A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel
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I would climb out on the bank to watch Constantine swim, he was so powerful, so beautiful.”
The brightness of his intellect and his kindliness of heart were equal to the beauty of his person, and the admiration excited deepened into the warmest and most sincere affection. It was like that between David and Jonathan, and appears to have been mutual.
When they separated at the close of their school-days, one to enter college and the other to go into business in Boston, the above covenant was written, admirable only as it illustrates what has been called Mr. Beecher’s genius for friendship. Returning to his native land in 1842, Constantine died very suddenly of cholera. But even then the old friendship was not forgotten. Years after Mr. Beecher gave to one of his sons “Constantine” as a middle name, that he might have in his family one who should always remind him of the friend so greatly beloved.
We close this chapter with a letter of reminiscence of Mount Pleasant days.
“Amherst, Mass., May 17, 1849.
”My dear Eunice and very dear Wife:
“Here am I in this memorable place. It is now fifteen years since you received a letter from me dated as is this one. It is twenty-three years since I first put my foot on the village sod! It gives my head a whirl to look back so far, or to hear myself, with my young-looking face and younger-acting one, talking of things that happened to me at such long distances of time. … Arrived at Northampton about four o’clock; took stage for Amherst, mounted on top for sight-seeing. Rode through the old town along by the ploughed fields to the bridge of memorable history. All our experiences came very freshly back. I thought I could tell the very places where I kissed you in our ride home. …
“After emerging from this old town (Hadley) the colleges shone out from afar; then Mount Pleasant gradually, and one by one the various prominent dwellings in the village. I put up at the Baltwoods’ old tavern. … I first went to the college; walked up and down and around in the various entries, in the grove, by the well, in the chapel, in each recitation-room. Then I went to each of the rooms which I occupied in college. I sought out the spots which had a very melancholy interest from events in my morbid religious history. I then turned my steps to Mount Pleasant. I cannot tell the emotions that I had when I once more trod the grassy ascent where my opening manhood first fairly dawned. As I walked up the long slope I almost thought that I should see the crowd of boys break forth from some door. I stopped on the terrace where for three years I mustered with more than a hundred boys, and whence we marched to chapel, to meals, to church, etc. As I stood there Constantine seemed to rise up to greet me, as he never will greet me; Hunt, Pomeroy, French, Burt, Thayer, Tilghman, Dwight, Van Lennep, Fitzgerald, and scores of others. The wings of the building, the chapel, the kitchen, etc., were all taken away, so that the places where most I roomed, and the veranda in which I used to sit and muse and feel the rise and swell of yearnings the meaning of which I did not know, are all swept away. Here I spent the half-ideal and half-emotive, dreamy hours in which I used to look across the beautiful Connecticut River valley, and at the blue mountains that hedged it in, until my heart swelled and my eyes filled with tears; why, I could not tell. Then I would push out into the woods and romp with the wildest of them. I visited the grove, once beautiful, now meagre and forlorn. I went into the rear building; each room brought up some forgotten scene, some face remembered for good or ill. I went to the room where I roomed early in my course. The boys were at supper, and so I sat down and meditated awhile. The room in which I lived with Fitzgerald was not to be found, some changes in the interior of the house having shut it out from the entry where I formerly found it. It was a strange mixture of old things found again and old things not to be found—of surprise and disappointment, of things painful and of things joyful. All my favorites, the little fellows that I used to love and cherish, their faces looked out at me at every turn. I tried to find the trees, growing three from a root, on which I made steps and built a slat house up among the branches; where I used to sit wind-rocked and read or muse, cry and laugh, just as the fancy took me. It was gone. There are twenty-five boys here at a select school. They were playing down on the old football ground, and the voices and shouts, quips and jokes, were so natural that I could hardly help plunging down the hill, catching up a club, and going into the game of ball with all my old ardor. But they would have no remembrances to meet mine. I should not have been Hank Beecher to them. … Good-by, dear wife.
“Truly yours,
“H. W. B.
“Love to all the children, big and little.”
For the benefit of all school-boys we call attention to some of the most marked features of this period in the life of H. W. Beecher, as they appear from the extracts given and from other papers for which we have no space. He was healthy and robust, a favorite among the boys upon the play-ground, who called him “Hank” Beecher. He was a leader in their sports, and at the same time a champion of the younger and weaker boys. He learned to master his work, and by drill in school-room and gymnasium gained control of his own powers of body and mind. He kept his eyes open to the beauty of the world around him, and was very susceptible to the attractions of fair faces as well. He was open and manly in following his religious convictions, clean-mouthed and pure-hearted in his morals. He pondered big matters, and asked large questions, and sought out satisfactory conclusions for himself and for his companions. He looked for information in all directions, and took great pains to store it away for future use. He read good books and a great many of them, and the novels he read were of the best kind. Withal he was a “hail-fellow-well-met” companion and a most devoted and faithful friend. Upon the authority of every word of testimony we have been able to get from teachers, classmates, and old residents of the town, we declare him to have been a royal school-boy, whose manly faithfulness, kindly service, stalwart morality, and loving, cheerful friendliness prepared him for the grand life which he afterwards lived and the great success which he achieved, and make him a worthy example for all the ingenuous, aspiring youth of our land.
CHAPTER VII.
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