IN THE NEW ENGLAND ATMOSPHERE 1851-1853 537 



morning service, he discussed the best shrubs for planting 

 throughout our groves and woods, and the best grasses to 

 use in getting a good turf upon the university grounds. 

 But, on leaving the house, he became silent and walked 

 slowly, his eyes fixed steadily on the ground ; and as I took 

 it for granted that he was collecting his thoughts for his 

 sermon, I was careful not to disturb him. As we reached 

 the chapel porch, a vast crowd in waiting and the organ 

 pealing, he suddenly stopped, turned round, lifted his eyes 

 from the ground, and said, &quot;I have been studying your 

 lawn all the way down here; what you need is to sow 

 Kentucky blue-grass.&quot; Then he entered the chapel, and 

 shortly was in the midst of a sermon evidently suggested 

 by the occasion, his whole manuscript being a few pencil- 

 ings on a sheet or two of note-paper, all the rest being ex 

 temporized in his best vein, both as to matter and manner. 



Chapin, too, was brilliant and gifted, but yery dif 

 ferent in every respect from Beecher. His way was to 

 read from manuscript, and then, from time to time, to rise 

 out of it and soar above it, speaking always forcibly and 

 often eloquently. His gift of presenting figures of speech 

 so that they became vivid realities to his audience was be 

 yond that of any other preacher I ever heard. Giving 

 once a temperance address, and answering the argument 

 as to the loss of property involved in the confiscation of 

 intoxicants, he suddenly pictured a balance let down from 

 the hand of the Almighty, in one scale all the lucre lost, in 

 the other all the crimes, the wrecks, the miseries, the sor 

 rows, the griefs, the widows groans and orphans tears, 

 until we absolutely seemed to have the whole vast, terrific 

 mass swaying in mid-air before us. 



On another occasion, preaching from the text, &quot;Now we 

 see through a glass darkly, but then face to face,&quot; he 

 presented the picture of a man in his last illness, seeing 

 dimly, through a half-transparent medium, the faint, dim 

 outline of the Divinity whom he was so rapidly nearing ; 

 and then, suddenly, death, the shattering of the glass, 

 and the man, on the instant, standing before his Maker 



