London's Bicentennial (Snippet 21)

 Henry Ward Beecher and London - 1881

    This preacher was one of the more popular public speakers during his time, but today people are more likely to know about his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. I don't know if the Reverend made it to London on this occasion, or what his "confoundedly wicked" topic was on the earlier visit. Whatever the subject, it was likely well-delivered. Twain described him, "sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point." Perhaps the problem had more to do with the erotic than the evangelical. His affair with a good friend's wife had been highly publicized.

Source: The Canton Advocate, June 2, 1881. (This Canton is the one in South Dakota, not the one south of us below Lake Erie.)