Part 5

“I went the next day to Memphis. I shall never be President of the United States--I have made up my mind to that; but I had a taste of what it would be to be President, for they gave me twenty-one guns when I went into the town. I thought to myself, ‘Am I on earth? and am I in Memphis, on the Mississippi River, clear down in the southwest corner of the State of Tennessee, and only twelve miles from the State of Mississippi? And are these twenty-one guns for the pastor of Plymouth Church? Well, things have turned around pretty lively!’ I do not know how many people saw that spectacle; I only know that I saw it.

“I was taken about the city by the editor of the Memphis _Appeal_, one of the most stirring of the Southern papers. I could not ask for a more kind reception than I received at his hands. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I arrived, and the lecture was at eight. As there was no lecture-room large enough to hold the people that wanted to gather, Agricultural Hall was taken, and 4,000 seats were put into it, and out from a gallery, looking down upon the people, I delivered my lecture, and I delivered it just as plump and as fair as I ever did anywhere else. I received just as cordial and respectful a hearing as ever I had, and I never desire to speak to a more thoughtful, cultivated, courteous, sympathetic, and respectful audience than I had in Memphis. Yet they knew who I was, and they very well knew what my sentiments had been and were.

“I bless God that the day has come when a true heart, with kind and sympathetic feelings, will give a man entrance into every State of this Union to discuss any question that it is necessary to discuss before the people of the United States.”

It was on January 23, 1877, that I had arranged with W. T. Powell of Richmond, Va., for Mr. Beecher to lecture in that city. Mr. Powell was manager of the Richmond Theatre, and was to pay $400 for the lecture. It was to be on Tuesday evening, and as Mr. Beecher lectured Monday evening in Baltimore, we had arranged to take the sleeper immediately after the Baltimore lecture and be in Richmond early the following morning.

As we went aboard the sleeper at Baltimore a telegram was put into my hands which read as follows:

* * * * *

“Richmond, Va., January 22, 1877.

“To J. B. Pond, Baltimore, Md.

“No use coming. Beecher will not be allowed to speak in Richmond. No tickets sold.

“W. T. POWELL.”

* * * * *

I at once replied: “Have started. Mr. Beecher will be on hand to keep his contract.” I did not mention the incident to Mr. Beecher.

Just before our arrival in Richmond the following morning, Mr. Powell came to me on the train and told me that the feeling against Mr. Beecher was so bitter that it would not do for him to attempt to speak; that not a ticket had been sold, and he dared not advertise.

Mr. Beecher and I went direct to the Exchange Hotel, and as he registered our names I saw at once that there was a general disposition, from the hotel clerk down to the negro porter and the bell-boy, to guy us.

We went down to breakfast, and the waiter and head waiter who seated us were disgustingly uncivil. Mr. Beecher made no remarks. We ate our breakfast, and as we passed out of the dining-room into a long hall we met a pretty little golden-haired child. Mr. Beecher, in his characteristic manner, stopped and began talking to and caressing the child, taking some candy from his pocket (he never was without bait for children), offered it, and was just getting into the little girl’s favor when the mother came along and snatched her away, as though she were rescuing her from a fierce beast of prey.

Mr. Beecher walked quietly to his room. I left instructions at the hotel office that no one was to knock at his door. Mr. Powell called and assured me that it would be all Mr. Beecher’s life was worth to attempt to speak in Richmond. I told him that I would let him off that night from his contract if he would rent me the theatre. He consented, and I at once got out some bills and dodgers and advertised Mr. Beecher to speak that evening. The Legislature was in session, and passed an informal vote that none of them would go near the theatre. The Tobacco Board did the same.

Evening arrived, and I could get no one to attend the door, so I did it myself. Mr. Powell applied for an extra force of a dozen police, which was of no account, as they were wholly in sympathy with the crowd.

The Rev. Dr. Grey, the principal Presbyterian minister, and the head of a leading institution of learning in Richmond, wrote the chief of police that though he distinctly wished it to be understood that he did not indorse or favor Mr. Beecher’s speaking in Richmond, he sincerely hoped that the threat to egg Mr. Beecher would not be carried into effect. As each member of the Legislature and the Tobacco Board knew that none of the other members would attend the lecture, each embraced the opportunity to go; and there, to their surprise, they all met. It was a crowd of men who made the best of the joke they had played upon themselves. They were hilarious and disrespectful.

The time came for me to go after Mr. Beecher. I had no door-tender, but the theatre was full of men, and my pockets were stuffed with dollars, so I left the door to take care of itself. I found him ready. While in the carriage on our way from the hotel to the theatre not a word passed between us, and during the day neither of us had spoken of the situation. When we arrived at the stage door of the theatre the dozen policemen were keeping the crowd back. As we alighted from the carriage at the door, a general yell went up. We met Mr. Powell on the stage. He called me to one side and said:

“Don’t you introduce Mr. Beecher. The gallery is full of eggs. You will have trouble.”

I stepped into the waiting-room. Mr. Beecher said: “Go ahead; I am ready.”

I walked on the stage, and he followed. As we sat down I saw the theatre full of men only. The crowd was disposed to be uncivil; canes began to rake the baluster of the balcony railing, and feet to pound the floor, and in less than a minute a yell fairly shook the theatre. Mr. Beecher signaled me to proceed.

I stood a moment for them to get quiet, and then introduced him to his first Virginian audience.

Mr. Beecher was to speak on “Hard Times,” but had decided to change the subject to the “Ministry of Wealth.” As he arose and stepped toward the footlights, another yell went up. He stood unmoved, and waited for some time; finally a lull came, and he began. He said that there was a natural law that brains and capital controlled the commercial world, and it could not be changed even by the Virginia Legislature, which opened with prayer and closed with the benediction. The Legislature were all there, and the public, like any other public, were ready to accept any good-natured drive at the Legislature.

It was not many minutes before the audience was in full sympathy with the speaker, and for two and a half hours Mr. Beecher addressed that crowd, swaying them with his mighty eloquence and telling them such truths as they never before had listened to. His peroration was a tribute to the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Mother of Presidents, her history and her people, and closed with a brief retrospect: how she had prospered when she set her mark high and bred her sons for Presidents and position, but how changed when she came to breed men for the market; how manfully and nobly her worthy sons had kissed the sod, and how sad had been her lot. But in all her prosperity and adversity God had not forsaken her. Industry brought prosperity, and soon, very soon, Virginia was to be one of the brightest stars in the constellation of States.

Such applause and cheers as he got during that address I have never before or since heard.

He stepped off the stage and into the carriage, and we were in our rooms at the hotel before half the audience could get out of the theatre.

After getting to his room Mr. Beecher threw himself back in a large chair in front of a blazing wood fire and laughingly said:

“Don’t you think we have captured Richmond?”

He had no more than spoken when the door opened and a crowd of men came rushing in. My first impression was that it was a mob, as it did not seem that there had been time for them to come from the theatre; but I was mistaken.

The foremost was a tall man with a slouch hat. (They were all in slouch hats.) He said:

“Mr. Beecher, this is our ‘Leftenant’-Governor. We have come to thank you for that great speech. This is our member for So-and-So, and this is Judge Harris,” and so on, introducing a score or more of prominent Virginians.

“Mr. Beecher, we want you to stay and speak for us to-morrow evening. We want our women to hear you,” etc.

Mr. Beecher was in his most happy humor. He shook the Virginians warmly by the hand. He told them that he was announced for Washington the following evening, and his time was all booked for the season. They offered to raise $500 if he would remain over. The following morning at seven o’clock many Virginians were at the station to see him off. All the morning papers contained extensive synopses of the lecture and favorable notices.

After that first appearance Mr. Beecher spoke twice in Richmond to the choicest audiences that the old capital could turn out. I consider this the greatest lecture I ever knew Mr. Beecher to give.

Mr. Beecher had preached in Davenport, Iowa, Sunday, March 4th, and lectured Monday evening. The crowds had been enormous on both occasions. People had come great distances from all directions.

While on the train from Iowa City, the morning of the 6th, a number of people in the same car were returning home from Davenport. Directly behind Mr. Beecher sat two very charming, refined ladies, dressed in black. I was seated directly opposite them, and noticed that they were amusing themselves by trying to gather up a number of Mr. Beecher’s long, white, silky hairs which had fallen on the velvet collar of his overcoat and about his shoulders. The ladies were proceeding so delicately and accumulating so fine a lock of his hair that it attracted the attention of a number of passengers, who seemed so intently interested in their success as to cause absolute silence all over the car. Mr. Beecher seemed interested in a book and unaware of what was going on about him. All of a sudden he quietly turned his head toward me. I noticed the twinkle in his eye, and at once knew something was coming.

“Pond, are there flies in this car?” he asked, as he quietly raised his hand to his shoulder as if to brush away a fly.

The spectators at once burst into a general laugh. The two ladies were, for a moment, apparently paralyzed. Finally one of them plucked up courage to say:

“Mr. Beecher, we have been all the way to Davenport to hear you preach and lecture. We are Brooklyn people. We saw some loose hairs on your shoulders, and could not resist the temptation to secure them as souvenirs. We hope you will pardon us.”

“Well,” said Mr. Beecher, “my wife never could have been so careful as that.”

Everybody in the car heard the conversation, and there was general merriment.

These ladies lived at Muscatine. They had once been members of Plymouth Church. Mr. Beecher entertained them until we reached the junction, where they left us for their home. He had given them all the late news from Plymouth and Brooklyn.

At Burlington, a week later, they came to the lecture with their husbands and families. They also came to the lecture in Washington, Iowa, and Monmouth, Ill. We never made a Western tour that they did not appear in some of the audiences.

March 26, 1878, we were in Topeka, Kan. While on a three weeks’ tour in the West we were at the Teft House, having arrived by an early train from Kansas City. We ate breakfast, and Mr. Beecher retired to his room, while I entertained old friends in the office, and there were many (as the exciting part of my career had been in this blood-bought State), from Mr. McMeakin, the proprietor, with his beard hanging down to the skirts of his garments, to Tom Anderson, Major Adams, Chester Thomas, George Peck, Gov. Tom Osborne, Benjamin Simpson, Rossington, and others. Mr. McMeakin interrupted the conversation by saying that an old colored man at the desk wanted to see Mr. Beecher, and would not accept the explanation that he would see no one during the morning, as he was resting.

The old darkey wore a long-tailed broadcloth coat and a plug hat about the same age as himself. He was a typical Uncle Ephraim. I left the crowd and spoke to him.

“Mr. Beecher is resting. He can see no one until he is up and rings his bell.”

“That’s right, sir. I know all about that, sir. You just take me to him. You’ll know if he wants to see me. He would be here just now if he knew I was to see him.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“It makes no difference. Just take me to him. I lived with him six years in Indiana. My wife nursed Miss Hattie and little Massa Harry. He knows me well ’nough.”

It came in such sincere, enthusiastic darky earnestness that I fully realized he was exactly the person Mr. Beecher would be glad to see at any hour.

I escorted him to Mr. Beecher’s room, walking quietly in without knocking, as was my custom. He was lying on his bed wide awake.

“Here is an old citizen of Kansas who not only claims that he knows you, but insists that you want to see him.”

Mr. Beecher had no more than set eyes on him than he exclaimed:

“Well, I guess he’s about right. Jim, how are you? Come in and tell me about yourself right away. I haven’t seen you for over thirty years.”

“Thirty-three years, Mr. Beecher,” said the darky “Well, well, why haven’t you reported to me where you were all this time? What has become of Letitia?”

“She’s right here, Mr. Beecher. She’s going to the lecture to-night just to see you.”

“Where are you living? Have you got a family?”

“I live here in Topeka, Letitia and I. We’s got four sons. They all time about here. All got good farms but Henry, our youngest boy. He ain’t no good. Henry was named for you, Mr. Beecher. He’s at the race-track. He trains fine horses for the biggest horseman in Kansas,” and he went on giving his history for thirty-three years. He and his eldest sons had been through the war, and they had been in all the struggles in Kansas, and he knew all about it.

“Letitia is mighty anxious to see you, Mr. Beecher. Yes, she is, sir.”

“Pond, get a carriage, and we’ll ride out to see Letitia. You’ll see what good housekeeping is.”

We all went down to the office together. The same crowd of old friends were still loitering about, waiting for a chance to see and meet Mr. Beecher, to whom I introduced them, and then ordered a hack.

Mr. Beecher told the gentlemen that he was very glad to see an old servant who had once taken great care of him and Mrs. Beecher, when they first lived in Indiana, and he was going out to see his wife, whom Mrs. Beecher had partly brought up and trained in housekeeping. They told Mr. Beecher that Jim was very well known and respected, and the richest colored man in Kansas.

A few moments later Mr. Beecher and this colored man and I were riding through the streets of the capital of Kansas in an open carriage. There could be no more appropriate background for that picture than the Capitol of Kansas. We soon drove up to a very fine-looking large frame house in the quarter of negro aristocracy. There were flowers in the yard and climbers over windows and doors. As we were dismounting, Mr. Beecher said:

“I see Letitia has not forgotten her love for flowers.”

Just then a very large and motherly colored woman came to the door to welcome him. I don’t believe that in all our travel we ever enjoyed a visit more than that. They lived over their early life in Indiana, and Mr. Beecher recollected just the incidents and circumstances they were in touch with--the building of the house, the making of the gardens, the flowers, the different horses, cows, and the long rides they had together in his missionary work, prying their old mud wagon out of the mire and pulling the horses out of swamps. Each and all had shared these hardships alike, and were now enjoying alike the reminiscences.

After an hour we drove back to the hotel, Mr. Beecher sounding the praise of his old servants until we arrived. Dinner was ready, and no small portion of the town waiting to set eyes on my star.

About 6 that evening Jim came in with a large pitcher of hot coffee, something that was hard to get in that country.

“Mr. Beecher, Letitia was afeared you would have no good coffee here, and she knowed how much you needed it, as you speak to-night. She never forgot the coffee, you know.”

“Oh, Jim, tell Letitia that she knows just how to have a good lecture to-night.”

It was a good lecture.

Mr. Beecher’s visit to his old servants before he had seen any callers was much and favorably commented upon, and greatly enhanced the popularity of the already best-known colored citizen in the town.

Mr. Beecher never ate before speaking. Not even at home on Sunday did he take breakfast. He was a great coffee drinker, and always required one or two cups of good coffee instead of his meal before a lecture or sermon. He gave me to understand before we started out together that if we were to have good lectures we must have good coffee. So I found it very often necessary to impress upon the host at our hotel that Mr. Beecher’s success depended upon the hotel-keeper as much as on the lecturer. It was very seldom we failed to have good coffee, except when in some frontier city in the far West and through the South.

On August 18, 1883, Mr. Beecher lectured in Butte City, Mont. We arrived by an early train, went directly to the hotel, and Mr. Beecher retired to his room to lie down. We had left Mrs. Beecher for a day’s rest at Deer Lodge, about forty miles from Butte, a sort of mountain watering-place, to join her on the following day on our way to Portland, Ore.

While Mr. Beecher was sleeping in the forenoon the proprietor of the hotel told me there was a lady in the parlor who wished to see him. Answering the summons, I found a young woman with a child in her arms. I asked her what she wanted with Mr. Beecher. She replied that she and her husband were members of Plymouth Church; that she wanted him to baptize her baby. I knew very well that under these circumstances Mr. Beecher would be glad to be disturbed, so I called him, and he came to the parlor, shook hands with the woman, patted the baby on the cheek, and asked:

“What are you members of Plymouth Church doing here?”

“My husband is working in the mines.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About two years, sir.”

“Where is your husband? “ asked Mr. Beecher.

“He hasn’t any coat, and doesn’t care to come in. He’s down at the door.”

Mr. Beecher turned to me and said: “Pond, bring that man up here.”

I found the hardy young miner and brought him up to the parlor. He was in his shirt-sleeves. He shook hands, saying: “Ah, Mr. Beecher, don’t you remember me? I am a member of Plymouth Church. I was very unfortunate in Brooklyn. I am a better man now, thanks to you, sir.”

It appeared that this young man had been unfortunate in Brooklyn. Through Mr. Beecher’s influence, and his wife’s, he had resolved to try his fortune in the far West.

Mr. Beecher was deeply affected at their earnest desire to have him baptize their only child, and I knew the baby’s baptism would be very impressive. As I stepped downstairs for a pitcher of water I met an editor of one of the papers, whom I had formerly known. I told him to come upstairs, that Mr. Beecher was about to baptize the child of one of his parishioners. It was indeed one of the most beautiful ceremonies I ever witnessed. I know we all cried.

He questioned them considerably concerning their circumstances, and asked me to see that they had tickets for the lecture that night.

The man had to hurry back to his work in the mine. Mr. Beecher asked the mother to accompany him with her baby to a clothing store across the street, where he purchased a suit of clothes for her husband, giving instructions for them to be sent to his house at once. He then allowed the mother to take her baby home, not without a recommendation to be sure she brought her husband to the lecture that night. The woman replied that she had no one with whom to leave the baby.

“Bring the baby,” said Mr. Beecher. “If there is no one else to take care of it, I will, or I will have Pond tend it.”

She was very much overcome with all this unexpected kindness. Her eyes were almost bursting with tears of gratitude as she walked away from the store.

After her departure we went to a dry goods store, where Mr. Beecher told the proprietor that he wanted several things. First, everything complete for a child of ten months, such as dresses, flannels, and such pretty things as a child wears, even to the little shoes and stockings, cloak, and bonnet. Then he told him that he wanted some goods for a dress for a woman who was in poor circumstances, but very worthy--something that she could wear and look becoming. He bought two or three calico dresses besides, and such other articles as he thought a poor family would most need, and ordered them all sent to the house. I paid the bills, and have them, receipted, now. They were altogether $83.

That evening Mr. Beecher lectured to an immense audience, all the seats having been sold in advance. We succeeded in placing two chairs at one side near the platform, which this little Plymouth family occupied. They were very attentive, and enjoyed the lecture immensely. The baby was quiet and playful during the early part of the evening, then fell quietly asleep in its mother’s arms. No one was in the least disturbed. I believe the orator got his inspiration for that occasion from this little party.

At the close of the lecture there was the usual rush to congratulate and shake hands with Mr. Beecher, including the Mayor, who presided, and the best people of Butte. I think he hardly noticed them, but made a break through the crowd and went directly to his former parishioners and congratulated them on the good behavior of the baby, told them many things of Plymouth Church and Brooklyn, enjoying it much more than all the congratulations the people had to offer afterward.

As Mr. Beecher and I returned to the hotel that evening, I said: “Mr. Beecher, it seems to me there are few men who would devote themselves for a day to a kindness like that.”

He replied: “Next to my own children are the members of my church.”

Mr. Beecher spoke in Bloomington, Ill., being introduced by an old gentleman, a former friend of Abraham Lincoln. He was a very old man, and I could see that he was very much respected. As he approached the audience to make the introductory speech, he hesitated for a word, and after a moment felt in his pockets for his manuscript, and discovered that he had forgotten them. Poor old gentleman! He was dreadfully embarrassed, and so was the audience for him. Mr. Beecher helped him out, and explained to the audience that it was a common mistake among speakers, of which he himself had often been guilty.