there was at least one young heart in the audience that could scarcely contain its rapture and that held itself quite still until the tempest sank away to peace in the words:
He sat serene upon the floods,
Their fury to restrain,
And He, as sovereign Lord and King,
Forevermore shall reign.
Stirred to the depths by songs such as this on Sunday, Harriet came home to a family that were making the rafters ring with music all the week. A fine-toned upright piano, which some lucky accident had brought within the means of the poor minister, had been early brought all the way from New Haven; Harriet said that never was ark of the covenant brought into the tabernacle with such gladness as when this magical instrument came into their abode. Then indeed was the house filled with music. Catherine and Harriet had regular instruction from a charming and beautiful performer. Edward and William learned to play on the flute. Dr. Beecher brought out his fiddle, and many evenings were given to concerts in which piano, violin, flute and voice united, and Scotch ballads and hymns and chorals resounded through the house.
Sunday evening was a particularly pleasant time in the Beecher home. Something of the old law about Sunday observance ending at sundown still held in New England. And when the boys, who were closely watching, had at last seen the required three stars come out—why, that decided the matter; it was really evening, the Sabbath was over, and playing could now begin without making their consciences prick. When the preaching was done for the day, Dr. Beecher would join the family, and music would be in order. Never was the father so entertaining as at this time. He was lively, sparkling, jocose. He got out the old yellow music book and his faithful friend, the violin, and played “Auld Lang Syne,” “Bonnie Doon,” “Mary’s Dream” and other favorites. On week day evenings a concert like this ended with “Money Musk” and “College Hornpipe,” and perhaps after the mother had gone to bed the father would exhibit the wonders of a double shuffle remembered from the corn-huskings of his youth; but it is said that the results on the feet of his stockings made the female authorities frown on them to such a degree that after a while the exhibition became a rare treat.
But there were other ways in which the high spirits of this sometimes frisky parent amused the family. For instance, in pursuance of a sort of dare the musical father went through the house before the housekeeper was up, energetically playing “Yankee Doodle.” At another time when he was tired of theological study he began to play the fiddle under the schoolroom (in the days when they had a school in the home), much to the delight of the pupils; but the mother came downstairs, took the instrument gently from his hands, carried it upstairs, and laid it on the desk in the schoolroom. This closed that incident and gave us an example of the mother’s tact in managing a rather difficult situation.
But not to dwell upon the jocose side of things which kept the life in the Beecher home from becoming too serious and dull for the welfare of a company of little ones who were full of activity that needed outlet, it is plain that there were many broadening educative influences about Harriet Beecher in her own immediate home.
These were also supplemented by others of a still wider character. When Harriet stayed at the Foote homestead in Nut Plains down near Guilford she slept in a bed that was hung with curtains of printed India linen on which bloomed strange mammoth plants with endless convolutions of branches in whose hollows appeared Chinese summer houses adorned with countless bells which gay Chinese attendants were ever in the act of ringing with a hammer. There were also sleepy-looking mandarins, and birds bigger than the mandarins. Drowsy little girl Harriet wondered why the bells did not ring when struck, and why the mandarins never came out of their summer houses.