Читать книгу A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher - Scoville Samuel - Страница 13

“Hopkinton, Friday eve, 1832.

”My dear Brother:

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

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

“Your affectionate brother,

“H. W. B.”

Of his preaching at this time he says:

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

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

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

Speaking of this period, he says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ ‘He that of such a height hath built his mind,

And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,

As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame

Of his resolvèd powers, nor all the wind

Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong

His settled peace or to disturb the same—

What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may

The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey?

“ ‘And with how free an eye doth he look down

Upon these lower regions of turmoil!

Where all the storms of passions mainly beat

On flesh and blood; where honor, power, renown

Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;

Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet

As frailty doth, and only great doth seem

To little minds, who do it so esteem.

“ ‘He looks upon the mightiest monarch’s wars

But only as on stately robberies;

Where evermore the fortune that prevails

Must be the right; the ill-succeeding mars

The fairest and the best-fac’d enterprise.

Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:

Justice, he sees (as if seduced), still

Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ill.

“ ‘He sees the face of right as manifold

As are the passions of uncertain man,

Who puts it in all colors, all attires,

To serve his ends and make his courses hold.

He sees that, let deceit work what it can,

Plot and contrive base ways to high desires,

That the all-guiding Providence doth yet

All disappoint, and mocks the smoke of wit.

“ ‘Nor is he moved with all the thunder-cracks

Of tyrants’ threats, or with the surly brow

Of Pow’r, that proudly sits on others’ crimes,

Charg’d with more crying sins than those he checks.

The storms of sad confusion that may grow

Up in the present for the coming times,

Appall not him, that hath no side at all

But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

“ ‘Although his heart (so near allied to earth)

Cannot but pity the perplexèd state

Of troublous and distressed mortality,

That thus make way unto the ugly birth

Of their own sorrows, and do still beget

Affliction upon imbecility:

Yet, seeing thus the course of things must run,

He looks thereon not strange, but as foredone.

“ ‘And whilst distraught ambition compasses,

And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,

And is deceived: whilst man doth ransack man,

And builds on blood, and rises by distress,

And th’ inheritance of desolation leaves

To great-expecting hopes: he looks thereon

As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,

And bears no venture in impiety.’ ”

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