A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel
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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