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THE OLD BEECHER HOUSE, NEW HAVEN.

David Beecher was five times married, and had a dozen children, of whom all but four died in infancy. Lyman Beecher was the only child of Esther Lyman, the third and best-loved of the five wives. She died of consumption two days after the birth of her son, who was a puny sevenmonths' child, whom it was thought useless to try to save, so he was wrapped up and laid aside as dead. After a while one of the women found that the babe breathed; so she washed and dressed it, with the words, "It is a pity he had not died." But there was good stock in him, and the weakling endured fully threescore and ten years of active and useful life; and "by reason of strength," quietly overpassed by eight years the extreme limit of fourscore.

The motherless babe was almost from birth adopted by his mother's sister, the childless wife of Lot Benton, a wellto-do farmer of Guilford, a few miles from New Haven. Worthy Uncle Lot was a true father to the child, one of whose daughters long after described him under the name of "Uncle Lot Griswold." He was a tall, bright, dark-eyed man of pleasant countenance; always scheming, and contriving, and farming on the principle of making his land yield the most with the least outlay. The first sixteen years of the life of Lyman Beecher were passed mainly with Uncle Lot.

Here and there in the autobiographical reminiscences we get glimpses of the way in which well-to-do people in Connecticut lived two genera

tions ago. Six mahogany

chairs, in a shut-up parlor, were considered magnificent. Good David Beecher never got beyond cherry. Here, excerpted from the autobiography, is a picture of life at Uncle Lot's:

We raised our own breadstuffs, he says, and fodder for stock, and cut salt hay on the marsh. Raised an acre or two of flax, though it was impossible to keep Aunt Benton in spinning for the winter. In fall and winter there was wood to be cut and hauled. In June we went to Quinnepaug, Outlet to wash sheep; a day or two afterward we sheared them. Then the fleece was salted, carded, and spun, all in the house: flax in winter, wool in summer. They made all sorts of linen work, table-cloths, shirting, sheeting, and cloths. Thrifty Aunt Benton and Annis-a bright thirteen-year old girlgot up very early in the morning and made breakfast, for which there was rye bread, butter, buckwheat cakes, and pie. After the dishes were washed Annis and I helped aunt milk. We dined on salt pork, vegetables, and pies; corned-beef also; and always on Sunday a boiled Indian pudding. We made a stock of pies at Thanksgiving, froze them for winter use, and they lasted until March. Of the durability of these Connecticut pies a good story is told. It is said, on taking down the pantry of an old house, under it was found one of these pies, in perfect preservation, though the earthen dish which had contained it was entire

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LOT BENTON'S HOUSE

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next day we were out picking apples again, and without his saying a word, I said, 'Yes, Sir, I should.' So he drove over to New Haven, and talked with father, and they settled it between them. Uncle Lot was to clothe

er than servants. Thus old Parson Fowler's Moses managed the farm, rung the church bell, sent his master's son to college, paid the bills, and was head-man in general. It was considered a settled thing that Lyman was to be a farmer, and in due time to have the nice Ben-me-Aunt Benton could make nearly every ton homestead.

thing-and father was to do the rest. Uncle took his nephew Lot Benton for his heir, gave him the homestead, and moved to Old Guilford. But when he died, many years afterward, he left me his Guilford house, and land worth about $2000 besides."

Thus it happened that an indifferent farmer was lost, and a great preacher was gained.

"How did it happen that you did not become a farmer?" asked his daughter, of the old man. "I should," was the reply, "if Uncle Benton had not cleared a fifteen-acre lot, and I driven plow over the whole three times. I wish you could see his old plow. It was a curious thing of his own making, clumsy, heavy, and patched with old hoes and pieces of iron to keep it from After two years of preparation Lyman Beecher falling to pieces. But he thought a great deal entered Yale College in 1793. He was eighteen of it. One day I drove the ox-team so near as years old, a stout and healthy farmer's boy. The to graze it with the wheel. There, there, Ly- college bore little resemblance to the present man, you've run over that plow and broke it all pride of the "City of Elms." It seems that the to pieces.' 'Why, Uncle Lot, I haven't touched special objects of the early builders of New Enthe plow.' 'Well, I'd a great deal rather you gland were first to find into what ugly shapes had than to have gone so plaguy nigh it.' Now they could pile up brick and timber, and then I am naturally quick, and that old plow was so to see how uncomfortable they could make the slow-one furrow a little way, and then an- interior. The Yale architects succeeded adother-and the whole fifteen acres three times mirably in both respects. For apparatus there over, some of it as steep as the roof of a house. was a home-made orrery as big as the wheel of I became inexpressibly sick of it. What should an ocean steamer, so rusty that it could not be I do then but build castles in the air? First I made to revolve; a four-foot telescope, through knew I would be a rod ahead, and the plow out, which nobody could see any thing; an air-pump and Uncle Lot would say 'Whoa!' and come so out of order that a mouse under the receiver and give me a shake. Not long after the job might have lived as long as Methuselah, so far as was finished, Uncle Benton and I were walking exhaustion of air was concerned. Besides these over to Toket Hill, and I had got so used to there was a prism and an elastic hoop to illusdriving that I fell into a brown study, and kept trate centrifugal force-and that was the whole saying 'Whoa!' 'Haw!' 'Gee!' as if the oxen list of the apparatus of Yale. For President were along. Why, Lyman,' said Uncle Lot, there was at first Dr. Stiles, a trim, pompous 'did you think you were driving the oxen?' It old gentleman, wonderfully urbane out of colwas then, I believe, he gave up. Next day we lege-just the reverse within it. He died before were out behind the barn picking apples. Ly- Beecher completed his course, and was succeedman,' said he, should you like to go to col-ed by Timothy Dwight, a man of quite a differlege?' 'I don't know, Sir,' said I. But the ent order. He was Beecher's spiritual father.

Twenty-five years after, when the pupil had become great, he told his teacher that to him he owed all that he had. "Then," said Dwight, "I have done a great and soul-satisfying work. I consider myself amply rewarded."

Beecher's college course, estimated by the class-books of the tutors, was not a brilliant one. Proficiency in mathematics was the recognized test of scholarship. He was deficient even in arithmetic; the higher mathematics he lost totally. So he got no appointment at Commencement; but he received an honor dearer to the college student. His class-mates found that he could talk so that people would listen, and they chose him to deliver the Valedictory Address on Presentation Day, six weeks before Com

mencement.

sides another hundred dollars in bad debts for necessaria scholaribus furnished "on tick" to students whose needs in the way of beer and cider, pipes and tobacco, were in advance of their pecuniary resources. "If I had gone into business then," said the good old man sixty years later, "I should have made money." Possibly he might, but this is the first and last instance during his long life in which he showed any aptitude in that direction.

A dozen hogsheads of beer, with cider and mead, pipes and tobacco, at discretion, seems an ample allowance for a hundred students. Bat Yale under Dr. Stiles's administration had fallen into a bad way. Most of the students were skeptical, called each other Voltaire, Rousseau, D'Alembert, and the like; wines and liquors were kept in many of the rooms, besides the potables which the butler furnished; rowdies were plenty; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common. Clergy and people, as we shall have occasion to see, were then, and for a long time thereafter, almost universally heavy drinkers, and inveterate smokers. A great change was, however, wrought in Yale immediately upon the accession of Dwight to the Presidency.

When Beecher entered college he was undecided whether he was to be a lawyer or a clergyman. He listened to the first lawyers of his day, became disgusted with legal quirks and quibbles, and determined that he would preach. Yet at this time he did not even suppose that he was converted. "It was not before the middle of my junior year," he says, "that I was really awakened." He passed through the ordinary phases of religious experience, as laid down in the theology of the time. First came conviction, then despair, then attempts at reformation

Good Father Beecher had dreadful fits of "hypo" when the college bills were to be paid. He could not stand it, he told his wife-the fifth, for he had been married, re-widowed, and again re-wedded, since the loss of his third and best-loved wife; he must take Lyman out of college. The good woman would not hear to this. She had some property in her own right, and that should go to pay her step-son's bills. Lyman knew well enough that his father was fairly well-to-do in the world, and tried to soothe him. "Don't be concerned," he said. "You have enough to live on at present; and when I get through and have a home I'll take care of you." "Pooh! poor fellow!" grumbled the dyspeptic old man, "you'll scratch a poor man's head all your lifetime." The dismal prophecy turned out to be not far from true; though the young man managed to help himself that year. Six weeks before Commencement the college butler gave up his post. By the old Yale laws, written in Latin which Cicero would need a glossary to understand, "The butler is licensed of heart, not of life, for his life was remarkto sell in the buttery cider, metheglin, strong ably blameless, or rather in technical phrase beer (not more than twelve casks [cados] a year), "moral." He could effect nothing by this atloaf-sugar, pipes, tobacco, and such like things tempt at "self-righteousness;" could not make necessary for students not on sale in the com- a "right prayer with a wrong heart;" was tormons. Young Beecher borrowed $300, bought mented with the doctrines, especially that of out the stock of Staples, the retiring butler, and Election; pored over Brainerd's Life—"a most started what we may call a college grocery. The undesirable thing for cases like mine; it gave number of cadi which he might sell was strictly me a tinge for years," and "Edwards on the limited by college law; but the size of a cadus Affections," which he calls "a most overwhelmwas not defined. The new butler interpreted it ing thing, and to common minds the most enliberally. To replenish the stock left by his tangling. They are," he said in his old age, predecessor, he "sent to New York by an En-"a bad generation of books on the whole. I glish parson (a judge of the article) and bought a hogshead of porter," from which we infer that a cadus, by Yale measurement, meant a hogshead. Young Beecher, having pronounced his Presentation Valedictory, went into his grocery enterprise with a will. In six weeks he made enough to pay the borrowed investment, clear Commencement expenses, buy a suit of clothes, with a surplus of a hundred dollars in hand, be

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was converted in spite of such books." To our minds the trouble was that he tried to be Edwards or Brainerd, and his nature would let him be only Beecher. The upshot was that he fell into a state of permanent hypochondria, a "dark, sullen, unfeeling state," that finally af fected his health, which lasted for months, and passed away only by degrees. "I began," he says, "to see more into the doctrines of the Bible. Election and Decrees were less a stumbling-block. I came in by that door. The fact is, the law and doctrines, without any explanation, is a cruel way to get souls into the kingdom. Mine was a hopeful, promising case, and

if I had the instruction I give to inquirers, I should have come out bright in a few days." As it was, he had grave doubts, which extended even into his divinity year, whether it would be right in him to preach.

His divinity year lasted really only nine months. There was no Hebrew, and apparently little Greek. It is doubtful whether Beecher could ever fairly read a chapter of the Scriptures in the original tongues. In divinity Hopkins, Edwards, Bellamy, Andrew Fuller, and, above all, Dwight's Sermons, were the chief text-books. The main study was the Evidences

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mill, where three or four spinning-wheels were turned by water. This was the favorite spot of the girls. Here, while they spun, they received their visitors, chatted, laughed, and read, Roxana fastening her French books to the distaff, studying and spinning at once.

of Christianity-the most important topic at a | the bank of a pleasant stream, was a spinningtime when it seemed a doubtful question whether infidelity would not oversweep New England. Twice a week he and a fellow-student walked over to West Haven, and held meetings in the society of Father Williston, a pious but very tame old preacher. Beecher had then formed that fiery, impetuous style which was ever after Beecher had inwardly sworn that he would his marked characteristic. "The people turned never marry a weak woman. His wife must out to hear us," he said, "and there were some have sense and possess strength to lean upon. conversions. I had much interest in my sub- Roxana possessed these qualities; but she had jects; was impulsive and vehement. I wish I said that she would never marry until she found could hear somebody speak as I used to then." some one like the stately Sir Charles GrandiMeanwhile, according to the wont of young son. It required some stretch of imagination men "looking forward to the ministry," he fell to recognize him in the short young collegian; in love, wisely and well, as it happened. At and when he asked if there was any fatal objecNutplains, a little way from the village of Old tions to his addresses, she hinted that it would Guilford, lived General Andrew Ward, an old be a long time before he would complete his revolutionary officer, and for years the magnate studies. However, she permitted him to conof the town. According to tradition, which any tinue his visits, and in due time an engagement one who chooses may believe, it was for a long was made, conditioned that neither party retime the custom when "town-meeting" was held, pented. The divinity student once came very for the Moderator to announce to the voters, near repenting. Roxana was trained in the "The meeting is now open, and you will pro- Episcopal communion, and Lyman, soon to be ceed to vote for General Ward and Deacon a Presbyterian preacher, became troubled about Burgess as representatives." It is certain that the difference in their religious views; so he for years Ward was standing representative for rode to Nutplains to talk the matter over, preGuilford. His son-in-law, Eli Foote, had died, pared, if the disagreement was too great, to give leaving ten children. The grandfather took up the engagement. them to his home, and became a father to all. They were a family of uncommon ability, but foremost of all was one daughter, Roxana. A refugee from St. Domingo took up his residence at Guilford; from him Roxana learned to speak and write French; she played well on the guitar, and was a very creditable artist, painting flowers and miniatures. She was well-read in history, poetry, and the novels of the day. The Ward House, familiarly called "Castle Ward," was merely a rather rambling New England farm-house, of wood, built piecemeal, from time to time as more room was needed. Close by, on

The result was a long talk, a good cry, and the discovery that on vital points they thought very much alike. He never told her to her dying day what he had in mind when he made that visit.

In due time the four young men who constituted the Yale Divinity Class were examined and licensed. Beecher feared that it would be hard to find flocks for so many shepherds. Providence, however, had taken care of that matter. The southern extremity of Long Island had been settled from Connecticut. At East Hampton was a church considered then the most important on the Island.

The pastor, good old Doc

EAST HAMPTON CHURCH.

tor Buell, had died a few months before, and after one or two trials of others Beecher was asked to go there as a "candidate." He owned a horse, saddle, and bridle; all the rest of his personal effects were packed in a little white hair-trunk, which he carried on the pommel of his saddle, as, on Thanksgiving-day, 1798, he rode over to New London, whence he was to take passage across the Sound.

East Hampton village was then a collection of plain farm-houses, built directly upon a portion of the main southern highway. In front of each house stood the wood-pile, close by the barn. The street, or rather road, was a stretch of green turf two or three hundred feet wide, through the centre of which ran a couple of narrow dun-colored ruts, worn by the wheels of the few passing wagons, and between them two broader ones trodden out by the feet of the horses. The green turf on either side was usually snowy with flocks of white geese. At each end of the street stood a windmill. A short row of stiff Lombardy poplars, and one great elm, a landmark for miles around, were then the only trees. The first "meetinghouse" was built in 1650. In 1717 it was replaced by the one in which Lyman Beecher was to preach. It had a bell and clock, and was the largest and

most splendid church on the Island. This building, its interior quite altered, still stands, and bids fair to stand for another century. It is the oldest house on the Island. Not far away were several small hamlets, mostly bearing sonorous Indian names, whence on Sundays the good people came to Hampton, riding in great two-horse wagons, each capable of carrying a whole family.

The new candidate" preached and visited with fair acceptance, meeting with less than the usual amount of carping. Sundry faults were indeed found. On Christmas-day he took dinner with a Deist, and in the evening, at another house, heard a young lady sing songs, and asked her to sing all she knew. On another occasion he actually sung himself; and once went hunting in company with a Deist. But, on the whole, matters went on favorably, and late in March he was able to write to Roxana that he expected to receive a "call" in April, in which case he should soon, say in May or June, "naturally enough begin to think about getting a wife."

The call came and was accepted. The preacher's salary was fixed at $300, with a kind of parsonage right, afterward commuted for $400 in cash. On the 19th of September, 1799, he was married, and in a few days the pair set out for their home. Roxana had a candle-stand, bureau, table, clothing, bedding, linen, and other

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BEECHER'S HOUSE AT EAST HAMPTON.

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