A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel
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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