Abraham Lincoln said to me, "The most marvelous thing about Mr.Beecher is his inexhaustible fertility." During the Civil War he was at the acme of his power.

He was then the peerless orator of Christendom.

It was his intention (as he once told me) to resign his pastorate at the age of sixty and to devote the remainder of his life to a ministry at large.

But the tempest of troubles which struck him about that time forbade his cherished design, and he continued at his post until the touch of death silenced the magic tongue.

Nearly thirty years have elapsed since I sat by him on the crowning evening of his career, at his "silver anniversary," in 1873.