Although one of Mr. Beecher's elders had said, "If an Abolitionist comes here, I will head a mob and put him down," the brave preacher sat on the platform at an Abolitionist meeting, and in his pulpit preached so earnestly against slavery that it was predicted that his influence for all time would be destroyed. He lectured as earnestly against intemperance and other sins; and these "Lectures to Young Men" became his first volume, dedicated to his father. The book had a wide reading, both in England and America. While at Indianapolis his little son George died. Years later he said, "I remember, to-night, as well as I did at the time, the night that my eldest son died. That was my first great sorrow.... It was in March, and there had just come up a great storm, and all the ground was covered with snow. "We went down to the graveyard with little Georgie, and waded through it in the snow. I got out of the carriage and took the little coffin in my arms, and walked knee-deep to the side of the grave, and looking in I saw the winter down at the very bottom of it.... If I should live a thousand years I could not help shivering every time I thought of it." Mr. Beecher loved the West, and expected to remain permanently in it; but the East had learned of his earnestness and his eloquence, and called him to Brooklyn. For a long time he refused to consider it; but his wife having suffered much from chills and fever, he finally accepted the call to the newly organized Plymouth Church, with twenty-one members, in the fall of 1847, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. In two years the membership had grown to over four hundred, and a new church had been built--the other having been badly damaged by fire--at a cost of $36,000. A month after Mr. Beecher's arrival in Brooklyn, his little girl, "Caty," died, and began, as he says, "her quiet march toward the once-opened gate, to rejoin the brother." From this time onward till Mr. Beecher's death in 1887, for forty years, Plymouth Church became the centre of almost unparalleled influence. Dr. Barrows says with truth, "It is probable that, except Westminster Abbey, no other church of English-speaking nations has in this century been visited by so many men and women of renown." The church, accommodating three thousand persons, was year by year crowded to repletion, often as many going away as could find standing-room within. Everybody wanted to hear the most eloquent pulpit orator in America. When Mr. Beecher first came to Plymouth Church, some said he would not please the cultivated East, but his earnestness soon satisfied all cavillers. He had one message, as he said, "The love of Christ to men. This, to me, was a burning reality.... Consequently I went into this work with all my soul, preaching night and day."