CHAPTER XVIII. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Mr. Beecher a Younger Child-Death of his Mother-His Step-Mother's Religious Influence-Ma'am Kilbourn's School-The Passing Bell-Unprofitable Schooling-An Inveterate School Joker-Masters the Latin Grammar -Goes to Amherst College-His Love of Flowers-Modes of Study; a Reformer-Mr. Beecher and the Solemn Tutor-His Favorite Poetry-His Introduction to Phrenology-His Mental Philosophy-Doctrine of Spiritual Intuition-Punctuality for Joke's Sake-Old School and New School-Doubts on Entering the Ministry-Settlement at Lawrenceburg-His Studies; First Revival-Large Accessions to the Church-"Tropical Style "-Ministerial Jokes-Slavery in the Pulpit-The Transfer to Brooklyn-Plymouth Church Preaching-Visit to England-Speeches in England-Letters from EnglandChristian View of England-The Exeter Hall Speech-Preaches an Unpopular Forgiveness. HENRY WARD BEECHER was the eighth child of Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813. The first child of a family is generally an object of high hope and anxious and careful attention. They are observed, watched-and if the parents are so disposed, carefully educated, and often over-watched and over-educated. But in large families, as time rolls on and children multiply, especially to those in straitened worldly circumstances, all the interest of novelty dies out before the advent of younger children, and they are apt to find their way in early life unwatched and unheralded. Dr. Beecher's salary was eight hundred dollars a year, not always promptly paid. This made the problem of feed ing, clothing and educating a family of ten children a dark one. The family was constantly enlarged by boarders, young ladies attending the female academy, and whose board helped somewhat to the support of the domestic establishment, but added greatly to the cares of the head manager. The younger members of the Beecher family therefore came into existence in a great bustling household of older people, all going their separate ways, and having their own grownup interests to carry. The child, growing up in this busy, active circle, had constantly impressed upon it a sense of personal insignificance as a child, and the absolute need of the virtue of passive obedience and non-resistance as regards all grown-up people. To be statedly washed and dressed and catechised, got to school at regular hours in the morning, and to bed inflexibly at the earliest possible hour at night, comprised about all the attention that children could receive in those days. The mother of Henry Ward died when he was three years old; his father was immersed in theological investigations and a wide sphere of pastoral labors and great general ecclesiastical interests, his grownup brothers and sisters in their own separate life history, and the three younger children were therefore left to their mortal pilgrimage, within certain welldefined moral limits, much after their own way. The step-mother, who took the station of mother, was a lady of great personal elegance and attractiveness, of high intellectual and moral culture, who from having been in early life the much admired belle in general society, came at last from an impulse of moral heroism HIS STEP-MOTHER'S RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. 507 combined with personal attachment, to undertake the austere labors of a poor minister's family. She was a person to make a deep impression on the minds of any children. There was a moral force about her, a dignity of demeanor, an air of elegance and superior breeding, which produced a constant atmosphere of unconscious awe in the minds of little ones. Then her duties were onerous, her conscience inflexible, and under the weight of these her stock of health and animal spirits sunk, so that she was for the most part pensive and depressed. Her nature and habits were too refined and exacting for the bringing up of children of great animal force and vigor, under the strain and pressure of straitened circumstances. The absurdities and crudenesses incident to the early days of such children appeared to her as serious faults, and weighed heavily on her conscience. The most intense positive religious and moral influence the three little ones. of the family received was on Sunday night, when it was her custom to take them to her bed-room and read and talk and pray with them. At these times, deep though vague religious yearnings were created; but as she was much of her time an invalid, and had little sympathy with the ordinary feelings of childhood, she gave an impression of religion as being like herself, calm, solemn, inflexible, mysteriously sad and rigorously exacting. In those days none of the to children that are now usual. attentions were paid The community did not recognize them. There was no child's literature; there were no children's books. The Sunday school was yet an experiment, in a fluctuating, uncertain |