CHAPTER XXI.

CLOSING SCENES, 1870-1889.

LITERARY LABORS.--COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLISHED BOOKS.--FIRST

READING TOUR.--PEEPS BEHIND THE CURTAIN.--SOME NEW ENGLAND

CITIES.--A LETTER FROM MAINE.--PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT

READINGS.--SECOND TOUR.--A WESTERN JOURNEY.--VISIT TO OLD

SCENES.--CELEBRATION OF SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.--CONGRATULATORY

POEMS FROM MR. WHITTIER AND DR. HOLMES.--LAST WORDS 489

[Illustration]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE. From a crayon by Richmond, made in

England in 1853 _Frontispiece_

SILVER INKSTAND PRESENTED TO MRS. STOWE BY HER ENGLISH

ADMIRERS IN 1853 xi

PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE'S GRANDMOTHER, ROXANNA FOOTE. From

a miniature painted on ivory by her daughter, Mrs.

Lyman Beecher 6

BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONN.[A] 10

PORTRAIT OF CATHERINE E. BEECHER. From a photograph taken in

1875 30

THE HOME AT WALNUT HILLS, CINCINNATI[A] 56

PORTRAIT OF HENRY WARD BEECHER. From a photograph by Rockwood,

in 1884 130

MANUSCRIPT PAGE OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" (fac-simile) 160

THE ANDOVER HOME. From a painting by F. Rondel, in 1860, owned

by Mrs. H. F. Allen 186

PORTRAIT OF LYMAN BEECHER, AT THE AGE OF EIGHTY-SEVEN. From a

painting owned by the Boston Congregational Club 264

PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. From an engraving

presented to Mrs. Stowe 318

THE OLD HOME AT HARTFORD 374

THE HOME AT MANDARIN, FLORIDA 402

PORTRAIT OF CALVIN ELLIS STOWE. From a photograph taken in 1882 422

PORTRAIT OF MRS. STOWE. From a photograph by Ritz and Hastings,

in 1884 470

THE LATER HARTFORD HOME 508

FOOTNOTE:

[A] From recent photographs and from views in the Autobiography of

Lyman Beecher, published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers.

LIFE AND LETTERS OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

CHAPTER I.

CHILDHOOD, 1811-1824.

DEATH OF HER MOTHER.--FIRST JOURNEY FROM HOME.--LIFE

AT NUT PLAINS.--SCHOOL DAYS AND HOURS WITH FAVORITE

AUTHORS.--THE NEW MOTHER.--LITCHFIELD ACADEMY AND ITS

INFLUENCE.--FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS.--A REMARKABLE

COMPOSITION.--GOES TO HARTFORD.

HARRIET BEECHER (STOWE) was born June 14, 1811, in the characteristic

New England town of Litchfield, Conn. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Lyman

Beecher, a distinguished Calvinistic divine, her mother Roxanna Foote,

his first wife. The little new-comer was ushered into a household of

happy, healthy children, and found five brothers and sisters awaiting

her. The eldest was Catherine, born September 6, 1800. Following her

were two sturdy boys, William and Edward; then came Mary, then George,

and at last Harriet. Another little Harriet born three years before had

died when only one month old, and the fourth daughter was named, in

memory of this sister, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher. Just two years after

Harriet was born, in the same month, another brother, Henry Ward, was

welcomed to the family circle, and after him came Charles, the last of

Roxanna Beecher's children.

The first memorable incident of Harriet's life was the death of her

mother, which occurred when she was four years old, and which ever

afterwards remained with her as the tenderest, saddest, and most sacred

memory of her childhood. Mrs. Stowe's recollections of her mother are

found in a letter to her brother Charles, afterwards published in the

"Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher." She says:--

"I was between three and four years of age when our mother died, and

my personal recollections of her are therefore but few. But the deep

interest and veneration that she inspired in all who knew her were such

that during all my childhood I was constantly hearing her spoken of,

and from one friend or another some incident or anecdote of her life

was constantly being impressed upon me.

"Mother was one of those strong, restful, yet widely sympathetic

natures in whom all around seemed to find comfort and repose. The

communion between her and my father was a peculiar one. It was an

intimacy throughout the whole range of their being. There was no human

mind in whose decisions he had greater confidence. Both intellectually

and morally he regarded her as the better and stronger portion of

himself, and I remember hearing him say that after her death his first

sensation was a sort of terror, like that of a child suddenly shut out

alone in the dark.

"In my own childhood only two incidents of my mother twinkle like rays

through the darkness. One was of our all running and dancing out before

her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning, and her

pleasant voice saying after us, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it

holy, children.'

"Another remembrance is this: mother was an enthusiastic horticulturist

in all the small ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John

in New York had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs. I

remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one

day when she was gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that

they were good to eat, using all the little English I then possessed

to persuade my brothers that these were onions such as grown people

ate and would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the

whole, and I recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd sweetish

taste, and thinking that onions were not so nice as I had supposed.

Then mother's serene face appeared at the nursery door and we all ran

towards her, telling with one voice of our discovery and achievement.

We had found a bag of onions and had eaten them all up.

"Also I remember that there was not even a momentary expression of

impatience, but that she sat down and said, 'My dear children, what you

have done makes mamma very sorry. Those were not onions but roots of

beautiful flowers, and if you had let them alone we should have next

summer in the garden great beautiful red and yellow flowers such as you

never saw.' I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew at this

picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag.

"Then I have a recollection of her reading aloud to the children Miss

Edgeworth's 'Frank,' which had just come out, I believe, and was

exciting a good deal of attention among the educational circles of

Litchfield. After that came a time when every one said she was sick,

and I used to be permitted to go once a day into her room, where she

sat bolstered up in bed. I have a vision of a very fair face with a

bright red spot on each cheek and her quiet smile. I remember dreaming

one night that mamma had got well, and of waking with loud transports

of joy that were hushed down by some one who came into the room. My

dream was indeed a true one. She was forever well.

"Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I can see his

golden curls and little black frock as he frolicked in the sun like a

kitten, full of ignorant joy.

"I recollect the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the

walking to the burial-ground, and somebody's speaking at the grave.

Then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused,

asked where she was gone and would she never come back.

"They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, and at

another that she had gone to heaven. Thereupon Henry, putting the two

things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven

to find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine's window one

morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to

know what he was doing. Lifting his curly head, he answered with great

simplicity, 'Why, I'm going to heaven to find mamma.'

"Although our mother's bodily presence thus disappeared from our

circle, I think her memory and example had more influence in moulding

her family, in deterring from evil and exciting to good, than

the living presence of many mothers. It was a memory that met us

everywhere, for every person in the town, from the highest to the

lowest, seemed to have been so impressed by her character and life that

they constantly reflected some portion of it back upon us.

"The passage in 'Uncle Tom' where Augustine St. Clare describes

his mother's influence is a simple reproduction of my own mother's

influence as it has always been felt in her family."

Of his deceased wife Dr. Beecher said: "Few women have attained to

more remarkable piety. Her faith was strong and her prayer prevailing.

It was her wish that all her sons should devote themselves to the

ministry, and to it she consecrated them with fervent prayer. Her

prayers have been heard. All her sons have been converted and are now,

according to her wish, ministers of Christ."

Such was Roxanna Beecher, whose influence upon her four-year-old

daughter was strong enough to mould the whole after-life of the author

of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." After the mother's death the Litchfield home

was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt, Harriet

Foote, took her away for a long visit at her grandmother's at Nut

Plains, near Guilford, Conn., the first journey from home the little

one had ever made. Of this visit Mrs. Stowe herself says:--

"Among my earliest recollections are those of a visit to Nut Plains

immediately after my mother's death. Aunt Harriet Foote, who was with

mother during all her last sickness, took me home to stay with her.

At the close of what seemed to me a long day's ride we arrived after

dark at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large

parlor where a cheerful wood fire was crackling. I was placed in the

arms of an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a thing at

which I marveled, for my great loss was already faded from my childish

mind.

[Illustration: _Roxanna Foote_]

"I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a large room, on one side

of which stood the bed appropriated to her and me, and on the other

that of my grandmother. My aunt Harriet was no common character. A more

energetic human being never undertook the education of a child. Her

ideas of education were those of a vigorous English woman of the old

school. She believed in the Church, and had she been born under that

_régime_ would have believed in the king stoutly, although being of the

generation following the Revolution she was a not less stanch supporter

of the Declaration of Independence.

"According to her views little girls were to be taught to move very

gently, to speak softly and prettily, to say 'yes ma'am,' and 'no

ma'am,' never to tear their clothes, to sew, to knit at regular hours,

to go to church on Sunday and make all the responses, and to come home

and be catechised.

"During these catechisings she used to place my little cousin Mary

and myself bolt upright at her knee, while black Dinah and Harry, the

bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us; for Aunt

Harriet always impressed it upon her servants 'to order themselves

lowly and reverently to all their betters,' a portion of the Church

catechism that always pleased me, particularly when applied to them, as

it insured their calling me 'Miss Harriet,' and treating me with a

degree of consideration such as I never enjoyed in the more democratic

circle at home. I became proficient in the Church catechism, and gave

my aunt great satisfaction by the old-fashioned gravity and steadiness

with which I learned to repeat it.

"As my father was a Congregational minister, I believe Aunt Harriet,

though the highest of High Church women, felt some scruples as

to whether it was desirable that my religious education should

be entirely out of the sphere of my birth. Therefore when this

catechetical exercise was finished she would say, 'Now, niece, you

have to learn another catechism, because your father is a Presbyterian

minister,'--and then she would endeavor to make me commit to memory the

Assembly catechism.

"At this lengthening of exercise I secretly murmured. I was rather

pleased at the first question in the Church catechism, which is

certainly quite on the level of any child's understanding,--'What is

your name?' It was such an easy good start, I could say it so loud and

clear, and I was accustomed to compare it with the first question in

the Primer, 'What is the chief end of man?' as vastly more difficult

for me to answer. In fact, between my aunt's secret unbelief and my own

childish impatience of too much catechism, the matter was indefinitely

postponed after a few ineffectual attempts, and I was overjoyed to hear

her announce privately to grandmother that she thought it would be time

enough for Harriet to learn the Presbyterian catechism when she went

home."

Mingled with this superabundance of catechism and plentiful needlework

the child was treated to copious extracts from Lowth's Isaiah,

Buchanan's Researches in Asia, Bishop Heber's Life, and Dr. Johnson's

Works, which, after her Bible and Prayer Book, were her grandmother's

favorite reading. Harriet does not seem to have fully appreciated

these; but she did enjoy her grandmother's comments upon their biblical

readings. Among the Evangelists especially was the old lady perfectly

at home, and her idea of each of the apostles was so distinct and

dramatic that she spoke of them as of familiar acquaintances. She

would, for instance, always smile indulgently at Peter's remarks and

say, "There he is again, now; that's just like Peter. He's always so

ready to put in."

It must have been during this winter spent at Nut Plains, amid such

surroundings, that Harriet began committing to memory that wonderful

assortment of hymns, poems, and scriptural passages from which in after

years she quoted so readily and effectively, for her sister Catherine,

in writing of her the following November, says:--

"Harriet is a very good girl. She has been to school all this summer,

and has learned to read very fluently. She has committed to memory

twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the Bible. She has a

remarkably retentive memory and will make a very good scholar."

At this time the child was five years old, and a regular attendant

at "Ma'am Kilbourne's" school on West Street, to which she walked

every day hand in hand with her chubby, rosy-faced, bare-footed,

four-year-old brother, Henry Ward. With the ability to read germinated

the intense literary longing that was to be hers through life. In

those days but few books were specially prepared for children, and

at six years of age we find the little girl hungrily searching for

mental food amid barrels of old sermons and pamphlets stored in a

corner of the garret. Here it seemed to her were some thousands of the

most unintelligible things. "An appeal on the unlawfulness of a man

marrying his wife's sister" turned up in every barrel she investigated,

by twos, or threes, or dozens, till her soul despaired of finding an

end. At last her patient search was rewarded, for at the very bottom

of a barrel of musty sermons she discovered an ancient volume of

"The Arabian Nights." With this her fortune was made, for in these

most fascinating of fairy tales the imaginative child discovered a

well-spring of joy that was all her own. When things went astray with

her, when her brothers started off on long excursions, refusing to take

her with them, or in any other childish sorrow, she had only to curl

herself up in some snug corner and sail forth on her bit of enchanted

carpet into fairyland to forget all her griefs.

In recalling her own child-life Mrs. Stowe, among other things,

describes her father's library, and gives a vivid bit of her own

experiences within its walls. She says: "High above all the noise of

the house, this room had to me the air of a refuge and a sanctuary. Its

walls were set round from floor to ceiling with the friendly, quiet

faces of books, and there stood my father's great writing-chair, on one

arm of which lay open always his Cruden's Concordance and his Bible.

Here I loved to retreat and niche myself down in a quiet corner with my

favorite books around me. I had a kind of sheltered feeling as I thus

sat and watched my father writing, turning to his books, and speaking

from time to time to himself in a loud, earnest whisper. I vaguely felt

that he was about some holy and mysterious work quite beyond my little

comprehension, and I was careful never to disturb him by question or

remark.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT.]

"The books ranged around filled me too with a solemn awe. On the

lower shelves were enormous folios, on whose backs I spelled in black

letters, 'Lightfoot Opera,' a title whereat I wondered, considering

the bulk of the volumes. Above these, grouped along in friendly,

social rows, were books of all sorts, sizes, and bindings, the titles

of which I had read so often that I knew them by heart. There were

Bell's Sermons, Bonnett's Inquiries, Bogue's Essays, Toplady on

Predestination, Boston's Fourfold State, Law's Serious Call, and other

works of that kind. These I looked over wistfully, day after day,

without even a hope of getting something interesting out of them. The

thought that father could read and understand things like these filled

me with a vague awe, and I wondered if I would ever be old enough to

know what it was all about.

"But there was one of my father's books that proved a mine of wealth

to me. It was a happy hour when he brought home and set up in his

bookcase Cotton Mather's 'Magnalia,' in a new edition of two volumes.

What wonderful stories those! Stories too about my own country. Stories

that made me feel the very ground I trod on to be consecrated by some

special dealing of God's Providence."

In continuing these reminiscences Mrs. Stowe describes as follows her

sensations upon first hearing the Declaration of Independence: "I

had never heard it before, and even now had but a vague idea of what

was meant by some parts of it. Still I gathered enough from the recital

of the abuses and injuries that had driven my nation to this course to

feel myself swelling with indignation, and ready with all my little

mind and strength to applaud the concluding passage, which Colonel

Talmadge rendered with resounding majesty. I was as ready as any of

them to pledge my life, fortune, and sacred honor for such a cause.

The heroic element was strong in me, having come down by ordinary

generation from a long line of Puritan ancestry, and just now it made

me long to do something, I knew not what: to fight for my country, or

to make some declaration on my own account."

When Harriet was nearly six years old her father married as his second

wife Miss Harriet Porter of Portland, Maine, and Mrs. Stowe thus

describes her new mother: "I slept in the nursery with my two younger

brothers. We knew that father was gone away somewhere on a journey

and was expected home, therefore the sound of a bustle in the house

the more easily awoke us. As father came into our room our new mother

followed him. She was very fair, with bright blue eyes, and soft auburn

hair bound round with a black velvet bandeau, and to us she seemed very

beautiful.

"Never did stepmother make a prettier or sweeter impression. The

morning following her arrival we looked at her with awe. She seemed to

us so fair, so delicate, so elegant, that we were almost afraid to go

near her. We must have appeared to her as rough, red-faced, country

children, honest, obedient, and bashful. She was peculiarly dainty

and neat in all her ways and arrangements, and I used to feel breezy,

rough, and rude in her presence.

"In her religion she was distinguished for a most unfaltering

Christ-worship. She was of a type noble but severe, naturally hard,

correct, exact and exacting, with intense natural and moral ideality.

Had it not been that Doctor Payson had set up and kept before her a

tender, human, loving Christ, she would have been only a conscientious

bigot. This image, however, gave softness and warmth to her religious

life, and I have since noticed how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up

in the hearts of all her children."

In writing to her old home of her first impressions of her new one,

Mrs. Beecher says: "It is a very lovely family, and with heartfelt

gratitude I observed how cheerful and healthy they were. The sentiment

is greatly increased, since I perceive them to be of agreeable habits

and some of them of uncommon intellect."

This new mother proved to be indeed all that the name implies to her

husband's children, and never did they have occasion to call her aught

other than blessed.

Another year finds a new baby brother, Frederick by name, added to

the family. At this time too we catch a characteristic glimpse of

Harriet in one of her sister Catherine's letters. She says: "Last week

we interred Tom junior with funeral honors by the side of old Tom of

happy memory. Our Harriet is chief mourner always at their funerals.

She asked for what she called an _epithet_ for the gravestone of Tom

junior, which I gave as follows:--

"Here lies our Kit,

Who had a fit,

And acted queer,

Shot with a gun,

Her race is run,

And she lies here."

In June, 1820, little Frederick died from scarlet fever, and Harriet

was seized with a violent attack of the same dread disease; but, after

a severe struggle, recovered.

Following her happy, hearty child-life, we find her tramping through

the woods or going on fishing excursions with her brothers, sitting

thoughtfully in her father's study, listening eagerly to the animated

theological discussions of the day, visiting her grandmother at Nut

Plains, and figuring as one of the brightest scholars in the Litchfield

Academy, taught by Mr. John Brace and Miss Pierce. When she was eleven

years old her brother Edward wrote of her: "Harriet reads everything

she can lay hands on, and sews and knits diligently."

At this time she was no longer the youngest girl of the family, for

another sister (Isabella) had been born in 1822. This event served

greatly to mature her, as she was intrusted with much of the care of

the baby out of school hours. It was not, however, allowed to interfere

in any way with her studies, and, under the skillful direction of her

beloved teachers, she seemed to absorb knowledge with every sense.

She herself writes: "Much of the training and inspiration of my early

days consisted not in the things that I was supposed to be studying,

but in hearing, while seated unnoticed at my desk, the conversation

of Mr. Brace with the older classes. There, from hour to hour, I

listened with eager ears to historical criticisms and discussions,

or to recitations in such works as Paley's Moral Philosophy, Blair's

Rhetoric, Allison on Taste, all full of most awakening suggestions to

my thoughts.

"Mr. Brace exceeded all teachers I ever knew in the faculty of teaching

composition. The constant excitement in which he kept the minds of his

pupils, the wide and varied regions of thought into which he led them,

formed a preparation for composition, the main requisite for which is

to have something which one feels interested to say."

In her tenth year Harriet began what to her was the fascinating work

of writing compositions, and so rapidly did she progress that at the

school exhibition held when she was twelve years old, hers was one of

the two or three essays selected to be read aloud before the august

assembly of visitors attracted by the occasion.

Of this event Mrs. Stowe writes: "I remember well the scene at that

exhibition, to me so eventful. The hall was crowded with all the

literati of Litchfield. Before them all our compositions were read

aloud. When mine was read I noticed that father, who was sitting on

high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close

I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' 'Your daughter, sir,'

was the answer. It was the proudest moment of my life. There was no

mistaking father's face when he was pleased, and to have interested him

was past all juvenile triumphs."

That composition has been carefully preserved, and on the old yellow

sheets the cramped childish handwriting is still distinctly legible.

As the first literary production of one who afterwards attained such

distinction as a writer, it is deemed of sufficient value and interest

to be embodied in this biography exactly as it was written and read

sixty-five years ago. The subject was certainly a grave one to be

handled by a child of twelve.

CAN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL BE PROVED BY THE LIGHT OF NATURE?

It has justly been concluded by the philosophers

of every age that "The proper study of mankind is

man," and his nature and composition, both physical

and mental, have been subjects of the most critical

examination. In the course of these researches many

have been at a loss to account for the change which

takes place in the body at the time of death. By some

it has been attributed to the flight of its tenant, and

by others to its final annihilation.

The questions, "What becomes of the soul at the time

of death?" and, if it be not annihilated, "What is

its destiny after death?" are those which, from the

interest that we all feel in them, will probably

engross universal attention.

In pursuing these inquiries it will be necessary to

divest ourselves of all that knowledge which we have

obtained from the light which revelation has shed over

them, and place ourselves in the same position as the

philosophers of past ages when considering the same

subject.

The first argument which has been advanced to prove

the immortality of the soul is drawn from the nature

of the mind itself. It has (say the supporters of

this theory) no composition of parts, and therefore,

as there are no particles, is not susceptible of

divisibility and cannot be acted upon by decay, and

therefore if it will not decay it will exist forever.

Now because the mind is not susceptible of decay

effected in the ordinary way by a gradual separation of

particles, affords no proof that that same omnipotent

power which created it cannot by another simple

exertion of power again reduce it to nothing. The only

reason for belief which this argument affords is that

the soul cannot be acted upon by decay. But it does not

prove that it cannot destroy its existence. Therefore,

for the validity of this argument, it must either be

proved that the "Creator" has not the power to destroy

it, or that he has not the will; but as neither of

these can be established, our immortality is left

dependent on the pleasure of the Creator. But it is

said that it is evident that the Creator designed the

soul for immortality, or he would never have created it

so essentially different from the body, for had they

both been designed for the same end they would both

have been created alike, as there would have been no

object in forming them otherwise. This only proves that

the soul and body had not the same destinations. Now

of what these destinations are we know nothing, and

after much useless reasoning we return where we began,

our argument depending upon the good pleasure of the

Creator.

And here it is said that a being of such infinite

wisdom and benevolence as that of which the Creator is

possessed would not have formed man with such vast

capacities and boundless desires, and would have given

him no opportunity for exercising them.

In order to establish the validity of this argument it

is necessary to prove by the light of Nature that the

Creator _is_ benevolent, which, being impracticable, is

of itself sufficient to render the argument invalid.

But the argument proceeds upon the supposition that

to destroy the soul would be unwise. Now this is

arraigning the "All-wise" before the tribunal of his

subjects to answer for the mistakes in his government.

Can we look into the council of the "Unsearchable" and

see what means are made to answer their ends? We do

not know but the destruction of the soul may, in the

government of God, be made to answer such a purpose

that its existence would be contrary to the dictates of

wisdom.

The great desire of the soul for immortality, its

secret, innate horror of annihilation, has been brought

to prove its immortality. But do we always find this

horror or this desire? Is it not much more evident

that the great majority of mankind have no such dread

at all? True that there is a strong feeling of horror

excited by the idea of perishing from the earth and

being forgotten, of losing all those honors and all

that fame awaited them. Many feel this secret horror

when they look down upon the vale of futurity and

reflect that though now the idols of the world, soon

all which will be left them will be the common portion

of mankind--oblivion! But this dread does not arise

from any idea of their destiny beyond the tomb, and

even were this true, it would afford no proof that

the mind would exist forever, merely from its strong

desires. For it might with as much correctness be

argued that the body will exist forever because we have

a great dread of dying, and upon this principle nothing

which we strongly desire would ever be withheld from

us, and no evil that we greatly dread will ever come

upon us, a principle evidently false.

Again, it has been said that the constant progression

of the powers of the mind affords another proof of its

immortality. Concerning this, Addison remarks, "Were a

human soul ever thus at a stand in her acquirements,

were her faculties to be full blown and incapable of

further enlargement, I could imagine that she might

fall away insensibly and drop at once into a state

of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being

that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and

traveling on from perfection to perfection after having

just looked abroad into the works of her Creator and

made a few discoveries of his infinite wisdom and

goodness, must perish at her first setting out and in

the very beginning of her inquiries?"

In answer to this it may be said that the soul is not

always progressing in her powers. Is it not rather a

subject of general remark that those brilliant talents

which in youth expand, in manhood become stationary,

and in old age gradually sink to decay? Till when the

ancient man descends to the tomb scarce a wreck of that

once powerful mind remains.

Who, but upon reading the history of England, does not

look with awe upon the effects produced by the talents

of her Elizabeth? Who but admires that undaunted

firmness in time of peace and that profound depth

of policy which she displayed in the cabinet? Yet

behold the tragical end of this learned, this politic

princess! Behold the triumphs of age and sickness

over her once powerful talents, and say not that the

faculties of man are always progressing in their powers.

From the activity of the mind at the hour of death has

also been deduced its immortality. But it is not true

that the mind is always active at the time of death. We

find recorded in history numberless instances of those

talents, which were once adequate to the government of

a nation, being so weakened and palsied by the touch

of sickness as scarcely to tell to beholders what they

once were. The talents of the statesman, the wisdom of

the sage, the courage and might of the warrior, are

instantly destroyed by it, and all that remains of them

is the waste of idiocy or the madness of insanity.

Some minds there are who at the time of death retain

their faculties though much impaired, and if the

argument be valid these are the only cases where

immortality is conferred. Again, it is urged that the

inequality of rewards and punishments in this world

demand another in which virtue may be rewarded and vice

punished. This argument, in the first place, takes

for its foundation that by the light of nature the

distinction between virtue and vice can be discovered.

By some this is absolutely disbelieved, and by all

considered as extremely doubtful. And, secondly, it

puts the Creator under an obligation to reward and

punish the actions of his creatures. No such obligation

exists, and therefore the argument cannot be valid. And

this supposes the Creator to be a being of justice,

which cannot by the light of nature be proved, and

as the whole argument rests upon this foundation it

certainly cannot be correct.

This argument also directly impeaches the wisdom of the

Creator, for the sense of it is this,--that, forasmuch

as he was not able to manage his government in this

world, he must have another in which to rectify the

mistakes and oversights of this, and what an idea would

this give us of our All-wise Creator?

It is also said that all nations have some conceptions

of a future state, that the ancient Greeks and Romans

believed in it, that no nation has been found but have

possessed some idea of a future state of existence.

But their belief arose more from the fact that they

wished it to be so than from any real ground of belief;

for arguments appear much more plausible when the mind

wishes to be convinced. But it is said that every

nation, however circumstanced, possess some idea of

a future state. For this we may account by the fact

that it was handed down by tradition from the time of

the flood. From all these arguments, which, however

plausible at first sight, are found to be futile, may

be argued the necessity of a revelation. Without it,

the destiny of the noblest of the works of God would

have been left in obscurity. Never till the blessed

light of the Gospel dawned on the borders of the pit,

and the heralds of the Cross proclaimed "Peace on earth

and good will to men," was it that bewildered and

misled man was enabled to trace his celestial origin

and glorious destiny.

The sun of the Gospel has dispelled the darkness that

has rested on objects beyond the tomb. In the Gospel

man learned that when the dust returned to dust the

spirit fled to the God who gave it. He there found

that though man has lost the image of his divine

Creator, he is still destined, after this earthly house

of his tabernacle is dissolved, to an inheritance

incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, to

a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Soon after the writing of this remarkable composition, Harriet's

child-life in Litchfield came to an end, for that same year she went

to Hartford to pursue her studies in a school which had been recently

established by her sister Catherine in that city.

CHAPTER II.

SCHOOL DAYS IN HARTFORD, 1824-1832.

MISS CATHERINE BEECHER.--PROFESSOR FISHER.--THE WRECK

OF THE ALBION AND DEATH OF PROFESSOR FISHER.--"THE

MINISTER'S WOOING."--MISS CATHERINE BEECHER'S SPIRITUAL

HISTORY.--MRS. STOWE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HER SCHOOL

DAYS IN HARTFORD.--HER CONVERSION.--UNITES WITH THE

FIRST CHURCH IN HARTFORD.--HER DOUBTS AND SUBSEQUENT

RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.--HER FINAL PEACE.

THE school days in Hartford began a new era in Harriet's life. It was

the formative period, and it is therefore important to say a few words

concerning her sister Catherine, under whose immediate supervision she

was to continue her education. In fact, no one can comprehend either

Mrs. Stowe or her writings without some knowledge of the life and

character of this remarkable woman, whose strong, vigorous mind and

tremendous personality indelibly stamped themselves on the sensitive,

yielding, dreamy, and poetic nature of the younger sister. Mrs. Stowe

herself has said that the two persons who most strongly influenced

her at this period of her life were her brother Edward and her sister

Catherine.

Catherine was the oldest child of Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote, his

wife. In a little battered journal found among her papers is a short

sketch of her life, written when she was seventy-six years of age.

In a tremulous hand she begins: "I was born at East Hampton, L. I.,

September 5, 1800, at 5 P. M., in the large parlor opposite father's

study. Don't remember much about it myself." The sparkle of wit in this

brief notice of the circumstances of her birth is very characteristic.

All through her life little ripples of fun were continually playing on

the surface of that current of intense thought and feeling in which her

deep, earnest nature flowed.

When she was ten years of age her father removed to Litchfield, Conn.,

and her happy girlhood was passed in that place. Her bright and

versatile mind and ready wit enabled her to pass brilliantly through

her school days with but little mental exertion, and those who knew

her slightly might have imagined her to be only a bright, thoughtless,

light-hearted girl. In Boston, at the age of twenty, she took lessons

in music and drawing, and became so proficient in these branches as

to secure a position as teacher in a young ladies' school, kept by

a Rev. Mr. Judd, an Episcopal clergyman, at New London, Conn. About

this time she formed the acquaintance of Professor Alexander Metcalf

Fisher, of Yale College, one of the most distinguished young men in

New England. In January of the year 1822 they became engaged, and the

following spring Professor Fisher sailed for Europe to purchase books

and scientific apparatus for the use of his department in the college.

In his last letter to Miss Beecher, dated March 31, 1822, he writes:--

"I set out at 10 precisely to-morrow, in the Albion for Liverpool; the

ship has no superior in the whole number of excellent vessels belonging

to this port, and Captain Williams is regarded as first on their list

of commanders. The accommodations are admirable--fare $140. Unless our

ship should speak some one bound to America on the passage, you will

probably not hear from me under two months."

Before two months had passed came vague rumors of a terrible shipwreck

on the coast of Ireland. Then the tidings that the Albion was lost.

Then came a letter from Mr. Pond, at Kinsale, Ireland, dated May 2,

1822:--

"You have doubtless heard of the shipwreck of the Albion packet of New

York, bound to Liverpool. It was a melancholy shipwreck. It happened

about four o'clock on the morning of the 22d of April. Professor

Fisher, of Yale College, was one of the passengers. Out of twenty-three

cabin passengers, but one reached the shore. He is a Mr. Everhart,

of Chester County, Pennsylvania. He informs me that Professor Fisher

was injured by things that fetched away in the cabin at the time the

ship was knocked down. This was between 8 and 9 o'clock in the evening

of the twenty-first. Mr. Fisher, though badly bruised, was calm and

resolute, and assisted Captain Williams by taking the injured compass

to his berth and repairing it. About five minutes before the vessel

struck Captain Williams informed the passengers of their danger, and

all went on deck except Professor Fisher, who remained sitting in his

berth. Mr. Everhart was the last person who left the cabin, and the

last who ever saw Professor Fisher alive."

I should not have spoken of this incident of family history with

such minuteness, except for the fact that it is so much a part of

Mrs. Stowe's life as to make it impossible to understand either

her character or her most important works without it. Without this

incident "The Minister's Wooing" never would have been written, for

both Mrs. Marvyn's terrible soul struggles and old Candace's direct

and effective solution of all religious difficulties find their origin

in this stranded, storm-beaten ship on the coast of Ireland, and the

terrible mental conflicts through which her sister afterward passed,

for she believed Professor Fisher eternally lost. No mind more directly

and powerfully influenced Harriet's than that of her sister Catherine,

unless it was her brother Edward's, and that which acted with such

overwhelming power on the strong, unyielding mind of the older sister

must have, in time, a permanent and abiding influence on the mind of

the younger.

After Professor Fisher's death his books came into Miss Beecher's

possession, and among them was a complete edition of Scott's works. It

was an epoch in the family history when Doctor Beecher came down-stairs

one day with a copy of "Ivanhoe" in his hand, and said: "I have always

said that my children should not read novels, but they must read these."

The two years following the death of Professor Fisher were passed by

Miss Catherine Beecher at Franklin, Mass., at the home of Professor

Fisher's parents, where she taught his two sisters, studied mathematics

with his brother Willard, and listened to Doctor Emmons' fearless

and pitiless preaching. Hers was a mind too strong and buoyant to be

crushed and prostrated by that which would have driven a weaker and

less resolute nature into insanity. Of her it may well be said:--

"She faced the spectres of the mind

And laid them, thus she came at length

To find a stronger faith her own."

Gifted naturally with a capacity for close metaphysical analysis and a

robust fearlessness in following her premises to a logical conclusion,

she arrived at results startling and original, if not always of

permanent value.

In 1840 she published in the "Biblical Repository" an article on Free

Agency, which has been acknowledged by competent critics as the ablest

refutation of Edwards on "The Will" which has appeared. An amusing

incident connected with this publication may not be out of place here.

A certain eminent theological professor of New England, visiting a

distinguished German theologian and speaking of this production, said:

"The ablest refutation of Edwards on 'The Will' which was ever written

is the work of a woman, the daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher." The worthy

Teuton raised both hands in undisguised astonishment. "You have a woman

that can write an able refutation of Edwards on 'The Will'? God forgive

Christopher Columbus for discovering America!"

Not finding herself able to love a God whom she thought of in her own

language as "a perfectly happy being, unmoved by my sorrows or tears,

and looking upon me only with dislike and aversion," she determined "to

find happiness in living to do good." "It was right to pray and read

the Bible, so I prayed and read. It was right to try to save others,

so I labored for their salvation. I never had any fear of punishment

or hope of reward all these years." She was tormented with doubts.

"What has the Son of God done which the meanest and most selfish

creature upon earth would not have done? After making such a wretched

race and placing them in such disastrous circumstances, somehow,

without any sorrow or trouble, Jesus Christ had a human nature that

suffered and died. If something else besides ourselves will do all the

suffering, who would not save millions of wretched beings and receive

all the honor and gratitude without any of the trouble? Sometimes when

such thoughts passed through my mind, I felt that it was all pride,

rebellion, and sin."

So she struggles on, sometimes floundering deep in the mire of doubt,

and then lifted for the moment above it by her naturally buoyant

spirits, and general tendency to look on the bright side of things. In

this condition of mind, she came to Hartford in the winter of 1824,

and began a school with eight scholars, and it was in the practical

experience of teaching that she found a final solution of all her

difficulties. She continues:--

"After two or three years I commenced giving instruction in mental

philosophy, and at the same time began a regular course of lectures

and instructions from the Bible, and was much occupied with plans for

governing my school, and in devising means to lead my pupils to become

obedient, amiable, and pious. By degrees I finally arrived at the

following principles in the government of my school:--

"First. It is indispensable that my scholars should feel that I am

sincerely and deeply interested in their best happiness, and the more I

can convince them of this, the more ready will be their obedience.

"Second. The preservation of authority and order depends upon the

certainty that unpleasant consequences to themselves will inevitably be

the result of doing wrong.

"Third. It is equally necessary, to preserve my own influence and their

affection, that they should feel that punishment is the natural result

of wrong-doing in such a way that they shall regard themselves, instead

of me, as the cause of their punishment.

"Fourth. It is indispensable that my scholars should see that my

requisitions are reasonable. In the majority of cases this can be

shown, and in this way such confidence will be the result that they

will trust to my judgment and knowledge, in cases where no explanation

can be given.

"Fifth. The more I can make my scholars feel that I am actuated by a

spirit of self-denying benevolence, the more confidence they will feel

in me, and the more they will be inclined to submit to self-denying

duties for the good of others.

"After a while I began to compare my experience with the government of

God. I finally got through the whole subject, and drew out the results,

and found that all my difficulties were solved and all my darkness

dispelled."

Her solution in brief is nothing more than that view of the divine

nature which was for so many years preached by her brother, Henry Ward

Beecher, and set forth in the writings of her sister Harriet,--the

conception of a being of infinite love, patience, and kindness who

suffers with man. The sufferings of Christ on the cross were not the

sufferings of his human nature merely, but the sufferings of the

divine nature in Him. In Christ we see the only revelation of God, and

that is the revelation of one that suffers. This is the fundamental

idea in "The Minister's Wooing," and it is the idea of God in which the

storm-tossed soul of the older sister at last found rest. All this was

directly opposed to that fundamental principle of theologians that God,

being the infinitely perfect Being, cannot suffer, because suffering

indicates imperfection. To Miss Beecher's mind the lack of ability to

suffer with his suffering creatures was a more serious imperfection.

Let the reader turn to the twenty-fourth chapter of "The Minister's

Wooing" for a complete presentation of this subject, especially the

passage that begins, "Sorrow is divine: sorrow is reigning on the

throne of the universe."

In the fall of the year 1824, while her sister Catherine was passing

through the soul crisis which we have been describing, Harriet came to

the school that she had recently established.

In a letter to her son written in 1886, speaking of this period of her

life, Mrs. Stowe says: "Somewhere between my twelfth and thirteenth

year I was placed under the care of my elder sister Catherine, in the

school that she had just started in Hartford, Connecticut. When I

entered the school there were not more than twenty-five scholars in it,

but it afterwards numbered its pupils by the hundreds. The school-room

was on Main Street, nearly opposite Christ Church, over Sheldon &

Colton's harness store, at the sign of the two white horses. I never

shall forget the pleasure and surprise which these two white horses

produced in my mind when I first saw them. One of the young men who

worked in the rear of the harness store had a most beautiful tenor

voice, and it was my delight to hear him singing in school hours:--

[Illustration: Catherine E. Beecher]

'When in cold oblivion's shade

Beauty, wealth, and power are laid,

When, around the sculptured shrine,

Moss shall cling and ivy twine,

Where immortal spirits reign,

There shall we all meet again.'

"As my father's salary was inadequate to the wants of his large family,

the expense of my board in Hartford was provided for by a species of

exchange. Mr. Isaac D. Bull sent a daughter to Miss Pierce's seminary

in Litchfield, and she boarded in my father's family in exchange for

my board in her father's family. If my good, refined, neat, particular

stepmother could have chosen, she could not have found a family more

exactly suited to her desires. The very soul of neatness and order

pervaded the whole establishment. Mr. I. D. Bull was a fine, vigorous,

white-haired man on the declining slope of life, but full of energy

and of kindness. Mr. Samuel Collins, a neighbor who lived next door,

used to frequently come in and make most impressive and solemn calls on

Miss Mary Anne Bull, who was a brunette and a celebrated beauty of the

day. I well remember her long raven curls falling from the comb that

held them up on the top of her head. She had a rich soprano voice, and

was the leading singer in the Centre Church choir. The two brothers

also had fine, manly voices, and the family circle was often enlivened

by quartette singing and flute playing. Mr. Bull kept a very large

wholesale drug store on Front Street, in which his two sons, Albert

and James, were clerks. The oldest son, Watson Bull, had established a

retail drug store at the sign of the 'Good Samaritan.' A large picture

of the Good Samaritan relieving the wounded traveler formed a striking

part of the sign, and was contemplated by me with reverence.

"The mother of the family gave me at once a child's place in her heart.

A neat little hall chamber was allotted to me for my own, and a well

made and kept single bed was given me, of which I took daily care with

awful satisfaction. If I was sick nothing could exceed the watchful

care and tender nursing of Mrs. Bull. In school my two most intimate

friends were the leading scholars. They had written to me before I

came and I had answered their letters, and on my arrival they gave me

the warmest welcome. One was Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of

the leading and best-beloved of Hartford physicians. The other was

Georgiana May, daughter of a most lovely Christian woman who was a

widow. Georgiana was one of many children, having two younger sisters,

Mary and Gertrude, and several brothers. Catherine Cogswell was one of

the most amiable, sprightly, sunny-tempered individuals I have ever

known. She was, in fact, so much beloved that it was difficult for

me to see much of her. Her time was all bespoken by different girls.

One might walk with her to school, another had the like promise on

the way home. And at recess, of which we had every day a short half

hour, there was always a suppliant at Katy's shrine, whom she found it

hard to refuse. Yet, among all these claimants, she did keep a little

place here and there for me. Georgiana was older and graver, and less

fascinating to the other girls, but between her and me there grew up

the warmest friendship, which proved lifelong in its constancy.

"Catherine and Georgiana were reading 'Virgil' when I came to the

school. I began the study of Latin alone, and at the end of the first

year made a translation of 'Ovid' in verse, which was read at the final

exhibition of the school, and regarded, I believe, as a very creditable

performance. I was very much interested in poetry, and it was my dream

to be a poet. I began a drama called 'Cleon.' The scene was laid in the

court and time of the emperor Nero, and Cleon was a Greek lord residing

at Nero's court, who, after much searching and doubting, at last comes

to the knowledge of Christianity. I filled blank book after blank book

with this drama. It filled my thoughts sleeping and waking. One day

sister Catherine pounced down upon me, and said that I must not waste

my time writing poetry, but discipline my mind by the study of Butler's

'Analogy.' So after this I wrote out abstracts from the 'Analogy,' and

instructed a class of girls as old as myself, being compelled to master

each chapter just ahead of the class I was teaching. About this time I

read Baxter's 'Saint's Rest.' I do not think any book affected me more

powerfully. As I walked the pavements I used to wish that they might

sink beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven. I was at the

same time very much interested in Butler's 'Analogy,' for Mr. Brace

used to lecture on such themes when I was at Miss Pierce's school at

Litchfield. I also began the study of French and Italian with a Miss

Degan, who was born in Italy.

"It was about this time that I first believed myself to be a Christian.

I was spending my summer vacation at home, in Litchfield. I shall

ever remember that dewy, fresh summer morning. I knew that it was a

sacramental Sunday, and thought with sadness that when all the good

people should take the sacrificial bread and wine I should be left

out. I tried hard to feel my sins and count them up; but what with the

birds, the daisies, and the brooks that rippled by the way, it was

impossible. I came into church quite dissatisfied with myself, and as

I looked upon the pure white cloth, the snowy bread and shining cups,

of the communion table, thought with a sigh: 'There won't be anything

for me to-day; it is all for these grown-up Christians.' Nevertheless,

when father began to speak, I was drawn to listen by a certain

pathetic earnestness in his voice. Most of father's sermons were as

unintelligible to me as if he had spoken in Choctaw. But sometimes he

preached what he was accustomed to call a 'frame sermon;' that is, a

sermon that sprung out of the deep feeling of the occasion, and which

consequently could be neither premeditated nor repeated. His text was

taken from the Gospel of John, the declaration of Jesus: 'Behold, I

call you no longer servants, but friends.' His theme was Jesus as a

soul friend offered to every human being.

"Forgetting all his hair-splitting distinctions and dialectic

subtleties, he spoke in direct, simple, and tender language of the

great love of Christ and his care for the soul. He pictured Him as

patient with our errors, compassionate with our weaknesses, and

sympathetic for our sorrows. He went on to say how He was ever near

us, enlightening our ignorance, guiding our wanderings, comforting our

sorrows with a love unwearied by faults, unchilled by ingratitude, till

at last He should present us faultless before the throne of his glory

with exceeding joy.

"I sat intent and absorbed. Oh! how much I needed just such a friend,

I thought to myself. Then the awful fact came over me that I had never

had any conviction of my sins, and consequently could not come to Him.

I longed to cry out 'I will,' when father made his passionate appeal,

'Come, then, and trust your soul to this faithful friend.' Like a flash

it came over me that if I needed conviction of sin, He was able to give

me even this also. I would trust Him for the whole. My whole soul was

illumined with joy, and as I left the church to walk home, it seemed to

me as if Nature herself were hushing her breath to hear the music of

heaven.

"As soon as father came home and was seated in his study, I went up to

him and fell in his arms saying, 'Father, I have given myself to Jesus,

and He has taken me.' I never shall forget the expression of his face

as he looked down into my earnest, childish eyes; it was so sweet, so

gentle, and like sunlight breaking out upon a landscape. 'Is it so?' he

said, holding me silently to his heart, as I felt the hot tears fall on

my head. 'Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day.'"

If she could have been let alone, and taught "to look up and not down,

forward and not back, out and not in," this religious experience might

have gone on as sweetly and naturally as the opening of a flower in

the gentle rays of the sun. But unfortunately this was not possible

at that time, when self-examination was carried to an extreme that was

calculated to drive a nervous and sensitive mind well-nigh distracted.

First, even her sister Catherine was afraid that there might be

something wrong in the case of a lamb that had come into the fold

without being first chased all over the lot by the shepherd; great

stress being laid, in those days, on what was called "being under

conviction." Then also the pastor of the First Church in Hartford, a

bosom friend of Dr. Beecher, looked with melancholy and suspicious

eyes on this unusual and doubtful path to heaven,--but more of this

hereafter. Harriet's conversion took place in the summer of 1825, when

she was fourteen, and the following year, April, 1826, Dr. Beecher

resigned his pastorate in Litchfield to accept a call to the Hanover

Street Church, Boston, Mass. In a letter to her grandmother Foote at

Guilford, dated Hartford, March 4, 1826, Harriet writes:--

"You have probably heard that our home in Litchfield is broken up.

Papa has received a call to Boston, and concluded to accept, because

he could not support his family in Litchfield. He was dismissed last

week Tuesday, and will be here (Hartford) next Tuesday with mamma and

Isabel. Aunt Esther will take Charles and Thomas to her house for the

present. Papa's salary is to be $2,000 and $500 settlement.

"I attend school constantly and am making some progress in my studies.

I devote most of my attention to Latin and to arithmetic, and hope soon

to prepare myself to assist Catherine in the school."

This breaking up of the Litchfield home led Harriet, under her

father's advice, to seek to connect herself with the First Church of

Hartford. Accordingly, accompanied by two of her school friends, she

went one day to the pastor's study to consult with him concerning the

contemplated step. The good man listened attentively to the child's

simple and modest statement of Christian experience, and then with an

awful, though kindly, solemnity of speech and manner said, "Harriet,

do you feel that if the universe should be destroyed (awful pause)

you could be happy with God alone?" After struggling in vain, in her

mental bewilderment, to fix in her mind some definite conception of the

meaning of the sounds which fell on her ear like the measured strokes

of a bell, the child of fourteen stammered out, "Yes, sir."

"You realize, I trust," continued the doctor, "in some measure at

least, the deceitfulness of your heart, and that in punishment for your

sins God might justly leave you to make yourself as miserable as you

have made yourself sinful?"

"Yes, sir," again stammered Harriet.

Having thus effectually, and to his own satisfaction, fixed the child's

attention on the morbid and over-sensitive workings of her own heart,

the good and truly kind-hearted man dismissed her with a fatherly

benediction. But where was the joyous ecstasy of that beautiful Sabbath

morning of a year ago? Where was that heavenly friend? Yet was not

this as it should be, and might not God leave her "to make herself as

miserable as she had made herself sinful"?

In a letter addressed to her brother Edward, about this time, she

writes: "My whole life is one continued struggle: I do nothing right.

I yield to temptation almost as soon as it assails me. My deepest

feelings are very evanescent. I am beset behind and before, and my sins

take away all my happiness. But that which most constantly besets me is

pride--I can trace almost all my sins back to it."

In the mean time, the school is prospering. February 16, 1827,

Catherine writes to Dr. Beecher: "My affairs go on well. The stock is

all taken up, and next week I hope to have out the prospectus of the

'Hartford Female Seminary.' I hope the building will be done, and all

things in order, by June. The English lady is coming with twelve pupils

from New York." Speaking of Harriet, who was at this time with her

father in Boston, she adds: "I have received some letters from Harriet

to-day which make me feel uneasy. She says, 'I don't know as I am fit

for anything, and I have thought that I could wish to die young, and

let the remembrance of me and my faults perish in the grave, rather

than live, as I fear I do, a trouble to every one. You don't know how

perfectly wretched I often feel: so useless, so weak, so destitute of

all energy. Mamma often tells me that I am a strange, inconsistent

being. Sometimes I could not sleep, and have groaned and cried till

midnight, while in the daytime I tried to appear cheerful and succeeded

so well that papa reproved me for laughing so much. I was so absent

sometimes that I made strange mistakes, and then they all laughed at

me, and I laughed, too, though I felt as though I should go distracted.

I wrote rules; made out a regular system for dividing my time; but

my feelings vary so much that it is almost impossible for me to be

regular.'"

But let Harriet "take courage in her dark sorrows and melancholies," as

Carlyle says: "Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls

are apt to have, and to be in thick darkness generally till the eternal

ways and the celestial guiding stars disclose themselves, and the vague

abyss of life knits itself up into firmaments for them."

At the same time (the winter of 1827), Catherine writes to Edward

concerning Harriet: "If she could come here (Hartford) it might be the

best thing for her, for she can talk freely to me. I can get her books,

and Catherine Cogswell, Georgiana May, and her friends here could do

more for her than any one in Boston, for they love her and she loves

them very much. Georgiana's difficulties are different from Harriet's:

she is speculating about doctrines, etc. Harriet will have young

society here all the time, which she cannot have at home, and I think

cheerful and amusing friends will do much for her. I can do better in

preparing her to teach drawing than any one else, for I best know what

is needed."

It was evidently necessary that something should be done to restore

Harriet to a more tranquil and healthful frame of mind; consequently in

the spring of 1827, accompanied by her friend Georgiana May, she went

to visit her grandmother Foote at Nut Plains, Guilford. Miss May refers

to this visit in a letter to Mrs. Foote, in January of the following

winter.

HARTFORD, _January 4, 1828._

DEAR MRS. FOOTE:--... I very often think of you and

the happy hours I passed at your house last spring.

It seems as if it were but yesterday: now, while I am

writing, I can see your pleasant house and the familiar

objects around you as distinctly as the day I left

them. Harriet and I are very much the same girls we

were then. I do not believe we have altered very much,

though she is improved in some respects.

The August following this visit to Guilford Harriet writes to her

brother Edward in a vein which is still streaked with sadness, but

shows some indication of returning health of mind.

"Many of my objections you did remove that afternoon we spent together.

After that I was not as unhappy as I had been. I felt, nevertheless,

that my views were very indistinct and contradictory, and feared that

if you left me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state

in which I had been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest,

my happiness for both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings

might take. In my disappointment and distress I called upon God, and

it seemed as if I was heard. I felt that He could supply the loss of

all earthly love. All misery and darkness were over. I felt as if

restored, nevermore to fall. Such sober certainty of waking bliss had

long been a stranger to me. But even then I had doubts as to whether

these feelings were right, because I felt love to God alone without

that ardent love for my fellow-creatures which Christians have often

felt.... I cannot say exactly what it is makes me reluctant to speak

of my feelings. It costs me an effort to express feeling of any kind,

but more particularly to speak of my private religious feelings. If any

one questions me, my first impulse is to conceal all I can. As for

expression of affection towards my brothers and sisters, my companions

or friends, the stronger the affection the less inclination have I to

express it. Yet sometimes I think myself the most frank, open, and

communicative of beings, and at other times the most reserved. If you

can resolve all these caprices into general principles, you will do

more than I can. Your speaking so much philosophically has a tendency

to repress confidence. We never wish to have our feelings analyzed

down; and very little, nothing, that we say brought to the test of

mathematical demonstration.

"It appears to me that if I only could adopt the views of God you

presented to my mind, they would exert a strong and beneficial

influence over my character. But I am afraid to accept them for several

reasons. First, it seems to be taking from the majesty and dignity

of the divine character to suppose that his happiness can be at all

affected by the conduct of his sinful, erring creatures. Secondly, it

seems to me that such views of God would have an effect on our own

minds in lessening that reverence and fear which is one of the greatest

motives to us for action. For, although to a generous mind the thought

of the love of God would be a sufficient incentive to action, there are

times of coldness when that love is not felt, and then there remains no

sort of stimulus. I find as I adopt these sentiments I feel less fear

of God, and, in view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief which is

more easily dispelled and forgotten than that I formerly felt."

A letter dated January 3, 1828, shows us that Harriet had returned to

Hartford and was preparing herself to teach drawing and painting, under

the direction of her sister Catherine.

MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--I should have written before to

assure you of my remembrance of you, but I have been

constantly employed, from nine in the morning till

after dark at night, in taking lessons of a painting

and drawing master, with only an intermission long

enough to swallow a little dinner which was sent to me

in the school-room. You may easily believe that after

spending the day in this manner, I did not feel in a

very epistolary humor in the evening, and if I had

been, I could not have written, for when I did not go

immediately to bed I was obliged to get a long French

lesson.

The seminary is finished, and the school going on

nicely. Miss Clarissa Brown is assisting Catherine in

the school. Besides her, Catherine, and myself, there

are two other teachers who both board in the family

with us: one is Miss Degan, an Italian lady who teaches

French and Italian; she rooms with me, and is very

interesting and agreeable. Miss Hawks is rooming with

Catherine. In some respects she reminds me very much

of my mother. She is gentle, affectionate, modest, and

retiring, and much beloved by all the scholars.... I

am still going on with my French, and carrying two

young ladies through Virgil, and if I have time, shall

commence Italian.

I am very comfortable and happy.

I propose, my dear grandmamma, to send you by the first

opportunity a dish of fruit of my own painting. Pray

do not now devour it in anticipation, for I cannot

promise that you will not find it sadly tasteless in

reality. If so, please excuse it, for the sake of the

poor young artist. I admire to cultivate a taste for

painting, and I wish to improve it; it was what my

dear mother admired and loved, and I cherish it for

her sake. I have thought more of this dearest of all

earthly friends these late years, since I have been old

enough to know her character and appreciate her worth.

I sometimes think that, had she lived, I might have

been both better and happier than I now am, but God is

good and wise in all his ways.

A letter written to her brother Edward in Boston, dated March 27, 1828,

shows how slowly she adopted the view of God that finally became one of

the most characteristic elements in her writings.

"I think that those views of God which you have presented to me have

had an influence in restoring my mind to its natural tone. But still,

after all, God is a being afar off. He is so far above us that anything

but the most distant reverential affection seems almost sacrilegious.

It is that affection that can lead us to be familiar that the heart

needs. But easy and familiar expressions of attachment and that sort

of confidential communication which I should address to papa or you

would be improper for a subject to address to a king, much less for

us to address to the King of kings. The language of prayer is of

necessity stately and formal, and we cannot clothe all the little

minutiæ of our wants and troubles in it. I wish I could describe to you

how I feel when I pray. I feel that I love God,--that is, that I love

Christ,--that I find comfort and happiness in it, and yet it is not

that kind of comfort which would arise from free communication of my

wants and sorrows to a friend. I sometimes wish that the Saviour were

visibly present in this world, that I might go to Him for a solution of

some of my difficulties.... Do you think, my dear brother, that there

is such a thing as so realizing the presence and character of God that

He can supply the place of earthly friends? I really wish to know what

you think of this.... Do you suppose that God really loves sinners

before they come to Him? Some say that we ought to tell them that God

hates them, that He looks on them with utter abhorrence, and that they

must love Him before He will look on them otherwise. Is it right to say

to those who are in deep distress, 'God is interested in you; He feels

for and loves you'?"

Appended to this letter is a short note from Miss Catherine Beecher,

who evidently read the letter over and answered Harriet's questions

herself. She writes: "When the young man came to Jesus, is it not said

that Jesus loved him, though he was unrenewed?"

In April, 1828, Harriet again writes to her brother Edward:--

"I have had more reason to be grateful to that friend than ever

before. He has not left me in all my weakness. It seems to me that

my love to Him is the love of despair. All my communion with Him,

though sorrowful, is soothing. I am painfully sensible of ignorance

and deficiency, but still I feel that I am willing that He should know

all. He will look on all that is wrong only to purify and reform. He

will never be irritated or impatient. He will never show me my faults

in such a manner as to irritate without helping me. A friend to whom I

would acknowledge all my faults must be perfect. Let any one once be

provoked, once speak harshly to me, once sweep all the chords of my

soul out of tune, I never could confide there again. It is only to the

most perfect Being in the universe that imperfection can look and hope

for patience. How strange!... You do not know how harsh and forbidding

everything seems, compared with his character. All through the day in

my intercourse with others, everything has a tendency to destroy the

calmness of mind gained by communion with Him. One flatters me, another

is angry with me, another is unjust to me.

"You speak of your predilections for literature having been a snare to

you. I have found it so myself. I can scarcely think, without tears

and indignation, that all that is beautiful and lovely and poetical

has been laid on other altars. Oh! will there never be a poet with a

heart enlarged and purified by the Holy Spirit, who shall throw all the

graces of harmony, all the enchantments of feeling, pathos, and poetry,

around sentiments worthy of them?... It matters little what service He

has for me.... I do not mean to live in vain. He has given me talents,

and I will lay them at his feet, well satisfied, if He will accept

them. All my powers He can enlarge. He made my mind, and He can teach

me to cultivate and exert its faculties."

The following November she writes from Groton, Conn., to Miss May:--

"I am in such an uncertain, unsettled state, traveling back and

forth, that I have very little time to write. In the first place, on

my arrival in Boston I was obliged to spend two days in talking and

telling news. Then after that came calling, visiting, etc., and then I

came off to Groton to see my poor brother George, who was quite out of

spirits and in very trying circumstances. To-morrow I return to Boston

and spend four or five days, and then go to Franklin, where I spend the

rest of my vacation.

"I found the folks all well on my coming to Boston, and as to my new

brother, James, he has nothing to distinguish him from forty other

babies, except a very large pair of blue eyes and an uncommonly fair

complexion, a thing which is of no sort of use or advantage to a man or

boy.

"I am thinking very seriously of remaining in Groton and taking care of

the female school, and at the same time being of assistance and company

for George. On some accounts it would not be so pleasant as returning

to Hartford, for I should be among strangers. Nothing upon this point

can be definitely decided till I have returned to Boston, and talked to

papa and Catherine."

Evidently papa and Catherine did not approve of the Groton plan, for

in February of the following winter Harriet writes from Hartford to

Edward, who is at this time with his father in Boston:--

"My situation this winter (1829) is in many respects pleasant. I room

with three other teachers, Miss Fisher, Miss Mary Dutton, and Miss

Brigham. Ann Fisher you know. Miss Dutton is about twenty, has a fine

mathematical mind, and has gone as far into that science perhaps as

most students at college. She is also, as I am told, quite learned in

the languages.... Miss Brigham is somewhat older: is possessed of a

fine mind and most unconquerable energy and perseverance of character.

From early childhood she has been determined to obtain an education,

and to attain to a certain standard. Where persons are determined to

be anything, they will be. I think, for this reason, she will make a

first-rate character. Such are my companions. We spend our time in

school during the day, and in studying in the evening. My plan of study

is to read rhetoric and prepare exercises for my class the first half

hour in the evening; after that the rest of the evening is divided

between French and Italian. Thus you see the plan of my employment and

the character of my immediate companions. Besides these, there are

others among the teachers and scholars who must exert an influence

over my character. Miss Degan, whose constant occupation it is to make

others laugh; Mrs. Gamage, her room-mate, a steady, devoted, sincere

Christian.... Little things have great power over me, and if I meet

with the least thing that crosses my feelings, I am often rendered

unhappy for days and weeks.... I wish I could bring myself to feel

perfectly indifferent to the opinions of others. I believe that there

never was a person more dependent on the good and evil opinions of

those around than I am. This desire to be loved forms, I fear, the

great motive for all my actions.... I have been reading carefully the

book of Job, and I do not think that it contains the views of God which

you presented to me. God seems to have stripped a dependent creature

of all that renders life desirable, and then to have answered his

complaints from the whirlwind; and instead of showing mercy and pity,

to have overwhelmed him by a display of his power and justice.... With

the view I received from you, I should have expected that a being who

sympathizes with his guilty, afflicted creatures would not have spoken

thus. Yet, after all, I do believe that God is such a being as you

represent Him to be, and in the New Testament I find in the character

of Jesus Christ a revelation of God as merciful and compassionate; in

fact, just such a God as I need.

"Somehow or another you have such a reasonable sort of way of saying

things that when I come to reflect I almost always go over to your

side.... My mind is often perplexed, and such thoughts arise in it

that I cannot pray, and I become bewildered. The wonder to me is, how

all ministers and all Christians can feel themselves so inexcusably

sinful, when it seems to me we all come into the world in such a way

that it would be miraculous if we did not sin. Mr. Hawes always says in

prayer, 'We have nothing to offer in extenuation of any of our sins,'

and I always think when he says it, that we have everything to offer

in extenuation. The case seems to me exactly as if I had been brought

into the world with such a thirst for ardent spirits that there was

just a possibility, though no hope, that I should resist, and then

my eternal happiness made dependent on my being temperate. Sometimes

when I try to confess my sins, I feel that after all I am more to be

pitied than blamed, for I have never known the time when I have not

had a temptation within me so strong that it was certain I should not

overcome it. This thought shocks me, but it comes with such force, and

so appealingly, to all my consciousness, that it stifles all sense of

sin....

"Sometimes when I read the Bible, it seems to be wholly grounded on

the idea that the sin of man is astonishing, inexcusable, and without

palliation or cause, and the atonement is spoken of as such a wonderful

and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement. Yet if I give up

the Bible I gain nothing, for the providence of God in nature is just

as full of mystery, and of the two I think that the Bible, with all its

difficulties, is preferable to being without it; for the Bible holds

out the hope that in a future world all shall be made plain.... So you

see I am, as Mr. Hawes says, 'on the waves,' and all I can do is to

take the word of God that He does do right and there I rest."

The following summer, in July, she writes to Edward: "I have never

been so happy as this summer. I began it in more suffering than I

ever before have felt, but there is One whom I daily thank for all

that suffering, since I hope that it has brought me at last to rest

entirely in Him. I do hope that my long, long course of wandering and

darkness and unhappiness is over, and that I have found in Him who died

for me all, and more than all, I could desire. Oh, Edward, you can

feel as I do; you can speak of Him! There are few, very few, who can.

Christians in general do not seem to look to Him as their best friend,

or realize anything of his unutterable love. They speak with a cold,

vague, reverential awe, but do not speak as if in the habit of close

and near communion; as if they confided to Him every joy and sorrow and

constantly looked to Him for direction and guidance. I cannot express

to you, my brother, I cannot tell you, how that Saviour appears to me.

To bear with one so imperfect, so weak, so inconsistent, as myself,

implied, long-suffering and patience more than words can express. I

love most to look on Christ as my teacher, as one who, knowing the

utmost of my sinfulness, my waywardness, my folly, can still have

patience; can reform, purify, and daily make me more like himself."

So, after four years of struggling and suffering, she returns to the

place where she started from as a child of thirteen. It has been

like watching a ship with straining masts and storm-beaten sails,

buffeted by the waves, making for the harbor, and coming at last to

quiet anchorage. There have been, of course, times of darkness and

depression, but never any permanent loss of the religious trustfulness

and peace of mind indicated by this letter.

The next three years were passed partly in Boston, and partly in

Guilford and Hartford. Writing of this period of her life to the Rev.

Charles Beecher, she says:--

MY DEAR BROTHER,--The looking over of father's letters

in the period of his Boston life brings forcibly to

my mind many recollections. At this time I was more

with him, and associated in companionship of thought

and feeling for a longer period than any other of my

experience.

In the summer of 1832 she writes to Miss May, revealing her spiritual

and intellectual life in a degree unusual, even for her.

"After the disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to

understand the changes through which this wonderful _ego et me ipse_

has passed.

"The amount of the matter has been, as this inner world of mine has

become worn out and untenable, I have at last concluded to come out of

it and live in the external one, and, as F---- S---- once advised me,

to give up the pernicious habit of meditation to the first Methodist

minister that would take it, and try to mix in society somewhat as

another person would.

"'_Horas non numero nisi serenas._' Uncle Samuel, who sits by me,

has just been reading the above motto, the inscription on a sun-dial

in Venice. It strikes me as having a distant relationship to what I

was going to say. I have come to a firm resolution to count no hours

but unclouded ones, and to let all others slip out of my memory and

reckoning as quickly as possible....

"I am trying to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness towards

everybody. Instead of shrinking into a corner to notice how other

people behave, I am holding out my hand to the right and to the left,

and forming casual or incidental acquaintances with all who will be

acquainted with me. In this way I find society full of interest and

pleasure--a pleasure which pleaseth me more because it is not old and

worn out. From these friendships I expect little; therefore generally

receive more than I expect. From past friendships I have expected

everything, and must of necessity have been disappointed. The kind

words and looks and smiles I call forth by looking and smiling are not

much by themselves, but they form a very pretty flower border to the

way of life. They embellish the day or the hour as it passes, and when

they fade they only do just as you expected they would. This kind of

pleasure in acquaintanceship is new to me. I never tried it before.

When I used to meet persons, the first inquiry was, 'Have they such and

such a character, or have they anything that might possibly be of use

or harm to me?'"

It is striking, the degree of interest a letter had for her.

"Your long letter came this morning. It revived much in my heart.

Just think how glad I must have been this morning to hear from you. I

was glad.... I thought of it through all the vexations of school this

morning.... I have a letter at home; and when I came home from school,

I went leisurely over it.

"This evening I have spent in a little social party,--a dozen or

so,--and I have been zealously talking all the evening. When I

came to my cold, lonely room, there was your letter lying on the

dressing-table. It touched me with a sort of painful pleasure, for it

seems to me uncertain, improbable, that I shall ever return and find

you as I have found your letter. Oh, my dear G----, it is scarcely

well to love friends thus. The greater part that I see cannot move me

deeply. They are present, and I enjoy them; they pass and I forget

them. But those that I love differently; those that I LOVE; and oh,

how much that word means! I feel sadly about them. They may change;

they must die; they are separated from me, and I ask myself why should

I wish to love with all the pains and penalties of such conditions? I

check myself when expressing feelings like this, so much has been said

of it by the sentimental, who talk what they could not have felt. But

it is so deeply, sincerely so in me, that sometimes it will overflow.

Well, there is a heaven,--a heaven,--a world of love, and love after

all is the life-blood, the existence, the all in all of mind."

This is the key to her whole life. She was impelled by love, and did

what she did, and wrote what she did, under the impulse of love. Never

could "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or "The Minister's Wooing" have been written,

unless by one to whom love was the "life-blood of existence, the all in

all of mind." Years afterwards Mrs. Browning was to express this same

thought in the language of poetry.

"But when a soul by choice and conscience doth

Throw out her full force on another soul,

The conscience and the concentration both

Make mere life love. For life in perfect whole

And aim consummated is love in sooth,

As nature's magnet heat rounds pole with pole."

CHAPTER III

CINCINNATI, 1832-1836.

DR. BEECHER CALLED TO CINCINNATI.--THE WESTWARD

JOURNEY.--FIRST LETTER FROM HOME.--DESCRIPTION

OF WALNUT HILLS.--STARTING A NEW SCHOOL.--INWARD

GLIMPSES.--THE SEMI-COLON CLUB.--EARLY IMPRESSIONS OF

SLAVERY.--A JOURNEY TO THE EAST.--THOUGHTS AROUSED BY

FIRST VISIT TO NIAGARA.--MARRIAGE TO PROFESSOR STOWE.

IN 1832, after having been settled for six years over the Hanover

Street Church in Boston, Dr. Beecher received and finally accepted a

most urgent call to become President of Lane Theological Seminary in

Cincinnati. This institution had been chartered in 1829, and in 1831

funds to the amount of nearly $70,000 had been promised to it provided

that Dr. Beecher accepted the presidency. It was hard for this New

England family to sever the ties of a lifetime and enter on so long

a journey to the far distant West of those days; but being fully

persuaded that their duty lay in this direction, they undertook to

perform it cheerfully and willingly. With Dr. Beecher and his wife were

to go Miss Catherine Beecher, who had conceived the scheme of founding

in Cincinnati, then considered the capital of the West, a female

college, and Harriet, who was to act as her principal assistant. In the

party were also George, who was to enter Lane as a student, Isabella,

James, the youngest son, and Miss Esther Beecher, the "Aunt Esther" of

the children.

Before making his final decision, Dr. Beecher, accompanied by his

daughter Catherine, visited Cincinnati to take a general survey of

their proposed battlefield, and their impressions of the city are given

in the following letter written by the latter to Harriet in Boston:--

"Here we are at last at our journey's end, alive and well. We are

staying with Uncle Samuel (Foote), whose establishment I will try and

sketch for you. It is on a height in the upper part of the city, and

commands a fine view of the whole of the lower town. The city does not

impress me as being so very new. It is true everything looks neat and

clean, but it is compact, and many of the houses are of brick and very

handsomely built. The streets run at right angles to each other, and

are wide and well paved. We reached here in three days from Wheeling,

and soon felt ourselves at home. The next day father and I, with three

gentlemen, walked out to Walnut Hills. The country around the city

consists of a constant succession and variety of hills of all shapes

and sizes, forming an extensive amphitheatre. The site of the seminary

is very beautiful and picturesque, though I was disappointed to find

that both river and city are hidden by intervening hills. I never saw

a place so capable of being rendered a paradise by the improvements

of taste as the environs of this city. Walnut Hills are so elevated

and cool that people have to leave there to be sick, it is said. The

seminary is located on a farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres of

fine land, with groves of superb trees around it, about two miles from

the city. We have finally decided on the spot where our house shall

stand in case we decide to come, and you cannot (where running water

or the seashore is wanting) find another more delightful spot for a

residence. It is on an eminence, with a grove running up from the back

to the very doors, another grove across the street in front, and fine

openings through which distant hills and the richest landscapes appear.

"I have become somewhat acquainted with those ladies we shall have

the most to do with, and find them intelligent, New England sort of

folks. Indeed, this is a New England city in all its habits, and its

inhabitants are more than half from New England. The Second Church,

which is the best in the city, will give father a unanimous call to be

their minister, with the understanding that he will give them what time

he can spare from the seminary.

"I know of no place in the world where there is so fair a prospect of

finding everything that makes social and domestic life pleasant. Uncle

John and Uncle Samuel are just the intelligent, sociable, free, and

hospitable sort of folk that everybody likes and everybody feels at

home with.

"The folks are very anxious to have a school on our plan set on foot

here. We can have fine rooms in the city college building, which is

now unoccupied, and everybody is ready to lend a helping hand. As to

father, I never saw such a field of usefulness and influence as is

offered to him here."

This, then, was the field of labor in which the next eighteen years

of the life of Mrs. Stowe were to be passed. At this time her sister

Mary was married and living in Hartford, her brothers Henry Ward and

Charles were in college, while William and Edward, already licensed to

preach, were preparing to follow their father to the West.

[Illustration: THE HOME AT WALNUT HILLS, CINCINNATI.]

Mr. Beecher's preliminary journey to Cincinnati was undertaken in

the early spring of 1832, but he was not ready to remove his family

until October of that year. An interesting account of this westward

journey is given by Mrs. Stowe in a letter sent back to Hartford from

Cincinnati, as follows:--

"Well, my dear, the great sheet is out and the letter is begun. All our

family are here (in New York), and in good health.

"Father is to perform to-night in the Chatham Theatre! 'positively

for the _last_ time this season!' I don't know, I'm sure, as we shall

ever get to Pittsburgh. Father is staying here begging money for the

Biblical Literature professorship; the incumbent is to be C. Stowe.

Last night we had a call from Arthur Tappan and Mr. Eastman. Father

begged $2,000 yesterday, and now the good people are praying him to

abide certain days, as he succeeds so well. They are talking of sending

us off and keeping him here. I really dare not go and see Aunt Esther

and mother now; they were in the depths of tribulation before at

staying so long, and now,

'In the lowest depths, _another_ deep!'

Father is in high spirits. He is all in his own element,--dipping into

books; consulting authorities for his oration; going round here, there,

everywhere; begging, borrowing, and spoiling the Egyptians; delighted

with past success and confident for the future.

"Wednesday. Still in New York. I believe it would kill me dead to live

long in the way I have been doing since I have been here. It is a sort

of agreeable delirium. There's only one thing about it, it is too

_scattering_. I begin to be athirst for the waters of quietness."

Writing from Philadelphia, she adds:--

"Well, we did get away from New York at last, but it was through much

tribulation. The truckman carried all the family baggage to the wrong

wharf, and, after waiting and waiting on board the boat, we were

obliged to start without it, George remaining to look it up. Arrived

here late Saturday evening,--dull, drizzling weather; poor Aunt Esther

in dismay,--not a clean cap to put on,--mother in like state; all of

us destitute. We went, half to Dr. Skinner's and half to Mrs. Elmes's:

mother, Aunt Esther, father, and James to the former; Kate, Bella, and

myself to Mr. Elmes's. They are rich, hospitable folks, and act the

part of Gaius in apostolic times.... Our trunks came this morning.

Father stood and saw them all brought into Dr. Skinner's entry, and

then he swung his hat and gave a 'hurrah,' as any man would whose

wife had not had a clean cap or ruffle for a week. Father does not

succeed very well in opening purses here. Mr. Eastman says, however,

that this is not of much consequence. I saw to-day a notice in the

'Philadelphian' about father, setting forth how 'this distinguished

brother, with his large family, having torn themselves from the

endearing scenes of their home,' etc., etc., 'were going, like Jacob,'

etc.,--a very scriptural and appropriate flourish. It is too much after

the manner of men, or, as Paul says, speaking 'as a fool.' A number of

the pious people of this city are coming here this evening to hold a

prayer-meeting with reference to the journey and its object. For _this_

I thank them."

From Downington she writes:--

"Here we all are,--Noah and his wife and his sons and his daughters,

with the cattle and creeping things, all dropped down in the front

parlor of this tavern, about thirty miles from Philadelphia. If to-day

is a fair specimen of our journey, it will be a very pleasant, obliging

driver, good roads, good spirits, good dinner, fine scenery, and now

and then some 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs;' for with George

on board you may be sure of music of some kind. Moreover, George has

provided himself with a quantity of tracts, and he and the children

have kept up a regular discharge at all the wayfaring people we

encountered. I tell him he is _peppering_ the land with moral influence.

"We are all well; all in good spirits. Just let me give you a peep

into our traveling household. Behold us, then, in the front parlor of

this country inn, all as much at home as if we were in Boston. Father

is sitting opposite to me at this table, reading; Kate is writing a

billet-doux to Mary on a sheet like this; Thomas is opposite, writing

in a little journal that he keeps; Sister Bell, too, has her little

record; George is waiting for a seat that he may produce his paper

and write. As for me, among the multitude of my present friends, my

heart still makes occasional visits to absent ones,--visits full of

pleasure, and full of cause of gratitude to Him who gives us friends.

I have thought of you often to-day, my G. We stopped this noon at a

substantial Pennsylvania tavern, and among the flowers in the garden

was a late monthly honeysuckle like the one at North Guilford. I made

a spring for it, but George secured the finest bunch, which he wore in

his button-hole the rest of the noon.

"This afternoon, as we were traveling, we struck up and sang 'Jubilee.'

It put me in mind of the time when we used to ride along the rough

North Guilford roads and make the air vocal as we went along. Pleasant

times those. Those were blue skies, and that was a beautiful lake and

noble pine-trees and rocks they were that hung over it. But those we

shall look upon 'na mair.'

"Well, my dear, there is a land where we shall not _love_ and _leave_.

Those skies shall never cease to shine, the waters of life we shall

_never_ be called upon _to leave_. We have here no continuing city, but

we seek one to come. In such thoughts as these I desire ever to rest,

and with such words as these let us 'comfort one another and edify one

another.'"

"Harrisburg, Sunday evening. Mother, Aunt Esther, George, and the

little folks have just gathered into Kate's room, and we have just been

singing. Father has gone to preach for Mr. De Witt. To-morrow we expect

to travel sixty-two miles, and in two more days shall reach Wheeling;

there we shall take the steamboat to Cincinnati."

On the same journey George Beecher writes:--

"We had poor horses in crossing the mountains. Our average rate for

the last four days to Wheeling was forty-four miles. The journey,

which takes the mail-stage forty-eight hours, took us eight days.

At Wheeling we deliberated long whether to go on board a boat for

Cincinnati, but the prevalence of the cholera there at last decided

us to remain. While at Wheeling father preached eleven times,--nearly

every evening,--and gave them the Taylorite heresy on sin and decrees

to the highest notch; and what amused me most was to hear him establish

it from the Confession of Faith. It went high and dry, however, above

all objections, and they were delighted with it, even the old school

men, since it had not been christened 'heresy' in their hearing. After

remaining in Wheeling eight days, we chartered a stage for Cincinnati,

and started next morning.

"At Granville, Ohio, we were invited to stop and attend a protracted

meeting. Being in no great hurry to enter Cincinnati till the cholera

had left, we consented. We spent the remainder of the week there, and I

preached five times and father four. The interest was increasingly deep

and solemn each day, and when we left there were forty-five cases of

conversion in the town, besides those from the surrounding towns. The

people were astonished at the doctrine; said they never saw the truth

so plain in their lives."

Although the new-comers were cordially welcomed in Cincinnati, and

everything possible was done for their comfort and to make them feel

at home, they felt themselves to be strangers in a strange land.

Their homesickness and yearnings for New England are set forth by the

following extracts from Mrs. Stowe's answer to the first letter they

received from Hartford after leaving there:--

MY DEAR SISTER (Mary),--The Hartford letter from all and sundry has

just arrived, and after cutting all manner of capers expressive of

thankfulness, I have skipped three stairs at a time up to the study

to begin an answer. My notions of answering letters are according

to the literal sense of the word; not waiting six months and then

scrawling a lazy reply, but sitting down the moment you have read a

letter, and telling, as Dr. Woods says, "How the subject strikes you."

I wish I could be clear that the path of duty lay in talking to you

this afternoon, but as I find a loud call to consider the heels of

George's stockings, I must only write a word or two, and then resume

my darning-needle. You don't know how anxiously we all have watched

for some intelligence from Hartford. Not a day has passed when I have

not been the efficient agent in getting somebody to the post-office,

and every day my heart has sunk at the sound of "no letters." I felt a

tremor quite sufficient for a lover when I saw your handwriting once

more, so you see that in your old age you can excite quite as much

emotion as did the admirable Miss Byron in her adoring Sir Charles. I

hope the consideration and digestion of this fact will have its due

weight in encouraging you to proceed.

The fact of our having received said letter is as yet a state secret,

not to be made known till all our family circle "in full assembly meet"

at the tea-table. Then what an illumination! "How we shall be edified

and fructified," as that old Methodist said. It seems too bad to keep

it from mother and Aunt Esther a whole afternoon, but then I have the

comfort of thinking that we are consulting for their greatest happiness

"on the whole," which is metaphysical benevolence.

So kind Mrs. Parsons stopped in the very midst of her pumpkin pies to

think of us? Seems to me I can see her bright, cheerful face now! And

then those well known handwritings! We _do_ love our Hartford friends

dearly; there can be, I think, no controverting that fact. Kate says

that the word _love_ is used in _six senses_, and I am sure in some one

of them they will all come in. Well, good-by for the present.

Evening. Having finished the last hole on George's black vest, I stick

in my needle and sit down to be sociable. You don't know how coming

away from New England has sentimentalized us all! Never was there

such an abundance of meditation on our native land, on the joys of

friendship, the pains of separation. Catherine had an alarming paroxysm

in Philadelphia which expended itself in "The Emigrant's Farewell."

After this was sent off she felt considerably relieved. My symptoms

have been of a less acute kind, but, I fear, more enduring. There! the

tea-bell rings. Too bad! I was just going to say something bright. Now

to take your letter and run! How they will stare when I produce it!

After tea. Well, we have had a fine time. When supper was about half

over, Catherine began: "We have a dessert that we have been saving all

the afternoon," and then I held up my letter. "See here, this is from

Hartford!" I wish you could have seen Aunt Esther's eyes brighten, and

mother's pale face all in a smile, and father, as I unfolded the letter

and began. Mrs. Parsons's notice of her Thanksgiving predicament caused

just a laugh, and then one or two sighs (I told you we were growing

sentimental!). We did talk some of keeping it (Thanksgiving), but

perhaps we should all have felt something of the text, "How shall we

sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Your praises of Aunt Esther

I read twice in an audible voice, as the children made some noise the

first time. I think I detected a visible blush, though she found at

that time a great deal to do in spreading bread and butter for James,

and shuffling his plate; and, indeed, it was rather a vehement attack

on her humility, since it gave her at least "angelic perfection," if

not "Adamic" (to use Methodist technics). Jamie began his Sunday-school

career yesterday. The superintendent asked him how old he was. "I'm

four years old now, and when it _snows very hard_ I shall be five," he

answered. I have just been trying to make him interpret his meaning;

but he says, "Oh, I said so because I could not think of anything else

to say." By the by, Mary, speaking of the temptations of cities, I

have much solicitude on Jamie's account lest he should form improper

intimacies, for yesterday or day before we saw him parading by the

house with his arm over the neck of a great hog, apparently on the most

amicable terms possible; and the other day he actually got upon the

back of one, and rode some distance. So much for allowing these animals

to promenade the streets, a particular in which Mrs. Cincinnati has

imitated the domestic arrangements of some of her elder sisters, and a

very disgusting one it is.

Our family physician is one Dr. Drake, a man of a good deal of

science, theory, and reputed skill, but a sort of general mark for

the opposition of all the medical cloth of the city. He is a tall,

rectangular, perpendicular sort of a body, as stiff as a poker, and

enunciates his prescriptions very much as though he were delivering

a discourse on the doctrine of election. The other evening he was

detained from visiting Kate, and he sent a very polite, ceremonious

note containing a prescription, with Dr. D.'s compliments to Miss

Beecher, requesting that she would take the inclosed in a little

molasses at nine o'clock precisely.

The house we are at present inhabiting is the most inconvenient,

ill-arranged, good-for-nothing, and altogether to be execrated affair

that ever was put together. It was evidently built without a thought of

a winter season. The kitchen is so disposed that it cannot be reached

from any part of the house without going out into the air. Mother is

actually obliged to put on a bonnet and cloak every time she goes into

it. In the house are two parlors with folding doors between them. The

back parlor has but one window, which opens on a veranda and has its

lower half painted to keep out what little light there is. I need

scarcely add that our landlord is an old bachelor and of course acted

up to the light he had, though he left little enough of it for his

tenants.

* * * * *

During this early Cincinnati life Harriet suffered much from ill-health

accompanied by great mental depression; but in spite of both she

labored diligently with her sister Catherine in establishing their

school. They called it the Western Female Institute, and proposed to

conduct it upon the college plan, with a faculty of instructors. As all

these things are treated at length in letters written by Mrs. Stowe to

her friend, Miss Georgiana May, we cannot do better than turn to them.

In May, 1833, she writes:--

"Bishop Purcell visited our school to-day and expressed himself as

greatly pleased that we had opened such an one here. He spoke of my

poor little geography,[1] and thanked me for the unprejudiced manner

in which I had handled the Catholic question in it. I was of course

flattered that he should have known anything of the book.

"How I wish you could see Walnut Hills. It is about two miles from the

city, and the road to it is as picturesque as you can imagine a road to

be without 'springs that run among the hills.' Every possible variety

of hill and vale of beautiful slope, and undulations of land set off by

velvet richness of turf and broken up by groves and forests of every

outline of foliage, make the scene Arcadian. You might ride over the

same road a dozen times a day untired, for the constant variation of

view caused by ascending and descending hills relieves you from all

tedium. Much of the wooding is beech of a noble growth. The straight,

beautiful shafts of these trees as one looks up the cool green recesses

of the woods seems as though they might form very proper columns for

a Dryad temple. There! Catherine is growling at me for sitting up so

late; so 'adieu to music, moonlight, and you.' I meant to tell you an

abundance of classical things that I have been thinking to-night, but

'woe's me.'

"Since writing the above my whole time has been taken up in the labor

of our new school, or wasted in the fatigue and lassitude following

such labor. To-day is Sunday, and I am staying at home because I think

it is time to take some efficient means to dissipate the illness and

bad feelings of divers kinds that have for some time been growing upon

me. At present there is and can be very little system or regularity

about me. About half of my time I am scarcely alive, and a great part

of the rest the slave and sport of morbid feeling and unreasonable

prejudice. I have everything but good health.

"I still rejoice that this letter will find you in good old

Connecticut--thrice blessed--'oh, had I the wings of a dove' I would be

there too. Give my love to Mary H. I remember well how gently she used

to speak to and smile on that forlorn old daddy that boarded at your

house one summer. It was associating with her that first put into my

head the idea of saying something to people who were not agreeable, and

of saying something when I had nothing to say, as is generally the case

on such occasions."

Again she writes to the same friend: "Your letter, my dear G., I have

just received, and read through three times. Now for my meditations

upon it. What a woman of the world you are grown. How good it would be

for me to be put into a place which so breaks up and precludes thought.

Thought, intense emotional thought, has been my disease. How much good

it might do me to be where I could not but be thoughtless....

"Now, Georgiana, let me copy for your delectation a list of matters

that I have jotted down for consideration at a teachers' meeting to be

held to-morrow night. It runneth as follows. Just hear! 'About quills

and paper on the floor; forming classes; drinking in the entry (cold

water, mind you); giving leave to speak; recess-bell, etc., etc.' 'You

are tired, I see,' says Gilpin, 'so am I,' and I spare you.

"I have just been hearing a class of little girls recite, and telling

them a fairy story which I had to spin out as it went along, beginning

with 'once upon a time there was,' etc., in the good old-fashioned way

of stories.

"Recently I have been reading the life of Madame de Staël and

'Corinne.' I have felt an intense sympathy with many parts of that

book, with many parts of her character. But in America feelings

vehement and absorbing like hers become still more deep, morbid, and

impassioned by the constant habits of self-government which the rigid

forms of our society demand. They are repressed, and they burn inward

till they burn the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes. It seems

to me the intensity with which my mind has thought and felt on every

subject presented to it has had this effect. It has withered and

exhausted it, and though young I have no sympathy with the feelings of

youth. All that is enthusiastic, all that is impassioned in admiration

of nature, of writing, of character, in devotional thought and

emotion, or in the emotions of affection, I have felt with vehement

and absorbing intensity,--felt till my mind is exhausted, and seems

to be sinking into deadness. Half of my time I am glad to remain in a

listless vacancy, to busy myself with trifles, since thought is pain,

and emotion is pain."

During the winter of 1833-34 the young school-teacher became so

distressed at her own mental listlessness that she made a vigorous

effort to throw it off. She forced herself to mingle in society, and,

stimulated by the offer of a prize of fifty dollars by Mr. James Hall,

editor of the "Western Monthly," a newly established magazine, for the

best short story, she entered into the competition. Her story, which

was entitled "Uncle Lot," afterwards republished in the "Mayflower,"

was by far the best submitted, and was awarded the prize without

hesitation. This success gave a new direction to her thoughts, gave her

an insight into her own ability, and so encouraged her that from that

time on she devoted most of her leisure moments to writing.

Her literary efforts were further stimulated at this time by the

congenial society of the Semi-Colon Club, a little social circle that

met on alternate weeks at Mr. Samuel Foote's and Dr. Drake's. The name

of the club originated with a roundabout and rather weak bit of logic

set forth by one of its promoters. He said: "You know that in Spanish

Columbus is called 'Colon.' Now he who discovers a new pleasure is

certainly half as great as he who discovers a new continent. Therefore

if Colon discovered a continent, we who have discovered in this club a

new pleasure should at least be entitled to the name of 'Semi-Colons.'"

So Semi-Colons they became and remained for some years.

At some meetings compositions were read, and at others nothing

was read, but the time was passed in a general discussion of some

interesting topic previously announced. Among the members of the club

were Professor Stowe, unsurpassed in Biblical learning; Judge James

Hall, editor of the "Western Monthly;" General Edward King; Mrs.

Peters, afterwards founder of the Philadelphia School of Design; Miss

Catherine Beecher; Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz; E. P. Cranch; Dr. Drake;

S. P. Chase, and many others who afterwards became prominent in their

several walks of life.

In one of her letters to Miss May, Mrs. Stowe describes one of her

methods for entertaining the members of the Semi-Colon as follows:--

"I am wondering as to what I shall do next. I have been writing a

piece to be read next Monday evening at Uncle Sam's _soirée_ (the

Semi-Colon). It is a letter purporting to be from Dr. Johnson. I have

been stilting about in his style so long that it is a relief to me to

come down to the jog of common English. Now I think of it I will just

give you a history of my campaign in this circle.

"My first piece was a letter from Bishop Butler, written in his

outrageous style of parentheses and foggification. My second a

satirical essay on the modern uses of languages. This I shall send

to you, as some of the gentlemen, it seems, took a fancy to it and

requested leave to put it in the 'Western Magazine,' and so it is in

print. It is ascribed to _Catherine_, or I don't know that I should

have let it go. I have no notion of appearing in _propria personæ_.

"The next piece was a satire on certain members who were getting very

much into the way of joking on the worn-out subjects of matrimony and

old maid and old bachelorism. I therefore wrote a set of legislative

enactments purporting to be from the ladies of the society, forbidding

all such allusions in future. It made some sport at the time. I try not

to be personal, and to be courteous, even in satire.

"But I have written a piece this week that is making me some disquiet.

I did not like it that there was so little that was serious and

rational about the reading. So I conceived the design of writing a _set

of letters_, and throwing them in, as being the letters of a friend.

I wrote a letter this week for the first of the set,--easy, not very

sprightly,--describing an imaginary situation, a house in the country,

a gentleman and lady, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, as being pious, literary,

and agreeable. I threw into the letter a number of little particulars

and incidental allusions to give it the air of having been really a

letter. I meant thus to give myself an opportunity for the introduction

of different subjects and the discussion of different characters in

future letters.

"I meant to write on a great number of subjects in future. Cousin

Elisabeth, only, was in the secret; Uncle Samuel and Sarah Elliot were

not to know.

"Yesterday morning I finished my letter, smoked it to make it look

yellow, tore it to make it look old, directed it and scratched out the

direction, postmarked it with red ink, sealed it and broke the seal,

all this to give credibility to the fact of its being a real letter.

Then I inclosed it in an envelope, stating that it was a part of a

_set_ which had incidentally fallen into my hands. This envelope was

written in a scrawny, scrawly, gentleman's hand.

"I put it into the office in the morning, directed to 'Mrs. Samuel E.

Foote,' and then sent word to Sis that it was coming, so that she

might be ready to enact the part.

"Well, the deception took. Uncle Sam examined it and pronounced, _ex

cathedra_, that it must have been a real letter. Mr. Greene (the

gentleman who reads) declared that it must have come from Mrs. Hall,

and elucidated the theory by spelling out the names and dates which

I had erased, which, of course, he accommodated to his own tastes.

But then, what makes me feel uneasy is that Elisabeth, after reading

it, did not seem to be exactly satisfied. She thought it had too much

sentiment, too much particularity of incident,--she did not exactly

know what. She was afraid that it would be criticised unmercifully.

Now Elisabeth has a tact and quickness of perception that I trust

to, and her remarks have made me uneasy enough. I am unused to being

criticised, and don't know how I shall bear it."

In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her

personal notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into

Kentucky in company with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in

the Western Institute. They visited an estate that afterwards figured

as that of Colonel Shelby in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and here the young

authoress first came into personal contact with the negro slaves of

the South. In speaking, many years afterwards, of this visit, Miss

Dutton said: "Harriet did not seem to notice anything in particular

that happened, but sat much of the time as though abstracted in

thought. When the negroes did funny things and cut up capers, she did

not seem to pay the slightest attention to them. Afterwards, however,

in reading 'Uncle Tom.' I recognized scene after scene of that visit

portrayed with the most minute fidelity, and knew at once where the

material for that portion of the story had been gathered."

At this time, however, Mrs. Stowe was more deeply interested in the

subject of education than in that of slavery, as is shown by the

following extract from one of her letters to Miss May, who was herself

a teacher. She says:--

"We mean to turn over the West by means of _model schools_ in this, its

capital. We mean to have a young lady's school of about fifty or sixty,

a primary school of little girls to the same amount, and then a primary

school for _boys_. We have come to the conclusion that the work of

teaching will never be rightly done till it passes into _female_ hands.

This is especially true with regard to boys. To govern boys by moral

influences requires tact and talent and versatility it requires also

the same division of labor that female education does. But men of tact,

versatility, talent, and piety will not devote their lives to teaching.

They must be ministers and missionaries, and all that, and while there

is such a thrilling call for action in this way, every man who is

merely teaching feels as if he were a Hercules with a distaff, ready

to spring to the first trumpet that calls him away. As for division of

labor, men must have salaries that can support wife and family, and, of

course, a revenue would be required to support a requisite number of

teachers if they could be found.

"Then, if men have more knowledge they have less talent at

communicating it, nor have they the patience, the long-suffering, and

gentleness necessary to superintend the formation of character. We

intend to make these principles understood, and ourselves to set the

example of what females can do in this way. You see that first-rate

talent is necessary for all that we mean to do, especially for the

last, because here we must face down the prejudices of society and we

must have exemplary success to be believed. We want original, planning

minds, and you do not know how few there are among females, and how few

we can command of those that exist."

During the summer of 1834 the young teacher and writer made her first

visit East since leaving New England two years before. Its object

was mainly to be present at the graduation of her favorite brother,

Henry Ward, from Amherst College. The earlier part of this journey

was performed by means of stage to Toledo, and thence by steamer

to Buffalo. A pleasant bit of personal description, and also of

impressions of Niagara, seen for the first time on this journey, are

given in a letter sent back to Cincinnati during its progress. In it

she says of her fellow-travelers:--

"Then there was a portly, rosy, clever Mr. Smith, or Jones, or

something the like; and a New Orleans girl looking like distraction, as

far as dress is concerned, but with the prettiest language and softest

intonations in the world, and one of those faces which, while you say

it isn't handsome, keeps you looking all the time to see what it can

be that is so pretty about it. Then there was Miss B., an independent,

good-natured, do-as-I-please sort of a body, who seemed of perpetual

motion from morning till night. Poor Miss D. said, when we stopped at

night, 'Oh, dear! I suppose Lydia will be fiddling about our room till

morning, and we shall not one of us sleep.' Then, by way of contrast,

there was a Mr. Mitchell, the most gentlemanly, obliging man that ever

changed his seat forty times a day to please a lady. Oh, yes, he could

ride outside,--or, oh, certainly, he could ride inside,--he had no

objection to this, or that, or the other. Indeed, it was difficult to

say what could come amiss to him. He speaks in a soft, quiet manner,

with something of a drawl, using very correct, well-chosen language,

and pronouncing all his words with carefulness; has everything in his

dress and traveling appointments _comme il faut_; and seems to think

there is abundant time for everything that is to be done in this

world, without, as he says, 'any unnecessary excitement.' Before the

party had fully discovered his name he was usually designated as 'the

obliging gentleman,' or 'that gentleman who is so accommodating.' Yet

our friend, withal, is of Irish extraction, and I have seen him roused

to talk with both hands and a dozen words in a breath. He fell into

a little talk about abolition and slavery with our good Mr. Jones, a

man whose mode of reasoning consists in repeating the same sentence at

regular intervals as long as you choose to answer it. This man, who was

finally convinced that negroes were black, used it as an irrefragible

argument to all that could be said, and at last began to deduce from

it that they might just as well be slaves as anything else, and so he

proceeded till all the philanthropy of our friend was roused, and he

sprung up all lively and oratorical and gesticulatory and indignant to

my heart's content. I like to see a quiet man that can be roused."

In the same letter she gives her impressions of Niagara, as follows:--

"I have seen it (Niagara) and yet live. Oh, where is your soul? Never

mind, though. Let me tell, if I can, what is unutterable. Elisabeth,

it is not _like_ anything; it did not look like anything I expected;

it did not look like a waterfall. I did not once think whether it was

high or low; whether it roared or didn't roar; whether it equaled my

expectations or not. My mind whirled off, it seemed to me, in a new,

strange world. It seemed unearthly, like the strange, dim images in the

Revelation. I thought of the great white throne; the rainbow around

it; the throne in sight like unto an emerald; and oh! that beautiful

water rising like moonlight, falling as the soul sinks when it dies,

to rise refined, spiritualized, and pure. That rainbow, breaking out,

trembling, fading, and again coming like a beautiful spirit walking the

waters. Oh, it is lovelier than it is great; it is like the Mind that

made it: great, but so veiled in beauty that we gaze without terror.

I felt as if I could have _gone over_ with the waters; it would be

so beautiful a death; there would be no fear in it. I felt the rock

tremble under me with a sort of joy. I was so maddened that I could

have gone too, if it had gone."

While at the East she was greatly affected by hearing of the death of

her dear friend, Eliza Tyler, the wife of Professor Stowe. This lady

was the daughter of Dr. Bennett Tyler, president of the Theological

Institute of Connecticut, at East Windsor; but twenty-five years of

age at the time of her death, a very beautiful woman gifted with a

wonderful voice. She was also possessed of a well-stored mind and a

personal magnetism that made her one of the most popular members of

the Semi-Colon Club, in the proceedings of which she took an active

interest.

Her death left Professor Stowe a childless widower, and his forlorn

condition greatly excited the sympathy of her who had been his wife's

most intimate friend. It was easy for sympathy to ripen into love,

and after a short engagement Harriet E. Beecher became the wife of

Professor Calvin E. Stowe.

Her last act before the wedding was to write the following note to the

friend of her girlhood, Miss Georgiana May:--

_January 6, 1836._

Well, my dear G., about half an hour more and your old

friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease

to be Hatty Beecher and change to nobody knows who. My

dear, you are engaged, and pledged in a year or two to

encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know how

you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading

and dreading the time, and lying awake all last week

wondering how I should live through this overwhelming

crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel _nothing at all_.

The wedding is to be altogether domestic; nobody

present but my own brothers and sisters, and my old

colleague, Mary Dutton; and as there is a sufficiency

of the ministry in our family we have not even to

call in the foreign aid of a minister. Sister Katy is

not here, so she will not witness my departure from

her care and guidance to that of another. None of my

numerous friends and acquaintances who have taken such

a deep interest in making the connection for me even

know the day, and it will be all done and over before

they know anything about it.

Well, it is really a mercy to have this entire

stupidity come over one at such a time. I should be

crazy to feel as I did yesterday, or indeed to feel

anything at all. But I inwardly vowed that my last

feelings and reflections on this subject should be

yours, and as I have not got any, it is just as well to

tell you _that_. Well, here comes Mr. S., so farewell,

and for the last time I subscribe

Your own

H. E. B.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This geography was begun by Mrs. Stowe during the summer of 1832,

while visiting her brother William at Newport, R. I. It was completed

during the winter of 1833, and published by the firm of Corey, Fairbank

& Webster, of Cincinnati.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY MARRIED LIFE, 1836-1840.

PROFESSOR STOWE'S INTEREST IN POPULAR EDUCATION.--HIS

DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.--SLAVERY RIOTS IN

CINCINNATI.--BIRTH OF TWIN DAUGHTERS.--PROFESSOR

STOWE'S RETURN AND VISIT TO COLUMBUS.--DOMESTIC

TRIALS.--AIDING A FUGITIVE SLAVE.--AUTHORSHIP UNDER

DIFFICULTIES.--A BEECHER ROUND ROBIN.

THE letter to her friend Georgiana May, begun half an hour before her

wedding, was not completed until nearly two months after that event.

Taking it from her portfolio, she adds:--

"Three weeks have passed since writing the above, and my husband

and self are now quietly seated by our own fireside, as domestic as

any pair of tame fowl you ever saw; he writing to his mother, and I

to you. Two days after our marriage we took a wedding excursion, so

called, though we would most gladly have been excused this conformity

to ordinary custom had not necessity required Mr. Stowe to visit

Columbus, and I had too much adhesiveness not to go too. Ohio roads

at this season are no joke, I can tell you, though we were, on the

whole, wonderfully taken care of, and our expedition included as many

pleasures as an expedition at this time of the year _ever_ could.

"And now, my dear, perhaps the wonder to you, as to me, is how this

momentous crisis in the life of such a wisp of nerve as myself has

been transacted so quietly. My dear, it is a wonder to myself. I am

tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look _only_ on the present, and leave the

future with Him who has hitherto been so kind to me. 'Take no thought

for the morrow' is my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose

house there are many mansions provided when these fleeting earthly ones

pass away.

"Dear Georgy, naughty girl that I am, it is a month that I have let

the above lie by, because I got into a strain of emotion in it that I

dreaded to return to. Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five

weeks Mr. Stowe and myself start for New England. He sails the first

of May. I am going with him to Boston, New York, and other places, and

shall stop finally at Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my

intention to return westward."

This reference to her husband as about to leave her relates to his

sailing for Europe to purchase books for Lane Seminary, and also as a

commissioner appointed by the State of Ohio to investigate the public

school systems of the old world. He had long been convinced that higher

education was impossible in the West without a higher grade of public

schools, and had in 1833 been one of the founders in Cincinnati of

"The College of Teachers," an institution that existed for ten years,

and exerted a widespread influence. Its objects were to popularize the

common schools, raise the standard of teachers, and create a demand

for education among the people. Professor Stowe was associated in this

movement with many of the leading intellects of Ohio at that time, and

among them were Albert Pickett, Dr. Drake, Smith Grimke, Archbishop

Purcell, President A. H. McGuffey, Dr. Beecher, Lydia Sigourney,

Caroline Lee Hentz, and others. Their influence finally extended to the

state legislature, and it was concluded to authorize Professor Stowe,

when abroad, to investigate and report upon the common school systems

of Europe, especially Prussia.

He sailed from New York for London in the ship Montreal, Captain

Champlin, on June 8, 1836, and carried with him, to be opened only

after he was at sea, a letter from his wife, from which the following

extract is made:--

"Now, my dear, that you are gone where you are out of the reach of my

care, advice, and good management, it is fitting that you should have

something under my hand and seal for your comfort and furtherance in

the new world you are going to. Firstly, I must caution you to set

your face as a flint against the 'cultivation of indigo,' as Elisabeth

calls it, in any way or shape. Keep yourself from it most scrupulously,

and though you are unprovided with that precious and savory treatise

entitled 'Kemper's Consolations,'[2] yet you can exercise yourself to

recall and set in order such parts thereof as would more particularly

suit your case, particularly those portions wherewith you so much

consoled Kate, Aunt Esther, and your unworthy handmaid, while you yet

tarried at Walnut Hills. But seriously, dear one, you must give more

way to hope than to memory. You are going to a new scene now, and one

that I hope will be full of enjoyment to you. I want you to take the

good of it.

"Only think of all you expect to see: the great libraries and

beautiful paintings, fine churches, and, above all, think of seeing

Tholuck, your great Apollo. My dear, I wish I were a man in your place;

if I wouldn't have a grand time!"

During her husband's absence abroad Mrs. Stowe lived quietly in

Cincinnati with her father and brothers. She wrote occasionally short

stories, articles, and essays for publication in the "Western Monthly

Magazine" or the "New York Evangelist," and maintained a constant

correspondence with her husband by means of a daily journal, which was

forwarded to him once a month. She also assisted her brother, Henry

Ward, who had accepted a temporary position as editor of the "Journal,"

a small daily paper published in the city.

At this time the question of slavery was an exciting one in Cincinnati,

and Lane Seminary had become a hotbed of abolition. The anti-slavery

movement among the students was headed by Theodore D. Weld, one

of their number, who had procured funds to complete his education

by lecturing through the South. While thus engaged he had been so

impressed with the evils and horrors of slavery that he had become

a radical abolitionist, and had succeeded in converting several

Southerners to his views of the subject. Among them was Mr. J. G.

Birney of Huntsville, Alabama, who not only liberated his slaves, but

in connection with Dr. Gamaliel Bailey of Cincinnati founded in that

city an anti-slavery paper called "The Philanthropist." This paper

was finally suppressed, and its office wrecked by a mob instigated by

Kentucky slaveholders, and it is of this event that Mrs. Stowe writes

to her husband as follows:--

"Yesterday evening I spent scribbling for Henry's newspaper (the

'Journal') in this wise: 'Birney's printing-press has been mobbed, and

many of the respectable citizens are disposed to wink at the outrage in

consideration of its moving in the line of their prejudices.'

"I wrote a conversational sketch, in which I rather satirized this

inconsistent spirit, and brought out the effects of patronizing _any_

violation of private rights. It was in a light, sketchy style, designed

to draw attention to a long editorial of Henry's in which he considers

the subject fully and seriously. His piece is, I think, a powerful

one; indeed, he does write very strongly. I am quite proud of his

editorials; they are well studied, earnest, and dignified. I think

he will make a first-rate writer. Both our pieces have gone to press

to-day, with Charles's article on music, and we have had not a little

diversion about our _family newspaper_.

"I thought, when I was writing last night, that I was, like a good

wife, defending one of your principles in your absence, and wanted you

to see how manfully I talked about it. Henry has also taken up and

examined the question of the Seminole Indians, and done it very nobly."

Again:--

"The excitement about Birney continues to increase. The keeper of the

Franklin Hotel was assailed by a document subscribed to by many of his

boarders demanding that Birney should be turned out of doors. He chose

to negative the demand, and twelve of his boarders immediately left,

Dr. F. among the number. A meeting has been convoked by means of a

handbill, in which some of the most respectable men of the city are

invited by name to come together and consider the question whether they

will allow Mr. Birney to continue his paper in the city. Mr. Greene

says that, to his utter surprise, many of the most respectable and

influential citizens gave out that they should go.

"He was one of the number they invited, but he told those who came to

him that he would have nothing to do with disorderly public meetings or

mobs in any shape, and that he was entirely opposed to the whole thing.

"I presume they will have a hot meeting, if they have any at all.

"I wish father were at home to preach a sermon to his church, for many

of its members do not frown on these things as they ought."

"Later: The meeting was held, and was headed by Morgan, Neville, Judge

Burke, and I know not who else. Judge Burnet was present and consented

to their acts. The mob madness is certainly upon this city when men of

sense and standing will pass resolutions approving in so many words of

things done contrary to law, as one of the resolutions of this meeting

did. It quoted the demolition of the tea in Boston harbor as being

authority and precedent.

"A large body, perhaps the majority of citizens, disapprove, but I fear

there will not be public disavowal. Even N. Wright but faintly opposes,

and Dr. Fore has been exceedingly violent. Mr. Hammond (editor of the

'Gazette') in a very dignified and judicious manner has condemned the

whole thing, and Henry has opposed, but otherwise the papers have

either been silent or in favor of mobs. We shall see what the result

will be in a few days.

"For my part, I can easily see how such proceedings may make converts

to abolitionism, for already my sympathies are strongly enlisted for

Mr. Birney, and I hope that he will stand his ground and assert his

rights. The office is fire-proof, and inclosed by high walls. I wish he

would man it with armed men and see what can be done. If I were a man

I would go, for one, and take good care of at least one window. Henry

sits opposite me writing a most valiant editorial, and tells me to tell

you he is waxing mighty in battle."

In another letter she writes:--

"I told you in my last that the mob broke into Birney's press, where,

however, the mischief done was but slight. The object appeared to be

principally to terrify. Immediately there followed a general excitement

in which even good men in their panic and prejudice about abolitionism

forgot that mobs were worse evils than these, talked against Birney,

and winked at the outrage; N. Wright and Judge Burnet, for example.

Meanwhile the turbulent spirits went beyond this and talked of

revolution and of righting things without law that could not be righted

by it. At the head of these were Morgan, Neville, Longworth, Joseph

Graham, and Judge Burke. A meeting was convoked at Lower Market Street

to decide whether they would permit the publishing of an abolition

paper, and to this meeting all the most respectable citizens were by

name summoned.

"There were four classes in the city then: Those who meant to go as

revolutionists and support the mob; those who meant to put down

Birney, but rather hoped to do it without a mob; those who felt ashamed

to go, foreseeing the probable consequence, and yet did not decidedly

frown upon it; and those who sternly and decidedly reprehended it.

"The first class was headed by Neville, Longworth, Graham, etc.; the

second class, though of some numbers, was less conspicuous; of the

third, Judge Burnet, Dr. Fore, and N. Wright were specimens; and in

the last such men as Hammond, Mansfield, S. P. Chase,[3] and Chester

were prominent. The meeting in so many words voted a mob, nevertheless

a committee was appointed to wait on Mr. Birney and ascertain what he

proposed to do; and, strange to tell, men as sensible as Uncle John and

Judge Burnet were so short-sighted as to act on that committee.

"All the newspapers in the city, except Hammond's ('Gazette') and

Henry's (the 'Journal'), were either silent or openly 'mobocratic.' As

might have been expected, Birney refused to leave, and that night the

mob tore down his press, scattered the types, dragged the whole to the

river, threw it in, and then came back to demolish the office.

"They then went to the houses of Dr. Bailey, Mr. Donaldson, and Mr.

Birney; but the persons they sought were not at home, having been

aware of what was intended. The mayor was a silent spectator of these

proceedings, and was heard to say, 'Well, lads, you have done well, so

far; go home now before you disgrace yourselves;' but the 'lads' spent

the rest of the night and a greater part of the next day (Sunday) in

pulling down the houses of inoffensive and respectable blacks. The

'Gazette' office was threatened, the 'Journal' office was to go next;

Lane Seminary and the water-works also were mentioned as probable

points to be attacked by the mob.

"By Tuesday morning the city was pretty well alarmed. A regular corps

of volunteers was organized, who for three nights patrolled the streets

with firearms and with legal warrant from the mayor, who by this time

was glad to give it, to put down the mob even by bloodshed.

"For a day or two we did not know but there would actually be war

to the knife, as was threatened by the mob, and we really saw Henry

depart with his pistols with daily alarm, only we were all too full of

patriotism not to have sent every brother we had rather than not have

had the principles of freedom and order defended.

"But here the tide turned. The mob, unsupported by a now frightened

community, slunk into their dens and were still; and then Hammond,

who, during the few days of its prevalence, had made no comments, but

published simply the Sermon on the Mount, the Constitution of Ohio,

and the Declaration of Independence, without any comment, now came

out and gave a simple, concise history of the mob, tracing it to the

market-house meeting, telling the whole history of the meeting, with

the names of those who got it up, throwing on them and on those who

had acted on the committee the whole responsibility of the following

mob. It makes a terrible sensation, but it 'cuts its way,' and all who

took other stand than that of steady opposition from the first are

beginning to feel the reaction of public sentiment, while newspapers

from abroad are pouring in their reprehensions of the disgraceful

conduct of Cincinnati. Another time, I suspect, such men as Judge

Burnet, Mr. Greene, and Uncle John will keep their fingers out of such

a trap, and people will all learn better than to wink at a mob that

happens to please them at the outset, or in any way to give it their

countenance. Mr. Greene and Uncle John were full of wrath against mobs,

and would not go to the meeting, and yet were cajoled into acting on

that committee in the vain hope of getting Birney to go away and thus

preventing the outrage.

"They are justly punished, I think, for what was very irresolute and

foolish conduct, to say the least."

The general tone of her letters at this time would seem to show that,

while Mrs. Stowe was anti-slavery in her sympathies, she was not a

declared abolitionist. This is still further borne out in a letter

written in 1837 from Putnam, Ohio, whither she had gone for a short

visit to her brother William. In it she says:--

"The good people here, you know, are about half abolitionists. A lady

who takes a leading part in the female society in this place yesterday

called and brought Catherine the proceedings of the Female Anti-Slavery

Convention.

"I should think them about as ultra as to measures as anything that has

been attempted, though I am glad to see a better spirit than marks such

proceedings generally.

"To-day I read some in Mr. Birney's 'Philanthropist.' Abolitionism

being the fashion here, it is natural to look at its papers.

"It does seem to me that there needs to be an _intermediate_ society.

If not, as light increases, all the excesses of the abolition party

will not prevent humane and conscientious men from joining it.

"Pray what is there in Cincinnati to satisfy one whose mind is awakened

on this subject? No one can have the system of slavery brought before

him without an irrepressible desire to _do_ something, and what is

there to be done?"

On September 29, 1836, while Professor Stowe was still absent in

Europe, his wife gave birth to twin daughters, Eliza and Isabella, as

she named them; but Eliza Tyler and Harriet Beecher, as her husband

insisted they should be called, when, upon reaching New York, he was

greeted by the joyful news. His trip from London in the ship Gladiator

had been unusually long, even for those days of sailing vessels, and

extended from November 19, 1836, to January 20, 1837.

During the summer of 1837 Mrs. Stowe suffered much from ill health, on

which account, and to relieve her from domestic cares, she was sent to

make a long visit at Putnam with her brother, Rev. William Beecher.

While here she received a letter from her husband, in which he says:--

"We all of course feel proper indignation at the doings of last General

Assembly, and shall treat them with merited contempt. This alliance

between the old school (Presbyterians) and slaveholders will make more

abolitionists than anything that has been done yet."

In December Professor Stowe went to Columbus with the extended

educational report that he had devoted the summer to preparing; and in

writing from there to his wife he says:--

"To-day I have been visiting the governor and legislators. They

received me with the utmost kindness, and are evidently anticipating

much from my report. The governor communicated it to the legislature

to-day, and it is concluded that I read it in Dr. Hodges' church on

two evenings, to-morrow and the day after, before both houses of the

legislature and the citizens. The governor (Vance) will preside at both

meetings. I like him (the governor) much. He is just such a plain,

simple-hearted, sturdy body as old Fritz (Kaiser Frederick), with more

of natural talent than his predecessor in the gubernatorial chair. For

my year's work in this matter I am to receive $500."

On January 14, 1838, Mrs. Stowe's third child, Henry Ellis, was born.

It was about this time that the famous reunion of the Beecher family

described in Lyman Beecher's "Autobiography" occurred. Edward made a

visit to the East, and when he returned he brought Mary (Mrs. Thomas

Perkins) from Hartford with him. William came down from Putnam, Ohio,

and George from Batavia, New York, while Catherine, Harriet, Henry,

Charles, Isabella, Thomas, and James were already at home. It was the

first time they had ever all met together. Mary had never seen James,

and had seen Thomas but once. The old doctor was almost transported

with joy as they all gathered about him, and his cup of happiness was

filled to overflowing when, the next day, which was Sunday, his pulpit

was filled by Edward in the morning, William in the afternoon, and

George in the evening.

Side by side with this charming picture we have another of domestic

life outlined by Mrs. Stowe's own hand. It is contained in the

following letter, written June 21, 1838, to Miss May, at New Haven,

Conn.:--

MY DEAR, DEAR GEORGIANA,--Only think how long it is

since I have written to you, and how changed I am since

then--the mother of three children! Well, if I have

not kept the reckoning of old times, let this last

circumstance prove my apology, for I have been hand,

heart, and head full since I saw you.