A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Scoville Samuel

you would have had a reply at all if it were not for something said on the first page. Now, I supposed that my good friends would find out all at once that my engagement had undermined all my habits of study and was ruining me, nor did it surprise me to have you write it. It is all false, as false as it can be. No term since I have been in college have I studied so much as the last term; no year accomplished so much as the last. I am not anxious, however, to vindicate myself; I am ready to have you all think so, if needful, for I expected it from the first.

      “Soon after I began the school some of the boys began to be fractious—all of them larger and stronger than myself. Their parents set them on, and they determined to carry me out of the room. A large fellow disobeyed me before the whole school, and persisted in it. They hoped I would thrash him, and then they would rise. But I turned him out of the school forthwith. He came the next day. I had previously told the committee and asked them to take the business out of my hands. They approved, but said that they wished I would do it. The next day I saw that they had got another great fellow in to help them. I called two of the committee in, and then ordered this disobedient boy out. He refused, and I took a rule and beat him, and finally broke it over his head. He struck at me a number of times and I parried them. The large ones then rose. I seized a club of wood and struck the boy three times—tore the skin each blow. The committee had to take the other fellows to keep them off. I then dismissed the school; told the committee that I should not keep the school where I could have them stand by and see such a scene without doing something; that if they would see those fellows removed I would go on, if not I would not. They said that they would do it if they thought they had power. I settled it all very soon by saying that I would not keep the school, and set my face as though I would return to Amherst. But the next day, Saturday, it rained. The committee liked my school, and gave me a good dismission in writing. The scholars were pleased for the most part, and through them their parents. They wished me much to open a private school. I waited till I found they were in earnest, and then opened one, and now am comfortably teaching about thirty scholars. Besides this my time is loaded. Sunday noon, Sabbath-school; Sunday afternoon, five o’clock, I have a Bible-class of ladies; Wednesday and Saturday evenings, meetings in the centre of town; two other evenings in the districts, and, after this, Sunday evening in the vestry. … May God bless and prosper you.

      “Your affectionate brother,

      “H. W. B.”

      Of his preaching at this time he says:

      “My earliest remembered sermons were delivered at Northbridge, Mass., where I taught school for three months in 1831. I conducted conference meetings almost every night, and a temperance address at Upton, Mass., where old Father Wood was pastor, and in his church. In the winter of 1832 I taught school in Hopkinton, Mass., and carried on revival meetings every night and preached on Sundays. The people were plain and simple and liked the effusions. During the winter of 1833 I again taught school at Northbridge, and made a formal sermon in a chapel over the new store built by Messrs. Whitings.”

      It was in his Sophomore year that a number of students, Henry Ward among them, invited a college mate who had been reading up on phrenology to deliver a lecture upon that subject. They did it for a joke, but it ended in Henry Ward’s accepting this philosophy as the foundation of the mental science which he used through life.

      It was during his college course that he began lecturing—that mode of communication with the people that afterwards became so popular, and in which for so many years he was the acknowledged leader. His first formal lecture for which he received pay was delivered in Brattleboro’, Vt. He was paid ten dollars, and walked the whole distance, nearly fifty miles each way, that he might have the whole sum to expend as he pleased.

      Speaking of this period, he says:

      “There stands before me a line of battered and worn books—English classics. Their history is little to them, but much to me. In part it is my own history. I wish I could lay my hand on the first book that I ever bought after the dim idea of a library began to hover in my mind! But that book is gone. Here, however, are others whose biography I can give. As early as 1832 I began to buy books—a few volumes, but each one a monument of engineering. My first books, if I remember correctly, were bought of J. S. & C. Adams, in Amherst, Mass. I used to go in there and look wistfully at their shelves. My allowance of money was very small—scarcely more than enough to pay my postage, when a letter cost twelve and a half or twenty-five cents. To take a two or three-dollar book from my five dollars of spending-money would have left me in a state of sad impecuniosity. Therefore, for many, many months I took it out in looking.

      “As early as at sixteen years of age I had begun to speak a little in public—faint peepings, just such as I hear in young birds before they are fully fledged. For such service the only payment was a kind patience till I relieved them by finishing my crude efforts. But at that time—say 1832—I was sent by the college society as delegate to a temperance convention in Pelham, or Enfield, or somewhere else. I conceived a desire thereafter to give a temperance lecture. I have forgotten how I ever got a chance to do it. But I remember that there came an invitation from Brattleboro’, Vt., to lecture on the 4th of July. My expenses were to be paid! A modest pride warmed my heart at the thought of making a real speech in public. I smothered all the fears and diffidences with the resolute purpose that I would succeed! I remember the days of writing and anxious preparation, and the grand sense of being a man when I had finished my manuscript! But the most generous purposes are apt to be ruined with selfishness; and my public spirit, alas! had a financial streak of joy in it—my expenses were to be paid!

      “Well, suppose I chose to walk and save all the expenses? I should have at least eight dollars of my own, of which I need give no account! That would be an era indeed. But grave scruples arose. Was it honest to take money for expenses which I had not really incurred? If I went by stage I might lawfully charge my fare and food; but if neither of them cost me anything, how could I honestly make a bill of expenses? I did not get any relief in reflecting upon it. I started off on foot, went up the Connecticut River valley, and reached Brattleboro’ by way of Greenfield.

      “Every hour this question of honesty returned. My feet blistered with walking, but I stamped on them hard in the morning, and the momentary exquisite pain seemed to paralyze the sensibility afterwards. Whether it was the counter irritation that relieved my brain, or whether—as I fear that I did—I smothered conscience by saying to myself that I would settle the matter when the time came, I do not know. But I was relieved from even that struggle, inasmuch as not a word was said to me about expenses, or money in any form. Yet I had a charming visit. The rising of the moon from behind the mountain that hedges in the town on the east powerfully excited my imagination, and led to the writing of the first piece, I believe, that I ever printed. It was published in the Guest, a college paper, issued chiefly as a rival to another college paper whose name (alas!) has escaped me. And if anybody could send me a volume of that Guest I should be exceedingly beholden to him!

      “But after reaching college again—no longer a mere student, but a public man, one who had made speeches, one who determined to be modest and not to allow success to puff him up—a very great and wonderful thing happened: the post brought me a letter from Brattleboro’ containing ten dollars. I could not believe my eyes. I forgot my scruples. Providence had put it to me in such a way that I got my conscience over on the other side, and felt that it would be a sin and shame for me to be raising questions and scruples on such a matter! But O that bill! How it warmed me and invigorated me! I looked at it before going to sleep; I examined my pocket the next morning early, to be sure that I had not dreamed it. How I pitied the poor students, who had not, I well knew, ten dollars in their pockets. Still, I tried to keep down pride in its offensive forms. I would not be lifted up. I would strive to be even more familiar than before with the plainest of my acquaintances. ‘What is money?’ said I to myself. ‘It is not property that makes the man; it is—’ Well, perhaps I thought it was the ability to deliver eloquent temperance addresses. But great is the deceitfulness of money. I felt the pride of riches. I knew every waking moment that I had money. I was getting purse-proud.

      “I resolved to invest. There was but one thing to invest in—books. I went to Adams’s store; I saw an edition of Burke’s works.