is family behind. But Major Pond made it
his business to see that Mrs. Tilton wanted for nothing that money could
buy. Beecher never saw Mrs. Tilton, to converse with her, again. She
outlived him a dozen years. On her deathbed she confessed to her sister
that her denials as to her relations with Beecher were untrue. "He loved
me," she said; "he loved me, and I would have been less than woman had
I not loved him. This love will be my passport to Paradise--God
understands." And so she died.

* * * * *

Tilton was by nature an unsuccessful man. He was proudly aristocratic,
lordly, dignified, jealous, mentally wiggling and spiritually jiggling.
His career was like that of a race-horse which makes a record faster
than he can ever attain again, and thus is forever barred from all
slow-paced competitions. Tilton aspired to be a novelist, an essayist, a
poet, an orator. His performances in each of these lines, unfortunately,
were not bad enough to damn him; and his work done in fair weather was
so much better than he could do in foul that he was caught by the
undertow. And as for doing what Adirondack Murray did--get right down to
hardpan and wash dishes in a dishpan--he couldn't do it. Like an Indian,
he would starve before he would work--and he came near it, gaining a
garret-living, teaching languages and doing hack literary work in Paris,
where he went to escape the accumulation of contempt that came his way
just after the great Beecher trial.

Before this, Tilton started out to star the country as a lecturer. He
evidently thought he could climb to popularity over the wreck of Henry
Ward Beecher. Even had he wrecked Beecher completely, it is very likely
he would have gone down in the swirl, and become literary flotsam and
jetsam just the same.

Tilton had failed to down his man, and men who are failures do not draw
on the lecture platform. The auditor has failure enough at home, God
knows! and what he wants when he lays down good money for a
lecture-ticket is to annex himself to a success.

Tilton's lecture was called, "The Problem of Life"--a title which had
the advantage of allowing the speaker to say anything he wished to say
on any subject and still not violate the unities. I heard Tilton give
this lecture twice, and it was given from start to finish in exactly the
same way. It contained much learning--had flights of eloquence, bursts
of bathos, puffs of pathos, but not a smile in the