The Life Henry Ward Beecher

T H E L I FE HENRY WARD BEECHER. It may be doubted if there was ever a better illus tration of the power of hereditary tendencies than s on of that furnished by Henry Ward Beecher, the Lyman and Roxanna Foote Beecher, who was born “ 24 1 81 3 . e ccen ld . , in L itchfie , Conn , June , The ” tricitie s of Henry Ward Beecher are well known to this generation , because whatever he did or said in f ff any way out of the usual course o a airs was seized upon by reporters and made known to the world by the ever ready press ; but in them he was a feeble reproduction of his venerable father, who for more than half a century kept himself and his denomina tion in hot water by deeds and utterances that were far more sensational and bewildering than any re f n o s o . corded his The press , too , has embalmed the flowers of rhetoric and pictorial eloquence of the n Beecher of yesterday, but scores of livi g witnesses arise to remind us that the elder Beecher was of all men most fervid in illustration , most fertile in r ff e g aphic delineation, most e ective in utteranc . r 6 THE LIEE o HENRY WARD BEECHER. i c L ke his father, too , Henry Ward Bee her was a man of marked domestic habit . He was the father of — t . eight children Henry Barton, Harrie B Scoville, H Al William Constantine , Herbert, Arthur oward, fred Bowen, Kate and George . His mother gave of him his love of flowers , a refinement thought and e a gentleness of bearing, which blended b autifully as it contrasted strongly with the physical strength , animal restlessness and rugged independence he in herited from the old man eloquent . ’ It w as an eventful hour in Beecher s history when he received a letter inviting him to journey from Indianapolis to speak before the House Missionary a h Society in the New York Tabernacle . He w s t e n but a young man , green in all the ways of metro politan life and untried in all the work that was s oon to be laid before him . He came , was heard and ever since remained at the post then and there prepared hi —“ for him . In the three elements of s nature men —he law unto tal, moral , and physical was always a hi of s o mself, utterly unlike the rest the world ; much s o that a witty member of a critical staff once said that the world was divided into three classes men , women , and the Beechers . In justice to Henry Ward ’ s peculiarities it must be recorded that all the m embers of his father ’ s family were as queer and Quixotic as tho se of his imm ediate family are tame “ and commonplace . Lyman Beecher was called the ” fiddling parson . He was s o full of magnetism and became so excited over his own discourses that he could not sleep at night until he had calmed himself down to an ordinary level by scraping the strings of his violin and worked off his surplus enthusiasm by ffl a double shu e on his kitchen floor. He was a or THE LIFE HENRY WARD BEECHER . 7 theological fighter by taste and instinct . His father was a blacksmith , full of sound sense and greatly given to disputation . This habit Lyman Beecher inherited, and early in life he swung the sledge hammer of assault against the vice of intemperance c until the ountry rang with the echo of his blows . W To Henry ard was bequeathed a like tendency , and among his earliest efforts w a s a series of s e r mons against the prevalent vices of the people of the city in which he lived that stirred the State of t w his adop ion to its centre , and dre crowds to hear the clergym an who dared to call a spade a spade and speak of a gambler and a drunkard as such in the house of God . HEREDITARY INFL UENCES . Some idea of the kind of trainin g young Beecher had may be inferred from the fact that his father was an utterly impracticable and erratic person out of the pulpit, and that his mother, who was refined o f and well balanced , had much her time occupied in undoing the mischief her husband had done . For instance , Lyman Beecher once bought and sent home a bale of cotton simply because it was cheap , without any idea or plan for its use . His wife , at first dis com fite d of , at once projected the unheard luxury , of a carpet , carded and spun the cotton hired it , woven , cut and sewed it to fit the parlor stretched and nailed it to the garret floor and brushed it over with thin paste . Then she sent to her New York n a brother for oil paints , lear ed from an encyclop edia how to prepare them , and then adorned the carpet in with groups of flowers , imitating those her small im yard and garden . This illustrates at once the a providence of the father , and the useful and esthetic 8 THE LIFE OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. turn of the mind of the mother, who seems to have ha d high ideals and great perseverance in attaining excellence under most unfavorable circumstances . Lyman Beecher was passionately fond of children ; his wife was not . They had thirteen , and the father, who married three times , chose his last wife after 1 m he was sixty years of age . Lyman Beecher was a in ative . g , impulsive , and averse to hard study His wife was calm and self- possessed and solved the m athematical problems not only for practical pur poses , but because she enjoyed that kind of mental ff e ort . Lyman Beecher was trained as a dialectician, in and felt that he excelled argumentation , and yet an his wife , without y such training, he remarked, was the only person he had met that he felt was fully his an equal in argument . He had that kind of love for his children that moved him to caress and fondle she t them ; , on the con rary, did not care to nurse or she tend them , although was eminently benevolent an d and very tender sympathetic . In other words , “ fa as the late Catharine Beecher once wrote , My ther seemed by natural organization to have what of ' w om an one usually deemed the natural traits , while my mother had some of those which often are ” claimed to be the distinctive attributes of man . AND BROTHERS SISTERS . ’ Henry Ward s earliest years were impressed by the loving carelessness of his eccentric father and the simple devotion of his accomplished mother. sh He was as y as a wild rabbit . When his mother “ “ , b died he eing but three years old , he wanted to dig down and get to Heaven where his “ mamm a” was . He responded to the caresses of his father an d could not understand the moody abstraction which THE LIFE OF HENRY WARD B EEOHER. 9 claimed the preoccupied mind when next he ran to repeat the embrace . A second mother was equally admirable as a woman , but cast iron in her method . nfl ical mode of life He was greatly i uenced by her, although She was never able to impart any of her orderliness and primness to either him or his brothers and sisters . That a great natured boy with such parentage should develop queerly is not to be wondered at . Added to this was the influence of his and s — brothers isters Catherine , a hard headed, active bustling woman of marked character and de te rm ine d E an convictions ; dward , introspective on in dweller, a muser the conflict of ages , odd his person as Catherine herself, and absent minded all the time Harriet, later the Wife of Professor Stowe , full of genius and blossoming with its eccentric of fun of ways ; Charles , full , a perfect bombshell and youthful indiscretion , several others , all queer . With this start in life Henry Ward accredited his father with his keen sense of humor, his intellectual power, his robust body and his intense physical emotionalism . AND SCHOOL COLLEGE . A l side from the rude teaching of a country schoo , Henry learned all he knew until he entered Amherst in 183 0 College , when he was seventeen years old , at ’ home . His father s house was the headquarters of theological disputation , and many a battle was waged across the hospitable board, while the big eyed children listened to that which no one could in . H explain Modest and retiring his manner , enry listened attentively to the teachings of his step mother, but the one result in those days was to plant of the seed wonder and inquisitiveness , which grew 1 L D REEO E 0 THE IFE OF HENRY WAR H R. up and bore marvellous fruit in later days . A brief period in the Boston Latin School prepared Henry Ward for college , and he entered without trouble . The obtainable record of his experience there does not Show brilliantly, nor compare favorably with that of scores of men who have lived unnoticed and died unsung. In mathematics alone he was proficient, a fact which stands out clearly and strangely when it is remembered that in later life he was a perfect child in figures , and could never keep the simplest account with any degree of accuracy .

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