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Show THE BEECHER MEMORIAL. i The speech made by Mr. Cleveland on Sunday I night last on Mr. Beecher was altogether the most ' human speech ever heard from that source. It showed real feeling. True, the orator did not mention why his gratitude was especially awakened, awak-ened, for it is true that without Mr. Beecher's influence in-fluence the plurality in New York state against Mr. Cleveland would have been too large to have been stolen and cast for Mr. Cleveland, but never mind that, he made a touching and manly speech. Thousands of men of all creeds and no creeds will I approve of what he said, for it would be but jus tice for the government from the national treasury treas-ury to supply all the funds needed for the creation in glorified form K a memorial to the memory of Henry Ward Beecher. The services he rendered the Republic when J the great war was in its very crisis can never be ' paid in money. He went to England when most of the men in power and most of the "men of capital in that country were striving to turn the whole power of the empire to armed intervention in favor of the Confederacy. Mr. Beecher raised his voice to arrest that movement. He spoke every day and night, often amid sneers and insults, in-sults, but he never wavered. His courage was supreme, his eloquence carried a new enchantment enchant-ment on its fire-tipped wings; his voice rang out shrill and clear for justice. It was like the sea-eagle's sea-eagle's defiant scream above the storm when the m, ocean heaps its rollers against the cliff which is y the eagle's home and where his young eaglets ! watch from the eyrie when the hurricane and the waves blend their wrathful uproar; and the cool I but electrified American won against British i wrath and avarice and brutality. He went to England as the Monitor went to ' Hampton Roads, just as invulnerable against at tack, and with the same effect when he took the offensive and pictured free England as eager to wage war for the upholding of human slavery, and I with no motive higher than the sordid hope of gain. What Mr. Beecher did at home in the cause of humanity many people know, but not many have ever appreciated his work In England for freedom and for native land. No trumpets i cheered him on; no flags lighted the way, but he made arrogant and uncivil crowds of England's m'- higher castes listen, and when he had them at I last subdued to silence with persuasion, with argument, argu-ment, with invective, when necessary, and with appeals to them not to cast diohenor upon their own forefathers; those who first made England free and those who later abolished human slavery everywhere under the British flag, he cowed them into silence and kindled in them a thrill of admiration ad-miration for the masterful man before them and won the cause he was championing. His was the irresistable power of one inspired soul over the multitude which has been seen once perhaps in five hundred years since the dawn of civilization. Too fine and costly a memorial to a memory like his can never be created by a grateful people. |