When Henry was eight years old we read of the three in this wise: “Harriet reads everything she can lay her hands on, and sews and knits diligently. Henry and Charles go to school. Henry is as sprightly and active, and Charles as honest and clumsy, as ever.” Later in the year he can be had if really wanted: “We have four boarders besides our own sick folk, so that if you are lonesome for want of children we could easily spare Henry or Harriet.” Whether the hint was taken, and the boy who was sometimes too “sprightly and active” and this girl who “reads everything she can lay her hands on” were wanted and sent, is not told. The next year perhaps they would not care to spare him. “I had the alders down at the bottom of the east lot cut up, broke it up, and planted to corn and potatoes. Henry and Charles began to help hoe a little.” Any one who has had experience in such matters knows that hoeing potatoes in a newly-ploughed field just cleared of alders is no fun. At this time Henry was nine years old. It has been said by one whose hatred of orthodox religion is only equalled by the beauty of the language with which he is able to clothe his misconceptions, that “Henry Ward Beecher was born in a Puritan penitentiary, of which his father was one of the wardens; a prison with very narrow and closely-grated windows.” But Mrs. Stowe wrote years ago: “One of my most vivid impressions of the family, as it was in my childish days, was of a great household inspired by a spirit of cheerfulness and hilarity, and of my father, although pressed and driven with business, always lending an attentive ear to anything in the way of life and social fellowship.” The brother Charles, who was an almost inseparable companion for Henry in those days, says in a letter recently received: “The parental authority was pronounced but not very strict. That is, there was never any thought in the mind of the children of disobedience, but resort to corporal punishment was rare. “Nor was brother Henry made to work very hard, nor was father very strait-laced or stern. Nor were we often _switched_, tho’ I dare say we deserved it. I only remember once distinctly, when Henry performed the gymnastics and I furnished the music (out in the barn). Fortunately for me, the switch was mostly used up on him as the elder—a birthright I did not envy—and I howled in sympathy, with a few cuts for _Da Capo_.