The third check was treated the same way.  When they handed him the fourth, one morning, as he was pinning it up over the others, he asked:  “When do you get your money from the newspapers?”

He was told that the bills were going out that morning for the four letters constituting a month’s service.

“I see,” he remarked.

A fortnight passed, then one day Mr. Beecher asked:  “Well, how are the checks coming in?”

“Very well,” he was assured.

“Suppose you let me see how much you’ve got in,” he suggested, and the boys brought the accounts to him.

After looking at them he said:  “That’s very interesting.  How much have you in the bank?”

He was told the balance, less the checks given to him.  “But I haven’t turned them in yet,” he explained.  “Anyhow, you have enough in bank to meet the checks you have given me, and a profit besides, haven’t you?”

He was assured they had.

Then, taking his bank-book from a drawer; he unpinned the six checks on his desk, indorsed each, wrote a deposit slip, and, handing the book to Edward, said: 

“Just hand that in at the bank as you go by, will you?”

Edward was very young then, and Mr. Beecher’s methods of financiering seemed to him quite in line with current notions of the Plymouth pastor’s lack of business knowledge.  But as the years rolled on the incident appeared in a new light—­a striking example of the great preacher’s wonderful considerateness.

Edward had offered to help Mr. Beecher with his correspondence; at the close of one afternoon, while he was with the Plymouth pastor at work, an organ-grinder and a little girl came under the study window.  A cold, driving rain was pelting down.  In a moment Mr. Beecher noticed the girl’s bare toes sticking out of her worn shoes.

He got up, went into the hall, and called for one of his granddaughters.

“Got any good, strong rain boots?” he asked when she appeared.

“Why, yes, grandfather.  Why?” was the answer.

“More than one pair?” Mr. Beecher asked.

“Yes, two or three, I think.”

“Bring me your strongest pair, will you, dear?” he asked.  And as the girl looked at him with surprise he said:  “Just one of my notions.”

“Now, just bring that child into the house and put them on her feet for me, will you?” he said when the shoes came.  “I’ll be able to work so much better.”

One rainy day, as Edward was coming up from Fulton Ferry with Mr. Beecher, they met an old woman soaked with the rain.  “Here, you take this, my good woman,” said the clergyman, putting his umbrella over her head and thrusting the handle into the astonished woman’s hand.  “Let’s get into this,” he said to Edward simply, as he hailed a passing car.

“There is a good deal of fraud about beggars,” he remarked as he waved a sot away from him one day; “but that doesn’t apply to women and children,” he added; and he never passed such mendicants without stopping.  All the stories about their being tools in the hands of accomplices failed to convince him.  “They’re women and children,” he would say, and that settled it for him.