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I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade in the humblest village of his dominions.

You think me a fanatic, for you read history not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when truth gets a hearing, the muse of history will write Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was the product of the best culture of New England. His father, Lyman Beecher, was the most celebrated preacher of his generation. Every advantage that the father could

offer to fit his son for high position was opened to him. He was placed in the Boston Latin School at twelve; two years were spent at Mt. Pleasant Academy, Amherst, Massachusetts; four years at Amherst College, and three years at Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, of which his father had been chosen president.

"Though dull at first to ordinary book knowledge," says one of his biographers, "the clouds and the elms, the birds and the trout streams found

Henry a good scholar." His course at Lane Seminary was the most important of his education. It was a time of hard study, intellectual broadening, and great spiritual activity. He was a close student of Milton and Shakespeare, but he declares that he owes 'more to the book of Acts and the writings of the Apostle Paul than to all other books put together." But his general education had only begun with these things.

He became a student of affairs, a deep thinker, an editor who had opportunity to express himself on leading public questions, social, educational, and political, as well as on matters of theology, and to mold public opinion in America.

Few men who have attained eminence as orators ever submitted to so much hard drill as did Henry Ward Beecher, and few appreciated it more, or spoke about it with so much gratitude. While a small boy he had great difficulty in articulation on account of enlarged tonsils and a small throat. His aunt declares that when he came to her home on errands she would have to ask him to repeat the message two or three times before it would dawn on her what he wanted. He says of his own training in elocution: "It was my good fortune to fall into the hands of Professor Lovell of New Haven, and for a period of three years I was drilled incessantly in gesture and voice culture. His manner, however, he very properly did not communicate to me. He simply gave his pupils the knowledge of what they had in themselves. We practiced a great deal on what was called 'Dr. Barber's system,' which was then in vogue, and particularly in developing the voice in its lower register, and also upon the explosive tones. There was a large grove lying between the seminary and my father's house, and it was the habit of brother Charles and myself, and one or two others, to make the night and even the day hideous with our voices, as we passed backward and forward through the wood, exploding all the vowels, from the bottom to the top of our voices. I found it to be a very manifest benefit, and one that has remained with me all my life long. The drill that I underwent produced not a rhetorical manner, but a flexible instrument that accommodated itself readily to every kind of thought and every shade of feeling, and obeyed the inward will in the outward realization of the results of rules and regulations."

Beecher not only drilled with Professor Lovell during his preparatory course, but kept up his training during his four years at Amherst College and his three years at the Theological Seminary. One of his classmates declares: In logic and class debates no one could approach him. I listened to his flow of eloquence in those days with wonder and admiration." By this time he had acquired right habits, had cultivated distinctness, had strengthened and enlarged his vocal organs, had made his voice flexible and responsive, had acquired the charm of conversational directness and the power to so vary his voice as, he himself says, to bewitch his audiences out of their weariness by the charms of a voice not artificial but made by assiduous training to be his second nature. What a speaker most needs is to strengthen his ordinary conversational voice, without giving it a hard, firm quality; that is, without destroying its flexibility and power of adaptation to every mood." When one arrives at this stage of training, his speaking becomes a growth, a simultaneous vocal and mental development.

Beecher's early experience in the ministry, first at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and then at Indianapolis, was a time of rapid growth in power as a public speaker. He was tireless in church work, in preparing his sermons, in writing editorials, in active work as a citizen in the promotion of good government. His power of concentration of thought is well illustrated in the fact that during his pastorate at Indianapolis he preached a series of forty sermons on one particular line of thought, and then concluded to put the substance of them all into one powerful address. When he preached that sermon the effect was so great that ever afterward he was recognized as a great orator. He kept up through life this habit of crowding a great deal into his sermons an example well worth the emulation of all aspiring young preachers. So great

was Beecher's influence, so increased was his following of young men, that his church at Indianapolis had to be enlarged to accommodate his congregation; and when in 1847 he was called to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, he had come to the stature of a well-rounded public man, highly reputed for his eloquence.

Let no one think that Beecher's skill in managing men came to him without severe discipline and many heartburns. Like many others he lacked confidence in his early ministry.

For the first three years of my ministry," he says, "I did not make a single sinner wink." But he was learning. He studied human nature as few orators ever did. His pastoral work took him into every family in his church. He says that during his first pastorate at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, he did everything "but come to hear himself preach." He swept the church, made the fires, rang the bell, trimmed the lamps. He carried sunshine and good humor with him wherever he went, and it was reflected in his own life as well as in the lives of those with whom he came in contact. When asked why he used wit and humor in his preaching, he said, "Every bell in my belfry shall ring to help influence men." His twelve years of Western experience gave him wide sympathy with and knowledge of the average man what he was pleased to call the "plain folks." He felt that it was well to keep close to these people and be seasoned with their sympathy. It was his custom to talk with railroad employees on his journeys, ride with bus drivers, or sit down with workmen anywhere he chanced to find them, because of his love of humanity and for the sake of learning how to reach men. This study of human nature gave him supreme power when he faced men in stormy assemblies.

Beecher's physical qualifications conduced greatly to his success. He was blessed with a magnificent physique, due no

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