glish branches, French, painting, and embroidery; he cared for the compositions of the pupils. The school prospered fairly enough; but in spite of it there was a growing deficit in the general income. He must either have more salary or must leave. He laid the matter fairly before his people. His demands certainly were not exorbitant. For five years he had spent $100 a year more than he had received, and was now $500 in debt. If his people would meet that $500, and thereafter pay him $500 a year and his fire-wood, he would stay with them, probably as long as he lived. The good people of East Hampton loved their pastor; but they loved their dollars quite as well, and tried to drive a close bargain.-Would Mr. Beecher promise never to ask more than $500 a year?—Mr. Beecher would not promise that. If things continued as they then were he thought he could live upon that. If his expenses should be greatly increased he could not. In any case, he must have a salary upon which he could live. Then if they paid the $500 of debt, would Mr. Beecher refund it in case he should ever remove from them?-He would not agree to that. He had labored for them for five years for a hundred dollars a year less than it had cost him to live. The $500 dollars was, he thought, his just due for arrears.-The result was that when the whole matter came up before the Presbytery, the church' said that they would make no objection to Mr. Beecher's request for a dismissal. Whereupon, in April, 1810, the Presbytery unanimously resolved that Mr. Beecher, according to his own request, should be dismissed from his pastoral

stuffs. Uncle Lot hired a small sloop to take them over. "He always did such things for us," said Beecher; "took as much care for me as if I had been but fifteen; made all my bargains." The parson soon bought a dilapidated old house, with five acres of land, paying $800 for the whole, and spending $300 in repairs to make the dwelling habitable. The first carpet ever known at East Hampton was in the parson's house. One day a little money came from good Uncle Lot; with it Lyman bought a bale of cotton; Roxana span it, had it woven, and painted it over in oil-colors, with a gay border around the edge, and groups of flowers in the centre. The people were astounded at the magnificence of the pastor's parlor when the new carpet was laid down. Good old Deacon Tallmadge coming one day stopped at the door, afraid to enter. "Walk in, Deacon," said the pastor. "I can't," he answered, "thout steppin' on't," adding, after a moment's wondering admiration, "D'ye think ye can have all that, and heaven too?" The good Deacon in a breath got off a couple of mots which have since done good service in comic papers and religious tracts. The young pastor soon became a man of note. "The light of the golden candlestick of East Hampton began to be seen afar." There were "revivals" in his parish. In other words, under his teaching and preaching men and women actually became Christians, despite of the poor health which for months together precluded him from active work. His first marked stroke which told beyond his own congregation was his Sermon on Dueling, occasioned by the death of Alexander Hamilton. That sermon was print-relation to the church and congregation at East ed, and became afterward a power in the politics of the country. Years after, when Henry Clay was a candidate for the Presidency, it was republished by his opponents as a political pamphlet, and was scattered broadcast over the land. Beecher's ministry at East Hampton lasted for a little less than twelve years. He preached earnestly, and in every way labored zealously in his vocation. Revival after revival rewarded his efforts. For the rest, he fished some, and took good care of his five-acre plot; set out an orchard, the first known in the place, for the farmers had thought apples would not grow so near the salt-water; and played, rather dolorously we imagine, upon that unclerical instrument the fiddle. His wife planted flowers and shrubs in the front yard of the parsonage-they say that a snow-ball and a catalpa of her planting are still living-and set out shade trees before the house. Others followed the good example, and set about beautifying their homes. Trees sprung up in the place of the old woodpiles, and now one can hardly find a more beautifully shaded place than East Hampton.

Hampton, and recommended to the Southern Association of Litchfield County, in the State of Connecticut, as a minister in good and regular standing: -For while these matters were pending, the church of Litchfield had given him a "call."

We have dwelt at length upon the early years of Lyman Beecher, and upon his first pastorate, because before its close his character had been fully formed. In fact, he was personally and professionally formed when, at the age of twenty-two, he entered upon his labor. The Doctor Beecher of Litchfield and Boston and Cincinnati was in all save growth the Lyman Beecher of East Hampton. In theology he was in terms thoroughly orthodox, even according to the strictest standard of Edwards. Both accepted the same formal creed even upon the questions of Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. Yet when practically presented there was a wide difference. To Edwards, the recluse student, the universe moved solely by the action of God; men were, after all, but puppets in his hands; every action of them and their eternal Meanwhile children were born in the parson- fate was fixed by divine decree, absolutely and age-almost one a year-and the pastor found unchangeably, before the world began. То his salary of $400 inadequate for the mainte- Beecher, endowed with an intense personality, nance of his growing household. To supply the every man acted, and was to be treated as acting deficiency he set up a boarding-school for girls from his own volition. In Edwards's view Diin his house. His wife taught the higher En-vine Sovereignty—including in the phrase Elec

tion, Decrees, Predestination, and kindred doc- Reeve, Principal of the Law School, which for

after its dissolution he married a third wife. "I thought," he had said long before, "that it would be my duty to live in the family state."

The chapter in which Harriet Beecher Stowe describes her "Early Remembrances" of life at Litchfield reads like an idyl. We see the father taking his boys on hunting and fishing excursions; coming back at night loaded with the

self could fry as fish should be fried; of nutting expeditions, where the father climbed higher into the trees than any of his boys dared venture; of the early spring days when the great logs of the wood-pile were to be cut, split, and wheeled off in order that the spot might be turned into a cucumber patch, so that Dr. Beecher of Litchfield might raise as early esculents as Dr. Taylor of New Haven, who had warmer and dryer land; and how all the children, boys and girls, even down to little Har

the afternoon and evening, as each man felt inclined. They must have had well-seasoned heads, since, notwithstanding this steady imbibition, "none of the Consociation were drunk; but," adds Beecher, "that there was not, at times, a considerable amount of exhilaration, I can not affirm. The side-board, with the spillings of water and sugar and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar of a very active grog-spoils of the trout-brook, which nobody but himshop. When they had done drinking, and had taken pipes and tobacco, in less than fifteen minutes there was such a smoke that you couldn't see. And the noise I can not describe. It was the maximum of hilarity. They told their stories and were at the height of their jocose talk." The Consociation, if not "drunk," was clearly "fuddled." The Society paid for the treat, and grumbled a little at the amount of liquor consumed. Almost on the heels of this affair came an ordination in another village, and the same Consociation enacted a sim-riet, were worked up into a fever of wood-carryilar scene, and the Society murmured still more loudly at the cost and scandal. "These two meetings," says Beecher, "were near together, and in both my alarm, shame, and indignation were intense. It was that which woke me up for the war; and I silently took an oath before God that I would never attend another ordination of that kind." Others were alarmed too. The General Association appointed a committee to consider the matter. Beecher was chairman, and drew up a stirring report, "the most important paper," he says, "that I ever wrote." Out of this grew the "Massachusetts Temperance Society," formed in 1813. This report was followed in time by the famous "Six Sermons on Intemperance," which, when published, wrought an effect greater for a time than any other discourses that have proceeded from the American pulpit.

Very pleasant are the chapters in which the daughters of Lyman Beecher, after an interval of almost half a century, narrate their reminiscences of life in Litchfield. This was divided into two great periods, the line between them marked by a great sorrow. Six years after its commencement the beloved Roxana died. No wife could have been more tenderly loved, truly honored, and deeply mourned. Strong man as he was, Beecher had come to look upon her as the better and stronger portion of himself; and his first sensation after her death was that of "a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly shut out alone in the dark." For a whole year after it seemed to him that there was not motive enough in the world to move him. Years after he showed to one of his sons a large basket filled with manuscripts. "There," he said, "are the sermons I wrote the year after your mother died, and there is not one of them good for any thing." Yet at the close of that year, almost to a day, hể married a second wife. This wife, Harriet Porter, was a worthy successor to Roxana Foote, to whose eight children she was as loving a mother as to those borne by herself. This union lasted almost twenty years. In less than a year

ing emulation by the father's well-timed declaration that he "wished Harriet was a boy, she would do more work than any of them." Then of the jovial apple season, when, to keep the apple-peelers at top of speed, father and children would emulate each other in trying to see who could tell the most stories out of Scott's novels -for those were the days when "Ivanhoe" and the "Tales of my Landlord" opened a new era in the world of fiction.

The

Still there was one cloud, small at first, but expanding from year to year, always lowering over this pleasant Litchfield home. It was the old East Hampton trouble: expenses were too great for income. The purchase of the old house had required all of the new pastor's means. The addition built to it was to have been paid for by money left to Roxana from her father's estate. This had been left in the hands of her brother, then a thriving merchant in New York. He failed; the money was lost, and the cost of the building, far greater than had been anticipated, became a debt. The experiment of keeping boarders-pleasant enough viewed from the children's stand-point, who only saw the bright dresses and blooming faces of the girls-looked otherwise to the parents. It did not pay. pastor found himself in debt, and regularly behindhand. His people raised $3000 to pay off the debt, securing the sum, most likely, upon his property, and making him a present of two year's salary. Affairs went on for a while smoothly. But in time new children came, and the elder ones were to be educated. Sickness happened; expenses increased; debts accumulated again, slowly but surely. So in 1826, after sixteen years' labor at Litchfield, Beecher found that he was running behindhand at the rate of $200 a year. The great Mr. Micawber had not then enunciated the famous formula that "if a man had twenty pounds a year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence he would be happy; but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable." But Beecher reached

have done otherwise. In his view the Unitarian system of doctrine and philosophy was dishonoring to God and ruinous to man. The adherents of this system had crept by stealth into orthodox churches, driven out the rightful owners, and taken wrongful possession. The old foundations established by the Pilgrim Fathers for the perpetuation of their own theology had been perverted to the support of doctrines which they repudiated. Harvard College had been seized; the fund left to maintain an annual sermon on the Trinity the same point. "For several days and nights," | was expended to keep up a yearly lecture dehe said, "I endured what I shall not attempt claring that there was no Trinity; the Hollis to describe, only by saying that a few days more of such suspense and agitation must have prostrated me entirely." The matter fairly before him, he met the case honestly. The condition of his congregation was not such as to lead him to expect that they could furnish him the money that he must have. "I will, therefore," he said, "ask for a dismission, sell my property, pay my debts, and cast myself upon the protection and guidance of Heaven."

Twelve hours after coming to this decision he received a formal letter asking him to become the pastor of the Hanover Church in Boston. The call was accepted, and Beecher took up his abode in the New. England capital. The six years during which his ministry in Boston lasted were the most brilliant of his life. He had just closed his first half century. In spite of the climate, which demanded the most watchful care in dress to meet its daily changes, he took a new lease of strength. He was more vigorous in body and mind than ever before. The sphere of his action was wide enough to call for the exercise of all his powers. The old burden of insufficient means was lifted from his shoulders. His children, whose spiritual condition had caused him constant uneasiness, had been one after another converted. One son had already entered the ministry, others were preparing to enter. No wonder that he preached and prayed and wrote, as he had never before wrote and prayed and preached. He was sustained and upheld by the fervent admiration of his church, and of the great body of his clerical associates. It was mainly by his efforts that the great Unitarian wave was turned which had threatened to sweep the old Puritan faith from New England. Beecher threw himself into this contest with intense earnestness. He could not

Professorship of Divinity was employed to train up a class of ministers whose ideas were in avowed opposition to the intention of its orthodox founder; the fountain from which pure truth should have flowed was perverted at its very source. So Beecher believed; and he acted in accordance with his conviction. We who look back upon this famous controversy, whatever we may think of its grounds, must find much to condemn in the spirit and manner in which it was conducted. The odium theologicum is proverbially the bitterest of all hatreds. We must admit that Beecher said and wrote many things unwise, harsh, and unjust. He would have been more or less than himself had he not done so. His biographer indeed intimates that, in his violent personal denunciations, he must be understood as only "speaking in a highly figurative sense of the logical demolition of error." But the "written letter remains ;" and we can not pronounce this controversy profitable reading. Nor do we think any man now will do well to pore over the controversies such as those upon "Revivals" and "Taylorism," in which Beecher was engaged with some of his own clerical associates. Let the dead past bury its dead.

Let us endeavor to present a personal picture of the man Lyman Beecher as he appeared during this period of his highest power, when he was beyond all dispute the foremost clergyman of the day-the acknowledged champion and defender of the faith.

No stranger, who should have been present at weekly reunion of the Boston ministers, would at first have recognized the great orthodox leader in the short, square, toothless old man in negligent undress, who seemed the perpetual mark for jokes and sly witticisms, which he always

sent back with interest. His absence of mind was proverbial. One pair of spectacles would be very apt to be on the top of his head, another on his nose, while he was fumbling in his pockets for a third. His watch was rarely wound up, and when wound up was never right. If he had occasion to make a memorandum he never had a pencil; he would borrow that of a neighbor, dash off a few hasty notes, and pocket it; the next time he wanted to write he would borrow another pencil, and so on, until those of half the company were stowed away in his pockets. Then some one would ask how many pencils he had; and recalled to recollection, he would begin distributing them among their owners. Yet before long the stranger would discover that this little absent-minded, genial man was not merely the favorite, but the master-spirit of the assembly.

careful statement of the subject, almost as condensed as a series of mathematical axioms. Then follows the scriptural argument; then the answering of objections. The Doctor has warmed to his work. He is conversational, acute, sometimes exciting a smile by quaintness of illustration or phrase. Last of all comes the essential point-the application. The preacher is thoroughly aroused. He warns, pleads, entreats, as though the whole audience were one person whom he must persuade, before he leaves the pulpit, to take some step of mighty import.

Service over, the Doctor goes directly home. He has been wrought up to the highest tension of mind and body, and must let himself "run down" by spending an hour or two in sport and talk with his family. He is lively, sparkling, and jocose, full of anecdote and incident. Probably the old violin which had come down from East Hampton is brought out. The Doctor gets cleverly through with "Auld Lang Syne, "Bonnie Doon," and that fine tune with the questionable title of "Go to the Devil and shake yourself," but is sure to break down in "Money Musk," and the "College Hornpipe." Now and then, when the good mother has gone to bed before him, he is wrought upon by the petitions of the young fry to go through the wonders of the double-shuffle which he used when a lad to dance on the barn-floor at corn-huskings; but these saltatory exhibitions make such ravages with the toes of his stockings that they are not in much favor with the female authorities upon whom falls the labor of the inevitable darnings. These performances were a part of his system of physical regimen. "If I were to go to bed," he said, “at the key at which I leave off preaching, I should toss and tumble all night. I must let off steam gradually, and then I can sleep like a child."

The most famous of his daughters shall furnish us with a sketch of a single imaginary day in this Boston life. He was a sound sleeper, and it was the special duty of the reigning "baby" of the household to waken him in the morning. She had been instructed that to do this she must take him by the nose, kiss him a great many times before the heaviness of his head would go off so that he could lift it. Fairly awakened, there was a difficulty in the way of rising. He was afraid there was "a great lion under the bed," who would surely catch him by the foot. Little curly-head must solemnly promise that she would not let him be eaten up if he rose. All this took so long that the breakfast bell would have rung before he was in condition to be led into the room by his little monitor. It is a week day, but he is to preach in the evening. He has made no special preparations for this is to be a discourse mainly extempore. All day long he is accessible to every body, talking with any one who would talk. Now and then he rushes out to the yard, where he has a gymnastic apparatus, swings on a pole or climbs a ladder hand-over-hand. Perhaps he takes a turn with his wood-saw; or if the wood is all cut, he has a load of sand in the cellar, which he shovels from side to side by way of exercise. An hour or two before service time he rushes up to his study, flings off his coat, takes a few swings with the dumb-bells, sits down, and begins dashing off notes on bits of paper about as big as the palm of his hand. The churchbells begin to ring, but he still writes; they begin to toll; messengers are sent to hurry him; and at last he rushes down stairs like a hurricane, papers in hand, with cravat and coat collar all awry, demanding a pin to fasten his loose notes together. Wife and daughters lay vio-gymen in the nation; and they felt assured that lent hands upon him, settling his attire as well as possible. The notes are thrust into the crown of his hat; wife or daughter hooked upon his arm; and they are off for church at breathless speed. He elbows his way through the crowd, and storms up the pulpit stairs. The preliminary services over, the sermon comHastily prepared as it seems, it is really no hasty production. It begins with a

mences.

Meantime the Church had begun to comprehend the vast importance of the great valley of the Mississippi. An attempt was made to establish a theological seminary in that region. Sixty acres of land at Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, had been given, besides a few thousand dollars in cash, toward establishing such an institution, to bear the name of Lane Seminary, in honor of the principal donor. Agents were sent East and South to collect the further funds necessary to erect buildings and endow professorships. They met with scanty success. No man of whom people at the East knew enough to have confidence in him was identified with the scheme. Its friends perceived that they must have at the head of it one of the first cler

he must be willing to go, and that his people must give him up for that work. Beecher was fixed upon by tommon consent as the man. Arthur Tappan, a New York merchant, said he would give $20,000—or rather would pay the annual interest upon that sum-if Beecher would go. More money was pledged upon similar conditions. Beecher accepted the call as a mandate from his Divine Master, and, after six years