Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

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 scraps 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 passed 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 associate 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 latitudinarian,' 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 God'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, blushing, 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 snatches 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 passed 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 grass, would pass 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 class 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.'