Henry Ward Beecher ...

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Preface

Carlyle has called Shakespeare " the best head in six tliousand years."

To Henry Ward Beecher, more frequently than to any one else, has the epithet Shakespearean been applied by men widely acquainted both with the poet and with the preacher.

The pastor of Plymouth Church, the most brilliant and .fertile pulpit-genius of the nineteenth century, and the most widely-influential American of his time, lived so varied a life, and one so replete with important incidents, that it has been no holiday task to compress into the compass of this volume what needed to be written in order to furnish an adequate picture of this many-sided and almost myriad-minded man.

I have aimed to give, in swift, flowing narrative, the story of his spiritual inheritance, his interesting early development, his various achievements, sorrows, and triumphs. Though " the life of such a man is the life of his epoch," I have not fully described all the reform movements through the midst of which flowed the current of his career. The main theme of this book is Mr. Beecher's richly-endowed personality, and to a large extent he has been allowed to speak for himself.

via PREFACE.

The materials which I liave found at hand, and wliich I have been kindly permitted by authors and publishers to use, have been exceedingly ample. The Rev. N. D. Hillis, D.D., of Evanston, Illinois, is the possessor of perhaps the completest Beecher library in the country, and this has been kindly placed at my service. Henry Ward Beecher had the fortune to have more things written about him than any other of his contemporaries, unless we except Lincoln and Gladstone.

No brief sketch is so satisfactory as that given by Mrs. Stowe in " Men of Our Times " (Hartford Publishing Company, 1868). In the " Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by her son, Charles Edward Stowe (Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1889), are many notices of Henry Ward Beecher which are valuable to his biographer.

The " Life of Beecher," by Abbott and Halliday (American Publishing Company, Hartford, 1887), contains an important sketch of Mr. Beecher by Dr. Lyman Abbott, his successor in Plymouth pulpit and in the editorship of T/ie Christian Union, now The Outlook. It contains also many reminiscences by Rev. S. B. Halliday, Mr. Beecher's beloved assistant in the pastoral work of Plymouth Church. This book, moreover, is valuable on account of the numerous contributions by distinguished contemporaries of the pulpit orator. I have made occasional use of these analyses and reminiscences, for the reason that Mr. Beecher can be adequately appreciated by those cnly who realize what a profound impression he made on various gifted minds. This life is also enriched by many of Mr. Beecher's characteristic utter-

PREFACE. ix

ances, and contains a brief account of his closing years.

The chief storehouse of knowledge concerning this remarkable man is found in the " Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by William C. Beecher and Rev. Samuel Scoville, assisted by Mrs, Henry Ward Beecher (Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888, now owned by Bromfield & Company). In the notes I refer to this book as the ^' Biography." It should be read by all who are interested to possess a full account of Mr. Beecher's life as seen by his own household. In the Ladies' Home Journal for-i89i-2, Mrs. Beecher has furnished a series of pleasant papers on " Mr. Beecher as I Knew Him." They are full of interesting anecdotes, for a few of which I have been able to find room in this volume.

" The Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher," two volumes, edited by Charles Beecher (Harper &> Brothers, 1865), must be carefully read by all w\\o wish to understand what Mr. Beecher inherited from his remarkable ancestry.

In the Preface to " Patriotic Addresses," by Henry Ward Beecher (New York : Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1887), there is an admirable and discriminating review of Mr. Beecher's personality and influence in public affairs, by John R. Howard. The '^ Life of Henry Ward Beecher," by Joseph Howard, Jr., and *'The Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher," by Thomas W. Knox, contain miscellaneous information, not elsewhere found. "The History of Plymouth Church," by Noyes L. Thompson (New York: G. W. Carleton & Company, 1873), is not without use to the student of Mr. Beecher's life.

X PREFACE.

The " Beecher Memorial," compiled and edited by Edwiird W. Bok, gives a great number of contemporary tributes, some of which the writer has found of interest and value. Joseph Parker's " Eulogy " (New York: Bachelder & Company, 1887), is a magnificent tribute to the genius and character of his illustrious friend.

A chief source of our knowledge of Henry Ward Beecher is the books which he published, or which friends hcive compiled from his writings and addresses. Foremost among these I mention " The Yale Lectures on Preaching," which remain unsurpassed in suggestiveness and stimulating power; the " Lectures to Young Men," " Plymouth Pulpit Sermons," " Patriotic Addresses," containing the complete publication of Mr. Beecher's most important speeches on subjects connected with slavery and the Civil War; '* Evolution and Religion," "Norwood," " Comforting Thoughts," " A Book of Prayer," " Royal Truths," " Beecher as a Humorist," "A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher," " Bible Studies," all of them published by Fords, Howard & Hulbert, and two volumes of Mr. Beecher's sermons, edited by Lyman Abbott and published by Harper Brothers. The English publication of Mr. Beecher's sermons (London: R. D. Dickinson) has been placed at my service by the kindness of Dr. Hillis, and also the sermons delivered during the last year of his life and published in T/ie Brooklyn Magazine.

Probably the most famous of the compilations from Mr. Beecher's works is " Life Thoughts," which had an extraordinary sale. An interesting selection from his writings is ''The Crown of Life" (Boston:

PREFACE. xi

D. Lothrop Company), with Introduction by Rossiter W. Raymond. This Introduction contains the best account ever given of some of the peculiarities of Mr. Beecher's mind, particularly its periodicity. Mr. Raymond explains how Mr. Beecher's fruitful genius remained dormant or inactive except at special recurring times, and how he brought about, with astonishing regularity, these periods of creative productiveness, which seldom lasted more than a few hours, but which he was usually able to make synchronous with his Sunday services.

Some of Mr. Beecher's very best writing is found in the " Star Papers," first and second series, and in " The Life of Jesus, the Christ," the first volume of which was published by J^ B. Ford & Company, 187 1, and the second by Bromfield & Company, 1891. The *' Prayers from Plymouth Pulpit " (A; C. Armstrong & Son) must not be omitted by any student of Henry Ward Beecher.

There have been many other volumes, besides addresses, pamphlets, reviews, and newspaper articles which I have consulted, and which have thrown important side-lights on Mr. Beecher's career.

While a student in the Union Theological Seminary in 1868 and 1869, it was my good fortune to be a listener to his preaching, and in what I have written of his unsurpassed pulpit eloquence I have freely drawn on my own vivid recollections. Mr. T. J. Ellinwood, who for so . many years reported Mr. Beecher's sermons, has very kindly sent me a number of Mr. Beecher's unpublished sentences. Mr. N. D. Pratt, of Chicago, a valued friend of Mr. Beecher, has very courteously allowed me the free use of his

Xll PREFACE.

unpublished reminiscences. A number of friends have furnished unpublished letters of interest and incidents connected with Mr. Beecher's remarkable personality.

" Biography," says Mr. Lowell, " in these communicative days has become so voluminous that it might seem calculated for the ninefold vitality of another domestic animal than for the less lavish allotment of man." I hope that this book will seem to many of the friends of Mr. Beecher too short rather than too long. If it shall be deemed by those who were personally familiar with him a truthful picture of this wonderful man, and if my estimate of his character and genius, and of the influence of his teaching, shall commend itself to the judgment of fair-minded Christian readers, 1 shall be greatly pleased. I shall be still more pleased if this account of a richly-gifted, heroic, and muchsuffering servant of Christ, and apostle of humanity, shall kindle in other hearts a new faith in that Divine Redeemer, who was the strength and glory of Mr. Beecher's great career.

JOHN HENRY BARROWS.

Chicago, August ist. 1893.

Contents

Preface ...» vii-xii

CHAPTER I. The Flower of New England Womanhood 1-7

CHAPTER H.

The King of the New England Pulp?t 8-17

CHAPTER HI.

The Nurse of His Childhood 18-27

CHAPTER IV.

"The Father of the Man " 28-35

CHAPTER V.

The Boy's Peril and Escape 36-43

CHAPTER VI.

Amherst College and Her Greatest Son 44-54

CHAPTER VII.

In the Great Valley of Decision 55-68

CHAPTER VIII.

Testing His Weapons 69-79

CHAPTER IX.

Indianapolis. The Western Evangelist 80^91

CHAPTER X.

A Sick Household. A Strong Pulpit.. 92-103

XIV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XI.

Call to Brooklyn. Early Revivals 104-116

CHAPTER XII.

A Historic Church 117-131

CHAPTER XIII.

The Private and Peaceful Ministry 132-144

CHAPTER XIV. .

Revivals. Nature. Music 145-155

CHAPTER XV.

Causes of Popularity and Unpopularity i 156-162

CHAPTER XVI.

The Battle for Freedom 163-178

CHAPTER XVII.

The Glue of Compromise, a Quack Cement 179-188

CHAPTER XVIII.

A Light in America's Dark Age 189-199

CHAPTER XIX.

The Irrepressible Conflict Continues 200-306

CHAPTER XX.

The Pilgrims on the Kansas Prairies 207-2 1 4

CHAPTER XXI,

The Republican Party and Its Great Leaders 21 5-226

CHAPTER XXII.

Truth on the Scaffold, Wrong on the Throne 227-238

CHAPTER XXIII.

Beecher the Emancipator 239-246

CONTENTS. XV

CHAPTER XXIV.

Steering by the Divine Compass 247-257

CHAPTER XXV.

Before the Great Storm 258-265

CHAPTER XXVI.

A Great Leader in a Great Crisis 266-272

. CHAPTER XXVII.

ToiHng for Liberty and the Union 273-286

CHAPTER XXVIII.

" You Wonder Why We're Hot, John .^ " 287-296

CHAPTER XXIX.

Conquering the Mob 297-308

CHAPTER XXX.

The Heart of Bruce Returns to Scotland 309-319

CHAPTER XXXI.

" I have fought with Beasts at Ephesus " 320-329

CHAPTER XXXII.

Tlie American Demosthenes Triumphs 330-344

CHAPTER XXXIIL

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Blessed are the Peacemakers 356-362

CHAPTER XXXV.

In Labors More Abundant 363-371

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Sunshine Before the Storm 37--379

XVI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Long Darkness 380-390

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

The Son of the Righteous DeHvered 391-398

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CHAPTER XL.

The Shadow Lessening 414-419

CHAPTER XLI.

New Light on Old Problems 420-428

CHAPTER XLi;...

Pulpit Thunderer and Plumed Knight , 429-434

CHAPTER XLIII.

Last View of the Old Battlefield 435-441

CHAPTER XLIV.

Night Cometh and the Eternal Morning 442-449

CHAPTER XLV.

" This Was a Man " 450-477

CHAPTER XLVI.

The Eloquent Orator 478-489

CHAPTER XLVII.

He Preached Christ 490-512

CHAPTER XLVIII.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

CHAPTER I.

THE FLOWER OF NEW ENGLAND WOMANHOOD.

More than three-fourths of a century have rippled "into the silent hollows of the past" since, in the hamlet of Litchfield, Connecticut, when the morning twilight of September was awaking the bird-songs in the elm-trees, a saintly woman, the flower of New England, told her weeping companion that Heaven drew near, and that its glories were almost overwhelming to her soul. On her death-bed she dedicated her sons as missionaries of Christ, and her dying hope was fulfilled, as all of them became ministers of the Gospel. She told them that God c®uld do for them more than she had done, and that thev must put their trust in Him. In her last moments, her husband repeated to her the words, " But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel." Then in perfect and cloudless peace she fell asleep.

Forty-seven years after the sods of Litchfield had closed over the dust of Roxana Foote Beecher, an old man, who had once been the king of the New England pulpit, but who had long been awaiting his departure, lay on his death-bed, in his house on Brooklyn Heights. Arousing from his death-torpor and kindling for a moment with the old electric fire, he cried out, *' I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day." And soon after this, a solemn and divine radiance illumined his venerable face, and he, too, had gone to the general assembly and church of the first-born and to God the Judge of all, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.

Roxana Foote and Lyman Beecher inherited the best qualities which have ever ripened on the fruitful soil of New England Puritanism, and they bequeathed to their greatest son, Henry Ward Beecher, a bodily vigor which excesses, unless they were excesses of cerebral excitation in public speaking, never impaired, a rollicking good nature which was like the summer sunshine playing over garden and field, a profound melancholy which led to occasional morbid estimates of himself, a genius, quick and powerful to discern the loftiest truths, a passionate devotion to God's children from the highest down to the lowliest of them all, a muscular and elastic intellect of prodigious creative power, a wit that flashed like the lightning through the clouds and was often accompanied by

THE FLOWER OF NEW ENGLAND WOMANHOOD. 3

thunder-blasts of righteous wrathfulness, and an imagination which transformed Heaven and earth into a radiant procession of pictures from which he selected at will.

Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813. His father had preached in this town since 1810. He was the ninth child, and the eighth then living, of Lyman Beecher and his first wife, Roxana Foote. The new-born infant was named after his uncles Henry and Ward, and the names were given by the grandmother, Roxana Foote, who was with her daughter when he was born. Henry Ward Beecher was eleven years the senior of that other leading genius of New England theological reform, Horace Bushnell, who first saw the light in the same town.

His father and mother, as Joseph Parker has said, "were enough to account for any genius, for their spiritual life was purely aristocratic, and enough to account for any goodness, for they held much daily commerce with Heaven." Henry Ward Beecher, in a marked and unusual measure, was the child, not only of his parents, but also of his remote ancestors. There appears in his many-sided character and vast stores of physical and moral endurance scarcely a trait or force which may not be distinctly traced to some one of his known progenitors. Elisha Foote, the father of Roxana Foote, was a descendant from the Englishman who aided King Charles First to hide from his pursuers in the Royal Oak which grew in afield of clover. For this service he was knighted, and the coat-of-arms for the Foote family shows an oak-tree standing in a clover field.

Another of the ancestors of Roxana Foote was Andrew Ward, one of the English gentlemen who sailed with John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Sir Richard Saltonstall and the Rev. George Phillips in the good ship Arbella, which arrived in Boston on June 22, 1630. Among his descendants were Colonel Andrew Ward who helped In the capture of Louisburg and who was famed for his total abstinence principles, and General Andrew Ward, distinguished in the Revolutionary struggle, and who for many years was regularly and without opposition chosen to the State Legislature of Connecticut.

Henry Ward Beecher had the looks of his mother, as everyone will discern who studies the fine portrait of Roxana Foote which appears in the biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe written by her son. Not only is the general outline of the mother's face reproduced, but " the fine nose, the full eye, the mobile, sensitive mouth appear in both." We are told that after his mother's death, which occurred in 1816, little Henry was discovered under his sister Catherine's window digging with great zeal, and when asked what he was doing he replied, " Why, I am going to Heaven to find mamma."

No mother ever had sweeter things written of her by her children than the mother of Henry Ward Beecher. Catherine says of Roxana Foote that she had " a high ideal of excellence in whatever she attempted, and a habit of regarding all knowledge with reference to its practical usefulness, and remarkable perseverence." And Harriet writes of her mother that she was " a woman to make a deep impression on the minds of her children, There was a moral

THE FLOWER OF NEW ENGLAND WOMANHOOD. 5

force about her, a dignity of demeanor, and an air of elegance and superior breeding which produced a constant atmosphere of unconscious awe in the minds of little children." And, again, she writes that her " mother was one of those strong, restful, and yet widely sympathetic natures, in whom all around seemed to find comfort and repose. The communion between her and my father was a peculiar one; it was an intimacy throughout the whole range of their being. There was no person in whose decision he had greater confidence and faith; intellectually and morally he regarded her as the better and stronger portion of himself, and I remember hearing him say that after her death his first sensation was a sort of terror like that of a child suddenly shut out in the dark."

She died when Henry was little more than three years old, so that his recollections of this remarkable woman were shadowy. And yet Mrs. Stowe writes: " Although my mother's bodily presence disappeared from our circle, I think that the memory and example of her had more influence in molding her family than the living presence of many mothers." When Henry Ward Beecher, in September, 1831, found the correspondence between his father and mother, how eagerly he 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 on it while writing it. The hand of my mother had formed every letter which I saw, she had looked upon that paper, she had folded it, she had sent it, and I found out more of her mind than I ever knew before, more of her feelings, her piety." ' And afterwards when he came to own a faded picture of a flower whicli his mother's hand had drawn and colored, it seemed to him the most precious art-product in the world.

Roxana Foote appears to have been, in her way, quite as remarkable as Lyman Beecher. Hers was a more refined, meditative, and imaginative nature. Like the New England housewives of her time she could do all the labors of the home, weaving, spinning and making the clothes, as well as skillfully preparing the food. She is said to have been an adept in needlework. She was well acquainted with literature, history, and French. She could use the pencil and the brush, and possessed some knowledge of music. Unlike Lyman Beecher, she was tall and beautiful. Her natural timidity was so great she was never able to lead the woman's weekly prayer-meeting. She came from a distinguished family, and, though of Puritan blood, she was early confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church, the communion of which her parents were members. It required some independence of character for her family, one part of it, to remain loyal to King George during the Revolutionary struggle.

She was a woman of patience and unselfishness, and her extraordinary resignation excited the amazement of her husband. Mrs. Stowe reports the tradition that she never spoke an angry word in her life. Henry Ward said of her, "■ There are few born to this . world that are her equals." " From her I received my love of the beautiful, my poetic temperament." And

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THE FLOWER OF NEW ENGLAND WOMANHOOD. 7

he once declared that this imaginative temperament was responsible for a good deal of the heresy with which he was sometimes charged. From his mother Beecher believed that he also received simplicity and childlike faith in God. "My mother was an inspired woman who saw God in Nature as well as in the Book."

Is it any wonder that his ideal of woman was so lofty ? His sister Catherine was a person of rare intellectual power and moral genius, who, out of her sorrow and study, evolved that conception of God which became the ruling conception in her brother's great ministry. His sister Harriet was a woman whom it is superfluous to praise, the author of one of the few epoch-making volumes in all literary history. His mother was to his affectionate remembrance an angel of light. He says, " I have only such a remembrance of her as you have of the clouds of ten years ago, faint, evanescent, and yet caught by imagination and fed by that which I have heard of her, and by what my father's thought and feeling of her were, it has come to be so much to me that no devout Catholic ever saw so much in the Virgin Mary as I have seen in my mother, who has been a presence to me ever since I can remember," One recalls the tribute which Theodore Parker paid to motherhood in his discourse on Daniel Webster: " When virtue leaps high in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of nobleness and find it far off in the dear breast of some mother who melted the snows of winter and condensed the summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets."

Chapter II. The King Of The New England Pulpit

Henry Ward Beecher was the son of his father, as well as of his mother, and his public speech, down to the last sermon of his life, abounded with eulogies of Lyman Beecher, who still retains, in the hearts of some older men now living, a place of reverent admiration and enthusiastic love never awarded to the son. This father of seven ministers, most of whom have been distinguished, was an inspiring teacher, friend, and guide, a man whose influence in New England surpassed Daniel Webster's in his prime. The more famous son differed from his father in so many respects that we are apt to overlook some striking resemblances. Both were men of the warmest affections. Dr. Beecher loved " old President Dwight of Yale College as his own soul." He was a man of magnetic eloquence, restless energy, and great evangelical fervor. He was singularly free from jealousy and selfishness. Few men were ever inspired with a more passionate love for Christ. Believing that the greatest thing in the world was to " save souls," he was peculiarly Pauline in the fiber of his nature, and appears to us at times like St. Augustine, with eyes turned upward, a pen in his left hand and a burning heart in his right.

Lyman Beecher treated his children to a surfeit of theology, and thought of himself as a man born to fight error on the one side, and to readjust the explanation and defense of Calvinistic doctrine on the other. He was mora of a theologian, technically speaking, than his son — at least he thought more and spoke more in the line of the theologies. He was himself a theological reformer, and the changes which he championed, and which his son pushed on into extremer manifestations, illustrate the saying of Dr. Holmes: " It is impossible for human nature to remain permanently shut up in the highest lock of Calvinism."

In both Lyman Beecher and his son appeared striking eccentricities of character. Both had a humorous way of looking at life and great frolicsomeness of disposition. The father was a dyspeptic. " From my earliest childhood," said Mr. Beecher in his Yale lectures, " I noticed the great watchfulness and skill with which he took care of himself." And this led Henry Ward to habitual thoughtfulness about his own health. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the father's trouble was dyspepsia, when we remember the state of the culinary art in New England in the early part of this century. Lyman Beecher writes: "We dined on salt pork, vegetables, and pies; corned beef, also, and always on Sunday a boiled Indian pudding. We made a stock of pies on Thanksgiving, froze them for winter use, and they lasted until March." There is a legend that on taking down the pantry of an old house in Connecticut, pies were found in perfect preservation, although the earthen dishes which had contained them had entirely decayed! It is possible that Henry Ward's occasional melancholy of spirits lO HENRY WARD BEECHER.

may have been partly an inheritance from ancestors who had been improperly fed and whose pleasures were not the most wholesome and refined. Lyman Beecher relates what used to happen at the meetings of the Association of Ministers who dined at his Uncle Benton's: '* As soon as Aunt Benton saw them coming she threw the irons in the fire and ran down cellar to draw a pail of beer. Then the hot irons were thrust in, hissing and foaming. It was sweetened and the flip was ready. Then came pipes, and in less than fifteen minutes you could not see across the room."

Although Lyman Beecher lived before anything American, except the Declaration of Independence, was likely to become cosmopolitan, he was in some respects second in influence only to his more famous son. As a preacher of the Gospel, in its commonly accepted sense, as a factor in the building of Christian institutions and as a revivalist, Lyman Beecher was superior to the pastor of Plymouth Church. But his training was more narrow, his intellectual furnishings far more limited. One of the famous scholars in the Faculty of Yale College used to speak of " the enormous illiteracy of Lyman Beecher," but this was probably only a rough way of asserting that the standard of literary culture has been immensely raised since Lyman Beecher pursued his student life in New Haven.

A few years after Andrew Ward had arrived in Boston, the widow Hannah Beecher with her son John, the first of the Beechers in New England, came to New Haven with the godly company who were the pioneers of John Davenport's important settlement. John Beecher was descended from the

THE KING OF THE NEW ENGLAND PULPIT. II

Sturdy Kentish yeomanry who made so deep an impression on English history *Mn the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth," and whom Charles Kingsley has celebrated in the brilliant and thrilling pages of " Westward Ho."

The Beechers were blacksmiths, and it is said that the anvil of Nathaniel and David Beecher stood upon the stump of the famous oak under whose boughs Davenport preached his first sermon to the New Haven colonists. One of Henry's great-grandfathers married a Roberts of Welsh blood, and he often gave the credit of his fervid imagination to his Welsh ancestry. It is amusing to read that his great-great-grandfather, the sturdy New Haven blacksmith, was strong enough to lift a barrel of cider and drink out of the bunghole; that his great-grandfather Joseph, was able to lift a barrel of cider into a cart, and that his grandfather, David Beecher, could lift a barrel of cider and carry it into the cellar. These were athletic feats which some Hosea Biglow might have celebrated in a rude New England Iliad, and have lifted into a fragment of the fame which belongs to the achievements of the muscular Ajax.

Physical strength was thus an inheritance with Henry Ward Beecher, although his father was exceedingly puny at first, and although Lyman Beecher's mother died with the consumption only two da)'^s after Lyman was born. As Henry Ward Beecher's grandfathers, David and Nathaniel, smote upon their anvils, they little dreamed that they were nurturing the strength in which an illustrious descendant was to strike at the most colossal and perilous iniquity that ever endangered America. Roger Sherman, the Connecticut statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence, used to call frequently on David Beecher, Lyman's father, because he was fond of politics and a studious reader of the only newspaper published in New England. Sherman used to say that he "always calculated on seeing Mr. Beecher as soon as he got home from Congress to talk over the particulars." David was more careless in his dress than his son or grandson. Henry Ward's Aunt Esther said that she had known him at least a dozen times to come in from the barn and sit down on a coat-pocket full of eggs, and jump up and say, "O wife!"

Like Henry Ward he was fond of pets, and like him he suffered acutely from hypochondria, though not from the same causes. The grandfather was a dyspeptic, and would pass suddenly from hilarity to intense mental distress. David Beecher was five times married. Lyman Beecher was thrice married — in 1799, i8i7,and 1836 — and was the father of thirteen children of whom eleven survived him.

It will thus be seen that Henry Ward Beecher's inheritance was rich and manifold. From father and mother both came strong, distinctive qualities. He belonged to a race which appears to have the instinct for reform. His ancestors who left England were Come-outers, so that he seems to have been a reformer from heredity, unlike Wendell Phillips, whose immediate ancestors were conservative and aristocratic, and unlike Charles Sumner, '' who was built apparently to play the part of a sovereign and an aristocrat," but who filled " the office of nurse to the slave child." Lyman Beecher was born to preach ; that is, he had that combination of energy, fervent emotiveness, and logical power which makes the effective preacher ; and he was also a reformer, that is, as he said, " when I saw a rattlesnake in my path I killed it." Neither father nor son went out of his way, like some of the radical and far-seeing reformers of our time, to hunt rattlesnakes. But neither of these men ever turned aside from the venomous beasts which they encountered.