was sitting demurely in front of the desk. The amazement of the teacher at this unexpected appearance, rubbing his glasses and peering at him again and again to determine whether it was real or he only saw a vision, was always remembered by Mr. Beecher with a chuckle of merriment.

For a short time near the close of his theological course he edited a paper, and appears to have done his work with marked success; but circumstances brought it to a speedy close. “The Cincinnati Journal needed an editor. There was at that time in the middle class of Lane Seminary a green young man of some facility of pen. He had written a series of anonymous articles on the Catholic question in the evening paper edited by Mr. Thomas. He was considered rather tonguey, and not likely to back down from anything from want of hopefulness and self-confidence. Him Dr. Brainerd called to the chair, and, on relinquishing the editorship, recommended this beardless youth to the proprietors of the journal as his successor. One fine morning this young man found himself an editor upon a salary! An editor must have a coat; and Platt Evans made a lion-skin overcoat that has never had a successor or an equal. He must have a watch! A plain, white-faced watch soon ticked in his pocket. Alas! evil days befell the publishers. The paper had a new owner. He did not want the young editor; the young editor did want the watch, but could not pay for it; the seller took it back, to the great grief of the young theologian, who went back disconsolate to his classes at Lane Seminary, and was broken-hearted for a whole day. The young man recovered, and has been in mischief ever since, some folks think.”

When the pro-slavery riots broke out in Cincinnati in 1836, and James G. Birney’s printing-office and press were destroyed by a mob headed by Kentucky slaveholders, young Beecher volunteered and was sworn in as special constable, and for several nights patrolled the streets thoroughly armed to protect the negroes and their friends. He was earnest in this matter, as in everything else that he undertook. His sister Harriet, finding him busy running bullets, and asking him what he was doing it for, was a good deal startled to hear him answer in a hard, determined voice: “To kill men.”

Besides the influence of this common, every-day life, which was afterwards reflected in his own hospitable spirit and home, two domestic events took place during these three years that deserve more especial notice. The first was “the Family Meeting.”

“Long before Edward came out here the doctor had tried to have a family meeting, but did not succeed. The children were too scattered. Two were in Connecticut, some in Massachusetts, and one in Rhode Island. But now—just think of it!—there has been a family meeting in Ohio! When Edward returned he brought on Mary from Hartford. William came down from Putnam, George from Batavia, Ohio; Catharine and Harriet were here already; Henry and Charles at home, too, besides Isabella, Thomas, and James. These eleven! The first time they all ever met together! Mary had never seen James, and she had seen Thomas but once. Such a time as they had! The old doctor was almost transported with joy. The affair had been under negotiation for some time. He returned home from Dayton late one Saturday evening. The next morning they for the first time assembled in the parlor. There were more tears than words. The doctor attempted to pray, but could scarcely speak. His full heart poured itself out in a flood of weeping. He could not go on. Edward continued, and each one in his turn uttered some sentence of thanksgiving. They then began at the head and related their fortunes. After special prayer all joined hands and sang ‘Old Hundred’ in these words:

“‘From all that dwell below the skies Let the Creator’s praise arise.’ * * * *

“When left alone in the evening they had a general examination of all their characters. The shafts of wit flew amain, the doctor being struck in several places. He was, however, expert enough to hit most of them in return. From the uproar of the general battle all must have been wounded....

“Tuesday morning saw them together again, drawn up in a straight line for the inspection of the king of happy men. After receiving particular instructions they formed into a circle. The doctor made a long and affecting speech. He felt that he stood for the last time in the midst of all his children, and each word fell with the weight of a patriarch’s. He embraced them once more in all the tenderness of his big heart. Each took of all a farewell kiss. With joined hands they united in a hymn. A prayer was offered, and finally the parting blessing was spoken.”

The other event referred to was the death of Mrs. Beecher, which occurred at the close of Henry’s first Seminary year. She was his step-mother, but “she did all that she could for my good.”

“In the holy yearnings of this truly devoted mother the whole family was included; nor could the older children perceive any less fervency in her desires for their true welfare than for that of her own flesh and blood.” And it was with deep and true feeling that he writes “that God was with her in her closing days, and that the light of his countenance cheered her passage to the tomb.”

These varied experiences of joy and sorrow in the home-life of this period; this variety of occupation—now studying and attending lectures in the Seminary, lecturing on temperance and phrenology, drilling in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” painting the old family mansion, accompanying his father in his attendance upon presbytery and synod, now a constable and anon an editor—all contributed to give him a broad culture, had much to do with the variety of labor which he undertook in after-life, and fitted him for that easy, natural, and familiar mingling with all kinds and conditions of men which was in him so marked a characteristic.

Of what he did, read, and thought at this time we are fortunate in having another source of authentic information from his own pen. Upon the unruled blank leaf of a letter-book, as large as a commercial ledger and heavily bound in leather, is written in a large hand, large enough to cover the whole page:

JOURNAL

OF

EVENTS, FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, PLANS, ETC.,

JUST AS THEY HAVE MET ME, THUS GIVING IN PART

A TRANSCRIPT OF MY INNER AND OUTER LIFE.

BEGUN JUNE, 1835, AT LANE THEOL. SEMINARY.

On the first page, “Begun three days after birthday,” June 27. “I have tried times without number to keep a diary or a journal of my religious feelings. I have never succeeded.” 1. “I am not enough contemplative to make a record of reflections and feelings very definite.” 2. “I never could be sincere. The only use which I distinctly know that I have derived from it is a knowledge of my being very averse to saying just what my feelings were. I could not help feeling: ‘This will, perhaps, be seen.’ And why should I not so feel? One object in keeping a journal is to look back upon your mind as it reflected itself at different periods past, and if you keep one no one can pretend to have enough of prospective wisdom to save it from the hands of others.”

After half a page of reasons why this possibility—which has indeed been realized—may take place, he says: “Can I conceal it all from myself, and feign to myself that that which I am disclosing and giving form and permanence to, my most secret feelings, none will see? And when I feel secretly that they will be seen, is it possible to go through honestly a narration of those emotions from the disclosure of which I shrink in my inmost soul?”

In view of this possibility, he decides upon a modification of his ideal:

“In this journal I do not set before me as an object to tell all my feelings, but only such as for any reason I may choose to tell. I intend to record, too, my opinions and reflections on occurrences, on persons, on books, and to find a resting-place, if possible, for many of those daily thoughts which are too short and unconnected to be noted down separately, and yet of some small value, perhaps—at least to give variety to a journal. Then, too, being little tenacious of dates, I here mean to record and date all changes in my life, that afterwards, when business and multiplicity of other facts have crowded from my mind such facts, I may here recur as to a faithful chronicle and refresh my memory.

“Here, then, I mean to be at ease, and not molest myself with any obligations to write so much, or so often, or so anything, but in mental dishabille I will stroll through my mind and do as I choose.”

It can well be supposed that with such an introduction facing us we feel some delicacy, even with the quasi permission which his departure from the true ideal of a journal gives, in handling, and especially in giving to the public, the matters which are here written. While we find no word that a perfectly upright and honorable man need be ashamed of, we do find private matters which we have no right to make public. Out of the great amount of material which the journal affords we have selected such portions as illustrate the salient features of his life, character, work, and methods at this time.

First of all, we find him still keeping up the old habit of reading, and after a very critical method.

“July 1, 1835.—I finished Scott’s ‘Antiquary’ this morning, and I propose giving some little account of my impressions. To do it I shall be obliged to collect my general scattered feelings into a definite, tangible form; and if I always did it after reading I should have more numerous ideas of things and of their forms, and more correct ones.

“I think it one of Scott’s best, although my personal taste gives his novels founded on warlike customs, as ‘Ivanhoe,’ more relish. But that does not alter the abstract merits of this, for there are grounds of judging a work altogether aside from our taste as to the subject judged. There are but two general considerations in estimating a novel. First, has the author been a faithful copyist of nature, even when his effort is of the imagination? And, second, has he made a judicious selection and skilful combination of his material.”

After several pages of the large ledger have been devoted to this subject, there follows this entry:

“July 4.—The difference between Scott and Shakspere is of two kinds: (1) the difference of dramatic and prosaic description, and (2) the native difference of the two men. The first involves a discussion and comparison of the two kinds of writing. The dramatic is narrower, more formal and measured, and consequently more stiff. No one ever heard one speak as Macbeth, as Hamlet, or as Iago, for no one ever spoke so. Passion, or indeed nature, never marches in heroic measure. In another respect it differs. There is a general sameness of language. The imitation of nature respects feelings and character, and not expression, if we except some comic characters. But prose imitates with perfect freedom, unshackled by verse, not only the passion, character, etc., but the expression and language.

“In this respect Scott differs from himself as a poet and novelist as much as when a novelist he differs from Shakspere, etc....”

Similar and lengthy criticisms of Crabbe, Coleridge, Byron, Burns, and others follow, many of them crude, but all aiming to grasp and express the original thought of the poet, as he says after naming some rules by which to judge a book:

“But such things are the externals of criticism. I admire the German way of going into the motive and spirit of a poem, and discussing the principles and source of feeling.”

We find his habit of drawing from his own experiences some moral or spiritual lesson, and then teaching it to others, thus early formed:

“June 27, 1835.— ... Being unwell is by no means useless. It crowds one on to thoughts of death, and sweeps away all the mist of forgetfulness which the frivolity of events has accumulated. One must either wrap himself in designed forgetfulness—which is a stupid resource—or come to some conclusion in respect to his religious prospects. For my part, in sickness (what little I have had) I am not agitated, but rendered serious and calmly apprehensive, and I begin to think what God is, and Christ, and heavenly joy, and compare them with my tastes and disposition, and see if they accord or are repulsive. I’ve written enough for the present, so I’ll return to Scott’s ‘Legend of Montrose.’”

We find very little, almost nothing, concerning the regulation work and studies of the theological course, possibly because some other book which has not come down to us contained these. He seems to have plenty to do, and carries into his work a very decided determination to succeed.

“Aug. 2, 1835, Sunday.—I have for this time work enough: two courses of lectures—one, for my Bible-class, to begin next Sunday; the other a course of temperance lectures for Reading and elsewhere. I don’t know how I shall succeed, but I am never self-distrustful and often feel sure I shall do VERY well, and as often see that I may fall through entirely. Either course failing would mortify me. But here, as elsewhere, let me start with feeling, ‘I will persevere, and with every endeavor which interest and ingenuity can furnish.’ Such being one’s constant feeling and action, hardly anything is invincible. Perseverance without corresponding exercise of ALL ONE’S MIND is but a dogged spinning out of tedious and useless effort. Remember when most discouraged to labor as though you were in the full blossom of Hope, and shortly you will be.”

At this time he was singing in, and sometimes leading, the choir in his father’s church, as he writes:

“Nov. 14.—The medical authorities of the family, having ordered me up for inspection, have decided that I was not sea-worthy, but have, in view of past services, ordered me into dock to be a receiving-ship, and there to undergo thorough repairs. I am quietly riding in the dock without mast or rigging. They have sent aboard two sets of workmen this morning, under the care of Messrs. Calomel and Aloes; and these are to remove all my cargo, ballast, etc., after which I am to be new-rigged and furnished and sent out on a new cruise. This is well. I have sailed very dully for some time and came near to foundering once or twice.

“Will you take my place to-day and sing bass? I know of no one possessing suitable gravity except yourself to confront the audience and do justice to music.... Yours truly,

“‘Old Constitution.’”

A line of tender sentiment runs through the journal, appearing whenever any reference is made to the one to whom he was engaged. Concerning so delicate a matter we only give extracts sufficient to show the radiant atmosphere in which, at least at times, he walked, and the deep and sincere affection which he cherished. They are to be read as the opening stanzas of that beautiful idyl that closed only with his life.

“Aug. 4, 1835.—It is a little curious, perhaps not, however, that I very much dislike to say anything in my journal of my thoughts and feeling for E., who is so much of my existence. Well, I suppose the more and the more delicately we love the less we care and wish to say about it. It becomes a matter of heart, not of tongue; it becomes a feeling, and feeling has no language except action. I have sent her a large letter, largely laden with affection....”

“Aug. 5, 1835.—Woke up and thought of E———, M———, and G———; compared their characters. M——— is marked by INTELLECT, G——— by lady-like character, sweetness, and gayness. E——— has neither so prominent, but both well combined and softened by strongest and sweetest affectionateness. Her character is uniform, and projects, if anywhere, in line of affection.”

“Sept. 14, 1835.—I wonder what people think of my warmth? Some, I know, estimate it far too highly, because they have not seen much of such things. Others, and most, suppose it very low and suspect very little of it. It is in truth but medium naturally. Well, in a year or two, and then E——— will be disappointed the right way. What a noble creature E——— is! I could have looked through ten thousand and never have found one so every way suited to me. How dearly do I love her! I long for the portrait.”

“Oct. 1, 1835.—Found a packet of letters from my dearest E———. Oh, how dear! Her likeness too, which, though imperfect in some respects, has very much the looks of the original, and if only one feature were preserved I would feel grateful. But, excepting the mouth, each feature is faithfully like her own. I shall begin a letter to her to-night. God bless and keep her! I love her more and more and say less and less about it.

“Harriet has had E———’s portrait all day, and I have felt quite lonesome without it. Last evening I retired to bed and very philosophically decided to leave the portrait in my side-pocket. I lay for some half-hour and was quite convinced that it was in the wrong place, and removed it to my pillow. It soon underwent another migration—where, one may imagine if he will recall all such doings as depicted in novels.”

The following is his first mention of preaching in the West:

“Aug. 9, Sunday, 1835.—Preached twice in George’s church. In morning with great dryness and trouble, and felt much mortified—more, I think, than grieved.

“Afternoon smaller audience, but had great liberty and fluency, and produced effect; but whether superficial or permanent and saving, God only knows. Afternoon text: ‘My ways not as your ways’; Morning: ‘For we thus judge’ (2 Cor. v. 14, etc.)

“After preliminaries, subject, ‘The genius of Christianity is not to produce gloom or debar from pleasure; but, contrary, earthly pleasures can only be enjoyed by Christians, and much more heavenly.’”

He begins to be conscious of unused powers.

“Sept., 1835.—Since reading Crabbe and Scott I am possessed with the notion of writing characters. I have some models which I know would be originals.”

His love of fun evidently subjected him now and then to criticism. To one whose remarks had touched him to the quick he writes in self-defence:

“Oct. 29 [1835].—... You said last night that I was never made for a minister. If a minister were made to wear a lachrymose face and never to enjoy or make mirth, you said truly and I was not born to it. There are, in fact, three classes of divines—the ascetic, the neuter, and the sunshiny; the first conceive the chief end of man to consist in a long face, upturned eyes, a profound sanctimonious look.... I must plead guilty if you mean that I was not born to the rank of these worthy personages. Far be it from me to believe that religion makes ridiculous dunces. And though I think many such are truly pious men, yet such endowments are the deformity and misfortune, not the ornament, of their piety. The second class I call neuter because they (like the Chinese leaf by which character is told) quirl and roll just according to the party with which they are.... I must confess I have too many opinions of my own to be whirled about by every change of company. And though it is proper and decent that one should conform to the nature of different occasions, so as not to jest at a funeral, laugh at church, or dance in a hospital among the sick, the dead and dying; and though one should respect the conditions of his company, so as not to obtrude upon age the buoyancy of youth, ... yet I am sure neither old age nor old reflections ... shall make me disown mirth.... Now for the third class, the glorious, sunshiny ones. I envy them, I emulate them. These are they who think there is a time for relaxation and elegant enjoyment. Too much is to be done to allow them long seasons of gayety.... But while they labor hard, think and write, and preach and visit, weeping with those who weep, they conceive by the same authority that they may unbend and refresh the mind by laughing with those who laugh.... To be mirthful is part of our constitution, and I believe God never gave us that which it is a sin to exercise.... None but those who feel it can tell how hard it is to restrain a disposition which sees everything in the most ludicrous point of view. But God knows that if I have a good deal of mirth I compensate for it in secret; and although now I look for different times, yet till now I have had enough of anything but joy to make mirth acceptable to me. You said what you did in jest, but I lay awake all night thinking of it. God will bear me witness that I love the ministry, and if it be necessary for me to lay aside even my constitutional gayety that I may be more useful, I will cheerfully do it....”

From a “catalogue of books in my possession” we learn that on December 2, 1835, he had 42 volumes of theological works, 71 volumes of literary, 10 scientific, and 12 miscellaneous, making a grand total in all of 135 volumes—not a bad showing for one who had earned every book, either by labor or severe economy, and, what is more to the point, had read and studied them all.

We must now turn from the perusal of his journal to note other influences than those already referred to—those of the Seminary, of home and books—that were at work upon him at this time. There were some that had a very important influence in shaping his ecclesiastical bearing through life.

These were days of heresy-hunting; days when Albert Barnes was arraigned before presbytery for unsoundness because of some kind of heterodoxy (?) discovered in his notes upon Romans, and when the conflict between the two parties in the Presbyterian Church was rapidly advancing to a division of that great body into Old and New School. “Dr. Beecher,” so writes Mrs. Stowe, “was now the central point of a great theological battle. It was a sort of spiritual Armageddon, being the confluence of the forces of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Calvinistic fatalism, meeting in battle with the advancing rationalism of New England New School theology. On one side was hard, literal interpretation of Bible declarations and the Presbyterian standards asserting man’s utter and absolute natural and moral inability to obey God’s commands, and on the other side the doctrine of man’s free agency and the bringing to the rendering of the declarations of the Scriptures and of the standards the lights of modern modes of interpretation.” This battle soon assumed the character of an assault upon Dr. Lyman Beecher for the purpose of his destruction. His son knew it to be wholly without justification and as senseless as it was wicked. He knew his father’s earnestness, devotion, and unselfishness, the sacrifices he had made to take up this work, felt how greatly he deserved the gratitude of all Christian men; and when he saw that father attacked for heresy and brought before every tribunal of the Presbyterian Church, except the highest, for trial, and all because his construction of the Presbyterian Confession was not according to the views of one or two of the leaders of that Church in the West, he was not more indignant than disgusted.

He saw him triumphantly acquitted by one body after another, but still pursued by suspicion, and knew that a conspiracy had been formed in which some of his Eastern friends and one or more Eastern seminaries were enlisted, with the avowed intention of crushing him, and all this mostly by good men, under the strong bias of ecclesiastical prejudice and in a mistaken zeal for God’s service.

We must feel his disgust as he was compelled to go scurrying through the country, not to rescue souls from danger nor to forward any great moral end, but to anticipate the action of some presbytery or arrange for some meeting of synod; we must realize his indignation at seeing his father compelled to leave the death-bed of his mother to defend himself against these heresy-hunters, if we would understand the position which Mr. Beecher occupied towards ecclesiastical bodies in after-years.

In a letter dated “Canal Boat, Wednesday morning, Oct. 14, 1835,” Henry Ward gives an account of a meeting of Synod. After a humorous description of the eccentricities of Dr. Beecher, for which we have no space, he writes: “At length we are ready to start. A trunk tumbles out of one side as Thomas tumbles in the other. I reverse the order—tumble Tom out, the trunk in. At length all are aboard, and father drives out of the yard, holding the reins in one hand, shaking hands with a student with the other, giving Charles directions with his mouth—at least that part not occupied with an apple; for since apples were plenty he has made it a practice to drive with one rein in the right hand and the other in the left, with an apple in each, biting them alternately, thus raising and lowering the reins like threads on a loom. Away we go, Charley horse on a full canter down the long hill, the carriage bouncing and bounding over the stones, father alternately telling Tom how to get the harness mended and showing me the true doctrine of original sin. Hurrah! we thunder alongside the boat just in time.... Yesterday the Synod was constituted Old School. Moderator by a majority of seven, under his administration the system is beginning to assume form and becomes apparent. All the committees are one way, and the whole aspect of affairs shows you that there is a deep-laid, regular plan, and the elders are all drilled in. The committee give leave of absence to all New School men, and refuse all others, so that they may increase and we decrease.

“It is Tuesday morning and everybody is talking, planning, plotting—all bustle; heads together; knots at every corner; hands going up and down, and faces approaching earnestly or drawing back in doubt; one taking hold of the other’s coat, leading off into one corner for a particular argument; elders receiving drill, some bolting the collar. Here, in my room, are father, George, and Mr. Rankin. They are looking over the ground, prognosticating, arranging for the onset, or for the reception of an onset.... I never saw so many faces of clergymen, and so few of them intellectual faces.... And the elders are just what forty or fifty common farmers would be supposed to be—except that for eldership the soberest men are chosen, and, as stupidity is usually graced with more gravity than great good sense, the body of elders are not quite so acute in look as the higher class of workingmen.”

Although written in a playful mood, it is evident that he had no fancy for such work, and as he advanced his dislike increased. The broad, kindly, hospitable living, the strong, practical, sympathetic preaching, and the honest dislike of all the rattle of ecclesiastical machinery, which marked his after-life, came naturally from the training he received on the outside of Lane Seminary.

The influences of the place in which he lived as well as of the times were powerful factors in his theological education. The great West, with its boundless possibilities which had so moved the spirit of his father, lay before him, and stirred his imagination as at an earlier period the sea had done. And, as when he looked out upon the broad Atlantic from the wharves of Boston he had felt the impulse to go forth to be a sailor, command ships, and fight naval battles, so did the movement of the great streams of population Westward, and the vast field that stretched out before him like the ocean, move his spirit to go forth upon the sea of human life and conquer for Christ.

In this period of theological study, when the most of students withdraw themselves as much as possible from real life, he was brought to face it in some of its most intense forms. Cincinnati was then the central and most important city of the great West; an immense commerce was carried on from its wharves; it was the point where gathered the multitudes that were going out to occupy the new territory; it was still the rendezvous for frontiersmen; more than this, it lay upon the border-land between the free and slave States, and already felt the uneasiness and bitterness of the irresistible conflict. Chain-gangs of slaves were continually passing on the decks of the steamboats, to be sold down South, and fugitives from bondage were keeping the sympathy or the hatred of the people in continual activity. Life of high pressure and in great variety was presented to Henry Ward Beecher there in the heart of the great West in the years of 1834-1837; life that was very real, and that called not so much for fine-spun theories as for practical forces; not for dead and formal dogmas, but for living truth, for Him who is both Life and Truth.

True, he might have measurably kept himself from it and immured himself in the library and class-rooms of the Seminary, but he followed an entirely opposite course; he lectured, wrote anti-slavery editorials, joined the citizens’ body of police for the preservation of order, every way keeping himself in sympathy with the stirring times in which he lived, and they helped to make him the living, practical preacher he afterwards became.

His Bible-class, to which he gave great attention, both in preparation and in teaching the lesson, afforded him a field for the application of the truths he had learned, and for testing the methods he had adopted.

Yet for the most of the time his mind was not settled. His ideal of the Christian ministry was so high that he sometimes despaired of ever attaining it, and at times he seems to have seriously contemplated giving up his preparation for the ministry and of devoting himself to some other pursuit. Mrs. Beecher says that through these years his letters were very full of the discomforts and doubts that troubled him. “... Sometimes I think I shall not succeed in anything. If, when my course here is finished, they will not license me, suppose I go far West, enter a homestead (?), clear the wood off, build a little log hut, work during the week, and hunt up the settlers and hold conference and prayer meetings—will you come to me if that is all I can offer you?” Then, perhaps, in the next letter: “I will preach, if it is in the by-ways and hedges; but oh! for more light to see my way clear!” “During the last two years his letters had less of this depression. He would preach, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear.” “But I must preach the Gospel as it is revealed to me, not as it is laid down in the schools.”

He gives his experience in these words:

“During the latter part of my stay in college my feelings were unsettled. Sometimes they inclined one way and sometimes the other, until I went to Lane Seminary. I was then twenty years old, and there came a great revulsion in me from all this inchoate, unregulated, undirected experience in religion. My mind took one tremendous spring over into scepticism, and I said: ‘I have been a fool long enough.’ I refused to be any longer played upon in such a way. It was bitter, it was malignant, it was sad, it was sorrowful; but it was wholesale, and swept away ten thousand fictions and external observances. I said: ‘I will not stir one step further than I can see my way, and I will not stand a moment where I cannot see the truth. I will have something that is sure and steadfast.’ Having taken that ground, I was in that state of mind for the larger part of two years.

“It then pleased God to lift upon me such a view of Christ as one whose nature and office it is to have infinite and exquisite pity upon the weakness and want of sinners as I had never had before. I saw that He had compassion upon them because they were sinners, and because He wanted to help them out of their sins. It came to me like the bursting forth of spring. It was as if yesterday there was not a bird to be seen or heard, and as if to-day the woods were full of singing birds. There rose up before me a view of Jesus as the Saviour of sinners—not of saints, but of sinners unconverted, before they were any better—because they were so bad and needed so much; and that view has never gone from me. It did not at first fill the whole heaven; it came as a rift along the horizon; gradually, little by little, the cloud rolled up. It was three years before the whole sky was cleared so that I could see all around, but from that hour I felt that God had a father’s heart; that Christ loved me in my sin; that while I was a sinner He did not frown upon me nor cast me off, but cared for me with unutterable tenderness, and would help me out of sin; and it seemed to me that I had everything I needed. When that vision was vouchsafed to me I felt that there was no more for me to do but to love, trust, and adore; nor has there ever been in my mind a doubt since that I did love, trust, and adore. There has been an imperfect comprehension, there have been grievous sins, there have been long defections; but never for a single moment have I doubted the power of Christ’s love to save me, any more than I have doubted the existence in the heaven of the sun by day and the moon by night.”

We have thus followed Henry Ward Beecher from the cradle to the moment that he stands prepared to enter upon his life-work; have noted every step of his course from the hills to the sea, from school to college, from the East to the West; have marked the influences of the home, of nature, of the city, of school, college, and seminary, of the times, of the Word and Spirit of God; have traced his experiences, felt his dawning strength, examined the life he lived, the dispositions he manifested, the hopes he cherished, and the character he formed; and in our confidence and admiration choose, as not inappropriate for him at this time, the description of “The Patrone of true Holinesse” in the “Faerie Queene”:

“Full iolly knight he seemed, and faire did sitt, As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt; And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living ever, Him ador’d: Upon his shield the like was also scor’d, For soveraine hope, which in His helpe he had, Right faithfull true he was in deede and word; But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad; Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”

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Chapter IX

Call to Preach—License—Examination by Miami Presbytery—Refusal to Subscribe to Old School—Ordination by Oxford Presbytery—Visit East—Marriage—Housekeeping.

In the early spring of 1837 Mr. Beecher graduated from Lane Seminary. In accordance with the practice of the Presbyterian Church, a clergyman might be licensed to preach, even though not ordained; but such license could only be obtained after the applicant had appeared before the Presbytery for examination, and he was required also to read a “trial lecture,” as it was called. Agreeably to this custom, upon graduating from the Seminary Mr. Beecher went before the Cincinnati Presbytery, was examined, and read his “trial lecture.” The examination and lecture seem to have been satisfactory, for he was duly licensed to preach.

For a few weeks prior to his examination for license he preached in a little hall at Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. He seriously contemplated settling there as soon as he should be licensed.

“After preaching there [Covington] three or four Sundays I was called, by Martha Sawyer, a Yankee woman, to go to Lawrenceburg and preach. There was a church in that place, composed of about twenty members, of which she was the factotum. She collected the money, she was the treasurer, she was the manager, she was the trustee, she was the everything of that church.”

At this time the pulpit of the little, struggling Presbyterian church at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, was vacant, and one of the ladies of that church came up to Cincinnati to see if Bishop Little could not secure for them a pastor. The good bishop introduced her to young Henry Ward Beecher. This led to his preaching one or two trial sermons at Lawrenceburg. The result of the experiment seemed to be satisfactory on both sides, although the first sermon was said to have been a lamentable failure through the nervous apprehensions of the young preacher in facing the unusually large audience of one hundred persons.

In May, 1837, he moved to Lawrenceburg and began preaching regularly as a licentiate, not yet ordained.

It may not be uninteresting to read just here the brief memoranda from the journal which he was keeping then:

“May 4 [1837].—Returned from Lawrenceburg. I think seriously of settling there—a destitute place indeed....

“If I go to Lawrenceburg, remember you can gain men easily if you get round their prejudices and put truth in their minds; but never if you attack prejudices. Look well at this....

”Mem.—My people must be alert to make the church agreeable, to give seats and wait on strangers, etc.“

”June 15, Thursday.—To-day received call from Lawrenceburg, and a very flattering call it was and did my heart good. Meeting called June 12, 1837; about 30 persons present. Mr. Hunt, moderator; D. S. Mayer, sec. Vote for me unanimous. Blank filled for $250, with but one dissenting voice (he voting for double that sum).“

”Monday, July 10.—Sat. eve., 8th, arrived here permanently to remain....

“I mean to write down little plans and devices for pastoral labor as they occur; I may else forget them.

“1. In different districts get men quietly to feel themselves responsible for progress of temperance or Sunday-schools.

“2. Quietly to visit from house to house and secure congregations.

“3. Secure a large congregation. Let this be the first thing. For this—

“1. Preach well uniformly.

“2. Visit widely and produce a personal attachment; also wife do same.

“3. Get the young to love me.

“4. See that the church have this presented as a definite thing, and set them to this work just as directly as I would to raising a fund, building, etc.

“4. Little girls’ societies for benevolent purposes.”

The town was small, scarce fifteen hundred inhabitants, located at the junction of the Ohio and Miami rivers—just across the Miami from Ohio on the east, and the Ohio River from Kentucky on the south—subject to devastating floods from both rivers impartially.

The church was small, with meagre accommodations, the people poor. We quote his description of the place and church:

“You can form some conception of that field when I tell you that it was a place where they had four gigantic distilleries, from which was carried to market a steamboat-load of liquor every day. When I went there and entered upon my vocation of preaching, I found a church, occupying a little brick building, with nineteen or twenty members. There was one man, and the rest were women. With the exception of two persons, there was not one of them who was not obliged to gain a livelihood by the labor of the hands. So you will understand how very poor they were. I could not, of course, obtain my living in so small a church, and in a community that was not overblessed with wealth. I was taken up, therefore, as a pensioner by the Home Missionary Society, and my first two years were spent in the field as a missionary, in part supported by the funds of this society.

“I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and bought some, and filled them and lit them. I swept the church and lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell, because there was none. I opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after every meeting. I took care of everything in the church.”

Here in this little frontier village, then upon the very borders of civilization, began his real work. For twenty-four years he had been preparing for this step. Now it must be determined whether his life should be a success or a failure.

The year passed uneventfully, and it was not until September, 1838, when he applied for ordination, that he got his first taste of trouble.

At this time the division between the Old School and the New School Presbyterian churches was about to take place, and two General Assemblies, afterwards called the Old School General Assembly and the New School General Assembly, were, a short time later, convened in Philadelphia. A resolution was introduced into the Oxford Presbytery that no man should be licensed or ordained by that body who did not connect himself with the Old School Presbyterian Church, dropping from their care those who declined to do so.

This resolution, it was thought, was probably aimed at Mr. Beecher[3]—an attempt to strike the father over the shoulders of his son. For the actual division and separation of the Presbyterian Church into Old and New School was in no small measure the result of the controversy carried on for several years previously against Dr. Lyman Beecher. The doctor in 1832 had, as we have seen, accepted the presidency and professorship of doctrinal theology in Lane Seminary. He had been brought up in, and had been connected with, the Congregational Church until this time. While he entertained no revolutionary spirit, he had some expectation that the free spirit of New England thought, and that loving spirit of voluntary co-operation which he had enjoyed so in his New England pastorate, might be infused into the forms of Presbyterianism. The idea of an intimate friendship and co-operation between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in the United States had always been dear to him.

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Footnote 3:

“It is no inconsiderable matter in these days that Dr. Beecher has at least one son who, after a full and free examination before the Oxford Presbytery, has been pronounced to be orthodox and sound in the faith; and that, in order to exclude the son of the arch-heretic, a new term of ministerial communion had to be introduced” (Extract from letter of Dr. Bishop, President of Oxford College, to Mr. Beecher in 1838).

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But when he went to Cincinnati there had already commenced in different quarters a movement aiming at greater stringency and the expulsion from the Presbyterian Church of what was called the New England element, of which Dr. Beecher was an eminent representative. His settlement at Lane Seminary was followed by a more active demonstration of hostility. Formal charges of heresy, slander, and hypocrisy were preferred against him, to which reference has already been made.

These proceedings produced a very markedly unfavorable impression in the public mind against Presbyterianism. They had only ended at about the time his son, Henry Ward, came to Lawrenceburg.

There was a good deal of feeling in the two branches of the Presbyterian Church, and when Mr. Beecher applied to the Oxford Presbytery, within whose jurisdiction Lawrenceburg was located, a good deal of interest was aroused. A son of Dr. Lyman Beecher was to be examined by a presbytery known to be in marked hostility to him. It would be a good chance to demonstrate the laxity and heterodoxy of Dr. Beecher. For, of course, the young man would only reflect the father’s views.

The presbytery duly met in session in September, 1838, and Henry Ward appeared before them. Writing to his brother George, he refers to his examination. After telling of his family affairs he says:

“So much for family news—a quiet lake; now for public affairs—a troubled ocean casting up mud and dirt.

“I went some sixty miles up into Preble County, near Eaton, before Oxford Presbytery. Presented my papers. Father Craigh was appointed to squeak the questions. They examined me to their hearts’ content. I was a model to behold, and so were they! Elders opened their mouths, gave their noses a fresh blowing, fixed their spectacles, and hitched forward on their seats. The ministers clinched their confessions of faith with desperate fervor and looked unutterably orthodox, while Graham and a few friendly ones looked a little nervous, not knowing how the youth would stand fire. There he sat, the young candidate begotten of a heretic, nursed at Lane; but, with such a name and parentage and education, what remarkable modesty, extraordinary meekness, and how deferential to the eminently acute questioners who sat gazing upon the prodigy! Certainly this was a bad beginning. Having predetermined that I should be hot and forward and full of confidence, it was somewhat awkward, truly, to find such gentleness and teachableness!

“Then came the examination: ‘Will the mon tell us in what relation Adam stood to his posterity?’ ‘In the relation of a federal head.’ ‘What do you mean by a federal head?’ ‘A head with whom God made a covenant for all his posterity.’ Then questions on all the knotty points. ‘Still the wonder grew,’ for the more the lad was examined the more incorrigibly orthodox did he grow, until they began to fear he was a leetle too orthodox upon some points. What was to be done? The vote on receiving me was unanimous! Well, they slept upon it. Next day, while settling the time of my ordination, Prof. McArthur, of Oxford, moved to postpone the business to take up some resolutions. In the first they ‘sincerely adhered to the Old School Pby. Assembly’; second, required that all licentiates and candidates under their care should do the same or be no longer such. I declined acknowledging it to be the true one. Father Craigh (whom my orthodoxy had softened) said they would give me six months to think and decide, and I might continue to preach in their bounds. I refused, and they turned me out and gave me my papers back again. I asked them what the duty of my church was. They replied that it was vacant—just what they had to say, and just what I wanted them to say, and, moreover, just what I determined they should say. I drove home forthwith; got back on Saturday. On Sunday recounted from the pulpit the doings of Pby., and declared them vacant if they continued under Oxford; appointed a meeting for Wednesday P.M. for their action. By a unanimous vote they withdrew from Oxford and declared themselves an Independent Pbyn. ch. Now for Synod. The Old School called a convention to meet two days before Synod met; cut out a series of resolutions going for O. S. Assembly, cutting off those who had officially joined the Constitutional Assembly, etc., etc. After sermon by Jno. Rankin, Stowe and Coe nominated for moderator—Stowe 47, Coe 70. The New School then determined simply to urge on to voting. All speaking was on one side. When they had passed the resolutions to the one cutting off all who had joined N. S. Assembly they inserted a new one, by which majority of Cincinnati Presbytery were ejected! Jno. Rankin then rose and declared the body dissolved, and as moderator of last Synod would give them time to leave the house, and would then form the true Synod. They prayed and adjourned to Wilson’s. It was queer. ‘Synod of Cincinnati will adjourn to meet at 7 in 1st Pby. ch.’; ‘Synod Cin. will now come to order,’ etc. I left after this and both bodies were still in session. I stepped in a moment Saturday morning just before leaving, and they were then passing in our Synod a resolution not to allow any slave-holder in our connection. Mills agreed to it. I did not wait to hear votes, but presume it was nearly unanimous. Synod declared the whole ground formerly held by Oxford Pby. to be held by the Cin. Pby. Stowe has just written me that Graham, Thomas, Chidlow, Merril, Crothers, Dickey, and others have formally withdrawn from the Old School Synod, but not yet united with ours. This is a brief sketch of matters ecclesiastical. Pby. of Cin. will begin their new authority over former territory of Oxford Pby., by coming here to ordain me on Thurs., Nov. 8 [1838].”

The New School Presbytery met in Cincinnati, and before this body Mr. Beecher applied for ordination, the minutes of which record that it ordained and installed him November 9, 1838, over the independent church at Lawrenceburg, Dr. Lyman Beecher presiding, Dr. Blanchard charging the pastor, and Dr. Calvin E. Stowe, his brother-in-law, charging the people.

Mr. Beecher felt that the division in the Church was wholly uncalled for, but naturally was unwilling to desert the school to which he was attached by its more liberal and democratic policy, by the associations of his education, and the ties of filial love and admiration. The bitterness of this controversy in the body of the Church, and the utter folly of a great Church, organized for the work of saving men’s souls, wasting its strength in harsh recriminations and angry feuds over matters which seemed to him of minor importance, and finally splitting the Church into two hostile bodies, produced a profound impression upon Mr. Beecher’s mind, and developed rapidly that trait, doubtless then latent, which has so markedly characterized his preaching since then—a disregard of mere forms, provided he could secure the substance. And so he grew to look upon all denominations as his brethren, wholly disregarding the formal differences that existed, rejoicing heartily in all their successes, and wishing them God-speed, seeing only the objects for which all labored—the enlightenment of the world, the saving of mankind. He was always willing to co-operate. He never withheld his hand or voice, when there was a chance to help a struggling church, because it was of a different denomination from his own.

He gave another account of these experiences and their effect upon his mind, in some remarks at one of his Friday-night meetings, suggested by the meeting, in the spring of 1869, of the Assemblies of the Old and New Schools, and their reunion as one body at that time:

“My whole life has more or less taken its color from the controversy which led to the division of the Old School and the New School Presbyterians. I was brought up in New England, a minister’s son, the son of a minister who was doctrinally inclined and whose warmest friends were great doctrinarians. My father’s household was substantially a debating society. As early as I can remember I knew enough to discuss foreordination, and I could do it as well as my betters. I could go just as far as they could, could run against snags at the same spots that they did, and could not get off any better than they could. All those great doctrines which tend powerfully to enlarge the imagination and to sharpen the reason without feeding them were, I had almost said, matters of daily conversation in my father’s family. When I went to college I fell under the influence of a young minister who became an Old School Presbyterian. He was a man of large brain and marked ability. He had a naturally philosophic mind. He was noble-hearted and genial. I remember that my poetic temperament, alongside of his rigorous, logical temperament, used to seem to me mean and contemptible. I thought he was like a big oak-tree, while I was more like a willow, half-grown and pliant, yielding to every force that was exerted upon it. At any rate, he had a powerful influence upon my development. But as I came to the possession of myself more and more I took on the logical methods in the exercise of the reasoning faculty which God had implanted in me, and they came near wrecking me; for I became sceptical, not malignantly but honestly, and it was to me a matter of great distress and anguish. It continued for years, and no logic ever relieved me. My brother Charles went through the same process, and he came back in the same way that I did, through the instrumentality of a living Saviour. An abstract, philosophical statement of the truth never met my wants, but when there arose over the horizon a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ as a living Friend, who had the profoundest personal interest in me, I embraced that view and was lifted up. My heart did for me then what my head had failed to do. This was an experience which has constituted one of the greatest affirmative forces that have acted on my mind in preaching. All my life long I have had a strong disposition to so preach the truth as to meet the wants of men who stand not only outside of the churches but outside of belief. I suppose that as long as I live I shall think of the truth, not as it looks to those that are within the Church, but as it looks to those that are outside of the Church and outside of belief itself.

“This has given to my preaching an element of naturalism. It has led me to seek for a ground on which I could stand and bring men to a knowledge of the love of Christ. I have gone far from the usual narrow ecclesiastical and theological rules to broader social methods by which men that are doubters can be reached.

“My first settlement as a pastor was at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where I was two years in the Presbyterian Church. When I left Lane Seminary I went down there to preach, and I thought nothing about Church connection. My business, as I supposed, was to preach what little I knew and to lead men to the Saviour; but I soon felt, for the first time, the authority of the Church. I had not been ground; I was nothing but corn, and I had to be run through a mill. This Lawrenceburg church was in the territory of the Miami Presbytery. The Presbytery was not only a body of Presbyterians, but was composed of Old School Presbyterians; not only were they Old School Presbyterians, but they were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; and not only were they straight, but they bent like a hoop the other way. I had received an ordination license at the Cincinnati Presbytery—where my father belonged at that time—in about 1837; but it was necessary that I should undergo another examination. The Assemblies had not then divided; there was only the one Church; but there were two parties—the Old School and the New School. There was the one great body, but there were these two sections. There were presbyteries and synods of the New School, and there were presbyteries and synods of the Old School; but they were under the same authority.

“I went on horseback from Lawrenceburg to Oxford, where the Presbytery was in session. And, by the way, I came near losing my life in crossing the river. The water was high, and I was thrown into it; but I got out and dried off, and started again, and reached my destination without any further mishap, and went through my examination.

“At that time, under the instruction which I had had in my father’s family, under the college drill that I had gone through, and under the training to which I was subjected in Lane Seminary, I had become so familiar with the doctrines of theology that it was difficult for any one to put me down in a discussion of them. I could state them very glibly. I was ready with an explanation of every single point connected with them. I knew all their proofs, all their dodging cuts, all their ins and outs. Therefore I had no trouble in standing my ground with the men who examined me. They knew they had Dr. Beecher’s son before them; the questions came like hail, and I was very willing. Somehow I have always had a certain sympathy with human nature which has led me invariably, in my better moods, to see instinctively, or to perceive by intuition, how to touch the right chord in people, how to reach the living principle in them; and that faculty was fully awakened in me on this occasion. I recollect that the presiding clergyman at that Presbytery was a man that I had seen at my father’s house and that I had taken a sort of fancy to. He was probably fifty or sixty years of age. He was tall, and was thin in the face, and he had a shrill, ringing voice. I felt that he was like a file; but still I liked him. Well, he put questions to me. Some of them I answered directly, some ingeniously, some intelligently, and others somewhat obscurely. The examination extended over two or three hours; and I thought I perceived a warming and melting influence among those men. I was quite indifferent as to whether or not I came out with their endorsement, and I have a recollection of feeling very fine. They questioned, and questioned, and questioned; and it happened that the points on which they were very particular were man’s sinfulness, the influence of the Holy Ghost, its necessity, its work, the thoroughness of it, and so on.

“Now, I was always immensely orthodox—thunderingly so; and when they thought they were going to get heresy they got a perfect avalanche of orthodoxy. This man whom I had seen at father’s was quite carried away with me; he shielded me and helped me over some rough places; and the Presbytery, without a dissenting voice, voted that I was orthodox—to their amazement and mine!

“I thought then that the bitterness of death was past, when lo! a professor from Oxford University, Miami, introduced a resolution, which was passed, that that Presbytery would not license nor ordain any candidate who would not give in his adhesion to the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly. It was on that point that the Old and New Schools divided, and I, being my father’s son, spurned the idea of going over to the Old School; I felt as big as forty men; and when that resolution passed I simply said: ‘Well, brethren, I have nothing to do but to go back to my father’s house.’ They were kind to me; they seemed to have conceived an affection for the young man; they took the greatest pains to conciliate me; they endeavored to smooth the way for me, and tried to persuade me to comply with their wish; but I was determined, and said, ‘I won’t.’ I always had the knack of saying that and sticking to it!

“So I turned my back on the Oxford Presbytery, and rode to Lawrenceburg again; and the next Sunday morning I announced to my congregation the result of my week’s pilgrimage, told them of the vote which declared their church vacant, and said to them: ‘Now, brethren, one of two things is necessary: you must get somebody else to preach for you, or you must declare yourselves independent of the Presbyterian Church.’ It was no sooner said than done. Before sundown on that day they declared themselves an independent church, and I decided to stay with them. I was then ordained by the New School Presbytery in Cincinnati, after which I went on with my work regularly.

“Preceding all this, you should recollect that during the three years that I was in the Seminary the controversy between the Old and New School Presbyterians ran very high on questions of theology and on questions of Church authority. I had been stuffed with these things. I had eaten and drank them. I had chopped and hewed them. I had built up from them every sort of argument. I had had them ad nauseam.

“When I went out into the field I found all the little churches ready to divide, such was the state of feeling throughout the whole West. Going into my work in the midst of that state of affairs, I made up my mind distinctly that, with the help of God, I would never engage in any religious contention. I remember riding through the woods for long, dreary days, and I recollect at one time coming out into an open place where the sun shone down through to the bank of the river, and where I had such a sense of the love of Christ, of the nature of His work on earth, of its beauty and its grandeur, and such a sense of the miserableness of Christian men quarrelling and seeking to build up antagonistic churches—in other words, the kingdom of Christ rose up before my mind with such supreme loveliness and majesty—that I sat in my saddle, I do not know how long (many, many minutes; perhaps half an hour), and there, all alone, in a great forest of Indiana, probably twenty miles from any house, prayed for that kingdom, saying audibly, ‘I will never be a sectary.’ I remember promising Christ that if He would strengthen me and teach me how to work I would all my life long preach for His kingdom and endeavor to love everybody who was doing that work. Not that I would accept others’ belief, not that I would embrace their theology, not that I would endorse their ecclesiastical organizations; but whatever their instruments might be, if they were sincerely working for the kingdom of Christ I would never put a straw in their way and never strike a blow to their harm. By the grace of God I have kept that resolution to this day. There was so much good that came from the discussions and quarrels of the Old and New Schools by which at that period of my ministry I was surrounded. So much for the influence on my mind of those early scenes and experiences, which were more, in some respects, a theological school to me than Lane Seminary itself was.”

Such was the beginning of his ministry.

We may now retrace our steps a little to take a look at the beginning of his domestic life.

For seven years, like Jacob of old, he had labored, waiting for the time when he could claim his wife. Of course, until he was settled somewhere with some definite income, it was folly to think of marrying. But when he began preaching on trial at Lawrenceburg, and it seemed probable that he might be called there, his mind ran forward to when, having a definite home, he might go East for his bride. In his journal we find one of his written reveries:

“SPRING, March 1, 1837.—The winter has gone. Spring has come—the time of the singing of birds. How vividly does that little expression call up the whole scene—the bright sun, the mild air, the heaven full of sweet influences, and the green sprouting grass among patches of snow, and the swelling buds! Every voice echoes in the air, and all sounds are mellow. The falling of a plank, the pound of a hammer or beetle, the rumble of a wagon, all, this morning, sound like joyful music. But I have one thought sweeter than any of these, which makes these sweet: it is that now only spring and summer are to fly before I meet my dear wife, not again to be parted, except by death!”

In July, 1837, having been formally called, though before his ordination—it then being apparent that he was to be definitely settled at Lawrenceburg—he wrote to Miss Bullard, suggesting that their marriage be celebrated shortly after his ordination, which was then expected to be in the following September. He had no sooner written and mailed the letter when he said to himself, as he explained to his wife later: “Why should I wait for my ordination? Why not have my wife present at it? And I started that very afternoon.”

His letter reached Miss Bullard in the morning of Saturday, July 29, and he himself appeared in the evening of the same day, to the great surprise of all. His plan was explained, and after a hasty discussion August 3 was fixed on for the wedding, and three o’clock in the afternoon the hour.

“I was expected to be ready to leave in the afternoon of August 3,” writes Mrs. Beecher. “The wedding-dress and wedding-cake were to be made—for what New England damsel could be married without wedding-cake? At one o’clock Monday morning I began my work, sewing until the family were up. After the breakfast was over the materials for the wedding-cake were brought from the village store, and Henry and I began the work for the cake. He picked over and stoned the raisins—taking abundant toll while doing it—beating the eggs, and in every way made himself useful, and kept the whole family in good spirits and cheerful, when, but for him, in such hurried preparations we might have felt the great exertion severely. But the work was done, and the 3d of August dawned bright and rosy.

“Very few guests were invited outside of the brothers and sisters, with their families, who were near enough to the old home to reach us. Both my sisters were married in a storm, and I had always said I would not be. Three o’clock was the hour appointed for the wedding. About two a heavy thunder-shower came on, and it began to rain, thunder, and lighten. At three o’clock we were summoned, but I said: ‘Wait until the storm passes,’ and, in spite of their remonstrance, they did wait. At four o’clock the clouds broke away and the sun appeared, and we were ushered into the parlor, Henry and I together. Just as we were entering the door (it was very warm, and door and windows all open) a rainbow, the most brilliant I ever saw, and so remarked by all in the room, seemed through the open window to span the parlor, and the spectators said we walked under its arch to our places. In his prayer the clergyman spoke of the ‘bow of peace and promise,’ which he hoped was the beautiful symbol of what our lives were to be.

“We rode to Worcester after the long farewells were said, not expecting to meet the home friends again for years.”

A few days later Mr. Beecher wrote from New York to his sister, Mrs. Stowe:

“MY VERY DEAR SISTER:

“Before this gets to you, you will have begun to look for us and wonder that we do not write or come. This is to certify that we are alive, safely and thoroughly married. Coming, and came as far as New York. Now, this damsel, my most comely wife, longing for the leeks and cucumbers of Boston, did freely eat thereof, and these, as in duty bound, did most freely hurt her. Three days she bore it, but on arriving at New York they had come well-nigh to the cholera morbus; and thus we are detained for a few days. The doctor’s prescriptions have acted like a charm. She is relieved, and rapidly grows better. Nevertheless, it being now Thursday, we shall tarry until Monday for her to gain strength, and then, God willing, we shall set our faces westward and travel like the wind. We were married on Thursday afternoon, at four o’clock, August the third. We went immediately to Worcester, to Mr. Barton’s. Nothing could surpass his delicate kindness to us.

“I preached a preparatory lecture to the three churches on Friday P.M., and preached twice for Mr. Peabody on Sunday. Monday left for Boston. Stayed until Tuesday of the week ensuing. Preached in Bowdoin church in the morning of Sunday, and at Park Street in the P.M. Was invited to preach all day at Bowdoin, and also all day at Odeon, but preferred my course. Left for New York on Tuesday noon; arrived next morning. Am at Rev. Mr. Jones’s (Mrs. Beecher’s brother-in-law), and very pleasantly situated. Lucy Ann is a dear, sweet sister, and Mr. Jones a most amiable and well-read, gentlemanly man. Probably I shall preach here on the Sabbath, but nothing has yet been definitely said.

“Shall return by Pittsburgh, leaving this place on Monday next, if God wills. At that rate you may calculate upon seeing us somewhere about the middle of the week ensuing.

“Ah! Harriet, how I long to see you and Calvin. I shall soon show you my dear, dear wife. I grow more and more proud of her every day....

“Love to all—for I love you all, even to the little homely kitten—and love to all our folks, Margaret Hastings and all.

“Yours most affectionately, dear Harriet, “H. W. B.”

Leaving New York, they started westward, partly by rail, partly by steamer, and not a little by the slow method of the canal; travelled day and night, until they finally reached Cincinnati the last of August.

From Mrs. Beecher’s memory we obtain her impressions of their first pastorate:

“We remained a few days at Walnut Hills, and then took the little steamer with a free pass to Lawrenceburg. We were to board for the present, as we did not think that eighteen cents in pocket and three hundred dollars a year prospective salary would enable us to begin housekeeping. Lawrenceburg was a small place on the Miami.

“Mr. Beecher was obliged to take charge of that part of the building in which he was to preach. Together we went every Saturday afternoon, swept and dusted the room, filled the lard-oil lamps, and laid the wood and kindlings ready for him to start the fire the next morning before service, when needed; for the members of the church were all, except a few families, poor laboring people, with all they could attend to at home.

“But curiosity to hear the young preacher filled the room the first Sabbath, and from that time it continued to be filled—crowded. The Methodist church had always been the fashionable church, where the wealthy and more refined part of the population worshipped. This little Presbyterian church had almost died out, and, when first requested to preach there, neither Mr. Beecher nor the people had any thought of his coming for more than that one Sabbath. But his manner of preaching was so very different from what they had been accustomed to—so original—that they wanted to hear him again, and after that they gave him a call to settle there. The Home Missionary Society were to give $150, and the little band who composed the church thought they could manage to raise $150—in all $300—and the call was accepted, notwithstanding the remonstrance of friends in Cincinnati. They were more ambitious for him than he was for himself, knowing that he could doubtless, in a short time, get a better settlement. They knew, also, he intended to marry as soon as his theological course was finished, and thought him wild to think of bringing a wife out West and expect to be able to live on three hundred dollars a year. But from the first he acted up to the advice he always gave in after-years to young graduates from theological seminaries: ‘Don’t hang round idle, waiting for a good offer. Enter the first field God opens for you. If He needs you in a larger one He will open the gate for you to enter.’ And so he did.

“From his first sermon[4] in Lawrenceburg that little room was crowded. He did not extemporize so entirely, at first, as in later years—at least he wrote more copious notes—but those who knew him can well imagine that when warmed up by his subject his notes did not hold him very closely.

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Footnote 4:

“See Appendix A.”

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“How vividly I recall that first Sabbath! How young, how boyish he did look! And how indignant I felt, when some of the ‘higher classes’ came in out of simple curiosity, to see the surprised, almost scornful looks that were interchanged!

“He read the first hymn, and read it well—as they had never heard their own ministers (often illiterate, uneducated men) read hymns. I watched the expression change on their faces. Then the first prayer! It was a revelation to them, and when he began the sermon the critical expression had vanished, and they evidently settled themselves to hear in earnest.

“The next Sunday the interest was still more strongly marked. His preaching was to them something unusual. It was evident the hearers were not quite at ease. He woke them up, and they were not quite prepared to decide whether they were anxious to be so thoroughly aroused. They were not exactly comfortable, and some went away, after the services were over, a little irritated and half-decided never to hear him again.

“The next Sabbath they concluded it would not hurt them to go just this one time more, and from that time were constant attendants. The satisfaction with this young preacher increased, and many from all sects came regularly.”

On his return from the East with his young wife, not feeling that they could afford to undertake housekeeping, he accepted the hospitality of one of his elders, who had offered him a room in his house. There they lived for some little time, when the sudden death of a member of the family and the necessity of a change in the good elder’s domestic arrangements required the use of this room.

At this time Mr. Beecher was attending a synodical meeting at Cincinnati. Mrs. Beecher set to work at once to get board elsewhere. Failing in this, she sought to hire rooms. After hunting until nearly exhausted she secured the refusal of two rooms over a stable down by the banks of the Miami, which had been occupied by the hostler, rental forty dollars per annum.

She immediately took the boat to Cincinnati, and then, being too poor to hire a wagon, she walked to Walnut Hills, four miles from Cincinnati—which was then the home of the Beecher family—to report on the state of affairs to her husband. A hasty examination of his finances showed just sixty-eight cents. As they had no household furniture of any kind, the prospect was not alluring. But an ability to get along somehow was a characteristic of those days. Friends, though not over-rich themselves, were able each to furnish something. One supplied half of an old carpet, another some knives and forks, a third a few sheets and pillow-cases, then a bedstead, a stove; and little by little, before they returned home that night, there was gathered together enough to meet the absolute requirements of living. Later the sale of Mrs. Beecher’s cloak realized thirty dollars. The salary, though nominally $500 per annum, was in fact but $300, of which one-half was paid by the Home Missionary Society, and neither half paid with great regularity. Any industrious day-laborer of modern times would have been ill-content with either income or home possessions.

Returning from Walnut Hills, the next thing was to cleanse the rooms and settle down. Mrs. Beecher gives a graphic account of their first housekeeping: “When we reached our former boarding-house we found our good friends with whom we had boarded very blue because their pastor and wife could find no better rooms; but the lady was a true New England woman and knew how soon a little hard labor would change the looks of the rooms. Old Toby, their colored man, brought round, the next morning, two pails and scrub-brushes and plenty of soap, and Henry and I went to work with great energy. Think of father with sleeves rolled up, a big apron on, scrubbing the floors! But I confess I never had known anything so hard to clean. Tobacco-stains and all manner of dirt that might have been looked for from the former occupants was so soaked into the floor that it seemed impossible to remove the stains. I asked the landlord if we might get some paint and paint the floors. ‘Oh! no. That would injure the wood!’

“In a day or two the rooms were as clean as faithful, hard work could make them, and after our last breakfast with our kind friends we bade them good-morning, with thanks and a blessing, and went to get our furniture, which the good captain of the steamboat had stored until we were ready. With it came some groceries, wash-tubs, and a nice painted dining-table, and a husk mattress, and husk pillows.

“‘Where did these last things come from?’ said your father.

“‘Part of my cloak,’ I replied, ‘but not all of it.’

“The kitchen-window looked out on a large back-yard that could be made a fine one with a little care, but among the rubbish I espied an old three-legged table and something that looked like the remains of small hanging shelves. I ran down stairs and asked the landlady if they had been thrown aside as worthless. ‘Oh! yes. They are good for nothing.’ ‘Then may I have them?’ ‘Certainly. But on examination you will find them of no use.’

“I washed and cleaned them well, and called to Henry to take them up-stairs to our rooms. By the table I found the broken leg. With very little trouble the table was repaired, the hanging shelves put up, and both varnished. They proved to be mahogany, and when the varnish was dry they looked quite nice. Among your father’s very scanty wardrobe was an old coat past any mending. I took the skirt, cleaned it, and put it on the top of the table, and fastened the sides and ends with some strips of kid that I had brought from home. It did look quite fine, and you can hardly imagine how much pride and pleasure your father had with his writing-table.

“The long boxes made in Amherst expressly to pack his books in when he came West were well made of planed boards. These we set one atop of the other, open side out, and filled with books bought by his own labors while in college, teaching school, and making speeches. These made quite a fine addition to the room which was to be the parlor, study, and our bed-room all in one.

“In the back room was a cook-stove given by brother George, and the old three-quarter bedstead that your father used at Lane Seminary, now all nice and clean, curtained with some four-cent calico Mrs. Judge Burnet gave us. Henry made the upright posts and ran a large wire round it on which the curtain was hung, with a wide tape all round the top on which our clothes were pinned. Crosswise from the door to the chimney a piece of four-cent calico curtained the corner where wash-benches and tubs, flour-barrel and sugar-barrel (the two last sent in by good friends) were placed, and over the door leading to the loft in the adjoining store your father had nailed some large pieces to hold saddle, bridle, and buffalo-robe. On the other side of the range was a good dish-closet, and in front a sink.

“So these two small rooms, at first so repulsive, were becoming quite a pleasant home. The house was situated very near the boat-landing on the wharf of the Miami River—too near for comfort when freshets swept down in that direction, but a pleasant outlook across on to the Kentucky hills; the river sometimes so low that your father has walked across and gathered flowers in Kentucky, then again rising so as to sweep everything before it as it did two years ago, utterly obliterating all that portion of Lawrenceburg where we lived.”

We are indebted to the Rev. John H. Thomas, the present pastor of Mr. Beecher’s old church in Lawrenceburg, for the impressions of his ministry there, as gathered from the reminiscences of his surviving parishioners:

“Mr. Beecher made his mark immediately. His youthful appearance—he was but twenty-three—and his careless dress may have raised doubts as to his ability when his hearers first saw him, but they disappeared as soon as he began to speak. The characteristics of his later oratory were all present from the first—fluency, glowing rhetoric, abundance of illustrations, witty points, brilliant ideas. From the first he filled the church. Merchants told their customers of the talented young preacher, and they would come miles to hear him. He was annoyed at interruptions, and when late-comers appeared he would stop speaking till they were seated.

“His personal habits were as original and effective as his pulpit efforts. He was not what would be called a good pastor. An old pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Lawrenceburg said to me: ‘Mr. Beecher could outpreach me, but I could out-visit him, and visiting builds up a church more than preaching.’ The records of the church during his pastorate are yet in our hands, though in one of the great floods here the volume floated out of the submerged study of the pastor, and was found, by chance, embedded in the yellow deposit of the Ohio. It is accurately and neatly kept, in the beautiful hand of Mr. Beecher, each entry signed with his well-known autograph. The additions to the church were about on the average of other pastors.

“But outside of strictly pastoral work Mr. Beecher’s influence was felt widely and beneficially. He was universally popular. He was kindly, genial, and free with all classes. He would hunt and fish with men not used to the society of clergymen, and spent much time on the river, especially in catching drift-wood brought down in every rise. Once he called to a poor German emigrant woman that if she would bring him her clothes-line he would show her how to get her winter’s supply of fuel. She brought it, and he tied a stone to one end, and, flinging it out from the shore over logs, would draw them in. In a little while their combined efforts had brought in a dray-load.

“He was fond of talking with all sorts and conditions of men. There was an old shoemaker in the town of pronounced infidel views. Mr. Beecher would spend hours in the room where he worked, discussing with him.

“There is no evidence that he lowered in any degree his character as a Gospel minister, but plenty that his influence was felt by the neglected classes, and even by the rough elements. And in this did he not follow the example of his divine Master, of whom it was said: ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them’?

“He was not unscholarly, but is remembered as a reader rather than as a student. He studied men even more than books. A Baptist minister with whom he had a discussion one Sunday is yet living here, and has told me that at the close of the discussion, in which the Baptist minister thought he had the best of it, Mr. Beecher waved his hand and said to the audience: ‘Well, I don’t care if you all go down to the river and get immersed.’

“His going away was esteemed a great loss. ‘Cords of people,’ says an old lady graphically, ‘were about to come into the Church.’ But Indianapolis, then with only 2,500 people, was the State capital, and was rapidly outstripping the little town on the river. It was a louder call.

“Mr. Beecher’s relations with the other ministers were happy, although he outshone them completely. He established a popular union Sunday-school, notwithstanding there was one in each church, and he often spoke in other churches.”

Mr. Beecher described his preaching there as follows:

“I preached some theology. I had just come out of the Seminary, and retained some portions of systematic theology, which I used when I had nothing else; and as a man chops straw and mixes it with Indian meal in order to distend the stomach of the ox that eats it, so I chopped a little of the regular orthodox theology, that I might sprinkle it with the meal of the Lord Jesus Christ. But my horizon grew larger and larger in that one idea of Christ. It seems to me that first I saw Christ as the Star of Bethlehem, but afterward He seemed to expand, and I saw about a quarter of the horizon filled with His light, and through years it came around so that I saw about one-half in that light; and it was not until after I had gone through two or three revivals of religion that, when I looked around, He was all and in all. And my whole ministry sprang out of that.”

At another time he said:

“I had no idea that I could preach. I never expected that I could accomplish much. I merely went to work with the feeling: ‘I will do as well as I can, and I will stick to it, if the Lord pleases, and fight His battle the best way I know how.’ And I was thankful as I could be. Nobody ever sent me a spare-rib that I did not thank God for the kindness which was shown me. I recollect when Judge ——— gave me his cast-off clothing I felt that I was sumptuously clothed. I wore old coats and second-hand shirts for two or three years, and I was not above it either, although sometimes, as I was physically a somewhat well-developed man, and the judge was thin and his legs were slim, they were rather a tight fit.

“There was a humorous side to this, but I could easily have put a dolorous side to it. I could have said: ‘Humph! pretty business! Son of Lyman Beecher, president of a theological seminary, in this miserable hole, where there is no church, and where there are no elders and no men to make them out of! This is not according to my deserts. I could do better. I ought not to waste my talents in such a place.’ But I was delivered from any such feeling. I felt that it was an unspeakable privilege to be anywhere and speak of Christ. I had very little theology—that is to say, it slipped away from me. I knew it, but it did not do me any good. It was like an armor which had lost its buckles and would not stick on. But I had one vivid point—the realization of the love of God in Christ Jesus. And I tried to work that up in every possible shape for my people. And it was the secret of all the little success which I had in the early part of my ministry. I remember that I used to ride out in the neighborhood and preach to the destitute, and that my predominant feeling was thanksgiving that God had permitted me to preach the unsearchable riches of His grace. I think I can say that during the first ten years of my ministerial life I was in that spirit.”

Here he began a habit which he followed during the first ten years of his ministry—that of keeping a record of every sermon preached, stating the date, text, an outline of the sermon, and then the reasons why he preached that particular sermon, “as giving a kind of guide to my course by a perusal of what I have done, also to avoid repetition and to show why I made given sermons”; thus forming the habit of preparing his sermons with a view to reaching some specific object. This record, with his daily journal in which he jotted down such thoughts on religious subjects as came to his mind day by day, are now before us, and show an immense amount of painstaking care. His habit of careful analysis was of incalculable value to him later, giving a logical method to his reasoning. It was not until after he came to Brooklyn that, under the increased pressure of this larger field of work, he abandoned this habit.

The last recorded sermons we find were those preached on the morning and evening of January 5, 1848.

During the second year of his Lawrenceburg pastorate he received a call to the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, at a salary of $600 per year. Though this opened up a much larger and more effective field of labor, with the means of living much more comfortably, yet, feeling that he was doing effective work where he was, he refused the call. He was always opposed to short pastorates and frequent changes: he had no faith in rolling stones.

After a short time the call was repeated and again declined. He was then urged to reconsider his refusal, and strong representations were made to him that it was his duty to accept the larger and more important field. At last, perplexed, he agreed to lay the matter before the Synod and abide by their recommendation The Synod advised that he accept the call.

Aside from the strong aversion which he felt for restless changes, and the feeling that, no matter how humble the field might be, he ought to labor there so long as there was work for the Master to engage him, he also felt a great unwillingness to leave the people to whom he was becoming strongly attached. The life there, though rude and simple, had been very happy. There his first child had been born. There for the first time he really had begun to live and work in the field he had chosen. But as he felt constrained to be guided by the advice which he had sought, on the Synod’s recommendation he accepted the call.

On the afternoon of July 28, 1839, he preached his farewell sermon at Lawrenceburg from the text: “These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you.”

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Chapter X

The New Field—Growth of Influence—Social Life—The Secret of Effective Preaching—Editorial Labors—Lectures to Young Men—Call to Brooklyn—Departure.

With a heart full of tender feelings he parted with his people and entered into the larger work in which he first became known outside of the limits of his Presbytery.

In the last week in July, 1839, he removed his family to Indianapolis, which, though it was the State capital, was hardly more than a village, having less than 4,000 inhabitants, its streets unpaved and noted for the depth and persistency of the mud. Like most of the then frontier towns, it was very malarial; chills and fever were expected as a matter of course, very rarely disappointing the expectation.

The Second Presbyterian Church was an offshoot from the “First” Church, a chip struck out by the axe of controversy, then being so fiercely waged between the Old and New Schools. The new church was of course New School. Its fifteen original members, having been released from the First Church after some little ecclesiastical difficulty, organized at once, and secured the second story of the old Marion County Seminary.

Their first call was to Rev. S. Holmes, of New Bedford, Mass.; he declined. They then invited Rev. John C. Young, of Danville, Ky., with like result. Their next call was to Henry Ward Beecher, who became their first pastor. He was then but twenty-six, looking still young, but fresh, rugged, and full of life.

To the few survivors of that little band who knew and loved him in those early days we are largely indebted for the impression produced by his preaching in this church and in the community, and for a brief account of his life among them.

“My first recollection of Mr. Beecher,” said one of his early parishioners, “was when I was a journeyman printer. A man named King came to me and, with much enthusiasm, declared he had heard the greatest preacher he had ever listened to in his life—a young fellow who was preaching at the Marion County Seminary.

“I went there and heard him for the first time in the spring of 1840, I suppose it was. I was, like everybody else, perfectly carried away with him. I soon formed his acquaintance, and, after he got to the new church on the Circle, became a member in the great revival of 1842. I was a printer when he delivered those lectures to young men, and in the course of printing them (I was at work in the shop where they were published) I was much in contact with him. They were published by the old jobbing house of E. Chamberlain, who was afterwards a bookseller here. The Indiana Farmer was printed in the office where I worked, published by a Quaker named Willis. Mr. Beecher was really the life and soul of it—wrote all the articles in it that were good for anything. I frequently assisted him in reading proofs. He had no practical experience as an agriculturist, except that he was thoroughly alive to every new thing. He took great pride in raising flowers, and his garden was full of plants that had never been seen here before. During his revival meetings—I think as much to test my sincerity and earnestness as anything else—he invited me to come to his house at five o’clock in the morning and breakfast with him. It was a winter morning and before daylight. Mrs. Beecher and the children were up, everything in perfect order, and breakfast ready. He called his wife and children together for family worship, and spoke and prayed in simple words. It seemed to me the most beautiful and touching thing I ever saw in my life. Mr. Beecher, I thought, was even then broad in his ideas and the most industrious man I ever knew. For a time he lived in one side of a little one-story house in the alley half a square north of Washington Street, between East and New Jersey Streets, in the rear of where the Jewish Synagogue now stands. I think there were three rooms. At another time he occupied a house that stood near the southeast corner of Pennsylvania and New York Streets. He has told me that during a malarial season he preached when he could hardly stand up, and, making his way home, would, on entering his door, fall from exhaustion.”

Another writing to us says:

“I remember well the occasion of his advent here (from Lawrenceburg). Almost immediately his ministry attracted a strong following—quite too numerous and influential for the limited seating capacity of one hundred and fifty the chapel could accommodate, and a church was erected for him on the corner of Market and Circle Streets. That was probably in 1840. The building was regarded as a colossal edifice, and, while what would now be considered primitive in the extreme, was in the main comfortable and inviting. It was the first departure from the orthodox style of high pulpits, and contained a low desk and platform. From the first his preaching and precept were of the beauty of holiness and praise, gladness and thanksgiving, and to this end he added the attraction of music to the service of lesson and prayer. In those days his choir was considered magnificent, and what the organ might lack in volume was more than made up in melody and soul-reaching timbre. He was especially happy in the selection of music that seemed to be an accompaniment to his discourse. He was also the first clergyman, out of the Episcopal Church, to introduce chants in the service.

“Upon the opposite side of The Circle from his church, facing west, was located the First Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, pastor. I have often heard them spoken of as the ‘two distinguished divines’ who were ‘the wheel-horses among theologians.’ They were both leaders. I think that if there was one impression more than another conveyed by Mr. Beecher’s appearance it was that of reserve force. The steam up, he was capable and eager for the work in hand. Indeed, he seemed the very personification of energy. I recall, however, that he was always neatly dressed, usually in black, and that he was the first clergyman in this part of the country to wear a soft hat. I am not sure if he did not wear the first straw hat in those days of clerical conventionality. He was certainly devoted to comfort, if in no manner given to taking his ease. I doubt if he knew what it was to be idle. When apparently indulging in recreation his active mind was storing food for thought and spiritual teaching. The lightest romance which caught his fancy (for he was an omnivorous reader) furnished material for practical application.

“In form he was compactly built, with just enough flesh to give grace to his lithe and active movements. His step was particularly elastic and yet firm. All vigor and animation, there was the rosy tint of health in his complexion, and his eyes were as clear and bright as a child’s. His disposition was sunny, and the kindly grasp of his hand confirmed the charm of his genial presence. It followed that he was fond of young people and frequently participated in their romps and sports. I remember in a game of copenhagen at a church picnic he was in no way disconcerted by being rolled over and over down the hill when entangled in the rope.

“When need be he could be determined enough. At one time a younger brother was an inmate of his family, and was a classmate of mine at the University. In the boy’s judgment ‘all work and no play made Jack a dull boy,’ and he went fishing and was gone two days. Instead of whetting his appetite for study the diversion had the opposite effect, and he openly declared he would go to school no more. Mr. Beecher did not waste words on the matter, but seized him and took him by main force. As they drew near the University the lad broke loose and took to his heels, Mr. Beecher after him. The mud in our streets at that day was something phenomenal, and there was a tussle in it, when the two closed, that sent the ‘soft impeachment’ in every direction. For a little while the air was filled with mud; arms and legs were scarcely distinguishable. The authority of elder brother prevailed, carrying its point—and the younger brother, too—and handed him over to the tender mercies of the principal, Mr. Kemper, who was a rigid disciplinarian, and proverbial for observing the Scriptural injunction of not sparing the rod. The youth was equal to the occasion, however. Equipped in extra thickness of clothing, he took his punishment with most astonishing fortitude, much to the admiration of the other boys, whose sympathies were naturally enlisted.

“This incident illustrated Mr. Beecher’s indifference to appearances where a duty was involved. He also assisted in building, painting, and varnishing his house, and, if material fell short or heavy groceries were needed, did not hesitate to go after them with his wheelbarrow and take them home. In the single particular of giving dignity to labor, if there had been no other, his influence in the community was invaluable.

“As in a notice of his personnel his characteristics first attract attention, so in his ministerial labors his method of conversion came before the inculcation of doctrine.

“I have spoken of his fondness for young men. It was reciprocated to a degree amounting to championship. His influence was personal and direct. In his revival work he did not trust entirely to church service. He became personally acquainted with people. He had a habit of taking long strolls with men, and what his precept failed in his good companionship made up. One long walk generally captured the sinner.

“He did not confine himself to Bible preachments. I heard his lectures to young men in the basement of the church, and they were so practical that they reached every mind. He struck yeoman blows at the evils of intemperance, and engaged in a controversy with an influential distiller of Lawrenceburg that attracted much attention and was reported by the press of that date. Largely owing to the sentiment aroused by the debate, no doubt, the distiller abandoned his calling.

“He also engaged in the publication of an agricultural paper, the Indiana Farmer, and, as far as known, was the only professional man who ever put practical sense into a periodical of the sort. A keen lover of nature, he may be said to have put his heart in the work and made it a memorable success.

“I do not remember his making any political speeches, although it is well known that his church was the favorite resort of statesmen, who made a study of his oratory and diction for their own benefit. I know that he was deeply interested in all charitable enterprises, particularly the benevolent institutions that are now the pride of the State.

“Nor am I aware that he ever addressed the legislative bodies in particular, although the General Assembly men attended his church almost in a body. He was known as a Whig, but was not pronounced in that direction.

“The heart-felt interest he took in the slavery question was well known. About the year 1842 a roving commission of Abolitionists from the East visited Indianapolis. They held a meeting on the State House grounds, and I remember seeing Mr. Beecher a prominent figure on the platform.

“The unpopularity of the Abolition cause at that time cannot easily be imagined. To be identified with it was to be socially ostracized and boycotted generally. It required the courage of a martyr to be an Abolitionist. As notable examples may be cited two physicians who were members of Mr. Beecher’s church. Bold enough to avow their principles, they were exceedingly unpopular with the masses, and in their struggle to combat popular opinion found it extremely difficult to support themselves and families. They literally had no practice. The manner in which Mr. Beecher sustained himself on this question was prophetic of the personal hold he had upon men. It was exceptional.

“Meanwhile his popularity both as a preacher and man continued to increase. Indeed, his success was without precedent and has never been rivalled since. His church was crowded every Sabbath, both by his own congregation and visitors from other and distant churches. Although the pew system obtained, at least one-fourth of the seats (one entire section) was reserved for young men and strangers. Among them may be named the judges of the Supreme, Federal, and local courts; distinguished professional men; and if there was a Hugh Miller of a fellow, picking out truths of humanity from stone or devoting himself like the Owens to his fellow-man, he would be found in that imposing body of men. I suppose Indianapolis could not then boast of more than five thousand inhabitants, but there was an unusual aggregate of culture and refinement, and it was pretty sure to find delight in Mr. Beecher’s preaching and service.

“As a rule his morning sermons were more doctrinal and more confined to notes than his evening discourse. In the delivery of all of his sermons, however, he would at times become very much enthused and dramatic.

“One frequent gesture that I noticed in attending his last lecture here he retained through life. It was the habit of raising his right hand high in air, and after a pause, sometimes prolonged, bringing his arm down sharply to his side. An amusing incident once occurred in consequence. At the identical moment that his hand was raised a big, burly fellow, a member of his congregation, aroused from a nap (even his eloquence could not keep every man awake) and seeing the hand uplifted, the sleepy lout thought the benediction was being pronounced. He gathered himself up accordingly and marched toward the door, making a terrible racket with his squeaking boots, to the visible annoyance of the congregation. There was a charming twinkle of fun in the preacher’s eye as he gravely said: ‘If others of the congregation desire to leave I will wait.’ A laugh went round the audience.

“In his liberal interpretation of the divine calling of bringing sinners to repentance, some motley members, not to say black sheep, were gathered into the fold. Among these was a lame tailor who was a very hard case indeed, but was possessed of an appreciative soul and a wonderfully retentive memory. He was always to be found in his seat in church and was attentive enough to inspire a speaker. The following morning the tailor’s shop would be crowded to hear him repeat the sermon, or eloquent passages thereof. This he would do, word for word, and with a close imitation of voice and gesture that proved a first-class actor had been lost to the world in the realm of ‘the shears’ and ‘goose.’ A propensity for gambling that could not be checked was reported to the church and he was dropped from the roll.

“Take them all in all, Mr. Beecher’s sermons in Indianapolis were marvels of logic and learning, graced by rare beauty of expression and that feeling to nature kin which touched the heart. His usefulness could not be circumscribed by the then narrow limits. His fame spread abroad in the land, and one fine Sunday two or more strangers, with an unmistakable New York air, appeared in the church. It transpired that they were a visiting committee in search of a bright and shining pulpit light, and it all ended in his call to Brooklyn.

“Great were the regrets of his congregation and the community of which he was the great central figure of interest and influence. The impress he left has not been obliterated, with the growth of the city, by the lapse of time. In many respects the city is a monument to his earnest efforts to promote her moral and intellectual development.”

Mr. Beecher has often remarked in later years that his first real preaching was at Indianapolis. Although at Lawrenceburg he was noted for his brilliancy of diction and wonderful oratorical power, and by his good-fellowship and the strong personal interest which he took in all his people made many and lasting friends, yet he did not feel that he was doing real, effective work. “I can preach so as to make the people come to hear me,” said he to good old Bishop Little, “but somehow I can’t preach them clear into the kingdom.”

A year or two after his removal to Indianapolis he determined to find out what the difficulty was.

“We had delivered hundreds before, but until then the sermon was the end and not the means. We had a vague idea that truth was to be preached, and then it was to be left to do its work under God’s blessing as best it might. The result was not satisfying. Why should not preaching do now what it did in the Apostles’ days? Why should it be a random and unrequited effort? These thoughts grew, and the want of fruits was so painful that we determined to make a careful examination of the Apostles’ teaching, to see what made it so immediately efficient. We found that they laid a foundation first of historical truth common to them and their auditors; that this mass of familiar truth was then concentrated upon the hearers in the form of an intense personal application and appeal; that the language was not philosophical and scholastic, but the language of common life. We determined to try the same. We considered what moral truths were admitted by everybody and gathered many of them together. We considered how they could be so combined as to press men toward a religious state. We recalled to mind the character and condition of many, who, we knew, would be present, and then, after as earnest a prayer as we ever offered, and with trembling solicitude, we went to the academy and preached the new sermon. The Lord gave it power, and ten or twelve persons were aroused by it and led ultimately to a religious life.

“This was the most memorable day of our ministerial life. The idea was born. Preaching was a definite and practical thing. Our people needed certain moral changes. Preaching was only a method of enforcing truths, not for the sake of the truths themselves, but for the results to be sought in men. Man was the thing. Henceforth our business was to work upon man; to study him, to stimulate and educate him. A sermon was good that had power on the heart, and was good for nothing, no matter how good, that had no moral power on man. Others had learned this. It was the secret of success in every man who ever was eminent for usefulness in preaching. But no man can inherit experience. It must be born in each man for himself. After the light dawned I could then see how plainly Jonathan Edwards’s sermons were so made. Those gigantic applications of his were only the stretching out of the arms of the sermon upon the lives and hearts of his audience. I could see it now, and wondered that I had not seen it before.”

The application of this, to him, new idea soon began to be apparent in rich results.

A series of revivals sprang up, by which many were brought into the church. From one of his successors we learn that “these were great foundation days for the church. Strong religious impressions were made upon the young town, and very many were redeemed to a life of Christian service. These were fruitful years, starred over by three prolific revivals. In the spring of 1842 nearly one hundred were received; again, in 1843, was another spiritual blessing, and once more in 1845. Such fruits vindicate the character and fervor of the pastoral activity. Many of these converts are in the church to-day, old men, testifying as elders and devout believers to the genuineness of this work. Mr. Beecher preached seventy nights in succession during one spring, in labors abundant. He ceased special effort, he said, to permit many who did not wish to come out under an excitement, to calmly join the church.

“Revivals have been characteristic of this church from the beginning. They have brought it steady and growing and efficient workers.”

He wrote to his father May 1, 1842:

“Prosperity and peace dwell with us. Our church is filled; our young converts run well, and already there is gathered in material for another revival of persons hitherto not wont to attend church anywhere.

“I hope this fall and early winter to see the scenes of this spring renewed. The neighborhoods about town are also revived.”

He has told us of one occasion when he attended a meeting of the Presbytery with his father. Great efforts were made at these meetings to awaken a religious interest among the people especially in the church where the meetings were held. Several sermons had been delivered on this occasion, with no great effect, when he was called upon to preach. He selected for his subject “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” “As I went on describing the going away of the sinner from God the people became interested; as I described the sinner’s coming to himself the interest increased; but when I came to the return of the sinner to God, and God’s readiness, even hastening, to receive him, the whole audience broke down, and father, who was on the platform with me, said, wiping his eyes and spectacles, ‘Thank the Lord! a revival is begun.’ Mr. C———, a good brother, grasped my hand after the sermon with great fervor. ‘You did well, Beecher, you did well; but you ought to have given ’em salt instead of sugar.’ But since the salt had been tried several days without effect, and the sugar, as he called my preaching, brought many to Christ, I did not agree with him.”

His zealous labors were by no means confined to Indianapolis. He was constantly called to help in the towns and villages throughout the centre of the State. One, two, and even three weeks at a time he would be gone, laboring to help some brother striving to awaken his people.

Terre Haute, Madison, Greenwood, Greencastle, Lafayette, Logansport, Fort Wayne, Laporte, and Columbus are the names we find most frequently endorsed on the manuscript notes of his old revival sermons now before us. These were the days he loved to look back upon; though full of hardship, privations, and not a little suffering, they were also full of that great joy which comes to those who labor successfully in winning souls.

Revisiting Terre Haute in one of his lecture tours many years afterward, and for the first time after coming East, he writes back:

“And now my face is turned homeward! I am bound to Terre Haute—clear across the prairie that I once traversed in early days. Farm touches farm over these wide expanses which, forty years ago, I thought could never be inhabited! No coal, no timber—how, except along the streams, could men settle and thrive? Railroads, those dry and solid rivers, have solved the problem.

“Is this Terre Haute? How has thy prosperity increased and thy beauty diminished!

“I wandered up and down the streets to find my Terre Haute! It was gone, covered up, lost, utterly lost, in new streets, new buildings! Where is the former green? Where the quiet fields within bowshot of the town?

“At any rate, I shall know the church. There it was that I first wrought in revivals, and every board and nail in it was precious. I found it. I entered by the basement side-door and stood in the lecture-room where I preached my first sermon, the same day of my arrival in town, to aid Rev. Dr. Jewett. It was a solemn feeling that stole over me. I saw the audience again. The seats were filled with shadowy listeners! It only needed to see a few of the familiar faces—L. H. Scott, Dr. Ketcham, Ball, Gookin, and others—to make it real again! Just then came up the aisle Harry Ross himself! It was the touch needed to round out the reminiscence. Only one fact disturbed the sweet illusion. This was not the same church. The old one had been burned, and this one took its place! It was a gentle shock to my sensibilities. But it stood on the very ground, and was on the old foundations, and upon the same plan, and looked like the old one, and so I inwardly voted that it was the old one and took my comfort of it! The city is wonderfully improved in every way except to those sentimentalists who come hither to renew the past and live over again old experiences.

“After the lecture, in a special train, we sped, through darkness and storm, to Indianapolis—three hours’ blessed ride. How different this midnight ride from the first one, thirty-five years before! For three weeks I had labored side by side with Brother Jewett—the first revival in which I had ever taken part! How helpless and wretched did I feel when Jewett sent for me—then newly settled in Indianapolis—to come over and help him! I had no effective sermons. I did not know how to preach in a revival. Yet my elders said, Go. I rode two days the lonely road, through beech forests (now all gone), in a dazed and wondering state. Hardly was my saddle empty before Jewett was at my elbow. ‘You have done well to come. You must preach to-night.’ In a moment the cloud lifted. The reluctance was gone. It has been so all my life. At a distance I dread and brood and shrink from any weighty enterprise; but the moment the occasion arrives joy shines clear, and an eager appetite to dash into the battle comes.

“Three memorable weeks at a time when events stamp the memory and the heart as the die stamps the coin! When the time came to return home did ever heart swell with stronger and more unutterable feeling? To go back to the ordinary round of church life from this glowing centre seemed so intolerable that my whole nature and all my soul rose up in uncontrollable prayer. Through the beech woods, sometimes crying, sometimes singing, and always praying, I rode in one long controversy with God. ‘Slay me if Thou wilt, but do not send me home to barrenness. Thou shalt go with me. I will not be refused. I am not afraid of Thee! I will prevail or die!’—these and even wilder strains went through the soul.

“At length the clouds rolled away. The heavens had never seemed so beautiful and radiant. An unspeakable peace and confidence filled my soul. The assurance of victory was perfect, and tranquillity blossomed into joy at every step. The first day was one long struggle of prayer. The second day was one long ecstasy of joy and thanksgiving! I need not say to the wise that the fire of my heart kindled in the church, and for months the genial warmth brought forth a spiritual summer, so that flowers and fruit abounded in the garden of the Lord.

“And now in this three-hour midnight ride, amid outward storms but inward joy and thanksgiving, I recalled the old days, and mingled their light with the gladness of the passing hour.”

Referring to a revival at Terre Haute—perhaps the one just mentioned—Dr. Lyman Beecher wrote:

“The revival here under Henry’s administration and preaching was, in the adaptation of means and happy results, one of the most perfectly conducted and delightful that I have ever known.”

We can get some slight idea of the hard physical labor he endured in his ordinary home preaching by quoting a single page of his “Sermon Record Book”—a not unusual record:

“Oct. 22. Rode 36 miles; Adams’ neighborhood by noon. Evening rode five miles to Franklin; preached on Faith. “ 23. Rode back to Adams, and at 10½ preached ordination of Stimson: Duties of Pastor. “ 24. Sunday morning and evening, our church. “ 26. Funeral of Mrs. Jennison. “ 31. Twice—once on Baptism. Nov. 7. Morning, baptism; P.M., funeral. “ 11. Rode 8 miles to Brewer’s and preached; home again. “ 12. Rode 8 miles to N. Prov. Ch.; preached, and home. “ 13. Preached morning and night, and rode 5 miles to M———; P.M., 10 miles, preached 3 times a day.”

At this time he undertook a minute and careful analysis of the Gospels:

“I took the New Testament, I read it diligently, I made myself familiar with the life and teachings of Christ, I became saturated with the spirit of the four Gospels, I obtained all the helps I could get for their interpretation, and I have now in my drawer a heap of manuscripts in which I have condensed and compiled these Gospels, everything in them being conveniently arranged for use. It was an immense work. These four Gospels had, as it were, been eaten and digested by me and gone into my blood and bones.

“It was while I was engaged in this work that Christ was brought to my soul for the first time in my life with a sweetness and beauty, with a vividness and glory, that for the time transformed the heavens and the earth to my eyes. I had a conception of the depths of the nature of the Divine Being that made metaphysical doctrines and philosophical formulas more repugnant to me than they had ever been before, and I entered into a vow and covenant that if I were permitted to preach I would know nothing but Christ and Him crucified among His people. I took my horse and saddle-bags and traversed the wilderness of Indiana, keeping that view in my mind. For eight or ten years I labored for the poor and needy, in cabins, in camp-meetings, through woods, up and down, sometimes riding two days to meet my appointments. I had no books but my Bible, and I went from one to the other—from the Bible to men, and from men to the Bible. When a case came up I said to myself: ‘What will reach that case?’ and I looked through the Acts of the Apostles to see how they reached such cases. I hunted the Bible through in order to get at the right way. So I worked on, and at last the habit was formed in my mind of studying men, their dispositions, their wants, their peculiarities; and then I worked with reference to curing them, not constructing a system, but striving to produce righteousness in the individual and in communities.”

It is said that in his preaching he often went double-loaded. He would go to church with a sermon specially prepared for some person whom he greatly desired to reach. If, however, he was not present, he would preach a more general sermon. But when, on some other occasion, he found, on entering church, that the object of his solicitude was present, he would lay aside the sermon prepared for that day and preach the special one.

It often occasioned no little surprise in the mind of the subject that Mr. Beecher should have happened that day to preach a sermon so exactly fitted to his case.

Although he had the strongest feelings of love and kindliness toward mankind, both in the abstract and the concrete, yet he never hesitated to lash with stinging words any who took advantage of their strength to abuse another’s weakness. And in such a case nothing could induce him to back down or withdraw from the attack, unless he could be satisfied that he had been mistaken in his facts.

One noticeable incident of the kind occurred during his ministry in Indianapolis, as narrated by Mrs. Beecher:

A man in the city hotel, and not a little feared because of his brutality, had done something more brutal than usual, and, the facts coming to Mr. Beecher’s knowledge, in his sermon on the following Sunday he expressed in no gentle terms his abhorrence of the act, and in very strong language rebuked the man.

Many of his listeners were alarmed lest the man would, when he heard of the sermon, do Mr. Beecher some injury.

Of course before the day was over the substance in the sermon had been reported throughout the town, and did not fail to reach the man’s ears.

Monday morning Mr. Beecher went to the post-office immediately after breakfast, and must go right by the hotel around which this man would most likely be hanging. He got his mail and turned to come home. As he passed the hotel there were several standing by, evidently watching for some development. At that moment the man came down the steps with a pistol in his hand.

“Did you say thus and so in your sermon yesterday?”

“I did.”

“Did you intend those remarks for me, or were you meaning me?”

“I most certainly did.”

“Then take it back right here, or by ——— I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

“Shoot away,” was the reply, as, looking the ruffian sternly in the face, Mr. Beecher calmly, with deliberate step, walked past the man. With pointed pistol and fierce oaths the man followed for a few paces, when, baffled by the imperturbable coolness of his opponent, he slunk away down a side-street, ashamed to return to the hotel.

Mr. Beecher himself has given us an account of another similar event:

“I remember that in Indianapolis there was a meeting called for the enforcement of the laws against gamblers and against grog-selling, at which I was requested to address mechanics and laborers; and some of these violators of the law were there. A man named Bishop, and others of that stamp, were in the meeting to hear what was going to be said. They were the very men that we were aiming at. I was much excited. There were gambling-dens and liquor-saloons where young men were induced to drink and form bad habits, and were in danger of being dragged down to destruction; and I expressed myself plainly, and pointed to Bishop, who sat on a back seat, and denounced him to his face. There was a lively time, if I recollect right; and he gave out the next day that when he and I met one or the other of us was going to be whipped. I went down the street soon after, and I had forgotten all about it until I was right in front of his shop. He was a bully. He watched me as I came down, and I confess that my first thought was a wish that I was not there; but then it would never do for me to flinch, and I walked as though I did not see him till I came close to him, when I turned and looked at him. He thought I was going to attack him, and waited a moment; I bowed and said, ‘Good-morning, Mr. Bishop,’ and passed on. He would not run after me and hit me, and so the affair blew over.

“A year or two after that I left Indianapolis and went up the river, and he chanced to be on the boat with me; and there never was a man that paid me more kind attention than he did. He looked after my children here and there, guarded me at night, and wanted me to drink with him—some soda-water. He opened his whole heart to me, and told me how he felt at the time of my remarks, how he felt the next day, and how he had come to feel since. He said he knew he was carrying on a wicked trade, that he was mad with himself, and that he was mad with me, and told me what it was that induced him to stop. I found that under his love of gain, which had led him to sell liquor, there was a conscience, a heart, and a good deal of kindness.”

During the latter part of his ministry in Indianapolis the Presbyterian clergymen had been requested by the presbytery to preach at least one sermon during the year on slavery. Agreeably to this suggestion Mr. Beecher prepared three sermons on this subject. He waited until the United States Federal Court came there, with Judge McLean as the presiding judge; and when all of the State courts, Supreme Court and Circuit, were in session and the Legislature was convened—so that all lawyers and public officers, men of every kind, thronged the city—he announced that he should preach on slavery.

From the original manuscript before us we learn that he presented his subject in three sermons. In the first he discussed ancient slavery, especially among the Hebrews, its origin, methods, and final abandonment. In his second he presented “the doctrine and practice of the New Testament in respect to slavery.”

In his last he discussed the moral aspects of slavery and its effect upon the community. These sermons made a profound impression on the public mind. Indiana was just over the border of slaveland, and many of its people sympathized heartily with the slave-holders. The prevailing sentiment was very bitter against the Abolitionists. There was very little patience with such “cranks” and “fanatics.” So when Mr. Beecher attacked slavery with the same unsparing earnestness which characterized his utterances on this subject in latter days—for he did not hesitate to denounce it as a crime against God and man—he stirred up a very large and very energetic hornet’s nest. The city was all excitement. Men talked of nothing else. The friends of slavery were bitter and threatening; the few friends of freedom, overawed by the threatening demonstrations, held their peace and waited to see the outcome. Mr. Beecher stood almost alone. Many of the church-brethren were shocked and grieved beyond all expression; some even felt so outraged as to send for letters of dismissal. Many prophesied that he had destroyed himself and ended his influence for usefulness for ever, mourning over his speedy downfall—a mournful prophecy so often repeated in after-years by timid brothers whenever he took any advanced position, and with the same results as in this instance.

Holding the United States Circuit, then in session, was Judge McLean, of the United States Supreme Court, whose views upon all public questions were naturally held in high esteem. The hotel where he was stopping was full of lawyers and members of the Legislature. On the Monday morning after these sermons, in angry and excited groups, they stood in the public rooms of the hotel, talking about the three sermons which had thrown the town into such a ferment. The judge, happening to join one of these groups, was asked his opinion. Instead of denouncing Mr. Beecher’s bold stand as madness, he calmly but with decisive emphasis replied: “Well, I think if every minister in the United States would be as faithful it would be a great advance in settling this question.” The judge’s words spread as rapidly as had the sermons. They checked the flow of bitter criticism. Men stopped talking and began to think; before the day was out a revulsion of feeling set in. Many of the most hostile found their anger changing into admiration—not convinced by Mr. Beecher’s logic, but deeply impressed by his pluck. Those who shared his views felt emboldened to speak out; and that middle class, the social weather-vanes who like to go with the majority, soon felt the changing breeze and began veering around to his side. The timid church-members took heart, the applications for letters of dismissal were recalled. The tide that threatened to overwhelm the plucky preacher only lifted him up and carried him the higher in public estimation. This was the first demonstration of his ability to face and overcome an adverse public sentiment while championing a just but unpopular cause—an experience many times repeated in the forty years that followed. Sometimes it seemed as if he could not stand against the flood poured out upon him. Then the consciousness of right made him strong and gave him that great peace that no whirlwind of adversity could destroy, and roused up in him a determination to only work the harder.

It was while in Indianapolis that he began his first real literary work. It is true that he did some editorial work while at Lane Seminary, but that was too short-lived and occasional to be regarded as regular literary occupation.

Here at Indianapolis he accepted the editorial chair of the Indiana Farmer and Gardener, and, as we are assured by those who were readers of that journal, threw around the subjects therein discussed a brightness of humor and fancy that made the otherwise dry topics of fodder, fertilizers, and plantings seem new and interesting subjects.

“It may be of some service to the young, as showing how valuable the fragments of time may become, if mention is made of the way in which we became prepared to edit this journal.

“The continued taxation of daily preaching, extending through months, and once through eighteen consecutive months without the exception of a single day, began to wear upon the nerves, and made it necessary for us to seek some relaxation. Accordingly we used, after each week-night’s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our heads by some alterative reading.

“In the State Library were Loudon’s works—his encyclopædias of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture. We fell upon them, and for years almost monopolized them.

“In our little one-story cottage, after the day’s work was done, we pored over these monuments of an almost incredible industry, and read, we suppose, not only every line but much of it many times over; until at length we had a topographical knowledge of many of the fine English estates quite as intimate, we dare say, as was possessed by many of their truant owners. There was something exceedingly pleasant, and is yet, in the studying over mere catalogues of flowers, trees, fruits, etc.

“A seedsman’s list, a nurseryman’s catalogue, are more fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through several years, we gradually accumulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the way for our editorial labors. Lindley’s ‘Horticulture’ and Gray’s ‘Structural Botany’ came in as constant companions. And when, at length, through a friend’s liberality, we became the recipients of the London Gardener’s Chronicle, edited by Prof. Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours unable to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden, to the more than oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devonshire’s grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discussions in that little bed-room at Indianapolis, with Van Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with Thompson and Knight of fruits and theories of vegetable life, and with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the horticultural world.

“This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such relations to the material world that we speak with entire moderation when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England could not have given us half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies.”

He was an earnest advocate of manual labor. He had no patience with those whose squeamish effeminacy made them look upon labor as degrading.

On the fly-leaves of his “Editorial Agricultural Book,” begun January 10, 1845, he wrote:

“It is my deliberate conviction that physical labor is indispensable to intellectual and moral health, that the industrial and producing interests of society are powerfully conservative of morals. Especially do I regard the tillage of the soil as conducive to life, health, morals, and manhood. I sympathize with the advance of society through practical physical labors more than I do through metaphysical speculations. I obtain clearer views of religious truth through my sympathies with men and their life than I do through books and their thoughts. Nor do I think any theology will be sound which is made in the closet. It should be made in the street, shop, ship, office, and on the farm. I have followed both inclination and conviction in allying myself to the laboring classes.”

His knowledge on the subject of farming was not altogether theoretic. One of his old parishioners writes us:

“He loved to work and toil, especially in his own garden. He always had the earliest vegetables in the market, and his garden was better than any other in the city. He loved to work among his flowers, and could call every flower by its name readily. I think that he loved his flowers and took more pleasure with them than anything else, excepting his family. He certainly was more devoted to his family than any man I ever saw.”

It was no uncommon thing for him to take his vegetables to the market before daylight, sometimes, as an especial favor, taking his little five-year-old girl with him.

From the report of the fall exhibition of the Indiana Horticultural Society we learn that Mr. Beecher took the three first prizes for the best exhibition of squashes, beets, and oyster-plants. His beets, it is stated, weighed from eight to fourteen pounds.

The literary production which first attracted any general attention was his “Lectures to Young Men.” The State capital seemed to be the headquarters for all those forms of temptation and vice which are particularly liable to undermine the morals of the young. Many a young man, whose future seemed bright with the promise of an honorable and useful life, had Mr. Beecher seen swept from his feet and whirled away to a dishonorable end—young men who might have been saved had some one been able to show them the dangers of the paths they were treading, whose beginnings seemed so pleasant and fair. Greatly distressed at what he saw, he finally determined to deliver a series of lectures intended primarily for young men, and for the purpose of opening their eyes. These were subsequently revised and published, under the title of “Lectures to Young Men.” The purpose of these lectures he aptly indicated in his preface:

“When a son is sent abroad to begin life for himself, what gift would any parent consider excessive to him who should sit down by his side and open the several dangers of his career, so that the young man should, upon meeting the innumerable covert forms of vice, be able to penetrate their disguises, and to experience, even for the most brilliant seductions, a hearty and intelligent disgust?

“Having watched the courses of those who seduce the young—their arts, their blandishments, their pretences—having witnessed the beginning and consummation of ruin, almost in the same year, of many young men, naturally well disposed, whose downfall began with the appearances of innocence, I felt an earnest desire, if I could, to raise the suspicion of the young and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are with such facility destroyed.

“I ask every YOUNG MAN who may read this book not to submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I denounce, nor blindly to follow me, but to weigh my reason, that he may form his own judgment. I only claim the place of a companion; and, that I may gain his ear, I have sought to present truth in those forms which best please the young; and though I am not without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise, my whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent sympathy of young men.”

He dedicated the book to his father—

“TO “LYMAN BEECHER, D.D.

To you I owe more than to any other living being. In childhood you were my Parent, in later life my Teacher, in manhood my Companion. To your affectionate vigilance I owe my principles, my knowledge, and that I am a minister of the Gospel of Christ. For whatever profit they derive from this Book the young will be indebted to you.”

Our space forbids any attempt at reproducing or analyzing these lectures.

The evils that he attacked were real, and he did not mince matters in the assault. In the course of his lectures some of his good people, including one or two of the elders, thought that he was too plain and outspoken in his description of the temptations and dangers that beset the young, and undertook to advise him, suggesting that he should be more prudent in the forms of his expressions. He expressed regret that he should differ with them, but he proposed, he said, to treat the subject as he thought he ought, without regard to any instructions given. He did not propose to fight a mad dog with a handful of straw. Notwithstanding the timidity of his advisers, it appears, from the universal testimony of those who heard them, that they did great good, awakening the community to the dangers he exposed.

He was earnestly urged to revise and print them, “that their usefulness may be extended beyond the place of their delivery.”

His first attempts at their revision were not at all satisfactory to him, for he said afterwards:

“I remember, when I was reading over my lectures to young men, with the intention of printing them, that I took down a volume of Dr. Barrow’s sermons and read two on the subject of ‘Industry and Idleness.’ I had two lectures on similar subjects that I thought of publishing, but they seemed to me so mean in the comparison that I took up the manuscript and fired it across the room and under the book-case, where it lay I do not know how long, and said: ‘I am not going to put those lectures into print and make an ass of myself.’ I thought that I would be a fool to think there was anything in them worth publishing. Afterwards, however, a volume of lectures to young men was lent to me, and when I read them they seemed so thin and weak that I said: ‘If these are acceptable to the public and will do good I think I can print mine.’”

The many editions published in this country and England justified his final conclusion.

Although his salary had been doubled on coming to Indianapolis, had he received it all it would hardly have kept pace with his necessities. Many little necessities incident to their new surroundings called for expense. In the State capital two rooms over a stable would hardly meet the requirements of his social surroundings. It became necessary to hire an entire house, the spare rooms of which were devoted to boarders whose rent helped out the slender family purse. The house needed painting; why hire a painter? He could do it himself. Was he not born and brought up in sturdy old New England, where every lad was expected, almost from the day he was weaned, to take care of himself and add his labor to increase the common good; where a man was thought wanting in ordinary “cuteness” who could not turn his hand to any job and do anything he had seen another do?

Off he starts to the paint-store with his old horse and wagon, entering so enthusiastically upon the work in hand that he wholly forgot an engagement, made for that morning, to marry a couple. As the paints were being put up, he suddenly recalls his engagement, abruptly turns on his heel, rushes from the store, jumps into his wagon, and goes clattering down the street, leaving the astounded storekeeper in anxious solicitude for his sanity. Returning shortly, with a merry laugh he explained the cause of his precipitate outgoing. He found the couple waiting, married them, and then returned for his paint. Getting his supplies, he goes to work. He said:

“I wanted to economize in every way I could, and meant to paint the house myself; and I did. I got along well enough until I came to the gable end, which was two and a half stories high. When I began to paint there I was so afraid that I should fall off from the platform that I nearly rubbed out with my vest what I put on with the brush, but in the course of a week I got so used to climbing that I was as nimble as any painter in town.”

Here three more little ones came to swell the family circle, adding new joys to the heart of one who loved almost with a mother’s devotion every little child he saw. But these joys brought three more mouths to feed, three more little bodies to clothe.

Fortunately food was abundant and very cheap. In the fall and early winter game abounded, so that pigeon, quail, and ducks were bought for almost nothing, and at times were literally given away.

We remember the story oft told by him of the man bringing six dozen pigeons to town. He tried to sell them, and was laughed at. He then offered to give them away; no one wanted them. “Well,” he said, “I won’t take them home; perhaps if I leave them in my wagon in the street some one will steal them.” Returning a half-hour later, he found that some other hunter equally anxious to get rid of his game had dumped eight dozen more into his wagon.

His people would sometimes donate food or clothing. The best suit of clothes he owned was made over from a discarded suit donated by one of his parishioners.

Yet these were among the happiest years of his life.

For he found joy in his work. He loved his people and was beloved. Above all, his teaching was bearing rich harvest, and many, many souls found rest and peace through his words. His success was very gratifying, and urged him on to greater effort.

Among the young his influence was especially marked. A genial playfellow and companion, entering with hearty zest into all their sports, helping them out of their little difficulties, he gained their confidence and love. He guided the feet of many into the paths of a higher and nobler life.

One of these friends writes:

“He had a class of young girls, and I do not think that any one that recited to him could ever forget his original way of teaching. There were eight in the class, and we enjoyed the hour spent with him. He developed our originality. He first attracted us toward Milton. We studied, for he inspired in us the desire to know. In after-years, in his visits to Indianapolis, the surviving scholars were looked up and called upon, and the children of those who were gone were asked after. With some of these scholars he was thrown more intimately than with others, for all were not in his church. In these he naturally took much interest and directed them in their reading. I remember his telling me to ‘let Bulwer alone and the French novels,’ which were then first being translated. At a company, a church social, or the singing-school he had a merry word to say to one and another. All felt at home with him.

“My brother tells this story: When he was nine years old he had with great labor made a kite, at least what he thought would serve as one. In those days there were no toy-shops here, and, indeed, it was with difficulty material could be found out of which to manufacture a kite. But, as I said, he and his little sister had succeeded in shaping a thing which they called a kite. So, on a spring day, they set forth to fly it. My brother held the string and the little sister kept the kite off the ground. He ran, and she after him; but run as they would, coax as they might, their efforts availed nothing. Finally, disappointed, footsore, and covered with dust, they stopped to take breath. While thus brooding over their failure they saw Mr. Beecher standing near, looking down upon them with an amused but sympathetic expression on his face. ‘What do you call that?’ ‘A kite,’ was the melancholy response. ‘Well! well!’ the kind heart fully taking in the situation. ‘Come to my house to-morrow afternoon.’ There was hope in the tone, and the boy’s heart bounded. The next day he went to Mr. Beecher’s. He was shown a kite bigger than himself. He could scarcely believe his senses. Why, the tail even was long enough to set him wild. ‘Where’s your string?’ asked Mr. Beecher. Out of his well-worn pocket, where all a boy’s treasures are hidden, he drew forth a cotton string neither long nor strong. ‘This will not do; have you any money?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Come, let’s go and get a string.’ To the nearest grocery-store, where in early times everything was kept, from pins up to ploughs, they went. A ball of twine was bought for a ‘bit’; one was not enough—two for a quarter. Out into the street they went, and the kite was a success. Away it flew over their heads, the heart of the happy boy flying with the kite far into the heavens, and won to his pastor for all time by this simple, kindly act.”

Like all mankind, he had to taste the bitter with the sweet and pass under the shadow of the dark cloud of sorrow.

First his brother George, who had been a kind of guardian brother to him, and deeply loved, was killed. The news came with the shock of a lightning-bolt.

“I was called to go to Jacksonville to deliver an address,” he said, speaking of his brother’s death. “The journey was a long one, across two States (or one and a half). I took my wife and child with me, and we were gone some two weeks. When, on returning, we had got within two miles of Indianapolis, and were as elated and songful and merry as one can imagine anybody to be, we met one of the elders of my church riding out from the city, and he said, after stopping to greet us: ‘Have you heard the news?’ ‘No,’ said I; ‘what is it?’ ‘Your brother George has killed himself.’ I did not say a word, my wife did not say a word, and he did not say one word more. We rode on, and as we rode I could not help thinking, ‘Killed himself! killed himself! killed himself!’ It was nearly an hour before we got home, and then I learned that my brother’s death was caused by an accident with a double-barrelled gun while he was shooting birds in the garden; and it was a great relief to me to know that ‘killed himself’ did not mean suicide.”

Later came the death of his little boy George, the first loss in his own immediate family. He wrote, a few years later, to his sister, Mrs. Stowe:

“I was in a missionary field, enduring hardships, and thinking in myself always how to stand up under any blow, even if it were a thunder-stroke, with Paul’s heroism at once firing me and putting me to shame. Our noble boy suddenly sickened. Our people did not know how to sympathize. Few came while he lived; fewer yet when, on a bleak March day, we bore him through the storm, and, standing in the snow, we laid his beautiful form in his cold, white grave. Eunice was heart-broken. My home was a fountain of anguish. It was not for me to quail or show shrinking. So I choked my grief and turned outwardly from myself to seek occupation.”

In later years this sorrow had hardly lost its acuteness:

“I remember, to-night, as well as I did at the time, the night that my eldest-born son died. That was my first great sorrow. I remember the battle of hope and of fear, and I remember the victory of submission. The child revived in the night. I went to Indianapolis (I lived on the edge of that city), and I shall never forget the amazing uplift of soul that I had, nor that one unspoken, universal thought of prayer, which seemed to me to fill the whole hemisphere, for the life of my child. I think that if one ever came near throwing his soul out of his body, I did. And yet before the morning dawned the child had found a brighter world. This was a double sorrow because I had given him up and then taken him back again. Then came the sudden wrench.

“It was in March, and there had just come up a great storm, and all the ground was covered with snow.

“We went down to the graveyard with little Georgie, and waded through it in the snow. I got out of the carriage, and took the little coffin in my arms, and walked knee-deep to the side of the grave, and looking in I saw the winter down at the very bottom of it. The coffin was lowered to its place, and I saw the snowflakes follow it and cover it, and then the earth hid it from the winter.

“If I should live a thousand years I could not help shivering every time I thought of it. It seemed to me then as though I had not only lost my child, but buried him in eternal snows. It was very hard for faith or imagination to break through the physical aspect of things and find a brighter feeling.”

The attachment which his people felt for him was more than reciprocated. He always loved to recall these early years and in memory live over again their joys and sorrows, their struggles and triumphs.

In the early winter of 1877, in the course of a Western lecture trip, revisiting Indianapolis, he wrote back:

“I went to Indianapolis in the fall of 1849 with a sick babe in my arms, who showed the first symptoms of recovery after eating blackberries which I gathered by the way. The city had then a population of four thousand. At no time during my residence did it outreach five thousand. Behold it to-day with one hundred and ten thousand inhabitants! The Great National Road, which at that time was of great importance, since sunk into forgetfulness, ran through the city and constituted the main street. With the exception of two or three streets there were no ways along which could not be seen the original stumps of the forest. I bumped against them in a buggy too often not to be assured of the fact.

“Here I preached my first real sermon; here, for the first time, I strove against death in behalf of a child, and was defeated; here I built a house and painted it with my own hands; here I had my first garden and became the bishop of flowers for this diocese; here I first joined the editorial fraternity and edited the Farmer and Gardener; here I had my first full taste of chills and fever; here for the first and last time I waded to church ankle-deep in mud and preached with pantaloons tucked into my boot-tops. All is changed now.

“In searching for my obscure little ten-foot cottage I got lost. So changed was everything that I groped over familiar territory like a blind man in a strange city. It is no longer my Indianapolis, with the aboriginal forest fringing the town, with pasture-fields lying right across from my house; without coal, without railroads, without a stone big enough to throw at a cat. It was a joyful day and a precious gift when Calvin Fletcher allowed me to take from the fragments of stone used to make foundations for the State Bank a piece large enough to put in my pork-barrel. I left Indianapolis for Brooklyn on the very day upon which the cars on the Madison Railroad for the first time entered the town; and I departed on the first train that ever left the place. On a wood-car, rigged up with boards across from side to side, went I forth.

“It is now a mighty city, full of foundries, manufactories, wholesale stores, a magnificent court-house, beautiful dwellings, noble churches, wide and fine streets, and railroads more than I can name radiating to every point of the compass.

“The old academy where I preached for a few months is gone, but the church into which the congregation soon entered still is standing on the Governor’s Circle. No one can look upon that building as I do. A father goes back to his first house, though it be but a cabin, where his children were born, with feelings which can never be transferred to any other place. As I looked long and yearningly upon that homely building the old time came back again. I stood in the crowded lecture-room as on the night when the current of religious feeling first was beginning to flow! Talk of a young mother’s feelings over her first babe—what is that compared with the solemnity, the enthusiasm, the impetuosity of gratitude, of humility, of singing gladness, with which a young pastor greets the incoming of his first revival? He stands upon the shore to see the tide come in! It is the movement of the infinite, ethereal tide! It is from the other world! There is no color like heart color. The homeliest things dipped in that for ever after glow with celestial hues. The hymns that we sang in sorrow or in joy and triumph in that humble basement have never lost a feather, but fly back and forth between the soul and heaven, plumed as never was any bird-of-paradise.

“I stood and looked at the homely old building, and saw a procession of forms going in and out that the outward eye will never see again—Judge Morris, Samuel Merril, Oliver H. Smith, D. V. Cully, John L. Ketcham, Coburn, Fletcher, Bates, Bullard, Munsel, Ackley, O’Neil, and many, many more! There have been hours when there was not a hand-breadth between us and the saintly host in the invisible church! In the heat and pressure of later years the memories of those early days have been laid aside, but not effaced. They rise as I stand, and move in a gentle procession before me. No outward history is comparable to the soul’s inward life; of the soul’s inward life no part is so sublime as its eminent religious developments. And the pastor, who walks with men, delivering them from thrall, aspersing their sorrow with tears, kindling his own heart as a torch to light the way for those who would see the invisible, has, of all men, the most transcendent heart-histories. I have seen much of life since I trod that threshold for the last time; but nothing has dimmed my love, nor has any later or riper experience taken away the bloom and sanctity of my early love. And I can truly say of hundreds: ‘For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel.’

“But other incidents arise—the days of sickness, chills and fever, the gardening days, my first editorial experience, my luck in horses and pigs, my house-building; and not a few scrapes—being stalled in mud, half-drowned in crossing rivers, long, lonely forest rides, camp-meetings, preachings in cabins, sleepings in the open air.

“I was reminded of one comical experience as I was seeking on Market Street to find the old swale or shallow ravine which ran between my cottage and Mr. Bates’s dwelling. It had formerly been a kind of bayou in spring when the stream above town overflowed, but dried off in summer. To redeem it from unhealth a dike had been built to restrain the river and turn the superfluous freshets another way. But one year the levee gave way in the night; and when the morning rose, behold a flood between me and my neighbor! There was sport on hand! It was too deep for wading, but I could extemporize a boat. I brought down to the edge my wife’s large washing-tub, and intended with a bit of board to paddle about. No sooner was I in than I was out. The tub refused to stand on its own bottom. Well, well, said I, two tubs are better than one. So I got its mate, and, nailing two strips across to hold them fast together, I was sure that they were too long now to upset. So they were, in the long line; but sideways they went over, carrying me with them with incredible celerity. Tubs were one thing, boats another—that I saw plainly.

“I would not be baffled. I proposed a raft. Getting rails from the fence, I soon had tacked boards across—enough of them to carry my weight. Then, with a long pole, I began my voyage. Alas! it came to a ludicrous end.

“A rail fence ran across this ravine in the field, just above the street. One end of the fence had loosened, and the water had floated it round enough to break its connection with its hither side. A large but young dog belonging to a friend had walked along the fence, hoping to cross dry-footed, till he came to the abrupt termination, and, his courage failing him, he had crouched down and lay trembling and whining, afraid to go back or to venture the water. I poled my raft up to the rescue; and, getting alongside, coaxed him to jump aboard, but his courage was all gone. He looked up wistfully, but stirred not. ‘Well, you coward, you shall come aboard.’ Seizing him by the skin of the neck, I hauled him on to the raft, which instantly began to sink. It was buoyant enough for a man, but not for a man and a lubberly dog. There was nothing for it—as the stupid thing would not stir, I had to; and with a spring I reached the fence just abdicated by the dog, while he, the raft now coming to the surface again, went sailing down the pond and was safely landed below, while I was left in the crotch of the fence. One such experiment ought to serve for a life-time, but alas!

“There is no end of things gone by. They rise at every point; and one walks encompassed with memories which accompany him through the living streets like invisible spirits.”

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