At this Beecher burst into a fit of merry laughter. "Found! Found!" he shouted, as he took off his overcoat and threw himself into a chair.
When he could stop laughing, he said: "You know, Rossiter, that I am always ready to lend my books to any one who will make good use of them and bring them back, but I always forget to whom I lend them. It happened, in this case, that I wanted that volume of Ruskin about a week ago; but when I went to the shelf for it, it was gone. I knew I must have lent it, but to whom I could not remember. During the past week, I began to demand the book of every friend I met to whom I might have lent it. Of course, every one of them protested innocence; but at last I've struck the guilty man. I shall know, in future, how to find my missing books. The plan works beautifully."
One evening, after supper, Mr. Beecher said to his wife:
"Mother, what material have we among our papers about our early Indiana days?"
Mr. Beecher had long been importuned to write his autobiography, and he had decided to do it after he had finished his Life of Christ.
Mrs. Beecher had two boxes brought into the room.
"Suppose you look into that box, if you will," said Mr. Beecher to Edward, "and I'll take this one, and we'll see what we can find about that time. Mother, you supervise and see how we look on the floor."
And Mr. Beecher sat down on the floor in front of one box, shoemaker-fashion, while Edward, likewise on the floor, started on the other box.
It was a dusty job, and the little room began to be filled with particles of dust which set Mrs. Beecher coughing. At last she said: "I'll leave you two to finish. I have some things to do up-stairs, and then I'll retire. Don't be too late, Henry," she said.
It was one of those rare evenings for Mr. Beecher—absolutely free from interruption; and, with his memory constantly taken back to his early days, he continued in a reminiscent mood that was charmingly intimate to the boy.