He necessarily used the greatest economy in college, his board costing him but one dollar and fifty cents a week, a mile from college grounds; and when vacation came he walked more than a hundred miles to Boston, because he had no money to pay the stage-coach fare.
Charles Beecher, the youngest of Roxana's children, was in college with his brother Henry. Dr. Beecher became so straitened in money matters that it seemed probable that the sons must leave college. He and his wife talked the matter over till finally he said, "Well, the Lord always has taken care of me, and I am sure he always will." The mother lay awake after she had gone to bed, and cried over it; evidently she was not as cold at heart as the young Henry Ward thought.
The next morning was the Sabbath. The door-bell rang, and a one hundred dollar bill was handed in from Mr. Homes, as a thank-offering for the conversion of one of his children. The way was now opened for the boys to continue their college course.
After Henry had been at Amherst less than a year, in the spring vacation of 1831, he and another student walked fifty miles to the home of a classmate, and there fell in love with the sister of the latter, Eunice White Bullard, daughter of Dr. Artemas Bullard of West Sutton, Mass.
"After our outside work was done," writes Mrs. Beecher, years later, "mother and I took knitting and sewing and sat down with them. I was going to wind a skein of sewing-silk (that was before spools were common), and, as was my custom, put it over the back of a chair. More gallant and thoughtful, apparently, than his older companions, this young gentleman insisted upon holding it for me to wind. For some reason—perfectly unaccountable, if one judged only by his quiet, innocent face, without watching the eyes and mouth—that skein became as intricately tangled as if tied by Macbeth's witches.
"'A badly tangled skein is it not?' said he, when I had lost half my evening in getting it wound.
"'Rather more troublesome, I imagine, than if I had kept it on the chair,' I replied. 'It was a good trial of patience, anyhow,' was his response to the laugh that followed."
The students remained for several days, and had a merry time. One day, after some pies had been taken out of the old-fashioned brick oven, a few ashes falling upon one, the mother asked Eunice to get them off. Henry offered to help, and respectfully taking the pie from her hands carried it into the garden, where he and his two other college friends ate it up. "There, we have cleared the plate nicely," said Henry Ward, as he handed it back to the mother.
Dr. Bullard said of young Beecher, "He's smart. If he lives, he'll make his mark in the world."
The next winter, January, 1832, Henry Ward taught school near the town where Eunice was teaching. He asked, "If she would go to the West with him as a missionary?" and was referred to her parents. Mrs. Bullard was grieved; but Dr. Bullard was angry, and said, "Why, you are a couple of babies. You don't know your own minds yet, and won't for some years to come." Young Beecher was a little over eighteen, and Miss Bullard ten months older.