Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

At four years of age Henry went to Ma'am Kilbourn's school, where he repeated his letters twice a day, and later to the district school, for which he had in those days no affection. "In winter," he says, "we were squeezed into the recess of the farthest corner, among little boys, who seemed to be sent to school to fill up the chinks between the bigger boys. We were read and spelt twice a day, unless something happened to prevent, which did happen about every other day. For the rest of the time we were busy in keeping still.

"And a time we always had of it. Our shoes always would be scraping on the floor or knocking the shins of urchins who were also being educated. All our little legs together (poor, tired, nervous, restless legs with nothing to do!) would fill up the corner with such a noise that, every ten or fifteen minutes, the master would bring down his two-foot hickory ferule on the desk with a clap that sent shivers through our breasts to think how that would have felt if it had fallen somewhere else; and then with a look that swept us all into utter extremity of stillness, he would cry, 'Silence in that corner!' ...

"Besides this our principal business was to shake and shiver at the beginning of the school for very cold; and to sweat and stew for the rest of the time before the fervid glances of a great iron box stove, red-hot." Those of us who have attended district schools in New England will recognize the truthfulness of the picture.

Henry longed for birds and flowers and books, as indeed he did all through college, and was ever a deeper student of nature than of books. And yet in after years he was glad for some of these school experiences. "I am thankful," he says, "that I learned to hem towels—as I did. I know how to knit suspenders and mittens. I know a good deal about working in wood-sawing, chopping, splitting, planing, and things of that sort. I was brought up to put my hand to anything; so that when I went West, and was travelling on the prairies and my horse lost a shoe, and I came to a cross-road where there was an abandoned blacksmith's shop, I could go in and start the fire, and fix the old shoe and put it on again. What man has done man can do; and it is a good thing to bring up boys so that they shall think they can do anything. I could do anything."

The lad was sensitive to praise or blame, and extremely diffident. "To walk into a room where 'company' was assembled, and to do it erect and naturally, was as impossible as it would have been to fly.... Our backbone grew soft, our knees lost their stiffness, the blood rushed to the head, and the sight almost left our eyes. We have known something of pain in after years, but few pangs have been more acute than some sufferings from bashfulness in our earlier years."

Mr. Beecher felt all through his life that he owed much to a colored man, Charles Smith, who worked on his father's farm when he was a boy. "He used to lie upon his humble bed," says Mr. Beecher, "(I slept in the same room with him) and read his Testament, unconscious, apparently, that I was in the room.... I never had heard the Bible really read before; but there, in my presence, he read it, and talked about it to himself and to God.... He talked to me about my soul more than any member of my father's family."

Henry was taken to Bethlehem, seven miles from Litchfield, to the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon; but he seems here also to have loved the woods and flowers so much better than books, that he was finally sent to Hartford to the care of his sister Catherine, who taught a school for young ladies. Though a favorite on account of his sunny disposition, he proved a poor scholar, and was sent home at the end of six months. When the boy was thirteen, Dr. Lyman Beecher moved with his family to Boston, having been called to the pastorate of the Hanover-street Congregational Church at the North End.

Here he loved Christ Church chimes, listened to their music "with a pleasure and amazement," he says, "which I fear nothing will ever give me again till I hear the bells ring out wondrous things in the New Jerusalem," and studied ships as he strolled along the docks, or lingered in Charlestown Navy Yard.

At the latter place he stole a six-pound shot, and not knowing how to get it home unobserved, carried it rolled in a handkerchief on the top of his head under his hat. With the greatest difficulty he brought it home, and then did not know what to do with it, not daring to show it, nor tell where he got it.

"But after all," he says, "that six-pounder rolled a good deal of sense into my skull. I think it was the last thing I ever stole; and it gave me a notion of the folly of coveting more than you can enjoy, which has made my whole life happier."