Beecher

“ Beecher was not only a very good-looking fellow, but he had that stamp of man of fashion on him which all the contamination of low habits and low associates had not effaced. His address was easy and unaffected, his voice pleasantly toned, his smile sufficiently ready; and his whole manner was an agreeable blending of deference with a sort of not ungraceful self-esteem. Negatives best describe the class of men he belonged to, and any real excellence he possessed was in not being a great number of things which form, unhappily, the social defects of a large section of humanity. ”

“ Beecher was of stout build, florid, and of strong physical constitution. He was fond of domestic and rural life; a student of nature; a lover of animals, flowers, and gems; an enthusiast in music, and a judge and patron of art. He owned a handsome residence at Peekskill on the Hudson, which he occupied during a part of every summer. In 1886 he made a lecturing tour in England, his first visit to that country after the war. ”

“ Beecher laughed.
"I only want to go up the river in one of the bigger boats, sir, to be rowed up to the clear water beyond the tideway. We should be under the attap awning all the time, and I want to see if there are any fish to be caught, or any birds or beasts to be shot."
"Well, I suppose you must. You'll be back before dark, of course?"
"Oh no; I meant for us to camp for the night, and come back to-morrow. There wouldn't be time to go up far enough without."
"You'll get fever," said the major shortly. "The jungle teems with it."
[334]
"We should sleep in the boat," said Beecher. ”

“ Beecher was one of those men who regard the chance persons they meet with in life just as they would accidental spots where they halt when on a journey,—little localities to be enjoyed at the time, and never, in all likelihood, revisited. ”

“ We smile, sometimes not without tears, at his childlike simplicity. We sit around the household hearth, join in the theological disputation, and share the naïve satisfaction of the whole Beecher family with themselves and each other. We see how it was that the father set them all a-spinning each in his own groove, but all bearing the unmistakable Beecher stamp. We feel his irresistible energy, his burning zeal, his magnetic force yet thrilling through the land and arousing every sluggish power to come to the help of the Lord-against the mighty. For such a life there is indeed no death. ”

“ The world—I mean their own world—likes them all the more if they have n't got great abilities. Now Beecher is just the fellow to suit them.”
“He is not a peer, surely?” asked she, hastily.
“No, he ain't yet, but he may be one any day. He is as sure of the peerage as—I am not! and then, poor Beecher—as you called him awhile ago—becomes the Lord Viscount Lackington, with twelve or fourteen thousand a year! I tell you, girl, that of all the trades men follow, the very best, to enjoy life, is to be an English lord with a good fortune.” ”

“ Beecher is interesting just in proportion that he is not orthodox, and he is altogether more interesting when talking against his creed. He delivered a sermon the other day in Chicago, in which he takes the ground that Christianity is kindness, and that, consequently, no one could be an infidel. ”

“ There is perhaps no man in America more widely known, more deeply loved, and more heartily hated than the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. This little book, fragmentary and desultory as it is, gives us a key wherewith to unlock the mystery both of the extent of his influence and the depth of the feelings which he excites. It is but a shower of petals flung down by a frolicsome May breeze; but the beauty and brilliancy of their careless profusion furnish a hint of the real strength and substance and fruitfulness of the tree from which they sprang. ”

“ Beecher's sermons were very simple, healthy, and strong. They pulsated with life; they had the vigor of bright red blood in them, because, like Christ's, they grew out of doors. He got them everywhere from life and nature. He picked them up in the marketplace, on Wall Street, in the stores. He got them from the brakeman, the mechanic, the blacksmith, the day laborer, the newsboy, the train conductor, the clerk, the lawyer, the physician, and the business man. ”

“ Just imagine a man being held eternally responsible for his conduct in Delaware! Mr. Beecher is a man of great genius—full of poetry and pathos. Every now and then he is driven back by the orthodox members of his congregation toward the old religion, and for the benefit of those weak disciples he will preach what is called "a doctrinal sermon;" but before he gets through with it, seeing that it is infinitely cruel, he utters a cry of horror, and protests with all the strength of his nature against the cruelty of the creed. ”

“ No man lived more in the public eye and for the public than Mr. Beecher. In his speeches and sermons and writings he took the public into his confidence with a freedom that was characteristic and natural in him, but which would have been extraordinary in any other man. He could not pass through the street without universal recognition, and no man in the two cities was so well known to everybody as he. At public meetings and at dinners where he was to speak, he came late amid smiling and expectant applause, and with the air of saying, "Where MacGregor sits, there is the head of the table." ”

“ As the chemist is able by the minutest drop, an almost imperceptible atom of some subtle ingredient, to change the properties of some vast mass, altering color and odor and taste at once, so did the great artist Grog Davis know how to deal with the complicated nature of Beecher, that he could at any moment hurl him down into the blackest depths of despair, or elevate him to the highest pinnacle of hope and enjoyment. ”

“ Mr. Beecher looked at Edward and sighed. “Hear about it,” he said.
“I don’t think I understand you,” was the reply.
“No, I don’t think you do,” he said. “I mean, you will some day hear about that suit. And I don’t know,” then he hesitated, “but—but you might as well get it straight. You say you were twelve then,” he mused. “What were you doing when you were twelve?”
“Going to school,” was the reply.
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Beecher. “Well,” he continued, turning on his haunches so that his back rested against the box, “I am going to tell you the story of that suit, and then you’ll know it.” ”

“ Beecher shows himself an artist,—both his language and his demeanor being marked by the most refined decorum. An elegant, finished simplicity characterizes all he does and says: not a word too much, nor a word misused, nor a word waited for, nor an unharmonious movement, mars the satisfaction of the auditor. The habit of living for thirty years in the view of a multitude, together with a natural sense of the becoming, and a quick sympathy with men and circumstances, has wrought up his public demeanor to a point near perfection. A candidate for public honors could not study a better model. ”

“ A sturdy tree, standing alone in a vast field, suggesting strength, growth and independence, and regarded both as a landmark and a shelter; withstanding alike the heats of summer and wrestling with and throwing off the blasts of winter; drawing from Nature her myriad stores of nutrition and giving back to Nature a wealth of power and grace in return; seemed Henry Ward Beecher, in his youth of old age, to the observation of men. Original orator, advocate, poet, humorist, agitator, rhetorician, preacher, moralist and statesman. ”

“ Away down West Street in the village of Litchfield was a square pine building standing at the edge of the highway where no tree gave shade and no bush or fence took off the cold hard look. In this Dame School, kept by Ma’am Kilbourne, Harriet Beecher’s school education began. Before the door in winter was a pile of wood for fuel, and in summer all the chips of the winter’s wood still lay there outspread upon the ground. ”

“ Beecher is not only a preacher, but a capital farmer. He has a model farm at Peekskill, on the Hudson, and is brimful of agricultural and horticultural theories, which he carries into practice successfully. His love for flowers is a perfect passion, and dates from his boyhood. He is an excellent mechanic, and makes the repairs on his own premises, as far as he can, with a keen relish, which he has doubtless inherited from his father. He is thoroughly read in history, and as an art critic has no superior. ”

“ Beecher belonged, without yet being one of them, to that set who live what in England is called a gentleman's life—racing, hunting, playing polo, seeking the sensations of big game or big fish, rather courting danger, drinking hard as a matter of pride, on the theory of the survival of the fittest, consuming the night in battles of cunning and physical endurance at the card-table. ”

“ HENRY WARD BEECHER. Perhaps no American minister has ever become so well known to the whole body of the people as Henry Ward Beecher. He has been bitterly criticised and opposed even by members of his own denomination, but has triumphed over every attack, and won a proud place among preachers. He has even become a power in the political world, and his devotion to the cause of liberty has endeared him to thousands who might otherwise have never heard his name. ”

“ Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' [Pg 305] philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms of Lincoln in the New York Independent during April and May of 1862 led Lincoln to exclaim after reading one of them, "Is Thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" ”

“ One evening the great preacher suddenly appeared at a friend’s house and, quietly entering the drawingroom without removing his overcoat, he walked up to his friend and said:
“Rossiter, why don’t you bring back that Ruskin of mine that I lent you?”
The man colored to the roots of his hair. “Why, Mr. Beecher,” he said, “I’ll go up-stairs and get it for you right away. I would not have kept it so long, only you told me I might.”
At this Beecher burst into a fit of merry laughter. “Found! Found!” he shouted, as he took off his overcoat and threw himself into a chair. ”

“ In such a home circle as that of the Beechers, books were the very breath of life. From 1799, when Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote were married, they had taken the Christian Observer, a paper conducted by Macaulay, Wilberforce and Hannah More, and they had always procured as many books as they could afford of those that were mentioned in that paper. A valuable encyclopedia came to the household as a gift from an English gentleman whose daughters had boarded with the [Pg 71] family. ”

“ Upon his return home he was tendered a great reception in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn. The people of the North had been watching every step of his course in England with deep anxiety, for it was a serious time in the history of this nation. The service which he rendered his country at that time earned the gratitude of the American Government and people, and made him the [Pg 89] most popular man of the North. I may add that this period of Mr. Beecher's life was the one of his greatest power and influence, and marked one of the greatest epochs in his history. ”

“ Beecher never sends an audience away half satisfied; for he has constantly grown with the growth of his splendid opportunity. How attentive the great assembly, and how quickly responsive to the points he makes! That occasional ripple of laughter,—it is not from any want of seriousness in the speaker, in the subject, or in the congregation, nor is it a Rowland Hill eccentricity. ”

“ Beecher knew supremely well two persons—himself and the man next to him. In interesting the man next to him he interested the multitude. He had in a great degree the same qualities which made Norman McLeod the foremost preacher of his day in the Scotch pulpit. Such a man lives too much on the surface to exhaust himself. He has only to keep within the sphere of commonplace to interest people as long as he lives.... Mr. Beecher lived on the surface of things. ”

“ Beecher might have disappeared after the manner of Romulus, and never have come to light, except in the saintly fashion of relics,—such as white finger-rings and breastpins, like those which some devotees of the Southern mode of worship are said to have been fond of wearing.
From these dangers, which he faced like a man, we welcome him back to a country which is proud of his courage and ability and grateful for his services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. ”

“ Then indeed was the house filled with music. Catherine and Harriet had regular instruction from a charming and beautiful performer. Edward and William learned to play on the flute. Dr. Beecher brought out his fiddle, and many evenings were given to concerts in which piano, violin, flute and voice united, and Scotch ballads and hymns and chorals resounded through the house.
Sunday evening was a particularly pleasant time in the Beecher home. Something of the old law about Sunday observance ending at sundown still held in New England. ”

“ 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 ”