Eccentricities of Genius

Preachers

Henry Ward Beecher was my nearest and dearest friend for eleven years. Excepting only Arizona and New Mexico, there was not a State or Territory in the Union in which we had not travelled together. In sunshine and in storm, by night, by day, by every conceivable mode of travel, in special Pullman cars, the regular passenger trains, mixed trains, freight trains, on steamboats and rowboats, by stage and on the backs of mules, I had journeyed at his side. I was near him in the days of 1875-77, at the time of his deepest sorrow, when he was reviled and spit upon; I saw the majestic courage with which he passed through gaping crowds at railroad stations, and at the entrances of hotels and public halls—a courage which I had not conceived mere humanity could possess. I have looked upon him when I felt that I would give my poor life a thousand times could that sacrifice alleviate the mental sufferings that I knew he was undergoing. There were times when it seemed as though he must give way; times when I was the only friend within his reach, and he sought refuge near and with me. It was thus that he came to love and trust me, and that my love and veneration for him became so strong that to lose him left me like a ship without a helm or a commander.

Especially during those three darkest years was he the subject of my sad admiration. Often have I seen him on our entering a strange town hooted at by a swarming crowd and greeted with indecent salutations. On such occasions he would pass on, seemingly unmoved, to his hotel, and remain there until the hour for his public appearance; then, confronted by great throngs, he would lift up his voice, always for humanity and godliness. He always saw and seized the opportunity to speak to the whole great people, and after he had spoken, the assemblages would linger to draw near, seemingly to touch the hem of his garments, to greet the man whom they had so lately despised. How changed I have often seen the public attitude toward him when he left a town to which he had come but the day before! Thus he went from city to city, making friends and advocates of all who heard or met him, and thus for eleven years was it my delight to accompany him in his work of re-establishing himself in that love and confidence of the people from which unprincipled enemies and an often merciless press had attempted to thrust him out forever.

I thank God that it was my privilege to attend his fortunes to the end, and to see and to hear, on both sides of the continent and on both sides of the ocean, demonstrations of love and confidence that came at length in so unsullied and vast a stream from the church, his friends, his country, and his race, toward him who had brought many thousands of them much nearer than they had been to the common Master of us all.

John Bright told me that Henry Ward Beecher was the greatest orator who spoke the English tongue. When Beecher came to Plymouth Church, in 1847, he was thirty-four years of age, strong and rugged in health, unconventional in manners, but never ungentlemanly. In his free, brusque address and direct approach he was different from more polished clergymen, and no man ever lived more directly under the public gaze than did Mr. Beecher for forty years; his life was seen and read by all men,—his public life,—but few have known of his domestic gentleness and invariable sweetness of nature. He was the centre of loving hearts. Strong and powerful as he knew he was, to those he loved he was as gentle as a mother. As to enmities, he had none, and he hardly knew he had enemies. He was the most joyous, radiantly happy man that ever lived.

I remember saying to him one day after I had seen him walking arm in arm with a man who had injured him, who had been abusing him: “I think you are carrying the doctrine of forgiveness too far.”

He said: “Pond, can we go further than to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who despitefully use us? Ah, there is so little known of the spirit of Christ in the world that when a man is trying feebly and afar off to follow Him, even Christians do not understand it.”

No answer could be made to such reasoning, and friends knew and learned from him what was meant by being a Christian. His theory was that as a son of God and in unison with his Father, he had a right to happiness, and this right he would allow no man or set of men to take from him.

He had, as I can bear witness, the power of abstraction, by which he could put away all thoughts of care and trouble, and rise to a higher atmosphere where the heavens were blue and unclouded, while his eyes and ears seemed closed to all lower considerations. To those nearest to him at these times this power seemed almost superhuman.

From my earliest recollection, in our log cabin on the frontier of Wisconsin, the name of Dr. Lyman Beecher was a household word. One day—I think it was in the summer of 1846—my mother was reading a paper that some friend had sent from the East containing a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher, a young son of Lyman Beecher, pastor of a new church in Indianapolis, in which the young man had dared to denounce slavery. Garrison, Thurlow Weed, Phillips, Beecher, Theodore Parker, Finney, were names as familiar to me in boyhood as those of my own relatives. Then came the Kansas conflict, Captain John Brown, and Sharp’s rifles (known as Beecher Bibles).

Educated, trained, and a participant in those early conflicts in Kansas, as I was, with the name of Beecher as a beacon light, one may perhaps be able to realize my feelings of reverence and awe for this great man when I met him for the first time in Brooklyn, in his own house, in April, 1875. I never had experienced such a feeling before. My lips trembled, my tongue seemed paralyzed, my throat clogged, my eyes flooded. I was helpless; I was joyous; so filled to overflowing with something that I must have made a fool of myself. Holding fast to my hand, Mr. Beecher walked over to the sofa in the parlor, set me down, and began questioning me about James Redpath, who had owned the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, in Boston, and for whom Mr. Beecher had lectured. I told him that Mr. Redpath had gone out of the business and had returned to journalism in New York, and that Mr. Hathaway and I had bought out the concern; that a number of engagements for him to lecture had been indefinitely postponed the season before, with a promise on his (Mr. Beecher’s) part that new dates should be given the management as soon as he himself could forecast his own time. Nearly a year had passed, and these people were waiting.

To make a long story short, the time was arranged for, and new dates for New England, to begin Monday, April 18, 1875, in New London, Conn. This was the first lecture given by Mr. Beecher under my auspices. From that time until February, 1887, three weeks before his death, Mr. Beecher and I travelled together nearly 300,000 miles. He lectured 1261 times for me.

On many of our lecture tours we were favored with Mrs. Beecher’s companionship. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher were both good travellers—never the slightest trouble. They carried their own hand baggage, and would allow no outsider to touch it. One little journey we made together, a sort of “vacation excursion.” Mr. Beecher delivered seventy-five lectures on that little circuit of the continent, preached sixteen sermons, many of them in Plymouth churches, and travelled 17,000 miles.

I cannot undertake to give a connected, chronological account of even a part of my wonderful experiences with Mr. Beecher. I have simply selected here and there an episode which will serve to illustrate some characteristic of the man I knew.

We had returned from Mr. Beecher’s first visit to Nashville and Memphis, in May, 1879. It had been a short tour of unusual interest to him; he had never before been south of Mason and Dixon’s line, except for a single night in Richmond, Va., in 1877. I accompanied him on the tour, and to his first Friday evening prayer-meeting in Plymouth Church after our return, for I was quite certain his people were to be treated to some interesting comments on our journey. I asked Mr. Ellingwood (Mr. Beecher’s stenographer) to take down the “talk” and write it out for me privately, which he did, and here it is—the first time it has ever seen the light of day:

Note.—This reproduction is from the last photograph Mr. Beecher ever had taken. It was made by Elliot & Fry in London, September, 1886. As he started to leave the gallery, he said to me: “Now, sir, I am ready to be led to the next block for slaughter.” He was looking me squarely in the eye as he spoke. The photographer said: “Stand right where you are, just a moment, Mr. Beecher.” He shifted his apparatus and caught this picture.

J. B. Pond.

“After the war, for the first time in my life it seemed to me that it was possible for me to visit the Southern portion of my native land. There had always been a sting in the thought that I, a citizen of the United States, who if need be would lay down his life for his country, could not cross Mason and Dixon’s line with any certainty of coming back, and that my name was a name to conjure with and bring up evil spirits. It had always hurt my pride of patriotism that I, a loyal and freedom-loving man, could not go where I pleased on this continent, that I could not go into any of thirteen or fourteen of these United States. I had feared that I should die without the sight.

“I did not know how the change was to be brought about, but I believed that there would be emancipation; that the conscience of mankind would slowly unfold and work in secret ways toward liberty, and that in the remote future free labor, applied to the raising of cotton and sugar, would compete in the market with slave labor and lead to abolition. That was my theory; but the Lord cut it short in righteousness; He severed the Gordian knot with the sword; this country was made free from end to end; and ever since I have said within myself, ‘Before I die I hope to tread the soil of every State in this Union.’ And now I have actually been away down South.

“I went first to Nashville—a beautiful city. The Fisk University, one of the marvels of the world, is there. It is really a very remarkable building, and it is very nobly manned. The whole of it has been sung into existence by men and women that had been in slavery. And, do you know, they look upon you at this church as being the author of their success. For you will recollect that the ‘Jubilee Singers’ came here impoverished and discouraged, hoping that they might raise a little money by singing. They were hardly able to meet their expenses in getting here. In this lecture-room, on a Friday evening, they were asked to sing some of their songs; and you said, after hearing them, ‘Those songs must be heard in the great church’; and when Sunday came they sang there; the fire was kindled, and invitations came in to them to sing in other places. Dr. Cuyler opened his church for them, and other churches were opened. Then they began to have calls from New England; and finally they went abroad. The result was that they earned over $200,000 singing through America, England, Germany, and France; and they have built with their breath that great collegiate institution, where five hundred of their kind are being instructed.

“Talk about old Rome, her achievements and her cathedrals. They are grand; but I will point to the rearing of the Fisk University by ex-slaves and their singing, and say, ‘It is the most wonderful thing that has yet been done in architecture.’

“I went the next day to Memphis. I shall never be President of the United States—I have made up my mind to that; but I had a taste of what it would be to be President, for they gave me twenty-one guns when I went into the town. I thought to myself, ‘Am I on earth? and am I in Memphis, on the Mississippi River, clear down in the southwest corner of the State of Tennessee, and only twelve miles from the State of Mississippi? And are these twenty-one guns for the pastor of Plymouth Church? Well, things have turned around pretty lively!’ I do not know how many people saw that spectacle; I only know that I saw it.

“I was taken about the city by the editor of the Memphis Appeal, one of the most stirring of the Southern papers. I could not ask for a more kind reception than I received at his hands. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I arrived, and the lecture was at eight. As there was no lecture-room large enough to hold the people that wanted to gather, Agricultural Hall was taken, and 4,000 seats were put into it, and out from a gallery, looking down upon the people, I delivered my lecture, and I delivered it just as plump and as fair as I ever did anywhere else. I received just as cordial and respectful a hearing as ever I had, and I never desire to speak to a more thoughtful, cultivated, courteous, sympathetic, and respectful audience than I had in Memphis. Yet they knew who I was, and they very well knew what my sentiments had been and were.

“I bless God that the day has come when a true heart, with kind and sympathetic feelings, will give a man entrance into every State of this Union to discuss any question that it is necessary to discuss before the people of the United States.”

It was on January 23, 1877, that I had arranged with W. T. Powell of Richmond, Va., for Mr. Beecher to lecture in that city. Mr. Powell was manager of the Richmond Theatre, and was to pay $400 for the lecture. It was to be on Tuesday evening, and as Mr. Beecher lectured Monday evening in Baltimore, we had arranged to take the sleeper immediately after the Baltimore lecture and be in Richmond early the following morning.

As we went aboard the sleeper at Baltimore a telegram was put into my hands which read as follows:

“Richmond, Va., January 22, 1877.

“To J. B. Pond, Baltimore, Md.

“No use coming. Beecher will not be allowed to speak in Richmond. No tickets sold.

“W. T. Powell.”

I at once replied: “Have started. Mr. Beecher will be on hand to keep his contract.” I did not mention the incident to Mr. Beecher.

Just before our arrival in Richmond the following morning, Mr. Powell came to me on the train and told me that the feeling against Mr. Beecher was so bitter that it would not do for him to attempt to speak; that not a ticket had been sold, and he dared not advertise.

Mr. Beecher and I went direct to the Exchange Hotel, and as he registered our names I saw at once that there was a general disposition, from the hotel clerk down to the negro porter and the bell-boy, to guy us.

We went down to breakfast, and the waiter and head waiter who seated us were disgustingly uncivil. Mr. Beecher made no remarks. We ate our breakfast, and as we passed out of the dining-room into a long hall we met a pretty little golden-haired child. Mr. Beecher, in his characteristic manner, stopped and began talking to and caressing the child, taking some candy from his pocket (he never was without bait for children), offered it, and was just getting into the little girl’s favor when the mother came along and snatched her away, as though she were rescuing her from a fierce beast of prey.

Mr. Beecher walked quietly to his room. I left instructions at the hotel office that no one was to knock at his door. Mr. Powell called and assured me that it would be all Mr. Beecher’s life was worth to attempt to speak in Richmond. I told him that I would let him off that night from his contract if he would rent me the theatre. He consented, and I at once got out some bills and dodgers and advertised Mr. Beecher to speak that evening. The Legislature was in session, and passed an informal vote that none of them would go near the theatre. The Tobacco Board did the same.

Evening arrived, and I could get no one to attend the door, so I did it myself. Mr. Powell applied for an extra force of a dozen police, which was of no account, as they were wholly in sympathy with the crowd.

The Rev. Dr. Grey, the principal Presbyterian minister, and the head of a leading institution of learning in Richmond, wrote the chief of police that though he distinctly wished it to be understood that he did not indorse or favor Mr. Beecher’s speaking in Richmond, he sincerely hoped that the threat to egg Mr. Beecher would not be carried into effect. As each member of the Legislature and the Tobacco Board knew that none of the other members would attend the lecture, each embraced the opportunity to go; and there, to their surprise, they all met. It was a crowd of men who made the best of the joke they had played upon themselves. They were hilarious and disrespectful.

The time came for me to go after Mr. Beecher. I had no door-tender, but the theatre was full of men, and my pockets were stuffed with dollars, so I left the door to take care of itself. I found him ready. While in the carriage on our way from the hotel to the theatre not a word passed between us, and during the day neither of us had spoken of the situation. When we arrived at the stage door of the theatre the dozen policemen were keeping the crowd back. As we alighted from the carriage at the door, a general yell went up. We met Mr. Powell on the stage. He called me to one side and said:

“Don’t you introduce Mr. Beecher. The gallery is full of eggs. You will have trouble.”

I stepped into the waiting-room. Mr. Beecher said: “Go ahead; I am ready.”

I walked on the stage, and he followed. As we sat down I saw the theatre full of men only. The crowd was disposed to be uncivil; canes began to rake the baluster of the balcony railing, and feet to pound the floor, and in less than a minute a yell fairly shook the theatre. Mr. Beecher signaled me to proceed.

I stood a moment for them to get quiet, and then introduced him to his first Virginian audience.

Mr. Beecher was to speak on “Hard Times,” but had decided to change the subject to the “Ministry of Wealth.” As he arose and stepped toward the footlights, another yell went up. He stood unmoved, and waited for some time; finally a lull came, and he began. He said that there was a natural law that brains and capital controlled the commercial world, and it could not be changed even by the Virginia Legislature, which opened with prayer and closed with the benediction. The Legislature were all there, and the public, like any other public, were ready to accept any good-natured drive at the Legislature.

It was not many minutes before the audience was in full sympathy with the speaker, and for two and a half hours Mr. Beecher addressed that crowd, swaying them with his mighty eloquence and telling them such truths as they never before had listened to. His peroration was a tribute to the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Mother of Presidents, her history and her people, and closed with a brief retrospect: how she had prospered when she set her mark high and bred her sons for Presidents and position, but how changed when she came to breed men for the market; how manfully and nobly her worthy sons had kissed the sod, and how sad had been her lot. But in all her prosperity and adversity God had not forsaken her. Industry brought prosperity, and soon, very soon, Virginia was to be one of the brightest stars in the constellation of States.

Such applause and cheers as he got during that address I have never before or since heard.

He stepped off the stage and into the carriage, and we were in our rooms at the hotel before half the audience could get out of the theatre.

After getting to his room Mr. Beecher threw himself back in a large chair in front of a blazing wood fire and laughingly said:

“Don’t you think we have captured Richmond?”

He had no more than spoken when the door opened and a crowd of men came rushing in. My first impression was that it was a mob, as it did not seem that there had been time for them to come from the theatre; but I was mistaken.

The foremost was a tall man with a slouch hat. (They were all in slouch hats.) He said:

“Mr. Beecher, this is our ‘Leftenant’-Governor. We have come to thank you for that great speech. This is our member for So-and-So, and this is Judge Harris,” and so on, introducing a score or more of prominent Virginians.

“Mr. Beecher, we want you to stay and speak for us to-morrow evening. We want our women to hear you,” etc.

Mr. Beecher was in his most happy humor. He shook the Virginians warmly by the hand. He told them that he was announced for Washington the following evening, and his time was all booked for the season. They offered to raise $500 if he would remain over. The following morning at seven o’clock many Virginians were at the station to see him off. All the morning papers contained extensive synopses of the lecture and favorable notices.

After that first appearance Mr. Beecher spoke twice in Richmond to the choicest audiences that the old capital could turn out. I consider this the greatest lecture I ever knew Mr. Beecher to give.

Mr. Beecher had preached in Davenport, Iowa, Sunday, March 4th, and lectured Monday evening. The crowds had been enormous on both occasions. People had come great distances from all directions.

While on the train from Iowa City, the morning of the 6th, a number of people in the same car were returning home from Davenport. Directly behind Mr. Beecher sat two very charming, refined ladies, dressed in black. I was seated directly opposite them, and noticed that they were amusing themselves by trying to gather up a number of Mr. Beecher’s long, white, silky hairs which had fallen on the velvet collar of his overcoat and about his shoulders. The ladies were proceeding so delicately and accumulating so fine a lock of his hair that it attracted the attention of a number of passengers, who seemed so intently interested in their success as to cause absolute silence all over the car. Mr. Beecher seemed interested in a book and unaware of what was going on about him. All of a sudden he quietly turned his head toward me. I noticed the twinkle in his eye, and at once knew something was coming.

“Pond, are there flies in this car?” he asked, as he quietly raised his hand to his shoulder as if to brush away a fly.

The spectators at once burst into a general laugh. The two ladies were, for a moment, apparently paralyzed. Finally one of them plucked up courage to say:

“Mr. Beecher, we have been all the way to Davenport to hear you preach and lecture. We are Brooklyn people. We saw some loose hairs on your shoulders, and could not resist the temptation to secure them as souvenirs. We hope you will pardon us.”

“Well,” said Mr. Beecher, “my wife never could have been so careful as that.”

Everybody in the car heard the conversation, and there was general merriment.

These ladies lived at Muscatine. They had once been members of Plymouth Church. Mr. Beecher entertained them until we reached the junction, where they left us for their home. He had given them all the late news from Plymouth and Brooklyn.

At Burlington, a week later, they came to the lecture with their husbands and families. They also came to the lecture in Washington, Iowa, and Monmouth, Ill. We never made a Western tour that they did not appear in some of the audiences.

March 26, 1878, we were in Topeka, Kan. While on a three weeks’ tour in the West we were at the Teft House, having arrived by an early train from Kansas City. We ate breakfast, and Mr. Beecher retired to his room, while I entertained old friends in the office, and there were many (as the exciting part of my career had been in this blood-bought State), from Mr. McMeakin, the proprietor, with his beard hanging down to the skirts of his garments, to Tom Anderson, Major Adams, Chester Thomas, George Peck, Gov. Tom Osborne, Benjamin Simpson, Rossington, and others. Mr. McMeakin interrupted the conversation by saying that an old colored man at the desk wanted to see Mr. Beecher, and would not accept the explanation that he would see no one during the morning, as he was resting.

The old darkey wore a long-tailed broadcloth coat and a plug hat about the same age as himself. He was a typical Uncle Ephraim. I left the crowd and spoke to him.

“Mr. Beecher is resting. He can see no one until he is up and rings his bell.”

“That’s right, sir. I know all about that, sir. You just take me to him. You’ll know if he wants to see me. He would be here just now if he knew I was to see him.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“It makes no difference. Just take me to him. I lived with him six years in Indiana. My wife nursed Miss Hattie and little Massa Harry. He knows me well ’nough.”

It came in such sincere, enthusiastic darky earnestness that I fully realized he was exactly the person Mr. Beecher would be glad to see at any hour.

I escorted him to Mr. Beecher’s room, walking quietly in without knocking, as was my custom. He was lying on his bed wide awake.

“Here is an old citizen of Kansas who not only claims that he knows you, but insists that you want to see him.”

Mr. Beecher had no more than set eyes on him than he exclaimed:

“Well, I guess he’s about right. Jim, how are you? Come in and tell me about yourself right away. I haven’t seen you for over thirty years.”

“Thirty-three years, Mr. Beecher,” said the darky “Well, well, why haven’t you reported to me where you were all this time? What has become of Letitia?”

“She’s right here, Mr. Beecher. She’s going to the lecture to-night just to see you.”

“Where are you living? Have you got a family?”

“I live here in Topeka, Letitia and I. We’s got four sons. They all time about here. All got good farms but Henry, our youngest boy. He ain’t no good. Henry was named for you, Mr. Beecher. He’s at the race-track. He trains fine horses for the biggest horseman in Kansas,” and he went on giving his history for thirty-three years. He and his eldest sons had been through the war, and they had been in all the struggles in Kansas, and he knew all about it.

“Letitia is mighty anxious to see you, Mr. Beecher. Yes, she is, sir.”

“Pond, get a carriage, and we’ll ride out to see Letitia. You’ll see what good housekeeping is.”

We all went down to the office together. The same crowd of old friends were still loitering about, waiting for a chance to see and meet Mr. Beecher, to whom I introduced them, and then ordered a hack.

Mr. Beecher told the gentlemen that he was very glad to see an old servant who had once taken great care of him and Mrs. Beecher, when they first lived in Indiana, and he was going out to see his wife, whom Mrs. Beecher had partly brought up and trained in housekeeping. They told Mr. Beecher that Jim was very well known and respected, and the richest colored man in Kansas.

A few moments later Mr. Beecher and this colored man and I were riding through the streets of the capital of Kansas in an open carriage. There could be no more appropriate background for that picture than the Capitol of Kansas. We soon drove up to a very fine-looking large frame house in the quarter of negro aristocracy. There were flowers in the yard and climbers over windows and doors. As we were dismounting, Mr. Beecher said:

“I see Letitia has not forgotten her love for flowers.”

Just then a very large and motherly colored woman came to the door to welcome him. I don’t believe that in all our travel we ever enjoyed a visit more than that. They lived over their early life in Indiana, and Mr. Beecher recollected just the incidents and circumstances they were in touch with—the building of the house, the making of the gardens, the flowers, the different horses, cows, and the long rides they had together in his missionary work, prying their old mud wagon out of the mire and pulling the horses out of swamps. Each and all had shared these hardships alike, and were now enjoying alike the reminiscences.

After an hour we drove back to the hotel, Mr. Beecher sounding the praise of his old servants until we arrived. Dinner was ready, and no small portion of the town waiting to set eyes on my star.

About 6 that evening Jim came in with a large pitcher of hot coffee, something that was hard to get in that country.

“Mr. Beecher, Letitia was afeared you would have no good coffee here, and she knowed how much you needed it, as you speak to-night. She never forgot the coffee, you know.”

“Oh, Jim, tell Letitia that she knows just how to have a good lecture to-night.”

It was a good lecture.

Mr. Beecher’s visit to his old servants before he had seen any callers was much and favorably commented upon, and greatly enhanced the popularity of the already best-known colored citizen in the town.

Mr. Beecher never ate before speaking. Not even at home on Sunday did he take breakfast. He was a great coffee drinker, and always required one or two cups of good coffee instead of his meal before a lecture or sermon. He gave me to understand before we started out together that if we were to have good lectures we must have good coffee. So I found it very often necessary to impress upon the host at our hotel that Mr. Beecher’s success depended upon the hotel-keeper as much as on the lecturer. It was very seldom we failed to have good coffee, except when in some frontier city in the far West and through the South.

On August 18, 1883, Mr. Beecher lectured in Butte City, Mont. We arrived by an early train, went directly to the hotel, and Mr. Beecher retired to his room to lie down. We had left Mrs. Beecher for a day’s rest at Deer Lodge, about forty miles from Butte, a sort of mountain watering-place, to join her on the following day on our way to Portland, Ore.

While Mr. Beecher was sleeping in the forenoon the proprietor of the hotel told me there was a lady in the parlor who wished to see him. Answering the summons, I found a young woman with a child in her arms. I asked her what she wanted with Mr. Beecher. She replied that she and her husband were members of Plymouth Church; that she wanted him to baptize her baby. I knew very well that under these circumstances Mr. Beecher would be glad to be disturbed, so I called him, and he came to the parlor, shook hands with the woman, patted the baby on the cheek, and asked:

“What are you members of Plymouth Church doing here?”

“My husband is working in the mines.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About two years, sir.”

“Where is your husband? “asked Mr. Beecher.

“He hasn’t any coat, and doesn’t care to come in. He’s down at the door.”

Mr. Beecher turned to me and said: “Pond, bring that man up here.”

I found the hardy young miner and brought him up to the parlor. He was in his shirt-sleeves. He shook hands, saying: “Ah, Mr. Beecher, don’t you remember me? I am a member of Plymouth Church. I was very unfortunate in Brooklyn. I am a better man now, thanks to you, sir.”

It appeared that this young man had been unfortunate in Brooklyn. Through Mr. Beecher’s influence, and his wife’s, he had resolved to try his fortune in the far West.

Mr. Beecher was deeply affected at their earnest desire to have him baptize their only child, and I knew the baby’s baptism would be very impressive. As I stepped downstairs for a pitcher of water I met an editor of one of the papers, whom I had formerly known. I told him to come upstairs, that Mr. Beecher was about to baptize the child of one of his parishioners. It was indeed one of the most beautiful ceremonies I ever witnessed. I know we all cried.

He questioned them considerably concerning their circumstances, and asked me to see that they had tickets for the lecture that night.

The man had to hurry back to his work in the mine. Mr. Beecher asked the mother to accompany him with her baby to a clothing store across the street, where he purchased a suit of clothes for her husband, giving instructions for them to be sent to his house at once. He then allowed the mother to take her baby home, not without a recommendation to be sure she brought her husband to the lecture that night. The woman replied that she had no one with whom to leave the baby.

“Bring the baby,” said Mr. Beecher. “If there is no one else to take care of it, I will, or I will have Pond tend it.”

She was very much overcome with all this unexpected kindness. Her eyes were almost bursting with tears of gratitude as she walked away from the store.

After her departure we went to a dry goods store, where Mr. Beecher told the proprietor that he wanted several things. First, everything complete for a child of ten months, such as dresses, flannels, and such pretty things as a child wears, even to the little shoes and stockings, cloak, and bonnet. Then he told him that he wanted some goods for a dress for a woman who was in poor circumstances, but very worthy—something that she could wear and look becoming. He bought two or three calico dresses besides, and such other articles as he thought a poor family would most need, and ordered them all sent to the house. I paid the bills, and have them, receipted, now. They were altogether $83.

That evening Mr. Beecher lectured to an immense audience, all the seats having been sold in advance. We succeeded in placing two chairs at one side near the platform, which this little Plymouth family occupied. They were very attentive, and enjoyed the lecture immensely. The baby was quiet and playful during the early part of the evening, then fell quietly asleep in its mother’s arms. No one was in the least disturbed. I believe the orator got his inspiration for that occasion from this little party.

At the close of the lecture there was the usual rush to congratulate and shake hands with Mr. Beecher, including the Mayor, who presided, and the best people of Butte. I think he hardly noticed them, but made a break through the crowd and went directly to his former parishioners and congratulated them on the good behavior of the baby, told them many things of Plymouth Church and Brooklyn, enjoying it much more than all the congratulations the people had to offer afterward.

As Mr. Beecher and I returned to the hotel that evening, I said: “Mr. Beecher, it seems to me there are few men who would devote themselves for a day to a kindness like that.”

He replied: “Next to my own children are the members of my church.”

Mr. Beecher spoke in Bloomington, Ill., being introduced by an old gentleman, a former friend of Abraham Lincoln. He was a very old man, and I could see that he was very much respected. As he approached the audience to make the introductory speech, he hesitated for a word, and after a moment felt in his pockets for his manuscript, and discovered that he had forgotten them. Poor old gentleman! He was dreadfully embarrassed, and so was the audience for him. Mr. Beecher helped him out, and explained to the audience that it was a common mistake among speakers, of which he himself had often been guilty.

He was to speak in Decatur that night, and I was obliged to secure a special train, as the regular train was four hours late. I secured a caboose and engine on the Illinois Central Railroad. We reached a small station about half-way to Decatur. We had to take a side track and wait for an upcoming train to pass. I saw a great crowd at the station, but our side track took us to one side of the town. We had no more than stopped when, looking back, I saw the crowd rushing toward our car. It was during the period when Mr. Beecher was most liable to insult, and I instinctively felt that that crowd were not coming to do him honor. We had a large coal stove in the caboose. It was red hot. A heavy iron poker lay on the floor. I ran the poker into the stove and let it heat. The mob came on and insisted on getting into the car. As I was watching the front door Mr. Beecher called, “Pond!” I looked around and saw that they had forced open the back door. I at once asked them to leave, as it was a private car and a special train. They kept crowding in, and I saw trouble ahead if they persisted. I caught the poker (which had become red hot) out of the stove and went for them. I jabbed it straight into them, and they began to get out.

I know that one of those roughs, if he is living, bears a scar, as I sawed the poker square across his arm and heard the meat fry.

We reached Decatur in time for the lecture, and went to Springfield the next day.

Once in 1884 Mr. Beecher requested me to postpone a lecture engagement on account of an important wedding which he said he had on hand. He declined to tell me who was to be married.

In fact, he said, he knew little about it himself. He invited me to his house that evening, and I was sitting with Mrs. Beecher in the library when the door bell rang and the parties were escorted to the parlor. He called Mrs. Beecher to join the party, but I was not invited. They must have remained an hour chatting after the ceremony, and then Mr. Beecher, in his cheerful, delightful manner, escorted them to the door, and they drove off. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher then returned to the library, expressing great wonder, and, I think, satisfaction, at the event.

Then he told me that he had just married C. P. Huntington to Mrs. A. D. Warsham, who was quite a prominent woman in New York and the subject of considerable comment as being very ambitious. He believed she would make Mr. Huntington an excellent wife. She was just the woman for him.

Several weeks after this incident Mr. Beecher and I were together on the cars and he was having what he called a “general house-cleaning” of his pockets—not an uncommon occurrence. His pockets would often get loaded up with letters and papers, and if he happened to be sitting by an open car window, he would clear out his pockets, tear up old letters and throw them away.

On this occasion he happened to put his hand in the watch pocket of his pantaloons and found there a little envelope, which he opened. When he saw its contents, he called me to sit beside him, and remarked:

“You remember the evening I married C. P. Huntington. I was so much interested in the subject that I forgot he handed me a little envelope as he went out of the door. I put it in the watch pocket of my pantaloons, and never thought of it again until just now, and here it is—four one thousand dollar bills.

“Now,” he said, “don’t tell any one about it and we will have a good time and make some happiness with this money. We will just consider that we found it.”

A few days later he called and asked me to go with him down town to look at a cargo of rugs which had just arrived. I think we went to a place somewhere on Pearl street, below Fulton, and we had to go up two or three flights of stairs. The place was packed with rugs, and men were overhauling and marking them. Many were brought out and shown to Mr. Beecher, who seemed to be quite an expert in rugs, as well as in all other lines of art. He picked out quite a number—some of them very valuable ones—and left instructions to have them sent to various friends of his in accordance with a list which he had made out. There was one beautiful prayer rug which he sent to a friend in Peekskill, a member of his church, and I think he sent one to each of his children, and to his sons’ wives. He also purchased quite a number for his own house. For one small prayer rug he paid $40. I asked him to let me pay for that one and keep it for myself. He said: “No; that’s the finest rug here. I propose to keep that one for myself.” I saw it sold for $95 at the Beecher collection sale, but I would not bid against the young Plymouth Church lady, a near friend of Mr. Beecher, and she got it. All of those rugs would bring higher prices than Mr. Beecher paid for them.

Later we were at Bailey, Banks & Biddle’s, in Philadelphia, where he purchased a beautiful coin silver lamp, and paid $100 for it, remarking:

“Pond, this is some of the money that we found.” He sent the lamp to his own home, and I afterwards saw it sold in his collection at the American Art Galleries for $18 to Mrs. Blair. I tried to get to the auctioneer to tell him that it was a coin silver lamp and what Mr. Beecher had paid for it, but it was too late.

He bought a pair of andirons in Cincinnati and sent them to his little friend, Violet Beach, in Peekskill. Her mother had lately built a beautiful house adjoining Mr. Beecher’s farm. In his letter to Violet’s mother he said:

“I send a present to Violet, and if she doesn’t like it, let her put it in the fireplace.”

He purchased a great many unmounted gems, some of which he subsequently had mounted and gave them to friends. Many were mounted in very pretty rings.

I think he really did absorb the entire $4.000 in making happiness among those whom he loved. This was one of Mr. Beecher’s eccentricities.

After Mr. Beecher’s death, Mr. C. P. Huntington was very kind to Mrs. Beecher. He always furnished her transportation for transcontinental tours to visit her son on Puget Sound, and it was my privilege to call upon him with Mrs. Beecher’s messages, as Mr. Beecher dead was Mr. Beecher living to me, so I took pleasure in going on these errands.

One day I related to Mr. Huntington the incident of Mr. Beecher’s discovery of the four thousand-dollar bills, and he replied:

“I should never have given them to him. It was all wrong. I made a mistake. Money never did him any good.”

Since that time I have visited many of Mr. Beecher’s old friends, and have seen in their houses some of the rugs and other presents purchased with that money—souvenirs that call up fond memories of the dearest friendship one could possibly possess. I often wonder whether happiness made in that way is not more effective than when money is invested in some public library or other charitable institution, where it never arouses any feeling of personal gratitude on the part of the beneficiaries, who, if they are any better off for the legacy, hardly seem to know it.

In many a group of ministers in nearly every large city in this country have I seen Mr. Beecher standing as a father, giving and receiving blessings. When he left churches and halls where he had been preaching and lecturing, crowds always surged around him, accosting him in grateful words, asking to shake hands with him, and cheering him loudly as he drove away.

Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Unitarians, Universalists, Jews, and Catholics, all mixed in the crowd and seemed equally anxious to do him honor.

In his private conversation his speech was as perfect in quality of thought, in richness of illustration, and in precision of statement as were his public utterances. This is true of only one other man that I have ever known, and that man, Wendell Phillips, was the least like him of all the orators of his day. One could spend a day in converse with either of these men, then listen to the lecture or sermon, and feel that the conversation was fully equal, if not superior, to the speech. I am bound to say from our long and intimate acquaintance that I believe Mr. Beecher’s best things have been said in private.

Perhaps nothing more significant of his sympathy with society at large can be shown than the promptness with which he accepted an offer of chaplaincy by the Thirteenth Regiment of the National Guard, through its commander, Colonel Austen. In January, 1878, the tender was made and accepted.

As usual Mr. Beecher’s action was canvassed and criticised in Plymouth Church, whereupon at a Friday evening prayer-meeting he said: “I did not accept, as you may readily suppose, because I had nothing to do, and because I wanted to fill up vacant time. It was not because I had any special military gifts, or that any special military proclivities led me to delight in such position. I was as much surprised as any one could be when the request was made by Colonel Austen, and I was informed that it was the unanimous wish of the officers of the regiment that I should accept the place. The first impulse I felt on receiving the invitation was to say No, but the second impulse was in the nature of a query, whether there was not some duty there. The question was not exactly ‘Should you accept the place?’ but rather, ‘Why should you not accept it? Is it not eminently wise that a body of young men, organized as a force of citizen soldiers, should have a chaplain? Is not a body of this kind, resembling in some respects a social club, unrestrained by the presence of women, fraught with great danger? Is it not liable to become a veritable maelstrom in which young men may be sucked down to destruction?’ It seems to me there is no question that they should be surrounded by some kind of moral influence, and it appeared to be a pertinent question whether, if some one should respond, I was not the one to do it. In my case, there seemed to be special reasons why I should respond. I had been always among the foremost in the matters that led to the war, and was forward in upholding the various measures of the war, and it hardly seemed wise or proper for me to turn away from the citizen soldiery after they had done their duty in that war, thus tacitly saying that they were of no further consequence to the nation or to the community. And even more than all this was the consideration that many of the young men of the regiment are members of my own flock here. And if it is wise and prudent to have a citizen soldiery, properly equipped and ready at all times to serve as a background of support for the civil authorities, it is certainly well to have them fortified and strengthened by all the good influences it is possible to throw around them. I go not for pleasure, but hoping to do them good. I want to help them as soldiers, as well as individuals, for I don’t like to have anything to do with a thing that doesn’t go. The regiment has entered upon a new life, and it will be rendered more prosperous than ever. At any rate, I hope you will have its well-being at heart, if for no other sake, at least for my sake, for I should not like to do anything in which I would not have the prayers of my people.”

In a formal record, printed in the North American Review, Colonel Austen pays high compliment to his chaplain, who, it appears, made his first parade on the occasion of the dedication of the Martyrs’ Tomb at Fort Greene, Brooklyn, on the 30th of May, 1878. “He had been invited,” says Colonel Austen, “and an order forwarded, to which this jovial reply was received:

“‘Brooklyn, No. 124 Columbia Heights.

“‘My Dear Colonel:

“‘I will be present, fully armed and equipped, as becomes a chaplain of the Old Thirteenth. Yours ever,

“‘Henry Ward Beecher,

“‘Captain Secular and Chaplain Spiritual of the Old Thirteenth—God
bless her.’

“Mr. Beecher had secured a spirited horse, which I had been advised was a Kentucky thoroughbred, and which he proposed to ride. In reply to a suggestion made by me that he might have trouble in the control of so spirited a steed, Mr. Beecher said: ‘I can stand any demonstration as long as the horse enjoys himself.’

“The order to march was given, the drums rolled out their first notes, and the horse, unused to such martial sounds, reared and plunged so that I made an effort to have the music stopped. But Mr. Beecher immediately discountenanced it. The Plymouth pastor firmly held his seat, his horsemanship exciting general admiration. He soon brought the steed under complete control, and, in passing me, on his way to his place in the staff line, he said quietly, ‘I guess this horse was not aware of the fact that I had my training in Indiana. Out there, when I went to visit my parishioners, in my younger days, I didn’t follow the roads, and the rail fences didn’t stand in my way. The horse knows all that now, and will march in line in proper order.’

“Our chaplain was right. His bold Kentucky thoroughbred had been instantly and utterly subdued. Not once again did the animal leave the line; but the fire of his eye showed that it was the master hand alone that held him under control.

“On the march the rain began to fall, and, apprehensive of Mr. Beecher’s health, I urged him to leave the line and return home. ‘Are you going to leave?’ and when I replied in the negative, he said: ‘A soldier desert on his first parade? Oh, no; I never do anything by halves. I have enlisted for the war, and my maiden battle must be fought out, even if the big drum has bursted.’”

Mr. Beecher’s presence was always the occasion of a marked ovation along the entire line of march when the regiment paraded, and his spirits were of the best.

His Peekskill home was his earthly paradise, and every laborer upon it, every animal, almost every insect, had its place in his heart; for that was the wonder of his greatness, that the smallest and the least shared his love and sympathy.

His delight in nature was deep, continuous, and sometimes rapturous.

He kept a farm diary, which was picked up from among the rubbish after the family had moved away. It contained entries at different periods each summer from the time he went to Peekskill until the autumn before his death. There were two books, bound in calf, full of entries in his own hand. It was a complete directory of the farm. Here are a few of the many hundred entries:

“June 12, 1867.—Some pale maple leaves are already letting go. A few descended before my window this morning. One of them stuck into the grass stem first, and quivered in a way that would make you think it was a bird. This is the very beginning of summer, and before trees have fairly got on their summer robes they begin contribution to death.

“July 5.—Bobolink sang to-day. Bluebirds, none. Robins, larks, wren, yet songful. Woodrobin, some.

“July 18, 1867.—Woodthrush still vocal last night; heard it when on compound road; also in Killendgrass Wood. First new potatoes yesterday.

“July 26.—Woodrobin still sings. Second brood on corner robins coming off. Rain thus far abundant.

“August 3.—Vireo, song-sparrow, meadow-lark, house-wren. For two days robin song ceased. Woodthrush have not heard for two days. On twenty-ninth of July the last hay cut.

“August 6, 1867.—Heard to-day the first yellow-hammer of the season, and also half a song of the robins, and only in snatches. Sparrow still sings. Wren silent. Sparrow yet quite vocal, and bluebirds flying in air give their soft and tender song.

“October 3, 1867.—Yesterday was particularly full of birds that seem to be travelling through on their way south. Bluebirds lisped their gentle and most ladylike notes, robins flew in threes and fives, high in the air. Heard a yellow-hammer and meadow-lark sing. To-night no sound but the melodious cricket, whose gurgle is far more agreeable than the hard and grating sounds of katydid and locust.

“August 2, 1872.—Robin silent for a week. Occasional note yet from woodthrush. Finches, sparrows, and linnets vocal. Young brood of thrushes hatched and now flying near hickory trees. The robin is the most powerful of all singers; his voice leads all, and constitutes four-fifths of the sound in summer mornings.

“1881.—After a faithful service of twenty-three years Thomas James Turner departed this life Wednesday, January 5, 1881, and was buried from my house, with service also in the Episcopal Church in Peekskill, where he had long been a communicant, and with Masonic honors, Saturday, January 8, 1881. He was, according to the measure of his gifts, an upright, faithful, and trustworthy man, who served not for lucre. I should be glad to have his name associated with this place, upon which he lived from about the time I bought it, and who has had a hand in every step in improvements which made it what it is this day.”

In 1863 Mr. Beecher made a single speech in Great Britain, as Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, but it was delivered in piecemeal in different places. Its exordium was on the 9th of October, in Manchester; its peroration was pronounced on the 20th of the same month in Exeter Hall, London. The public is more or less familiar with the result of that mission.

After a few months’ absence he returned to America, having finished a more remarkable embassy than any envoy who has represented us in Europe since Franklin pleaded the cause of the young Republic at the court of Versailles. He had no official existence; but through the heart of the people he reached nobles, ministers, courtiers, and the throne itself. He whom The Times attacked, he whom Punch caricatured, was a power in the land. The change of the ruling classes in England, who were strong for the South, was at once manifest. As Mr. Scott, who introduced him in Exeter Hall, told me years later: “You should have been here to witness the effect of that speech as he swayed his enthusiastic audience hither and thither by his convincing arguments and appeal.”

I was a soldier at that time, commanding a battalion of cavalry on the frontier of southwestern Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian country, but I read with eagerness of the great achievements of Mr. Beecher in England. We soldiers looked upon Beecher at home as Beecher in the field. He sharpened the swords, ran the bullets, and forged the cannon. His speeches read by the soldiers made Spartans out of the most timid. He inspired, encouraged, and electrified as no one else could.

During all our travels and associations together in this country my anxiety and determination to have Mr. Beecher heard again in England became more and more intense. I never could get much encouragement until the spring of 1886, when, after much deliberation and urging by friends, he told me to go ahead. I immediately engaged passage from New York on Saturday morning, June 19. At that eventful Friday evening prayer-meeting, the evening before Mr. and Mrs. Beecher sailed, both the lecture-room and the auditorium were crowded. When the great overflow asked Mr. Beecher if they could not go into the auditorium, he replied: “No; this is our prayer-meeting room, where we have met on Friday evenings for forty years, and I do not feel like making this evening an exception.” The overflow filled the main auditorium with members and friends waiting to say good-by to Mr. and Mrs. Beecher.

The ship left the wharf at 6 o’clock on the morning of the 19th, her decks crowded with passengers not yet aware of Mr. Beecher’s presence; but as he stood almost alone on the forecastle deck, leaning on the rail, his well-known form attracted attention of people on the ferry-boats, and simultaneously the whistles of tugboats and other neighboring craft were sounded in salute.

Over a thousand Plymouth Church people had risen before the sun to pay a farewell tribute to Mr. and Mrs. Beecher by an excursion down the harbor on the steamer Grand Republic.

Before we reached Liberty Island and slowed down, the Grand Republic came alongside, her throng of passengers crowded to the nearer guards, and sent up cheer after cheer.

We passed Sandy Hook at 10:30, and were soon out at sea, bound for England. We found on board baskets, bouquets, and banks of flowers. Many friends had sent letters of farewell, and one had provided a basket of homing pigeons with instructions how to send the messages, what birds to fly first, and what others at 2 and 3 o’clock. Mr. Beecher wrote messages to his sons and to his friends in various parts of the country, fastened them to the birds according to directions, took the birds in his hands, playfully gave them parting instructions, and let them fly. They reached their destination in due time.

On the next Saturday morning at daybreak we awoke off the Irish coast. There was a heavy fog, and the fog-whistle was making a horrible din. We could hear voices in the distance, noises of life and commerce; soon the fog lifted, and we saw land. At 6 o’clock we reached Queenstown. Here many of our passengers disembarked, and here, with the Dublin morning papers, we got letters and telegrams, and countless invitations for Mr. Beecher to dine and to speak and lecture. We saw that Gladstone was announced to speak in Liverpool the following Monday, and decided to remain and hear him. We received letters from Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Parker, Dr. Henry Allon, and a host of others of Mr. Beecher’s clerical friends, inviting him to preach, and scores of applications from all parts of the kingdom for lectures.

We landed in Liverpool at 7:30 in the evening, and were met by delegations from Bradford, Leeds, York, Carnarvon, Manchester, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, and other cities. Reporters from the London papers were also in waiting. My fondest dream was realized. I want to tell something of that experience, because, under some strange journalistic influence, the American newspaper accounts of the trip rather left it to be inferred that there was lack of success. But let us see.

We spent Sunday, the 27th, in Liverpool. Mr. Beecher had several invitations to preach, but was obliged to decline all since he had not regained his vigor lost in seasickness. He found his way to some church alone, and sat in a large congregation unrecognized for the first time since he was ordained a minister. In the afternoon many clergymen and many men active in politics called to pay their respects.

The first lecture in England took place in Exeter Hall, London, July 19. It was in the same hall that Mr. Beecher had spoken when last in England, during our American Civil War. I believe there was scarcely a clergyman or minister in the city of London who would have declined the honor of introducing Mr. Beecher on this occasion, but Mr. Beecher said to me on the morning of the lecture: “Pond, when I spoke here in 1863, having hard work to find some one to preside, Mr. Benjamin Scott, chamberlain of the city of London, volunteered his services. See if you can find him; I want him to take the chair to-night.”

I did find him, still chamberlain of the city. He very modestly referred me to others who, he said, would gladly preside, and would lend more honor to the occasion than he could. That would not do. I told him that he was Mr. Beecher’s choice. He seemed highly complimented, and kindly consented to serve for the second time. The great hall was packed, and when Mr. Scott appeared, the memory of his earlier action still green, the burst of applause which greeted him grew as it continued, the audience finally rising, waving handkerchiefs, and cheering.

Mr. Scott referred to the meeting in the hall twenty-three years before. He had never regretted occupying the position filled on that occasion; now Mr. Beecher had honored him by asking him to be present again.

Mr. Scott sat down, and Mr. Beecher arose and was greeted with deafening applause. He stood silent and impassive, his face seemingly untouched by emotion, as he looked around upon the vast audience. As the applause died away he began to speak, but before he could make himself heard the applause was again repeated, with additional emphasis, if possible, and Mr. Beecher was obliged to wait for it to cease. Then, in a strong voice that reverberated around the hall, he recalled the previous meeting. “A long lapse of time in a man’s life,” he said, “and such lapses give solidity to a man’s opinion; they also give sagacity.”

He was not surprised at the view some people took of America; they did not know the facts. “America is the younger tree, but the acorn from which it sprang fell from the English oak. Americans are of English lineage and blood. If England is not proud of America, why, then the latter will make her so”—a remark which aroused much applause. The lecture—that one on the “Reign of the Common People,” which so many thousands of Americans have heard with pleasure (and no two audiences ever heard alike)—occupied nearly two hours in delivery, and was frequently interrupted by applause and cheers.

Mr. Beecher preached his first sermon in London on Sunday, July 4, 1886, in City Temple, whose pastor was the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker. The congregation were admitted by ticket, church members first, then the public, to the capacity of the auditorium. Hundreds, and I may say thousands, came who had to be turned away. That week the religious and secular press teemed with praise for the great American preacher. Every daily paper in London had some kindly notice of him. It is not usual in England for the secular press to notice religious doings, especially those of dissenters, so called. Every denomination has its well-supported organ.

More generous criticism could not have been written than Mr. Beecher received at the hands of the secular and religious press. His sermon was published verbatim, with extended editorial comment.

Sunday, July 11, was an interesting day. Mr. Beecher preached in Union Chapel, Islington, London, for his old friend, the Rev. Dr. Henry Allon, the scholarly representative of the highest class of cultivated, well-educated Congregationalists. There was as great a congregation of intelligent people as I have ever seen. The usual system of first admitting members of the society by ticket was adopted exclusively up to a certain hour. Then the doors were thrown open to the public, and the large auditorium was immediately packed to its utmost capacity. As great a throng outside was unable to get in.

After service, and dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Allon, Mr. Beecher and I, by invitation of Dean Bradley, visited Westminster Abbey, where a number of clergymen of the Church of England were gathered to meet him in the parlors of the deanery. Tea was served, and the Dean invited Mr. Beecher through the various historical private rooms about the Abbey. Dean Stanley’s library and desk were just as when he died. Incidents and anecdotes of their late friend were exchanged between the Dean and Mr. Beecher. The clergymen listened to the dialogue as though fearing to lose a word. As Mr. Beecher entered the Jerusalem Chamber he said:

“I am struck with awe. No room has greater interest to me, unless it be the ‘Upper Room.’”

He recalled with remarkable rapidity and correctness the many religious events that had taken place there—the Westminster Assembly and Confession of Faith, the two revisions of the Bible, etc.—and the eminent and scholarly men brought up within the very gates of that sanctuary listened with intense interest to his eloquent exposition of what must have seemed their own peculiar province of history.

The affection and respect with which Mr. Beecher was greeted by English clergymen—those of the Establishment as well as Non-Conformists—was very marked.

The Dean of Canterbury said to Mr. Beecher himself:

“There is one thing, Mr. Beecher, for which we must all thank you, and that is for what you have taught us of the Fatherhood of God.”

When Mr. Beecher went (in 1886) through England and Scotland, he was hailed on every side by ministers who bore the most grateful testimony to the happy influence which his ministry had exercised upon their spiritual lives. Many of these men, too, had seen and heard him in America.

Dr. Howson, the dean of Chester, and joint author with Conybeare of the scholarly and famous “Life of St. Paul,” came to Plymouth Church to see the man and hear the voice whose printed words had been so much to him. I accompanied him to Plymouth Church. We went home with Mr. Beecher, and they had a delightful time together; and on his return to England he sent one of his books in return for one Mr. Beecher had given him, inscribed, “For gold I give thee brass.”

I must make a special reference to the meeting with the theological students in City Temple on Friday morning, October 15. There were about six hundred of the students to whom Mr. Beecher was to talk. The remaining seats in the Temple were set aside for ministers and clergymen of all denominations, college professors, and visitors, who were admitted on presentation of their personal cards. These were taken up at the door at my request, and I now have the cards of six hundred and eighteen ministers, who, in addition to the students and professors, thronged the meeting, notwithstanding that the rain descended in torrents.

It was estimated by the pastor, Dr. Parker, that nearly three thousand people were present.

Never was Mr. Beecher more elevated in thought, more eloquent in expression, more tender in feeling; and never did I witness a multitude of earnest men more thoroughly filled with Christian joy than on this occasion.

That was a never-to-be-forgotten morning. The address was one of great power, suggestive, reminiscent, witty, full of wisdom and experience; but the great intellectual display came afterward, when he said he would try to answer any question put to him.

I imagine that of all people to ask uncomfortable and insoluble questions, the young theological student, freshly familiar with all the dogmatic niceties and doubts of the books, is the most troublesome, and Mr. Beecher, who always freely laid himself open by great breadth of statement, was an ideal target for their ingenuity. The first question keyed him up to the keenest enjoyment of the situation. For over half an hour he stood there, alert, excited, but never a more complete master of all his powers, and replied to the questions thrust at him from every side in rapid succession—questions of every conceivable sort, in theory, practice, and speculation. His replies were invariably brief, and they came as quickly as a flash of lightning. It seemed as if you could see his mind flash. He was witty, sarcastic, subtle, and humorous. His replies, commonly the very essence of common-sense, went to the mark like a bullet. Here is one question from the balcony that turned the laugh on the interlocutor very suddenly: “Mr. Beecher, I am a clergyman. May I beg to ask one question? I have simply to say how very grateful we should be if, as many of us are unable to hear you on Sunday morning, you could preach anywhere within our reach on Sunday evening.”

Mr. Beecher, quick as a flash: “I shall be perfectly willing to preach in St. Paul’s, or at Westminster, at any hour.”

“I mean in any chapel in London.”

Mr. Beecher replied: “I am afraid I shall have to carry out my original purpose in that regard. I have been preaching in the chapels in London some time, and should like to try some of the larger buildings.”

CLOSE OF THE SUMMER IN ENGLAND—TOUR IN DUBLIN.

I have often wondered to myself if the Dublin lecture was truly a success. Mr. Frederick Windee had agreed to pay me £80 for the lecture. Who Mr. Windee was I didn’t know, except that his references were good. He wrote me, when I made the engagement, that the “Reign of the Common People” would not do for Ireland. The subject smacked of politics, and it would not do to advertise it in Dublin. The “Institution” would risk “Wastes and Burdens of Society,” to which I knew Mr. Beecher would not object.

On our arrival at the station a little weasel-faced Irishman met us and introduced himself as Mr. Windee. He was very polite, but seemed nervous. On reaching the hotel he called me aside and told me he feared Mr. Beecher was a dangerous man for Dublin, but hoped he would not make a mistake. I assured him that there was not the slightest cause for fear.

He placed £80 in Irish bills in my hand. I asked him who was to preside. He told me that the Rev. Mr. Morrison would preside if he could be assured that the speaker would not in any way refer to religion or politics in his lecture. I had to tell Mr. Beecher what the feeling was. He smiled and said nothing. That night at Metropolitan Hall we found a large audience waiting. Mr. Beecher was introduced to the chairman, the Rev. S. G. Morrison, a somewhat patriarchal divine, who without ceremony and with great uncertainty conducted the lecturer to the platform, where he sat down to as cold a reception as I ever knew a man to receive. All was still as death. The chairman rose, stepped forward, and said:

“Ladies and gentlemen: I have the honor to introduce a distinguished orator from Yankee-land. Mr. Beecher is not on this platform in his clerical character, so we are not to be treated to any exposition of his theological sentiments. Mr. Beecher is not here as a politician, and therefore we will not hear from him any exposition of his political principles (Applause: Hear! Hear!), but Mr. Beecher is here to deliver an address of more than ordinary social importance. As a well-known philanthropist, from his own experience, from the wonderful abilities the great Master has gifted him with, and from his well-known character as one of the most distinguished orators, you may anticipate, I think, a lecture that shall not only be instructive, but delightful. I have great pleasure in introducing Mr. Beecher to your notice this evening.” (Applause.)

Mr. Beecher, on coming forward, was received with courteous but not cordial applause. He said:

“I have been very kindly introduced by the distinguished and honorable gentleman who has accompanied me. Therefore, I accept the position assigned me. I have not come to speak on theology, and you shall never know how much you have missed. (Laughter.) I have not come to speak on politics; I have enough of that in my own country. (Laughter.) And even if I knew about your politics, I should think it very inexpedient, ‘as one born abroad,’ to meddle with local affairs and local questions. I know that it is not necessary for one to know much about politics in order to make a good speaker, but nevertheless I accept the delimitation. There is nothing left of me but this—that I am a man. That is enough. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ and as to other things, I give them the go-by in the hope that some twenty or thirty years hence I may revisit you and that then you may be very glad to hear my opinions about those other subjects.” (Laughter.)

Mr Beecher gave his lecture in one of his characteristic moods, caused by an attempt to confine him within certain bounds. The audience soon had reason to believe that he had in some way, perhaps unconsciously, woven a great deal of religion and politics into the lecture; at least the chairman told me after the lecture that he could see and feel it all through. The Dublin papers published the lecture entire the next morning.

The last lecture of the tour had been delivered; there was much handshaking; the people had got as thoroughly warmed as they dared. Mr. Beecher was jolly and happy as he extended his hand to the hesitating people gathered around him, seemingly wishing and hoping, but scarcely venturing, to approach him. “Come right along,” he said; “this is my good-by shake. I am glad to see you.”

We rode back to our hotel. To-morrow we would be on our way to America. Mrs. Beecher had supper waiting, and we had our small jokes and enjoyed ourselves. Never were three people more happy. Mr. Beecher reminded me that this was not the first time we had knocked off, a day at a time, a long lecture tour.

Between the 4th of July and the 21st of October, fifteen and a half weeks, Mr. Beecher had preached seventeen times, delivered nine public addresses and fifty-eight lectures. For the fifty-eight lectures he cleared the sum of $11,600 net of all expenses for himself and Mrs. Beecher from the day they sailed from New York, June 19, to the day they arrived at their home in Brooklyn, October 31. This was his summer vacation.

His health was always a wonder to me. He never knew what illness meant excepting at sea. He seldom, if ever, showed anger. When attacked in open debate or argument, or when aroused, his eyes twinkled, and then look out—a murderous broadside was about to sink the enemy’s ship.

LAST DAYS AND DEATH.

I find the following entries in my diary of 1887:

Saturday, March 5—In Washington, for Mr. Beecher. In the afternoon received telegram from Col. H. B. Beecher: “Father very ill; apoplexy; suffering no pain. Come home.”

Left my business and started for Brooklyn 10 P.M. The Associated Press publishes the sad news. It is the talk on the cars, and by everybody. Henry Ward Beecher’s name on everybody’s lips.

Sunday, March 6.—Arrived in Brooklyn 7 o’clock, Mr. Beecher’s house. Found a grief-stricken home. Mrs Beecher cannot be comforted. His two sons, the Colonel and Will, and their families, are by the dying bedside of their dear father. I see my dearly beloved—paralyzed, unconscious, never again to know any of those he loves. Dr. Searle, the faithful family physician, with him, and tells us there is no hope. Still, the family ask for another consultation. I went for Dr. Hammond, who tells us that Mr. Beecher will never speak again—that it is only a question of a few hours. It can hardly seem real. This great life is suddenly ebbing. He breathes on. Mrs. Beecher asks me not to go away. Dr. Searle and I waited and watched all night.

Monday, March 7.—Mr. Beecher seems in a deep sleep, as I have seen him sleep many times when very tired. His left side is paralyzed. He can move his right arm. He seems to be addressing audiences, and gestures very earnestly. From 11 o’clock to past midnight I sat by his side, and held his right hand. I believe he is conscious of my presence, for I ask him to give my hand two grips if he knows me, and he immediately responds. His breathing is harder, and at midnight there is a rattle in his throat. Dr. Searle and I keep the watch again. Mrs. Beecher has not laid down nor slept since he was stricken. She is heroic and brave.

Tuesday, March 8.—Dr. Searle awoke me at 4, saying: “Mr. Beecher is failing fast.” I was on the lounge in the parlor, and could hear him breathe distinctly in the room above. Everybody in the house was called, and was soon by his bedside. Mrs. Beecher, Colonel Beecher and family, Rev. Samuel Scoville and family, William C. Beecher and family. Respiration, 56 to 60; pulse, 120. The great life is surely going—no hope! He rallies, and raises the right arm. We again disperse; then we are summoned again. Daylight reveals its sad scene. His breath is shorter. Bulletins are sent out every fifteen minutes telling that Mr. Beecher is dying. Dr. Searle holds his pulse. The family are weeping about the dying bed. It is 9:40 A.M. Dr. Searle whispers to me: “His pulse has stopped. He is breathing his last. He is gone!” Dr. Searle lays the lifeless hand by his side, bends over, and is the first to kiss the cheek of his departed friend, and amid a flood of tears and pitiful sobs, walks away and announces to the waiting multitude outside that all is over. Henry Ward Beecher is dead!

Good-by, my best beloved friend. I shall never have another like you.

Mr. Beecher died of apoplexy at his residence in Brooklyn on Tuesday, March 8, 1887, at 9:40 A.M. The private funeral was held at 9:30 A.M. on the following Thursday at his late home, where none but the members of the family were present. The public funeral took place at Plymouth Church at 10:30 A.M. on Friday, the 11th. In accordance with the request so often repeated by Mr. Beecher, the funeral services were entirely under the direction of his friend, the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Hall, of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn, who conducted the simple and impressive ceremonies at the house of mourning, and also at the church in which the world-renowned preacher and orator had earned fame and universal love. Dr. Hall’s public address was a model of simplicity, dignity, and manly pathos. He rose to the height of the occasion, and without a sign of exaggerated rhetoric impressed every mind with the greatness of the man who had departed, and comforted every loving heart under his firm yet tender touch. Mr. Beecher’s ideas of the fitness of things were never more signally confirmed than by his choice of Dr. Hall, “to bury, not to praise him.”

Surging crowds thronged the neighboring thoroughfares. Business was suspended by proclamation of the mayor of Brooklyn. The streets in all directions were filled with the sorrowing multitude, who stood in line for hours with a hope of viewing once more the face of their departed friend. When the funeral pageant entered Plymouth Church the interior of the great structure was blooming like an immense bower of flowers and living things. Evergreens and roses, smilax and blossoming vines, greeted those who entered. It seemed, indeed, the ushering of the dead into the realm of life. Lying in state during an entire day, the body was viewed by thousands. The crush to gain one glimpse of the remains was terrible, although the interior arrangements were perfect to secure an orderly passing of the long lines of people. The Thirteenth Regiment were the guard of honor; and hour after hour, from 10 in the morning until 10 in the evening, while the great organ gave forth subdued and solemn music, the people entered, looked, and passed. It was estimated that in this slow but constantly moving stream over fifty thousand persons—men, women, and children—had come to see his face for the last time.

On Saturday, March 12, 1887, Henry Ward Beecher’s body was buried in Greenwood. His hearse was followed not only by his comrades of the Thirteenth Regiment, his family, friends, parishioners, and fellow Brooklynites, but in sympathy and honor by millions of his countrymen. Not in this generation, at least, has there been a funeral so nobly significant. In the stately procession walked the viewless forms of principles, of governments, of nations, and of races; the guardian spirit of the slave whom he helped to liberate; the fair, sad genius of the Green Isle, for which he so often and so eloquently pleaded; the dusky representative of the Chinese Empire, in behalf of whose sons he again and again and again demanded justice; the fair form of modern science with the radiance of the morning sun on her queenly brow; the benign angel of charity, clothed in the whiteness of that purity which renders sin invisible; Democracy, with her free step, flowing hair and cap of many hues; Columbia, full of matronly grace and as benign as the atmosphere of June; and Christianity, calm, motherly, and forgiving—these were the pallbearers by whom the body of our hero was borne to its resting-place.

THE REV. DR. LYMAN ABBOTT was introduced to me by Henry Ward Beecher in his library one morning in 1877 as the editor of The Christian Union, then known as “Henry Ward Beecher’s paper.” We were about leaving for a long lecture tour in the West, and the doctor had called to consult and advise with his chief before leaving. I don’t know when I was ever more favorably impressed with a gentleman than I was with Dr. Abbott as I listened to his conversation and the general outline he was submitting for work ahead. Turning to me, Dr. Abbott said:

“Major Pond, we are anxious to secure from Mr. Beecher full accounts of his Western tour, as editorial correspondence, and I want to ask your help. You know how valuable such material must be, as all his friends are anxious to read every word he writes.”

This is the spirit that Dr. Abbott always manifested as associate editor with Mr. Beecher up to the end of that partnership, and Mr. Beecher’s love and appreciation of his friend was equally steadfast.

Mr. Beecher’s interest in The Christian Union never diminished, even after he left it, he insisting that now he was out of it Dr. Abbott would feel much more freedom in carrying out his own ideas. Dr. Abbott was a man of remarkable resources, could work easily, and grasp the right and the fitness of things, and he was also a man of great originality of thought, with a mind as clear as crystal, and was progressive. Mr. Beecher said he wished Dr. Abbott had a body equal to his head, but, he added, “he works easily and makes no false motions or superfluous exertion. Every faculty counts.”

While on the tour just referred to The Christian Union was regularly forwarded to Mr. Beecher, and as he was reading it one time, he turned to me and said: “I wish I could write like Abbott. He is the clearest writer we have.” Then he would read aloud Dr. Abbott’s editorials and comment on them as of the finest and soundest.

On another occasion Mr. Beecher told me that in profane history he considered that Dr. Richard S. Storrs was one of the most notable scholars of the day, while in Old Testament history his own brother, Edward Beecher, was the best versed man he ever knew; he seldom had to refer to the book, but could quote literally almost any passage, and could give the names and views of commentators and authorities that seemed almost endless. But the most accomplished, all-round Bible scholar, he believed, was Lyman Abbott.

Once, when speaking of the future of Plymouth Church, I said: “Mr. Beecher, what is to be the future of Plymouth Church? Certainly, there is no one to take your place there.”

“If I thought that, I would go out at once,” he replied. “That church has been too well brought up to be dependent on any one man for its cohesiveness. I have no fear on that score. Lyman Abbott only needs a Columbus.”

I have known many instances where friends would complain to Mr. Beecher that Dr. Abbott was working The Christian Union to his own aggrandizement. He always gave a sharp rebuke to these suggestions, and lost no opportunity to defend his friend, whom he declared to be the most patient, long suffering, and forgiving man in the world, or he never could have stood the neglect he was constantly receiving at his (Mr. Beecher’s) hands. This tendency to impugn Dr. Abbott’s methods pervaded even Mr. Beecher’s household quite extensively, but to no effect, for if ever Mr. Beecher could rise in his might, it was when good motives of a friend were assailed, and he generally settled the matter on the spot. Mr. Beecher died. The great church was left without a pastor. There was not a minister in the world that this congregation, as a body, wished to even consider as his successor. His friend, Dr. Abbott, who was now at the head of The Christian Union Company, its editor and business manager, had given up preaching for his present work. He was available and invited to supply the pulpit, pending the securing of a pastor. With hesitancy the doctor accepted, on the distinct understanding that he was not a candidate for the pastorate, and for months he preached to that great congregation, which seemed to show no signs of depletion from the loss of its pastor. Only a few famous preachers were thought of. When Rev. Dr. Parker, of London, came over in 1887 for a lecture tour and to deliver a eulogy on his friend, Mr. Beecher, the enterprising men of the press interviewed a large number of church members and printed their expressions, both kind, friendly, and unfriendly, to such an extent that before the doctor was in this country a week he was dragged through the newspapers as one who expected to be called to Plymouth Church, whereas he had his own great congregation eagerly awaiting his return. I don’t wonder that he was disgusted and discouraged and unable to finish his tour.

There was a young preacher in England who had made a great impression on Mr. Beecher by his speech of welcome before the Congregational board, at a reception given Mr. Beecher in Liverpool on our last day in England: Rev. Charles Berry, of Wolverhampton.

I had published Mr. Beecher’s remarks concerning Mr. Berry in my “Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher,” and some Plymouth people had seen them, and suggested that Mr. Berry be invited to come over and preach a trial sermon. Meanwhile Dr. Abbott was preaching every Sunday, and the church was always full. Mr. Berry was preaching in Wolverhampton on a salary of £200 a year. He came to Plymouth Church, preached two sermons and received a call, with an offer of $9,000 a year. Of course this first real recognition of Mr. Berry as a preacher of unusual ability, and a call to the most famous pulpit in the world, surprised the religious public of Great Britain, and more than quadrupled his value at home. The people of his own congregation at once strongly protested against his going away, and from then until the time of his death he was the leading minister of his denomination in his own country.

During all this time Dr. Abbott was occupying the pulpit and preaching twice every Sunday. It finally dawned upon the Church Committee that they were really having the finest and most acceptable preaching available in all the world. Dr. Abbott was called to be their pastor, and accepted. There was, of course, some protest, for it did not seem possible to a great many that there were not some “great” men somewhere, and Lyman Abbott had been all his life familiar to them. But the church interest and attendance showed no falling off; it rather increased; the sentiment in his favor became and remained unanimous, and for ten years Lyman Abbott held that pulpit, and, as all the world knows, held it to the highest grade among the pulpits of the land.

The most unanimous protest came in 1898, when Dr. Abbott surprised his congregation by telling them that he was going to resign, and asked them to look for his successor. They were not going to accept his resignation. He had so completely filled their ideal of a pastor and preacher that to lose him meant a certain calamity to the church. Only a few of the veterans—who had seen Mr. Beecher followed by another, without disaster—could believe that Plymouth Church could be satisfied with a substitute for Dr. Abbott.

During all this decade Dr. Abbott had carried on his editorial work and the management of his paper. He had dared to make some remarkable changes. To the great dissatisfaction of many of his readers, he had changed the name of his paper—that well-known, loved and appropriate name, The Christian Union—to The Outlook. Even the name Christian Union was a magnificent property in itself, and the doctor had to answer a great many complaints and listen to prophecies of disaster, but it did not seem to worry him. There was an improvement in form and dress made at the same time, and the smaller page with wider columns was accepted cheerfully. It was a conspicuous and very welcome visitor in the household, and soon had an enhanced popularity. This ran for only a year or so, when another change was made to magazine form, with a neat greenish-gray cover, resembling more the old-fashioned almanac than anything else. This, many of the subscribers thought, was a fatal innovation, but it took only a few short weeks to convince them that the new size was more convenient to read, to carry, and to preserve; and so all the changes came to be acknowledged as advance movements in keeping with the times.

In my intercourse with Dr. Abbott during these ten years I saw that he was under great strain from his many duties. His two sermons a week, his editorial duties, and his lecture engagements were more than any man could keep up with, even had he the physique of an athlete. I learned that his ambition was to reach the great people more extensively than was possible through the pulpit. He told me long before he resigned that he wanted to stop preaching and try to make The Outlook more nearly what it ought to be by giving it his best work. His sons were developing good business ability, and he wanted to leave them an established business. The fact that the increased growth and influence of his paper has placed it as the very first in its line is evidence that his head was level, for is not The Outlook the paper above all others that voices public sentiment on all the important issues of the times? In all the improvements and continued elements of success he has been peculiarly aided by the discriminating taste and literary talent of his associate editor, Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, and by the intelligent enterprise and judgment of his publisher, Mr. William B. Rowland; yet, after all, The Outlook is Lyman Abbott.

The Plymouth Committee was diligent in its search for a successor to Dr. Abbott. I heard Thomas G. Shearman say the evening that Mr. Abbott’s resignation was accepted: “We are going to have the greatest preaching in Plymouth right along. Your committee are not ready to report yet, but when they are ready, there will be no mistake.” This was at the close of the meeting that had been devoted to eulogistic speeches on Dr. Abbott in the doctor’s presence—speeches showing that, if one-half were true, the doctor was certainly a greater man than any that had yet walked upright on this terrestrial globe. It was for that congregation to bide their time with patience and see what the committee would present. In two weeks Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Chicago, was announced at a prayer meeting for the following Sunday. The committee reported very enthusiastically. They had heard the young man in Chicago, and were in love with him at first sight. Dr. Hillis came. The church had been prepared to do honor to an ideal minister. They did. Dr. Abbott was foremost in welcoming the young stranger to the pulpit, to which he certainly had reason to believe no other man could ever be so welcome as he had been, and then, in all simplicity and modesty, Dr. Abbott took his seat in the congregation and joined in the tide of enthusiasm which rolled over Dr. Hillis. The new pastor was then and there carried up to the highest possible place in the hearts of the congregation. Such a scene of joy and general expression of love and satisfaction could not often be witnessed in any other body of Christian men and women. Plymouth Church is a unique institution—the fruits of forty years of Henry Ward Beecher’s inspiration and harmonizing genius.

Since his retirement, Dr. Abbott seems to have been none the less busy. He has been addressing large audiences continually. He has delivered twelve lectures before the Lowell Institute, Boston, has been “preacher to the University” at Yale, at Harvard, at Cornell, and elsewhere, year after year, and at other important places all over the country has been a welcome speaker and, what is better than all, he has given, “without money and without price,” an extensive course of lectures before the People’s Institute, Cooper Union, New York, where thousands have rushed to hear him and many have been obliged to turn away because the houses were filled on each occasion long before the time to begin. This great crowd contains as intelligent people as exist anywhere, most of whom have seen better days, and who show their appreciation of their opportunities by expressions of joy that can come only from true, loving hearts. The poor have the gospel preached to them by Dr. Lyman Abbott.

REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, third and present pastor of Plymouth Church (A.D. 1900), is one of whom I hardly dare attempt to write or prophesy, as I fear my heart may outrun my head. He came to Plymouth Church in April, 1899, and has been preaching twice every Sunday to a congregation that tests the capacity of the famous church—the most critical and intelligent congregation to preach to that exists in Christendom—a congregation that seldom heard and never could endure a dull sermon from any of its pastors.

Twelve years ago the public believed that the work of Plymouth Church was sustained and carried on mainly through the tremendous personality of Henry Ward Beecher, and that it must greatly suffer by his death; yet Dr. Lyman Abbott surprised the religious world by infusing into the work of that church increased vigor and strength for ten years longer. Now comes this young minister from the West (more markedly Western than either of his predecessors), born in Iowa thirty-seven years ago, and takes up the work laid down by Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. Lyman Abbott, and carries it on as vigorously as ever. Truly he must be a great man to do this thing.

His preaching differs widely from any other that this generation has heard. It is nineteenth century preaching, embellished by all the intellectual appliances conceivable. I remember that while I was a printer, away back in the fifties, the New York Sun announced a cylinder press that could print two thousand papers in an hour. What a sensation in the daily newspaper world! Now, one hundred thousand are printed on one machine in that time, and the demand for an increased output has constantly kept ahead of achievement The same wonderful progress in facilities for travel, in telephony and telegraphy and other applications of electricity, multiplying the efficiency of every conceivable faculty and resource, in every line of thought and invention, has extended even to the pulpit of Dr. Hillis. Such preaching! So much preaching, and such sound and commonsense preaching! Such showers of words and finished sentences, epigrammatic outpourings of sound thoughts, quotations from the best books on all subjects, ancient and modern! His head is a storehouse of knowledge. Such an encyclopedia of words and facts it seems impossible for one man to be. There is enough in a single sermon to make four good ones for four good ministers, and then there would be enough left over to supply four more.

I sit, just one in that great crowd, and listen spellbound, for it will not do to lose one of those sparkling sentences. I want him to stop, for he has given me more than I can possibly digest in one week; but yet I want him to go on, too, for it seems wrong to break the spell of enchantment. I catch a suggestion that I might surely profit by, but I cannot remember it, there is so much else that I must hear crowding it out. I risk a turn of my head to see if all the crowd are as intensely interested as I am. None of them see me, so intent is each one to catch every word. So it goes on for an hour. When he suddenly stops with, “Let us pray,” the whole congregation gives one simultaneous long breath. It is a short prayer. Then there is a hymn by the united choir and congregation—old Plymouth congregational singing, nowhere else to be heard. The great crowd rises to go away. I look in front of me and see there this young minister, meeting and shaking hands with the crowd that is rushing forward to greet him, as placid and quiet and as gently receiving his friends as though he had but just now stepped into the hall. There is not the slightest show of fatigue. And here I discover the greatest element in all this young man’s attractiveness. Dominating all else is his personality. All who meet him and have the privilege of speaking to him and shaking his hand are his devoted, loving friends.

Such is Dr. Hillis, and this the dawn of his career. What will he be at high meridian?

THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER, minister of City Temple, London, and the greatest of living pulpit orators—I do not say the greatest preacher, for I think that distinction has belonged to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, during the past fifty-three years—has eccentricities that have retarded his friendships among strangers. Dr. Parker and his congregation in London were loyal, staunch friends of Mr. Beecher and his church during the time of the great preacher’s deepest sorrow. In 1886, while in England with Henry Ward Beecher, I engaged Dr. Parker to come over here and make a lecture tour.

Meanwhile his friend, Mr. Beecher, died, and as Dr. Parker was coming to America, it was arranged that he should deliver a eulogy on his friend in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn. The net proceeds I was to present to the Beecher Statue Fund, then being raised. It was the Doctor’s first appearance on the tour, and a large audience of Mr. Beecher’s friends nearly filled the Academy. The net proceeds were subsequently turned over to the Statue Fund as a contribution from me.

At the end of the first week I paid Dr. Parker for five lectures, which included the Beecher eulogy. I made no objections to this. In fact, I knew I had a perfect right to do so. Nothing was said about it in settlement. The Doctor delivered five lectures and I had paid him. The net proceeds of the first lecture I had donated to the Beecher Statue Fund. I should have sent in a check as the net receipts of the lecture, with no further explanation, and then everything would have been all right and no questions asked; but as many thought the net receipts—about $1,100—looked small for so large a house, and did not take into consideration the expense of the Academy of Music rental, advertising, etc., I made a confidential statement to a member of the Statue Committee of all items, including the fee of the speaker. The secretary happened to be the very last man I should have trusted. He at once had an item for the newspapers, and rushed to the office, and that evening appeared in all the daily papers sensational headlines:

“DR. PARKER TAKES PAY FOR EULOGIZING HIS FRIEND.”
“MAJOR POND WITHHOLDS MONEY BELONGING TO THE
BEECHER STATUE.”
“DEACON WHITE DENOUNCES THE THIEF AND ACCOMPLICE,
ETC.”

It was exciting. Dr. Parker was on the road filling lecture engagements. Reporters and interviewers found him in Chicago and told him he was charged with refusing to deliver a eulogy on his friend for less than $250. Had he any money belonging to the Beecher Statue Fund? He declared he had none.

The Doctor had been lecturing to crowded houses, but now the reporters completely demoralized him. He telegraphed me that he must stop. He was ill and could not go farther. He returned to New York. Reporters haunted him there. Every interview made matters worse. He engaged passage and sailed back home in a very few days. There was due to Dr. Parker $1,100 for lectures that he had delivered. Of course I had been making money on his lectures, and to stop and cancel was a financial loss to me; but as in all contracts, “illness or unavoidable circumstances render this agreement null and void,” I could only settle with Dr. Parker by paying what was due him. I made out the statement and accompanying check for $1,100. He sent for me the day before he sailed. As I came into his dignified and sombre presence the Doctor said:

“Major Pond, I sail for my home to-morrow. My health is such that I cannot go on. The long voyages frighten me, and I am so completely collapsed when I arrive at the end of a day’s journey that I cannot address my audiences. Under these conditions, and with this certificate of one of your most eminent physicians, I am legally released from any obligation to you. You owe me $1,100 according to this statement. I propose to go away from America owing no one and having no one owe me, and you wish to pay me? You give me this check, which I suppose is good.”

Holding the check in his hand, he proceeded to tear it up. “You are an honorable man. I want you to feel welcome at all times in my house in London. As to what you owe me, I propose to give you five hundred years to pay me, and if when due you cannot meet it I will renew it five hundred years more.”

That was Dr. Parker’s eccentric business way.

Comparisons were sometimes made between Mr. Beecher and Dr. Parker from the standpoint of pulpit and church resemblances. There were, in fact, few if any points of similarity. In the Englishman’s manner there is the note of social dominance and a full gamut of ecclesiastical supremacy. Mr. Beecher had none of this, but in his relation to the public exhibited only a loving paternalism. Dr. Parker directs as well as teaches. Beecher advised and sympathized.

In public affairs, taking their different conditions into view, Dr. Joseph Parker and Henry Ward Beecher would bear a closer comparison, not at all unfavorable to Beecher’s British compeer.

Dr. Parker was Mr. Beecher’s personal friend of many years’ standing, and was his host in England on several occasions, the last being in 1886. During Beecher’s English campaign in defence of the Union cause, in 1863, Dr. Parker, then living and preaching in Manchester, was among Mr. Beecher’s firmest and most active supporters. As a speaker, Dr. Parker’s manner, though essentially dramatic, is never melodramatic like that of Dr. Talmage. His intellect, and therefore his voice and style, is that of action—insistent, believing, combative, even aggressive. His manner is more emphatic and his tones deeper than were Mr. Beecher’s, striking as the latter’s often were. The small piercing eyes and peculiar voice hold his audience strongly; even the burr in his tones helps the orator’s control. It intensifies the air of sagacity, the expression of intellectual shrewdness, as well as sincerity, which make him one of the more notable personages I have been able to bring into the arena of brain and speech which our lecture forum offers. Dr. Parker does not possess the amazing versatility which made Mr. Beecher so attractive and gave him such a mental charm, nor does he possess at all times the sunny sweetness of disposition which men loved in Mr. Beecher.

Dr. Parker’s sincerity is always as apparent as his ability of thought and expression. He gives the impression that all his preparation and power are aimed merely to give suitable expression to the opinions and convictions that are his. Words, tones, mannerisms, gestures, are all simply vehicles. It is the thought and its purpose that dominate all, and this is the secret of his strength, success, and power.

His imagery is English; his poesy belongs to their flowers and verdure; the ruggedness of his speech and manner is that of the bleak moors of the north of England. A middle-class Englishman, the Doctor is the personification of all their sterling traits and sturdy characteristics. His speech is studied, polished, finished; his gestures are trained, and all climaxes are carefully arranged. One can only imagine what might be if the speaker ever broke loose; but he never did so far as I know. Our Beecher, on the contrary, was, while obedient to the law of his themes, free as the wind, fresh as the air, full of fancy and illustration as all out of doors, alive with the human glory and glow of life, sweeping in grandeur, glowing with sunshine or melting as with the dew and the joy of the eve. All these, and the deep, lifting, surging soul of the man were in his utterances.

But when all is said for Mr. Beecher, it must not be forgotten that Dr. Parker is a power, a unique personality, gifted with a remarkable intellect and endowed with a temperamental quality which makes all characteristics effective for his work. He is a contemporary whose force and value can be measured only by a comparison with one like Mr. Beecher. And I found him an honorable man.

THE REV. T. DEWITT TALMAGE made a lecture tour under my management in England in the summer of 1879.

One morning in early June of that summer I was passing a news stand in front of the Astor House in New York and was attracted toward a small placard which read “Christian Herald and Signs of the Times. Circulation half a million. Only authorized publication of the Rev. Dr. Talmage’s sermons in England.” I bought the paper, and read the attractive headlines of the sermons, and a leader by its editor, the Rev. Dr. Baxter, a clergyman of the Church of England, eulogizing the great preacher, describing his popularity as a preacher and lecturer in America and his extensive influence on the religious thought of Great Britain. I was on my way to Brooklyn, and while reading the paper on the ferryboat, I concluded to call on Dr. Talmage and see if he would not like to do some lecturing in England. I found him in his study, very affable, and disposed to look favorably on a proposition to go abroad. He had never crossed the ocean, but had heard that his sermons were extensively published and read in Great Britain. In fact, the last mail had brought a letter from the general secretary of the Y. M. C. A. at Leeds asking if he would consider a proposition to deliver ten lectures under the auspices of his association in the larger cities of England, Ireland, and Scotland, offering to pay his passage and give him £10 a lecture—£100 for ten cities ($500). The Doctor asked me to write out a proposition and to call in the morning. I sat down and wrote on a sheet of paper in his study, as follows:

“Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage.

“Dear Sir: I will give you $10,000 for one hundred lectures in Great Britain this summer, paying all the travelling and hotel expenses for yourself and Mrs. Talmage from the time you sail from America until you return; settlement to be made weekly.

“Yours truly,
“J. B. Pond.”

The following morning I called again at No. 1 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, the Doctor’s home, and he read me a letter which he had prepared in duplicate:

“J. B. Pond.

Dear Sir: I will deliver one hundred lectures for you in Great Britain, beginning within three weeks, for $100 a lecture, you paying the expenses of myself, wife, and daughter from the time we sail until you return.

“Signed,
“T. DeWitt Talmage.”

I mailed a note accepting his proposition, and he gave me the subjects of his lectures. He wrote a note to the secretary of the Leeds Y. M. C. A., saying that I would soon be in England, and that all arrangements must be made with me. He told me that he had already secured passage on the Gallia, to sail in about a week.

The next morning found me on board the City of Berlin bound for England for the first time. While on the steamer I wrote a letter to the editor of The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times stating that I was coming over to see if arrangements could be made for some lectures by Dr. Talmage, and that I would stop at the Westminster Palace Hotel and hoped to pay my respects to him soon after my arrival. I also wrote Mr. John Lobb, whose address Dr. Talmage had given me, editor of a new religious paper, The Christian Globe, who had also asked permission to print some of Dr. Talmage’s sermons.

Upon my arrival at the hotel in London, I found several gentlemen waiting to see me: Dr. Baxter, of The Christian Herald; John Lobb, of The Christian Globe, and Henry Thorn (brother of Charley Thorn, belonging to the family of famous actors of that name), who was secretary of the Leeds Y. M. C. A. All wanted a private interview then and there, but I was very tired. It was past midnight, and I set a time for meeting them the following morning.

The next morning the first and earliest caller was Dr. Baxter, who apologized for the unseasonableness of the hour—8 A.M. He thought he would come early, as possibly he might be of service, as his paper was going to press that day and if I wished any announcement made of Dr. Talmage’s coming, its columns were at my service. I replied that I should like to announce that the Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage would be available to lecture in Great Britain during his summer vacation. Any parties desiring to secure him might address Major J. B. Pond, Westminster Palace Hotel, London. This at once he agreed to, and then asked if I would sell him the right to place on the benches of all the halls where the Doctor lectured copies of The Christian Herald. I told him that I had no idea as to the value of such a franchise in his country, and asked him what he considered a fair price. He offered me £50 ($250). So large a sum almost stunned me. However, I showed no signs of the shock, but intimated that a Mr. Lobb, of The Christian Globe, had some proposition to make. He replied, “Yes, Mr. Lobb has a new paper, but I consider the established circulation of half a million copies of The Christian Herald a great medium for Dr. Talmage, as it prints his sermons regularly.” I asked if he paid the Doctor for his sermons. He replied that at one time he had sent him £100. There was no international copyright law then. He then said that if I would accept £100 ($500) for the right, he would give me a check then and there. I concluded to do this, and the first half hour’s business talk in London found me in possession of $500, without the slightest expense on my part. Then Dr. Baxter offered another £100 for the sole privilege of Dr. and Mrs. Talmage’s and their daughter’s photographs, to print on the first page of his paper. I told him that I was not authorized to sell the right, but as he was the Doctor’s publisher, I would risk the acceptance of his offer. As I gave Dr. Baxter a receipt for £100 for the sole right to publish these portraits in Great Britain during the tour, I at once telegraphed Dr. Talmage on board the Gallia at Queenstown what I had done, and to consider no overtures from publishers who had already gone to Queenstown to meet and to welcome him.

That afternoon Dr. Baxter brought me a copy of The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times, fresh from the press, with the little announcement that I had given him inserted at the head of the editorial column. It was not long before ministers began to call and to inquire terms and the possibility of securing a lecture. I had not even time to inquire as to the best hall for a first London appearance. Mr. Thorn, general secretary of the Leeds Y. M. C. A., had come by first train, after receiving my letter mailed at Queenstown. He wanted the first ten lectures in Great Britain, and offered me £20 each for those to be given in the largest cities. When I informed him that I paid the Doctor far more than that amount, he seemed amazed. He said that £20 was the highest fee ever paid for a lecture in England. I told him I was prepared to speculate unless I could get my price. He asked time to wait upon his associates in Exeter Hall, promising to return in an hour. On his return he said that he was authorized to pay me £50 each, for one lecture in each of the ten cities of Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bradford, and Sheffield.

Being unacquainted with the country and its lecture system, and knowing the offer to be a substantial one, and that there was $1,200 profit in it for me, I closed the contract, fixing the first date in Nottingham on Wednesday, June 18.

I had been kept in my hotel all day by the crowd of waiting applicants for lectures without a chance even to look out on a London street. I was recognized and addressed by all visitors as Dr. Talmage’s “secretary.” Such patronage from such a class of men was indescribably overwhelming; they were all ministers from suburban churches. I saw success and profit assured in my venture already in the first twelve hours in London.

That evening I went out into the London streets for the first time in my life. “London by Gaslight” I had read about, and now the reality had suddenly burst upon me! No wonder so much has been said and written of it. I got into a hansom cab for the first time, and told my driver to show me as much of London as he could in an hour. We went over Westminster Bridge to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle. I wanted to see that famous edifice first. It was not lighted, and to me presented a dreary appearance. Then back over the bridge down Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, and out Oxford Street to Holborn Viaduct we went. I wanted to see City Temple, where the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker preached. That was dark, too, but oh! the flying street traffic of cabs and vehicles of all kinds!

What an amazing sight!

Many handcarts were drawn by men and women in the streets, something entirely new to me. The streets were bordered on each side with cablights—a yellow border when looking in one direction and red in the opposite. All those in motion were being driven with such rapid speed that collision and accident seemed inevitable, but I got safely back to my hotel having seen more in sixty minutes than my eyes had ever before beheld in as many months. I tried to get sleep that night, but sleep would not come. What if the Gallia should go down, or Dr. Talmage get ill, or any other accident? I was alone in London, too. I had no one to talk to. I wanted to vent my feelings and could not. It was a long night.

I was up early next morning, but there was no sign of life about the hotel or in the street. I asked the first person I met: “What is the matter—is it Sunday? Where are all the people? “He informed me that it was only 7 o’clock, and that nobody was supposed to be moving about London before 9. It seemed strange to a Yankee. I started out and got lost in Westminster Abbey. How time dragged along. I wanted breakfast, but could get nothing for an hour, so I waited and wondered.

At 8:30 I got into the dining room and gave an order for breakfast and a morning paper. While reading my paper a man in uniform, whom I found to be “boots,” approached me with a salute, asking if I were Major Pond?

“Yes,” I replied.

“The post has just brought your letters; where shall I take them, sir?”

“Bring them to me here,” I said.

“But I can’t. There are several baskets full.”

“What!” said I. “You must be mistaken. I am expecting no such mail.”

“Aren’t you Major J. B. Pond?” he again politely inquired.

“Yes; I’m that man. What’s the matter?”

“You have several hundred letters, sir. Shall I take them to your room?”

I accompanied “boots” to the office, and there, to my astonishment, were between four and five hundred letters, nearly enough to fill a barrel, and they were all addressed to me, and from every part of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and many telegrams. All were seeking to secure the Rev. Dr. Talmage for a lecture, and all from the two-line announcement in The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times the day before.

About 10 o’clock Dr. Baxter called and I showed him what I considered a sight—more letters than I could open and read in two days. He expressed no surprise, but kindly offered to put one or two stenographers and a permanent secretary at my disposal, free of any expense. About noon three young men arrived from Dr. Baxter’s with notes of introduction; these were the stenographers and a secretary at my service. “Who am I?” I thought. Such patronage and politeness I was unaccustomed to. It required change of position and getting out into the lobby for a free breath very often.

I began opening letters. They were from everywhere in the British islands, invariably addressing me in words of welcome to Dr. Talmage and his worthy secretary, and asking terms for the Doctor to preach or lecture. Many of them were admirably written, showing that their respect and welcome for Dr. Talmage knew no bounds. I wondered if it were possible that there could be so many ministers who knew and read of Dr. Talmage. I felt certain that the Doctor had no idea of his popularity over there. Callers flocked in and crowded the lobby of the hotel, waiting answers to their cards. I could not see half of them. I put them off with asking them to write and promising to answer.

I soon discovered that I had made a mistake, and that my contract with Mr. Thorn for the first ten lectures had cost me $5,000, for that was just what the Leeds Y.M.C.A. cleared on them.

I got the letters open. I also got a map of Great Britain and an “A.B.C. Guide,” which tells more of that country than all our American guides can tell in many times the space. With the aid of secretaries and map, I was soon enabled to see that I could easily fill five hundred lecture engagements, if I only had them. I replied to the smaller cities that no proposition for lectures would be considered under a guarantee of £100, and cities like London, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and other large ones would require £300. I received acceptances from Belfast and Dublin of my proposition of £200; of that for £300 from Manchester, Liverpool, and Bristol. In all replies to the applications I was non-commital and careful to state that when terms were accepted and contracts forwarded and signed, there must be an accompanying deposit of twenty-five per cent. of the amount of each sum contracted for. Many correspondents were so eager to secure contracts at once that they sent checks by return mail. So many of these checks of deposit came in that it caused great embarrassment and confusion. In some instances they were sent back to me a second time, with the assurance that I was held to produce Dr. Talmage or I would have the law applied to force me. Such a scramble for an attraction I had never dreamed of before. During all the first two days at every mail “Boots” brought in armsful of letters. I decided to wait a day or two and let applications accumulate. On Dr. Baxter’s recommendation I accepted an invitation for Dr. Talmage to preach in the Islington Presbyterian Church, Colebrooke Road, Beside-the-Angel (a part of London). He was to have £10 for that. The Sunday business was not mine, and the secular days were all I cared to be interested in.

The Gallia arrived at Queenstown in due time, and I received a despatch from the Doctor that deputations were there to meet him from all parts of Great Britain and he had referred all to me. A day later I met him and Mrs. Talmage and Miss Jessie Talmage at the Northwestern Station in London, safe and well, but very tired. He said he had had a narrow escape of his life; that as soon as the steamer arrived in Queenstown delegations of ministers and deacons and secretaries of Y.M.C.A.’s had rushed aboard the boat and down to his and Mrs. Talmage’s stateroom. He heard them coming, shouting:

“Welcome, Talm-o-d-ge.” (They all give the broad sound of “o” to the middle “a” of his name.) “Welcome! Welcome! God bless you! God bless Mrs. Talm-o-d-ge. God bless Miss Talm-o-d-ge. Where is the Doctor?”

And rushing into the room they got hold of Mrs. Talmage’s arm, she being in the lower berth, and nearly jerked it out of the socket before they knew or cared to know their mistake. They got hold of the Doctor and pulled him out of his room before they let go, and shook his hands, and pulled his shirt nearly off, shouting, “Welcome! God bless you,” and kept it up all day on the steamer and on the cars to London, arriving at the Westminster Palace Hotel about 6 P.M., where Dr. Baxter was in waiting. Arrangements had been made for dinner and a reception at the Doctor’s house that evening, so our party was obliged to hurry and dress. We drove in hansoms about four miles. Dr. Baxter’s father, a noted barrister, seemed to be the head of the household. Ministers and clergymen were assembled to do the guests honor. Lord Shaftsbury was the first lord I ever recalled seeing. Dinner was at a long table, with not much sociability; all wore serious, pious expressions. I think I never saw Talmage so uncomfortable. He asked the blessing, and after dinner in the parlors came a season of prayer. The circle of kneeling visitors was to me as tiresome as the old frontier country prayer meetings of my boyhood days, and there was less feeling in them. Each prayed in his turn, and thus for two long hours there was a contest of appeals to the throne for God’s servant, “Talm-o-d-ge.” It was twelve o’clock when we got into our cabs to make our way back to our hotel. It was the first chance I had to speak to Talmage alone; but as it was Saturday night, and he was to preach the next afternoon in the Islington Presbyterian Church, he retired at once.

I did not see him the next morning, as he was preparing for the afternoon sermon. An hour’s drive, with Dr. Baxter as pilot, and Dr. and Mrs. Talmage in an open carriage, Miss Jessie and I following in a second carriage, brought us to a point where we could look across an open space to a hillside where stood a church. That hillside was black with thousands of people, they all wear black on Sunday there, and as we came in sight the crowd began to move, and soon I saw we were being surrounded by what seemed an impassable mob. Coming nearer, Talmage was recognized, and a shout arose:

“Talm-o-d-ge! Talm-o-d-ge! God bless Talm-o-d-ge!” and the crowd came rushing on. Some jumped on the carriage and grabbed his hands and hung on to them; some got hold of Mrs. Talmage, and some one got hold of Talmage’s coat and succeeded in tearing off a piece of his coat-tail. “I want this for a souvenir,” shouted that maniac.

They then unhooked the horses, tied a long rope to the carriage, and hauled the great divine through a jam of humanity, and amid uproars and noises that Niagara Falls could hardly have drowned. Finally the preacher was lifted from the carriage, carried bodily over the heads of the mob, and thrust into the crowded church. After he was out of sight, the crowd gave way, and not long afterward a committee succeeded in getting Mrs. Talmage into a side door, but Miss Jessie and I preferred to wait outside in our carriage until after the service. What took place inside can be inferred from the following item, which appeared in The Dally News next day (June 16th):

“The public announcement that the Rev. Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, U. S., would preach attracted yesterday evening a very large number of persons to the outside at least of the Islington Presbyterian Church, of which Dr. Thain Davidson is the minister. The seat-holders and a few others having received tickets were enabled to get in sideways, and between them they filled about all the seats almost two hours before the service commenced. Thousands of unprivileged persons either went away altogether or remained to take their chances among the public rush at a quarter past six, the services commencing at half past. The church, which seats about seven hundred and fifty persons, then quickly became crammed, amid cries and shrieks here and there for help in consequence of the pressure, and a few windows had to be broken to increase the ventilation. Many persons were reported injured.”

The same performance was gone through after service except that the horses were allowed to be hitched back on the carriage. The mob followed for at least half a mile, shouting praises for “Talmodge” as we drove away. Dr. Baxter left us at the hotel and for the first time our party was left alone free from visitors. The Doctor was very tired. At dinner both he and Mrs. Talmage could talk of nothing but this “overwhelmingly cordial greeting to an American minister.” “Major, did you ever hear of such greeting to a minister?” I was asked, and I certainly never had.

“This is going to be awful. How can I ever live through a succession of ovations like that?” he said to all of us.

“DeWitt, you never can endure it,” said Mrs. Talmage; “I am sure you cannot.”

This was the burden of the conversation at dinner. When I retired to the reading room the Doctor soon followed me, to remark:

“Major Pond, was ever such an ovation given to an American minister in London before?”

“Never,” said I instantly and emphatically.

“Major, what would the American papers say of this if they knew the facts? Hadn’t some account of this tremendous reception better be cabled to the Associated Press?”

The next morning the following despatch appeared in the New York Herald:

“London, June 15, 1879.

“Herald, New York:

“Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage preached to-day at the Islington Presbyterian Church, Colebrooke Road, to an enormous congregation. Much curiosity was evinced by the people to see the famous American preacher; a dense crowd blockaded the streets leading to the church. The enthusiasm was immense. Half a mile before the Presbyterian church was reached the carriage of the reverend gentleman was lifted from the ground and carried bodily to the church. It was one of the most tremendous ovations ever paid to an American minister in London.”

---

That Sunday evening Dr. Talmage and I walked out and had our first private business talk. We crossed the street to Westminster Abbey and walked all around it, discussing the wonders of the historic Abbey for some time, when the Doctor suddenly changed the subject.

“Wasn’t that the most tremendous, overwhelming reception that a minister ever had?” he said to me. “This excitement is going to use me all up. I never can stand it. What have you done?”

I replied that I had fixed my first ten nights with the Leeds Y. M. C. A., all in the large cities.

“I cannot stand it. I am sure it will break me down. How much am I to get out of it?”

I replied, “You get your $100 a night and your expenses; isn’t that our contract?”

“Oh, I can’t do that. It would be the ruin of my health; and you would be getting rich and I have nothing.”

“Wait, my dear Dr. Talmage, and see how it starts. I came here under terms of a contract with you, and now you don’t seem to consider it binding.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t stand it, and must give the whole thing up unless I can have at least $250 a lecture.”

“That’s all I get for the first ten lectures, and by that time we don’t know whether they will be worth any more. Let’s try under our contract and see if it is as great as your prediction. I am ready to do the fair thing. I certainly will make no new contract until we see if the one in existence is any good.”

“Very well; stop it all. I will take Mrs. Talmage and Jessie and go to Paris and get rest, which I need and must have.”

So we sat on the steps of Westminster Abbey until 2 o’clock Monday morning and the Doctor was booked to lecture in Nottingham that night.

When we separated he asked me what hour he had better start for Nottingham, if he went. I told him 9:30. “I’ll see you at breakfast at 8 and tell you finally,” he said.

When he and Mrs. Talmage came down to breakfast in their travelling clothes I knew he was going to Nottingham. I felt so, any way. Applications were pouring in, and I saw that I could obtain certainties of from £100 to £200 a lecture after the ten Leeds lectures had been given, so I was prepared to make concessions to the Doctor, if he showed any disposition to be fair. As we sat down to the table the Doctor handed me a note written by his own hand on a narrow strip of paper. It read as follows:

“Pay me $200 a lecture and my expenses, not those of my family, and I will go on for one hundred lectures. Put this note in your pocket.” I read and replied:

“All right, Dr. Talmage. I accept. Mrs. Talmage, do you know about this?”

“Yes, Major Pond. I am so glad you and the Doctor have come to an agreement.”

So we started for Nottingham. Mr. Thorn met us at the station there and drove the Talmages to some gentleman’s house where, they were entertained. Mr. Thorn returned and dined with me at my hotel. I asked him how the bookings were. He replied that everything was full. I asked if he sold reserved seats. He said:

“No; the people had filled the house early that afternoon and not another person could be got in. He and his committee had been all the afternoon collecting the entrance fee from the crowd now in their seats. He was ready for Dr. Talmage to go on at any time.”

When he went to the hall there were thousands of the same human strata that had been seen the Sunday before, waiting to set eyes on Dr. Talmage, and they were enthusiastic to the verge of insanity. The police had protected a back entrance, so that the chairman, mayor, and speaker could get in. I was obliged to stand until I could bear it no longer, and went out.

I arranged with Thorn to pay me for the two following lectures in Birmingham and Manchester, so I could return to London and proceed to fill the balance of the time, and he to look after the welfare of the “star” while I agreed to join them on the following Saturday in Liverpool. At my London hotel I found great stacks of letters, but as my time and route were all mapped out, they did not trouble me. Still all the letters must be opened in order to know which of them most needed attention. There were many applications with accompanying checks for from £20 to £40. It seemed incredible that there could be such a craze over a minister, and yet that it caused no comment whatever in the daily newspapers or the secular press in any way. I expected to read blazing headlines of the first great occasion in the London morning papers, but there was not a word. The London secular press seldom mentions religious doings.

I then set to work to finish booking the time. There was much to do in arranging ninety one-night stands for a great attraction, and surely I had the greatest one I had ever known. I was working into midnight when a telegram came up. I would not have opened it had it been a seasonable hour. It was from the Doctor, and read:

“Birmingham, June 19, 1879.

“J. B. Pond, Westminster Palace Hotel, London.

“Stop everything. To-night surpasses all.

“Signed,
“T. DeWitt Talmage.”

He was booked for Manchester the following evening, and a great audience was expected. I replied:

“Must keep the Manchester engagement. Will meet you there to-morrow.”

So I left London and arrived in Manchester about 5 o’clock the next afternoon. Passing the City Hall and public buildings my “cabby” drove into a dense crowd of thousands massed together. I never saw the like. I asked my driver what that crowd meant. He said a Yankee minister was to lecture there by the name of “Talm-o-d-ge.” I asked the name of the building. He said it was Free Trade Hall.

I discharged the cab and tried to get into the outskirts of the crowd. I had a small handbag. The crowd was not noisy, but simply made a rush for the door, which had been burst open, and filled the hall with all that could get in. Every now and then I could hear some one say, “I will see Talm-o-d-ge,” and then he would make a break, only to be crowded back. I slipped up to a policeman and asked what this all meant. He told me the same story, of a Yankee minister that was to lecture. He had never before heard of “Talm-o-d-ge,” but the crowd evidently had. I said to him, so as not to be overheard: “I am a Yankee. I am Dr. Talmage’s secretary.” He didn’t even wait to look at me, but with both hands in the air he shouted:

“This is Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here! Dr. Talin-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here! “Just then the crowd within hearing turned their eyes on me and made a rush, all shouting, “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary! Here! Here!”

The next thing I knew I was being carried above the heads of that crowd and shot along head first. So I was carried over and on these heads, until I was nearly in the centre of great Free Trade Hall. How they found a place for my feet I don’t know. They passed me on by their hands until there was a place to alight. “Dr. Talm-o-d-ge’s secretary,” was the cry. The crowd was orderly and numbered about six thousand, or as many as could possibly get inside of Free Trade Hall, which is one of the greatest auditoriums in the world. They were singing “Hold the Fort,” while the Y. M. C. A. committee, in their shirt sleeves, were collecting the admission fees, ranging from one shilling to half a crown. No objections were made to paying, for everybody expected to do that, but the rush of thousands was more than the hall could accommodate.

I remained there until Dr. Talmage and Mr. Lee, his host, who was to preside, and family arrived. I heard the lecture, and it was the first one of Dr. Talmage’s that I ever heard through. The people cheered as he came in, and it seemed for minutes as though the roof would be fairly raised. I never heard such cheering. After the lecture it was midnight before the crowd would let up on shaking hands and becoming enthusiastic over the Doctor. It was a scene that could not be produced in America.

The Doctor saw me after the lecture and asked where I was stopping. I told him at the Queen’s. He said he was stopping with Mr. William Lee, a distinguished resident of Manchester, and that he and Mrs. Talmage would call in the morning. I went back to my hotel. About 11 o’clock the next morning Dr. and Mrs. Talmage arrived and came up to my room. There was very little ceremony. The Doctor struck right out from the shoulder. It was business!

“You have got to pay me $350 a lecture or I go home from here. I cannot stand this tremendous succession of ovations.”

“If you can do it for $350, can’t you stand the same thing for the price agreed upon in London? I am paying you twice the amount of our original agreement,” I said.

“I am killing myself and making you or somebody else rich. I get nothing for it. Say yes or no.” He was positive but good natured. I didn’t hurry to reply, but related my experience of being suspended over the heads of that multitude for half an hour yesterday, remarking that it seemed days.

Mrs. Talmage, always a loyal wife, would often remind her husband that it was no use attempting to go on. He could not stand it. I did not get angry. I really enjoyed it, only there were people waiting outside to see me. Dr. Baxter wanted to buy a return date in Manchester, and did buy it then and there while the Talmages waited. In a side room he gave me his check for £300, and I signed a contract. I returned and invited Dr. and Mrs. Talmage to lunch. They accepted. The conversation between them was as to what steamers sailed first and which was the most desirable route. I heard it all. This was an open date, Saturday. He was to preach in Manchester the following Sunday, so I did not hurry.

I felt sure the tour would pay if the people did not get disgusted. They had expected a great Calvinistic divine to give them religious lectures. Many made unkind expressions at his provoking so much laughter and at the secular tendency of his address. I felt a little uncertain, but finally said: “Dr. Talmage, I am getting $250 each for this series of ten lectures, as you know. Thorn is making the fortune—not I. I am getting tired of this, but I will give you your $250 each for the one hundred lectures; no more.” He said nothing, but waited. Finally getting up, he said, “Well, that’s the best you will do, is it?”

“Yes, sir; and I may change my mind in ten minutes. If you do this, I will hire an English lawyer to draw up papers that will hold.”

“All right, then, make your contract and I will sign it.”

This had been a long siege. I went out, and by direction of the hotel proprietor found a solicitor, who came to my room, got all the details, and went back. He must have worked all night on the document. It was a remarkable paper, drawn up in the English form, with many pages of “whereases,” “said party,” etc., having a long ribbon and large red wax seal about the size of a Boston cracker attached. The party of the second part (Talmage) after hearing it read, signed it, as I also did. When all was over, the Doctor said very pleasantly that he was glad that there was an understanding at last.

We went together to Liverpool, Glasgow, and other cities in Scotland. Such crowds! He missed the train for Perth. I had told him that he must take a certain train in order to be on time. A party had taken them to the Trossachs, and when the hour arrived to begin the lecture in Perth, a telegram came from the Doctor stating that he had missed the train and would arrive about 10. The audience, which congested the hall, seemed quite patient for two hours. The time was late and the curfew bell said 11 o’clock. Many demanded their money back, and got it to the amount of £40; but still there was a large audience waiting, and the Doctor got through a little after midnight. The following Sunday we spent in Glasgow. The Doctor preached in the morning and in the afternoon we settled up.

The tenth lecture of the tour concluded my contract with the Leeds Y. M. C. A. at $250 a lecture. On this ten lectures I had made nothing, but during that time I had booked the balance of the tour of ninety more lectures at a very handsome profit, the lowest fee being £80 a lecture, and in some instances £250. The final lecture in England was sold in Liverpool to the Y. M. C. A. for £400, to be September 11. Eleven weeks booked for five lectures a week, twenty-five per cent. of the guarantees paid in advance and in my bank in London. Good prospects indeed.

Secretary Thorn, of the Leeds Y. M. C. A., who had managed the first ten lectures, presided at a dinner given to Dr. Talmage in Leeds three weeks later. In his official report, which he read on that occasion, he stated that the Association had netted about £1,000 ($5,000). This was $500 profit on each lecture. At the low prices paid for admission to lectures in Great Britain, 1s, 2s 6d to 3s 6d, it shows that the crowds must have been enormous. As the lectures were all sold to local committees in the towns yet to be visited, I felt certain that in most cases these parties had pretty heavy responsibility, especially as the religious press was complaining of the lack of piety in the Doctor’s discourses. His lecture on “The Bright Side of Things” had provoked laughter where many had expected sacred things. I feared a reaction, for in all the crowds I heard expressions of bitter disappointment.

From Leeds, after two lectures in near cities, we came to London. Dr. Baxter, of The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times, was to pay me £200 for the first London lecture in Exeter Hall, which was crowded. Dr. Talinage had already preached in the same hall, with the usual large gathering of disappointed outsiders.

When we arrived in London I found there was quite a feeling against Dr. Talmage, aroused by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker on account of the questionable verdict in his ecclesiastical trial by the New York Presbytery just before he left. But the Rev. Charles Wood, a young Presbyterian minister visiting London at that time, now in Philadelphia, succeeded in bringing Dr. Parker around, and Talmage was invited to preach in City Temple, but had not the open date and had to forego the honor. However, the ladies of both sides exchanged friendly calls, and all went well.

After our return to London and the Exeter Hall lecture the business from this time began to decline. It was difficult in many instances to collect the guarantees, and I often felt like a thief when accepting money that responsible parties had guaranteed with a reasonable assurance that it would prove profitable. Then again, others had persisted in having dates, and threatened the law if I did not make the contract and accept the twenty-five per cent. advance payment. Some of these I enjoyed holding to the terms they had almost compelled me to make.

Several causes contributed to the revulsion of public opinion and the depreciation of the Doctor’s value. Chief among these was the disappointment in his religious zeal. These religious “lower” classes, whose only literature is the penny religious weekly, had pictured him as an ideal man of God. With his marvellous insight into the human heart of the nineteenth century, he had, through his sermons, touched chords beyond the reach of any other man of his time. He had shown that he knew the burdens, the temptations, the bitternesses of men and women who gain their daily bread only by a struggle. With this master key he had unlocked their hearts, and they sought his presence very much in the same spirit that the multitude followed Christ into the wilderness. I believe I witnessed marvellous, unmatched scenes in old England that summer. Such tribute as was laid at Talmage’s feet was never paid to any other religious leader, and when these people came to find the lectures more of a secular, not religious character their disappointment knew no bounds. His final lecture in Liverpool was a dismal failure. Four responsible men had signed the contract for $2,000. I settled for $500, and if Dr. Talmage had not refunded that amount to the Y. M. C. A. committee I believe he would have been mobbed. The crowd gathered outside the Northwestern Hotel, calling for Talmage, and it seemed as though every vituperative adjective the English language possesses was applied to him by these religious fanatics. He had made the feeling. If he had only emulated his own teachings instead of using an old American lyceum lecture, he might have had a triumphant home-coming instead of the one he did have; but he seemed to disregard in every way the wishes of the people who paid to see or hear him. The result to the management was simply a loss of the time. The Doctor got all that was made on the tour. Instead of one hundred lectures the tour was shortened to seventy, for which Dr. Talmage received $17,500, the management “his labor for his pains.” Had Dr. Talmage kept his original agreement he would have netted $7,000, but by his “eccentricity” he made $10,500 more than he expected when he started on the journey.

I have made very few engagements for Dr. Talmage since his memorable season.

Dr. Talmage’s sermons have been more widely read and circulated during the past thirty years than those of any other minister that has lived in his time. The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times, of London, has sent out from five hundred thousand to nearly a million a week since 1870. Next to The Christian World it is the greatest religious newspaper property in Great Britain. The price is a penny, and it sells almost wholly to the lower classes, who depend upon it for their only reading, both religious and secular. It is printed in muddy black with cheap, coarse zinc cuts. It now has an American edition, edited ostensibly by Dr. Talmage, with a circulation equal, if not greater, than that in Great Britain. This is a reproduction of the English edition, but on much finer paper and beautifully printed—an essential feature for a religious household paper in America, no matter how remote or primitive the fireside it reaches. This American edition prints one of Dr. Talmage’s sermons every week. It is most skillfully managed and considered a great property. It is seldom seen in the public reading rooms or library, or among the upper middle class homes, but drive out into the country among the farmers and stop at a farmhouse for a drink of water, and while you wait the first object to attract your attention is a copy of The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times. From the Atlantic to the Pacific this religious paper has found its way into the houses of the poor religious classes, and, of course, must do incalculable good.

Another means of disseminating Dr. Talmage’s sermons for the past two decades has been the “patent insides” of country newspapers. Over six thousand different weekly papers by this method send out his weekly sermon, and while the doctor had a pulpit his sermon appeared in one of the Monday morning papers in every large city.

“Dr. Talmage’s Sermon in the Great Tabernacle yesterday. By special telegraph to The Courier-Journal,” etc.

Dr. Talmage has the greatest congregation of readers of his sermons of any man living, and this is his means of advertising. To gather up a large audience for him in the western country all that is needed is a railroad junction where cars can be run from all directions, the erection of a temporary amphitheatre, and the announcement that Dr. Talmage is to preach, and all the facilities for bringing out crowds will be tested to their fullest capacity. Under these conditions the doctor is the greatest one-man attraction in America, and what cares he for such comment as the following from The Congregationalist, the New England organ of that denomination:

“If in humility it may be done without violence to the feelings of our Presbyterian brethren—whose particular funeral it is—we feel called upon to inquire if it be not nearly time for the reign of ordinary propriety to set in as to the Talmage business. It was bad enough to have a lot of old sermons weekly stereotyped through the land on Monday mornings during his late tour to the Holy Land, as having been delivered by him on the previous day on Mars Hill and elsewhere; and to have accounts so gorgeous as to be manifestly fictitious in their coloring, sent abroad as the great man’s intercourse by the way with kindred great men. But now that this dazzling pulpit light is once more shining and shimmering at home, we think the world at large could manage, without overwhelming grief, to dispense with Mr. Louis Klopsch’s Boswellian columns, detailing the amazing Talmage experiences, and recounting the tremendous Talmage remarks at various places along that route, which has been beatified and forevermore advertised as that of his travels.”

The Toledo Blade, one of the papers which published Talmage’s sermons during this Palestine tour, came out with a frank explanation that none of them were cabled, and that they were all prepared before the doctor left home. The Blade further made matters interesting by admissions that some of them, including the one credited to Mars Hill, were never delivered at all.

What cares Dr. Talmage for all this? He has his public, that he has educated, adamantine in its faith in him. He is said to be the richest minister in the world, and he has earned it all himself.

CHARLES H. SPURGEON was, to me, a name, next to that of Beecher, to conjure with. When I arrived in London for the first time, June 3, 1879, and started out to see the sights, the first place I instructed my “cabby” to drive to was Spurgeon’s Tabernacle.

It was about sunset when I first set eyes on the famous building. I know I felt a disappointment. It was not what I expected to see. The surroundings were not attractive. The high iron gates suggested more a prison than an invitation to go up to the house of the Lord. I made no stop, but directed my driver to show me the City Temple, on Holburn Viaduct, where the great Dr. Joseph Parker preached. It was in the gloaming that I first saw this famous “church.” It was not as large as I expected. In most of our cities it would be considered a very ordinary, comfortable house of worship.

“Do you call that a large church?” I asked the cabby.

“It isn’t a church, sir; it’s a chapel. There’s a church,” he said, pointing to a still smaller edifice on the adjoining corner. “That’s where the lord mayor worships.” I learned then and there that only the Church of England has the right to the name of church for their places of worship (all others are chapels), and that there are no church bells or chimes except in the Established Church. I drove back through Oxford Street and Picadilly Circus to the Westminster Palace Hotel.

On returning to my hotel I sat down and addressed the following letter to Mr. Spurgeon:

“Westminster Palace Hotel, June 3, 1879.

“Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, Nightingale Lane.

“My Dear Sir: I am in London for the first time in my life and have set my eyes on the great Tabernacle, which was the first object of interest I wished to visit, as your name and your church have been almost a part of my life for a number of years, being a fellow-Baptist.

“Inasmuch as you thought enough of a letter that I wrote you to publish it in one of your books, I write to ask if I could have the pleasure of an interview with you at your convenience. Meanwhile, if a note from you would facilitate my getting a comfortable seat to hear you next Sabbath, I would very much appreciate it.

“I am, yours very truly,
“J. B. Pond.”

The next morning I received the following letter from Mr. Spurgeon:

“Nightingale Lane, Balham, Surrey, June 5, 1879.

“Dear Sir: It will only be a waste of time for you to see me, as I am not at all in your line, and I am happy to enclose your cards.

“Yours truly,
“C. H. Spurgeon.”

“Major J. B. Pond, Westminster Palace Hotel.”

There were two printed admission tickets to the Tabernacle. When Sunday morning arrived, in company with a friend, I went early to the Tabernacle in hopes of getting a comfortable seat. There was a great throng on the steps, hundreds of people having already congregated there while waiting for the doors to open. I noticed near the church an open gate, through which people were passing to a side door. I tried to pass in, but was stopped by a large, somewhat plain spoken, typical Englishman, who told me that my tickets were good when the front doors were opened.

I said, “Why can I not pass in here the same as others do?”

“Oh, you can by dropping something in the box.”

I then saw that people were dropping pieces of silver into the box and passing in. I said to him, “How much am I expected to drop in?”

He replied, “Anything you please. A half crown is the usual amount.”

So dropping in two half crowns ($1.25) I was enabled to pass in at this side door of the great Tabernacle, where a gentlemanly usher gave our party good seats. Already several hundred people had entered in this way, and before the doors were open the lower floor was about filled with these contributors.

When the main doors were thrown open, there was a general rush of men and women in all directions, carrying umbrellas and jumping over the pews to get to the very nearest available seats, and almost immediately every seat in the church was occupied and great crowds were standing against the wall in the back galleries. I think I never witnessed such a squabble of people rushing into a building. They created a dust that was almost suffocating.

Very soon the great preacher appeared on a plain platform with no rostrum or pulpit except a small table at his side, where lay a hymn book and a Bible. Mr. Spurgeon immediately pronounced the invocation and then read a hymn, which the congregation sang without organ accompaniment or any other music except their voices. As the congregation rose, clouds of dust seemed to rise with it, so that it was almost impossible to distinguish the people in the top gallery.

It was a remarkable scene—a very devout crowd of worshippers who entered into the spirit of the occasion and did worship the Lord and Mr. Spurgeon with tremendous intensity.

I saw a number of Plymouth Church people near where I sat. I remember asking one or two of them how this compared with Plymouth Church. They all expressed disappointment. For intelligence, the congregation was not to be compared with Plymouth; it was another class of people, of a much lower order than I supposed could possibly form the congregation to which Mr. Spurgeon had preached so many years.

Passing out through the crowd I shook hands with Mr. Spurgeon. He didn’t recognize me. The following day I wrote him that before leaving England I should very much like to pay my respects to the man I had read and admired many years, making no reference whatever to my business. In reply I received the following strange letter, which showed that the great preacher really impugned my motives and thought I was bound to secure him for a lecture tour in America:

“Nightingale Lane, Balham, Surrey, June 6, 1879.

“Dear Sir: I am not at all afraid of anything you could say by way of temptation to preach or lecture for money, for the whole of the United States in bullion would not lead me to deliver one such lecture. It would only waste your time and mine for you to see me, though I feel sure you are one of the pleasantest men on earth. Your good-natured pertinacity is so admirable that I trust you will not waste it upon an impossible object, but be content to have my acknowledgment that if success could have been achieved, you would have achieved it.

“Yours very truly,
“C. H. Spurgeon.

“Major J. B. Pond, Westminster Palace Hotel.”

I returned home without the sight.

I revisited England in 1886 with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Remembering the cordial letter Mr. Spurgeon had written me on my previous visit, I thought it no more than proper to drop him a line, stating that I was again in London and asking if he was of the same opinion still, and disinclined to allow me the privilege of a call to pay my respects, stating that I was visiting England with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. I didn’t even suggest that Mr. Beecher would like to meet him, as that was not a part of my interests. I received the following letter in reply:

“Westwood, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, July 13, 1886.

“Dear Sir: I have, in as plain a manner as possible, on former occasions declined to make your acquaintance, and I beg with all courtesy and decision to do the same again. I know your business, and I have no wish to enter upon it further. I can communicate with Mr. Beecher myself should I wish to do so. At present I have no object for which to seek an interview.

“Yours truly,
“C. H. Spurgeon.”

The morning I received the above letter from Mr. Spurgeon I breakfasted with Dr. and Mrs. Parker at their home in Daleham Gardens, where a number of distinguished ministers and friends had been invited to meet Mr. and Mrs. Beecher. There were present Mr. James Clarke, editor of The Christian World; the Rev. Dr. Simon, pastor of Westminster Chapel; the Rev. Dr. Henry Allon, Union Chapel, Islington; and the Rev. Dr. Clifford, Westbourne Park Chapel.

During the conversation some of the ministers present were of the opinion that Mr. Beecher should deliver his last lecture in London in the great Tabernacle, as it was the most appropriate auditorium in London and could accommodate the largest number of people. I said that I thought it impossible for Mr. Beecher to preach in the Tabernacle, as I did not believe that Mr. Spurgeon was friendly to Mr. Beecher. This seemed to surprise Dr. Parker, as well as the other representative ministers present. Dr. Parker suggested that Dr. Allon and Mr. Spurgeon were the greatest of friends, and he was sure that Mr. Spurgeon would be delighted to extend the invitation to Mr. Beecher; and Dr. Allon was of the same opinion. I remember that he said, “Most assuredly Mr. Spurgeon would expect to invite Mr. Beecher to occupy the Tabernacle.” I handed to Mr. Beecher Spurgeon’s letter, which I had just received. As he read, I noticed a smile come on his face. He passed the letter to Dr. Parker, who also read it, and then to Dr. Allon, who, I think, passed it back to me. The enthusiasm for Mr. Spurgeon and the Tabernacle suddenly ceased.

On the occasion of Mr. Beecher’s first sermon in London, July 4, the congregation was admitted by ticket—the church members first and then the public, to the capacity of the auditorium. Hundreds, and I might say thousands, came who had to be turned away. As the congregation had to be admitted by ticket, and as many were unable to secure these, a rumor easily started in one of the religious papers that Mr. Beecher was preaching the Gospel for money, and that the tickets to hear him preach were sold at the doors of the house of the Lord. The secular press took it up. Newspaper correspondents cabled it to their representative journals across the Atlantic. London Truth enlarged upon it, and Labouchere’s letter to The New York Herald repeated it.

One of the first comments on the story was in The Baptist, a paper of which Mr. Spurgeon was supposed to be one of the editorial writers—an article which found a place in nearly all of the leading papers where Mr. Beecher was booked to lecture or preach. So I wrote the following letter to that paper, which was published without comment:

CHARGING TO HEAR THE GOSPEL.

“31 Montague St., London, W. C., July 25, 1886.

“To the Editor of The Baptist.

“Dear Sir: May I be allowed to correct a statement made in your excellent paper of the 23d inst. concerning Mr. Beecher and his lectures and sermons?

“Mr. Beecher does not charge for preaching outside his own pulpit in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. I have managed all his lecture tours for the past eleven years, and I have always arranged that he should preach on the Sabbath while absent from home, and that under no circumstances was there to be a charge of any kind made for hearing him preach the Gospel. True, when in other cities, in order to protect pew-holders and members of the regular congregations, it has been necessary to issue tickets of admission to the side doors before the house was opened to the general public.

“Mr. Beecher is a lecturer as well as preacher. He delivers on an average one hundred and fifty lectures a year, and has during some seasons lectured upward of two hundred times, besides preaching every Sabbath. He lectures because he finds it profitable both to himself and to those who are glad to pay their money to hear him; but never has he received a penny for preaching outside his own pulpit; and if London were bullion, and he could have it for preaching one sermon here, it would not even tempt him.

“Mr. Beecher receives from me the same pay per lecture that I give him in America. My business is furnishing lectures and high-class entertainments to lyceums and lecture associations in America. I supply lecture and musical societies throughout the United States with the best talent to be had. It is part of the American system of education, and the Americans are educated to it, and generally prefer it to trashy shows. They expect great men to address them; and when Dean Stanley, Professor Huxley, and Herbert Spencer came to America, I had hundreds of applications from all parts of the land asking their terms and approximate date; and when I replied that these men could not be secured, many of my constituents accused me of shiftlessness and neglect of business, and poured upon me all sorts of abuse because I did not supply them. I have ’imported’ a great deal of English talent: George Dawson, Canon Kingsley, Bellew, Matthew Arnold, and last season Canon Farrar, who made a great deal of money in America, lectured every day and preached twice every Sabbath for three months. He was not abused nor falsely accused because of his success. Thousands tried to get tickets to hear him preach. They were not to be had, as the church congregations where he preached had them for themselves and friends. Canon Farrar received £200 each for his last three lectures in America, and the management made something too. The public were not only satisfied, but grateful that so rare an opportunity had been offered them.

“Mr. Beecher is not a rich man, nor a money-lover. He does not know what becomes of his money. He lives the Gospel that he preaches. He has many drafts on his purse that he would like to meet. He does all that he can to assist the needy. He has two thousand eight hundred members in his church, all as dear as his children to him. Reverses overtake many. His name is the first that goes on a note to give a deserving friend a new start in life. Could you but know a hundredth part of the good he is constantly doing, you would be as ardent a believer as I am. I bring him to England during his summer vacation to lecture. He gets every penny from me for his lectures that he gets from any service in Great Britain. He wants to preach every Sunday, so I leave Saturdays open, and place the Sundays where he likes to preach. If it were money we were after, I would have him lecture Saturdays and rest Sundays, and make £25 to £100 myself, and be £50 better off (every week) so far as this world’s goods are concerned. The ministers for whom he preaches manage their own congregations, and Mr. Beecher does not know as much about it as you do.

“Referring to Mr. Spurgeon on this subject of ‘charging to hear a sermon,’ where ‘the managers charged a shilling to hear him preach,’ and he remarked that ‘if he had known it he never would have preached,’ I will ask you to kindly explain the difference between charging a shilling and doing as I have on two different occasions when I went with some friends to hear Mr. Spurgeon. By putting money in a box at the side door I was allowed to go in and get seats, and I always found that a good-sized congregation was accommodated in this way by ‘paying what they liked,’ before the main doors were opened to the general public.

“If this is not charging an admission, I want to know what it is. I certainly could not have got a comfortable seat unless I complied with this custom.

“I am, yours very truly,
“J. B. Pond,

“Manager of Henry Ward Beecher’s Lectures.”

BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER of New York is the one clergyman of all that I know whom I most wish was a lyceum lecturer. It seems as though he is about the only one of his class of great and lovable clergymen that has been spared to us, now that Chapin, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks have passed away. He is ever going about doing good, and is as much at home and as well appreciated among the very poorest people as among those in the very highest station of life.

He is recognized by all who meet him on the street, and something kind is said as he passes by. If he would only be a lecturer! Thousands would pay to see and hear him, because they would know that they were to have something worth while in return for what they gave.

There is no great function, public or private, that he is not one of the first to be invited. He marries sons and daughters of the millionaires, and the poorest people as well, and all along the intermediate classes. In the Episcopalian families no name is more generally known, respected and loved.

The bishop is one of our very best public speakers. His addresses under all conditions abound with wit, humor and pathos, and sound sense. It is the simplicity, modesty, and real manliness of his make up that causes him to be just what he is and what he cannot help being. In every sense that the word implies, to every one who knows the meaning of the word, he is a man.

He told me of an incident that occurred as he was passing along Fourth Avenue. Some urchins were playing in the street, and he overheard one of them say: “There goes the Bish. He’s no chump.” I would rather have that eulogy from that urchin than from any statesman I know of.

THE VERY REV. S. REYNOLDS HOLE, dean of Rochester, was engaged by me for a lecture tour in America during the season of 1894-95. Since Canon Farrar lectured in America there has been no clergyman of the Church of England that I considered of sufficiently high standing to supply the demand that came most especially from the Episcopalian churches and societies. One of the best proofs that Dean Hole was such a man, if he could be secured, was the fact that as soon as it became known that negotiations were pending, the Lotus Club wrote to him tendering him a dinner on his arrival.

He came in October, with Mrs. Hole, and put up at the Everett House. He arrived on the 24th, and he was at once interviewed by representatives of all the newspapers. The next day he and Mrs. Hole received calls from many clergymen and their wives, and from nearly all the horticulturists in the vicinity. Roses in great profusion, of every form and variety, were sent in, for the Dean is known all over the world as the king of rose growers. Never was there a finer collection of roses than those which came to the Everett House during the Dean’s stay.

Then he yielded to Sarony’s invitation to come over and be photographed. The scene between the Dean and Sarony was indeed picturesque. “When the great photographer and artist found an interesting subject his enthusiasm was intense. The magnificent stature of the Dean fairly captivated him. He reached up (whoever knew Sarony will understand) and caught the Dean’s hand, exclaiming, as he looked at me:

“Major Pond, you have at last brought me a subject that I can enjoy. We’re going to have a good time.”

“I’d just like to hug you, sir,” said the artist, turning again to the Dean.

“I’ve not the slightest objection,” the Dean replied, and Sarony tried to encircle the big man with his arms. The famous artist, Mr. Herbert A. Olivier, who accompanied the party from England, made a sketch of the scene at that time, which is as correct in detail as a photograph could be.

On Saturday, the 27th, came the dinner at the Lotus Club. Dean Hole’s “Reminiscences” had made him widely known as the friend of Dickens, Thackeray, Leech, and other great Englishmen of the past generation. A distinguished company gathered to meet him, including the president, Frank R. Lawrence, the Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Church; Dr. Arthur Brooks, Rev. Dr. David H. Greer, President Schurman, of Cornell University; the Rev. Dr. James MacArthur, and many other distinguished guests of the club.

Even at his advanced age Dean Hole looked stout and lusty. He is six feet three inches in height, and his body is built on the typical lines of John Bull. As one of the New York journals expressed it, he “is certainly one of the finest specimens of Elizabethan ecclesiastical architecture that England has ever sent to this country.” His head is large and covered with a mass of silvery gray hair. His features are strong and have an expression of benevolence and good humor.

In introducing the guest, Mr. Lawrence said:

“Two occasions come to my mind this evening—the Lotus Club’s receptions to Charles Kingsley and Dean Stanley. To-night we are equally honored in the privilege of meeting Dean Hole. We cannot greet him without recalling the facts which his ‘Reminiscences’ have made familiar here. We recall him as one who clasped hands with Thackeray and was the friend of Dickens; but it is his own individuality as a man and author that makes him dear to us.”

The Dean, on rising, said:

“I can assure you, gentlemen, that when I received your invitation, having heard so much of the literary, artistic, and social amenities of your famous club, I resembled in feelings—not in feature—the beautiful bride of Burleigh, when—

“‘A trouble weighed upon her,
   And perplexed her night and morn,
 With the burden of an honor
   Unto which she was not born.’

“I could have quoted the words of the mate in Hood’s ‘Up the Rhine,’ when, during a storm at sea, a titled lady sent for him, and asked him if he could swim. ‘Yes, my lady,’ says he, ‘like a duck.’ ‘That being the case,’ says she, ‘I shall condescend to lay hold of your arm all night.’ ‘Too great an honor for the likes of me,’ says the mate.

“Even when I came into this building—though I am not a shy man, having been educated at Brazennose College, and preposterously flattered throughout my life, most probably on account of my size—I had lost this sense of unworthiness; but your gracious reception has not only reassured me, but has induced a delicious hallucination that, at some period forgotten, in some unconscious condition, I have said something, or done something, or written something, which really deserved your approbation. To be serious, I am, of course, aware why this great privilege has been conferred upon me. It is because you have associated me with those great men with whom I was in happy intercourse that you have made my heart glad to-night.

“It has ever been my ambition to blend my life, as the great painter does his colors, ‘with brains, sir,’ and I venture to think that such a yearning is a magnificent proof that we are not wholly destitute of this article, as when the poor wounded soldier exclaimed on hearing the doctor say that he could see his brains: ‘Oh, please write home and tell father, for he has always said I never had any.’ Be that as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the higher abodes of brightness and freshness, as it is to-night.

“Yes, my brothers, it is delightful to dwell ‘with brains, sir,’ condensed in books in that glorious world—a library—a world which we can traverse without being sick at sea, or footsore on land; in which we can reach the heights of science without leaving our easy chair, hear the nightingales, the poets, with no risk of catarrh, survey the great battlefields of the world unscathed; a world in which we are surrounded by those who, whatever their temporal rank may have been, are its true kings and real nobility, and which places within our reach a wealth more precious than rubies, for all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared with it.

“In this happy world I met Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, Willis, Longfellow, Whittier, and all your great American authors, historical, poetical, pathetic, humorous, and ever since I have rejoiced to hold converse with them. Nevertheless, it is with our living companions, with our fellow-men, who love books, as we do, that this fruition is complete, and so it comes to pass, in the words of one whose name I speak with a full heart, Oliver Wendell Holmes, that ‘a dinner table made up of such material as this is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism.’

“We feel, as our witty Bishop, afterward Archbishop, Magee described himself, when he said, ‘I am just now in such a sweet, genial disposition that even a curate might play with me.’ We are bold enough to state with Artemus Ward of his regiment, composed exclusively of major generals, that ‘we will rest muskets with anybody.’

“‘Linger, I cried, O radiant Time, thy power
   Hath nothing else to give. Life is complete.
 Let but the happy present, hour by hour,
   Itself remember and itself repeat.’

“And yet one more quotation, wherewith to make some amends for the stupidity of him who quotes lines most appropriate, by Tennyson, from ‘The Lotus Eaters,’ and repeated by one who has just crossed the Atlantic:

“‘We have had enough of action and of motion we,
 Tossed to starboard, tossed to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
 And the wallowing monster spouted his foam fountain on the sea;
 Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind;
 In this hollow Lotus land to live and lie reclined
 (Here where the Queen of Clubs so royally we’ve dined),
 On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.’

“And now, gentlemen, let me give—

“‘Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.’”

Then President Schurman of Cornell welcomed the Dean on behalf of the universities. He was followed by Dr. MacArthur, who made a fine speech and paid a splendid tribute to the guest of the evening. Mr. Brooks was the next speaker. Dr. Greer raised many a laugh by his witty remarks.

Dean Hole’s first lecture in America was in Calvary Baptist Church, Fifty-seventh Street, New York. Notwithstanding that the rain came down in torrents, the great church was crowded. The Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix introduced the speaker. The good Dean entertained his audience fairly well, but was a disappointment to many, due largely, I thought, to his bad advisers. He had been told that the more he amused American audiences and made them laugh, the better satisfied they would be. It is often a misfortune to a clergyman to be a wit. There were on the platform and in the audience people as learned as the one who addressed them. In his Rochester congregation he had been accustomed to addressing a different audience—an audience that he must talk down to. It took him only a short time to discover that in America the pews are as high as the pulpit, and he gave his audiences a scholarly and delightful entertainment. His popularity increased to the end of his tour.

He did not come to America for gain. All his earnings on the tour were applied to the restoration of an arch in the tower of the Rochester Cathedral, where the good Dean is fond of showing his Yankee visitors his American lecture proceeds.

It was Mrs. Pond’s and my privilege, during our visit to England in the summer of 1897, to be guests for three days at the Deanery. During our stay a garden party was given in our honor by the Dean and Mrs. Hole. We were shown on the place over a thousand varieties of roses, and we thought they must certainly be the very choicest in all the world; but the morning of the day of the garden party, a number of wagons and carts came driving in, loaded with banks and boxes of roses from various persons whom the Dean said were his disciples. They were displayed in a large basement room of the Deanery, and we were invited to view them. The great room was filled with tables on which the roses were displayed. It was certainly the most beautiful floral display that we ever saw, and the Dean assured us that nothing could be more perfect.

“You see,” said the Dean, “my dear Major and Mrs. Pond, the fruits of our efforts in rose culture; our disciples have all outgrown their teachers.” There was every color and almost every variety of rose. How I wish I could adequately describe them!

The garden party was a magnificent affair. The parishioners and best citizens of Rochester and its neighborhood were there—about four hundred—Rochester’s “Four Hundred,” I presume. The guests’ table was under an immense rose-tree as large as a common apple-tree, in full bloom. It was the first and only large rose-tree I have seen in blossom.

Among the guests were Mr. John Morgan Richards of London, and his daughter, Mrs. Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes “); a Mr. Arnold, brother of Sir Edwin Arnold, a scholarly gentleman and poet, who would be famous were he not eclipsed by his brother, and Mr. Latham, an English gentleman who now owns and lives in the famous Dickens home at Gad’s Hill, near by, who, the day before, had shown us all over the place and through the house, the unique Dickens library, the dining room, and the chair at the head of the table where the great novelist died.

I was never so impressed with the fact that there is more in this life than just to live and breathe and have a being, and that when life’s efforts are made in the right direction, what should be called “higher life” is almost within the reach of all who desire to attain it.

I must declare that of all the visits I have ever made in Europe, and of all the hosts and hostesses whose hospitality it has been my honor to enjoy, the Deanery at Rochester, Dean Hole (now past eighty), and his estimable wife, are among the very brightest of my memories. May they long be spared to us!

I copy from the good Dean’s book, “A Little Tour in America,” the following anecdote, which will give his estimate of one of our American plays that he saw while here:

“I had also the gratification of seeing those popular favorites, Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, in ‘Lady Clancarty,’ and was specially delighted with Mr. Denman Thompson in ‘The Old Homestead.’ Toward the end of the play, his manager came to my box with an invitation to an interview, and I had the pleasure of thanking Mr. Thompson for his humorous, pathetic, bright, and wholesome performance, and of telling him how much he resembled in many ways the greatest comic actor of his day, Mr. Buckstone.

“Next morning there appeared in the New York Herald a paragraph headed, ‘A Dean Behind the Scenes,’ and shortly afterward I was gently rebuked by a brother clergyman as having imperilled the dignity of my office. As counsel for the defence, I made answer, ‘Reverend sir, in the play entitled “The Old Homestead,” two young fellows, who had been making fools of themselves and had gone to the bad, were brought back to a right mind—to their home and duty. They were shown the misery and degradation of vice, and then, in contrast, the happiness and the honor of a righteous life. I went behind the scenes to thank the teacher of that object lesson, and if you, my brother, will prove to me that by one of your sermons you have persuaded two prodigals to get away from the husks of the swine and return to their Father’s house, I shall rejoice to pay my respects to you in the vestry, or wherever we may meet.’”

THE BISHOP OF RIPON, DR. BOYD CARPENTER, the Queen’s favorite minister, is regarded as the most eloquent man in the English clergy. I visited him at his palace during 1897. He said he wished to visit America soon, but had three hundred and ten parsons to look after, and did not know just how soon he could arrange to make the trip.

His great theme is Dante. A distinguished woman told me that she had heard him deliver a course of five lectures on Dante, and she thought she had never heard a man so intensely interested in his subject or so eloquent. His palace is a sort of public hotel for all members of the clergy, and Mrs. Carpenter told me that though a yearly income of £10,000 seemed enormous for a Bishop, she was often put to it to know how to make both ends meet. She kept count one year, and they entertained more than six thousand persons.

The Bishop writes a personal letter to the Queen every month, and receives one in reply. He has a copy of every photograph that Queen Victoria ever had taken, with her autograph written on each one.

A warm feeling of personal friendship exists between the Bishop of Ripon and the Dean of Ely, yet the two men are very unlike. The wide difference between their points of view is apparent from these few words in one of Dr. Carpenter’s letters to me:

“Dean Stubbs is a man well known for his strong social sympathies. He has been the champion of the agricultural laborer, and in all questions he, as such, has taken a strangely liberal line.”

The Bishop of Ripon has had invitations to deliver the Noble course of lectures at Harvard University, and the Lowell Institute lectures in Boston. I know that he would be pleased to come to our country, but he is such a very busy man that up to this time he has not found it possible.

THE VERY REVEREND CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBs, D.D., Dean of Ely, is a most charming gentleman and esteemed as one of the most accomplished English pulpit orators of the Church of England. Through the Rev. Dr. John Watson I induced him to come to America in the fall of 1899 to give a series of lectures to fill the demand which seemed to me had long existed in this country to hear from the platform one of the ablest lecturers of the Church of England.

Besides being a fine pulpit orator, the Dean of Ely is a pleasing platform speaker, with but little English mannerism, a scholar of fine type, an essayist of gentle humor and kindly wit, a man of practical affairs, and a sympathetic poet in touch with history and humanity. As a poet he has the ballad quality, the lyric tone.

Not only were his prepared lectures polished and scholarly, but when called upon suddenly he was always ready, with wit and humor and anecdote, for any occasion, as is attested by the following portion of an impromptu speech made at a banquet tendered by the Lotus Club to Sir Henry Irving in New York on the evening of the day of the Dean’s arrival:

“Mr. President, Sir Henry, Gentlemen of the Lotus Club: In this atmosphere of resistless eloquence and wit and humor and good fellowship and eulogy, I confess I find myself somewhat embarrassed—embarrassed by the generosity of your kindly feeling toward me, expressed by your president, but embarrassed especially because your president has treated me with not even that amount of generosity which he extended to the gentleman who spoke last and who needed no such generosity. I have not even had a twenty-minutes’ grace in which to concoct any impromptu humorous remarks. What, then, can I do? I think it was one of your own prophets—shall I say one of your own poets?—one of the greatest of your literary men, an ambassador to England some years ago, a man of whom I am always glad to think as a personal friend of my own, Mr. James Russell Lowell, who once said that an after-dinner speech should consist of an anecdote, a commonplace, and a quotation. Now, how can I fulfil those canons of speech to-night?

“An anecdote. I am reminded, partly by the frank comradeship of this meeting to-night and partly, also, by the rapidity with which the time is passing by, that I am staying with one of the clergy of this city who is not very well known to me as yet;—although I find that to know almost any American is to love him as a friend—and who, perhaps, may therefore be a little surprised to-night if I return toward the small hours, as at present would seem to be my prospect. And that recalls to my mind an incident which I remember a good many years ago in my Cambridge life when I was present at a banquet given in the hall of St Peter’s College, Cambridge, in honor of its six hundredth anniversary. There were many illustrious members of the college present, and many and long speeches. I remember that it was half-past eleven o’clock at night when Sir Frederick Bramwell, the brother of the judge, was called upon to respond to ‘The Toast of the Applied Sciences.’ He said something of this kind: ‘Gentlemen, I could have conceived occasions when it would have been delightful to me to expatiate upon such a subject, but at this hour of the night the only application of science that appears to me to be appropriate to the moment is the application of the domestic lucifer to the bedroom candle.’ (Laughter.) Whereupon your ambassador, Mr Lowell, with that happy genius, that quick power of composition, and that delightful grace which were always so characteristic of him, wrote on the back of his menu card, and tossed across the table, these lines:

“‘Oh, brief Sir Frederick,
   Who thy wit could catch,
  Hold thee a candle,
   Or find thy match?’”

          (Applause.)

Dean Stubbs is a man above middle stature, of robust frame and English aspect, with just a trace perhaps of some Scandinavian ancestor in the long head and face and the ruddy complexion. He is descended from the same Yorkshire yeoman stock as the present Bishop of Oxford, the author of the “Constitutional History of England,” whose kinsman he is, and from which stock in old days there came such men as the well-known Puritan writer, John Stubbs, who wrote the “Discovery of a Gaping Gulph,” and who, when his hand was cut off by order of the Queen, as a penalty for the publication of his outspoken pamphlet, waved his hat with the other hand and cried, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” The distinction which some men have gained as the champions of a great cause, or the leaders of a great movement, is a surprise to us when we see them. In their bodily presence there is nothing indicative of power, and we have to wait for the explanation of their ascendency. No such surprise will be felt by those who look upon Dr. Stubbs for the first time. We see at once that his physical endowments fit him for leadership. The tall, massive, upright frame, suggestive of his yeoman ancestry; the easy, natural dignity of his bearing; the firmness of his step, as of one who is clear as to his own course, and whom it would not be easy to move from any position that he felt called upon to take; the high, broad forehead, the alert and penetrating glance—all make it easy for us to believe, even before we have heard him speak, that he possesses characteristics which explain his position and influence. He impresses one immediately as a strong man both intellectually and physically.

In speaking of his recreations, he said: “I am president of the Ely Golf Club, am fond of bicycling, work at carpentering, am maker and patentee of the Sleepy Hollow chair, and few things please me more than to show my English, especially my American friends, round the cathedral.” And any one who has heard the Dean’s exquisite lectures on the Ely Cathedral may well be delighted with such a guide.

Unlike other clergymen who devote themselves exclusively to theological studies and abstract disquisition, Dr. Stubbs has examined and discussed some of the most vital practical questions of the day—the relief of the poor, the condition and needs of laborers, the welfare of artisans in the great manufacturing centres, the advancement of women, and the education of the masses. His life, accordingly, has been one of practical industry and effort for the good of others, and, while building an honorable renown for himself, he has been, in the largest sense of the word, a public benefactor.

He has always taken such a deep and active interest in the problems of labor and capital that he has become known as a “Christian Socialist.” In explanation of the meaning of this term as applied to himself, he relates the following anecdote:

“I had called on a rich old merchant in the North to ask him for a subscription. At first he was somewhat grumpy. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘they call you a Socialist; what do you mean by Socialism?’ ‘My dear sir,’ I replied, ’it depends on what Socialism you mean, political Socialism or Christian Socialism, for there is a great difference between the two. Of the Political Socialist I hold very much the same opinion as that of Ebenezer Eliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer, who wrote long ago—

‘“What is a socialist? one who hath yearnings
 For equal division of unequal earnings,
 A rogue, or a bungler, or both, he is willing
 To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.”

But while the political Socialist says, “What is yours is mine,” the Christian Socialist says, “What is mine is yours.”’ The old man’s eyes twinkled. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I’ve met a good many of the first sort; I never met any of the second. However, here’s £5 for your fund.’”

The Dean began his American tour with a course of six matinee lectures in the Lyceum Theatre, New York. His subjects were: “Shakespeare as a Religious Teacher,” “Ely Cathedral” (illustrated), “Milton and the Puritans,” “Ideal Women of the Poets,” “James Russell Lowell,” and a second lecture on “Ely Cathedral” (also illustrated). Other lectures which he gave in this country were on “Shelley,” “Browning,” and “Charles Kingsley and Christian Socialism,” but the illustrated lectures on “Ely Cathedral” were the only ones that drew big money. The others were too scholarly for the American lyceum in its present condition.

Some idea of the delightfulness of the Dean’s illustrated lectures on the Cathedral of Ely may be had from the following criticism by William Winter, published in the New York Tribune: “The exordium of the Dean’s discourse, devoted to a portrayal of the physical beauty of the wide, dream-like fenlands of England, with Ely Cathedral—an image of sublimity and mystery—towering through the white mist and the hazy, golden light, fell upon the ear like a strain of music, and easily lured his hearers into a mood of fancy and sentiment, making them sympathetic with the glories of the past and reverent of the grandeur of the passionate religious devotion expressed so well in those wonderful old minsters of Europe—which seems to have utterly died out of the earth. Later it pleased the Dean to make his lecture a familiar talk, and to grace it with occasional tints of playful humor: the colloquial and rhetorical strains are not harmonious, and it is never easy to mingle them, but, certainly, the speaker managed this difficult involution with singular grace; but, at the last, reverting to his poetic vein, he rounded his work with noble eloquence and power. More than seventy pictures, many of them very lovely, were incidentally displayed—the spectacle culminating in a view of the shrine of St. Awdry, from which the white marble sarcophagus of the virgin Queen Etheldreda has disappeared—hidden, it is believed, somewhere in the great cathedral—perhaps to be restored in a purer, because a more spiritual, age, now dawning on the world.”

While in New York, the Dean being very anxious to hear Dr. Hillis, the Plymouth pulpit being the Mecca of all visiting clergymen and ministers from the other side, we arranged to attend one Sunday morning. The Dean was intensely interested, but I think was much surprised by Dr. Hillis’ unique style. “A nightmare of eloquence!” he exclaimed.

In Boston he repeated his New York course of lectures in Steinert Hall, which seemed to be the most popular lecture hall in Boston at this time. It is a very deep cellar under the Steinert Piano Rooms, and is quite prettily fitted up, but oh! if there should happen to be a panic down there, no one would escape to tell the story. Back of the stage is an elevator shaft used for carrying pianos up and down from the basement to the top of the building, and this causes a strong draught from the back of the stage, through the auditorium, and out to the sidewalk. Acoustically there is an advantage in this, because the draft carries the sound through the audience room, and one can be distinctly heard throughout the place in almost a whisper. But in cool weather both audience and speakers have to keep on their coats and wraps, as the cold draught carries away with it all the heat from the radiators. It is the best Boston has, unless you go up two or three more flights to the Y. M. C. A. Hall, which is about as inconvenient for an audience as anything could possibly be.

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the fashionable people of Boston turned out to welcome the Dean of Ely. He was the social lion of the season and the special pet of the literary Episcopalians and the faculty of Harvard University. He preached three times in Trinity Church—Phillips Brooks’ old pulpit—for his friend, Dr. Donald, and was also university preacher in the Appleton Chapel, Harvard, where he was listened to by a great crowd of undergraduates. Some of these sermons are published this autumn in a volume with the title “Pro Patria!”—sermons on special occasions in England and America.

The papers gave excellent accounts of his sermons and lectures, and, on the whole, Dr. Stubbs’ visit proved a financial success; but, compared with former days, when a first-class lecturer was a first-class attraction, there was much to be desired. Fifteen years ago a course of such lectures would have filled Tremont Temple or Music Hall.

At Columbus, Ohio, he preached for the St. Andrew’s Brotherhood, and met with a very cordial reception. He preached in Philadelphia and gave a course of lectures there with great success.

On the announcement of his proposed visit to Chicago I received a letter from the Episcopalian Bishop of that city denouncing a dean who could come to America to lecture for money; but notwithstanding this, the appointments were made for that city.

The Dean of Ely did not come to America to make money. He came to make friends, and I am sure he did it. He wanted a holiday, and he came to our country to get it, and if, not being a rich man, and having six sons to educate and put out in the world, he chose to pay his way by earning his travelling expenses, I do not see what business it is of the Bishop of Chicago to question the dignity of the Dean. That can quite well take care of itself.

Dr. Stubbs gave his first lecture in Chicago for the Twentieth Century Club, which for a number of years has had the first appearance of all my stars, and generally assures a good audience on the following evening in Central Music Hall. The local manager, however, in that city in some way conceived the idea that nobody but Episcopalians would care to hear the Dean of Ely, and so worked through the church instead of advertising through the general public. The result of such a course, together with most gloomy conditions of mud, sleet, rain, and snow combined, was poor business, although a delightful lecture to those who were present. The Chicago Journal said:

“Because of his scholarly attainments, his bright and sympathetic views, the lecture of last evening was one of the most charming and instructive addresses of the kind ever heard in Chicago.”

“The Elite, an illustrated society journal of Chicago, addressed to people of culture and fashion,” in an article on the Dean, says in allusion to his lecture before the Twentieth Century Club: “He gave his hearers much pleasure. They all said so at the time. Many remarked that the occasion was one of the club’s best evenings. The Dean has been misquoted in the newspapers (of course without intention) as to what he said on that evening by way of rebuke. The manner in which he administered the rebuke was gentle to playfulness—yet it held a bit of quiet sarcasm. But no offence was given and no offence was felt. He caused his audience to laugh and put it on its mettle.”

This is, of course, in allusion to the foolish indignation of the yellow journals of Chicago about an interview with the Dean by the American Outlook in which Dr. Stubbs spoke of “the hateful unloveliness of the city, and its wilderness of mean streets.”

This interview happened to appear just at the time when there was a lull in yellow journalistic excitements in Chicago, and his description of that city furnished material for some very elaborate editorials and cartoons and the publication of private letters which patriotic Chicagoans were invited to contribute. The affair was taken up by the press throughout the country, and at the present writing the Dean of Ely is the best-advertised clergyman of the Church of England. There would be no difficulty in booking a profitable tour for him this season (1900-1901) if only he were available. Several of my friends in Chicago wrote to me that if I dared to visit their city again I would be a candidate for the Vigilance Committee, for having brought Dean Stubbs to this country. Knowing that the Dean would appreciate the humorous side of the situation, I sent him some of the newspaper clippings and wrote him that if I were driven out of my own country on his account I might wish to seek refuge in the confines of Ely Cathedral. To this he replied as follows:

“Deanery, Ely, July 25, 1900.

“My Dear Good Major: I am delighted to hear that you and Mrs. Pond are coming to the Isle of Refuge—you are quite safe here. If the Vigilance Committees of Chicago meditate a raid upon you at Ely, we will open the sluice at Denver and put the whole of Cambridgeshire outside the Isle twelve feet under sea water. But how sadly wanting in humor some of your journalists must be. I thought that was an English prerogative. The Chicagoans were really very kind, my hostess at the Twentieth Century Club quite charming, and I believe she was the sister of the mayor. How strange! And Mr. Newman was as kind as he could be and his wife was more so. But why must I praise an ugly street because I like a man who lives in it? I didn’t praise New Jersey; why Chicago? No. It is a hatefully unlovely place, but I admire greatly the men who, because they live there—poor things—are so loyal and patriotic. To be loyal for a noble city like New York is fine, but to be loyal to Chicago, that is sublime. Pray announce that I am coming over next spring to lecture in Chicago on ‘The Ideal City of the Poets,’ to be illustrated with ‘dinky second number’ lantern slides of the City of the Wind.

“I have just had a pleasant visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, my kind hosts in Philadelphia, and a continual stream of Americans who heard one or the other of my lectures are passing through here daily, and very pleasant it is to me to welcome them. We are suffering from an exceptionally torrid summer—93 degrees in the shade yesterday. I feel, to use one of your quaint Americanisms, as ’limp as a half-yard of chewed string.’

“Kindest regards to your wife and Bimbo and Miss Glass.

“Ever sincerely yours,
“Charles W. Stubbs.”

Evidently the good Dean retains the humorous pluck of his old Puritan ancestor, and if on his next visit the irate Chicagoans cut off the offending right hand which wrote the Outlook article, the dean will good-humoredly wave the bleeding stump and cry—“Bravo Chicago!”