Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made Part 29

They have reached the summit of the range, from which a glorious view stretches out before them to the westward. The adventurers consist of the usual cla.s.s of emigrants, men, women, and children. There are several wagons and a number of horses in the train. The faces of the emigrants express the various emotions which fill their hearts as they gaze upon the glorious scene before them. Some are full of life and vigor, and hope beams in every feature, while others are struggling with sickness and despair. The advance of the train has been momentarily checked by a huge tree which has fallen across the trail, and two stout men, under the direction of the leader of the party, who is sitting on his horse, are engaged in hewing it away with axes. Two others have climbed to the summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping proudly from its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly youth, clasping his father's long rifle firmly, and gazing toward the promised land with a countenance glowing with hope and energy. His sister, as hopeful as himself, is seated by her mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has been thrown over a rock. The mother's face is sad, but patient. She knows well the privations, toils, and hards.h.i.+ps which await them in the new home-land, but she tries to share the enthusiasm and hope of her children. She clasps her nursing infant to her breast, and listens to her husband, who stands by and points her to the new country where they will have a home of their own. Her face is inexpressibly beautiful. The rich, warm light of the rising sun streams brightly over the whole scene, and gives to it a magical glow. The legend, "Westward the Star of Empire Takes its Way," is inscribed over the painting, in letters of gold.

An elaborate illuminated border, ill.u.s.trative of the advance of civilization in the West, surrounds the painting, and is in itself one of the most perfect works of art in the Capitol.

Leutze received the sum of $20,000 for this painting. After completing it, some matters connected with his family required him to make a visit to Dusseldorf, and upon reaching that place he was warmly welcomed by the artists, on the 10th of June, 1863, at their club. "About one hundred and fifty lords of art," says a letter from Dusseldorf, "a.s.sembled at the 'Mahlkasten,' just outside of the Hof-Garten. This is the club-house of the painters, and, with its gardens, is their property. Leutze was received with music, and when he came within reach of the a.s.sembled company, there was a general rush to shake his hands, kiss his cheeks, and hug him. The old fellows were much affected at the scene, and were heartily glad to see their old companion once more. The guest made a short and feeling address, whereupon all went in to supper.

Here two of the artists had arrayed themselves, one as a negro, the other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and handed them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right, and his old friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet cf peace was pa.s.sed around; there was speaking and drinking of healths, with songs afterward in the illuminated garden. The occasion appears to have been a very pleasant and right merry one, and is said to have been the happiest festival ever given by the Society of Artists."

Returning to the United States a few months later, Leutze repaired to Was.h.i.+ngton, where he had permanently settled. He was given several commissions by the Government, and at once began to design his subjects.

They were only in the cartoon, however, at the time of his death. One of these, "Civilization," was to have been placed in the Senate Chamber, and was partly finished. It is said to have given promise of being his finest production. He also left a sketch of an immense picture, "The Emanc.i.p.ation." He was always a hard worker, and this doubtless contributed to bring about his death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1868. The immediate cause was apoplexy, superinduced by the intense heat.

"Mr. Leutze," says a writer in the Annual Cyclopedia, "was altogether the best educated artist in America, possessed of vast technical learning, of great genius, and fine powers of conception. His weakest point was in his coloring, but even here he was superior to most others."

"Leutze," says Mr. Tuckerman, "delights in representing adventure. He ardently sympathizes with chivalric action and spirit-stirring events: not the abstractly beautiful or the simply true, but the heroic, the progressive, the individual, and earnest phases of life, warm his fancy and attract his pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not a painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We remember hearing a brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours upon a picture, deftly s.h.i.+fting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand to hand, as occasion required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then suddenly breaking from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in a jovial song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for some wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his happiness. His very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of disposition. He scorned all ultra refinement, and found his impulse to art not so much in delicate perception as in vivid sensation. There was ever a reaction from the meditative. His temperament is Teutonic--hardy, cordial, and brave. Such men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and unchastened enthusiasm."

VIII.

DIVINES.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the famous Presbyterian divine of New England. Dr. Beecher was regarded as one of the most powerful champions of orthodox Christianity in the land of the pilgrims, and had the good fortune to be the father of a family whose members have become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.

The most of these gave early promise of their future distinction, but the subject of this memoir was regarded as the dunce of the family. He grew up as the children of most New England clergymen of that day climbed the road to manhood. His father's family was large, and the salary paid by the congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars, and was not always promptly paid at that. The good people of the land of steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the Lord's messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the "best talent" at the lowest price. The stern, hard struggle for a livelihood in which the father was engaged prevented him from giving much personal attention to his children, and the mother of young Henry dying when he was but three years old, the boy was left very much to himself. Like most ministers' children, he was obliged to "set an example to the village,"

and this boy was dosed with Catechism and his father's stern and gloomy theological tenets until he was sick of them.

"In those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "none of the attentions were paid to children that are now usual. The community did not recognize them..

There was no child's literature; there were no children's books. The Sunday-school was yet an experiment in a fluctuating, uncertain state of trial. There were no children's days of presents and _fetes_, no Christmas or New Year's festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only a.s.sociated with one day's unlimited range of pies of every sort--too much for one day--and too soon things of the past. The childhood of Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's toy as a gift from any older person, or a single _fete_. Very early, too, strict duties devolved upon him. A daily portion of the work of the establishment, the care of the domestic animals, the cutting and piling of wood, or tasks in the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up gave him early habits of vigor and self-reliance."

When but three or four years old he was sent to the Widow Kilbourn's school, where he said his letters twice a day, and pa.s.sed the rest of his time in hemming a brown towel or a checked ap.r.o.n. It was not expected that he would learn very much from Marm Kilbourn, but the school kept him out of the way of the "home folks" for the greater part of the day.

He was a winning, sweet-faced child, with long golden curls, of which he was very proud. Some of his female playfellows at school, thinking it a shame that a boy should look so much like a girl, cut off one or two of his curls with a pair of shears made of sc.r.a.ps of tin, and when the little fellow complained of his loss at home it was decided that the best way to protect him from such attacks in future was to cut his hair close to his head, which was done at once. Little Henry was commonly thought a dull child. His memory was lamentably deficient, and his utterance was thick and indistinct, so much so that he could scarcely be understood in reading or speaking. This was caused partly by an enlargement of the tonsils of his throat, and partly by timidity. The policy of repression worked badly in his case, and had there not been so much real good at the basis of his character it might have led this gentle, yearning boy far from the useful channel along which his life has flown.

His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry, who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was driving her in the chaise. They pa.s.sed a church on their way, and the bell was tolling for a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly, "what do you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went on. "_I_ think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into _eternity_." The little fellow shuddered, in spite of himself, and thought, no doubt, what a dreadful thing it was to be a Christian.

So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There was no effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and tenderness. He rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one who took little children in His arms and blessed them, but was taught to regard Him as a stern and merciless judge, as one who, instead of being "touched with the feeling of our infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of wringing fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him, for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he was more than sick of it. "I think," said he to his congregation, not long since, referring to this part of his life, "that to force childhood to a.s.sociate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one thing, that if I am 'lax and lat.i.tudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I could not go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and 'adoption,' and all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I do not know that they have brought forth any blossoms. I have a kind of grudge against many of those truths that I was taught in my childhood, and I am not conscious that they have waked up a particle of faith in me. My good old aunt in heaven--I wonder what she is doing. I take it that she now sits beauteous, clothed in white, that round about her sit chanting cherub children, and that she is opening to them from her larger range sweet stories, every one fraught with thought, and taste, and feeling, and lifting them up to a higher plane. One Sunday afternoon with my aunt Esther did me more good than forty Sundays in church with my father. He thundered over my head, and she sweetly instructed me down in my heart.

The promise that she would read Joseph's history to me on Sunday was enough to draw a silver thread of obedience through the entire week; and if I was tempted to break my promise, I said, 'No; Aunt Esther is going to read on Sunday;' and I would do, or I would not do, all through the week, for the sake of getting that sweet instruction on Sunday.

"And to parents I say, Truth is graded. Some parts of G.o.d's truth are for childhood, some parts are for the nascent intellectual period, and some parts are for later spiritual developments. Do not take the last things first. Do not take the latest processes of philosophy and bring them prematurely to the understanding. In teaching truth to your children, you are to avoid tiring them."

"The greatest trial of those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was the Catechism.

Sunday lessons were considered by the mother-in-law as inflexible duty, and the Catechism as the _sine qua non_. The other children memorized readily, and were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blus.h.i.+ng, stammering, confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some sand-bank of what is required or forbidden by this or that commandment, his mouth choking up with the long words which he hopelessly miscalled, was sure to be accused of idleness or inattention, and to be solemnly talked to, which made him look more stolid and miserable than ever, but appeared to have no effect in quickening his dormant faculties."

At the age of ten he was a well-grown, stout, stocky boy, strong and hearty, trained to hard work, and to patient obedience of his elders. He was tolerably well drilled in Calvinism, and had his head pretty well filled with s.n.a.t.c.hes of doctrine which he caught from his father's constant discussions; but he was very backward in his education. He was placed at the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, at Bethlehem, Connecticut, and it was hoped that the labors of this excellent tutor would result in making something of him. He spent a winter at this school, and boarded at a neighboring farm-house, whose kind-hearted mistress soon became so much attached to him that she indulged him to an extent which he had never known at home. With his gun on his shoulder, he pa.s.sed the greater part of his hours out of school in tramping over the pretty Connecticut hills, in search of game, or, lying down on the soft gra.s.s, would pa.s.s hours in gazing on the beautiful landscape, listening to the dull whirr of the partridges in the stubble-field or the dropping of the ripe apples in the orchard. The love of nature was strong in the boy, and his wonderful mistress taught him many of the profoundest lessons of his life. He made poor progress at the school, however, and his father was almost in despair. The whole family shook their heads in solemn forebodings over the failure of this child of ten to become a mental prodigy.

Miss Catharine Beecher, his eldest sister, was then teaching a young ladies' school in Hartford, and she proposed to take the boy and see what could be done with him. There were thirty or forty girls in the school, and but this one boy, and the reader may imagine the amount of studying he did. The girls were full of spirits, and in their society the fun-loving feature of his disposition burst out and grew with amazing rapidity. He was always in mischief of some kind, to the great delight of the girls, with whom he was extremely popular, and to the despair of his sister, who began to fear that he was hopelessly stupid.

The school was divided into two divisions in grammar recitations, each of which had its leader. The leaders chose their "sides" with great care, as these contests in grammar were esteemed the most important part of the daily exercises. Henry's name was generally called last, for no one chose him except as a matter of necessity. He was sure to be a dead weight to his leader.

"The fair leader of one of these divisions took the boy aside to a private apartment, to put into him with female tact and insinuation those definitions and distinctions on which the honor of the cla.s.s depended.

"'Now, Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used only with the singular noun. You can say _a man_, but you can't say _a men_, can you?' 'Yes, I can say _Amen_, too,' was the ready rejoinder.

'Father says it always at the end of his prayers.'

"'Come, Henry, now don't be joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he, possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book, too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one of these sallies made his young teacher laugh, which was the victory he wanted.

"'But now, Henry, seriously, just attend to the active and pa.s.sive voice. Now, _I strike_, is active, you see, because if you strike you do something. But, _I am struck_, is pa.s.sive, because if you are struck you don't do any thing, do you?'

"'Yes, I do; I strike back again.'

"Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were offered gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky nature, his sister appointed his seat at her elbow when she heard her cla.s.ses. A cla.s.s in natural philosophy, not very well prepared, was stumbling through the theory of the tides. 'I can explain that,' said Henry. 'Well, you see, the sun, he catches hold of the moon and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea and pulls that, and this makes the spring tides.'

"'But what makes the neap tides?'

"'Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands.'"

It will hardly surprise the reader to be told that Master Henry remained with his sister only six months, and was returned at the end of that time to his father as an indifferent scholar and a most inveterate joker.

A change now occurred in his life. When he was twelve years old his father removed to Boston to a.s.sume the charge of the Hanover-Street Church. Here the boy had a chance to see something more than nature, and to employ his powers of observation in receiving impressions from the daily life and aspect of a large and crowded city. His father entered him at the Boston Latin School, and appealed to him not to disgrace his name any longer by his stupidity. The appeal roused the little fellow's pride, and he set to work to show to his family that he was not the dunce they had thought him. He went at his studies manfully, mastering the tedious puzzle of the Latin verbs and nouns, and acquiring a respectable acquaintance with the grammar of that language. It was a terrible task to him, for he had no liking for the language, and did his work merely to please his father and escape disgrace. His success cost him a share of his health, and his vigorous const.i.tution began to show the effects of such intense application. His father noticed this, and as a diversion to his mind advised him to enter upon a course of biographical reading. He read the lives of Captain Cook, Nelson, and the great naval commanders of the world, and at once became possessed of the desire to go to sea. This feeling made him restless and discontented, and he resolved to leave home and s.h.i.+p on board some vessel sailing from the harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with the sailors and captains, and sometimes carrying his little bundle with him. But the thoughts of home were too strong for him, and he could never quite summon up resolution enough to run away. In a fit of desperation he wrote a letter to his brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and informing him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he dropped where his father would be sure to find it. The old gentleman soon discovered it, and, reading it, put it into his pocket without comment.

The next day he asked the boy if he had ever thought of any definite avocation for his future life.

"Yes," said Henry, "I want to go to sea. I want to enter the navy, be a mids.h.i.+pman, and rise to be a commander."

"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully; "but in order to prepare for that you must study mathematics and navigation."

"I am ready, sir."

"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant, and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at once. As soon as you are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an appointment."

The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst. The Doctor felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, "I shall have that boy in the ministry yet."

At the Mount Pleasant Inst.i.tute he roomed with his teacher in mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friends.h.i.+p sprung up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in him a fair knowledge of the science. Young Beecher also took lessons in elocution from Professor John E. Lovell. Under the instructions of this able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had troubled him so much. He continued at this school for three years, devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.

During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should attain the proper age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst College upon the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that inst.i.tution in 1834.

In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected. Henry followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet, in 1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.

"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to a.s.sume the work of the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed by a deep melancholy.

He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian minister. He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval profession. He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others; that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy work in it, was a treason to all honor.

"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely and heartily the same with that of his father, to secure the regeneration of the individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and thereby to effect the regeneration of human society. The problem that oppressed him was, how to do this. His father had used certain moral and intellectual weapons, and used them strongly and effectively, because employing them with undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into his mind to qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of thought and inquiry, that were partially inconsistent with the received statements of his party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield them with the force which could make them efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could wield the weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of objections more profound and perplexities more bewildering. Like the shepherd boy of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying the armies of the living G.o.d, and longed to attack him, but the armor in which he had been equipped for the battle was no help, but only an inc.u.mbrance!