America’s Great Preacher.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 2, 11 June 1887, Page 4

America’s Great Preacher.

ANECDOTES OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. Now the great American divine is dead and gone, anecdotes about him are pouring in. Tho following is a selection.—ln 1869 Mr Beecher preached at I enox, Mass. “Oh, dear,’’ exclaimed Miss Heron, the a.tress, who was present, “I did hope, when 1 left Now York. I should leave tho stage behind me.” When Park Benjamin was invited to attend Plymouth Church, and complained of not knowing the way. Mr Beecher told the poet to take the ferry nnd follow the crowd. “1 would come,” replied Benjamin, “ only that I make it an invariable rule never to go to Buy place of amusement on Sunday,” tn 1860 Mr Beecher was invited by tho Mercantile Library Association of St. Louis to lecture, but with the understanding that he should “eschew all matters pertaining to politics and religion. The characteristic reply was : “I am too much of a patriot to eschew the oneaud too goodaChristiau to neglect the other,” and in closing, “hoped that before long the young men of St. Louis would be able to listen, without shrinking, to tho free speech of an honest man.” His lecture was on “Young America,” nnd up to November of that year he had received 500 invitations for the winter lecturing tour. One pleasant Sabbath morning, so the story runs, on the way to church, Beecher went up to a number of boys playing marbles and exclaimed," What, boys, playing marbles on the Sabbath day! Why, you frighten me. “ Upon which one of the little sinners answered : “Frightened, ha! Why the d 1 don’t you rug-then ?” When Mr Beecher tried to stop running horse-cars in Brooklyn on Sundays, for the sake of tho. conductors and drivers, he unbeknownquestioned a conductor, who replied, if that sanctimonious hypocrite, “If Beecher would shut up his establishment the thing could be done.” Mr Beecher inquired of some boys crying papers. ’ What’s the news to night ?” “Oh,” said one of the urchins, give me three cents and I’ll show you.” Dr Todd is credited with the famous division, “ Sain's, tinners, and the Beecher family,” and also with the assertion that no man had done more to build up the Evangelical faith than Dr Lymaa B oflier, and that no men had done more to pull it down than his sons.