vision of world-wide interest, and
particularly of the close connection between things called secular and
religious. The slavery question had a profound religious bearing, and
touched the very core of Plymouth Church life, yet even that does not
stand out more vividly in my memory than the scene when Louis Kossuth
landed at the Battery from an American man-of-war, and rode up Broadway
escorted by a hundred or more prominent citizens. We boys knew little
about him, but none the less eagerly we hurried along, barely escaping
the horses' feet, and none the less lustily we joined in the shout.
Later, through Mr. Beecher's references to him and his work, and by
seeing him in Plymouth Church, we came to know that the fight for
liberty was the same, whether in the South or in Europe, and whether it
was for black men that we knew or for Hungarians of whom we knew
nothing, scarcely even the name. Another lesson that we learned was that
the whole world is kin, and that even far-off lands cannot suffer
oppression and wrong without other lands suffering with them. So
Plymouth pulpit became a platform for the presentation of every form of
appeal to the best Christian consciousness of the church and through the
church of the nation.

Another scene, after I had grown to manhood, illustrates the same
chivalry that was bound to assert the claims of any person or any class.
Mr. Beecher was always an advocate of women's rights. He could never see
why women should be debarred from so many of the privileges, or duties,
of social life. During the first Lincoln campaign there appeared upon
the lecture platform a woman who brought a woman's plea for the cause of
liberty and human rights. No one who ever heard Anna Dickinson speak
could forget her, or failed to be moved by her eloquence. Of course Mr.
Beecher was her friend, and welcomed her assistance in the contest that
was growing more and more severe. She drew great crowds whenever she
spoke.

I was then president of the Central Republican Club, and we engaged Miss
Dickinson to speak in the Academy of Music, where we were then holding
meetings. Some days before the meeting was to take place the secretary
of the board of directors of the Academy called at my office with a
notice that the directors could not allow Miss Dickinson to speak in
that building.

I did not know what to do. The meeting had been extensively advertised.
I finally decided to go and see Mr. Beecher. As I recited the