good deal of fraud about beggars," he remarked as he waved a
sot away from him one day; "but that doesn't apply to women and
children," he added; and he never passed such mendicants without
stopping. All the stories about their being tools in the hands of
accomplices failed to convince him. "They're women and children," he
would say, and that settled it for him.

"What's the matter, son? Stuck?" he said once to a newsboy who was
crying with a heavy bundle of papers under his arm.

"Come along with me, then," said Mr. Beecher, taking the boy's hand and
leading him into the newspaper office a few doors up the street.

"This boy is stuck," he simply said to the man behind the counter.
"Guess The Eagle can stand it better than this boy; don't you think so?"

To the grown man Mr. Beecher rarely gave charity. He believed in a
return for his alms.

"Why don't you go to work?" he asked of a man who approached him one day
in the street.

"Can't find any," said the man.

"Looked hard for it?" was the next question.

"I have," and the man looked Mr. Beecher in the eye.

"Want some?" asked Mr. Beecher.

"I do," said the man.

"Come with me," said the preacher. And then to Edward, as they walked
along with the man following behind, he added: "That man is honest."

"Let this man sweep out the church," he said to the sexton when they had
reached Plymouth Church.

"But, Mr. Beecher," replied the sexton with wounded pride, "it doesn't
need it."

"Don't tell him so, though," said Mr. Beecher with a merry twinkle of
the eye; and the sexton understood.

Mr. Beecher was constantly thoughtful of a struggling young man's
welfare, even at the expense of his own material comfort. Anxious to
save him from the labor of writing out the newspaper articles, Edward,
himself employed during the daylight hours which Mr. Beecher preferred
for his original work, suggested a stenographer. The idea appealed to
Mr. Beecher, for he was very busy just then. He hesitated, but as Edward
persisted, he said: "All right; let him come to-morrow."

The next day he said: "I asked that stenographer friend of yours not to
come again. No use of my trying to dictate. I am too old to learn new
tricks. Much easier for me to write myself."

Shortly after that, however, Mr. Beecher dictated to Edward some
material for a book he was writing. Edward naturally wondered at this,
and asked the stenographer what had happened.

"Nothing," he said. "Only Mr. B