night in the eastern part of Maine. A party of gentlemen at Calais, went with him upon a little expedition into the Indian territories, spending several days there hunting and fishing. When about to embark upon a chain of lakes in birch canoes, the Indian guide, Etienne, rather objected to so old a man attempting the adventure, fearing that he would give out. He did not know his man. The doctor rowed with the best of the youngsters; caught more trout than all the party together, and returned each day from the various tramps, in the lead; eat his fish on a rock, with a sea-biscuit for a trencher, and fingers for knives and forks: slept on the ground, upon hemlock branches under a tent, and, at length, the Indian guide went from the extreme of depreciation to the highest expression of admiration in his power, saying, 'Ah! old man all Indian?'

"While residing on Long Island, in early life, he was returning home just at evening from a visit to old Dr. Woolworth. Seeing what he thought, in the dark, to be a rabbit by the road-side, a little ahead, he reasoned with himself'They are rather tender animals-if the fellow sits still till I come up, I think I could hit him with these books,' a goodly bundle of which he had in his handkerchief. Hit him he surely did; only it proved to be not a rabbit, but a skunk. The logical consequences followed, and he returned to his family in anything but the odor of sanctity. In after life, being asked why he did not reply to a scurrilous attack which had been made upon him, the doctor answered, 'I discharged a quarto once at a skunk, and I then made up my mind never to try it again.'

"During the prevalence of a revival in his church in Boston, the number of persons desiring religious conversation was so great, sometimes amounting to several hundred, that he was accustomed to employ younger clergymen to assist him. On one occasion, a young Andoverian was conversing with a person, who believed herself to be converted, within the doctor's hearing. The young man was probing the grounds of her evidence, and among other questions was overheard asking the lady if she thought that she was willing to be damned for the glory of God?' Instantly starting up, the doctor said to him, 'What was that you were asking?' I was asking her if she would be willing to be damned for the glory of God.' 'Well, sir, would you be willing?' 'Yes, sir, I humbly hope I should be.' 'Well, then, sir, you ought to be damned.' And, afterward, he took occasion to enlighten him to a better theol ogy. His absorption in thought gave rise to absent-mindedness and to forgetfulness, frequently to ludicrous stories. On several occasions he entered his neighbors' houses in Boston, for his own, and was only awakened to the truth by the appearance of the kind mistress, who saluted him with 'Good morning, doctor; we are happy to see you here.' But, in one case, in another mansion, where the good woman had a sweet heart, but a sour tongue, the salutation was more piquant:— 'Doctor, if you can't find your own house, I wish you would hire a man to go and show you.' Well, it is not very comfortable to have a neighbor walk into your parlor, with two or three clergymen in train, appropriate your chairs, call for the servants, and even stand at the foot of the stairs, calling out, 'My dear-my dear! will you come down?' Hundreds of

stories related of the doctor are mere fictions, or ascriptions to him of things belonging to other men. He once said, if I should write my own life, the first volume should contain the things which I did not do and did not say. Nevertheless, not a few are authentic."

Dr. Beecher, physically, is not a large man; indeed, is rather small, but he is firmly, strongly made. His head is large; the hair combed straight back from his forehead, giving him a bold and fearless look, which comports well with his character. His eyes are light blue, his nose is prominent, mouth large, and his complexion is florid. A stranger would hardly think, upon seeing Dr. Beecher in the pulpit, and not knowing him, that a great man was before him. Says a good critic of pulpit eloquence:

"Well do I remember the first time I heard him preach. It was seventeen years ago. From early childhood I had been taught to reverence the name of the great divine and orator, and I had long promised myself the pleasure of listening. to him. My first Sunday morning in Cincinnati found me sitting with his congregation. The pastor was not as punctual as the flock. Several minutes had elapsed after the regular hour for beginning the service, when one of the doors opened, and I saw a hale looking old gentleman enter. As he pulled off his hat, half a dozen papers, covered with notes of sermons, fluttered down to the floor; the hat appeared to contain a good many more. Stooping down and picking them up deliberately, he

came scuttling down the aisle, with a step so quick and resolute, as rather to alarm certain prejudices I had on the score of clerical solemnity. Had I met him on a parade ground, I should have singled him out as some general in undress, spite of the decided stoop contracted in study; the iron-gray hair brushed stiffly toward the back of the head; the keen, sagacious eyes, the firm, hard lines of the brown and wrinkled visage, and the passion and power latent about the mouth, with its long and scornful under lip, bespoke a character more likely to attack than to suffer. His manner did not change my first impression. The ceremonies preliminary to the sermon were dispatched in rather a summary way. A petition in the long prayer was expressed so pithily I have never forgotten it.

"I forget now what reprehensible intrigue our rulers were busy in at the time, but the doctor, after praying for their adoption of various useful measures, alluded to their conduct in the following terms: 'And, O Lord, grant we may not despise our rulers; and grant they may not act so, that we can't help it.' It may be doubted whether any English bishop has ever uttered a similar prayer for king and parliament. To deliver his sermon, the preacher stood bolt upright, stiff as a musket. At first, he twitched off and replaced his spectacles a dozen times in as many minutes, with a nervous motion, gesturing meanwhile with frequent pump-handle strokes of his right arm; but as he went on, his unaffected language began to glow with animation, his simple style became figurative and graphic, and flashes of irony lighted up the dark groundwork of his puritanical reasoning. Smiles and tears chased each other over the faces of many in the audience. His peroration was one of

great beauty and power. I have heard him hundreds of times since, and he has never failed to justify his claim to the title of 'the old man eloquent.'

The "father of the Beechers" is worthy of everlasting remembrance, because of his manliness. We want iron men in these days, more than we want splendid preachers or passionate poets. Lyman Beecher has infused into the ministry a new spirit of reform. He is a living rebuke to all ministerial cowards. He has lived a life of incessant toil, yet has habituated himself to such manly recreations that he has not been obliged to waste one half his existence in recovering lost health. One hundred such men can revolutionize a nation, for they impress themselves ineffaceably upon their generation.