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.
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