The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-09-05

soon be published. They read like an
entertaining story book.
Isabella Beecher was born on Wash
ington's birthday, 1922, in Litchfield,
Conn. She was nine years younger
than her brother Henry Ward. When
she was four years old the family went
to Boston and lived there till she was
eleven. Then, bag and baggage. they
migrated to Cincinnati. That town
was considered a promising field for
missionary work, and to carry the Cos
pei to its people Lyman Beecher was
sent there.
The family went from Boston to
Philadelphia first, then from Phila-
delphia to Wheeling, w. Va. 1t seems
scarcely conceivable to US that there
ever was a time when no railroad exist
ed from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, yet
so late as 1888 the only route from the
Penn city westward was still by stage.
In four horse stage the Beechers rode
! from Philadelphia to Wheeling and
| were more than a week making the
| trip They sang all the way, for, says
Mrs. Hooker, every member of our
| family, so far as 1 can remember, began
singing soon. after BIRTH
| For these valuable "reminiscences
how Catharine and Harriet Beecher
opened a school for girls in Cincinnati;
y
Beecher kept loaded gun behind his
study door to kill wild pigeons; how he
preached and taught and shot and daily
drove a white horse to Cincinnati, three
miles away, and did the family market
| ing-for these there is no room here
and it is thousand pities
When Isabella was thirteen her
mother died and at sixteen she herself
was sent back to New England, to Hart
,, Ill
| Mrs. Thomas c. Perkins. She writes:
But I date my interest in public af-
fairs from those few years between
| eleven and sixteen when our family
circle was ever in discussion on the
vital problems of human existence,
and United States constitution, fugitive
| slave law and Missouri compromise al
ternated with free will. regeneration,
heaven. hell and the destiny of man
! as John Fiske would have it."
What must it not have been to be
one of the Beecher family in those
days.
In Hartford Isabella, a beautiful girl,
with all the Beecher brain and mag
netism, met John Hooker, a young law
lstudent, and became engaged to him be-
fore she was seventeen 1t was her
first love and his. also their last and
only love. When Isabella was nineteen
tney were married, ana from that day
till John Hooker passed from earth. in
1901. nearly sixty years later they were
an ideal welded pair. living the life of
perfect accord and sympathy. When
Mrs. Hooker became interested in the
emancipation of her own sex and threw
all the Beecher yerve into the woman
movement Mr.. Hooker stood at her
side and helped her throughout. investi-
Igating knotty law points and suggest
ing constitutional arguments, writing.
speaking and giving aid and comfort
to those idealists who worked and still
work that woman may be a free. re-
sponsible citizen.
The young wife became interested in
the woman movement in an odd way.
Her husband was q young attorney,
waiting for clients and meantime
studying more law. While he waited
he asked her to come to his Office and
make the time less long. She went,
taking her sewing or knitting. While
she worked he read law aloud to her
He came at last to the chapter in
Blackstone on husband and wife, show