ethods of financiering
seemed to him quite in line with current notions of the Plymouth
pastor's lack of business knowledge. But as the years rolled on the
incident appeared in a new light--a striking example of the great
preacher's wonderful considerateness.

Edward had offered to help Mr. Beecher with his correspondence; at the
close of one afternoon, while he was with the Plymouth pastor at work,
an organ-grinder and a little girl came under the study window. A
cold, driving rain was pelting down. In a moment Mr. Beecher noticed
the girl's bare toes sticking out of her worn shoes.

He got up, went into the hall, and called for one of his granddaughters.

"Got any good, strong rain boots?" he asked when she appeared.

"Why, yes, grandfather. Why?" was the answer.

"More than one pair?" Mr. Beecher asked.

"Yes, two or three, I think."

"Bring me your strongest pair, will you, dear?" he asked. And as the
girl looked at him with surprise he said: "Just one of my notions."

"Now, just bring that child into the house and put them on her feet for
me, will you?" he said when the shoes came. "I'll be able to work so
much better."

One rainy day, as Edward was coming up from Fulton Ferry with Mr.
Beecher, they met an old woman soaked with the rain. "Here, you take
this, my good woman," said the clergyman, putting his umbrella over her
head and thrusting the handle into the astonished woman's hand. "Let's
get into this," he said to Edward simply, as he hailed a passing car.

"There is a 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
d