“‘Awake and sing the song Of Moses and the Lamb; Wake, every heart and every tongue, To praise the Saviour’s name. Sing on your heavenly way, Ye ransomed sinners, sing! Sing on rejoicing every day In Christ the Heavenly King.’ Long, long discussions, lasting till past midnight and resumed at every meal, of ‘free agency,’ ‘sovereignty,’ ‘natural and moral ability,’ interpretations, and such. “Charles could whittle graceful boats with sharp knife out of thick sticks. “Henry had the full set of Walter Scott’s works. “Charles took lessons on the violin of Tosso, in the city. Henry wrote something that Editor Charles Hammond printed in the Cincinnati _Gazette_. O wonderful Henry! They both wrote long, long letters to two far-away beings, and the little boy sometimes took them to the post-office and paid twenty-five cents, wondering what they could find to write such long, long letters about.” His brother Charles says: “The glorious old forest lay between the Seminary and father’s house, and we made it ring with vocal practice and musical scales and imitations of band-music. The house father occupied was of brick, and Henry whitewashed it with a kind of whitewash that was equal to paint, of a sort of cream color. I can see him now, on his tall ladder, with his spattered overalls, working away. “One of our professors was B———, a nice, dapper, rosy little man, in the chair of history. We naughty boys made fun of him. Henry took notes. I would give something handsome for that note-book. B——— was fond of quoting authors with sounding names, Bochart among others, and Henry would have it ‘Go-cart,’ and made a hieroglyphic to that effect. “We walked to and from the city, up and down the long hill, and attended father’s church, Second Presbyterian, on Fourth Street. Henry had a Bible-class of young ladies, for which he made preparation by writing.” For three years young Beecher was again a member of the home-circle, from which he had been so long separated. This home had apparently lost none of that broad, open-doored hospitality and cheerful spirit that so markedly characterized it in Litchfield. “The house was full. There was a constant high tide of life and animation. The old carry-all was perpetually vibrating between home and the city, and the excitement of coming and going rendered anything like stagnation an impossibility.” “It was an exuberant and glorious life while it lasted. The atmosphere of the household was replete with mental oxygen, full charged with intellectual electricity. Nowhere else have we felt anything resembling or equalling it. It was a kind of moral heaven, the purity, vivacity, inspiration, and enthusiasm of which only those can appreciate who have lost it and feel that in this world there is, there can be, no place like home.”