“The long boxes made in Amherst expressly to pack his books in when he came West were well made of planed boards. These we set one atop of the other, open side out, and filled with books bought by his own labors while in college, teaching school, and making speeches. These made quite a fine addition to the room which was to be the parlor, study, and our bed-room all in one. “In the back room was a cook-stove given by brother George, and the old three-quarter bedstead that your father used at Lane Seminary, now all nice and clean, curtained with some four-cent calico Mrs. Judge Burnet gave us. Henry made the upright posts and ran a large wire round it on which the curtain was hung, with a wide tape all round the top on which our clothes were pinned. Crosswise from the door to the chimney a piece of four-cent calico curtained the corner where wash-benches and tubs, flour-barrel and sugar-barrel (the two last sent in by good friends) were placed, and over the door leading to the loft in the adjoining store your father had nailed some large pieces to hold saddle, bridle, and buffalo-robe. On the other side of the range was a good dish-closet, and in front a sink. “So these two small rooms, at first so repulsive, were becoming quite a pleasant home. The house was situated very near the boat-landing on the wharf of the Miami River—too near for comfort when freshets swept down in _that direction_, but a pleasant outlook across on to the Kentucky hills; the river sometimes so low that your father has walked across and gathered flowers in Kentucky, then again rising so as to sweep everything before it as it did two years ago, utterly obliterating all that portion of Lawrenceburg where we lived.” We are indebted to the Rev. John H. Thomas, the present pastor of Mr. Beecher’s old church in Lawrenceburg, for the impressions of his ministry there, as gathered from the reminiscences of his surviving parishioners: “Mr. Beecher made his mark immediately. His youthful appearance—he was but twenty-three—and his careless dress may have raised doubts as to his ability when his hearers first saw him, but they disappeared as soon as he began to speak. The characteristics of his later oratory were all present from the first—fluency, glowing rhetoric, abundance of illustrations, witty points, brilliant ideas. From the first he filled the church. Merchants told their customers of the talented young preacher, and they would come miles to hear him. He was annoyed at interruptions, and when late-comers appeared he would stop speaking till they were seated.