out any subject in wordy
warfare against all comers. His temper was splendid, his good-nature
sublime. If an opponent got the best of him he enjoyed it as much as the
audience--he could wait his turn. The man who can laugh at himself, and
who is not anxious to have the last word, is right in the suburbs of
greatness.

However, the Beechers all had a deal of positivism in their characters.
Thomas K. Beecher of Elmira, in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, declared he
would not shave until John C. Fremont was elected President. It is
needless to add that he wore whiskers the rest of his life.

When Henry Ward was nineteen his father received a call to become
President of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, and Henry Ward
accompanied him as assistant. The stalwart old father had now come to
recognize the worth of his son, and for the first time parental
authority was waived and they were companions. They were very much
alike--exuberant health, energy plus, faith and hope to spare. And
Henry Ward now saw that there was a gentle, tender and yearning side to
his father's nature, into which the world caught only glimpses. Lyman
Beecher was not free--he was bound by a hagiograph riveted upon his
soul; and so to a degree his whole nature was cramped and tortured in
his struggles between the "natural man" and the "spiritual." The son was
taught by antithesis, and inwardly vowed he would be free. The one word
that looms large in the life of Beecher is Liberty.

* * * * *

Henry Ward Beecher died aged seventy-four, having preached since he was
twenty-three. During that time he was pastor of three churches--two
years at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, six years at Indianapolis, and
forty-three years in Brooklyn. It was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven
that he became pastor of the Congregational Church at Lawrenceburg. This
town was then a rival of Cincinnati. It had six churches--several more
than were absolutely needed. The Baptists were strong, the Presbyterians
were strenuous, the Episcopalians were exclusive, while the
Congregationalists were at ebb-tide through the rascality of a preacher
who had recently decamped and thrown a blanket of disgrace over the
whole denomination for ten miles up the creek. Thus were things when
Henry Ward Beecher assumed his first charge. The membership of the
church was made up of nineteen women and one man. The new pastor was
sexton as well as preacher--he swept out, rang t