He always saw
the ridiculous side of those attacks; never their serious import.
At one time a fellow Brooklyn minister, a staunch Prohibitionist,
publicly reproved Mr. Beecher for being inconsistent in his temperance
views, to the extent that he preached temperance but drank beer at his
own dinner-table. This attack angered the friends of Mr. Beecher, who
tried to persuade him to answer the charge. But the Plymouth pastor
refused. "Friend -- is a good fellow," was the only comment they could
elicit.
"But he ought to be broadened," persisted the friends.
"Well now," said Mr. Beecher, "that isn't always possible. For
instance," he continued, as that inimitable merry twinkle came into his
eyes, "sometime ago Friend -- criticised me for something I had said. I
thought he ought not to have done so, and the next time we met I told
him so. He persisted, and I felt the only way to treat him was as I
would an unruly child. So I just took hold of him, laid him face down
over my knee, and proceeded to impress him as our fathers used to do of
old. And, do you know, I found that the Lord had not made a place on him
for me to lay my hand upon."
And in the laughter which met this sally Mr. Beecher ended with "You
see, it isn't always possible to broaden a man."
Mr. Beecher was rarely angry. Once, however, he came near it; yet he was
more displeased than angry. Some of his family and Edward had gone to a
notable public affair at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where a box had
been placed at Mr.
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