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The only safe course is the open road of truth. Lies once begun, pile up; and lies require lies to bolster them.

Mrs. Tilton had made a written confession to her husband, but this she repudiated in court, declaring it was given “in terrorem.” Now she had only words of praise and vindication for Beecher.

Mrs. Beecher sat by her husband’s side all through the long trial. For a man to leave the woman with whom he has lived a lifetime, and who is the mother of his children, is out of the question. What if she does lack intellect and spirituality! He has endured her; aye! he has even been happy with her at times–the relationship has been endurable–’twere imbecility, and death for both, to break it.

Beecher and his wife would stand together.

Mrs. Tilton’s lips had been sanctified by love, and were sealed, though her heart did break.

The jury stood nine for Beecher and three against. Major Pond, the astute, construed this into a vindication–Beecher was not guilty!

The first lecture after the trial was given at Alexandria Bay. Pond had sold out for five hundred dollars. Beecher said it was rank robbery–no one would be there. The lecture was to be in the grove at three o’clock in the afternoon. In the forenoon, boats were seen coming from east and west and north–excursion-boats laden with pilgrims; sailboats, rowboats, skiffs, and even birch-bark canoes bearing red men. The people came also in carts and wagons, and on horseback. An audience of five thousand confronted the lecturer.

The man who had planned the affair had banked on his knowledge of humanity–the people wanted to see and hear the individual who had been whipped naked at the cart’s tail, and who still lived to face the world smilingly, bravely, undauntedly.

Major Pond was paid the five hundred dollars as agreed. The enterprise had netted its manager over a thousand dollars–he was a rich man anyway–things had turned out as he had prophesied, and in the exuberance of his success he that night handed Mr. Beecher a check for two hundred fifty dollars, saying, “This is for you with my love–it is outside of any arrangement made with Major Pond.” After they had retired to their rooms, Beecher handed the check to Pond, and said, as his blue eyes filled with tears, “Major, you know what to do with this?” And Major Pond said, “Yes.”

Tilton went to Europe, leaving his family behind. But Major Pond made it his business to see that Mrs. Tilton wanted for nothing that money could buy. Beecher never saw Mrs. Tilton, to converse with her, again. She outlived him a dozen years. On her deathbed she confessed to her sister that her denials as to her relations with Beecher were untrue. “He loved me,” she said; “he loved me, and I would have been less than woman had I not loved him. This love will be my passport to Paradise–God understands.” And so she died.

* * * * *

Tilton was by nature an unsuccessful man. He was proudly aristocratic, lordly, dignified, jealous, mentally wiggling and spiritually jiggling. His career was like that of a race-horse which makes a record faster than he can ever attain again, and thus is forever barred from all slow-paced competitions. Tilton aspired to be a novelist, an essayist, a poet, an orator. His performances in each of these lines, unfortunately, were not bad enough to damn him; and his work done in fair weather was so much better than he could do in foul that he was caught by the undertow. And as for doing what Adirondack Murray did–get right down to hardpan and wash dishes in a dishpan–he couldn’t do it. Like an Indian, he would starve before he would work–and he came near it, gaining a garret-living, teaching languages and doing hack literary work in Paris, where he went to escape the accumulation of contempt that came his way just after the great Beecher trial.