Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1877-07-20

While Henry Ward Beecher Is entertain
ing New York reporters with contradict
lions of the story that he and Tilton con-
template a restoration 10 their Old-time
friendship and his personal belief in the
other story that Tilton aud Moulton have
had falling out, half. brother, named
James Beecher, and a whole brother TO
Thomas X, is discovered in the character of
a solitary, in the depths of the primitive
forest in Ulster county, owning a tract Of
wild land a mile square, with seventy-ive
acres Of clear trout lake into which his
house looks from its windows. This James
Beecher is a clergyman, about forty-five
years of age, and gave up church at
Poughkeepsie with $2j00 salary in order
to enjoy this deep solitude uudisturbed.
He constructed his house himself, telling
the trees for portion of it. 1t is a story
and half affair, with kitchen, parlor, sit
ting room and bedrooms on the ground
floor. Here he lives the year round with
his wife and an adopted daughter some six
years old. 1t was from no misanthropic
feeling that be chose this way OF life, for his
nature is healthy TO robustness, but from
profound and passionate love of nature and
an overpowerng weariness Of contact with
artificial life. He used to spend his vaca-
lions on the great highways leading 10 the
notable scenery of our continent; but they
cost him at least $3.50 apiece, and one year
he actually discovered that he could do bet
ter and enjoy much more in his present
place for $3.50. This and the superb seen
cry decided him. The latter he says lie
never saw surpassed. The solitude is COM
plete. 1t is not a negative, but a positive
and palpable sensation.
When asked how the people round about
managed to live on their clearings, he an
swered that be could not tell but he was
satisfied that fully three-lourths of our
wants are purely artificial. Parties of cler-
gymen are building club-houses for their
summer recreation within four or five
miles of him, and he has himself managed
TO accommodate as many as thirty visitors
at his house at a time. This is not solitude,
however. His neighbors for ten miles
around turned out and helped him cut a
road for the mail, which Mis-. Beecher goes
after once a week with the pony. Together
they catch trout enough in the lake after
sonset any yevening TO last them through the
next udJ. hISs DetCueI ltdCucS a SChOOi,
receiving for it 500 Of the public money and
spending S75 10 clOthe the children and pro-
vide them with books. The first winter he
spent in the place he was entirely by him
| self, aud he describes The solitude as sub-
| lime. The silence could be absolutely
| felt. Once in a while he makes a visit 10
the outside world aud breaches in the cities,
but he says he has no longing for them.
He breaches at two regular stations in
school houses, and makes il a point never
TO miss his day though lie once mistook
N nday for Sunday from not having
"craiked his calendar" and discovered
that he had done a hard days work on the
Sabbath. For this be performed suitable
penance. In this profound solitude he ex-
pects TO spend the reminder of his days.
His longings for The picturesque and grand
in Nature are here satisfied. The whole
thing simply expresses the deep desire of
the human heart for the single element
which civilization, so-called, steadily tends
TO eradicate. There is an unexpressed and
unsurpassed love OF the natural, The wild,
the simple, and the rude, that demands
qualification at some time before we pass
| away. The tendency is irresistible TO re-
turn with more or less intimacy TO Nature.
Boston Post.