Читать книгу A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher - Scoville Samuel - Страница 12

Table of Contents

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: