A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward BeecherScoville, Samuel
Religion
A Biography of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Scoville, Samuel
Beecher, Henry Ward, 1813-1887
“‘Oh! no, my young friend, don’t rise, don’t trouble yourself; it is
perfectly agreeable to me; in fact, I like a low seat.’ And with these
words the tall man doubled up like a jack-knife, and was seen sitting
with his grave face between his knees, like a grasshopper drawn up for a
spring. He heaved a deep sigh and his eyes met the eyes of Mr. Beecher;
the hidden spark of native depravity within him was exploded by one
glance at those merry eyes, and he burst into a loud roar of merriment,
which the two continued for some time, greatly to the amusement of the
boys who were watching to hear how Beecher would come out with his
lecture. The chair was known thereafter as the ‘Tutor’s Delight.’”
He carried his usual sports with him into college life. “On Saturday
afternoons,” says Lewis Tappan, “we often revisited the woods in the
rear of our former home, on which occasion your father would climb the
tallest trees and place a pillow-case over the holes where the flying
squirrels were. I on the ground rapped the trees, startling the inmates,
who were caught in their efforts to escape.
“Botanical and geological specimens were collected on the way, and in
his room your father had a good collection of the latter.”
He joined a club of eight who boarded a mile from college, that the
going and returning for their meals might give them six miles of
exercise a day. This was done in part to save expense, the board being
cheaper at that distance from the village. He also walked from college
to Boston, more than a hundred miles, on his vacations, for the same
reason. Yet, with all his care in economy, and although his board cost
him but $1.50 a week, it was thought at one time impossible to keep him
in college on account of the expense, as this letter, written by a
friend of the family during his Freshman year, will explain:
“While Henry and Charles were in college your father and mother felt
very much straitened for money. One evening particularly they were
talking about it, and did not know what they should do to keep the boys
along. At last your father said: ‘Well, the Lord always has taken care
of me, and I am sure he always will.’ The mother lay awake, she told me
afterwards, and cried. She cried because she did not see how they should
get along; but what most troubled her was that her husband had so much
faith and she had not any.
“The next morning was Sabbath morning. Some one rang at the door, and a
letter was handed in containing a $100 bill and no name. They came up to
tell me, as they always did, but they did not know, nor I then, who gave
it. I found out afterwards it was Mr. Homes—a thank-offering at the
conversion of one of his children.“
The following letter, written near the close of his Freshman year, shows
the bent of his mind at this period:
”MY DEAR SISTER:
“I write principally to tell you that I have sent the ‘Book of Nature,’
and that it is probably at the stage-house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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