“Let no man think that we despise the sympathy and well-wishing of a convention of infidels. We thank them for their kind feelings. Like our Master, we had rather discourse with publicans and sinners than dine with the most select and eminent Pharisee. But we love a true Christian better than either. But, infidel or Pharisee, all need the grace of God, and all, by repentance of sin and faith in Christ, the Saviour of sinners, may yet meet in heaven.
“Gentlemen of the Cincinnati convention of infidels! we should be ashamed to be less kind and courteous than you have been, and in concluding we take leave of you kindly, saying, in the words of Inspired Writ:
“‘Now may the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ. To whom be glory for ever and ever.’ *”
The setting up of a new organ in Plymouth Church this winter is thus duly announced:
“The organ long expected has arrived, been unpacked, set up, and glorified over. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted, brayed, thundered. It has played so loud that everybody was deafened, and so softly that nobody could hear.”
After speaking of the characteristics of the many organists who have tried it, and of one who was an especially brilliant player, he says: “But he was not a Christian man, and the organ was not to him a Christian instrument, but simply a grand Gothic instrument, to be studied just as a mere Protestant would study a cathedral, in the mere spirit of architecture and not at all in sympathy with its religious signification or uses. And before long he went abroad to perfect himself in his musical studies, but not till a most ludicrous event befell him. On a Christmas day a great performance was to be given. The church was full; all were musically expectant. It had been given out that something might be expected. And surely something was had a little more than was expected. For when every stop was drawn, that the opening might be with a grand choral effect, the down-pressing of his hands brought forth not only the full expected chord, but also a cat that by some strange chance had got into the organ. She went up over the top as if gunpowder had helped her. Down she plunged into the choir, to the track around the front bulwark of the gallery, until opposite the pulpit, when she dashed down one of the supporting columns, made for the broad aisle, when a little dog joined in the affray, and both went down toward the street-door at an astonishing pace. Our organist, who, on the first appearance of this element in his piece, snatched back his hands, had forgotten to relax his muscles, and was to be seen following the cat with his eyes, with his head turned, while his astonished hands stood straight out before him, rigid as marble!”
In the spring of this year he purchased a farm in Peekskill, and explains his object as follows:
“I knew that the place was good for grass, for grain, and for fruits, of all which I talked a good deal during the preliminary approaches to a purchase, but for which I cared about as much as I should whether the inside of my boots were red or yellow.
“If the thing must be told—and I mention it to you, Mr. Bonner, confidentially—it was the remarkable aptitude of the place for eye-crops that caught my fancy. It was not so much what grew upon the place, as what you could see off from it, that won me. It is a great stand for the eye. If a man can get rich by looking, I am on the royal road to wealth. And, indeed, it is true wealth that the eye gets, and the ear and all the finer senses; riches that cannot be hoarded or squandered; that all may have in common; that come without meanness and abide without corrupting. So long as it remains true that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth His handiwork, so long will men find both heart wealth and strength by a reverent admiration of the one and a sympathetic familiarity with the other.”
In a letter to his daughter he describes the new home:
“... Farm—I wrote so far at home, but being interrupted have brought it up to the green hills. You will be quite ashamed to think that Matteawan ever seemed beautiful to you when you shall have seen this place. It has no wild or romantic features, but it is full of soft, nice, beautiful views. No barren fields are seen, no brown pasture-lands, no rugged hills—the very mountains in the horizon are carved into round and graceful shapes. The near hills are round, gentle, smooth, and verduous to the very top. Only one summit is rugged and wild, and we keep that in the distant foreground as a contrast to all the other graceful shapes. The river in the distance is like a lake, except the fleets of sloops and schooners give it a sense of navigation. From the top hill of the farm you can see almost as wide a prospect as from Bald Mountain in Salisbury—on the north and east, wild, mountainous, solitary; but all the rest beautiful and cultivated, with the Hudson rolling along the west. I have traced a rude diagram[6] on the opposite page, but it will be only just better than nothing, though you must confess that it is exceedingly well drawn for me!
6. The Publishers regret that the diagram could not be given.
”... I heard from H——— yesterday. He is well and lively, and wrote me quite a sprightly and witty letter. W——— is round, rosy, curly, and loving as usual. B———, the rogue, is fairly recovering from a double charge of scarlet-fever and whooping-cough, and is becoming most healthfully saucy.“
Early in the autumn they returned from the country and began life again in the city. We give copies of several letters written to his daughter:
“... In the beginning let me say, my dear child, that I heartily approve of all that you have done. I am not a superstitious observer of the Sabbath, nor do I hold to the rigor either of the Jewish or the Puritan Sabbath. But I do believe that one-seventh part of our time was originally appointed for rest, for home-society, and for religious culture....
“When I was myself in Paris I acted just as I do in Brooklyn. I took no more liberties, and was quite as observant of my home proprieties. And I must say that I do not relish the idea of our young countrymen going to Europe to learn how to get rid of religious habits. Foreign travel should improve our manners, increase our information, enlarge our experience of men, enrich our imagination, cultivate our tastes, but not enervate our conscience....
“Everything is going well at the farm. I have bought a yoke of cattle, white with mottled necks and red heads; also two Ayrshire calves, and a little bull calf of the same breed. Your mother is driving away at her cheeses in the most housewifely style. She has already made, eaten, and given away two or three, and she has four or five on hand, good large ones, which are to grow old for city use. Already I imagine myself a nimble little maggot making the cheese fly. The pet ponies do bravely, the pigs are fat and flourishing, the chickens comely, and the ducks noisy but drawing very near to doom and dinner.
“I would not advise you to use wine unless you are weak and it is recommended by judicious advisers for real reasons of health; and then I should take it frankly and without hesitation. But while you do not use it, you are not bound to take it on any occasion for others’ sake. If the occasion comes, call for a glass of water and calmly lift that to your lips. But more of this by and by. I have no objection to your learning to dance as a part of physical education.”
The home life in Brooklyn ran undisturbed through the autumn, until, early in 1860, a serious accident befell Mrs. Beecher, which Mr. Beecher describes in the following letter:
”My dear Child H———:
“I suppose you will not scold me if I relieve your mother of letter-writing this steamer; it is, I think, the first time she has missed. But she is too lame to write to-day, having had an accident that ought to have killed her, and that would have killed anybody else. And that your fears may not magnify the matter, I shall go back and describe it all to you.
“On Wednesday last, February 8, she took the horse and chaise (a two-wheeled chaise, which we have bought of Mr. M———), and started to go to New York and meet and bring me home from the New Haven depot. Eliza and Bertie were taken in, the former to go over to the Hudson River Railroad for milk, and Bertie for the ride. The horse was spirited and soon got under way beyond control, but did not run till, turning into Hicks Street from Orange, she dashed off like lightning, ran to Fulton Street and right across it, up on to the pavement and headlong on to the Brooklyn Bank steps. The carriage was broken and turned over, and all, of course, heaped up together—horse, chaise, and people. Men sprang to the horse, held and detached her; others succored the party. Bertie had a smart thump on his right eye, or above it, which has done him no harm, and he has not been kept in from his play, though made a little homelier than he was before. Eliza was thrown against the stone and a smart slit cut in her head, which bled profusely, and though she has kept her bed by the doctor’s orders, she expects to be about to-day. Your mother, as usual, took everybody’s share on herself. She was shot out apparently head-first, and fell upon the right side of her head, neck, and shoulder, bruising her, but breaking nothing. She was insensible when taken into the drug-store close by. I know not how H——— was notified so soon, but he seems to have been on the spot within five minutes, and manifested as much self-possession and decisive wisdom as would have done credit to a much older head. He gave orders to have his mother taken home, sent for Dr. Adams to come to the drug-store, sent another messenger to the stableman to look after the carriage and horse (who, confound her homely self! was but little hurt), and then took a hack to meet me at the New Haven depot and bring me home.
“I reached the house very nearly as soon as your mother did. Found Mrs. E——— B———, Mrs. L———, Mrs. B———, Mrs. E———, and one or two strange ladies present, the doctor, a policeman or two, and scores of people running to and fro; yet, in the main, there was order and good sense.
”... The doctors regard her as out of danger, but she will be a sufferer for a week or more. Everything is going on regularly in the house, except that I am at home all the time, which is very irregular in my habits.
“... And so when you read this you must remember that though it seems to you as if it had just happened, it will have been all past, and your mother doubtless, while you read, will be marching forth in full authority. Everybody who saw the scene speaks in admiration of her courage and skill. She guided the horse to the last, though she could not control her, and was game to the end. But that we should all expect. Nor does her courage flinch yet. Some one said to her yesterday: ‘Well, I suppose you will never drive that horse again.’ ‘Yes, I shall too,’ said she; and she shall. We are very grateful for her safety and merciful deliverance, and although she will suffer from twinges, yet, as there are no internal injuries, no bones fractured, it is only a matter of patience.... Slept very well and has the beginning of an appetite, although I am constrained to say that when I mentioned the little luxury of gruel as something appetizing and excellent for her, she turned up her nose (I could not be mistaken) at the suggestion, so that she is evidently not quite settled yet in her mind. She can walk slowly, takes her bath, submits to packs, and has refreshed herself once or twice with a hand-glass, looking at the recent improvements about her countenance.
”... Love to all. I shall keep you faithfully apprised of her health, and you need not fear that anything is a bit worse than I say. I shall tell the truth. Good-by.
“May God have you in His care!
”My dear H———:
“Your aunt has told you of your mother, and little is to be added on that score.... I wish you would take all your gauze paper and send it to Cardinal Antonelli, or the pope, or the—that is, burn it up, tear it up, crumple it, throw it away, do anything with it except sending it to me. Go forth and search and buy some that is respectable, for I wow a wow that I will vex my eyes no more with such intolerable stuff. I feel as though I could say a little more with great comfort to myself, but, as I must receive several letters before this reaches you and reforms your writing materials, I reserve a stock of wrath for those several occasions.
”Wednesday, Feb. 15.—Your mother this morning is generally better, though suffering from cramps. She is now lying in a pack. Mrs. F——— has been as good as an angel, and a great deal more useful. Indeed, I do not think much of angels, unless they have a good serviceable body on. Of course Auntie B——— is on hand kindly and constantly. Everybody is kind. Mrs. G——— has spent four days here, two in the parlors to receive company, etc., and two with your mother. Mrs. L——— has been incessantly here, and has both watched, waited, and run for watchers and nurses without tire or fatigue. We had a meeting on Monday night for new church. The action of the trustees was confirmed, and they were requested to go ahead immediately and raise the necessary funds, and as soon as $100,000 were secured to proceed to lay the foundations. I do not regard the enterprise as quite sure yet, though looking favorably. Give my love to the pope. I am sorry for his situation. If he only sat under my preaching how much his eyes might be opened! As it is, if he chooses to write to me in regard to any of his little difficulties, I hope he will allow no delicacy to restrain him. I will do the best I can for him. Ditto Antonelli.
“I am now the holder of your room. There nap I, and there sleep I, and seldom either without a faint shadow of a rosy-cheeked, Minerva-eyed girl that whilom tenanted it. I have removed the boys, W——— and B———, into the room next it, formerly H———’s, while he holds the front large room, now pink-papered and famously carpeted and furnished. Eliza is quite well and trots about the house with a diligence that shows how wholesome it is for an Irishwoman to have her head broke. I have promised her, whenever she is sick, to give her a granite-steps course, instead of water, as being much better adapted to her wants and nationality. Give my love to all the great American family.... Remember that paper, THAT PAPER, THAT PAPER!
“Good-by, old fellow. Give my love to Hattie, and tell her that her father hasn’t forgotten her,” were the first words of Mr. Beecher to me that I remember. I had been introduced to him the evening before, but he had just returned from a lecturing tour, tired and sleepy, and if he said anything brilliant it has entirely escaped my memory. I was going, in company with Mrs. Stowe’s son, to take a pedestrian tour in Europe. We expected, in time, to join her party, who were then on the Continent, and were busy getting ready to go on board ship that day. It was a hearty send off to one who was comparatively a stranger, that was very characteristic of the man.
Of course I remembered the message and gave it faithfully; and after several months’ acquaintance, travelling in Switzerland and Italy, made an addition of the same in kind on my own account, which being accepted and reciprocated, we were married September 25, 1861.
“The innumerable friends of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher would hardly forgive us if we were to omit mentioning the pleasing incident that occurred at his country residence at Peekskill last week. On Wednesday morning, after the dew was dry, Mr. Beecher chose a spot under the shadows of the trees near his garden, where, in the presence of a fit circle of friends and neighbors, he gave away his only daughter in a novel ceremony of marriage. The beauty of the day and the beauty of the ceremony together rendered the scene singularly charming, tender, and impressive.”
Of his method of making himself acquainted with the peculiar features of the villages in which he lectured, and his pleasant words concerning the people he met, the following letter is a good illustration:
“My dear Doctor:
“I sent you a scrap from the goodly town of Norwich, N. Y., in which I have most pleasantly spent a portion of three days, and would fain have added as many more. It is one of the many towns in this Chenango Valley of which Dr. Dwight said that the time would come when men of wealth would leave the seaboard cities and retire to it as a place of rare repose.
“The great hammer manufactory of the New World is also located here. What hardware man has not seen David Maydole’s name? Many of the best improvements in the hammer have sprung from his ingenious skill. But there is room for improvement still. Thus our hammers have the power of hiding themselves.
“After investigating many cases it becomes plain that hammers have a power of locomotion, and that when we are asleep they crawl off. We have never seen them actually move, but we have almost. We have found them on the ground or floor, and they were probably on their way somewhere when we surprised them, and then, like many insects, they feigned dead.... We should be glad to listen every night to as sweet music as that which rose up before our window in Hamilton and in Norwich.”
As a complement to the above an experience in not lecturing is here given in full:
”Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Brooklyn:
“Dear Sir: On behalf of the Mercantile Library Association of this city, it is my pleasant duty to address you. We are now endeavoring to form the lecture programme for our association for the coming season, and we wish to do so as early as possible. Fully appreciating your well-known reputation as a lecturer and an orator, we should be pleased to make an engagement with you for two or three lectures the coming fall and winter. If you can serve us, will you be so kind as to give us your terms, time, and subject as soon as possible?
“As our Association may not be well known to you, permit me to say one word in regard to it. We think that there is no library association in this country that is in a more prosperous condition than ours. It has some eighteen hundred members, and is rapidly increasing. Its members are merchants, clerks, and members from the several professions. As a matter of course these members come from all parts of our country, and naturally entertain a variety of views, both as to politics and religion. Hence it becomes our Association to be very careful to eschew all matters pertaining to either of these subjects in its lectures. Should you be so kind as to favor us with a course of lectures—and we sincerely hope you will do so—you will please bear the above facts in mind. Hoping to hear from you at your earliest convenience, I remain, Yours truly,
They heard from him at once as requested, and this was the answer:
“Dear Sir: I have received your letter politely inviting me to give one or more lectures before the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association next fall or winter. But you ask, in consequence of the diversity of opinions among your members, that I should, if I accepted your invitation, ‘eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion.’ I am too much of a patriot to eschew the one, and too good a Christian to neglect the other. Indeed, the only motive that I have for lecturing at all is the hope that I may make better citizens and better Christians of my fellow-men. And it seems to me that a course of lectures from which have been strained out ‘all matters pertaining to politics and religion,’ must afford but a very meagre diet to the young people of St. Louis.
“Nor can I imagine why you should, under the circumstances, have wished me to visit you. If I have ever been of any service to my fellow-men, it has been because I never would eschew any topic which I thought it needful for them to hear. Nor have I ever allowed myself to stand on any platform where I could not follow my own judgment as to what should be said with the most unlimited freedom. And it is too late in my life for me to yield up my sense of self-respect and come under a censorship.
“I hope I have not taken seriously a matter which, perhaps, you meant only as a pleasant jest. For, on reading your letter again, I hardly repress the conviction that you deemed it a pleasant jest to ask me to come all the way to St. Louis to give lectures, under an implied agreement that I should ‘eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion!’”
When the title of Doctor of Divinity was offered him he declined it, as follows:
”To President and Board of Trustees of Amherst College:
“Gentlemen: I have been duly notified that at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees the title of D.D. was conferred upon me. It would certainly give me pleasure should any respectable institution bear such a testimony of good will, but that Amherst College, my own mother, should so kindly remember a son is a peculiar gratification. But all the use of such a title ends with the public expression. If the wish to confer it be accepted, for the rest it would be but an encumbrance and furnish an address by no means agreeable to my taste. I greatly prefer the simplicity of that name which my mother uttered over me in the holy hour of infant consecration and baptism.
“May I be permitted, without seeming to undervalue your kindness or disesteeming the honor meant, to return it to your hands, that I may to the end of my life be, as thus far I have been, simply
One of the peculiar features of Mr. Beecher’s work in those days of 1861-63 was the revival interest that continued, with variations of intensity, it is true, but with no substantial interruption, for years. The revival of 1858 had not entirely ceased at that time, and although those days of war, especially since he gave himself so intensely to public matters, would naturally be regarded as unfavorable to any marked religious interest, yet it continued notwithstanding, as is shown by the numbers that constantly sought admission to the church upon profession of faith. This was owing, we doubt not, to the perfect conviction of Mr. Beecher that the whole work of that time was the Lord’s, and to his entering upon it with such consecration that he was continually shielded and refreshed by experiences of the divine presence. This gave a deep practical spirituality to his preaching, which was appropriated and reflected by his church, making the Gospel attractive, in those days of trouble, as never before. Men turned to the refuge which they saw he had found, and which, with deepest sympathy and with abundant hopefulness, he was pointing out to them. He himself says: “It is a mistake to suppose that the preoccupation of the public mind with the war, and the great excitements which are fed by the ever-changing rumors and news, are unfavorable to the work of a true minister of the Gospel.”
The continued ingathering into Plymouth Church during all those years of the war was something almost phenomenal. One marked occasion, the May communion of 1862, was described in a newspaper of that day: “Every part of the house was densely packed. The platform and desk were decorated with vases of flowers, while banks of azaleas, magnolias, carnations, fuchsias, white lilies, roses, and other plants in blossom reached from the pulpit floor to the orchestra. After the usual exercises of singing, reading, and prayer, Mr. Beecher read a list of about eighty names of persons who were to unite with the church. Many of them were members of the Sabbath-schools and Bible-classes. Some were persons of middle age; a few were persons of advanced years. After a brief address Mr. Beecher read the articles of faith, to which the parties gave their assent. The ordinance of baptism was then administered to those who had never before received it; after which the members of the church arose and received the new members into full and cordial communion. Mr. Beecher took his text from John x. 3, 4. There had been provided memorial bouquets for each new communicant, which were distributed at the close of the services.”
These floral decorations may almost be said to have been introduced by Plymouth Church, and were justified by Mr. Beecher upon the highest moral and religious grounds. He says of “Flowers in Church”:
“They are simply the signs of gladness. They are offerings of joyful hearts to God.
“Flowers are not of man. They are divine. Man can, by culture, develop all that God has hidden in them, but can add nothing to them, nor can he invent or build them.
“God has made flowers for everybody. They are next in abundance to the great elements—air, light, water. The poorest man has a roadside flower-garden. No mission-church is so poor that it cannot afford wild flowers upon the altar and a few assorted leaves in the windows. How beautifully would woman’s hand light up the dreary plaster wall and frigid seats of many a church room, if permitted to garnish them with these field-thoughts of God!
“The effect upon children is well worth our thought. To teach a child to love flowers is to give him riches that no bankruptcy can reach. This is the wisdom of finding our pleasures, not in conventional arrangements, but in sympathy with nature, which never is confiscated, or goes out of fashion, or becomes old and exhausted. There is a new heaven and a new earth every day, as if suggesting that grand and final event of prophecy.
“The use of flowers on social and religious occasions soon gives to them meanings which they had not to us before. We read nature more thoughtfully and lovingly.
“Weeds change to flowers. The moment a plant inspires intelligent emotion in us it ceases to be a weed and becomes a flower. The natural world is not any longer godless or commercial and mechanical. It has a moral power.
“At first many will shrink at seeing flowers upon the speaker’s desk or on the pulpit. But why? Is the place too holy? But is it holier than God? And are not flowers His peculiar workmanship? If God deemed it suitable to His dignity and glory to occupy His mind with making and preserving such innumerable flowers, are we wise in disdaining them or considering the place too sacred for God’s favorites? Do men reflect that God has been pleased to name Himself from flowers? ‘I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley.’”
In line with this are his views upon “Christian Liberty in the Use of the Beautiful”:
“I cannot but think Christian men have not only a right of enjoyment in the beautiful, but a duty, in some measure, of producing it, or propagating it, or diffusing it abroad through the community.
“But in all your labors for the beautiful, remember that its mission is not of corruption, nor of pride, nor of selfishness, but of benevolence! And as God hath created beauty, not for a few, but hath furnished it for the whole earth, multiplying it until, like drops of water and particles of air, it abounds for every living thing, and in measure far transcending human want, until the world is a running-over cup, so let thine heart understand both the glory of God’s beauty and the generosity of its distribution. So living, life shall be a glory, and death a passing from glory to glory.”
If we have supposed that his love for nature was intuitive or came to its fulness without effort or study, the following letter will correct that impression:
“We are performing not alone a work of love in commending Ruskin, but paying a small part of a debt that can never be discharged. We are more indebted to him for the blessings of sight than to all other men. We were, in respect to nature, of the number of those who, having eyes, saw not; and ears, heard not. He taught us what to see and how to see. Thousands of golden hours and materials both for self-enjoyment and the instruction of others, enough to fill up our whole life, we owe to the spirit excited in us by the reading of Ruskin’s early works.
“The sky, the earth, and the waters are no longer what they were to us.
“We have learned a language and come to a sympathy in them more through the instrumentality of Ruskin’s works than by all other instrumentalities on earth, excepting always the nature which my mother gave me—sainted be her name!”
We have again come to the point, 1863, which we once before reached in this biography, but this time upon entirely different lines. In our first examination, for the sake of unity of impression, we confined ourselves to the events of the great anti-slavery conflict. In this which we have just completed we have sketched the outline of other labors and the events of his home life during this period. No one, we suspect, reading the first record, the record of strife and battle, would conceive it possible that a life so full of all manner of peaceful pursuits and home labors was being lived; nor, on the other hand, would any one going over his work of preaching, lecturing, writing helpful Star articles upon all manner of common subjects, imagine that he had the time or the spirit for the former work. But, in fact, in his case they were each the necessary complement of the other.
We have seen how, at the West in the midst of continued revival efforts, he took up the study of landscape-gardening as an alterative. This was an illustration of his habit through life. In the midst of the most exciting events he would escape and go apart from them all, if possible, to some point where he could look out upon the landscape or up to the clear heavens. Such places at such times seemed to become Mountains of Transfiguration, where he would meet the Master and be refreshed by His presence, and whence returning he would bring back a store of beautiful experiences that enabled him to give cheer and inspiration to his fellow-toilers, who had not, perhaps, noted his absence from their side. Or he would escape to some quiet nook and hold converse with birds and flowers, delight himself in quaint and pleasant fancies, look at life from a new standpoint, until he was able again to take up the burden without weariness; or he would sit down with his boxes of seeds or catalogues of plants, and lose himself in their imagined growth and beauty; or, drawing from his pocket some one of the precious stones he always carried with him, gather rest and inspiration as he watched its changing hues.
In this way he was enabled to carry on the most various and exhaustive labors, and at the same time to preserve that mental health and good cheer for which he was remarkable.