Home Life—Love of Children—His Method of Training and Education—Formation of Library and Art Collection—Personal Traits.

To the public Mr. Beecher was best known as the eloquent preacher and speaker, the fearless advocate of right and foe to wrong, the champion of the weak and oppressed, a friend to all mankind. But it was only to those who knew him in his home-life that the softer and sweeter sides of his nature were fully revealed. For his home and family he had the deepest and most tender affection. Though brought up in New England, where respectful reverence from child to parent was often carried to such an extreme that the father was almost unapproachable to his children, he retained none of the puritanical austerity that largely filled the social atmosphere of Connecticut seventy years ago, partly because in his own home there was more of the feeling of fellowship between the father and children, but more especially because his intense love for children swept away all barriers of cold formality. To his own he was the companion and playfellow, the partner in every joy, the comforter in every sorrow. Patient in unravelling those mysteries of mind and matter that perplex the early life of every healthful child, he never answered their childish wonderings with the impatient “don’t bother me,” which too often checks that curiosity which is nature’s mode of self-education, and which often makes childhood one long, continuous “why.”

Every little prattler was his by love’s adoption. In more than a score of households he was the “Grandpa” par excellence, often sadly interfering, we fear, with the rules of government; for, by tacit consent between parents, children, and “Grandpa,” he was superior to all nursery regulations. His consent, and often co-operation, was a warrant of pardon for any and all pranks and escapades committed thereunder.

He was always very careful to exercise this power along the line of healthy sport, in little pranks that gave amusement to all, but at the same time leading the boys to be more manly and the girls to be more womanly. Many a young man and woman today looks back upon those bright days of their childhood with deep and tender affection, and sees where, in what seemed then mere sport and fun, they had caught the inspiration for higher and nobler living.

In this childhood’s Utopia things were sometimes strangely transposed. Nothing would at first more surprise a stranger, in whose memory still lingered pungent recollections of early discipline, than to see a troop of children pounce down upon Mr. Beecher, clamoring with shouts and laughter for a whipping. He remembered that shouts and clamor were constant concomitants in the execution of domestic penalties in his early days, but nothing in his experience recalled laughter in that connection.

The mystery would soon be explained, when, with mock frowns and assumed violence, the children were seized, twirled and tumbled into a row along the wall; and ordered to hold out each right hand; one after another each hand was seized and several blows administered—with a stick of candy. Of course the sticks did not get away. The rods were not spared, and we don’t think that any of the children were spoiled.

And the stranger, as with quiet smile he looks upon them, wonders, after all, if parents resorted to that kind of whipping more, whether the increased feeling of good-fellowship would not render the need of the other kind less frequent.

In the training of his own children he seldom resorted to actual physical punishment, and then only when the little culprit had been guilty of some especially aggravated offence. But when he did resort to the laying on of hands, he entered into it with great earnestness. Dishonesty, falsehood, cruelty, and meanness of every kind were capital offences. The sinner did not lose his head in such cases, but some other parts of his person were so actively stimulated, that standing became the most comfortable position for a long time thereafter. These little rencounters naturally produced profound impressions. We were not apt to invite another by repeating that particular offence.

We well remember some experiments in natural philosophy, conducted by us when about six or seven years old, in which a kitten and a tub of water figured prominently, some features of which, bordering on the barbarous, we will omit. Just then our father came along, and—well, things were generally reversed, including the youthful experimenter. The kitten was fished out, and we had it so thoroughly impressed upon our understanding that kittens won’t swim under water, that we do not remember to have experimented any further in that direction.

After these profoundly impressionable interviews he would talk earnestly and lovingly to the culprit, declaring that it hurt him more to punish than it did the sinner to be punished—which we can well believe now, from our knowledge of his deep and tender loving-kindness, and from the similar duties time has brought to us. Then it used to seem strongly paradoxical, measuring his pain by our still smarting skin we generously thought that we would willingly have foregone any benefits derived from the experience, and have spared him so much suffering.

Happily, these graver cases were infrequent. The minor misdemeanors from childhood’s restless carelessness were generally met with quiet, gentle talks, the mischief fully explained with all its whys and wherefores; the little penitent being finally dismissed with a kiss, honestly and heartily determined to keep out of mischief, and succeeding, by great effort, for an hour or two, until he tumbled into something else. With such cases the father’s patience was infinite.

As the children grew older he was untiring in his care that they should form those habits of body, mind, and morals that should make them strong, useful, and moral men and women. He stimulated their natural curiosity, but at the same time taught them to be self-helpful. If a question were asked that could be answered by any book that he had, the questioner was sent for it, and told, “Now read that carefully, and tell me what you learn; I want to know it, too;” adding: “Information which you get when your attention is fully aroused, and for which you have to stop and take some little trouble, you will be pretty sure to remember.”

“Never ask a question,” he used to say, “if you can find the answer yourself, but never hesitate to ask if you can’t find it: remember always you have a tongue in your head.”

His letters to the absentees at school and college were full of well-considered advice, and well illustrate what we have referred to:

“I am more glad than I can express that you feel so much interest in religious meetings, and I hope that God will lead you to embrace with your whole soul a religious life. It is the only way to perfect honor and to the highest truth and duty. Religion is only the highest use and regulation of every faculty. To love God and live in true benevolence toward men is the very way to make yourself wise, happy, and good.... In all your own personal conduct act upon conscience, and do not try to please yourself merely, but to do what is right, and because it is right. Towards your companions, in all things, seek to be unselfish, kind in little things, studying their good and not your own.... One word as to reading your Bible. You must not regard the book with superstition, and imagine that you will get good by merely reading it. You must remember that it is a very large and widespread book; many things will not be of service to you yet. It has something in it for every age and all circumstances.... Every day try to put in practice something that you read in the Bible. Remember that being a Christian does not take away anything that is innocent and joyous, but only adds to them higher and nobler joys.”

To a young friend who had much artistic ability, but who was discouraged because it was not of the highest grade, he wrote:

“Your note pained me for your sake, as it indicated a bad state of ideality. The sense of the beautiful and of the perfect was designed to stimulate and not to discourage effort. We are not to aim at the highest, but the highest attainable by us. Here, however, comes in that pride of which you speak, and which is unwise, inartistic, unchristian.

“Now, the province of art may be said to be to make homely things handsome, and good things beautiful.

“The power or the gift of the artist is not to glorify himself, but to make the way of human life smoother to tender feet. While, then, high art has an important function, so has decorative art. It is the democratic form of art—i.e., the form which allies it to Christianity.

“Washing the feet is not an agreeable but a most necessary act. ‘If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s,’ etc. It is the keynote of Christianity that one should be willing to serve, not rule. Christ ‘emptied Himself of reputation,’ ‘took upon Him the form of a servant.’

”You are not willing to do things which give pleasure to common people. You are not willing to make plain people happy, to make common homes more cheerful and beautiful. You do not join ideality to benevolence, but to self-adoring pride. If you could perform great works, you would be willing to toil, and even suffer. Being unable to do that, you are not willing to perform the gentler offices of art, the sweetest and most womanly, and give hues and colors to those homely implements that every-day life needs.

“If I had your gifts and your calling, I think that every day I should send thanks to God that, though I could not do great things, I could do that which would cheer daily human life, that would cast a ray of beauty along the homely path where the poor must walk.

“It seems to me that your eyes are holden, and that you do not see God’s angel sent to you, saying, ‘Will you not be a worker together with God, for all, and for the lowly first?’ You push him away and say, with bitterness, ‘Let me help the strong, the high, the rich, or let me die.’

“It is a wicked pride, and you must be born again, and repeatedly, until you can say to your Lord, ‘I will follow Thee in Thy poverty, in Thy humiliation, and if need be I will die to the highest ambition, that I may with my whole soul work for the lowly and in a lowly way!’

“Idealized pride.

“Idealized conscience.

“These are your enemies. They stand between you and your life’s work—between you and Him who died for you.

“I would never have taken the trouble to write this, if I did not love you so much, and did not hope to see you yet one day, ‘clothed and in your right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus.’”

It was his idea that home should be a training-school for his children, by precept, example, and by object-teaching. Partly in gratification of his own love of learning and of the beautiful, but more for the training of the family and development of correct tastes in all departments of literature and art, he covered his walls with paintings, etchings, and engravings; when wall-space gave out, portfolios, drawers, and cabinets were filled with the choicest specimens of art that he could find—not with the zeal of a collector, who seeks the rare merely for its rarity, but because the thing itself was beautiful, or illustrated some type or period of art. As a result his collection of prints furnished a good illustration of etching and engraving, from the earliest rude woodcuts of the fifteenth century, through the various growths of improvement, down to the parchment proofs of the modern etcher. DÜrer, Rembrandt, Ostade, Wille, SchÖngauer, and many others, exemplified the old school, while through a multitude of the French, German, Italian, and English artists were traced the growths of modern art. All the wall-space that could be spared from the paintings and framed engravings was devoted to book-cases well filled. The ancient and the English classics were well-nigh complete, and every modern writer of note, in any department of learning, could find upon Mr. Beecher’s shelves the best of his brain’s offspring. As in art, so in literature, he bought nothing because it was rare, but only because it would gratify the higher tastes or could teach something. The student in any department of art, science, manufacture, agriculture, medicine, or theology would find in Mr. Beecher’s library the best authorities in his special branch of study, and generally with the marks of careful reading apparent upon their pages; while the professional man, whose life had been devoted to the study and practice of his particular profession, has often wondered how Mr. Beecher could have found it possible, with his many duties, to acquire a theoretic knowledge, in that branch of learning, so accurate and comprehensive. The solution of the mystery lay in the fact that he never had to learn a thing twice. The knowledge he acquired he retained. He was remarkably watchful and observant was deeply interested in everything that was going on about him; and when he became interested in a subject, would buy all the books he could find that would enlighten him, and study them carefully. He delighted in visiting workshops, factories, laboratories, studios, and all other places where men worked, there watching attentively the worker, and in a few probing questions reaching such facts as he had failed to find in his books—applying the precept he gave his children: learning what he could by his own observation, then filling the gaps by questioning.

While his memory of words, dates, and the like was very bad, rendering it almost impossible for him to quote accurately, or recall figures or dates, yet his memory of facts was wonderfully accurate. The language by which he learned a fact he could seldom repeat, but the information he never forgot. The former was only the shell; it was the meat of the nut alone that he cared for.

Of course in making up his library he bought many books which in fact he never used, for he said: “A library is like a bountiful table, on which each guest can find everything that he wants; yet it don’t follow that each guest must eat from every dish. My library is the table for my mind, from which I take what I want to-day, and from which I can get what I may want at any time hereafter.” His library was eminently a working library. Most of his books were bought when he was still a young minister, when economy and love of books waged constant warfare, of which contest we give his humorous description:

“Alas! where is human nature so weak as in a book-store? Speak of the appetite for drink, or a bon-vivant’s relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings to be compared with those fantasies of taste, of imagination, of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller’s temptation-hall?...

“Then, too, the subtle process by which the man satisfies himself that he can afford to buy. Talk of Wall Street and financiering! No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. Why, he will economize; he will dispense with this and that; he will retrench here and there; he will save by various expedients hitherto untried; he will put spurs on both heels of his industry; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the time for payment comes! Ah! this Somehow! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred on Hope....

“Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them promotes caution. You don’t feel quite at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account-book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot afford. She has no ‘speculation’ in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy ‘somehows.’ It is a matter of no small skill and experience to get your books home, and in their places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering express brings them to the door just at evening. ‘What is it, my dear?’ she says to you. ‘Oh! nothing—a few books that I cannot do without.’ That smile! A true housewife, that loves her husband, can smile a whole arithmetic at him in one look! Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the strings of the bundle (and of your heart), and out comes the whole story. You have bought a whole set of costly English books, full bound in calf, extra gilt! You are caught, and feel very much as if bound in calf yourself, extra gilt, and admirably lettered.

“Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be smuggled home. Let them be sent to some near place. Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the topmost shelf. Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper, and every suspicious circumstance. Be very careful not to be too kind. That often brings on detection. Only the other day we heard it said somewhere: ‘Why, how good you have been lately! I am really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly.’ Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day we had bought a few books which ‘we could not do without.’ After a while you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table. ‘Why, my dear, what a beautiful book! Where did you borrow it?’ You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command: ‘That? Oh! that is mine. Have you not seen it before? It has been in the house this two months.’months.’ And you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and everything else you can think of; but it all will not do—you cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men. Of course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting.”

When we consider how strongly developed was his love of the beautiful, we are not surprised at his fondness for music and precious stones. At first the two seem widely dissimilar, but to his mind they were only different forms of the same thing, and to both he was profoundly impressionable. Gems and precious stones were only valued for their color. They were color crystallized, and to color he was peculiarly and strangely susceptible. Music was color expressed in terms of sound. The one was color to his eye, the other to his ear. The mere enjoyment of sweet sounds and beautiful colors we can readily understand; it is common to all who can see or hear, in greater or less degree. But the marked peculiarity in Mr. Beecher’s case was what we might describe as their drug effect. This is not, perhaps, unusual with others in the case of music, for, with many, soft and gentle music will quiet the excited mind, soothe the soul, and bring peace where the tempest raged. This was so with him, but in a greater and more marked degree. Colors would produce the same effect. When disturbed or nerve-tired, or when, after some marked effort in the pulpit or upon the platform, he found his brain aflame and every nerve keyed to the highest tension, he would sit down in his study, take out from his pocket or table-drawer an opal, garnet, hyacinth, or flashing diamond, hold it lovingly in his open hand, drinking in through his eyes the soft, rich rays of color. Almost as if by magic, the turgid veins on brow and temple grew less prominent, the deep flush upon his face softened gradually into its natural color, the muscular tension abated, the nerve-strain relaxed, and a soft and gentle peacefulness settled down upon him, like the comforting shadow of an angel’s wing. Casting himself upon his bed, he would sleep as peacefully as a child upon its mother’s bosom.

A notable illustration of this occurred while in England in 1863. When he returned to his hotel, after a three hours’ struggle with the mob in the Philharmonic Hall at Liverpool, he found himself still under the excitement of the fierce strife, every nerve still vibrating under the strain. The waves of thought and imagination rolled through his brain, like the billows of the ocean still tossing after the gale has passed. He had been roused to the very centre of his being, and it promised to be a night of restless, sleepless tossings. He had with him an opal of wonderful fire and color. Sitting down in his room, he placed the stone in his hand, and for half an hour sat watching the play of its changing colors. As he watched, the stormy brain grew quiet, a gentle sense of physical fatigue and sleepiness stole over him, yielding to which he went to bed, dropping at once into a quiet, unconscious sleep, unbroken till, late in the morning, he awoke, rested and refreshed.

These color-opiates he always carried with him; a dozen of the finest stones were set in rings and strung upon a key-ring carried in his pocket; while in the recesses of some inner vest-pocket were hidden a number of unset stones, carefully wrapped in paper. His love in that direction was well known to all the prominent jewellers, who laid aside for his inspection the finest specimens of those stones for which he especially cared. One of these gentlemen writes:

“Mr. Beecher’s love for fine gems was neither on account of their value nor their rarity. He loved them because they spoke to him of nature and the God who rules nature, and this voice appealed to him most strongly in the specimens which possessed the richest colors. He might admire a perfectly clear diamond if it was unusually brilliant, but this admiration sank to insignificance by the side of that awakened by one possessing color. ‘How grand,’ he would say, ‘is that nature which can catch the hues of the rainbow and fasten them in imperishable stone! The rainbow passes away, the beautiful flowers fade, but in the loveliness of these gems are held permanently the colors of both.’ In one of my visits to Europe I secured a magnificent diamond, which I am confident has never been excelled. Its color is hard to describe, but I likened it to molten gold. I had no commission from Mr. Beecher to purchase anything of this kind, but nevertheless it was for him I bought it, knowing his taste in these matters, and consequently I resisted all temptations to sell it abroad, and brought it home with me. Mr. Beecher was delighted, as I thought he would be, and compared its hue to the deep reddish gold of a setting sun. This gem was set in a black enamelled ring, and was often worn by him—the only jewel I ever knew him to wear. He was as loyal to the gems of his cabinet as he was to his animate friends, and indeed the stones were also his friends. Rubies, sapphires, amethysts, topaz, hyacinths, aqua-marines, all were objects of his deep love, not alone because they gratified his keen enjoyment of color, but also because he seemed to read in them a page of the great book of nature. Neither was there any superstition connected with or tainting this love. The ill-omened opal was a part of his collection when the prejudice against it was strongest, and, in fact, Mrs. Beecher wore these stones frequently. I have said that richly-colored gems were his friends, and so they were, and more. From them he gathered inspiration, rest, peace, and even truth itself. He saw them, but he also saw beyond them. Their colors seemed to him to be one of those mysteries through which God speaks to man—a mystery in which his spirit delighted to bathe, and from which he seemed to inhale strength and much of that inspiration which all nature appeared to yield up to him ungrudgingly. His gems gratified his sense of sight, his sense of poetry, his sense of a beautiful nature, and, more than all these, his sense of an omnipotent divinity. None of them, that I know of, had any special history. He loved them for themselves alone and for what they might teach him.”

He used to say half-jokingly, but with a great deal of underlying earnestness, that it was the duty of every one to be healthy and strong; that weakness was the penalty which men had to pay for disobeying the laws of nature, sins committed either by themselves or their parents. Preservation of health was a prime duty, its waste a cardinal sin.

As he preached, so he practised; he handled his body as an intelligent engineer does his engine. He made it a matter of careful study. He knew just what he could do with impunity, and just what he must avoid. If he found that eating a certain thing harmed him, that thing he left alone. For the stomach was the furnace and must be kept free and clear; if that broke down, the whole engine came to a standstill.

He studied the effect upon himself of the various kinds of food and drink, and used them at the times and in the manner which experience and study taught him would give the best results.

Some things affected him very peculiarly, and of this he took advantage in their use. This was markedly so with tea and coffee. He found that coffee produced a mild kind of mental stimulus that made all things look brighter and more joyous; that its use before preaching stimulated the brighter and happier side of his nature, adding a slightly roseate tinge to all he saw. It was optimistic. While with tea the effect was the reverse. Objects appeared in their more sober, sombre colors. The rosy faded into the blue, and while it could not be said that he felt depressed exactly, yet the tendency was downward. Life seemed somewhat sterner, its responsibilities became more prominent, its joys less conspicuous. Tea was slightly pessimistic.

But, strangely, when he drank both, as he usually did, they held each other in check; he then saw both the lights and the shadows of life in their true relation to one another. His mind pursued the even tenor of its way.

Wines, beer, and their like he never used for pleasure or as beverages; as medicines, in certain conditions of stomach disorders, he found them useful. But then, as his library attests, he first carefully studied and investigated the peculiar properties of each that he used, and confined their use to the condition in which he found them most useful. For instance, Burgundy wine was used only to counteract certain tendencies toward hepatic trouble. Beer was used only as a substitute for the bromides to relieve insomnia.

Writing to a friend, who had inquired anxiously as to the truth of certain rumors respecting his use of stimulants, he replied:

Careful as he was himself, he disliked exceedingly to have others looking after or inquiring about his health. If unwell, he would lie down, and in careful dieting and sleep soon find relief. On such occasions he preferred to be left to himself, undisturbed by questioning or fussing. If well, he repelled solicitude by jokes or humorous bantering.

Exposed so constantly in his lecture-tours (in one season travelling twenty-seven thousand miles) to the danger of accidents, and to sickness through unavoidable exposures, it was not strange that Mrs. Beecher felt no little anxiety for his welfare, and when rumors came back, with the usual newspaper distortions and exaggerations, her solicitude would naturally be greatly increased. On one occasion, when her anxiety, in consequence of some rumor, became too great to be restrained, she wrote an anxious letter to him, inquiring about his health and expressing her fears. She received the following characteristic letter in reply:

What a careful observance of the rules of health did toward keeping his body in thorough working order, sleep did for his brain. Every hour of sleep that he could get he counted clear gain; but even that was regulated according to the drafts made upon his brain. During vacation time, or when he had but little work on hand—rare occasions—he found the night’s rest sufficient. But on Sundays, while lecturing, or when pressed by mental work of any kind, he would supplement the night with a long nap in the afternoon. So long as he kept his health and had sleep enough, no amount of work tired him. Under such circumstances it might almost be said that his brain worked spontaneously; thinking came as easily and naturally to him as breathing.

He was spared the mental drudgery that oppresses so many men. His own illustration was that “some men are like live springs, that bubble up and flow perpetually; while others are like pumps—one must work the handle for all the water he gets.”

His methods of preparation for the pulpit were peculiar. In one sense his whole life was a constant preparation, for he was always observing and studying, laying up stores for future use, seldom knowing just when he would utilize the material, yet sooner or later employing it all. His memory was a great magazine, filled with ammunition, on which he drew as the occasion required. This might be called his general preparation. Just before preaching or speaking he would enter into his special preparation, unlock the magazine, and lay out the material he wished to use. This he would do just in advance of speaking (his ammunition was highly volatile, and, if left exposed too long, was apt to evaporate and be lost).

His Sunday-morning sermons were prepared after breakfast, and the evening sermons after tea. He would retire to his study and think out the result which he wished to reach, making outline notes of the steps by which he proposed to reach it. He could never preach a sermon on a given topic unless it was in his mind. It sometimes happened that after wrestling with his subject in his study for an hour or two, and finally preparing a very unsatisfactory outline of what he wanted to preach, he would go to his church, and, while the choir were singing the opening hymn, the whole subject would come up before his mind in the form he wanted. Hastily tearing a fly-leaf from his hymn-book, or taking the back of his notes, he would sketch out in a few lines the new-born sermon, which would perhaps occupy an hour in its delivery. These were very apt to be among his best sermons.

Speaking on this subject, he once said: “My whole life is a general preparation. Everything I read, everything I think, all the time, whether it is secular, philosophic, metaphysic, or scientific—it all of it goes into the atmosphere with me; and then, when the time comes for me to do anything—I do not know why it should be so, except that I am of that temperament—it crystallizes, and very suddenly too, and so much of it as I am going to use for that distinct time comes right up before my mind in full form, and I sketch it down and rely upon my facility, through long experience, to give utterance and full development to it after I come before an audience. There is nothing in this world that is such a stimulus to me as an audience. It wakes up the power of thinking and wakes up the power of imagination in me.”

After a speech or sermon had once been formed in his mind, if not soon delivered, it would evaporate and be lost. While he might recall it, it would be in different form.

When in the delivery, and the thoughts were surging at full tide through his brain, he became like one inspired, but half-conscious of his external surroundings.

The sermon once preached, and his mind quieted down to its normal condition, it would be impossible for him to recall or repeat the words and expressions that had but just left his lips. The general outline, the result, he could of course recall, but the language was a part of the inspiration, and left him with it.

His reply to one asking for a copy of a prayer illustrates this:

“You request me to send you the prayer made on Decoration Day evening. If you will send me the notes of the oriole that whistled from the top of my trees last June, or the iridescent globes that came in by millions on the last waves that rolled in on the beach yesterday, or a segment of the rainbow of last week, or the perfume of the first violet that blossomed last May, I will also send you the prayer that rose to my lips with the occasion, and left me for ever. I hope it went heavenward and was registered there, in which case the only record of it will be found in heaven.”

The thought and labor necessary to keep up with his duties as pastor, editor, and lecturer would seem to have been enough to tax to the uttermost his time and strength. But, by a kind of selfish blindness, the general public seemed wholly unconscious of the value of his time. By post or in person, an unending stream poured in upon him, seeking everything that human ingenuity or perversity could suggest.

Begging for help in every conceivable form. One wanted three thousand dollars to lift the mortgage from his farm. A clergyman in distress asked for a thousand, saying that the Lord would repay it. A young theologian asked that Mr. Beecher would write him a lecture that he might deliver, and from its proceeds pay his education for the ministry. A school-girl requested that he write for her a composition, suggesting the topic and briefly outlining the way she wished it treated. Another came in person from a distant State, requesting that he adopt and educate her; as she had exhausted her means coming on, he had to pay her fare back. One man, who had discovered the locality of Captain Kidd’s treasures, wanted him to bear the expense of their exhumation, the profits to be divided. These are a few actual incidents in the line of begging letters.

He has described the callers:

“It is six o’clock in the morning. The day is begun. The family are emerging. Breakfast will be ready in half an hour. You look for the Tribune. The bell rings. A man has called thus early for fear you might be out. You despatch his business. Sitting down to breakfast, the bell rings, and the servant says the man will wait. But what pleasure can one have at a meal with a man upstairs waiting for him, and the consciousness of it hastening the coffee and the toast on their way? You run up. Can you marry a couple at so-and-so? That is settled. Prayers are had with the family. The bell rings once, twice, three times. When you rise there are five persons waiting for you in the front parlor. A young man from the country wishes your name on his circular for a school. A young woman, in failing health by confinement to sewing, does not know what to do; behind in rent; cannot get away to the country; does not wish charity, only wishes some one to enable her to break away from a state of things that will in six months kill her. Another calls to inquire after a friend of whom he has lost sight. While you are attending to these the bell is active, and other persons take the place of those who go. A poor slave-mother wants to buy her son’s wife out of slavery. A kind woman calls in behalf of a boarder who is out of place, desponding, will throw himself away if he cannot get some means of livelihood. Another calls to know if I will not visit a poor family in great distress in ——— Street. A good and honest-looking man comes next; is out of work, has ‘heard that your “riverince” is a kind man,’ etc. Another man wants to get his family out from Ireland; can pay half, if some one will intercede with ship-owners to trust him the balance. A stranger has died, and a sexton desires a clergyman’s services. Several persons desire religious conversation. It is after ten o’clock. A moment’s lull. You catch your hat and run out. Perhaps you have forgotten some appointment. You betake yourself to your study, not a little flurried by the contrariety of things which you have been considering. You return to dine. There are five or six persons waiting for you. At tea you find others also, with their divers necessities.

“This is not overdrawn, and for months of the year it is far underdrawn. There is no taxation compared to incessant various conversation with people for whom you must think, devise, and for whose help you feel yourself often utterly incompetent.”

Half of his life-work would have been left undone had he attempted to have given the letters and callers his personal attention. All that related to his pastoral duties, and much besides, he attended to personally. The rest he turned over to his wife. If his life has been a benefit to mankind, then the world owes a heavy debt of gratitude to her for the self-sacrificing protection she afforded him. She was his helpmeet indeed; nine-tenths of his correspondence she carried on. Few save his church-members and personal friends had access to him until she had first learned their errand, and determined whether the case was one that should be brought to his attention. Yet, with all this care, he seldom saw less than ten or a dozen callers each day while he was at home.

The drain upon his purse was constant, for he could hardly withstand a tale of suffering and want. Of course he was not infrequently imposed upon, as every generous man is apt to be. He used to say that the satisfaction of relieving one really deserving sufferer was compensation enough to make up for being swindled ten times.

Nor was his generosity, or its abuse, confined to those who sought material aid. Among those who engaged his affection and confidence, some there were who, Judas-like, turned against him when it seemed for their interest to do so. Toward these he never felt resentment, save momentarily under the smart of some sudden, treacherous blow. The love which he once gave to a friend he never forgot. He would be very slow to believe any one, once trusted, to be unworthy, and never lost a deep and tender feeling for such, even after he felt that they were unworthy of confidence. It was this feeling that led to no little criticism at the hands of those whose cynicism made trusting hard and hating easy. By these his tender, sympathetic trustfulness was called “gush” and “slopping over.” To their criticisms he replied:

“I suppose I do slop over sometimes. Well, I never saw a pan just full of milk that did not slop over. If you do not want any slopping-over, take a pint of milk and put it in a big bucket. There will be no slopping-over then. And a man who has only a pint of feeling, in an enormous bucket, never slops over. But if a man is full of feeling, up to the very brim, how is he going to carry himself without spilling over? He cannot help it. There will be dripping over the edges all the time. And as every flower or blade of grass rejoices when the rain falls upon it, so every recipient along the way in which a man with overflowing generous feeling walks, is thankful for his bounty.

“How to carry a nature full of feeling, and administer it without making mistakes, I do not know, you do not, nobody does, nobody ever did, and nobody ever will; so we must take it and get along as best we can. Life is a kind of zigzag, anyhow; and we are obliged to resort to expedients, and make experiments, and learn from our blunders, which are inevitable. We find out a great deal more from men’s mistakes than from their successes.

“But, after all, I am not sorry that I have been imposed upon, and that I have trusted men that were not worthy to be trusted. I am not sorry that I have been duped. It falls out from an abundance of generous feeling. It is the mistake of a disposition that I think it is a great deal better to have, with all the impositions which it suffers, than that kind of cold caution which prevents your venturing anything on the side of kindness, because you always want to be safe.

“I was much impressed with what I once heard my father say. His chance sayings have been like rudders to me all my lifelong. A man whom he had befriended, and done a great deal for, turned against him and acted very meanly. One day father came home very much exercised about it, and I expected he was going to blow out—for he shook his head in a peculiar way that he had when his feelings were very much wrought up. He said (raising his hand, and bringing it down slowly, but with great emphasis), ‘Well, when I have acted honorably toward a man, and he goes away and acts meanly toward me, I am never sorry that I acted honorably toward him!’

“Now, I think that was a sign of nobility.”

Plymouth Church, although the principal field of his ministerial work, was not by any means his only pastorate; he had a number of other subsidiary pulpits. Most prominent among them was the White Mountains. Such was his thirst for work in the fields of his Master, he made even his infirmities an instrumentality for good. For nearly thirty years he had been afflicted with that but little understood American malady, “hay fever,” which attacked him every year about the 16th of August, almost to the day. For nearly six weeks he suffered the torments of that distressing malady; during which reading, writing, and almost all forms of mental work were impossible.

Finally his attention was called to the exemption which the clear, bracing air of the White Mountains afforded, and, trying the experiment, happily found complete relief. The first year or two he merely rested, but after that he began holding, at first, informal services Sundays; then the large hotel parlor became the church, and every Sunday morning he preached. Soon the demand for more room crowded them out, and then one of the great tents used in the State fairs was secured, filled with benches. Here, during the last two or three years that he visited the Twin Mountain House, he preached regularly every Sunday during his six weeks’ vacation.

From the neighboring hotels and all the adjacent towns the people came by hundreds, filling the great tent. Each morning, after breakfast, fifty to a hundred of the guests would gather in one of the smaller rooms and join with Mr. Beecher in family prayers. To these he read a chapter from the Bible, briefly expounding its meaning, and then made a short prayer.

Another field in which he worked, widely different from any other, was the State militia. In January, 1878, he was invited to take the chaplaincy of the “Brooklyn Thirteenth,” as it was called, and accepted the invitation. His reasons for this step we give in his own words:

“It was not because I had nothing to do, and wanted to fill up vacant time. It was not, certainly, because I have any eminent military gifts, or what might be called a military spirit, by which I am led to delight in such things. I was as much surprised as any one could be when the invitation came through Colonel Austen, bearing the request of all the officers and all the privates in this regiment that I should act as their chaplain.

“After the surprise had a little subsided, of course my first impulse was to say, ‘No, I cannot.’ My second thought was, ‘Is it a matter simply of your own convenience, or is there a moral duty here?’ The question came, not exactly ‘Should you?’ but, ‘Why should you not?’ Is it not an eminently wise and proper thing for a body of citizen-soldiery to have a chaplain, and ought we not to be grateful that they desire it? Made up, as our regiments are, of young men in the prime of life, in this and in all associations of men, unrestrained and uncivilized, one might almost say, in the absence of woman, great mischiefs have often ensued from a relaxation of moral principle, a sort of vortex being formed, down which young men might slide to their destruction; and therefore it is a matter of importance that they should have a moral influence thrown about them. And when the request came from the Thirteenth that I would act as their chaplain, it seemed to me that somebody ought to answer their request; and there were some reasons why I thought I should answer it. I was forward in all those movements which brought on the war, and during the whole period of the conflict I did as much as I possibly could to bear my part of the responsibility; and with the end of the war, to drop the whole matter of our citizen-soldiery and show no more interest in them, to throw them aside as an instrument employed and worn out and no longer of use, did not appear to me wise or proper.

“Moreover, many of these young men belong to my congregation and to my parish; they were therefore in some sense my own sheep, after whom I ought to look; and I reasoned that if it was desirable to have a citizen-soldiery as a kind of background on which civil authority could retreat in times of great peril, it was eminently desirable that that soldiery should be moral, manly, expert, and in every way fitted for the high task to which they were assigned.

“Under those circumstances, because I am an old citizen here, because I have a right in some sense to be a father to the young men in this neighborhood, and because I very heartily believe in the formation of these centres of citizen-soldiery, I did not feel at liberty to shrink from the duty that was laid upon me; and I went with the hope and purpose, not simply as a mere recipient of courtesy, but with the feeling that I might be able to do them good—to do them good in the first instance as soldiers, and in the second instance as men.”

As their chaplain he preached to his “boys”—as he was fond of calling them—at stated intervals, and, as far as his other engagements permitted, attended at their reviews and public parades.

Of course his inexperience in military matters led to many amusing incidents.

Being a capital horseman, he found no trouble in maintaining himself in his saddle; but when it came to manipulating his sword, his troubles began. Then the path to martial glory did not seem easy. His first trouble was to get his sword drawn; once drawn, he was puzzled to know what on earth to do with it. He almost invariably neglected to salute his reviewing officer, to the great amusement of his fellow-members on the staff, who enjoyed bantering him. As one of his colonels remarked:

“His temporal sword was a source of some anxiety to him, and he always drew it with reluctance, preferring, as he said, to wield the more familiar ‘sword of the spirit.’”

Next to his sword the receipt of military orders bothered him most, leading often to humorous comments to those about him or to his commanding officer. To one of these orders he replied:

”My dear Colonel:

“I enclose a circular with a humble request for its interpretation. It is, without doubt, clear as crystal to the military mind, but to my peaceful mind it is as dark as theology, or a pocket, or midnight, or a wolf’s mouth.

“It orders, first and beginning, that we are to come in fatigue uniform, without side-arms.

“It ends by ordering us to bring our best coat, knots, and swords. I humbly inquire whether one end of this letter does not seem to eat up the other.

“Shall I wear my resplendent chapeau or my ridiculous cap, in which I look like a pumpkin with a ribbon around it? Shall I wear my coat and golden straps, or my other military coat, which I have not got, and never had?

“Lastly, may I go directly to Historical Hall, and not to the armory?

“I am, your ignorant chaplain and captain,

“Are overcoats forbidden? Thermometer nearly down to zero!”