My Wife and I; Or, Harry Henderson's History

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

In like manner I found an oasis in the hot and hurried course of my week-day life, by dropping in to the weekly prayer-meeting. The large, bright, pleasant room seemed so social and home-like, the rows of cheerful, well-dressed, thoughtful people, seemed, even before I knew one of them, fatherly, motherly, brotherly, and sisterly, as they joined with the piano in familiar hymn-singing, while the pastor sat among them as a father in his family, and easy social conversation went on with regard to the various methods and aspects of the practical religious life.

To me, a stranger, and naturally shy and undemonstrative, this socialism was in the highest degree warming and inspiring. I do not mean to set the praise of this Church above that of a hundred others, with which I might have become connected, but I will say that here I met the types of some of those good old-fashioned Christians that Hawthorne celebrates in his "Celestial Railroad," under the name of Messrs. "Stick to the Right," and "Foot it to Heaven," men better known among the poor and afflicted than in fashionable or literary circles, men who, without troubling their heads about much speculation, are footing it to Heaven on the old, time-worn, narrow way, and carrying with them as many as they can induce to go.

Having thus provided against being drawn down and utterly swamped in the bread-and-subsistence struggle that was before me, I sought to gain a position in connection with some paper in New York. I had offers under consideration from several of them. The conductors of "The Moral Spouting Horn" had conversed with me touching their projects, and I had also been furnishing letters for the "Great Democracy," and one of the proprietors had invited me to a private dinner, I suppose for the purpose of looking me over and trying my paces before he concluded to purchase me.

Mr. Goldstick was a florid, middle-aged man, with a slightly bald head, an easy portliness of manner, and that air of comfortable patronage which men who are up in the world sometimes carry towards young aspirants. It was his policy and his way to put himself at once on a footing of equality with them, easy, jolly, and free; justly thinking that thereby he gained a more unguarded insight into the inner citadel of their nature, and could see in the easy play of their faculties just about how much they could be made to answer his purposes. I had a chatty, merry dinner of it, and found all my native shyness melting away under his charming affability. In fact, during the latter part of the time, I almost felt that I could have told him anything that I could have told my own mother. What did we not talk about that is of interest in these stirring times? Philosophy, history, science, religion, life, death, and immortality—all received the most graceful off-hand treatment, and were discussed with a singular unanimity of sentiment—that unanimity which always takes place when the partner in a discussion has the controlling purpose to be of the same mind as yourself. When, under the warm and sunny air of this genial nature, I had fully expanded, and confidence was in full blossom, came the immediate business conversation in relation to the paper.

"I am rejoiced," said Mr. Goldstick, "in these days of skepticism to come across a young man with real religious convictions. I am not, I regret to say, a religious professor myself, but I appreciate it, Mr. Henderson, as the element most wanting in our modern life."

Here Mr. Goldstick sighed and rolled up his eyes, and took a glass of wine.

I felt encouraged in this sympathetic atmosphere to unfold to him my somewhat idealized views of what might be accomplished by the daily press, by editors as truly under moral vows and consecrations, as the clergymen who ministered at the altar.

He caught the idea from me with enthusiasm, and went on to expand it with a vigor and richness of imagery, and to illustrate it with a profusion of incidents, which left me far behind him, gazing after him with reverential admiration.

"Mr. Henderson," said he, "The Great Democracy is not primarily a money-making enterprise—it is a great moral engine; it is for the great American people, and it contemplates results which look to the complete regeneration of society."