While in the East, after having received the call from Plymouth Church and while the question of acceptance was still in doubt, Mr. Beecher also received a call from the Park Street Church of Boston—the same church where he had preached nine years before, when on his way back to Lawrenceburg with his young wife. On June 10, 1847, he received a letter from the Rev. Silas Aikens, the pastor of Park Street Church, stating that they very much desired Mr. Beecher to accept a call to the position of associate pastor. Early in July a formal call was sent by the church and society to the same effect, but was shortly afterwards declined. The call to Brooklyn having been definitely accepted, Mr. Beecher began at once to arrange for the removal of his family. His salary was in arrears. To meet the necessities of his family he had been obliged to borrow five hundred dollars. This, with other and smaller debts, must be paid, and money must be raised wherewith to transport his family East. But how? Fortunately this difficulty had been foreseen, and as soon as it seemed probable that the call would be accepted the friends at Plymouth Church, in prophecy of that generosity which characterized them in all after-years, promptly raised by subscription one thousand dollars, and notified Mr. Beecher to draw thereupon as he might need. About the first of October, 1847, he started Eastward, leaving Indianapolis on the first passenger-train run on the new road just built. Modern luxuries had not then been introduced, if we may rely upon his account of the ride: “The car was no car at all, a mere extempore wood-box, used sometimes without seats for hogs, but with seats for men, of which class I (ah me miserable!) happened to be one. And so at eleven at night I arrived in Madison, not overproud in the glory of riding on the first train that ever went from Indianapolis to Madison.” October, 1847, marked a new era in Mr. Beecher’s experience. By successive steps he had advanced from field to field with steadily increasing responsibility, from the collegian tramping twenty miles to deliver an occasional address in some adjoining town on topics affecting public morals, to the young theologian still in the seminary, trying his powers in some little hamlet—a knight-errant breaking a lance with the adversary; to the young, unknown missionary entering the lists for his first real, earnest battle against “the world, the flesh, and the devil”; to the acknowledged preacher called to the State capital, dealing stalwart blows at those evils which sap the public conscience and allure the youth into evil ways, a recognized leader not only within the limits of his Presbytery but even throughout his State.