We saw Bishop Huntington several times that winter, once I be-
lieve he came to lecture. He was Chaplain and Professor of Moral Philosophy
at Harvard, not having as yet reached his decided Episcopal views, although
from a lecture on St. Augustine which he gave many times the winter follow-
ing one could see whither he was trending. You know him so well, you hardly
need any reminder of him. His transition from Unitarianism to Orthodoxy was a
topic of general interest - his oldest friends disappointed at last that he
found refuge in so inelastic a church as that of the Apostolic succession.
The poetical side of his nature never appeared more charmingly than about our
dinner table, I think in the year '75, with Uncle Sam, Dr. Storrs, ^Bleeker[?] and Beech
er for a stimulus. Beecher as he came in the parlor shortly before din-
ner, made for a large vase of red lilies in the fireplace, stooping over
them as if to caress them in his admiration. Their beauty seemed to charm
all the company, quite making the subject matter of conversation for the first part of the din-
ner. Some one spoke of Syrian lilies, in the illustration of our
Lord, Then of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn", " Christ was born among the
lillies [sic]", then of the rare beauty and pictursqueness [sic] of this whole
family of plants. The talk was very informal, but brilliant. As we strolled
back to the parlor afterward, the gentlemen began to smoke, and Beecher grew
very sober and tender in his mood, and fell to talking of our emotional
natures, their responsiveness to slight external causes, ^{and appreciation quite indefinable
quite indefinable.}

For instance, he said "When I was a boy in Litchfield I used to sit in the
door of my home, listening to the wind in the branches over my head, looking
up at the sky, - I could hear the faint hum of the spinning wheel in the gar