This town was first settled in 1720 in a pleasant high country among hills, lakes, and valleys. Evidently intelligent men founded also this settlement, because they were stirring patriots during the war of the revolution, and were visited by Washington, Lafayette, Rochambeau, and many of the principal officers of the army. One of the chief heroes of that time lived to be a parishioner of Dr. Beecher. Also during his life in Litchfield and helping to make the town famous, were, among others, Governor Oliver Wolcott, Jr., a member of Washington's cabinet, John Pierpont the poet, and Judge Reeve. These men became intimate friends of Dr. Beecher; especially Judge Reeve, who had founded in Litchfield a celebrated law school, to which young men were sent from nearly every State in the union. The Reverend Mr. Huntington, who preceded Dr. Beecher, wrote of Litchfield: "It is a delightful village on a fruitful hill, richly endowed with schools, both professional and scientific, with its remarkable governors and judges, with its learned lawyers and senators, and representatives both in the National and State departments, and with a population enlightened and respectable. Litchfield

was now in its glory."

The meeting-house, of course, made a great impression upon the child Harriet. She described it later in life in her first book, called "The Mayflower: " "To my childish eyes our old meeting-house was an awe-inspiring thing. To me it seemed fashioned very nearly on the model of Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple, as set forth in the pictures in my Scripture Catechism. . . . Its double row of windows, of which I knew the number by heart, its doors, with great wooden quirls over them; its belfry, projecting out at the east end; its steeple and bell, all inspired as much sense of the sublime in me as Strasbourg Cathedral itself. . . . But the glory in the execution of those good old billowy compositions called fuguing tunes, where the four

DEATH OF MRS. BEECHER

9

parts that compose the choir take up the song, and go racing around one after another, each singing a different set of words, till at length, by some inexplicable magic, they all come together again, and sail smoothly out into a rolling sea of harmony! I remember the wonder with which I used to look from side to side when treble, tenor, counter, and bass, were thus roaring and foaming, and it verily seemed to me as if the psalm were going to pieces among the breakers, and the delighted astonishment with. which I found that each particular verse did emerge whole and uninjured from the storm."

Harriet Beecher was hardly four years old when her mother died, leaving eight little children weeping round her bed. Of these children two possessed what the world calls genius. They were all more or less distinguished, Catherine, the eldest, being a woman of remarkable character. Harriet and Henry Ward were next to the youngest, always inseparable companions, always inspired with the tenderest love and faith in each other to the end of life.

Mrs. Stowe says of her mother and of her touching departure from this world: "I was between three and four years of age when our mother died, and my own personal recollections of her are therefore but few. But the deep interest and veneration that she inspired in all who knew her was such that, during all my childhood, I was constantly hearing her spoken of, and, from one friend or another, some incident or anecdote of her life was constantly being impressed on me.

"Mother was one of those strong, restful, yet widely sympathetic natures, in whom all around seemed to find comfort and repose. She was of a temperament peculiarly restful and peace-giving. Her union of spirit with God, unruffled and unbroken even from early childhood, seemed to impart to her an equilibrium and healthful placidity that no earthly reverses ever disturbed. The communion

It was

between her and my father was a peculiar one. an intimacy throughout the whole range of their being. There was no human mind in whose decisions he had greater confidence. Both intellectually and morally he regarded her as the better and stronger portion of himself, and I remember hearing him say that, after her death, his first sensation was a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly shut out alone in the dark.

"Her death occurred at a time when the New England ministry were in a peculiar crisis of political and moral trial, and the need of such a stay and support in his household was more than ever felt. . . . I asked him the question whether he ever had any reason to believe that the spirits of the blessed are ever permitted to minister to us in our earthly sorrows, and he said, after a moment of deep thought, 'I never but once had anything like it. It was a time of great trial and obloquy, and I had been visiting around in my parish, and heard many things here and there that distressed me. I came home to my house almost overwhelmed; it seemed as if I must sink under it. I went to sleep in the north bedroom, the room where your mother died. I dreamed that I heard voices and footsteps in the next room, and that I knew immediately it was Roxana and Mary Hubbard coming to see me. door opened, and Mary stayed without, but your mother came in and came toward me. She did not speak, but she smiled on me a smile of heaven, and with that smile all my sorrow passed away. I awoke joyful, and I was light-hearted for weeks after.'

The

"In my own early childhood only two incidents of my mother twinkle like rays through the darkness. One was

of our all running and dancing out before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning, and her pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.'

"Another remembrance is this: Mother was an enthusiastic horticulturalist in all the small ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John, in New York, had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs. I remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one day when she was gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that they were good to eat, and using all the little English I then possessed to persuade my brothers that these were onions such as grown people ate, and would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the whole; and I recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd, sweetish taste, and thinking that onions were not as nice as I had supposed. Then mother's serene face appeared at the nursery door, and we all ran toward her, and with one voice began to tell our discovery and achievement. We had found this bag of onions and had eaten them all up.

"Also I remember that there was not even a momentary expression of impatience, but that she sat down and said: 'My dear children, what you have done makes mamma very sorry; those were not onion-roots, but roots of beautiful flowers; and if you had let them alone, ma would have had next summer in the garden great beautiful red and yellow flowers such as you never saw.' I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew at this picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag.

"Then I have a recollection of her reading to the children one evening aloud Miss Edgeworth's Frank,' which ad just come out, I believe, and was exciting a good deal. f attention among the educational circles of Litchfield. After that, I remember a time when every one said she was sick; when, if I went into the street, every one asked ne how my mother was; when I saw the shelves of the closets crowded with delicacies which had been sent in for her, and how I used to be permitted to go once a day into

her room, where she sat bolstered up in bed, taking her gruel. I have a vision of a very fair face, with a bright red spot on each cheek, and a quiet smile as she offered me a spoonful of her gruel; of our dreaming one night, we little ones, that mamma had got well, and waking in loud transports of joy, and being hushed down by some one coming into the room. Our dream was indeed a true one. She was forever well; but they told us she was dead, and took us in to see what seemed so cold, and so unlike anything we had ever seen or known of her.

66 Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I remember his golden curls and little black frock, as he frolicked like a kitten in the sun in ignorant joy.

"I remember the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the walking to the burial ground, and somebody's speaking at the grave, and the audible sobbing of the family; and then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused, asked the question where she was gone, and would she never come back?

"They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, at another that she had gone to heaven; whereupon Henry, putting the two things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven to find her; for, being discovered under sister Catherine's window one morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to know what he was doing, and, lifting his curly head with great simplicity, he answered, 'Why, I'm going to heaven to find ma.'

"Although mother's bodily presence disappeared from our circle, I think that her memory and example had more influence in moulding her family, in deterring from evil, and exciting to good, than the living presence of many, mothers. It was a memory that met us everywhere, for every person in the town, from the highest to the lowest, seemed to have been so impressed by her character and life