CHAPTER III 



WAR TIME AND GOLD 



On Sunday, the fourteenth of April, 1861, we 

 heard of the fall of Sumter. The spiritual at- 

 mosphere was charged with electricity at a pain- 

 ful tension. All men were friends and all 

 women acquaintances. Strangers clasped hands 

 in the street and poured out news* wild rumors, 

 or denunciations. I was one of a vast throng 

 that crowded the ferry boats to Brooklyn that 

 evening on their way to Plymouth Church. 

 Beecher, inspired,- preached from the text, 

 "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go 

 forward," About the middle of the service a yel- 

 Idw envelope, containing a despatch that was 

 false, w&s sent to the platform. The silence as 

 Bee^her read the telegram was painful* but when 

 he waved it in air and exclaimed with the full 

 power of his magnetic voice, 



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