The president of the village and leading citizens, one after another, mounted the platform, which was the piazza of Mr. Beecher's house, and expressed their confidence in him and the confidence of his neighbors, the villagers. Then Mr. Beecher said to me: "You were born in this town and are known all over the country. If you feel like saying something it would travel far." Of course, I was very glad of the opportunity because I believed in him. In the course of my speech I told a story which had wonderful vogue. I said: "Mr. Lincoln told me of an experience he had in his early practice when he was defending a man who had been accused of a vicious assault upon a neighbor. There were no witnesses, and under the laws of evidence at that time the accused could not testify. So the complainant had it all his own way. The only opportunity Mr. Lincoln had to help his client was to break down the accuser on a cross-examination. Mr. Lincoln said he saw that the accuser was a boastful and bumptious man, and so asked him: 'How much ground was there over which you and my client fought?' The witness answered proudly: 'Six acres, Mr. Lincoln.' 'Well,' said Lincoln, 'don't you think this was a mighty small crop of fight to raise on such a large farm?' Mr. Lincoln said the judge laughed and so did the district attorney and the jury, and his client was acquitted." The appositeness was in the six acres of ground of the Lincoln trial and of the six months of the Beecher trial. As this was a new story of Lincoln's, which had never been printed, and as it related to the trial of the most famous of preachers on the worst of charges that could be made against a preacher, the story was printed all over the country, and from friends and consular agents who sent me clippings I found was copied in almost every country in the world. Mr. Beecher was one of the few preachers who was both most effective in the pulpit and, if possible, more eloquent upon the platform. When there was a moral issue involved he would address political audiences. In one campaign his speeches were more widely printed than those of any of the senators, members of the House, or governors who spoke. I remember one illustration of his about his dog, Noble, barking for hours at the hole from which a squirrel had departed, and was enjoying the music sitting calmly in the crotch of a tree. The illustration caught the fancy of the country and turned the laugh upon the opposition. Hugh J. Hastings, at one time editor and proprietor of the Albany Knickerbocker, and subsequently of the New York Commercial Advertiser, was full of valuable reminiscences. He began life in journalism as a very young man under Thurlow Weed. This association made him a Whig. Very few Irishmen belonged to that party. Hastings was a born politician and organized an Irish Whig club. He told me that he worshipped Daniel Webster.