which I belonged when I was a boy, and marched out
with the crowd.

The president of the village and leading citizens, one after
another, mounted the platform, which was the piazza of Mr. Beecher's
house, and expressed their confidence in him and the confidence
of his neighbors, the villagers. Then Mr. Beecher said to me:
"You were born in this town and are known all over the country.
If you feel like saying something it would travel far." Of course,
I was very glad of the opportunity because I believed in him.
In the course of my speech I told a story which had wonderful
vogue. I said: "Mr. Lincoln told me of an experience he had in
his early practice when he was defending a man who had been
accused of a vicious assault upon a neighbor. There were no
witnesses, and under the laws of evidence at that time the accused
could not testify. So the complainant had it all his own way.
The only opportunity Mr. Lincoln had to help his client was to
break down the accuser on a cross-examination. Mr. Lincoln said
he saw that the accuser was a boastful and bumptious man, and so
asked him: 'How much ground was there over which you and my client
fought?' The witness answered proudly: 'Six acres, Mr. Lincoln.'
'Well,' said Lincoln, 'don't you think this was a mighty small
crop of fight to raise on such a large farm?' Mr. Lincoln said
the judge laughed and so did the district attorney and the jury,
and his client was acquitted."

The appositeness was in the six acres of ground of the Lincoln
trial and of the six months of the Beecher trial. As this was a
new story of Lincoln's, which had never been printed, and as it
related to the trial of the most famous of preachers on the worst
of charges that could be made against a preacher, the story was
printed all over the country, and from friends and consular agents
who sent me clippings I found was copied in almost every country
in the world.

Mr. Beecher was one of the few preachers who was both most effective
in the pulpit and, if possible, more eloquent upon the platform.
When there was a moral issue involved he would address political
audiences. In one campaign his speeches were more widely printed
than those of any of the senators, members of the House, or
governors who spoke. I remember one illustration of his about
his dog, Noble, barking for hours at the hole from which a squirrel
had departed, and was enjoying the music sitting calmly in the
crotch of a tree.