The Portland daily press., 1874-08-18
Our New York Letter.
actuat extent of his fault frank.y stated
Case OF Conspiracy and Bfacl-snail.

New YORK, Aug. II, 1874.
There was an infinite sense of relief, among
the friends of Mr.. Beecher, when his statement
appeared. Owing to the delay of its produc-
ton, which seemed to their impatience well
nigh interminable, their anxiety had been
wrought up to its utmost tension. There seems
to have been a preconceived purpose on the
part of the assailants to make the halloo last
as long as possible. First, Tilton must needs
shut himself up for several days, to ornament
his diffusive narrative with rhetorical gewgaws.
No sooner had he delivered himself of his gar
nished diatribe, than Moulton complexities the
situation by disappearing and concealing him.
self where he cannot be found for a week.
When he finally reappears, several days more
are consumed by his consultations with counsel,
and his preparations to sustain his role of mys-
terry and inscrutability. And thus, through all
these inexcusable hndrances caused exclusive
ly by the attacking party, a deeply excited
community has been kept in torturlng suspense
for seven weary weeks-the moral atmosphere
tainted, meanwhile, with prurient details serv-
ing rather to minister to unwholesome curiosi-
ty, than to contribute to plain calculation of
exposed to injurious comments and censorious
structures.
Now that the long sad chronicle has been
completed, review Of it may be ventured up
on without offense to good taste.
The trouble has grown out of the maud
lin fancies Of lovesick woman crazed and be-
deviled by weak sentimentalism, which per-
vaded her whole nature, hopelessly destroyed
her common sense, if she ever had any, and inn
paired her sanity. She stands revealed in a
striking light through the extraordinary letters
which her husband, with q strange heedlessness
of proprety has scattered broadcast over the
land. There is an excess of emotional gush in
these extravagant illusions which shows clear
ly enough that the writer lived in an ideal
world, aud was the perpetual prey Of morbid
vagaries. They are an odd tumble of adula-
ton, idolatry, and overstraned praise inter-
woven with quotations and illustrations which
are only saved from being blasphemous by their
ludicrous absurdity. Taken in connection with
her subsequent narrative of the sufferngs she
habitually endured from his tyranny, caprice,
conceit, depreciation, neglect and ill treatment
one cannot avoid the conclusion that the poor
hemence of protestation, what she lack of sim
certy of heart.
1t was from this distempered source that the
original accusation sprang. She told her hus-
band one day, in an outburst of confidence
with view 20 placate him-that she had loved
Mr. Beecher better than she loved him; that
she had not supposed that there was any
thing wrong in this, but that some inward
monitor, or celestial visitation had, at length,
opened her eyes to the fact that it was on the
whole sinful thing to do, and that accordingly
she had made up her mind to return to her al
legiance. The precise terms of this unparal-
leled confession are not known. 1t was said
to have been committed to paper, but it is also
stated that the paper has been destroyed. This
happened in July 1870. In the last days of the
ensuing December Tilton for the first time
communicated to Beecher the information that
SUCH confession had been made, at the resi-
dence, but not in the presence, of Moulton It
was at this initial point of the case, that Mr..
Beecher made the mistake which has been pro-
ductive of so much subsequent unhappiness,
But the circumstances by which he was sur
rounded, are lucidly described in his own
words: "From the anger and fury of Mr.. Til
ton, 1 apprehended that this charge made
by him, and, supported By the accusation of his
wife, was to be at once publicly pressed against
me, and if it was, had nothing but my simple
word of denial to interpose against it," 1t is
all very well to say that Mr.. Beecher ought to
have met the fabrication then aud there, and
that it was an objectionable act of cowardice,
to yield to menace, and temporize with his en-
emy Undoubtedly that course should have
been unfalteringly pursued. But men rarely
act wisely in critical emergencies, and there is
nothing on earth about which clergyman is so