Mr. Beecher found his recreation from hard work in his love of country life. His farm at Lenox, Mass., proving too far from Brooklyn, he bought, in 1859, thirty-six acres at Peekskill-on-the-Hudson, and named it Boscobel. The old farmhouse was said to have been the headquarters of General Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame.
He watched like a child for the first note of the bluebird and robin, for the first arbutus, anemone, and violet of early spring. He loved roses as fondly as Professor Child of Harvard College. He raised hollyhocks, dahlias, geraniums, pansies, lilies, and chrysanthemums. He said, "The wonder is, that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in the month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of the most charming inflictions to which man is heir."
He bought trees of almost every variety, chickens of various kinds, Jersey cows and honey-bees, and a large family of dogs,—a St. Bernard, a mastiff, an Eskimo, a terrier, and others.
He once said, "If the dog isn't good for anything else, it is good for you to love, and that is a good deal." Speaking of those at Peekskill, he said, "They are practically good for nothing, but I sometimes think they are worth more to me than the whole place."
He used to say that he felt really sorry that his dog Tommy could not talk. "If ever there was a dog that was distressed to think that he could not talk, that dog is. I sit by him on the bank, of a summer evening, and I say, 'Tommy, I am sorry for you;' and he whines, as much as to say, 'So am I.' I say, 'Tommy, I should like to tell you a great many things that you are worthy of knowing;' and I do not know which is the most puzzled, he or I—I to get any idea into his head, or he to get any out of mine."
Mr. Beecher finally built a beautiful house of granite and brick, natural woods throughout the interior: first story cherry; second, ash; and third, pine, where he gathered his valuable library. "Where is human nature so weak as in a book-store?" he said; and in books and flowers and works of art he found that money melted away, so that, say his sons, William C. Beecher and the Rev. Samuel Scoville, in the life of their father, "it was in part to meet this heavy outlay that he projected and carried out the series of lecture-tours that ran through the last ten years of his life."
He had learned what many another learns, that "the most profitable kind of land-owning" is to "enjoy all that there is of beauty and peacefulness in my neighbor's lands as much as they, without the responsibility or the taxes." And yet people have to build once, to learn not to build again.
In 1872, Mr. Beecher having preached for twenty-five years in Plymouth Church, a "Silver Wedding" was celebrated by his people. Monday, Oct. 7, was the first day of the jubilee. In the sunny afternoon the three thousand children in the three Sunday-schools connected with the church marched past Mr. Beecher's house, as he stood upon his doorstep, and each child laid a flower at his feet, until he stood "literally embanked in flowers." Each day through the week had its appropriate exercises. On Thursday, the historical day, the brilliant and learned Dr. Richard S. Storrs of Brooklyn gave an eloquent address. "May your soul," said the speaker, "as the years go on, be whitened more and more in the radiance of God's light, and in the sunshine of His love!"
That soul was soon to be tested and whitened in a furnace heated almost beyond endurance. Theodore Tilton, a member of Mr. Beecher's church, had, through the influence of the latter, become the editor of the Independent. Having lost his position, apparently by his own misdeeds, and made his family unhappy, Mr. and Mrs. Beecher advised his wife to separate from him. Tilton determined to drive Beecher from his pulpit, and forced his wife to criminate the latter in character, which statements she afterwards declared again and again were untrue in every particular. Plymouth Church dropped its obnoxious member. He took the case into the courts, asking one hundred thousand dollars damages. For six months the details were read all over the world. Mr. Beecher was acquitted by his church, by the jury, and by a National Advisory Council of one hundred and seventy-two churches. Mr. William A. Beach, the leading counsel for Tilton, said later, "I had not been four days on the trial before I was confident that he was innocent.... I felt and feel now that we were a pack of hounds trying in vain to drag down a noble man." Judge Neilson, who had not known Mr. Beecher previously, became his warm friend.
Most persons who will take the trouble to go over the testimony now, after twenty years have cooled the passions of the hour, will agree with Mr. Beach. Dr. Barrows says truly, "That any man should have endured the fires which surrounded Mr. Beecher, and have come forth so radiant, so pure, so self-respecting, and so widely trusted and beloved, is a moral miracle, the parallel of which it would be difficult to find."