The expenses of the trial year were $118,000; and though Plymouth Church raised Mr. Beecher's salary for that year to $100,000, he found himself deeply in debt. To pay this indebtedness he gave a series of lectures during the next two or three years. "The Reign of the Common People," "The Burdens of Society," "Conscience," "The Uses of Wealth," "The Ministry of the Beautiful," "Evolution and Religion," were among his most popular lectures. Upon the last, though a deep subject, I have seen five thousand persons strangely moved by his eloquence.
Although in some places he was jeered at by the rabble, yet year by year he found great strength and comfort in the love of the people. He wrote home that preaching Sunday evening in Boston, "Ten thousand people couldn't get in. Shook hands with whole audiences. Papers next morning with kind notices. Went to Congregational ministers' meeting on Monday morning. Cheered and clapped when I entered. After prayer for day was finished it was moved that I address the meeting. I did so, and closed with prayer. All wept, and it broke up like a revival meeting."
In 1886, when Mr. Beecher was seventy-three years of age, he consented to go a third time to England, to see his friends and lecture. Mrs. Beecher accompanied him, with his friend and lecture agent, Major J. B. Pond. Three thousand Plymouth Church people came to see him set sail in the early morning of June 19. Dodworth's band played "Hail to the Chief;" and then, as the vessel moved away, the great crowd sang, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." One friend had sent a basket of twenty homing pigeons; and these in the afternoon carried back messages to the loved ones.
Everywhere in England Henry Ward Beecher was received with a royal welcome. There were no more meetings like those at Manchester and Liverpool in the days of the Civil War. So vast were the crowds to hear him preach, that the congregations had to be admitted by ticket. Thousands were necessarily turned away. His first lecture was at Exeter Hall, London.
"Between July 4 and Oct. 21, fifteen and one-half weeks," says Mr. Pond in his book, "A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher," "Mr. Beecher preached seven times, gave nine public addresses, and delivered fifty-eight lectures. For the fifty-eight lectures he cleared the sum of $11,600, net of all expenses for himself and Mrs. Beecher from the day they sailed from New York."
It is estimated that Mr. Beecher earned by his pen and voice during forty years in Brooklyn nearly a million and a half dollars, most of which he gave away.
But much as he enjoyed England, the brave man was growing weary with the work of life. He wrote, "I want to come home.... I long every year to lay down my tasks and depart.... It is simply a quiet longing of the spirit, a brooding desire to be through with my work, although I am willing to go on, if need be."
He came home Oct. 31, 1886, and soon promised to complete the second volume of the "Life of Christ." He also made a contract with a publishing firm to have his autobiography ready before July 1, 1888.
He wrote some on each book during the winter. March 3 he went to New York with his wife, who said, "I never knew my husband so lively, tender, or joyous before, or not in a long time." That night he retired early, feeling weary. The next day, Friday, he slept nearly all day, and, being aroused to go to a prayer-meeting, said he did not feel like getting up. A physician came in the afternoon and in the evening, and asked Mr. Beecher to raise his hand. He could not. The left side showed signs of paralysis. It was apoplexy.
The great man watched the faces of his wife and the doctor, seemed to divine the result, closed his eyes, gave the hand of his wife "a long, strong, loving, and earnest pressure. It was the realization of the inevitable. It was farewell. He never opened his eyes again. His sleep, thereafter, was constant.... From Saturday morning until the end were silence, sleep, heavy but regular breathing, and unconsciousness.... Mrs. Beecher held his hand in hers continually. When the end approached all the household were gathered.... Not one of them shed a tear or gave expression to a sob—then and there. The supreme self-control was in obedience to Mr. Beecher's often expressed hope and wish that around his bed of release no tears should fall, but the feeling should prevail as those who think of a soul gone to its crowning."