Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 March 1887 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS JOUPNAX, MONDAY, MARCH 7, 1887.

himself and his congregation trith the family and friends of Mr. Beecher. Dr. Parker prayed thsit they might be comforted by the assurance that th stricken preacher was a servant of the Lord fully prepared to enter heaven. "We mourn, yet vra rejoice in our sadness. "Why should we monrn when a trayeler completes his journey? Why should we prieve when a voyager, leaving the sea, places his foot on the uolid earth? Why ehould we lament .when a wanderer joins his kindred at home?"

ttlOGHAPniCAL. AND CHARACTERISTIC The L.lfo and Career of the Great Treacher The AVork He Has Dune. Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Conn., on June 24, li13, the eighth child of Lyman and Roxana Beecher. As is usually the case with the younper children in large families, be received much less attention in his youthful days than falls to the lot of the first born. This difference in treatment arises from a variety of causes; tuc when, as in this case, the parents are in straitened circumstances, no other explanation is needful. The anxious watchfulness which follows e very movement of the first child of even the most hntnble persona cannot be bestowed upou those who come after, however great the desire of-the parenSS may be to surround all with like care. This enforced neelect, howevor, is not always a misfortune, but somoticies quite the reverse, and far more wholesome in its results than a tco solicitous supervision. At all events, the early acquaintance of this eolith child with the stern realities of life, and his deprivation of what are now considered the preroeatives of boyhood, freedom from care and responsibility, seem to have had a most excellent effect upon his character. Dr. Lyman Beecher's salary was but $800 a ye5jr, and that not always well paid. Absorbed in relipious work and church affairs, the father found little time to bestow upon his children, savo to see that they were regularly catechized and were provided with such means for education as he could afford. With the mother and elder sisters ekinsr out the small income by keeping a houseful of boarders, comparatively little care could be expected from that quarter for the babies of the families. The little Beechers, including Henry Ward, were taught the virtue of absolute obedience to all older people, were sent to school regularly, to bed at the earliest possible hour, and were impressed with a general sense of their own insignificance. Mrs. Beecher died when Henry was but three years of age, and the home training which made its impress upon his. character was that received from his step-mother, n woman of high mental and moral culture, and an almost morbid conscientiousness, combined with great religious zeal. Owing perhaps to the unaccustomed duties which pressed upon her in tbe management of the large family whose care she had undertaken, the second Mrs. Beecher was much of the time depressed and pensive. This added a melancholy and solemnity to the religious instruction which she cave the children, and, as Mr. Beecher himself said, long afterward cast a gloom over the subject which he was long unable to overcome when considering such matters. In respect to moral teaching1, however, her influence was all that could be desired, and being a woman of great elegance of manner and personal attractiveness, the im pression 6he made upon the children was shown in later years in their high-bred bearing. in ma scnooiboy aays xienry waragaresmau promise of the later eminence which he was to reach. Ha was, in fact, dull in his studies, shy and stolid in manner, and with an utterance so thick and indistinct that he was understood with difficulty. Educational accommodations were limited in Litchfield, and up to his tenth year he had enjoyed only the advantage of a few months in tbe district school. In the meantime, however, he t;revv physically vigorous and laid the foundation for that sturdy health which 'has enabled him to remain in active life and to perform his clerical duties long after many of his early contemporaries had passed' into the retirement of feeble old age. At this time he wa3 placed in a private school, where he made some progress, though he was Doted more for his mischievous pranks and irrepressible humor than for his familiarity with his studies. In fact, it is recorded of him that all through his academic and collegiate course he was regarded as a humorist first of all, so great was his fund of animal spirits. When he was twelve years old his father moved to Boston, where the boy was placed in a Latin school, and the effort was made, as one of his biographers says, to smite the Latin grammar into his mind by a pressuro like that by which a com is stamped in a mint. Alter a year of this young Henry rebelled and threatened to Bo to sea. Dr. Beecher perceived that something must be done, and transferred him to 2fotpt Pleasant Academy, Amherst, where presently he began to develop some indications of his real brilliancy of talent hitherto so unsus pected. He fell under the care of a young mathemat ical teacher who so inspired his ambition that he became proficient in the study, though he had no natural taete for it, and, as he lately re marked, has always found figures troublesome. Ice mastery or this branch, nowever, was a good mental training, and served the purpose of teaching him how to study. At this time, also, he was put through a strict drill in elocution by a Professor Lovell, whom Mr. Beecher remem bored gratefully to the day of his death as one who had aided him to overcome his natural dis abilities of speech and manner. He was drilled,! also, in the management and control of his body, ' training that was or much importance in his ifter-career as an orator. At the close of bis first year in the academy a revival of religion in the school awoke that religious sensibility which was his bv inheritance and the result of home iducation, and immediately he took upon him self irrevocable vows to engage in religious work. Up to this time the goal of his ambition naa Deen tne navy, ms scneme icr running away to sea having been shrewdly turned by his father into the .hope of entering the navy as a midshipman, for which portion an education was a requisite: Dr. Beecher desired all of his boys to preach the gospel, and was therefore overjoyed that without undue pressure this son had elected to enter the ministry. His course of education was now .directed to this purpose. He remained three years in all at the icademy, after which he entered college. Here he toot: an elective course, which prevented the granting of a degree, but which, beingin the line of his tastes and thought, afforded him great pleasure, and was probably more beneficial than i carrying out of the then stereotyped programme would have been. His ability as an oritor already began to be shown, and rhetoric he regarded as his special field. His habits of study were somewhat peculiar. 9e had made for himself at a carpenter's, a cirnilar table with a hole In the middle, where was txel a seat Established in this, with his books

around him, he read and pondered, and laid that foundation of that comprehensive knowledge for which he has since been noted. During his college career he took the positionof a reformer, but was popular with both students and faculty, his never-failing high spirits making him a merry companion at all times. This peculiarity of temperament prevented him from taking first rank as a religious man, and has, it may be added, militated against him since in the minds of the many to whom religion is a thing of solemnity and sanctimoniousness. He was very fond of the English classics, and especially of the old English poets. Tbe only poem he ever committed to memory, he once told a friend, was written by an obscure contemporary of Sbakspeare. The last stanza of this poem read as follows: "He that endurrs for what his conscience knows Not to le ill. doth from a patience hitrh

Jjook on the only cause whereto be owes Those sufferings, not on his misery; The more he endures the more bis glory grows. Which never grows from imbecility; Only the best composed and worthiest hearts God sets to act the hardest and constant'st parts." During his two last college years Mr. Beecher taught country schools during the lone winter vacations, and thus raised the funds with which be laid the foundation of that peculiar library which his tastes caused him to accumulate. He also engaged in religions work, delivered temperance lectures, and joined in the controversy concerning slavery, in which, from the start, he took position as an Abolitionist After his graduation, in 1834. Mr. Beecher joined his father in Cincinnati, to which place the latter had removed two years previously. There, in Lane Seminary, was raging a theological battle between the Calvinistic forces and the advancing rationalism of the New England school. Henry Ward was devoted to his father, but without taking any active part in this controversy found himself so greatly influenced by the arguments of the opposition that he felt many theological doubts; and during these periods of mental conflict he seriously contemplated going into another profession, as his brother, who had studied with him, actually did do at this time. However, out of regard for his father, he did not do so, but as a result of his reflections formu lated a creed which, to his mind, reconciled the principles of Christianity with those of the church to which he was attached to a degree which enabled him to retain the theological bonds. This creed has been modified and changed somewhat as he advanced in life, audits liberality has occasioned much criticism, but the points wherein he differed from the strictly orthodox and Calvinistic brethren can be specified only by the theologians. HIS MINISTERIAL CAKEF.R. He finished a theological course at Lane Sem inary, after which h9 married and immediately accepted a call, the first that came, to Lawrenceburg, Ind. He had preached in that town but a short time when he was invited to Indianapo lis, where he labored for eight years. WThile here he lived a life of much simplicity, the salarv paid by the then struggling church being lnsuuicient for a more pretentious style of living. During this period he preached twice on Sunday, held at least five other services a week, and, by consent of his flock, engaged in missionary service through the State for a portion of each year. His great social talent made him very popular, and his play of humor in his discourse sdrew many to hear him who conld not have been reached by the usual style of exhorta tion. During the third year of his ministry in Indianapolis a great revival of religion occurred in Terre Haute, as a partial result, at least, of his labors. This was followed by revivals in other parts of the State, and for many months he was unceasingly active. A member or his church in Indianapolis says that in the spring of 1812 a re markable revival began, in which the whole town was pervaded by the influence of religion, and which continued for many weeks. During its progress the pastor is remembered as plungins through the wet streets, his trousers stuffed in his muddy bootlegs, earnest, untiring, swift, with a merry heart, a glowing face and i helpful word for everyone; the whole day preach ing Christ to the people where be could find them, and at uight preaching still where the people were sure to find him." One hundred persons were added to the church at this time. Early in the following year the ehurch had larsre accessions, as it also had in 1845. There was a continuous growth in the membership, in fact, until the pastor resigned, in 1847, to accept a call to the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, n. y. Mr. Beecher formed strong and warm friend ships during his pastorate in Indianapolis, and ha3 always since taken great interest in the place and the people. It was in this city that he first began that war upon slavery which he afterwards waeed so relentlessly. There was a strong feeling in Indianapolis against introducing the subject into pulpit d'scussions, but Mr. Beecher haa no sympathy with this sentiment, and deftly brought up the matter without previous announcement of his intention, by preach ing three sermons on the life or Moses and the bondaee of the children of Israel. Under this cover he gained the ear of the people and pres ently surprised them, attacking the system of American slavery. In Plymouth pulmt he declared at once his principles of free speech, and during the excitement aroused by the passage of the fugitive slave law labored for the cause of the oppressed with great enerey. When the battle for the settlement of Kansas was going on. and the East was sending out colonies, Mr. Beecher advocated the necessity of their going armed, and a subscription was raised in Plymouth Church to supply every family with a Bible ana a rifle. This raised a great outcry, of course, but not many years later churches which had risen in protest at these rifles were aiding to equip soldiers and prepare munitions of war. During the war Mr. Beecher's labors were incessant. Plymouth Church took charge of raising and equipping one regiment, the First Long Island, and many of its young men went out in it. At this time Mr. Beecher took the editorship of the New York Independent, wishing this opportu nity to give hi3 views wider publicity. He was in constant communication with Washington, and on intimate terms with the Secretary of War, for whose wonderful efficiency he had the greatest admiration. His multiplied labors and the burdens of tho war on his spirit broke down his health. His voice began to fail and he went to Europe for a temporary respite from work. Here occurred one of the most remarkable events in his career. On his first arrival in England he was importuned to lecture, but having gone for relaxation, he declined to do so. On his return to London from Paris, after a few weeks, during which he had heard of the battle of Gettysburg and the capture of Vicksburg, he recognized the fact that he had the opportunity to plead the cause of his country before the world, and to expose the true character of the Southern Confederacy. A series of engage ments tor iiira to gpens. wera lormeu, and he opened in Manchester to an audience of 0,000 people. The Confederacy's emissaries had made every preparation to excite popular tumult, and prevent hi3 being heard, but notwithstanding the roar and fury he pertevere 1 and said bis say in condemnation of the Rebellion and its instigators. He epoke in Glasgow. Edinburgh and Liverpool, the dis turbances and excitement in the latter place be ing ahead of any other experience. The speaker's powerful thrsique and 6trong lungs stood him in good s;rire on this occasion, as he had to outset earn a mob and drown tbe roar of a mul titude. As he said of it afterward, it was like driving a team of runaway horses and making love to a lady at the same time. These speeches had a wonderful influence toward creating an Enehsh sentiment in favor of the Northern cause where sympathy with the South had hitherto prevailed. He always regarded this as the severest labor and greatest effort of his life. After the close of the war Mr. Beecher was one of the first to advocate a policy or concilia tion and amnesty. This, being in advance of popular sentiment, created much feeling and estranged many friends, but wnn tne passage of time these differences of opinion were adjust ed, and his wisdom on that occasion acknowl edged. Since the war Mr. Beecher has continued with riymouth Church, varying his me each year with a lecture tour through the country. His strong character, personal magnetism and loy alty to his friends has produced among the members of his congregation a feeling of affection and confidence which has no parallel in this country. Foul slanders have not been sufficent to move, bnt through evil and good report they have stood by their pastor until calumny was lived down and their faith justified. Mr. Beecher has always been, noted for his in

terest in politics, but only concerned himself actively when moral questions in which he was interested were the points in controversy; as, for instance, during the war, when he. labored earnestly in behalf of the Republican party and was classed as an active member. In 1884, for no reason that has been clearly defined, he varied his usual course of procedure and espoused the cause of Mr. Clevelcnd, and labored earnestly for his election. In the summer of 18S6 Mr. and Mrs. Beecher went to England for the first time since the war, and were the recipients of many social attentions. Since their return the Plymouth pastor has remained quietly at his home in Brooklyn, occupying his leisure moments in writing an autobiography, a weekly letter for a newspaper syndicate, and doing other literary work. Recently he renewed his labors upon the ''Life of Christ," a work begun some years ago and laid aside, and it is probable that the unusual indoor confinement growing out of this hastened the attack of

apoplexy that has laid him low. During the last few weeks, in addition to other literary labors, Mr. Beecher has been furnishing a weekly letter to the Sunday press. His last one, dated Feb. 23, was on the training of children. It was an earnest, practical talk with parents relative to the dangers and temptations that beset the young, particularly in cities. It was full of serious and instructiye matter. In this letter Mr. Beecher said: "I thank God for two things yes for a thousand; but for two among many: First, that 1 was born and bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. If. I were to raise a monument of gold hieher than heaven it would be no expression of the debt of gratitude which I owe to them, for that which they unceasingly gave, by the heritage of their body and the heritage of their souls, to me. And next to that I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never became acau&inted with wickedness. I know a great deal about it; for if I hear a man say A, I know the whole alphabet of that man'slife, by which I cau imagine all the rest. If I see a single limb, I have the physiologist's talent by which I know the whole structure. But I never became acquainted with wicKedness when I was young by coming in contact with it I never was sullied in act, nor in thought, nor in feeling, when I was young. I grew up as pure as a woman. And 1 cannot express to God the thanks which I owe to my mother and to my father, and to the great household of sisters and brothers among whom I lived. " James Parton, writing about Mr. Beecher a few years ago, said: "One remarkable thing about his preaching is that he has not, like so many men of liberal tendencies, fallen into milk and-waterism. He often gives a foretaste of the terrific power which preachers will wield when they draw inspiration from science and life. Without ever frightening people with horrid pictures, of the future, he has a sense of the perils which beset human life here, upon this bank and shoal of time. It cannot be said of his preaching that he preaches 'Christianity with the bones taken out.' He does not give 'twenty minutes of tepid exhortation,' nor amuse his hearers with elegant and melodious essays upon human virtue. Philosophers and purists may cavil at parts of these sermons, and, of course, they are not perfect; but who can deny that their general effect is civilizing, humanizing, elevating and regeneratine; and that this master of preaching is a true brother of all those high and bright spirits, on both sides of the ocean, who are striving to make the soul of tnis age ni to inuent and nobly impel its new body." BEECHER IN INDIANAPOLIS. His work in the Second Church A Great Trio of Preachers Beecher's Peer liari ties. Tho Second Presbyterian Church, Zl this city, of-which Mr. Beecher was pastor for eight years, was organized, with fifteen members, late in the fall of 1838, in the lecture-room of the Old Seminary. The members were mainly or wholly seceders from the First Presbyterian Church, following what was then called the "New ScEool, one of the leaders of which wa3 Mr. Beecher's father. The little congregation was little increased dur ing the eight months preceding the arrival of its first pastor. The most prominent members were Samuel Merrill, then president of the State Bank; his son-in-law, John L Ketchum, Lawrence M. Vance, Edwin J. Peck, Wm. N. Jackson, Gen. Thomas A. Morris, some of whom, however, probably became members after Mr. Beecher's acceptance of the pastorate. He began his work in this little congregation on the last day of July, 1839, in the placo of its organization. The iect-ure-room of the Old Seminary formed the larger part of the second story, entered from a stairway in the east lobby. A platform breast high extended across the west end of the room, sur mounted by a railing. Tbe seat3 were highbacked benches as long as the platform, leaving a narrow aisle along each walL They would ac commodate, as comfortably as consistent with their construction, about two hundred people. This was the examination and exhibition room of the school it belonged to. The lower main room of the seminary had been occasionally granted to different sectaries for religious services, but nonehad been continuously held for such purposes before the occupancy by this infant church. Whatever reputation Mr. Beecher may have acquired during his Lawrenceburg pastorate was confined mainly to his denomination, and was derived in part, no doubt, from the assured and national fame of his father. At 1. a -t, when he came to this city he was known to the gen eral public better as Lyman Beecher's son than as a young pulpiteer of unusual promise. At the time of his arrival here Rev. James S. Kemper, nowvof South Charleston, O., had been in charge of the seminary a year, and jaturally took a good deal of interest in the son of a famous clergyman, recently of his own denomination, who was using his own lecture-room for a church. He soon saw the promise in the almost boyish pastor little more than boyish in age, and no more so in spirit and action and tne nrst remars the writer ever heard about the man since so widely known and admired, was made by Mr. Kemper to a little knot of his pupils, one day at "recess." "Th is the maKing or a splendid man in him, if he will trust himself and let go of . his f Ather. I have never heard anything finer than his description of the angel3 looking down over the .battlements of heaven anxiously watchine for tho rescue and return of sinners." xne commendation came from as competent a critic as there was in the city. The winter of 1839-40, in spite of the ex citeroent of the great "log-cabin" presidential campaign, saw the young pastor steadily enlarg ing the attendance on his sermons and making more urgent the necessity of more ample accom modations. Members of the Legislature were drawn to tbe dingy little lecture-room in larger crowds than to any other church in the town and the members of the Legislature in those days were many of them men of wide repute as orators themselves. Beforo the spring of J 840 opened it wa3 clear that the Second Church must have a hou3e of its owu. and preparations for it were begun. During Mr. Beecher's early residence here, he and his wife lived in the family of the late Her vey Bates, and he added something to a not very fat salarv six hundred dollars a rear, the writer thinks, in the first year at least by tak ing as pupils some of the girls, now grand' mothers, of the city. It was esteemed a fayor

by the parents, and probably was regarded in

much the same light by the teacher, whose restless activity needed more occupation than his congregation afforded him. But the building of his new church soon took up his spare time and energy, and his schoolmaster's experience did not outlast the year of its beginning. The Second Presbyterian Church, far oftener called "Beecher's," was so far completed by the latter part of the summer that the basement, being the lecture and Sunday-school room, was used by the congregation. The dedication took place on the 4th of October, 1! 840. For seven years Henry Ward Beecher wa3 here laying the foundations and building the central structure of his renown. Circle Hall Is the same building, changed in the exterior only by the removal of a broad flight of steps and the pillared semicircular recess, or open vestibule, from which the auditorium was entered, and stairways led to the choir gallery. During some years of Mr. Beecher's service in this new edifice there was about as remarkable a clerical association as ever occurred in this country. Henry Ward Beecher held the church on the west side of the Circle then encumbered with the "Governor's house" that no Governor ever lived in on Market street; Phineas D. Gurley was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, exactly opposite on the east side of the Circle, the site of the Journal office now. At that time, forty odd years ago, Mr. Gurley was held quite the equal of Mr. Beecher, and had quite as high and wide a reputation, enlarged in later life in Washington City and other Eastern cities, but not keeping quite up to his "rival." an unpleasant but no infrequent distinction. On the south side of the same Circle, at the other end of Mr. Beecher's "quadrant," was Lucien W. Berry, pastor of Wesley Chapel, held above both tbe others by his own church and denomination, and but little below either in popular estimation. He died while President of Asbury (DePauw) University, but would have surely held a position beside the lamented Matthew Simpson had he lived as long. Three abler preachers of wider renown than these have rarely preached almost within the Eound of each other's voices. The first conspicuous effort of Mr. Beecher above the level of his ordinary pastoral duties was a revival begun in February, 1842. The meetings were held every night for a considerable time in the lecture-room of the church, and attracted more attention and aroused more interest amone the young men of the city than any religious awakening that had ever occurred here. A number of the most prominent young professional and business men joined" the church, and rather unusually for conversions carried by Btorm in a revival most of them lived and died in the church. Some few are stillliving old men now, but faithful to their professions. At that time a controversy was going on raein? would hardly be too strong a description between the Christian denomination (called then "Disciples" and "Campbellites"), and other sectaries, on the mode of baptism, the former holding immersion to be the only proper or efficacious mode, Methodists and Presbyterians dissenting. Public debates were frequentand sometimes acrimonious, anadherent of the comparatively new sect hero of Disciples being invariably one of the contestants. . Rev. John O'Kane, a noted controversialist of that denomination, once, in a goodhumored and rather jocular tone, in the hearing of the writer, challenged Mr. Beecher to a public debate, but the challenge was declined as pleasantly as it was offered. In this state of feeling among the denominations here and all over the West, Mr. Beecher carried on his first revival, and an incident of it made him the subject of the first very harh censure he had probably ever encountered. His consregation and many spectators had gathered on the canal bank, near Kentucky avenue bridge, to witness the baptism, by immersion in the canal, of one of the revival converts, a son of Solon W. Norris, a prominent citizen, who believed in that mode of administration of the rite. Before proceeding with it Mr. Bee-her made a brief speech to the crowd, in which he said that he held any modo of baptism effectual, but would always use that which the subject of it pre ferred. This was little less then than an avowal of aenosticisra now, to the "immeraionists," and they made Mr. Beecher the text of a good deal of unpleasant animadversion. So far in his career in Indianapolis, Mr. Beecher's labors and honors were almost wholir local. Occasional visitors from different parts of the State, not a few members of the Legislature, now and then a resident returni?!; to his former home, carried reports of his eloquence abroad. but he had now come to th9 point where he could spread the evidence of his ability in the widest and surest way. In 1843 he delivered a series of twelve "Lectures to Youne Men." pri marily aiming to warn his revival converts and their associates of the temptations, perils, struggles, that He in the paths of young men, and the methods of avoidance or resistance. They were a well-done piece of work, in a literary point of view, better done as a shrewd and sound estimate of the condition and necessities or young men, especially in city life. They wore always largely attended, and almost always cordially approved. The only exception was that on the Strange vv oman, andfjjat, as he humorousiy says in his preface, received harsher censure be fore it was read than after. A considerable edi tion was sold here, and a second issued, which was republiehed in England, the first work of an ndiana author thus honored. 13y this time he had become one of the conspicuous men of tbe State, and better known, probablr, than any resident of this city, except some of its prominent politicians and public officers, like ex Governor Noble whose funeral sermon he preached n '44 ex-Governor Wallace, or ex-United States Senator Oliver H. Smith, or ex Governor Ray, and that is much to say of a young man barely thirty, and but a half dozen years a resi dent of the State. But his fame was to grow still, and, like all fame, to attract enmity as well as admiration. Not long after his "lectures," in accordance with an order or suggestion of some general church organization, he delivered a sermon on slavery, starting with the Israelites in Egypt as his text, or rather as the preface of his attack on American slavery. At that time the slave power was not only dominant but defiant. It owned the Democratic party bodily, and a considerable portion of the Whig opposition. To assail it was political ruin and social ostracism. Mr. Beecher, however, did not spare for any consideration of enmity or personal disadvan tage. His sermon was the first outright, downrieht, plain-speaking estimate of the "relic of barbarism ever heard here. And it provoked more comment than any beforo or sinc. One of his sisters, in a sketch of his residence here, says, "Nobody was offended." It is a mistake. Several Democratic members of bis church de nounced it without measure, and left in wrath, though later they all returned. The Sentinel, of the Chapman8, roughly handled, with no sup pression or name or place, the "preaching or politics from the pulpit" But the greater part of the congregation were, if not pleased, at least not irritated enough to make a fuss about it. Some two or three years before he left his church here for the "Plymouth," in Brooklyn. he delivered several sermons on the subject of temperance. His father was one of the first, if not the very first man of eminence in this country to make a specialty of sermons or addresses on temperance. Henry had kept even step with the venerable missionary of sobrietv aud decen cy, and, it is not at all improbable, surpassed him in the vigor of his reprobation of intemper ance. He extended his condemnation beyond the bar and the "grocery," as the saloon was then always called when it wasn't called "dog gery," and took in the distiller and the whole sale dealer as equally culpable. There waa no beer drank in those days, or rQt enongh to make it worth associating with the whisky that the corn waa turned into, except, as the old woman said, "what little is wasted in bread. The distiller, therefore, got not only the "hot end," but the whole poker, and regarding himself and being generally regarded as a conspicuously respectable member of society, he did not fancy being associated with the dogeery-keeper who mad his trade profitable. A Mr. Comegys, who had at one time been engaged in the mercantile business here, but at that time was concerned in a distillery at Lawrenceburg, probably, took hufe offense at the "unrespective" preacher, and attacked his temperance teachings witn more violence than force in the Journal. Mr. Beecher replied, .and was met by a rejoinder which was also answered, the controversy running through two or three letters on each side. In the last of the distillers' publications he made an indiscreet allusion to a method of refutation thatsupgested a threat of personal chastisement. To this came the characteristic retort that if there was to be a fight the preacher would take "a woman and it Quaker as his seconds." This, so far as the writer remembers, ended the only newspaper controversy that the famous preacher ever had here, and he probably never bad a more excited one io his later life, A couple of years or so after Mr. Beecher was

settled here he was joined by his brother Charles, who had taken to music with more passion than prudence, and had wandered about

the country teaching and playing publicly, as he found profitable ooportunitv, and we believe ga,ve himself the name of "Wandering Willie." Settled here, however, he formed the first choir, or took the leadership of it, in any church here, except the Episcopal Mr. Ketcham, Mr. Vance, Mr. Willard, Dr. Ackley the only pronounced Abolitionist in the town before Mr. Beecher's position had been declared and his wife, a daughter of Dr. Baldwin, first president of Wabash College, were the principal members. In the revival of '42 Charles was converted, and subsequently became a preacher himself. Two younger half brothers. Francis K. and James the latter committed suicide in New York State a year or so a?o lived here with Mr. Beecher for a time. The latter, a lad of fifteen or sixteen, was a pupil in the Old Seminary, and got a well-earned thrashing for playing hookey to hunt wild ducks in the river. He afterwards admitted that that licking was the making othim, by taking the conceit out of him. But he appreciated it so little at the time that he put on three coats and as many vests to provide against the chance of it when his brother brought him up to school for Mr. Kemper to deal with "according to law." About the time his brother Charles came here, Mr. Beecher bought the acre block on the soutbwest corner of Ohio and New Jersey streets, and built next to tho alley west of New Jersey street the two-story frame house still standing in good condition, and long occupied by Dr. Talbot Bullard, his'wife's brother. Here heapplied himself to gardening with his usual energy, and did as much of it for ornament and pleasure as for more material service in the kitchen. Here the late Daniel Yandes, he said, "one day, while looking over the fence, watching him trim his rose and lilac bushes, suggested, with the dry humor that sometimes cropped out of his conversation, that 'the finest flower in that garden was the cabbage.'" The taste for horticulture appeared in a more effective form a little later, in the assumption of the editorship of the Indiana Farmer, an agricultural monthly, established in 1835 or '36 by Mr. Osborn and Mr. Willett Overtaken by disaster about 1840 and abandoned by its founders, it was revived by Mr. S. V. B. Noel, then proprietor of the Journal, and Mr. Beecher's articles had a wide circulation, mainly by reproduction in other publications. He retained this editorial position till he left this city. " At the May meeting, in 1847,. of the. National Missionary Association of his church, ho attracted general attention by a sermon, or speech probably the latter which brought him the call from 'Plymouth Church. Brooklyn. He left this city first temporarily, in the latter part of August, 1847. The writer happened to be on the steamer with him going from Madison it was just before the completion of the Madison railroad, which had then reached Greenwood and, being as well acquainted as a boy usually is with a man, Mr. Beecher spoke to him quite freely of his feelings and expectations in leaving here. He said he had not made up his mind fullv to remove to Brooklyn. He was much inclined to return to th West and remain, at least after a trial of the Eastern situation and service. This inclination disappeared as he saw the field of his service widening, and doubtless his rapidlywidening and rising reputation had some influence in the same direction. He would have been more or less than human if it had not. In the fall of 1855. as the writer thinks, he came here on a lecturing tour under the management of some Eastern "imnressario," and delivered a lecture against "Know-nothingism," or the policy of restricting the naturalization of foreign immigrants by greatly lengthening the precedent term of residence. It was in this address that he illnstrated the absurdity of thefear of "foreignizing" to coin a word the country by the remark, "When I eat chicken, I don't become chicken: chicken becomes me." Several of his old friends and church members were displeased with his "selling himself out," as they called it, by his contract with the manager of the tour, and learning of it, he wrote to the Journal as soon as he got home, explaining and justifying his action. The letter, as was noticed a short time ago in the Sunday Journal, in a communication from the editor at that time, was most comically and vexatiously mixed up by a drunken or negligent foreman with an article on a new kind of bread that was coming into vogue, and the first publication utterly spoiled. Tbe blunder was corrected the next day, and, as far as the writer now retails, this was the last pub lication mad in the Journal directly from Mr. Beecher. His incessant occupation as preacher, editor, writer, lecturer and occasional stump speaker has prevented him from maintaining as frequent a connection vith his old home here as he and his friends could have wished, and now it is ended for all time to come in this world. B. R. S. A Democratic Change. Wonderful things are coming to 1 ght That put our old ideas to flight And give us some startling new ones; We live to learn how little we know, And a thousand things w thought were so, Like poor John Chinaman, "must go" To make a place for the true ones. One of the cherished notions we had Was that butter when old, if it wasu't "bad," Waa hardly the thing we wanted To put on a roll when smoking hot. Or boiled potatoes just from the pot; But it wasn't as bad we were sure it was not As if by magzota 'twas haunted. But now a ''swift w itness" is found who 6wears That we were all wrong, and he declares That the solid facts are these: "That strong butter never 'has worms' at ailThat raatrgots that skip and worms that crawl May be found in butter that he would call," As the boys say, "just the cheese." That was Budd. J. R., a Democrat, Though I wouldn't pretend to hint by that That Democratic butter Is made from milk from the government toat, Or that the cream that goes into it Is churned in an ancient boot not a bit I scorn such a slander to utter. As the Yankees say, I have an idear That Budd, J. K., had a notion queer, That as the case was a "Btroni''ona Against "the board," 'twould b best to go His length as an expert in "greas," and so, Finding he had to draw the bow. He concluded to draw he "long" one. Columbus, Iud., March 4., 1S87. Anxrs. "Adeps" sertivi to be somewhat mistaken as to the identity of the witness, but that fact does not militate against the truth and poetry of his production. Ed. Journal. Absolutely Pure. This powder neerTaries. A iriarTel of purity. Btr"gth ahd whoiegomrness. More ecouomlcal than lhoriinary kinds, and cannot l sold tn eoniiMtittcm with the mnl titude of low-tst, ibort-weielit alntu or phosphate powders, bold only in cans. KOi'AU UAKl&itf l'JW XJltH CO., XW Wall street. K. Y.

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