“His personal habits were as original and effective as his pulpit efforts. He was not what would be called a good pastor. An old pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Lawrenceburg said to me: ‘Mr. Beecher could outpreach me, but I could out-visit him, and visiting builds up a church more than preaching.’ The records of the church during his pastorate are yet in our hands, though in one of the great floods here the volume floated out of the submerged study of the pastor, and was found, by chance, embedded in the yellow deposit of the Ohio. It is accurately and neatly kept, in the beautiful hand of Mr. Beecher, each entry signed with his well-known autograph. The additions to the church were about on the average of other pastors. “But outside of strictly pastoral work Mr. Beecher’s influence was felt widely and beneficially. He was universally popular. He was kindly, genial, and free with all classes. He would hunt and fish with men not used to the society of clergymen, and spent much time on the river, especially in catching drift-wood brought down in every rise. Once he called to a poor German emigrant woman that if she would bring him her clothes-line he would show her how to get her winter’s supply of fuel. She brought it, and he tied a stone to one end, and, flinging it out from the shore over logs, would draw them in. In a little while their combined efforts had brought in a dray-load. “He was fond of talking with all sorts and conditions of men. There was an old shoemaker in the town of pronounced infidel views. Mr. Beecher would spend hours in the room where he worked, discussing with him. “There is no evidence that he lowered in any degree his character as a Gospel minister, but plenty that his influence was felt by the neglected classes, and even by the rough elements. And in this did he not follow the example of his divine Master, of whom it was said: ‘This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them’? “He was not unscholarly, but is remembered as a reader rather than as a student. He studied men even more than books. A Baptist minister with whom he had a discussion one Sunday is yet living here, and has told me that at the close of the discussion, in which the Baptist minister thought he had the best of it, Mr. Beecher waved his hand and said to the audience: ‘Well, I don’t care if you all go down to the river and get immersed.’ “His going away was esteemed a great loss. ‘Cords of people,’ says an old lady graphically, ‘were about to come into the Church.’ But Indianapolis, then with only 2,500 people, was the State capital, and was rapidly outstripping the little town on the river. It was a louder call. “Mr. Beecher’s relations with the other ministers were happy, although he outshone them completely. He established a popular union Sunday-school, notwithstanding there was one in each church, and he often spoke in other churches.” Mr. Beecher described his preaching there as follows: