The Americanization of Edward Bok Part 10

The next day he said: "I asked that stenographer friend of yours not to come again. No use of my trying to dictate. I am too old to learn new tricks. Much easier for me to write myself."

Shortly after that, however, Mr. Beecher dictated to Edward some material for a book he was writing. Edward naturally wondered at this, and asked the stenographer what had happened.

"Nothing," he said. "Only Mr. Beecher asked me how much it would cost you to have me come to him each week. I told him, and then he sent me away."

That was Henry Ward Beecher!

Edward Bok was in the formative period between boyhood and young manhood when impressions meant lessons, and a.s.sociations meant ideals. Mr.

Beecher never disappointed. The closer one got to him, the greater he became--in striking contrast to most public men, as Edward had already learned.

Then, his interests and sympathies were enormously wide. He took in so much! One day Edward was walking past Fulton Market, in New York City, with Mr. Beecher.

"Never skirt a market," the latter said; "always go through it. It's the next best thing, in the winter, to going South."

Of course all the marketmen knew him, and they knew, too, his love for green things.

"What do you think of these apples, Mr. Beecher?" one marketman would stop to ask.

Mr. Beecher would answer heartily: "Fine! Don't see how you grow them.

All that my trees bear is a crop of scale. Still, the blossoms are beautiful in the spring, and I like an apple-leaf. Ever examine one?"

The marketman never had. "Well, now, do, the next time you come across an apple-tree in the spring."

And thus he would spread abroad an interest in the beauties of nature which were commonly pa.s.sed over.

"Wonderful man, Beecher is," said a market dealer in green goods once.

"I had handled thousands of bunches of celery in my life and never noticed how beautiful its top leaves were until he picked up a bunch once and told me all about it. Now I haven't the heart to cut the leaves off when a customer asks me."

His idea of his own vegetable-gardening at Boscobel, his Peekskill home, was very amusing. One day Edward was having a hurried dinner, preparatory to catching the New York train. Mr. Beecher sat beside the boy, telling him of some things he wished done in Brooklyn.

"No, I thank you," said Edward, as the maid offered him some potatoes.

"Look here, young man," said Mr. Beecher, "don't pa.s.s those potatoes so lightly. They're of my own raising--and I reckon they cost me about a dollar a piece," he added with a twinkle in his eye.

He was an education in so many ways! One instance taught Edward the great danger of pa.s.sionate speech that might unconsciously wound, and the manliness of instant recognition of the error. Swayed by an occasion, or by the responsiveness of an audience, Mr. Beecher would sometimes say something which was not meant as it sounded. One evening, at a great political meeting at Cooper Union, Mr. Beecher was at his brightest and wittiest. In the course of his remarks he had occasion to refer to ex-President Hayes; some one in the audience called out: "He was a softy!"

"No," was Mr. Beecher's quick response. "The country needed a poultice at that time, and got it."

"He's dead now, anyhow," responded the voice.

"Not dead, my friend: he only sleepeth."

It convulsed the audience, of course, and the reporters took it down in their books.

After the meeting Edward drove home with Mr. Beecher. After a while he asked: "Well, how do you think it went?"

Edward replied he thought it went very well, except that he did not like the reference to ex-President Hayes.

"What reference? What did I say?"

Edward repeated it.

"Did I say that?" he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully prepared kind," he added.

Edward told him he regretted the reference because he knew that General Hayes would read it in the New York papers, and he would be nonplussed to understand it, considering the cordial relations which existed between the two men. Mr. Beecher knew of Edward's relations with the ex-President, and they had often talked of him together.

Nothing more was said of the incident. When the Beecher home was reached Mr. Beecher said: "Just come in a minute." He went straight to his desk, and wrote and wrote. It seemed as if he would never stop. At last he handed Edward an eight-page letter, closely written, addressed to General Hayes.

"Read that, and mail it, please, on your way home. Then it'll get there just as quickly as the New York papers will."

It was a superbly fine letter,--one of those letters which only Henry Ward Beecher could write in his tenderest moods. And the reply which came from Fremont, Ohio, was no less fine!

IX. a.s.sociation with Henry Ward Beecher

As a letter-writer, Henry Ward Beecher was a constant wonder. He never wrote a commonplace letter. There was always himself in it--in whatever mood it found him.

It was not customary for him to see all his mail. As a rule Mrs. Beecher opened it, and attended to most of it. One evening Edward was helping Mrs. Beecher handle an unusually large number of letters. He was reading one when Mr. Beecher happened to come in and read what otherwise he would not have seen:

"Reverend Henry Ward Beecher.

"Dear Sir:

"I journeyed over from my New York hotel yesterday morning to hear you preach, expecting, of course, to hear an exposition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead, I heard a political harangue, with no reason or cohesion in it. You made an a.s.s of yourself.

"Very truly yours, __ __.

"That's to the point," commented Mr. Beecher with a smile; and then seating himself at his desk, he turned the sheet over and wrote:

My Dear Sir:--

"I am sorry you should have taken so long a journey to hear Christ preached, and then heard what you are polite enough to call a 'political harangue.' I am sorry, too, that you think I made an a.s.s of myself. In this connection I have but one consolation: that you didn't make an a.s.s of yourself. The Lord did that."

"Henry Ward Beecher.

When the Reverend T. De Witt Talmage began to come into public notice in Brooklyn, some of Mr. Beecher's overzealous followers unwisely gave the impression that the Plymouth preacher resented sharing with another the pulpit fame which he alone had so long unquestioningly held. Nothing, of course, was further from Mr. Beecher's mind. As a matter of fact, the two men were exceedingly good friends. Mr. Beecher once met Doctor Talmage in a crowded business thoroughfare, where they got so deeply interested in each other's talk that they sat down in some chairs standing in front of a furniture store. A gathering throng of intensely amused people soon brought the two men to the realization that they had better move. Then Mr. Beecher happened to see that back of their heads had been, respectively, two signs: one reading, "This style $3.45," the other, "This style $4.25."

"Well," said Mr. Beecher, as he and Doctor Talmage walked away laughing, "I was ticketed higher than you, Talmage, anyhow."

"You're worth more," rejoined Doctor Talmage.

On another occasion, as the two men met they began to bandy each other.

"Now, Talmage," said Mr. Beecher, his eyes twinkling, "let's have it out. My people say that Plymouth holds more people than the Tabernacle, and your folks stand up for the Tabernacle. Now which is it? What is your estimate?"

"Well, I should say that the Tabernacle holds about fifteen thousand people," said Doctor Talmage with a smile.