“Yes,” said Henry, “I want to go to sea.  I want to enter the navy, be a midshipman, and rise to be a commander.”

“Oh, I see,” said the Doctor, cheerfully; “but in order to prepare for that you must study mathematics and navigation.”

“I am ready, sir.”

“Very well.  I’ll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant, and then you’ll begin your preparatory studies at once.  As soon as you are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an appointment.”

The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst.  The Doctor felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, “I shall have that boy in the ministry yet.”

At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung up between them.  Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this discovery, he redoubled his efforts.  Appealing to his pupil’s pride and ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in him a fair knowledge of the science.  Young Beecher also took lessons in elocution from Professor John E. Lovell.  Under the instructions of this able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had troubled him so much.  He continued at this school for three years, devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.

During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should attain the proper age.  Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in the esteem of his teachers and friends.  He entered Amherst College upon the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that institution in 1834.

In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected.  Henry followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry’s sister Harriet, in 1836.  Having finished his course, he was ordained.

“As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume the work of the ministry,” says Mrs. Stowe, “he was oppressed by a deep melancholy.  He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian minister.  He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval profession.  He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others; that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy work in it, was a treason to all honor.