Amherst College—Private Journal—Testimony of Classmates—Tutor’s
Delight—Begins his Anti-Slavery Career—Spiritual
Darkness—Engagement—Letters of his Mother—Experiences in Teaching
School—First Sermons—Lecturing—His Reading—The Record.
Henry Ward Beecher entered Amherst College in 1830 in a class of forty
members. Although prepared for the Sophomore year, yet, following the
advice of his father, he entered as a Freshman in the class of ’34. On
the cover of a very commonplace-looking copy-book, brown and yellow with
age, which we have in our possession, he has written with a great many
flourishes “Private Journal,” and then has added with equal emphasis,
“Not to be looked into.” But since he afterwards drew his pen through
both clauses, we have taken the liberty not only to look but also to
make extracts from its contents.
The pages appear to have been written for the most part with reference
to a correspondence which he was then carrying on with his brother
Charles, referred to in the previous chapter, many of the questions
being apparently argued, and incidents in the diary noted with him in
view. As a whole it forms a rather odd mixture of excellent sentiments,
religious doctrines, questions and arguments, studied illustrations and
daily incidents, showing an alert mind, and one that, while awake to
observe the smallest events, was equally ready to grapple with the
largest subjects. A list of eleven “Tracts French” on half the first
page is followed on the blank spaces of the remainder with careless
pen-scrawls in which the name of “Nancy” appears with attempts at
monograms, showing the pleasant fancies that possessed his idle moments.
“Tracts English” heads the next page, which is ruled for names and
numbers; but for some reason, perhaps because the list was too great or
the selection too difficult, the plan was never carried out and not a
single entry was made—a failure so human, so common, that it at once
brings him into the sympathies of thousands who remember how often they
have done the same thing.
“Occasional Thoughts” comes next, printed with the pen in small caps in
the middle of a page, and surrounded with the usual artistic
pen-decorations. On the opposite page the thoughts begin. The first is
“Proof of a Hell.” “I prove first that there must be a hell, and then it
will appear evident that there must be a judgment.” Six pages of
proof-texts and argument follow, when we come to the next question: “Who
will enjoy heaven most?” When this has been answered, somewhat more
briefly than the former, but apparently to his own satisfaction, he
opens the next subject:
“I wish to ask you [evidently addressed to his brother], not as a
question, but for my own information, what you think about the devil?
Now, this of itself is quite a curious question, but what I wish to ask
in this particular is, Do you think that he is at all under the divine
direction as we are?”
Several pages of pithy sayings and illustrations follow, of which the
first three are fair samples:
“God’s plans are like a hive of bees, for they seem to go on without any
order till they are accomplished, but then you can see a great plan.
Each one seems to be pursuing something for itself, but, like the bees,
they at the end help to form one elegant edifice.”
“A half-way Christian has too little piety to be happy in the next
world, and too much to be happy in this.”
“Religion, like fire, will go out nearly as soon if no fuel is added to
it as if water is poured on it.”
These are not quotations, but original, and show thus early a habit
already formed and a power already being educated of illustrating
religious truth by natural objects and processes.
The last half of the book is used as a diary, written mostly with a
lead-pencil, and opens with an account of his journey from Boston to
Hartford on his way to enter college:
“I started from Boston Tuesday eve at ten o’clock, and, riding all
night, I arrived in Hartford in time to dine. I took passage in the
United States mail-stage. It can hold but six passengers inside, it
being made light in order to travel fast. I think that we travelled very
fast, for we went one hundred miles in about fifteen hours. After I got
into Hartford I started off to find Mary. I went to her house, and sent
word that I wished to see Mrs. Perkins. After waiting awhile she came
down-stairs, and did not know me, and I had to tell her who I was. About
five o’clock I went to see Harriet and Catharine. Catharine knew me, but
Harriet did not. She could not think what to make of it when I went up
and kissed her.
“I shall now begin my journal:
“Catharine wishes me to go to her levée to-night. Don’t want to much,
but conclude that I will. Went before any of the company came. Went into
Catharine’s room and sat till it was time to go down. The company began
to come in, at first ladies, like flocks of pigeons, stringing along
through the parlors; soon also the gentlemen began to come in. In the
meantime I was sitting by the side of the pianoforte, alone and
‘unbefriended,’ looking at the different groups of persons talking. At
length Harriet came and sat down by me, and I had quite a talk; but she
wishing me to go with her into the other parlor, where a great many
young ladies and no gentlemen were sitting, I refused, whereupon she
kept pressing me, till at length, when she got up to go and speak with
some one on the other side of the room, I seized the opportunity, and
very quickly started for the door, but unluckily ran against a
gentleman, knocked him half-over, made an apology, and got into the
entry. Nor did my scrape end here; for, getting my hat, I perceived that
they saw me from the parlors, and, getting the other side of the entry
to hide myself from them, I espied six or seven young ladies seated on
the stairs, watching to see what I was a-going to do. Well, I went back
to the table where I had taken my hat, and from there _whipped_ out of
the door. After I had got home I sat and talked with Aunt Esther and
Mary for a few moments, and then I went out to get a lamp. The stairs, I
thought, were in this shape:
[Illustration]
but instead of that they were in this way:
[Illustration]
You know when they are moved round in that way there are four or five
steps that meet in one point, _a_, and branch at _b_, so you cannot step
on them except at _b_. Well, I stepped down at _a_ and fell five stairs
head-first—stretching my hands forward saved my cranium—and tumbled the
rest of the way, to the no small annoyance of my shins and knees. So
much for running away from the levée.”
“Catharine and Harriet came to tea, after which I went home with them,
when Harriet put her curls on to my head and her bonnet, Catharine a
cloak and neck-handkerchief, and then called the young ladies in, and
they all thought that I was Harriet; and then, to cap all, Harriet put
on a man’s cloak and my hat, and she looked exactly like _you_
[Charles]!”
Such was Henry Ward Beecher at the age of seventeen, on the eve of
entering college—bashful, smooth-faced, and changing rapidly in
appearance, so that his own sisters did not know him. The penmanship
shows as yet an unformed hand, but in its main features is like that of
a later date.
He carelessly leaves out a word or a letter here and there, and markedly
in places continues the old habit of his early school days—poor
spelling. Nothing appears that indicates any talent superior to the
majority of young men on their way to college, unless it be a certain
enthusiasm, straightforwardness, and simplicity.
The college at this time was but nine years old, having been established
in 1821. Rev. Heman Humphrey was president. It was small and poorly
endowed, as well as young, but the chairs of instruction were ably
filled; and since it had been founded by the orthodox Congregationalists
as, in fact, an antidote to the Unitarianism of Harvard, and with
especial reference to the education of young men for the ministry, its
orthodoxy was unquestioned and its religious spirit pronounced and
active.
By reason of his excellent preparation and the admirable mental training
he had received, either of two courses were open to Henry Ward. He might
aspire to lead his class in scholarship, become a “high-honor” man, and
possibly take the valedictory, or use the time which he had at his
disposal in following out those studies and readings that were to his
taste.
He chose the latter, and, while giving sufficient study to the college
course to preserve a respectable standing in his class, gave his
greatest effort to carrying out his own plan of development and culture.
“I had acquired by the Latin and mathematics the power of study,” he
says. “I knew how to study, and I turned it upon things I wanted to
know.”
The beauty of the Greek and Latin classics did not attract him; it
seemed cold and far away, belonging to another time and another order of
mind; but our English classics, with their warmth of feeling, their
lofty imagination, their delicate sentiment, their power and eloquence,
seemed akin and near to him; they had to do with the present, and he
gave himself to their study with a whole-hearted enthusiasm that
rendered him peculiarly open to their influences.
Inspired and fed by them as to what to say, he also gave especial
attention to the manner of saying it. Rhetoric and oratory were
diligently pursued throughout his college course. In these departments
he seems, according to the testimony of his class and college mates, to
have excelled then almost as markedly as he has since.
Says Dr. Thomas P. Field: “The first thing I particularly remember about
him in college was this: I went into our class prayer-meeting on
Saturday evening, and young Beecher gave an exhortation. He urged us to
a higher life and more constant activity in religious work. I heard him
a great many times after he became a famous preacher, but I think I
never was more moved by his eloquence than in that boys’ prayer-meeting.
In the regular routine of our studies I always was aroused and
astonished by his extemporaneous debates. He surpassed all the rest of
us then in extemporaneous power of speech as much as he did in his
after-life. There was where he seemed to me particularly to excel as a
student. In mere recitation of mathematics or languages many of us could
surpass him, but in extemporaneous debates he could beat us all. I was
always greatly interested, too, in his written essays. We were in the
habit of reading our essays to the professors in the class-room. Your
father always had something to say that was fresh and striking and out
of the beaten track of thought—something, too, that he had not gotten
from books, but that was the product of his own thinking.”
Dr. John Haven, another classmate, says of him: “He was a great reader,
and probably had more general knowledge than any one of his classmates
when he graduated.”
Says Lewis Tappan, a classmate: “In logic and class debates no one could
approach him. I listened to his flow of impassioned eloquence in those
my youthful days with wonder and admiration.”
S. Hopkins Emery, another classmate, in answer to a letter, writes:
“Nobody could be gloomy or desponding near your father. He made us all
cheerful and happy. Do I remember him in college? Indeed I do—more than
I have time to write or you patience, perhaps, to read. It seems but
yesterday that I was reading a composition in the lecture-room of
Professor Worcester. Beecher sat just behind me. I had finished reading,
when I heard a friendly whisper in my ear: ‘Emery, your porch is too
large for the house.’ It was a good criticism. In such college studies
which had to do with writing and speaking the English language your
father excelled. The dead languages and mathematics never seemed to suit
his taste. He might have excelled in them if he had been so minded. He
was equal to anything he undertook. No one was his match in
extemporaneous talk or debate.”
This power and its exercise upon one memorable occasion was fraught,
according to a college mate, Rev. S. W. Hanks, with very marked
consequences:
“In the annual Sophomore and Freshman fray the former found themselves
engaged with a force that was more than a match for them, and their
pranks upon the Freshmen got repaid with much more than the usual
interest. In consequence of this a meeting of all the classes in college
was held to protest against the barbarities of this customary war, in
which the smoke of the battle usually found its way into the Freshmen’s
rooms. At this meeting a leading member of the Junior class, finding the
Sophomores a little wanting in courage and speaking talent, volunteered
to act as their attorney, and made a telling and crushing speech against
the Freshmen class for their hard handling of the Sophomores, who had
only followed an old custom in their treatment of the Freshmen. At the
close of this speech by the ‘leading Junior,’ Beecher arose and said he
wished to say a word on the other side, whereupon he ‘went for’ the
Junior in a speech full of wit and point, which altogether ‘turned the
tables’ to the great amusement of all present and the great annoyance of
the ‘leading Junior.’ When the meeting broke up the Goliah of the Junior
class found himself suffering from a wound which the little smooth stone
from the sling of the hitherto unknown Freshman had made. This was a new
experience for the proud Junior, and the wound rankled.
“It seems never to have been forgotten. Time passed on and the ‘leading
Junior’ became a leading lawyer, jurist, judge, and Democratic
politician, and when the great scandal arose volunteered a very strong
argument against Mr. Beecher. It had great weight in some quarters, but
was less convincing to those parties who remembered that this judge was
eagerly embracing the first opportunity that had offered of paying off
an old score of their college days.”
“He was whole-souled and hearty, humorous in the extreme but without a
particle of viciousness, a reformer and an earnest man.” This is again
the testimony of his classmate, Dr. Field.
“We would often gather on the steps of the chapel, a number of us
incidentally, and if your father was in the gathering we always had much
wit and sparkling repartee, and anecdote and description, all of which
seemed to be infused by your father, and of which, indeed, he was the
greater part. He always seemed full of health and hilarity, and yet,
after all, there was a prevailing seriousness, an earnest purpose, a
determination to be a good and true man. I never knew anything of him
but what was good, and great, and orderly, and becoming a Christian. I
have heard persons say he was wild in college. Nothing more untrue. I
never heard him utter a word, and never heard of his doing a deed, that
was contrary to the rules of morality and propriety. He would criticise
some things in college studies, etc. I remember his maintaining very
decidedly that the study of mathematics was not a good discipline for
the mind, but he never set himself against college rules of order. He
was a strong temperance man, and was very bold to rebuke his
fellow-students in anything he thought to be wrong.”
Of his social and humorous qualities Mrs. Stowe says:
“In fact, Mr. Beecher was generally the centre of a circle of
tempestuous merriment, ever eddying round him in one droll form or
another.
“He was quick in repartee, an excellent mimic, and his stories would set
the gravest in a roar. He had the art, when admonished by graver people,
of somehow entrapping them into more uproarious laughing than he himself
practised, and then looking innocently surprised.
“Mr. Beecher on one occasion was informed that the head tutor of the
class was about to make him a grave exhortatory visit. The tutor was
almost seven feet high, and as solemn as an Alpine forest. But Mr.
Beecher knew that, like most solemn Yankees, he was at heart a
deplorable wag, a mere whited sepulchre of conscientious gravity, with
measureless depths of unrenewed chuckle hid away in the depths of his
heart. When apprised of his approach he suddenly whisked away into his
closet the chairs of his room, leaving only a low one which had been
sawed off at the second joint, so that it stood about a foot from the
floor. Then he crawled through the hole in that study-table which he had
made after a peculiar plan of his own, and, seated meekly among his
books, awaited the visit.
“A grave rap is heard. ‘Come in.’ Far up in the air the solemn dark face
appears. Mr. Beecher rose ingenuously and offered to come out. ‘No,
never mind,’ says the visitor; ‘I just came to have a little
conversation with you. Don’t move.’
“‘Oh!’ says Beecher innocently, ‘pray sit down, sir,’ indicating the
only chair.
“The tutor looked apprehensively, but began the process of sitting down.
He went down, down, down, but still no solid ground being gained,
straightened himself up and looked uneasy.
“‘I don’t know but that chair is too low for you; do let me get you
another,’ said Beecher meekly.
“‘Oh! no, my young friend, don’t rise, don’t trouble yourself; it is
perfectly agreeable to me; in fact, I like a low seat.’ And with these
words the tall man doubled up like a jack-knife, and was seen sitting
with his grave face between his knees, like a grasshopper drawn up for a
spring. He heaved a deep sigh and his eyes met the eyes of Mr. Beecher;
the hidden spark of native depravity within him was exploded by one
glance at those merry eyes, and he burst into a loud roar of merriment,
which the two continued for some time, greatly to the amusement of the
boys who were watching to hear how Beecher would come out with his
lecture. The chair was known thereafter as the ‘Tutor’s Delight.’”
He carried his usual sports with him into college life. “On Saturday
afternoons,” says Lewis Tappan, “we often revisited the woods in the
rear of our former home, on which occasion your father would climb the
tallest trees and place a pillow-case over the holes where the flying
squirrels were. I on the ground rapped the trees, startling the inmates,
who were caught in their efforts to escape.
“Botanical and geological specimens were collected on the way, and in
his room your father had a good collection of the latter.”
He joined a club of eight who boarded a mile from college, that the
going and returning for their meals might give them six miles of
exercise a day. This was done in part to save expense, the board being
cheaper at that distance from the village. He also walked from college
to Boston, more than a hundred miles, on his vacations, for the same
reason. Yet, with all his care in economy, and although his board cost
him but $1.50 a week, it was thought at one time impossible to keep him
in college on account of the expense, as this letter, written by a
friend of the family during his Freshman year, will explain:
“While Henry and Charles were in college your father and mother felt
very much straitened for money. One evening particularly they were
talking about it, and did not know what they should do to keep the boys
along. At last your father said: ‘Well, the Lord always has taken care
of me, and I am sure he always will.’ The mother lay awake, she told me
afterwards, and cried. She cried because she did not see how they should
get along; but what most troubled her was that her husband had so much
faith and she had not any.
“The next morning was Sabbath morning. Some one rang at the door, and a
letter was handed in containing a $100 bill and no name. They came up to
tell me, as they always did, but they did not know, nor I then, who gave
it. I found out afterwards it was Mr. Homes—a thank-offering at the
conversion of one of his children.“
The following letter, written near the close of his Freshman year, shows
the bent of his mind at this period:
”MY DEAR SISTER:
“I write principally to tell you that I have sent the ‘Book of Nature,’
and that it is probably at the stage-house.
“But I want to consult you on a _plan_ that I have formed—for I possess
real Beecher blood in the matter of _planning_. It is this: In my six
weeks’ vacation, and in the four weeks’ one, I mean to attach myself as
some kind of agent to the Bible, or Tract, or Education, or some other
society, wherever I can, and travel round to the small towns at a
distance, and collect funds or distribute Bibles and tracts, or
something like that, or do something or other—of course I can’t tell
what they may want me to do.
“I shall in a month or two be eighteen years old, and I think that that
is old enough to begin to do something. I can get letters of the
president and professors here and of gentlemen of Boston to establish my
mission, so that folks will not think that I am collecting for my own
purposes under the name of some society. Will you write to me about it?
Tell C. that I have engaged one to hear me recite botany. I am going to
establish a daily prayer-meeting here, and pray for a revival. Pray for
us, too. Mount Pleasant is in a very bad state. Lotteries are here
without number—five dollars is the highest prize—and books and
everything else, morals and all, are going, I believe, and the masters
(blind fellows) know nothing of it, although one of the monitors handed
in to Mr. Fellowes a _lottery scheme_ instead of his report in the
division.
“Give my love to Mary and husband, Catherine, Cos. Elizabeth, and all
who care for me, taking a goodly portion to yourself.
“Your Brother,
“H. C. B.”
Lest we get a stronger impression of his sanctity at this time than the
facts would warrant, we add this incident, related by himself, of one of
his vacation experiences in Boston that has in it a very decided flavor
of humorous and unsanctified humanity: “Looking for a friend, I rapped
at the door where I thought he lived. The door stuck, but at last flew
open after a good deal of tugging from the other side, and a very
red-faced woman appeared and asked in a very cross tone what I wanted.
‘Does Mr. ——— live here?’ I asked very meekly. ‘No, he don’t!’ snapped
the woman, and slammed the door in my face. I thought I would teach her
a lesson; so, after I had walked a little ways to give her time to get
to work, I went back and rapped again as if I wanted to tear the knocker
off. And when the same woman opened the door I shouted at the top of my
voice, ‘_Who said he did?_’ and then turned and walked away. When I
reached the corner the woman was still gazing after me in amazed
silence.”
It was at Amherst that young Beecher began his anti-slavery career, as
he tells us in his sermon upon the death of Wendell Phillips:
“Fifty years ago, during my college life, I was chosen by the Athenian
Society to debate the question of African colonization, which then was
new, fresh, and enthusiastic.... Fortunately I was assigned to the
negative side of the question, and in preparing to speak I prepared my
whole life. I contended against colonization as a condition of
emancipation—enforced colonization was but little better than enforced
slavery—and advocated immediate emancipation on the broad ground of
human rights. I knew but very little then, but I knew this, that all men
are designed of God to be free, a fact which ought to be the text of
every man’s life—this sacredness of humanity as given of God, redeemed
from animalism by Jesus Christ, crowned and clothed with rights that no
law nor oppression should dare touch.”
Of his religious life at this period we give the story in his own words:
“When I went to college there was a revival there, in which I was
prodigiously waked up. I was then about seventeen years old, and I had
begun to pass from boyhood to manhood, but I was yet in an unsettled
state of mind. I had no firm religious ground to stand upon. I was
beginning to slough hereditary influences without being able to take on
more salutary influences, and I went through another phase of suffering
which was far worse than any that I had previously experienced. It
seemed as though all the darknesses of my childhood were mere puffs to
the blackness which I was now passing through. My feeling was such that
if dragging myself on my belly through the street had promised any
chance of resulting in good I would have done it. No man was so mean
that I was not willing to ask him to pray for me. There was no
humiliation that I would not have submitted to ten thousand times over
if thereby I could have found relief from the doubt, perplexity, and
fear which tormented me.
“I went to Dr. Humphrey in my darkness of soul and said: ‘I am without
hope and am utterly wretched, and I want to be a Christian.’ He sat and
looked with great compassion upon me (for he was one of the best men on
earth; if there is a saint in heaven Dr. Humphrey is one), and said:
‘Ah! it is the Spirit of God, my young man; and when the Spirit of God
is at work with a soul I dare not interfere.’ And I went away in blacker
darkness than I came, if possible.
“I went to an inquiry-meeting which Professor Hitchcock was conducting,
and when he saw me there he said: ‘My friends, I am so overwhelmed with
the consciousness of God’s presence in this room that I cannot speak a
word.’ And he stopped talking, and I got up and went out without
obtaining rescue or help.
“Then I resorted to prayer, and frequently prayed all night—or should
have done so if I had not gone to sleep; I tried a great many devices; I
strove with terrific earnestness and tremendous strength; and I remember
that one night, when I knelt before the fire where I had been studying
and praying, there came the thought to my mind: ‘Will God permit the
devil to have charge of one of his children that does not want to be
deceived?’ and in an instant there rose up in me such a sense of God’s
taking care of those who put their trust in him that for an hour all the
world was crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and I sprang to my feet
and began to cry and laugh; and, feeling that I must tell somebody what
the Lord had done for me, I went and told Dr. Humphrey and others.
“I endeavored, from that time out, to help those who were in trouble of
mind like that in which I had been whelmed; and yet I was in a sort of
half-despair.”
It was in one of these half-despairing moods, doubtless, that he sought
counsel from Moody Harrington, of whose piety and wisdom in directing
inquirers he has often spoken. Harrington’s room-mate writes:
“It was in the midst of this great religious movement that one day Henry
Ward Beecher came to our room—how distinctly I remember it!—and, with a
countenance betokening a mighty pressure upon his spirit, said
substantially: ‘Harrington, I am in great distress, in spiritual
darkness; I don’t think I have any religion. I’ve come to talk with
you.’ My room-mate took him into his bedroom and talked and prayed with
him a long time, and when the young man came out from that interview his
face seemed radiant with hope and peace. Years after Beecher had become
famous he would repeatedly speak of Harrington as having been to him a
spiritual helper beyond that of any other man he had known.”
His first talk in a religious meeting outside the school or college is
thus described:
“I think it must have been late in my Freshman career at Amherst College
or in my Sophomore. My mind was much stirred and distressed at that time
on the subject of religion. In the class above, one Moody Harrington
took much interest in me. He was in some respects a remarkable man for
profound religious feeling, for fervid imagination, and for remarkable
eloquence in exhortation. He lifted me by his personal sympathy and his
encouragement out of great despondency and set me on my feet with some
tremblings of heart. On one occasion he asked me to walk with him one
evening to Logtown to a little prayer and conference meeting. After
Harrington had spoken for a while he turned to me all unexpectedly and
asked me to make some remarks. I was confounded. I rose and said
something—I do not know what, nor did I quite know then, for everything
was whirling darkness while I was speaking, but it was the letting out
of waters. I never ride past the Dwight house without going out of the
cars to look over the place and to bring back to memory that dismal
night, and that dismal speech, and the dismal walk back to college,
ashamed and silent.”
Another important event took place in his Sophomore year, January 2,
1832. He became engaged to Eunice White Bullard, daughter of Dr. Artemas
Bullard, of West Sutton, Mass. Of this event, the preceding and
succeeding acquaintance, our dear mother has written in a paper entitled
“Looking Back,” of which she says: “Of course all this is no help to you
in preparing your father’s life, but I sit and dream of the past and
write just as it rises before me, as fresh as if but yesterday, hoping
by doing so something may come to me that will be of service to you.”
We shall give her notes just as she has written them, leaving it for our
readers to judge whether or not they are of any service:
“LOOKING BACK.
“Fifty-seven years ago last May, 1831, my brother Ebenezer, then in his
Freshman year in Amherst College, wrote: ‘The term closes this week. I
shall walk home (fifty miles), and would like to bring two of my
classmates with me. We shall start before the sun and hope to be with
you by supper-time. Don’t be at any more trouble than if there were
three Ebenezers coming home.’
“No; of course not! Sickness in the village made it impossible to get
help that summer, and mother and I were doing the work alone for a very
large family, so large that a half-dozen more or less made little
difference.
“In good time for supper, weary and travel-soiled, my brother and his
two friends made their appearance: one a tall, very dark-complexioned
gentleman, the other a very verdant-looking youth, a Freshman of not
quite eighteen—an age when one is prepared to find a young man awkward
and painfully embarrassed, and to look with dismay on the prospect of
trying to entertain and make him comfortable.
“But even then the roguish mouth, the laughing, merry eyes, the quaint
humor and quick repartee, very soon put all such anxiety to flight. This
was _Henry Ward Beecher_ as I first saw him. Truth to tell, an
exceedingly homely young man. But, in youth or old age, who ever thought
of that, or, thinking, believed it after being with him an hour? Before
that first evening was ended none of the family thought of him as a
stranger; he was thoroughly at home with all. There were truly ‘only
three Ebenezers there,’ each equally ready for quiet conversation,
music, fun, repartee, or teasing; but the youngest of the three was the
most expert in the latter accomplishment.
“After our outside work was done mother and I took knitting and sewing
and sat down with them. I was going to wind a skein of sewing-silk (that
was before _spools_ were common), and, as was my custom, put it over the
back of a chair. More gallant and thoughtful, _apparently_, than his
older companions, this young gentleman insisted upon holding it for me
to wind. For some reason—_perfectly unaccountable_ if one judged only by
his quiet, innocent face, without watching the eyes and mouth—that skein
became as intricately tangled as if tied by Macbeth’s witches. ‘A badly
tangled skein, is it not?’ said he, when I had lost half my evening in
getting it wound. ‘Rather more troublesome, I imagine, than if I had
kept it on the chair,’ I replied. ‘It was a good trial of patience,
anyhow,’ was his response to the laugh that followed.
“Even my quiet mother was not exempt from some of his mirthful sallies,
but he carried, in all his fun, such an inexhaustible store of
gentleness and good-humor that I think she really enjoyed it. Often in
after-years she used to say that Henry always made her feel young again.
“My father had been called out some distance to see a patient and had
not yet met the ‘three Ebenezers,’ but came in just as we were all
laughing heartily at some story Henry had told. He stood in the doorway,
tall, dignified, and somewhat stern. When at last we became conscious of
his presence brother at once came forward and introduced his classmates.
Father received them courteously, but a little of the sternness still
lingered on his face as he took the chair which, without the least
appearance of boldness, _somehow_ young Mr. Beecher was the first to
bring him, yet in no way seeming to put himself forward. Little by
little the same subtle influence that had pervaded the whole evening’s
enjoyment began to steal over father. The little cloud seen at first
vanished, and long before it was time to retire my father was telling
stories and Henry following with another as freely as if they had been
boys together.
“The others joined, but it was to _young Beecher_ that father was most
drawn. When the ‘good-nights’ were said, and while I went to the dairy
to make some preparations for breakfast, father and mother took counsel
together about the work for the morrow and various matters; but just as
I returned father was saying: ‘He’s smart. If he lives he’ll make his
mark in the world.’ ‘Who, father?’ I asked. ‘Why, young Beecher.’ (But
father didn’t quite like the ‘mark’ he made a few months later—‘Nothing
but a boy!’)
“The visit was prolonged some days, and there was no end to the fun and
frolic. Your father was constantly investigating, and by no means lacked
assistance from my brother and his other more demure classmate, who,
however, stayed only part of the time.
“Mother and I were necessarily much of the time busy in the kitchen,
milk-cellar, dairy, etc., but these young collegians found those places
most attractive. The gentle way mother smiled at all the younger one’s
mischievous pranks was a source of perpetual delight to him. He always
said he fell in love with my mother, and, not being able to get her,
took up with me.
“One day, in taking out the bread, pies, etc., from the old-fashioned
brick oven with the long-handled shovel, she dropped some ashes on one
of the pies, and called me from the dairy to get it off while she
removed other articles. Your father sprang forward. ‘No, no; I will get
it off for you,’ and, respectfully taking it from her hands, the three,
without her seeing the mischief, marched off with it into the garden,
and, seating themselves under a big apple-tree, ate it all up. This
labor of love accomplished, the others rather held back from proclaiming
it, but your father demurely walked in and handed mother the empty
plate, saying: ‘There! see, we have cleaned the plate nicely!’
“One evening your uncle told him one of their classmates was engaged to
Miss ———. ‘I don’t believe it,’ said young Beecher. ‘She knows nothing
about singing, and I am sure F——— would never marry one who did not. I
know I never would marry a woman who could not sing.’ Short-sighted
mortal! In the evening brother asked him to get his flute and have some
music. He did so, and after a short time asked me to sing. I replied: ‘I
can’t; I never sang a note in my life.’
“In the summer and fall after first meeting your father I taught school
in Clappville, South Leicester, Mass., and at the commencement of his
fall vacation at Amherst Henry found it necessary to go from Amherst to
Boston (thinking it _shorter, perhaps_!) _via_ Clappville, and entered
my school-room just as I was dismissing the school for the day. He spent
the evening at Brother Jones’s, where I was boarding, and, incidentally
of course, remarked that he understood I was intending to visit my aunt
in Whitingsville during the winter. I replied that after my school
closed I was thinking of having a play-spell before taking another, and
might be there at least through December.
“After my school closed, while spending some time at home before my
visit to my aunt, he called at father’s, and incidentally (again)
remarked that he had been requested to teach the town school in
Northbridge, and was to board at a Mr. Fletcher’s (Whitingsville was
only a part of Northbridge, and he knew it all the time).
“‘Why,’ said my father, ‘that’s where Eunice will be. Now, child, you
have been teasing to go to some academy this winter and go on with your
Latin, but,’ turning to the demure, quiet-looking young man, who had not
seemed to pay any attention to what was going on—‘but she has overworked
the past few months, and I won’t let her go to school. Perhaps, as you
are to board at her aunt’s and she will be there a short time, you might
give her some help if she is in trouble with her Latin!’ Strange as it
may seem, he didn’t appear to feel it an intrusion, but professed
himself as very ready to render me any service. Even my clear-sighted
mother saw nothing out of the way in father’s suggestion. ‘He was such a
boy!’ as she said afterward. Neither did I, as I might have done had he
been older; only, even though he was now a Sophomore, I didn’t believe
he could help me much—_I_ who had been a school-ma’am for three terms!
And how young and boyish he did look! But (an after-thought) he might,
after all, know much more than his _looks_ led us to give him credit
for.
“He came to uncle’s a week after I did, one Saturday, so as to be ready
to begin school Monday. That evening (January 2, 1832) the young
teacher, my cousin, a young lad who was to be under his care, and myself
were all in the parlor writing. Uncle and aunt were out calling. He
interrupted my writing by asking how far I had progressed in Latin. Was
I perfect in the Latin grammar? Could I conjugate all the verbs? etc. I
thought it a queer way to begin teaching, but I said, ‘Oh! yes; I think
so.’ ‘Suppose you try some of them, and let me see how well you
understand them.’ I laughed to myself, for I was sure I knew them
perfectly, and rather thought I knew them as well as my teacher; but I
respectfully conjugated the verbs as he gave them out, and at last, ‘Go
through the verb “amo.”’ I did so, soberly, honestly, without a thought
of any mischievous intentions. I went through it creditably, and was
told that the lesson was perfect.
“I then turned to my writing, and soon after he slipped a bit of paper
on to my writing-desk: ‘Will you go with me as missionary to the West?’
A few minutes after my cousin finished his studies for the evening and
went to bed. Then some few short questions ensued and a few shorter
answers not necessary to repeat. But, as the embarrassment consequent
upon such abrupt and unexpected questions had somewhat diminished, he
urged a more decided, definite answer from me personally. Simply
referring him to my parents did not satisfy him, so I quietly remarked:
‘Why! I can’t sing, and only a short time since you said you would never
marry a woman who could not sing!’ ‘Oh! that was six months ago, and I
have changed my mind.’ ‘And in six months from now you may change it
again.’ ‘No! I did change it the very minute you said that night that
you never sang. There is no fear of my changing again.’
“The next day, Sabbath, uncle’s horse shied going to church, and tipped
us all out of the sleigh; and Henry was so anxious to know if I were
hurt, paying no attention to others, that he awakened uncle’s
suspicions.
“That week at the week-day evening meeting (Preparatory Lecture) Henry
was called to speak, and did wonderfully well, to the great surprise of
all who heard that ‘young lad.’ After that, while he stayed at
Whitingsville, he spoke at almost all the evening meetings, and always
with increasing surprise and acceptance. I do not remember your father’s
alluding to those meetings but once, and that, I think, was to an
English friend who called when we lived on ‘The Heights.’ He said,
smiling: ‘Whitingsville was my first pastorate. While teaching there one
winter I spoke there several times and in some other places near by.’
“The next Saturday after giving me that momentous question on that
little slip of paper, Henry rode to West Sutton and spoke to father and
mother, to their infinite surprise. Mother was grieved, but father was
very angry. ‘Why, you are a couple of babies! You don’t know your own
minds yet, and won’t for some years to come,’ he repeated over and over
again. (_Fifty-seven_ years have given ample proof that we did.) But
father was grieved, mortified, angry that he should have been so blind.
But who could resist your father when he pleaded in earnest? Mother
often spoke of it long after we were married. She said it was wonderful
how he swayed that strong, proud man, my father, who winced at being
outgeneralled by a boy. His extremely youthful appearance perfectly
blinded them both. But mother was soon only a listener, charmed by the
modest, manly, earnest manner, illumined occasionally by flashes of
humor, with which he opened his heart to father and finally overcame
him. From the first Henry’s youth and the long engagement was father’s
only objection, and the fear that, as he grew older, he would repent of
such imprudence.
“From the first hour father saw him he was drawn to him, and when he
left after this conversation, and returned to Whitingsville, father
said: ‘Boy as he seems, he will be true to Eunice; I have no fear on
that score.’ Just before your father came to teach _several branches_ he
went a few miles out from Amherst and gave a lecture, I think on
temperance (am not quite sure), for which he received five dollars. With
it, among other things, he bought me Baxter’s ‘Saint’s Rest’—not a usual
love-token—and some paper that was for me if his suit prospered. On the
fly-leaf of the little book, in pencil, were the following lines:
‘Take it; ’tis a gift of love
That seeks thy good alone;
Keep it for the giver’s sake,
And read it for thine own.’
“Before his next vacation he walked to Brattleboro’, Vermont, gave a
lecture, received ten dollars, and then bought our engagement-ring, a
plain gold ring, which was also my wedding-ring. With the remainder he
bought books.
“The three years in college soon passed. We only met once in three
months—vacations—and there was nothing unusual to record. The ‘young
boy,’ ‘too young to know what he was about,’ as we were so often told,
went on toward manhood, unshaken by opposition, laughing at all
prophecies of inconstancy or change, and then we bade farewell for four
years while Henry went to Lane Seminary, Walnut Hills, Ohio, for his
theological course.”
Somewhere Father Beecher has described a “Saxon courtship” as “a grave
and serious thing. It is a matter of consideration. I have known a
proposal of love to be stated like a proposition, and calmly argued for
and against with far less warmth than Luther would have felt in debating
a thesis. Indeed, many courtships are like attempts at kindling fires
with green wood—a few starveling coals are heaped together, a mere spark
dances in and out upon the inhospitable charcoal, and disappears on one
side as fast as it appears on the other. But by all manner of shavings
and bits of paper—mere trinkets, as it were, and billet-doux—a slight
flame is got up, which strives, with doubtful prospect, to convert the
smoke into blaze. The bellows are called in, the fire is fairly driven
up to its work, the green sticks begin to sizzle at either end; and
though at last, when the heat triumphs, the fire is large and lasting,
the poor fellow that kindled it had to work for it.”
Now, we never could bring ourselves to asking direct questions, and we
do not suppose that we should ever have been any wiser if we had; but,
from the references sometimes made to riding through covered bridges,
from the comical look that would come to his face and the blushes that
would be sure to come to her cheeks when the raillery around the table
became hot and personal, we were led to believe that this was not their
kind.
On two leaves of his diary, written probably while at his home in Boston
in the vacation that followed his Freshman year, and during the summer
in which he had made the acquaintance of Miss Bullard, we find the
following:
“_Sept. 3, 1831, Sab. morn._—I found the correspondence of my father and
own mother this morning, and eagerly sought out _her_ letters and read
them. O my mother! I could not help kissing the letters. I looked at the
paper and thought that her hand had rested upon it while writing it. The
hand of my mother! She had formed every letter which I saw. _She_ had
_looked_ upon that paper which I now looked upon. She had folded it. She
had sent it. But I found out more of her _mind_ than I ever knew before;
more of her _feelings_, her _piety_. I should think from her writings
that she was very _amiable_, _lovely_, and _confiding_ in her
disposition, yet had much dignity. She appeared to have a mind very
clear, strong, yet not _perceptible_ till brought out by her feelings.
Her letter to father in which she treats of ‘love to _God_, whether we
should love him because he has done us good or not,’ etc., I was much
pleased with. And I could not help observing that her letters were
superior, more refined and conclusive, than the corresponding ones of
father’s. They corresponded upon _subjects_, it seems, as pride, dress,
slander, etc., etc. Her piety was doubted by herself, although no one
who reads her description of her feelings can doubt for a moment that
Christ was found within her heart.
“The letter to father in reply, apparently, to one in which he had
expressed his feelings toward her and urged for her permission to hope
for a future union, pleased me much. There was much playfulness about
it. I thought that I could see that she loved him while she was writing
it, yet she tried not exactly to show it. I should think that at the
conclusion she told her feelings frankly, from one line which I saw, but
the rest was torn off. I suspect that father did it that no one might
ever see it.”
In common with many other students of limited means, he taught a term of
eight weeks during three of the four years of his college course, using
the winter vacation, which was at first six weeks long, and borrowing
two weeks from the winter term in college.
Of his experience in Hopkinton and some other matters, especially the
fear of his friends concerning his engagement, the following letter to
his brother William gives some interesting details:
“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.