He loved to work among flowers and raise vegetables, which he often took to market before daylight. He believed in manual labor. He painted his own house, and did not hesitate to bring his groceries home in a wheelbarrow. He said: "It is my deliberate conviction that physical labor is indispensable to intellectual and moral health."
He was as fearless as he was industrious. One man had taken offence at Mr. Beecher's plain-speaking about some of his brutal acts. He stationed himself on the hotel steps, pistol in hand, to meet the pastor as he should return from the post-office.
"Did you say thus in your sermon yesterday?" asked the man.
"I did," was the reply.
"Did you intend those remarks for me, or were you meaning me?"
"I most certainly did."
"Then,"—with an oath, "take it back right here, or I'll shoot you on the spot."
"Shoot away," said Mr. Beecher, looking the man squarely in the face, and passed on. The man followed for a few steps, and then went down a side street.
Although one of Mr. Beecher's elders had said, "If an Abolitionist comes here, I will head a mob and put him down," the brave preacher sat on the platform at an Abolitionist meeting, and in his pulpit preached so earnestly against slavery that it was predicted that his influence for all time would be destroyed. He lectured as earnestly against intemperance and other sins; and these "Lectures to Young Men" became his first volume, dedicated to his father. The book had a wide reading, both in England and America.
While at Indianapolis his little son George died. Years later he said, "I remember, to-night, as well as I did at the time, the night that my eldest son died. That was my first great sorrow.... It was in March, and there had just come up a great storm, and all the ground was covered with snow.