m in good stead when he was again
publicly attacked not long afterward.

This occurred in connection with a notable anniversary celebration in
honor of Henry Ward Beecher, in which the entire city of Brooklyn was to
participate. It was to mark a mile-stone in Mr. Beecher's ministry and
in his pastorate of Plymouth Church. Bok planned a worldwide tribute to
the famed clergyman: he would get the most distinguished men and women
of this and other countries to express their esteem for the Plymouth
pastor in written congratulations, and he would bind these into a volume
for presentation to Mr. Beecher on the occasion. He consulted members of
the Beecher family, and, with their acquiescence, began to assemble the
material. He was in the midst of the work when Henry Ward Beecher passed
away. Bok felt that the tributes already received were too wonderful to
be lost to the world, and, after again consulting Mrs. Beecher and her
children, he determined to finish the collection and publish it as a
memorial for private distribution. After a prodigious correspondence,
the work was at last completed; and in June, 1887, the volume was
published, in a limited edition of five hundred copies. Bok distributed
copies of the volume to the members of Mr. Beecher's family, he had
orders from Mr. Beecher's friends, one hundred copies were offered to
the American public and one hundred copies were issued in an English
edition.

With such a figure to whom to do honor, the contributors, of course,
included the foremost men and women of the time. Grover Cleveland was
then President of the United States, and his tribute was a notable one.
Mr. Gladstone, the Duke of Argyll, Pasteur, Canon Farrar, Bartholdi,
Salvini, and a score of others represented English and European opinion.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, T. De Witt Talmage,
Robert G. Ingersoll, Charles Dudley Warner, General Sherman, Julia Ward
Howe, Andrew Carnegie, Edwin Booth, Rutherford B. Hayes--there was
scarcely a leader of thought and of action of that day unrepresented.
The edition was, of course, quickly exhausted; and when to-day a copy
occasionally appears at an auction sale, it is sold at a high price.

The newspapers gave very large space to the distinguished memorial, and
this fact angered a journalist, Joseph Howard, Junior, a man at one time
close to Mr. Beecher, who had befriended him. Howard had planned to be
the first in the field with a hastily prepared b