"The Minister's Wooing" was not completed as a serial till December,

1859. Long before its completion Mrs. Stowe received letters from many

interested readers, who were as much concerned for the future of her

"spiritual children," as George Eliot would call them, as if they had

been flesh and blood.

The following letter from Mr. Lowell is given as the most valuable

received by Mrs. Stowe at this time:--

CAMBRIDGE, _February 4, 1859._

MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I certainly did mean to write you

about your story, but only to cry _bravissima!_ with

the rest of the world. I intended no kind of criticism;

deeming it wholly out of place, and in the nature of

a wet-blanket, so long as a story is unfinished. When

I got the first number in MS., I said to Mr. Phillips

that I thought it would be the best thing you had done,

and what followed has only confirmed my first judgment.

From long habit, and from the tendency of my studies, I

cannot help looking at things purely from an æsthetic

point of view, and what _I_ valued in "Uncle Tom" was

the genius, and not the moral. That is saying a good

deal, for I never use the word _genius_ at haphazard,

and always (perhaps, too) sparingly. I am going to be

as frank as I ought to be with one whom I value so

highly. What especially charmed me in the new story

was, that you had taken your stand on New England

ground. You are one of the few persons lucky enough

to be born with eyes in your head,--that is, with

something behind the eyes which makes them of value. To

most people the seeing apparatus is as useless as the

great telescope at the observatory is to me,--something

to stare through with no intelligent result. Nothing

could be better than the conception of your plot (so

far as I divine it), and the painting-in of your

figures. As for "theology," it is as much a part of

daily life in New England as in Scotland, and all I

should have to say about it is this: let it crop out

when it naturally comes to the surface, only don't dig

down to it. A moral aim is a fine thing, but in making

a story an artist is a traitor who does not sacrifice

everything to art. Remember the lesson that Christ gave

us twice over. First, he preferred the useless Mary to

the dish-washing Martha, and next, when that exemplary

moralist and friend of humanity, Judas, objected to

the sinful waste of the Magdalen's ointment, the great

Teacher would rather it should be wasted in an act of

simple beauty than utilized for the benefit of the

poor. Cleopatra was an artist when she dissolved her

biggest pearl to captivate her Antony-public. May I, a

critic by profession, say the whole truth to a woman of

genius? Yes? And never be forgiven? I shall try, and

try to be forgiven, too. In the first place, pay no

regard to the advice of anybody. In the second place,

pay a great deal to mine! A Kilkenny-cattish style

of advice? Not at all. My advice is to follow your

own instincts,--to stick to nature, and to avoid what

people commonly call the "Ideal;" for that, and beauty,

and pathos, and success, all lie in the simply natural.

We all preach it, from Wordsworth down, and we all,

from Wordsworth down, don't practice it. Don't I feel

it every day in this weary editorial mill of mine, that

there are ten thousand people who can write "ideal"

things for one who can see, and feel, and reproduce

nature and character? Ten thousand, did I say? Nay, ten

million. What made Shakespeare so great? Nothing but

eyes and--faith in them. The same is true of Thackeray.

I see nowhere more often than in authors the truth that

men love their opposites. Dickens insists on being

tragic and makes shipwreck.

I always thought (forgive me) that the Hebrew parts of

"Dred" were a mistake. Do not think me impertinent; I

am only honestly anxious that what I consider a very

remarkable genius should have faith in itself. Let

your moral take care of itself, and remember that an

author's writing-desk is something infinitely higher

than a pulpit. What I call "care of itself" is shown

in that noble passage in the February number about the

ladder up to heaven. That is grand preaching and in the

right way. I am sure that "The Minister's Wooing" is

going to be the best of your products hitherto, and I

am sure of it because you show so thorough a mastery

of your material, so true a perception of realities,

without which the ideality is impossible.

As for "orthodoxy," be at ease. Whatever is well done

the world finds orthodox at last, in spite of all the

Fakir journals, whose only notion of orthodoxy seems

to be the power of standing in one position till you

lose all the use of your limbs. If, with your heart and

brain, _you_ are not orthodox, in Heaven's name who is?

If you mean "Calvinistic," no woman could ever be such,

for Calvinism is logic, and no woman worth the name

could ever live by syllogisms. Woman charms a higher

faculty in us than reason, God be praised, and nothing

has delighted me more in your new story than the happy

instinct with which you develop this incapacity of the

lovers' logic in your female characters. Go on just

as you have begun, and make it appear in as many ways

as you like,--that, whatever creed may be true, it is

_not_ true and never will be that man can be saved by

machinery. I can speak with some chance of being right,

for I confess a strong sympathy with many parts of

Calvinistic theology, and, for one thing, believe in

hell with all my might, and in the goodness of God for

all that.

I have not said anything. What could I say? One might

almost as well advise a mother about the child she

still bears under her heart, and say, give it these and

those qualities, as an author about a work yet in the

brain.

Only this I will say, that I am honestly delighted with

"The Minister's Wooing;" that reading it has been one

of my few editorial pleasures; that no one appreciates

your genius more highly than I, or hopes more fervently

that you will let yourself go without regard to this,

that, or t'other. Don't read any criticisms on your

story: believe that you know better than any of us, and

be sure that everybody likes it. That I know. There is

not, and never was, anybody so competent to write a

true New England poem as yourself, and have no doubt

that you are doing it. The native sod sends up the

best inspiration to the brain, and you are as sure of

immortality as we all are of dying,--if you only go on

with entire faith in yourself.

Faithfully and admiringly yours,

J. R. LOWELL.

After the book was published in England, Mr. Ruskin wrote to Mrs.

Stowe:--

"Well, I have read the book now, and I think nothing can be nobler

than the noble parts of it (Mary's great speech to Colonel Burr, for

instance), nothing wiser than the wise parts of it (the author's

parenthetical and under-breath remarks), nothing more delightful than

the delightful parts (all that Virginie says and does), nothing more

edged than the edged parts (Candace's sayings and doings, to wit); but

I do not like the plan of the whole, because the simplicity of the

minister seems to diminish the probability of Mary's reverence for him.

I cannot fancy even so good a girl who would not have laughed at him.

Nor can I fancy a man of real intellect reaching such a period of life

without understanding his own feelings better, or penetrating those of

another more quickly.

"Then I am provoked at nothing happening to Mrs. Scudder, whom I think

as entirely unendurable a creature as ever defied poetical justice at

the end of a novel meant to irritate people. And finally, I think you

are too disdainful of what ordinary readers seek in a novel, under the

name of 'interest,'--that gradually developing wonder, expectation, and

curiosity which makes people who have no self-command sit up till three

in the morning to get to the crisis, and people who have self-command

lay the book down with a resolute sigh, and think of it all the next

day through till the time comes for taking it up again. Still, I know

well that in many respects it was impossible for you to treat this

story merely as a work of literary art. There must have been many facts

which you could not dwell upon, and which no one may judge by common

rules.

"It is also true, as you say once or twice in the course of the work,

that we have not among us here the peculiar religious earnestness you

have mainly to describe.

"We have little earnest formalism, and our formalists are for the most

part hollow, feeble, uninteresting, mere stumbling-blocks. We have the

Simeon Brown species, indeed; and among readers even of his kind the

book may do some good, and more among the weaker, truer people, whom it

will shake like mattresses,--making the dust fly, and perhaps with it

some of the sticks and quill-ends, which often make that kind of person

an objectionable mattress. I write too lightly of the book,--far too

lightly,--but your letter made me gay, and I have been lighter-hearted

ever since; only I kept this after beginning it, because I was ashamed

to send it without a line to Mrs. Browning as well. I do not understand

why you should apprehend (or rather anticipate without apprehension)

any absurd criticism on it. It is sure to be a popular book,--not as

'Uncle Tom' was, for that owed part of its popularity to its dramatic

effect (the flight on the ice, etc.), which I did not like; but as a

true picture of human life is always popular. Nor, I should think,

would any critics venture at all to carp at it.

"The Candace and Virginie bits appear to me, as far as I have yet seen,

the best. I am very glad there is this nice French lady in it: the

French are the least appreciated in general, of all nations, by other

nations.... My father says the book is worth its weight in gold, and he

knows good work."

* * * * *

When we turn from these criticisms and commendations to the inner

history of this period, we find that the work was done in deep sadness

of heart, and the undertone of pathos that forms the dark background

of the brightest and most humorous parts of "The Minister's Wooing"

was the unconscious revelation of one of sorrowful spirit, who, weary

of life, would have been glad to lie down with her arms "round the

wayside cross, and sleep away into a brighter scene."

Just before beginning the writing of "The Minister's Wooing" she sent

the following letter to Lady Byron:--

ANDOVER, _June 30, 1858._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I did long to hear from you at a time

when few knew how to speak, because I knew that you

did know everything that sorrow can teach,--you whose

whole life has been a crucifixion, a long ordeal.

But I believe that the "Lamb," who stands forever in

the midst of the throne "as it had been slain," has

everywhere his followers, those who are sent into the

world, as he was, to suffer for the redemption of

others, and like him they must look to the joy set

before them of redeeming others.

I often think that God called you to this beautiful and

terrible ministry when He suffered you to link your

destiny with one so strangely gifted, so fearfully

tempted, and that the reward which is to meet you, when

you enter within the veil, where you must soon pass,

will be to see the angel, once chained and defiled

within him, set free from sin and glorified, and so

know that to you it has been given, by your life of

love and faith, to accomplish this glorious change.

I think very much on the subject on which you conversed

with me once,--the future state of retribution. It

is evident to me that the spirit of Christianity has

produced in the human spirit a tenderness of love which

wholly revolts from the old doctrine on the subject,

and I observe the more Christ-like any one becomes,

the more impossible it seems for him to accept it; and

yet, on the contrary, it was Christ who said, "Fear

Him that is able to destroy soul and body in hell,"

and the most appalling language on this subject is

that of Christ himself. Certain ideas once prevalent

certainly must be thrown off. An endless infliction for

past sins was once the doctrine that we now generally

reject. The doctrine as now taught is that of an

eternal persistence in evil necessitating eternal

punishment, since evil induces misery by an eternal

nature of things, and this, I fear, is inferable from

the analogies of nature, and confirmed by the whole

implication of the Bible.

Is there any fair way of disposing of the current

of assertion, and the still deeper undercurrent of

implication, on this subject, without one which

loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure

naturalism? But of one thing I am sure,--probation does

not end with this life, and the number of the redeemed

may therefore be infinitely greater than the world's

history leads us to suppose.

The views expressed in this letter certainly throw light on many

passages in "The Minister's Wooing."

The following letter, written to her daughter Georgiana, is introduced

as revealing the spirit in which much of "The Minister's Wooing" was

written:--

_February 12, 1859._

MY DEAR GEORGIE,--Why haven't I written? Because, dear

Georgie, I am like the dry, dead, leafless tree, and

have only cold, dead, slumbering buds of hope on the

end of stiff, hard, frozen twigs of thought, but no

leaves, no blossoms; nothing to send to a little girl

who doesn't know what to do with herself any more than

a kitten. I am cold, weary, dead; everything is a

burden to me.

I let my plants die by inches before my eyes, and do

not water them, and I dread everything I do, and wish

it was not to be done, and so when I get a letter from

my little girl I smile and say, "Dear little puss, I

will answer it;" and I sit hour after hour with folded

hands, looking at the inkstand and dreading to begin.

The fact is, pussy, mamma is tired. Life to you is

gay and joyous, but to mamma it has been a battle in

which the spirit is willing but the flesh weak, and

she would be glad, like the woman in the St. Bernard,

to lie down with her arms around the wayside cross,

and sleep away into a brighter scene. Henry's fair,

sweet face looks down upon me now and then from out

a cloud, and I feel again all the bitterness of the

eternal "No" which says I must never, never, in this

life, see that face, lean on that arm, hear that voice.

Not that my faith in God in the least fails, and that

I do not believe that all this is for good. I do, and

though not happy, I am blessed. Weak, weary as I am, I

rest on Jesus in the innermost depth of my soul, and

am quite sure that there is coming an inconceivable

hour of beauty and glory when I shall regain Jesus,

and he will give me back my beloved one, whom he is

educating in a far higher sphere than I proposed. So do

not mistake me,--only know that mamma is sitting weary

by the wayside, feeling weak and worn, but in no sense

discouraged.

Your affectionate mother,

H. B. S.

So is it ever: when with bold step we press our way into the holy place

where genius hath wrought, we find it to be a place of sorrows. Art

has its Gethsemane and its Calvary as well as religion. Our best loved

books and sweetest songs are those "that tell of saddest thought."

The summer of 1859 found Mrs. Stowe again on her way to Europe, this

time accompanied by all her children except the youngest.

CHAPTER XV.

THE THIRD TRIP TO EUROPE, 1859.

THIRD VISIT TO EUROPE.--LADY BYRON ON "THE

MINISTER'S WOOING."--SOME FOREIGN PEOPLE AND THINGS

AS THEY APPEARED TO PROFESSOR STOWE.--A WINTER IN

ITALY.--THINGS UNSEEN AND UNREVEALED.--SPECULATIONS

CONCERNING SPIRITUALISM.--JOHN RUSKIN.--MRS.

BROWNING.--THE RETURN TO AMERICA.--LETTERS TO DR.

HOLMES.

MRS. STOWE'S third and last trip to Europe was undertaken in the summer

of 1859. In writing to Lady Byron in May of that year, she says: "I

am at present writing something that interests me greatly, and may

interest you, as an attempt to portray the heart and life of New

England, its religion, theology, and manners. Sampson Low & Son are

issuing it in numbers, and I should be glad to know how they strike

you. It is to publish this work complete that I intend to visit England

this summer."

The story thus referred to was "The Minister's Wooing," and Lady

Byron's answer to the above, which is appended, leaves no room for

doubt as to her appreciation of it. She writes:--

LONDON, _May 31, 1859._

DEAR FRIEND,--I have found, particularly as to

yourself, that if I did not answer from the first

impulse, all had evaporated. Your letter came by the

Niagara, which brought Fanny Kemble, to learn the loss

of her _best_ friend, that Miss Fitzhugh whom you saw

at my house.

I have an intense interest in your new novel. More

power in these few numbers than in any of your former

writings, relatively, at least to my own mind. More

power than in "Adam Bede," which is _the_ book of the

season, and well deserves a high place. Whether Mrs.

Scudder will rival Mrs. Poyser, we shall see.

It would amuse you to hear my granddaughter and myself

attempting to foresee the future of the "love story,"

being quite persuaded for the moment that James is

at sea, and the minister about to ruin himself. We

think that she will labor to be in love with the

self-devoting man, under her mother's influence, and

from that hyper-conscientiousness so common with good

girls,--but we don't wish her to succeed. Then what

is to become of her older lover? He--Time will show.

I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to

have conversed about the "Spiritualism." Harris is

lecturing here on religion. I do not hear him praised.

People are looking for helps to believe everywhere but

in life,--in music, in architecture, in antiquity,

in ceremony,--and upon all is written, "Thou shalt

_not_ believe." At least, if this be faith, happier

the unbeliever. I am willing to see _through_ that

materialism, but if I am to rest there, I would rend

the veil.

_June 1._ The day of the packet's sailing. I shall hope

to be visited by you here. The best flowers sent me

have been placed in your little vases, giving life, as

it were, to the remembrance of you, though not to pass

away like them.

Ever yours,

A. T. NOEL BYRON.

The entire family, with the exception of the youngest son, was abroad

at this time. The two eldest daughters were in Paris, having previously

sailed for Havre in March, in company with their cousin, Miss Beecher.

On their arrival in Paris, they went directly to the house of their

old friend, Madame Borione, and soon afterwards entered a Protestant

school. The rest of the family, including Mrs. Stowe, her husband and

youngest daughter, sailed for Liverpool early in August. At about the

same time, Fred Stowe, in company with his friend Samuel Scoville, took

passage for the same port in a sailing vessel. A comprehensive outline

of the earlier portion of this foreign tour is given in the following

letter written by Professor Stowe to the sole member of the family

remaining in America:

CASTLE CHILLON, SWITZERLAND, _September 1, 1859._

DEAR LITTLE CHARLEY,--We are all here except Fred, and

all well. We have had a most interesting journey, of

which I must give a brief account.

We sailed from New York in the steamer Asia, on the 3d

of August [1859], a very hot day, and for ten days it

was the hottest weather I ever knew at sea. We had a

splendid ship's company, mostly foreigners, Italians,

Spaniards, with a sprinkling of Scotch and Irish. We

passed one big iceberg in the night close to, and as

the iceberg wouldn't turn out for us we turned out for

the iceberg, and were very glad to come off so. This

was the night of the 9th of August, and after that we

had cooler weather, and on the morning of the 13th the

wind blew like all possessed, and so continued till

afternoon. Sunday morning, the 14th, we got safe into

Liverpool, landed, and went to the Adelphi Hotel. Mamma

and Georgie were only a little sick on the way over,

and that was the morning of the 13th.

As it was court time, the high sheriff of Lancashire,

Sir Robert Gerauld, a fine, stout, old, gray-haired

John Bull, came thundering up to the hotel at noon

in his grand coach with six beautiful horses with

outriders, and two trumpeters, and twelve men with

javelins for a guard, all dressed in the gayest

manner, and rushing along like Time in the primer, the

trumpeters too-ti-toot-tooing like a house a-fire, and

how I wished my little Charley had been there to see it!

Monday we wanted to go and see the court, so we

went over to St. George's Hall, a most magnificent

structure, that beats the Boston State House all

hollow, and Sir Robert Gerauld himself met us, and said

he would get us a good place. So he took us away round

a narrow, crooked passage, and opened a little door,

where we saw nothing but a great, crimson curtain,

which he told us to put aside and go straight on; and

where do you think we all found ourselves?

Right on the platform with the judges in their big wigs

and long robes, and facing the whole crowded court! It

was enough to frighten a body into fits, but we took it

quietly as we could, and your mamma looked as meek as

Moses in her little, battered straw hat and gray cloak,

seeming to say, "I didn't come here o' purpose."

That same night we arrived in London, and Tuesday

(August 16th), riding over the city, we called at

Stafford House, and inquired if the Duchess of

Sutherland was there. A servant came out and said

the duchess was in and would be very glad to see us;

so your mamma, Georgie, and I went walking up the

magnificent staircase in the entrance hall, and the

great, noble, brilliant duchess came sailing down the

stairs to meet us, in her white morning dress (for it

was only four o'clock in the afternoon, and she was

not yet dressed for dinner), took your mamma into her

great bosom, and folded her up till the little Yankee

woman looked like a small gray kitten half covered in a

snowbank, and kissed and kissed her, and then she took

up little Georgie and kissed her, and then she took my

hand, and didn't kiss me.

Next day we went to the duchess's villa, near Windsor

Castle, and had a grand time riding round the park,

sailing on the Thames, and eating the very best dinner

that was ever set on a table.

We stayed in London till the 25th of August, and then

went to Paris and found H. and E. and H. B. all well

and happy; and on the 30th of August we all went to

Geneva together, and to-day, the 1st of September, we

all took a sail up the beautiful Lake Leman here in the

midst of the Alps, close by the old castle of Chillon,

about which Lord Byron has written a poem. In a day or

two we shall go to Chamouni, and then Georgie and I

will go back to Paris and London, and so home at the

time appointed. Until then I remain as ever,

Your loving father,

C. E. STOWE.

Mrs. Stowe accompanied her husband and daughter to England, where,

after traveling and visiting for two weeks, she bade them good-by and

returned to her daughters in Switzerland. From Lausanne she writes

under date of October 9th:--

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--Here we are at Lausanne, in the

Hotel Gibbon, occupying the very parlor that the

Ruskins had when we were here before. The day I left

you I progressed prosperously to Paris. Reached there

about one o'clock at night; could get no carriage,

and finally had to turn in at a little hotel close by

the station, where I slept till morning. I could not

but think what if anything should happen to me there?

Nobody knew me or where I was, but the bed was clean,

the room respectable; so I locked my door and slept,

then took a carriage in the morning, and found Madame

Borione at breakfast. I write to-night, that you may

get a letter from me at the earliest possible date

after your return.

Instead of coming to Geneva in one day, I stopped

over one night at Macon, got to Geneva the next day

about four o'clock, and to Lausanne at eight. Coming

up-stairs and opening the door, I found the whole

party seated with their books and embroidery about

a centre-table, and looking as homelike and cosy as

possible. You may imagine the greetings, the kissing,

laughing, and good times generally.

From Lausanne the merry party traveled toward Florence by easy stages,

stopping at Lake Como, Milan, Verona, Venice, Genoa, and Leghorn. At

Florence, where they arrived early in November, they met Fred Stowe

and his friend, Samuel Scoville, and here they were also joined by

their Brooklyn friends, the Howards. Thus it was a large and thoroughly

congenial party that settled down in the old Italian city to spend the

winter. From here Mrs. Stowe wrote weekly letters to her husband in

Andover, and among them are the following, that not only throw light

upon their mode of life, but illustrate a marked tendency of her mind:--

FLORENCE, _Christmas Day, 1859._

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--I wish you all a Merry Christmas,

hoping to spend the next one with you.

For us, we are expecting to spend this evening with

quite a circle of American friends. With Scoville and

Fred came L. Bacon (son of Dr. Bacon); a Mr. Porter,

who is to study theology at Andover, and is now making

the tour of Europe; Mr. Clarke, formerly minister at

Cornwall; Mr. Jenkyns, of Lowell; Mr. and Mrs. Howard,

John and Annie Howard, who came in most unexpectedly

upon us last night. So we shall have quite a New

England party, and shall sing Millais' Christmas hymn

in great force. Hope you will all do the same in the

old stone cabin.

Our parlor is all trimmed with laurel and myrtle,

looking like a great bower, and our mantel and table

are redolent with bouquets of orange blossoms and pinks.

_January 16, 1860._

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--Your letter received to-day has

raised quite a weight from my mind, for it shows that

at last you have received all mine, and that thus the

chain of communication between us is unbroken. What

you said about your spiritual experiences in feeling

the presence of dear Henry with you, and, above all,

the vibration of that mysterious guitar, was very

pleasant to me. Since I have been in Florence, I have

been distressed by inexpressible yearnings after

him,--such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of

utter darkness and separation, not only from him but

from all spiritual communion with my God. But I have

become acquainted with a friend through whom I receive

consoling impressions of these things,--a Mrs. E., of

Boston, a very pious, accomplished, and interesting

woman, who has had a history much like yours in

relation to spiritual manifestations.

Without doubt she is what the spiritualists would

regard as a very powerful medium, but being a very

earnest Christian, and afraid of getting led astray,

she has kept carefully aloof from all circles and

things of that nature. She came and opened her mind to

me in the first place, to ask my advice as to what she

had better do; relating experiences very similar to

many of yours.

My advice was substantially to try the spirits whether

they were of God,--to keep close to the Bible and

prayer, and then accept whatever came. But I have

found that when I am with her I receive very strong

impressions from the spiritual world, so that I feel

often sustained and comforted, as if I had been near

to my Henry and other departed friends. This has been

at times so strong as greatly to soothe and support

me. I told her your experiences, in which she was

greatly interested. She said it was so rare to hear of

Christian and reliable people with such peculiarities.

I cannot, however, think that Henry strikes the

guitar,--that must be Eliza. Her spirit has ever

seemed to cling to that mode of manifestation, and if

you would keep it in your sleeping-room, no doubt you

would hear from it oftener. I have been reading lately

a curious work from an old German in Paris who has been

making experiments in spirit-writing. He purports to

describe a series of meetings held in the presence of

fifty witnesses, whose names he gives, in which writing

has come on paper, without the apparition of hands or

any pen or pencil, from various historical people.

He seems a devout believer in inspiration, and the book

is curious for its mixture of all the phenomena, Pagan

and Christian, going over Hindoo, Chinese, Greek, and

Italian literature for examples, and then bringing

similar ones from the Bible.

One thing I am convinced of,--that spiritualism is a

reaction from the intense materialism of the present

age. Luther, when he recognized a personal devil,

was much nearer right. We ought to enter fully, at

least, into the spiritualism of the Bible. Circles and

spiritual jugglery I regard as the lying signs and

wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness;

but there is a real scriptural spiritualism which has

fallen into disuse, and must be revived, and there

are, doubtless, people who, from some constitutional

formation, can more readily receive the impressions of

the surrounding spiritual world. Such were apostles,

prophets, and workers of miracles.

_Sunday evening._ To-day I went down to sit with Mrs.

E. in her quiet parlor. We read in Revelation together,

and talked of the saints and spirits of the just made

perfect, till it seemed, as it always does when with

her, as if Henry were close by me. Then a curious thing

happened. She has a little Florentine guitar which

hangs in her parlor, quite out of reach. She and I

were talking, and her sister, a very matter-of-fact,

practical body, who attends to temporals for her, was

arranging a little lunch for us, when suddenly the bass

string of the guitar was struck loudly and distinctly.

"Who struck that guitar?" said the sister. We both

looked up and saw that no body or thing was on that

side of the room. After the sister had gone out, Mrs.

E. said, "Now, that is strange! I asked last night

that if any spirit was present with us after you came

to-day, that it would try to touch that guitar." A

little while after her husband came in, and as we were

talking we were all stopped by a peculiar sound, as if

somebody had drawn a hand across all the strings at

once. We marveled, and I remembered the guitar at home.

What think you? Have you had any more manifestations,

any truths from the spirit world?

About the end of February the pleasant Florentine circle broke up, and

Mrs. Stowe and her party journeyed to Rome, where they remained until

the middle of April. We next find them in Naples, starting on a six

days' trip to Castellamare, Sorrento, Salerno, Pæstum, and Amalfi; then

up Vesuvius, and to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and afterwards back to

Rome by diligence. Leaving Rome on May 9th, they traveled leisurely

towards Paris, which they reached on the 27th. From there Mrs. Stowe

wrote to her husband on May 28th:--

Since my last letter a great change has taken place

in our plans, in consequence of which our passage for

America is engaged by the Europa, which sails the 16th

of June; so, if all goes well, we are due in Boston

four weeks from this date. I long for home, for my

husband and children, for my room, my yard and garden,

for the beautiful trees of Andover. We will make a very

happy home, and our children will help us.

Affectionately yours,

HATTY.

This extended and pleasant tour was ended with an equally pleasant

homeward voyage, for on the Europa were found Nathaniel Hawthorne and

James T. Fields, who proved most delightful traveling companions.

While Mrs. Stowe fully enjoyed her foreign experiences, she was

so thoroughly American in every fibre of her being that she was

always thankful to return to her own land and people. She could not,

therefore, in any degree reciprocate the views of Mr. Ruskin on this

subject, as expressed in the following letter, received soon after her

return to Andover:--

GENEVA, _June 18, 1860._

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--It takes a great deal, when I am at

Geneva, to make me wish myself anywhere else, and,

of all places else, in London; nevertheless, I very

heartily wish at this moment that I were looking out

on the Norwood Hills, and were expecting you and the

children to breakfast to-morrow.

I had very serious thoughts, when I received your

note, of running home; but I expected that very day an

American friend, Mr. S., who I thought would miss me

more here than you would in London; so I stayed.

What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to

go to America again, after coming to Europe! It seems

to me an inversion of the order of nature. I think

America is a sort of "United" States of Probation, out

of which all wise people, being once delivered, and

having obtained entrance into this better world, should

never be expected to return (sentence irremediably

ungrammatical), particularly when they have been making

themselves cruelly pleasant to friends here. My friend

Norton, whom I met first on this very blue lake water,

had no business to go back to Boston again, any more

than you.

I was waiting for S. at the railroad station on

Thursday, and thinking of you, naturally enough,--it

seemed so short a while since we were there together.

I managed to get hold of Georgie as she was crossing

the rails, and packed her in opposite my mother and

beside me, and was thinking myself so clever, when you

sent that rascally courier for her! I never forgave him

any of his behavior after his imperativeness on that

occasion.

And so she is getting nice and strong? Ask her, please,

when you write, with my love, whether, when she stands

now behind the great stick, one can see much of her on

each side?

So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter

performances? I congratulate you, for I suppose it is

something like "Positively the last appearance on any

stage." What was the use of thinking about _him_? You

should have had your own thoughts about what was to

come after him. I don't mean that Roman Catholicism

will die out so quickly. It will last pretty nearly as

long as Protestantism, which keeps it up; but I wonder

what is to come next. That is the main question just

now for everybody.

So you are coming round to Venice, after all? We shall

all have to come to it, depend upon it, some way or

another. There never has been anything in any other

part of the world like Venetian strength well developed.

I've no heart to write about anything in Europe to you

now. When are you coming back again? Please send me

a line as soon as you get safe over, to say you are

all--wrong, but not lost in the Atlantic.

I don't know if you will ever get this letter, but I

hope you will think it worth while to glance again at

the Denmark Hill pictures; so I send this to my father,

who, I hope, will be able to give it you.

I really am very sorry you are going,--you and yours;

and that is absolute fact, and I shall not enjoy my

Swiss journey at all so much as I might. It was a shame

of you not to give me warning before. I could have

stopped at Paris so easily for you! All good be with

you! Remember me devotedly to the young ladies, and

believe me ever affectionately yours,

J. RUSKIN.

In Rome Mrs. Stowe had formed a warm friendship with the Brownings,

with whom she afterwards maintained a correspondence. The following

letter from Mrs. Browning was written a year after their first meeting.

ROME, 126 VIA FELICE, _14 March, 1861._

MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--Let me say one word first. Your

letter, which would have given me pleasure if I had

been in the midst of pleasures, came to me when little

beside could have pleased. Dear friend, let me say it,

I had had a great blow and loss in England, and you

wrote things in that letter which seemed meant for me,

meant to do me good, and which did me good,--the first

good any letter or any talk did me; and it struck me as

strange, as more than a coincidence, that your first

word since we parted in Rome last spring should come to

me in Rome, and bear so directly on an experience which

you did not know of. I thank you very much.

The earnest stanzas I sent to England for one who

wanted them even more than I. I don't know how people

can keep up their prejudices against spiritualism with

tears in their eyes,--how they are not, at least,

thrown on the "wish that it might be true," and the

investigation of the phenomena, by that abrupt shutting

in their faces of the door of death, which shuts them

out from the sight of their beloved. My tendency is to

beat up against it like a crying child. Not that this

emotional impulse is the best for turning the key and

obtaining safe conclusions,--no. I did not write before

because I always do shrink from touching my own griefs,

one feels at first so sore that nothing but stillness

is borne. It is only after, when one is better, that

one can express one's self at all. This is so with me,

at least, though perhaps it ought not to be so with a

poet.

If you saw my "De Profundis" you must understand that

it was written nearly twenty years ago, and referred

to what went before. Mr. Howard's affliction made me

think of the MS. (in reference to a sermon of Dr.

Beecher's in the "Independent"), and I pulled it out

of a secret place and sent it to America, not thinking

that the publication would fall in so nearly with a new

grief of mine as to lead to misconceptions. In fact the

poem would have been an exaggeration in that case, and

unsuitable in other respects.

It refers to the greatest affliction of my life,--the

only time when I felt _despair_,--written a year after

or more. Forgive all these reticences. My husband calls

me "peculiar" in some things,--peculiarly _lâche_,

perhaps. I can't articulate some names, or speak of

certain afflictions;--no, not to _him_,--not after all

these years! It's a sort of _dumbness_ of the soul.

Blessed are those who can speak, I say. But don't you

see from this how I must want "spiritualism" above most

persons?

Now let me be ashamed of this egotism, together with

the rest of the weakness obtruded on you here, when I

should rather have congratulated you, my dear friend,

on the great crisis you are passing through in America.

If the North is found noble enough to stand fast on

the moral question, whatever the loss or diminution of

territory, God and just men will see you greater and

more glorious as a nation.

I had much anxiety for you after the Seward and Adams

speeches, but the danger seems averted by that fine

madness of the South which seems judicial. The tariff

movement we should regret deeply (and do, some of us),

only I am told it was wanted in order to persuade

those who were less accessible to moral argument. It's

eking out the holy water with ditch water. If the Devil

flees before it, even so, let us be content. How you

must feel, _you_ who have done so much to set this

accursed slavery in the glare of the world, convicting

it of hideousness! They should raise a statue to you in

America and elsewhere.

Meanwhile I am reading you in the "Independent," sent

to me by Mr. Tilton, with the greatest interest. Your

new novel opens beautifully.[14]

Do write to me and tell me of yourself and the subjects

which interest us both. It seems to me that our Roman

affairs may linger a little (while the Papacy bleeds

slowly to death in its finances) on account of this

violent clerical opposition in France. Otherwise we

were prepared for the fall of the house any morning.

Prince Napoleon's speech represents, with whatever

slight discrepancy, the inner mind of the emperor. It

occupied seventeen columns of the "Moniteur" and was

magnificent. Victor Emmanuel wrote to thank him for

it in the name of Italy, and even the English papers

praised it as "a masterly exposition of the policy of

France." It is settled that we shall wait for Venice.

It will not be for long. Hungary is _only_ waiting,

and even in the ashes of Poland there are flickering

sparks. Is it the beginning of the restitution of all

things?

Here in Rome there are fewer English than usual, and

more empty houses. There is a new story every morning,

and nobody to cut off the head of the Scheherazade.

Yesterday the Pope was going to Venice directly, and,

the day before, fixed the hour for Victor Emmanuel's

coming, and the day before _that_ brought a letter from

Cavour to Antonelli about sweeping the streets clean

for the feet of the king. The poor Romans live on these

stories, while the Holy Father and king of Naples meet

holding one another's hands, and cannot speak for sobs.

The little queen, however, is a heroine in her way and

from her point of view, and when she drives about in a

common fiacre, looking very pretty under her only crown

left of golden hair, one must feel sorry that she was

not born and married nearer to holy ground. My husband

prays you to remember him, and I ask your daughters to

remember both of us. Our boy rides his pony and studies

under his abbé, and keeps a pair of red cheeks, thank

God.

I ought to send you more about the society in Rome, but

I have lived much alone this winter, and have little to

tell you. Dr. Manning and Mr. De Vere stay away, not

bearing, perhaps, to see the Pope in his agony.

Your ever affectionate friend,

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

Soon after her return to America Mrs. Stowe began a correspondence with

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, which opened the way for the warm friendship

that has stood the test of years. Of this correspondence the two

following letters, written about this time, are of attention.

ANDOVER, _September 9, 1860._

DEAR DR. HOLMES,--I have had an impulse upon me for

a long time to write you a line of recognition and

sympathy, in response to those that reached me monthly

in your late story in the "Atlantic" ("Elsie Venner").

I know not what others may think of it, since I have

seen nobody since my return; but to me it is of deeper

and broader interest than anything you have done

yet, and I feel an intense curiosity concerning that

underworld of thought from which like bubbles your

incidents and remarks often seem to burst up. The

foundations of moral responsibility, the interlacing

laws of nature and spirit, and their relations to us

here and hereafter, are topics which I ponder more

and more, and on which only one medically educated

can write _well_. I think a course of medical study

ought to be required of all ministers. How I should

like to talk with you upon the strange list of topics

suggested in the schoolmaster's letter! They are bound

to agitate the public mind more and more, and it is of

the chiefest importance to learn, if we can, to think

soundly and wisely of them. Nobody can be a sound

theologian who has not had his mind drawn to think with

reverential fear on these topics.

Allow me to hint that the monthly numbers are not

long enough. Get us along a little faster. You must

work this well out. Elaborate and give us all the

particulars. Old Sophie is a jewel; give us more of

her. I have seen her. Could you ever come out and spend

a day with us? The professor and I would so like to

have a talk on some of these matters with you!

Very truly yours,

H. B. STOWE.

ANDOVER, _February 18, 1861._

DEAR DOCTOR,--I was quite indignant to hear yesterday

of the very unjust and stupid attack upon you in the

----. Mr. Stowe has written to them a remonstrance

which I hope they will allow to appear as he wrote it,

and over his name. He was well acquainted with your

father and feels the impropriety of the thing.

But, my dear friend, in being shocked, surprised,

or displeased personally with such things, we must

consider other people's natures. A man or woman may

wound us to the quick without knowing it, or meaning to

do so, simply through difference of fibre. As Cowper

hath somewhere happily said:--

"Oh, why are farmers made so coarse,

Or clergy made so fine?

A kick that scarce might move a horse

Might kill a sound divine."

When once people get ticketed, and it is known that one

is a hammer, another a saw, and so on, if we happen to

get a taste of their quality we cannot help being hurt,

to be sure, but we shall not take it ill of them. There

be pious, well-intending beetles, wedges, hammers,

saws, and all other kinds of implements, good--except

where they come in the way of our fingers--and from a

beetle you can have only a beetle's gospel.

I have suffered in my day from this sort of handling,

which is worse for us women, who must never answer, and

once when I wrote to Lady Byron, feeling just as you

do about some very stupid and unkind things that had

invaded my personality, she answered me, "Words do not

kill, my dear, or I should have been dead long ago."

There is much true religion and kindness in the world,

after all, and as a general thing he who has struck a

nerve would be very sorry for it if he only knew what

he had done.

I would say nothing, if I were you. There is eternal

virtue in silence.

I must express my pleasure with the closing chapters of

"Elsie." They are nobly and beautifully done, and quite

come up to what I wanted to complete my idea of her

character. I am quite satisfied with it now. It is an

artistic creation, original and beautiful.

Believe me to be your true friend,

H. B. STOWE.

FOOTNOTE:

[14] _The Pearl of Orr's Island._

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-1865.

THE OUTBREAK OF CIVIL WAR.--MRS. STOWE'S SON

ENLISTS.--THANKSGIVING DAY IN WASHINGTON.--THE

PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION.--REJOICINGS IN

BOSTON.--FRED STOWE AT GETTYSBURG.--LEAVING ANDOVER

AND SETTLING IN HARTFORD.--A REPLY TO THE WOMEN OF

ENGLAND.--LETTERS FROM JOHN BRIGHT, ARCHBISHOP WHATELY,

AND NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

IMMEDIATELY after Mrs. Stowe's return from Europe, it became only too

evident that the nation was rapidly and inevitably drifting into all

the horrors of civil war. To use her own words: "It was God's will

that this nation--the North as well as the South--should deeply and

terribly suffer for the sin of consenting to and encouraging the great

oppressions of the South; that the ill-gotten wealth, which had arisen

from striking hands with oppression and robbery, should be paid back

in the taxes of war; that the blood of the poor slave, that had cried

so many years from the ground in vain, should be answered by the blood

of the sons from the best hearthstones through all the free States;

that the slave mothers, whose tears nobody regarded, should have with

them a great company of weepers, North and South,--Rachels weeping for

their children and refusing to be comforted; that the free States, who

refused to listen when they were told of lingering starvation, cold,

privation, and barbarous cruelty, as perpetrated on the slave, should

have lingering starvation, cold, hunger, and cruelty doing its work

among their own sons, at the hands of these slave-masters, with whose

sins our nation had connived."

Mrs. Stowe spoke from personal experience, having seen her own son go

forth in the ranks of those who first responded to the President's

call for volunteers. He was one of the first to place his name on the

muster-roll of Company A of the First Massachusetts Volunteers. While

his regiment was still at the camp in Cambridge, Mrs. Stowe was called

to Brooklyn on important business, from which place she writes to her

husband under the date June 11, 1861:--

"Yesterday noon Henry (Ward Beecher) came in, saying that the

Commonwealth, with the First (Massachusetts) Regiment on board, had

just sailed by. Immediately I was of course eager to get to Jersey City

to see Fred. Sister Eunice said she would go with me, and in a few

minutes she, Hatty, Sam Scoville, and I were in a carriage, driving

towards the Fulton Ferry. Upon reaching Jersey City we found that the

boys were dining in the depot, an immense building with many tracks

and platforms. It has a great cast-iron gallery just under the roof,

apparently placed there with prophetic instinct of these times. There

was a crowd of people pressing against the grated doors, which were

locked, but through which we could see the soldiers. It was with great

difficulty that we were at last permitted to go inside, and that object

seemed to be greatly aided by a bit of printed satin that some man gave

Mr. Scoville.

"When we were in, a vast area of gray caps and blue overcoats was

presented. The boys were eating, drinking, smoking, talking, singing,

and laughing. Company A was reported to be here, there, and everywhere.

At last S. spied Fred in the distance, and went leaping across the

tracks towards him. Immediately afterwards a blue-overcoated figure

bristling with knapsack and haversack, and looking like an assortment

of packages, came rushing towards us.

"Fred was overjoyed, you may be sure, and my first impulse was to wipe

his face with my handkerchief before I kissed him. He was in high

spirits, in spite of the weight of blue overcoat, knapsack, etc., etc.,

that he would formerly have declared intolerable for half an hour.

I gave him my handkerchief and Eunice gave him hers, with a sheer

motherly instinct that is so strong within her, and then we filled his

haversack with oranges.

"We stayed with Fred about two hours, during which time the gallery

was filled with people, cheering and waving their handkerchiefs. Every

now and then the band played inspiriting airs, in which the soldiers

joined with hearty voices. While some of the companies sang, others

were drilled, and all seemed to be having a general jollification. The

meal that had been provided was plentiful, and consisted of coffee,

lemonade, sandwiches, etc.

"On our way out we were introduced to the Rev. Mr. Cudworth, chaplain

of the regiment. He is a fine-looking man, with black eyes and hair,

set off by a white havelock. He wore a sword, and Fred, touching it,

asked, 'Is this for use or ornament, sir?'

"'Let me see you in danger,' answered the chaplain, 'and you'll find

out.'

"I said to him I supposed he had had many an one confided to his kind

offices, but I could not forbear adding one more to the number. He

answered, 'You may rest assured, Mrs. Stowe, I will do all in my power.'

"We parted from Fred at the door. He said he felt lonesome enough

Saturday evening on the Common in Boston, where everybody was taking

leave of somebody, and he seemed to be the only one without a friend,

but that this interview made up for it all.

"I also saw young Henry. Like Fred he is mysteriously changed, and

wears an expression of gravity and care. So our boys come to manhood

in a day. Now I am watching anxiously for the evening paper to tell me

that the regiment has reached Washington in safety."

In November, 1862, Mrs. Stowe was invited to visit Washington, to be

present at a great thanksgiving dinner provided for the thousands

of fugitive slaves who had flocked to the city. She accepted the

invitation the more gladly because her son's regiment was encamped

near the city, and she should once more see him. He was now Lieutenant

Stowe, having honestly won his promotion by bravery on more than one

hard-fought field. She writes of this visit:--

Imagine a quiet little parlor with a bright coal fire,

and the gaslight burning above a centre-table, about

which Hatty, Fred, and I are seated. Fred is as happy

as happy can be to be with mother and sister once more.

All day yesterday we spent in getting him. First we had

to procure a permit to go to camp, then we went to the

fort where the colonel is, and then to another where

the brigadier-general is stationed. I was so afraid

they would not let him come with us, and was never

happier than when at last he sprang into the carriage

free to go with us for forty-eight hours. "Oh!" he

exclaimed in a sort of rapture, "this pays for a year

and a half of fighting and hard work!"

We tried hard to get the five o'clock train out to

Laurel, where J.'s regiment is stationed, as we wanted

to spend Sunday all together; but could not catch it,

and so had to content ourselves with what we could

have. I have managed to secure a room for Fred next

ours, and feel as though I had my boy at home once

more. He is looking very well, has grown in thickness,

and is as loving and affectionate as a boy can be.

I have just been writing a pathetic appeal to the

brigadier-general to let him stay with us a week. I

have also written to General Buckingham in regard to

changing him from the infantry, in which there seems to

be no prospect of anything but garrison duty, to the

cavalry, which is full of constant activity.

General B. called on us last evening. He seemed to

think the prospect before us was, at best, of a long

war. He was the officer deputed to carry the order

to General McClellan relieving him of command of the

army. He carried it to him in his tent about twelve

o'clock at night. Burnside was there. McClellan said it

was very unexpected, but immediately turned over the

command. I said I thought he ought to have expected

it after having so disregarded the President's order.

General B. smiled and said he supposed McClellan had

done that so often before that he had no idea any

notice would be taken of it this time.

Now, as I am very tired, I must close, and remain as

always, lovingly yours,

HATTY.

During the darkest and most bitter period of the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe

penned the following letter to the Duchess of Argyll:--

ANDOVER, _July 31, 1863._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your lovely, generous letter was a

real comfort to me, and reminded me that a year--and,

alas! a whole year--had passed since I wrote to your

dear mother, of whom I think so often as one of God's

noblest creatures, and one whom it comforts me to think

is still in our world.

_So many_, good and noble, have passed away whose

friendship was such a pride, such a comfort to me!

Your noble father, Lady Byron, Mrs. Browning,--their

spirits are as perfect as ever passed to the world of

light. I grieve about your dear mother's eyes. I have

thought about you all, many a sad, long, quiet hour,

as I have lain on my bed and looked at the pictures

on my wall; one, in particular, of the moment before

the Crucifixion, which is the first thing I look at

when I wake in the morning. I think how suffering is,

and must be, the portion of noble spirits, and no lot

so brilliant that must not first or last dip into the

shadow of that eclipse. Prince Albert, too, the ideal

knight, the _Prince Arthur_ of our times, the good,

wise, steady head and heart we--that is, our world, we

Anglo-Saxons--need so much. And the Queen! yes, I have

thought of and prayed for her, too. But could a woman

hope to have _always_ such a heart, and yet ever be

weaned from earth "all this and heaven, too"?

Under my picture I have inscribed, "Forasmuch as Christ

also hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves

with the same mind."

This year has been one long sigh, one smothering sob,

to me. And I thank God that we have as yet one or two

generous friends in England who understand and feel for

our cause.

The utter failure of Christian, anti-slavery England,

in those _instincts_ of a right heart which always can

see where the cause of liberty lies, has been as bitter

a grief to me as was the similar prostration of all our

American religious people in the day of the Fugitive

Slave Law. Exeter Hall is a humbug, a pious humbug,

like the rest. Lord Shaftesbury. Well, let him go; he

is a Tory, and has, after all, the instincts of his

class. But I saw _your_ duke's speech to his tenants!

That was grand! If _he_ can see these things, they are

to be seen, and why cannot Exeter Hall see them? It is

simply the want of the honest heart.

Why do the horrible barbarities of _Southern_ soldiers

cause no comment? Why is the sympathy of the British

Parliament reserved for the poor women of New Orleans,

deprived of their elegant amusement of throwing vitriol

into soldiers' faces, and practicing indecencies

inconceivable in any other state of society? Why is

_all_ expression of sympathy on the _Southern_ side?

There is a class of women in New Orleans whom Butler

protects from horrible barbarities, that up to his day

have been practiced on them by these so-called New

Orleans ladies, but British sympathy has ceased to

notice _them_. You see I am bitter. I am. You wonder

at my brother. He is a man, and feels a thousand

times more than I can, and deeper than all he ever

has expressed, the spirit of these things. You must

not wonder, therefore. Remember it is the moment when

every nerve is vital; it is our agony; we tread the

winepress alone, and they whose cheap rhetoric has been

for years pushing us into it now desert _en masse_. I

thank my God I always loved and trusted most those who

now _do_ stand true,--your family, your duke, yourself,

your noble mother. I have lost Lady Byron. Her great

heart, her eloquent letters, would have been such a joy

to me! And Mrs. Browning, oh such a heroic woman! None

of her poems can express what _she_ was,--so grand, so

comprehending, so strong, with such inspired insight!

She stood by Italy through its crisis. Her heart was

with all good through the world. Your prophecy that

we shall come out better, truer, stronger, will, I am

confident, be true, and it was worthy of yourself and

your good lineage.

Slavery will be sent out by this agony. We are only

in the throes and ravings of the exorcism. The roots

of the cancer have gone everywhere, but they must

die--will. Already the Confiscation Bill is its natural

destruction. Lincoln has been too slow. He should have

done it sooner, and with an impulse, but come it must,

come it will. Your mother will live to see slavery

abolished, _unless_ England forms an alliance to hold

it up. England is the great reliance of the slave-power

to-day, and next to England the faltering weakness of

the North, which palters and dare not fire the great

broadside for fear of hitting friends. These things

_must_ be done, and sudden, sharp remedies are _mercy_.

Just now we are in a dark hour; but whether God be with

us or not, I know He is with the slave, and with his

redemption will come the solution of our question. I

have long known _what_ and who we had to deal with

in this, for when I wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" I had

letters addressed to me showing a state of society

perfectly _inconceivable_. That they violate graves,

make drinking-cups of skulls, that _ladies_ wear cameos

cut from bones, and treasure scalps, is no surprise

to me. If I had written what I knew of the obscenity,

brutality, and cruelty of that society down there,

society would have cast out the books; and it is for

their interest, the interest of the whole race in the

South, that we should succeed. I wish _them_ no ill,

feel no bitterness; they have had a Dahomian education

which makes them savage. We don't expect any more of

_them_, but if slavery is destroyed, one generation of

education and liberty will efface these stains. They

will come to themselves, these States, and be glad it

is over.

I am using up my paper to little purpose. Please give

my best love to your dear mother. I am going to write

to her. If I only could have written the things I have

often thought! I am going to put on her bracelet, with

the other dates, that of the abolition of slavery in

the District of Columbia. Remember me to the duke and

to your dear children. My husband desires his best

regards, my daughters also.

I am lovingly ever yours,

H. B. STOWE.

Later in the year we hear again from her son in the army, and this

time the news comes in a chaplain's letter from the terrible field of

Gettysburg. He writes:--

GETTYSBURG, PA., _Saturday, July 11_, 9.30 P. M.

MRS. H. B. STOWE:

_Dear Madam_,--Among the thousands of wounded and dying

men on this war-scarred field, I have just met with

your son, Captain Stowe. If you have not already heard

from him, it may cheer your heart to know that he is

in the hands of good, kind friends. He was struck by

a fragment of a shell, which entered his right ear.

He is quiet and cheerful, longs to see some member

of his family, and is, above all, anxious that they

should hear from him as soon as possible. I assured him

I would write at once, and though I am wearied by a

week's labor here among scenes of terrible suffering,

I know that, to a mother's anxious heart, even a hasty

scrawl about her boy will be more than welcome.

May God bless and sustain you in this troubled time!

Yours with sincere sympathy,

J. M. CROWELL.

The wound in the head was not fatal, and after weary months of intense

suffering it imperfectly healed; but the cruel iron had too nearly

touched the brain of the young officer, and never again was he what he

had been. Soon after the war his mother bought a plantation in Florida,

largely in the hope that the out-of-door life connected with its

management might be beneficial to her afflicted son. He remained on it

for several years, and then, being possessed with the idea that a long

sea voyage would do him more good than anything else, sailed from New

York to San Francisco around the Horn. That he reached the latter city

in safety is known; but that is all. No word from him or concerning

him has ever reached the loving hearts that have waited so anxiously

for it, and of his ultimate fate nothing is known.

Meantime, the year 1863 was proving eventful in many other ways to Mrs.

Stowe. In the first place, the long and pleasant Andover connection of

Professor Stowe was about to be severed, and the family were to remove

to Hartford, Conn. They were to occupy a house that Mrs. Stowe was

building on the bank of Park River. It was erected in a grove of oaks

that had in her girlhood been one of Mrs. Stowe's favorite resorts.

Here, with her friend Georgiana May, she had passed many happy hours,

and had often declared that if she were ever able to build a house, it

should stand in that very place. Here, then, it was built in 1863, and

as the location was at that time beyond the city limits, it formed,

with its extensive, beautiful groves, a particularly charming place of

residence. Beautiful as it was, however, it was occupied by the family

for only a few years. The needs of the growing city caused factories to

spring up in the neighborhood, and to escape their encroachments the

Stowes in 1873 bought and moved into the house on Forest Street that

has ever since been their Northern home. Thus the only house Mrs. Stowe

ever planned and built for herself has been appropriated to the use of

factory hands, and is now a tenement occupied by several families.

Another important event of 1863 was the publishing of that charming

story of Italy, "Agnes of Sorrento," which had been begun nearly four

years before. This story suggested itself to Mrs. Stowe while she

was abroad during the winter of 1859-60. The origin of the story is

as follows: One evening, at a hotel in Florence, it was proposed that

the various members of the party should write short stories and read

them for the amusement of the company. Mrs. Stowe took part in this

literary contest, and the result was the first rough sketch of "Agnes

of Sorrento." From this beginning was afterwards elaborated "Agnes of

Sorrento," with a dedication to Annie Howard, who was one of the party.

Not the least important event of the year to Mrs. Stowe, and the world

at large through her instrumentality, was the publication in the

"Atlantic Monthly" of her reply to the address of the women of England.

The "reply" is substantially as follows:--

_January, 1863._

A REPLY

To "The affectionate and Christian Address of many

thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to

their Sisters, the Women of the United States of

America," (signed by)

ANNA MARIA BEDFORD (Duchess of Bedford).

OLIVIA CECILIA COWLEY (Countess Cowley).

CONSTANCE GROSVENOR (Countess Grosvenor).

HARRIET SUTHERLAND (Duchess of Sutherland).

ELIZABETH ARGYLL (Duchess of Argyll).

ELIZABETH FORTESCUE (Countess Fortescue).

EMILY SHAFTESBURY (Countess of Shaftesbury).

MARY RUTHVEN (Baroness Ruthven).

M. A. MILMAN (wife of Dean of St. Paul).

R. BUXTON (daughter of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton).

CAROLINE AMELIA OWEN (wife of Professor Owen).

MRS. CHARLES WINDHAM.

C. A. HATHERTON (Baroness Hatherton).

ELIZABETH DUCIE (Countess Dowager of Ducie).

CECILIA PARKE (wife of Baron Parke).

MARY ANN CHALLIS (wife of the Lord Mayor of London).

E. GORDON (Duchess Dowager of Gordon).

ANNA M. L. MELVILLE (daughter of Earl of Leven and Melville).

GEORGIANA EBRINGTON (Lady Ebrington).

A. HILL (Viscountess Hill).

MRS. GOBAT (wife of Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem).

E. PALMERSTON (Viscountess Palmerston).

(And others).

SISTERS,--More than eight years ago you sent to us in

America a document with the above heading. It is as

follows:--

"A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely

believe, a common cause, urge us, at the present

moment, to address you on the subject of that system of

negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and,

even under kindly disposed masters, with such frightful

results, in many of the vast regions of the Western

world.

"We will not dwell on the ordinary topics,--on the

progress of civilization, on the advance of freedom

everywhere, on the rights and requirements of the

nineteenth century; but we appeal to you very seriously

to reflect, and to ask counsel of God, how far such a

state of things is in accordance with his Holy Word,

the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the

pure and merciful spirit of the Christian religion.

We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the

dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of

that long-established system. We see and admit the

necessity of preparation for so great an event; but,

in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot

be silent on those laws of your country which, in

direct contravention of God's own law, 'instituted in

the time of man's innocency,' deny in effect to the

slave the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys,

rights, and obligations; which separate, at the will

of the master, the wife from the husband, and the

children from the parents. Nor can we be silent on that

awful system which, either by statute or by custom,

interdicts to any race of men, or any portion of the

human family, education in the truths of the gospel and

the ordinances of Christianity. A remedy applied to

these two evils alone would commence the amelioration

of their sad condition. We appeal to you then, as

sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices

to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God, for

the removal of this affliction and disgrace from the

Christian world.

"We do not say these things in a spirit of

self-complacency, as though our nation were free from

the guilt it perceives in others.

"We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share

in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers

introduced, nay compelled the adoption, of slavery in

those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it before

Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply feel

and unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now

venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common

crime and our common dishonor."

* * * * *

This address, splendidly illuminated on vellum, was

sent to our shores at the head of twenty-six folio

volumes, containing considerably more than half

a million of signatures of British women. It was

forwarded to me with a letter from a British nobleman,

now occupying one of the highest official positions

in England, with a request on behalf of these ladies

that it should be in any possible way presented to the

attention of my countrywomen.

This memorial, as it now stands in its solid oaken

case, with its heavy folios, each bearing on its back

the imprint of the American eagle, forms a most unique

library, a singular monument of an international

expression of a moral idea. No right-thinking person

can find aught to be objected against the substance

or form of this memorial. It is temperate, just, and

kindly; and on the high ground of Christian equality,

where it places itself, may be regarded as a perfectly

proper expression of sentiment, as between blood

relations and equals in two different nations. The

signatures to this appeal are not the least remarkable

part of it; for, beginning at the very steps of the

throne, they go down to the names of women in the

very humblest conditions in life, and represent all

that Great Britain possesses, not only of highest and

wisest, but of plain, homely common sense and good

feeling. Names of wives of cabinet ministers appear

on the same page with the names of wives of humble

labourers,--names of duchesses and countesses, of wives

of generals, ambassadors, savants, and men of letters,

mingled with names traced in trembling characters by

hands evidently unused to hold the pen, and stiffened

by lowly toil. Nay, so deep and expansive was the

feeling, that British subjects in foreign lands had

their representation. Among the signatures are those of

foreign residents, from Paris to Jerusalem. Autographs

so diverse, and collected from sources so various,

have seldom been found in juxtaposition. They remain

at this day a silent witness of a most singular tide

of feeling which at that time swept over the British

community and _made_ for itself an expression, even at

the risk of offending the sensibilities of an equal and

powerful nation.

No reply to that address, in any such tangible and

monumental form, has ever been possible. It was

impossible to canvass our vast territories with the

zealous and indefatigable industry with which England

was canvassed for signatures. In America, those

possessed of the spirit which led to this efficient

action had no leisure for it. All their time and

energies were already absorbed in direct efforts to

remove the great evil, concerning which the minds of

their English sisters had been newly aroused, and their

only answer was the silent continuance of these efforts.

From the slaveholding States, however, as was to be

expected, came a flood of indignant recrimination and

rebuke. No one act, perhaps, ever produced more frantic

irritation, or called out more unsparing abuse. It came

with the whole united weight of the British aristocracy

and commonalty on the most diseased and sensitive part

of our national life; and it stimulated that fierce

excitement which was working before, and has worked

since, till it has broken out into open war.

The time has come, however, when such an astonishing

page has been turned, in the anti-slavery history of

America, that the women of our country, feeling that

the great anti-slavery work to which their English

sisters exhorted them is almost done, may properly and

naturally feel moved to reply to their appeal, and lay

before them the history of what has occurred since the

receipt of their affectionate and Christian address.

Your address reached us just as a great moral conflict

was coming to its intensest point. The agitation kept

up by the anti-slavery portion of America, by England,

and by the general sentiment of humanity in Europe,

had made the situation of the slaveholding aristocracy

intolerable. As one of them at the time expressed it,

they felt themselves under the ban of the civilized

world. Two courses only were open to them: to abandon

slave institutions, the sources of their wealth and

political power, or to assert them with such an

overwhelming national force as to compel the respect

and assent of mankind. They chose the latter.

To this end they determined to seize on and control all

the resources of the Federal Government, and to spread

their institutions through new States and Territories

until the balance of power should fall into their hands

and they should be able to force slavery into all the

free States.

A leading Southern senator boasted that he would yet

call the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill; and for a

while the political successes of the slave-power were

such as to suggest to New England that this was no

impossible event.

They repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had

hitherto stood like the Chinese wall, between our

Northwestern Territories and the irruptions of

slaveholding barbarians.

Then came the struggle between freedom and slavery in

the new territory; the battle for Kansas and Nebraska,

fought with fire and sword and blood, where a race of

men, of whom John Brown was the immortal type, acted

over again the courage, the perseverance, and the

military-religious ardor of the old Covenanters of

Scotland, and like them redeemed the ark of liberty at

the price of their own blood, and blood dearer than

their own.

The time of the Presidential canvass which elected

Mr. Lincoln was the crisis of this great battle. The

conflict had become narrowed down to the one point of

the extension of slave territory. If the slaveholders

could get States enough, they could control and

rule; if they were outnumbered by free States, their

institutions, by the very law of their nature, would

die of suffocation. Therefore Fugitive Slave Law,

District of Columbia, Inter-State Slave-trade, and what

not, were all thrown out of sight for a grand rally

on this vital point. A President was elected pledged

to opposition to this one thing alone,--a man known

to be in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law and other

so-called compromises of the Constitution, but honest

and faithful in his determination on this one subject.

That this was indeed the vital point was shown by the

result. The moment Lincoln's election was ascertained,

the slaveholders resolved to destroy the Union they

could no longer control.

They met and organized a Confederacy which they openly

declared to be the first republic founded on the right

and determination of the white man to enslave the black

man, and, spreading their banners, declared themselves

to the Christian world of the nineteenth century as a

nation organized with the full purpose and intent of

perpetuating slavery.

But in the course of the struggle that followed, it

became important for the new confederation to secure

the assistance of foreign powers, and infinite pains

were then taken to blind and bewilder the mind of

England as to the real issues of the conflict in

America.

It has been often and earnestly asserted that slavery

had nothing to do with this conflict; that it was a

mere struggle for power; that the only object was to

restore the Union as it was, with all its abuses. It is

to be admitted that expressions have proceeded from the

national administration which naturally gave rise to

misapprehension, and therefore we beg to speak to you

on this subject more fully.

And first the declaration of the Confederate States

themselves is proof enough, that, whatever may be

declared on the other side, the maintenance of slavery

is regarded by them as the vital object of their

movement.

We ask your attention under this head to the

declaration of their Vice-President, Stephens, in that

remarkable speech delivered on the 21st of March,

1861, at Savannah, Georgia, wherein he declares the

object and purposes of the new Confederacy. It is one

of the most extraordinary papers which our century

has produced. I quote from the _verbatim_ report in

the "Savannah Republican" of the address as it was

delivered in the Athenæum of that city, on which

occasion, says the newspaper from which I copy, "Mr.

Stephens took his seat amid a burst of enthusiasm and

applause such as the Athenæum has never had displayed

within its walls within the recollection 'of the oldest

inhabitant.'"

Last, not least, the new Constitution has put at rest

_forever_ all the agitating questions relating to our

peculiar institution,--African slavery as it exists

among us, the proper _status_ of the negro in our form

of civilization. _This was the immediate cause of the

late rupture and present revolution._ Jefferson, in his

forecast, had anticipated this as the "rock upon which

the old Union would split." He was right. What was a

conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether

he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that

rock _stood_ and _stands_ may be doubted.

_The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of

the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of

the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of

the African was in violation of the laws of nature;

that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and

politically._

In the mean while, during the past year, the Republican

administration, with all the unwonted care of

organizing an army and navy, and conducting military

operations on an immense scale, have proceeded to

demonstrate the feasibility of overthrowing slavery

by purely constitutional measures. To this end they

have instituted a series of movements which have made

this year more fruitful in anti-slavery triumphs than

any other since the emancipation of the British West

Indies. The District of Columbia, as belonging strictly

to the national government and to no separate State,

has furnished a fruitful subject of remonstrance from

British Christians with America. We have abolished

slavery there, and thus wiped out the only blot of

territorial responsibility on our escutcheon.

By another act, equally grand in principle, and far

more important in its results, slavery is forever

excluded from the Territories of the United States.

By another act, America has consummated the

long-delayed treaty with Great Britain for the

suppression of the slave-trade. In ports whence slave

vessels formerly sailed with the connivance of the

port officers, the administration has placed men who

stand up to their duty, and for the first time in our

history the slave-trader is convicted and hung as a

pirate. This abominable secret traffic has been wholly

demolished by the energy of the Federal Government.

Lastly, and more significant still, the United States

government has in its highest official capacity taken

distinct anti-slavery ground, and presented to the

country a plan of peaceable emancipation with suitable

compensation. This noble-spirited and generous offer

has been urged on the slaveholding States by the chief

executive with earnestness and sincerity. But this is

but half the story of the anti-slavery triumphs of this

year. We have shown you what has been done for freedom

by the simple use of the ordinary constitutional forces

of the Union. We are now to show you what has been done

to the same end by the constitutional war-power of the

nation.

By this power it has been this year decreed that every

slave of a rebel who reaches the lines of our army

becomes a free man; that all slaves found deserted

by their masters become free men; that every slave

employed in any service for the United States thereby

obtains his liberty; and that every slave employed

against the United States in any capacity obtains his

liberty; and lest the army should contain officers

disposed to remand slaves to their masters, the power

of judging and delivering up slaves is denied to army

officers, and all such acts are made penal.

By this act the Fugitive Slave Law is for all present

purposes practically repealed. With this understanding

and provision, wherever our armies march they carry

liberty with them. For be it remembered that our army

is almost entirely a volunteer one, and that the most

zealous and ardent volunteers are those who have been

for years fighting, with tongue and pen, the abolition

battle. So marked is the character of our soldiers in

this respect, that they are now familiarly designated

in the official military dispatches of the Confederate

States as "the Abolitionists." Conceive the results

when an army so empowered by national law marches

through a slave territory. One regiment alone has to

our certain knowledge liberated two thousand slaves

during the past year, and this regiment is but one out

of hundreds.

Lastly, the great decisive measure of the war

has appeared,--_the President's Proclamation of

Emancipation_.

This also has been much misunderstood and

misrepresented in England. It has been said to mean

virtually this: Be loyal and you shall keep your

slaves; rebel and they shall be free. But let us

remember what we have just seen of the purpose and

meaning of the Union to which the rebellious States

are invited back. It is to a Union which has abolished

slavery in the District of Columbia, and interdicted

slavery in the Territories; which vigorously represses

the slave-trade, and hangs the convicted slaver as a

pirate; which necessitates emancipation by denying

expansion to slavery, and facilitates it by the offer

of compensation. Any slaveholding States which should

return to such a Union might fairly be supposed to

return with the purpose of peaceable emancipation.

The President's Proclamation simply means this: Come

in and emancipate peaceably with compensation; stay

out and I emancipate, nor will I protect you from the

consequences.

Will our sisters in England feel no heartbeat at

that event? Is it not one of the predicted voices of

the latter day, saying under the whole heavens, "It

is done; the kingdoms of this world are become the

kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ"?

And now, sisters of England, in this solemn, expectant

hour, let us speak to you of one thing which fills our

hearts with pain and solicitude. It is an unaccountable

fact, and one which we entreat you seriously to ponder,

that the party which has brought the cause of freedom

thus far on its way, during the past eventful year,

has found little or no support in England. Sadder

than this, the party which makes slavery the chief

corner-stone of its edifice finds in England its

strongest defenders.

The voices that have spoken for us who contend for

liberty have been few and scattering. God forbid that

we should forget those few noble voices, so sadly

exceptional in the general outcry against us! They

are, alas! too few to be easily forgotten. False

statements have blinded the minds of your community,

and turned the most generous sentiments of the British

heart against us. The North are fighting for supremacy

and the South for independence, has been the voice.

Independence? for what? to do what? To prove the

doctrine that all men are _not_ equal; to establish the

doctrine that the white may enslave the negro!

In the beginning of our struggle, the voices that

reached us across the water said: "If we were only

sure you were fighting for the abolition of slavery,

we should not dare to say whither our sympathies for

your cause might not carry us." Such, as we heard, were

the words of the honored and religious nobleman who

draughted this very letter which you signed and sent

us, and to which we are now replying.

When these words reached us we said: "We can wait; our

friends in England will soon see whither this conflict

is tending." A year and a half have passed; step after

step has been taken for liberty; chain after chain has

fallen, till the march of our armies is choked and

clogged by the glad flocking of emancipated slaves;

the day of final emancipation is set; the border

States begin to move in voluntary consent; universal

freedom for all dawns like the sun in the distant

horizon, and still no voice from England. No voice?

Yes, we have heard on the high seas the voice of a

war-steamer, built for a man-stealing Confederacy,

with English gold, in an English dockyard, going out

of an English harbor, manned by English sailors, with

the full knowledge of English government officers, in

defiance of the Queen's proclamation of neutrality!

So far has English sympathy overflowed. We have heard

of other steamers, iron-clad, designed to furnish to

a slavery-defending Confederacy their only lack,--a

navy for the high seas. We have heard that the British

Evangelical Alliance refuses to express sympathy with

the liberating party, when requested to do so by

the French Evangelical Alliance. We find in English

religious newspapers all those sad degrees in the

downward-sliding scale of defending and apologizing

for slaveholders and slaveholding, with which we have

so many years contended in our own country. We find

the President's Proclamation of Emancipation spoken

of in those papers only as an incitement to servile

insurrection. Nay, more,--we find in your papers, from

thoughtful men, the admission of the rapid decline of

anti-slavery sentiments in England.

This very day the writer of this has been present at

a solemn religious festival in the national capital,

given at the home of a portion of those fugitive slaves

who have fled to our lines for protection,--who, under

the shadow of our flag, find sympathy and succor. The

national day of thanksgiving was there kept by over

a thousand redeemed slaves, and for whom Christian

charity had spread an ample repast. Our sisters,

we wish _you_ could have witnessed the scene. We

wish you could have heard the prayer of a blind old

negro, called among his fellows John the Baptist,

when in touching broken English he poured forth his

thanksgivings. We wish you could have heard the sound

of that strange rhythmical chant which is now forbidden

to be sung on Southern plantations,--the psalm of this

modern exodus,--which combines the barbaric fire of

the Marseillaise with the religious fervor of the old

Hebrew prophet:--

"Oh, go down, Moses,

Way down into Egypt's land!

Tell King Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Stand away dere,

Stand away dere,

And let my people go!"

As we were leaving, an aged woman came and lifted up

her hands in blessing. "Bressed be de Lord dat brought

me to see dis first happy day of my life! Bressed be de

Lord!" In all England is there no Amen?

We have been shocked and saddened by the question

asked in an association of Congregational ministers in

England, the very blood relations of the liberty-loving

Puritans,--"Why does not the North let the South go?"

What! give up the point of emancipation for these four

million slaves? Turn our backs on them, and leave them

to their fate? What! leave our white brothers to run

a career of oppression and robbery, that, as sure as

there is a God that ruleth in the armies of heaven,

will bring down a day of wrath and doom? Remember that

wishing success to this slavery-establishing effort is

only wishing to the sons and daughters of the South all

the curses that God has written against oppression.

_Mark our words!_ If we succeed, the children of

these very men who are now fighting us will rise up

to call us blessed. Just as surely as there is a God

who governs in the world, so surely all the laws of

national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and

if we succeed, we shall have delivered the children's

children of our misguided brethren from the wages of

sin, which is always and everywhere death.

And now, sisters of England, think it not strange if we

bring back the words of your letter, not in bitterness,

but in deepest sadness, and lay them down at your door.

We say to you, Sisters, you have spoken well; we have

heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the

cause, even unto death. We have sealed our devotion

by desolate hearth and darkened homestead,--by the

blood of sons, husbands, and brothers. In many of

our dwellings the very light of our lives has gone

out; and yet we accept the life-long darkness as our

own part in this great and awful expiation, by which

the bonds of wickedness shall be loosed, and abiding

peace established on the foundation of righteousness.

Sisters, what have _you_ done, and what do you mean to

do?

We appeal to you as sisters, as wives, and as mothers,

to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens, and your

prayers to God for the removal of this affliction and

disgrace from the Christian world.

In behalf of many thousands of American women.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

WASHINGTON, _November 27, 1862._

The publication of this reply elicited the following interesting letter

from John Bright:--

ROCHDALE, _March 9, 1863._

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I received your kind note with

real pleasure, and felt it very good of you to send

me a copy of the "Atlantic Monthly" with your noble

letter to the women of England. I read every word

of it with an intense interest, and I am quite sure

that its effect upon opinion here has been marked and

beneficial. It has covered some with shame, and it has

compelled many to think, and it has stimulated not a

few to act. Before this reaches you, you will have

seen what large and earnest meetings have been held in

all our towns in favor of abolition and the North. No

town has a building large enough to contain those who

come to listen, to applaud, and to vote in favor of

freedom and the Union. The effect of this is evident

on our newspapers and on the tone of Parliament, where

now nobody says a word in favor of recognition, or

mediation, or any such thing.

The need and duty of England is admitted to be a strict

neutrality, but the feeling of the millions of her

people is one of friendliness to the United States and

its government. It would cause universal rejoicing,

among all but a limited circle of aristocracy and

commercially rich and corrupt, to hear that the

Northern forces had taken Vicksburg on the great river,

and Charleston on the Atlantic, and that the neck of

the conspiracy was utterly broken.

I hope your people may have strength and virtue to win

the great cause intrusted to them, but it is fearful to

contemplate the amount of the depravity in the North

engendered by the long power of slavery. New England is

far ahead of the States as a whole,--too instructed and

too moral; but still I will hope that she will bear the

nation through this appalling danger.

I well remember the evening at Rome and our

conversation. You lamented the election of Buchanan.

You judged him with a more unfriendly but a more

correct eye than mine. He turned out more incapable and

less honest than I hoped for. And I think I was right

in saying that your party was not then sufficiently

consolidated to enable it to maintain its policy in the

execution, even had Frémont been elected. As it is now,

six years later, the North but falteringly supports the

policy of the government, though impelled by the force

of events which then you did not dream of. President

Lincoln has lived half his troubled reign. In the

coming half I hope he may see land; surely slavery will

be so broken up that nothing can restore and renew it;

and, slavery once fairly gone, I know not how all your

States can long be kept asunder.

Believe me very sincerely yours,

JOHN BRIGHT.

It also called forth from Archbishop Whately the following letter:--

PALACE, DUBLIN, _January, 1863._

DEAR MADAM,--In acknowledging your letter and

pamphlet, I take the opportunity of laying before

you what I collect to be the prevailing sentiments

here on American affairs. Of course there is a great

variety of opinion, as may be expected in a country

like ours. Some few sympathize with the Northerns,

and some few with the Southerns, but far the greater

portion sympathize with neither completely, but lament

that each party should be making so much greater

an expenditure of life and property than can be

compensated for by any advantage they can dream of

obtaining.

Those who are the least favorable to the Northerns are

not so from any approbation of slavery, but from not

understanding that the war is waged in the cause of

abolition. "It was waged," they say, "ostensibly for

the restoration of the Union," and in attestation of

this, they refer to the proclamation which announced

the confiscation of slaves that were the property of

secessionists, while those who adhered to the Federal

cause should be exempt from such confiscation, which,

they say, did not savor much of zeal for abolition.

And if the other object--the restoration of the

Union--could be accomplished, which they all regard

as hopeless, they do not understand how it will tend

to the abolition of slavery. On the contrary, "if,"

say they, "the separation had been allowed to take

place peaceably, the Northerns might, as we do, have

proclaimed freedom to every slave who set foot on

their territory; which would have been a great check

to slavery, and especially to any cruel treatment of

slaves." Many who have a great dislike to slavery yet

hold that the Southerns had at least as much right

to secede as the Americans had originally to revolt

from Great Britain. And there are many who think that,

considering the dreadful distress we have suffered from

the cotton famine, we have shown great forbearance in

withstanding the temptation of recognizing the Southern

States and to break the blockade.

Then, again, there are some who are provoked at the

incessant railing at England, and threats of an

invasion of Canada, which are poured forth in some of

the American papers.

There are many, also, who consider that the present

state of things cannot continue much longer if the

Confederates continue to hold their own, as they

have done hitherto; and that a people who shall have

maintained their independence for two or three years

will be recognized by the principal European powers.

Such appears to have been the procedure of the European

powers in all similar cases, such as the revolt of the

Anglo-American and Spanish-American colonies, of the

Haytians and the Belgians. In these and other like

cases, the rule practically adopted seems to have been

to recognize the revolters, not at once, but after a

reasonable time had been allowed to see whether they

could maintain their independence; and this without

being understood to have pronounced any decision either

way as to the justice of the cause.

Moreover, there are many who say that the negroes and

people of color are far from being kindly or justly

treated in the Northern States. An emancipated slave,

at any rate, has not received good training for earning

his bread by the wages of labor; and if, in addition

to this and his being treated as an outcast, he is

excluded, as it is said, from many employments, by

the refusal of white laborers to work along with him,

he will have gained little by taking refuge in the

Northern States.

I have now laid before you the views which I conceive

to be most prevalent among us, and for which I am not

myself responsible.

For the safe and effectual emancipation of slaves,

I myself consider there is no plan so good as the

gradual one which was long ago suggested by Bishop

Hinds. What he recommended was an _ad valorem tax_ upon

slaves,--the value to be fixed by the owner, with an

option to government to purchase at that price. Thus

the slaves would be a burden to the master, and those

the most so who should be the most valuable, as being

the most intelligent and steady, and therefore the best

qualified for freedom; and it would be his interest to

train his slaves to be free laborers, and to emancipate

them, one by one, as speedily as he could with safety.

I fear, however, that the time is gone by for trying

this experiment in America.

With best wishes for the new year, believe me

Yours faithfully,

RD. WHATELY.

Among the many letters written from this side of the Atlantic regarding

the reply, was one from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he says:--

I read with great pleasure your article in the last

"Atlantic." If anything could make John Bull blush, I

should think it might be that; but he is a hardened

and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared

nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him

a vantage-ground on which to parade his own virtue and

sneer at our iniquity.

With best regards from Mrs. Hawthorne and myself to

yourself and family, sincerely yours,

NATH'L HAWTHORNE.

CHAPTER XVII.

FLORIDA, 1865-1869.

LETTER TO DUCHESS OF ARGYLL.--MRS. STOWE DESIRES TO

HAVE A HOME AT THE SOUTH.--FLORIDA THE BEST FIELD

FOR DOING GOOD.--SHE BUYS A PLACE AT MANDARIN.--A

CHARMING WINTER RESIDENCE.--"PALMETTO LEAVES."--EASTER

SUNDAY AT MANDARIN.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR.

HOLMES.--"POGANUC PEOPLE."--RECEPTIONS IN NEW ORLEANS

AND TALLAHASSEE.--LAST WINTER AT MANDARIN.

IN 1866, the terrible conflict between the North and South having

ended, Mrs. Stowe wrote the following letter to the Duchess of Argyll:--

HARTFORD, _February 19, 1866._

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter was a real spring of

comfort to me, bringing refreshingly the pleasant

library at Inverary and the lovely days I spent there.

I am grieved at what you say of your dear mother's

health. I showed your letter to Mrs. Perkins, and we

both agreed in saying that _we_ should like for a time

to fill the place of maid to her, as doubtless you all

feel, too. I should so love to be with her, to read to

her, and talk to her! and oh, there is so much that

would cheer and comfort a noble heart like hers that

we could talk about. Oh, my friend, when I think of

what has been done these last few years, and of what is

now doing, I am lost in amazement. I have just, by way

of realizing it to myself, been reading "Uncle Tom's

Cabin" again, and when I read that book, scarred and

seared and burned into with the memories of an anguish

and horror that can never be forgotten, and think it

is all over now, all past, and that now the questions

debated are simply of more or less time before granting

legal suffrage to those who so lately were held only

as articles of merchandise,--when this comes over me I

think no private or individual sorrow can ever make me

wholly without comfort. If my faith in God's presence

and real, living power in the affairs of men ever grows

dim, this makes it impossible to doubt.

I have just had a sweet and lovely Christian letter

from Garrison, whose beautiful composure and

thankfulness in his hour of victory are as remarkable

as his wonderful courage in the day of moral battle.

His note ends with the words, "And who but God is to

be glorified?" Garrison's attitude is far more exalted

than that of Wendell Phillips. He acknowledges the

great deed done. He suspends his "Liberator" with

words of devout thanksgiving, and devotes himself

unobtrusively to the work yet to be accomplished for

the freedmen; while Phillips seems resolved to ignore

the mighty work that has been done, because of the

inevitable shortcomings and imperfections that beset

it still. We have a Congress of splendid men,--men

of stalwart principle and determination. We have a

President[15] honestly seeking to do right; and if he

fails in knowing just what right is, it is because he

is a man born and reared in a slave State, and acted

on by many influences which we cannot rightly estimate

unless we were in his place. My brother Henry has

talked with him earnestly and confidentially, and has

faith in him as an earnest, good man seeking to do

right. Henry takes the ground that it is unwise and

impolitic to endeavor to force negro suffrage on the

South at the point of the bayonet. His policy would be,

to hold over the negro the protection of our Freedman's

Bureau until the great laws of free labor shall begin

to draw the master and servant together; to endeavor to

soothe and conciliate, and win to act with us, a party

composed of the really good men at the South.

For this reason he has always advocated lenity of

measures towards them. He wants to get them into a

state in which the moral influence of the North can

act upon them beneficially, and to get such a state of

things that there will be a party _at the South_ to

protect the negro.

Charles Sumner is looking simply at the abstract

_right_ of the thing. Henry looks at actual

probabilities. We all know that the state of society

at the South is such that laws are a very inadequate

protection even to white men. Southern elections always

have been scenes of mob violence _when only white men

voted_.

Multitudes of lives have been lost at the polls in

this way, and if against their will negro suffrage was

forced upon them, I do not see how any one in their

senses can expect anything less than an immediate war

of races.

If negro suffrage were required as a condition of

acquiring political position, there is no doubt the

slave States would grant it; grant it nominally,

because they would know that the grant never could or

would become an actual realization. And what would then

be gained for the negro?

I am sorry that people cannot differ on such great and

perplexing public questions without impugning each

other's motives. Henry has been called a back-slider

because of the lenity of his counsels, but I cannot

but think it is the Spirit of Christ that influences

him. Garrison has been in the same way spoken of as

a deserter, because he says that a work that is done

shall be called done, and because he would not keep up

an anti-slavery society when slavery is abolished; and

I think our President is much injured by the abuse that

is heaped on him, and the selfish and unworthy motives

that are ascribed to him by those who seem determined

to allow to nobody an honest, unselfish difference in

judgment from their own.

Henry has often spoken of you and your duke as pleasant

memories in a scene of almost superhuman labor and

excitement. He often said to me: "When this is all

over,--when we have won the victory,--_then_ I will

write to the duchess." But when it was over and the

flag raised again at Sumter his arm was smitten

down with the news of our President's death! We all

appreciate your noble and true sympathy through the

dark hour of our national trial. You and yours are

almost the only friends we now have left in England.

You cannot know what it was, unless you could imagine

your own country to be in danger of death, extinction

of nationality. _That_, dear friend, is an experience

which shows us what we are and what we can feel. I am

glad to hear that we may hope to see your son in this

country. I fear so many pleasant calls will beset his

path that we cannot hope for a moment, but it would

give us _all_ the greatest pleasure to see him here.

Our dull, prosy, commonplace, though good old Hartford

could offer few attractions compared with Boston or

New York, and yet I hope he will not leave us out

altogether if he comes among us. God bless him! You are

very happy indeed in being permitted to keep all your

dear ones and see them growing up.

I want to ask a favor. Do you have, as we do, _cartes

de visite_? If you have, and could send me one of

yourself and the duke and of Lady Edith and your

eldest son, I should be so very glad to see how you

are looking now; and the dear mother, too, I should

so like to see how she looks. It seems almost like a

dream to look back to those pleasant days. I am glad

to see you still keep some memories of our goings on.

Georgie's marriage is a very happy one to us. They live

in Stockbridge, the loveliest part of Massachusetts,

and her husband is a most devoted pastor, and gives all

his time and property to the great work which he has

embraced, purely for the love of it. My other daughters

are with me, and my son, Captain Stowe, who has come

with weakened health through our struggle, suffering

constantly from the effects of a wound in his head

received at Gettysburg, which makes his returning to

his studies a hard struggle. My husband is in better

health since he resigned his professorship, and desires

his most sincere regards to yourself and the duke, and

his profound veneration to your mother. Sister Mary

also desires to be remembered to you, as do also my

daughters. Please tell me a little in your next of Lady

Edith; she must be very lovely now.

I am, with sincerest affection, ever yours,

H. B. STOWE.

Soon after the close of the war Mrs. Stowe conceived the idea of making

for herself and her family a winter home in the South, where she might

escape the rigors of Northern winters, and where her afflicted son

Frederick might enjoy an out-of-door life throughout the year. She was

also most anxious to do her share towards educating and leading to a

higher life those colored people whom she had helped so largely to set

free, and who were still in the state of profound ignorance imposed

by slavery. In writing of her hopes and plans to her brother Charles

Beecher, in 1866, she says:--

"My plan of going to Florida, as it lies in my mind, is not in any

sense a mere worldly enterprise. I have for many years had a longing to

be more immediately doing Christ's work on earth. My heart is with that

poor people whose cause in words I have tried to plead, and who now,

ignorant and docile, are just in that formative stage in which whoever

seizes has them.

"Corrupt politicians are already beginning to speculate on them as

possible capital for their schemes, and to fill their poor heads with

all sorts of vagaries. Florida is the State into which they have,

more than anywhere else, been pouring. Emigration is positively and

decidedly setting that way; but as yet it is mere worldly emigration,

with the hope of making money, nothing more.

"The Episcopal Church is, however, undertaking, under direction of the

future Bishop of Florida, a wide-embracing scheme of Christian activity

for the whole State. In this work I desire to be associated, and my

plan is to locate at some salient point on the St. John's River, where

I can form the nucleus of a Christian neighborhood, whose influence

shall be felt far beyond its own limits."

During this year Mrs. Stowe partially carried her plan into execution

by hiring an old plantation called "Laurel Grove," on the west side of

the St. John's River, near the present village of Orange Park. Here

she established her son Frederick as a cotton planter, and here he

remained for two years. This location did not, however, prove entirely

satisfactory, nor did the raising of cotton prove to be, under the

circumstances, a profitable business. After visiting Florida during

the winter of 1866-67, at which time her attention was drawn to the

beauties and superior advantages of Mandarin on the east side of the

river, Mrs. Stowe writes from Hartford, May 29, 1867, to Rev. Charles

Beecher:--

MY DEAR BROTHER,--We are now thinking seriously of a

place in Mandarin much more beautiful than any other

in the vicinity. It has on it five large date palms,

an olive tree in full bearing, besides a fine orange

grove which this year will yield about seventy-five

thousand oranges. If we get that, then I want you to

consider the expediency of buying the one next to it.

It contains about two hundred acres of land, on which

is a fine orange grove, the fruit from which last year

brought in two thousand dollars as sold at the wharf.

It is right on the river, and four steamboats pass it

each week, on their way to Savannah and Charleston.

There is on the place a very comfortable cottage, as

houses go out there, where they do not need to be built

as substantially as with us.

[Illustration: THE HOME AT MANDARIN, FLORIDA.]

I am now in correspondence with the Bishop of Florida,

with a view to establishing a line of churches along

the St. John's River, and if I settle at Mandarin, it

will be one of my stations. Will you consent to enter

the Episcopal Church and be our clergyman? You are

just the man we want. If my tasks and feelings did not

incline me toward the Church, I should still choose

it as the best system for training immature minds

such as those of our negroes. The system was composed

with reference to the wants of the laboring class of

England, at a time when they were as ignorant as our

negroes now are.

I long to be at this work, and cannot think of it

without my heart burning within me. Still I leave all

with my God, and only hope He will open the way for me

to do all that I want to for this poor people.

Affectionately yours,

H. B. STOWE.

Mrs. Stowe had some years before this joined the Episcopal Church, for

the sake of attending the same communion as her daughters, who were

Episcopalians. Her brother Charles did not, however, see fit to change

his creed, and though he went to Florida he settled a hundred and sixty

miles west from the St. John's River, at Newport, near St. Marks, on

the Gulf coast, and about twenty miles from Tallahassee. Here he lived

every winter and several summers for fifteen years, and here he left

the impress of his own remarkably sweet and lovely character upon the

scattered population of the entire region.

Mrs. Stowe in the mean time purchased the property, with its orange

grove and comfortable cottage, that she had recommended to him, and

thus Mandarin became her winter home. No one who has ever seen it can

forget the peaceful beauty of this Florida home and its surroundings.

The house, a story and a half cottage of many gables, stands on a

bluff overlooking the broad St. John's, which is five miles wide at

this point. It nestles in the shade of a grove of superb, moss-hung

live-oaks, around one of which the front piazza is built. Several fine

old orange trees also stand near the cottage, scenting the air with

the sweet perfume of their blossoms in the early spring, and offering

their golden fruit to whoever may choose to pluck it during the winter

months. Back of the house stretches the well-tended orange grove in

which Mrs. Stowe took such genuine pride and pleasure. Everywhere about

the dwelling and within it were flowers and singing birds, while the

rose garden in front, at the foot of the bluff, was the admiration of

all who saw it.

Here, on the front piazza, beneath the grand oaks, looking out on the

calm sunlit river, Professor Stowe enjoyed that absolute peace and

restful quiet for which his scholarly nature had always longed, but

which had been forbidden to the greater part of his active life. At

almost any hour of the day the well-known figure, with snow-white,

patriarchal beard and kindly face, might be seen sitting there, with a

basket of books, many of them in dead and nearly forgotten languages,

close at hand. An amusing incident of family life was as follows:

Some Northern visitors seemed to think that the family had no rights

which were worthy of a a moment's consideration. They would land at

the wharf, roam about the place, pick flowers, peer into the house

through the windows and doors, and act with that disregard of all the

proprieties of life which characterizes ill-bred people when on a

journey. The professor had been driven well-nigh distracted by these

migratory bipeds. One day, when one of them broke a branch from an

orange tree directly before his eyes, and was bearing it off in triumph

with all its load of golden fruit, he leaped from his chair, and

addressed the astonished individual on those fundamental principles of

common honesty, which he deemed outraged by this act. The address was

vigorous and truthful, but of a kind which will not bear repeating.

"Why," said the horror-stricken culprit, "I thought that this was Mrs.

Stowe's place!" "You thought it was Mrs. Stowe's place!" Then, in a

voice of thunder, "I would have you understand, sir, that I am the

proprietor and protector of Mrs. Stowe and of this place, and if you

commit any more such shameful depredations I will have you punished as

you deserve!" Thus this predatory Yankee was taught to realize that

there is a God in Israel.

In April, 1869, Mrs. Stowe was obliged to hurry North in order to visit

Canada in time to protect her English rights in "Oldtown Folks," which

she had just finished.

About this time she secured a plot of land, and made arrangements for

the erection on it of a building that should be used as a schoolhouse

through the week, and as a church on Sunday. For several years

Professor Stowe preached during the winter in this little schoolhouse,

and Mrs. Stowe conducted Sunday-school, sewing classes, singing

classes, and various other gatherings for instruction and amusement,

all of which were well attended and highly appreciated by both the

white and colored residents of the neighborhood.

Upon one occasion, having just arrived at her Mandarin home, Mrs. Stowe

writes:--

"At last, after waiting a day and a half in Charleston, we arrived here

about ten o'clock Saturday morning, just a week from the day we sailed.

The house looked so pretty, and quiet, and restful, the day was so calm

and lovely, it seemed as though I had passed away from all trouble, and

was looking back upon you all from a secure resting-place. Mr. Stowe

is very happy here, and is constantly saying how pleasant it is, and

how glad he is that he is here. He is so much improved in health that

already he is able to take a considerable walk every day.

"We are all well, contented, and happy, and we have six birds, two

dogs, and a pony. Do write more and oftener. Tell me all the little

nothings and nowheres. You can't imagine how they are magnified by the

time they have reached into this remote corner."

In 1872 she wrote a series of Florida sketches, which were published in

book form, the following year, by J. R. Osgood & Co., under the title

of "Palmetto Leaves." May 19, 1873, she writes to her brother Charles

at Newport, Fla.:--

"Although you have not answered my last letter, I cannot leave Florida

without saying good-by. I send you the 'Palmetto Leaves' and my parting

love. If I could either have brought or left my husband, I should have

come to see you this winter. The account of your roses fills me with

envy.

"We leave on the San Jacinto next Saturday, and I am making the most of

the few charming hours yet left; for never did we have so delicious a

spring. I never knew such altogether perfect weather. It is enough to

make a saint out of the toughest old Calvinist that ever set his face

as a flint. How do you think New England theology would have fared if

our fathers had been landed here instead of on Plymouth Rock?

"The next you hear of me will be at the North, where our address is

Forest Street, Hartford. We have bought a pretty cottage there, near to

Belle, and shall spend the summer there."

In a letter written in May of the following year to her son Charles, at

Harvard, Mrs. Stowe says: "I can hardly realize that this long, flowery

summer, with its procession of blooms and fruit, has been running on at

the same time with the snowbanks and sleet storms of the North. But so

it is. It is now the first of May. Strawberries and blackberries are

over with us; oranges are in a waning condition, few and far between.

Now we are going North to begin another summer, and have roses,

strawberries, blackberries, and green peas come again.

"I am glad to hear of your reading. The effect produced on you by

Jonathan Edwards is very similar to that produced on me when I took the

same mental bath. His was a mind whose grasp and intensity you cannot

help feeling. He was a poet in the intensity of his conceptions, and

some of his sermons are more terrible than Dante's 'Inferno.'"

In November, 1874, upon their return to Mandarin, she writes: "We have

had heavenly weather, and we needed it; for our house was a cave of

spider-webs, cockroaches, dirt, and all abominations, but less than a

week has brought it into beautiful order. It now begins to put on that

quaint, lively, pretty air that so fascinates me. Our weather is, as

I said, heavenly, neither hot nor cold; cool, calm, bright, serene,

and so tranquillizing. There is something indescribable about the best

weather we have down here. It does not debilitate me like the soft

October air in Hartford."

During the following February, she writes in reply to an invitation to

visit a Northern watering place later in the season: "I shall be most

happy to come, and know of nothing to prevent. I have, thank goodness,

no serial story on hand for this summer, to hang like an Old Man of

the Sea about my neck, and hope to enjoy a little season of being like

other folks. It is a most lovely day to-day, most unfallen Eden-like."

In a letter written later in the same season, March 28, 1875, Mrs.

Stowe gives us a pleasant glimpse at their preparations for the proper

observance of Easter Sunday in the little Mandarin schoolhouse. She

says: "It was the week before Easter, and we had on our minds the

dressing of the church. There my two Gothic fireboards were to be

turned into a pulpit for the occasion. I went to Jacksonville and got a

five-inch moulding for a base, and then had one fireboard sawed in two,

so that there was an arched panel for each end. Then came a rummage

for something for a top, and to make a desk of, until it suddenly

occurred to me that our old black walnut extension table had a set of

leaves. They were exactly the thing. The whole was trimmed with a

beading of yellow pine, and rubbed, and pumice-stoned, and oiled, and

I got out my tubes of paint and painted the nail-holes with Vandyke

brown. By Saturday morning it was a lovely little Gothic pulpit, and

Anthony carried it over to the schoolhouse and took away the old desk

which I gave him for his meeting-house. That afternoon we drove out

into the woods and gathered a quantity of superb Easter lilies, papaw,

sparkleberry, great fern-leaves, and cedar. In the evening the girls

went over to the Meads to practice Easter hymns; but I sat at home

and made a cross, eighteen inches long, of cedar and white lilies.

This Southern cedar is the most exquisite thing; it is so feathery and

delicate.

"Sunday morning was cool and bright, a most perfect Easter. Our little

church was full, and everybody seemed delighted with the decorations.

Mr. Stowe preached a sermon to show that Christ is going to put

everything right at last, which is comforting. So the day was one of

real pleasure, and also I trust of real benefit, to the poor souls who

learned from it that Christ is indeed risen for them."

During this winter the following characteristic letters passed between

Mrs. Stowe and her valued friend, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, called

forth by the sending to the latter of a volume of Mrs. Stowe's latest

stories:--

BOSTON, _January 8, 1876._

MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I would not write to thank you for

your most welcome "Christmas Box,"

"A box whose sweets compacted lie,"

before I had read it, and every word of it. I have

been very much taken up with antics of one kind and

another, and have only finished it this afternoon. The

last of the papers was of less comparative value to

me than to a great fraction of your immense parish of

readers, because I am so familiar with every movement

of the Pilgrims in their own chronicles.

"Deacon Pitkin's Farm" is full of those thoroughly

truthful touches of New England in which, if you are

not unrivaled, I do not know who your rival may be.

I wiped the tears from one eye in reading "Deacon

Pitkin's Farm."

I wiped the tears, and plenty of them, from both eyes,

in reading "Betty's Bright Idea." It is a most charming

and touching story, and nobody can read who has not

a heart like a pebble, without being melted into

tenderness.

How much you have done and are doing to make our New

England life wholesome and happy! If there is any

one who can look back over a literary life which has

pictured our old and helped our new civilization, it is

yourself. Of course your later books have harder work

cut out for them than those of any other writer. They

have had "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for a rival. The brightest

torch casts a shadow in the blaze of a light, and any

transcendent success affords the easiest handle for

that class of critics whose method is the one that

Dogberry held to be "odious."

I think it grows pleasanter to us to be remembered by

the friends we still have, as with each year they grow

fewer. We have lost Agassiz and Sumner from our circle,

and I found Motley stricken with threatening illness

(which I hope is gradually yielding to treatment), in

the profoundest grief at the loss of his wife, another

old and dear friend of mine. So you may be assured that

I feel most sensibly your kind attention, and send you

my heartfelt thanks for remembering me.

Always, dear Mrs. Stowe, faithfully yours,

O. W. HOLMES.

To this letter Mrs. Stowe replied as follows:--

MANDARIN, _February 23, 1876._

DEAR DOCTOR,--How kind it was of you to write me that

very beautiful note! and how I wish you were just where

I am, to see the trees laden at the same time with

golden oranges and white blossoms! I should so like

to cut off a golden cluster, leaves and all, for you.

Well, Boston seems very far away and dreamy, like some

previous state of existence, as I sit on the veranda

and gaze on the receding shores of the St. John's,

which at this point is five miles wide.

Dear doctor, how time slips by! I remember when Sumner

seemed to me a young man, and now he has gone. And

Wilson has gone, and Chase, whom I knew as a young man

in society in Cincinnati, has gone, and Stanton has

gone, and Seward has gone, and yet how lively the world

races on! A few air-bubbles of praise or lamentation,

and away sails the great ship of life, no matter over

whose grave!

Well, one cannot but feel it! To me, also, a whole

generation of friends has gone from the other side of

the water since I was there and broke kindly bread

with them. The Duchess of Sutherland, the good old

duke, Lansdowne, Ellesmere, Lady Byron, Lord and Lady

Amberly, Charles Kingsley, the good Quaker, Joseph

Sturge, all are with the shadowy train that has moved

on. Among them were as dear and true friends as I ever

had, and as pure and noble specimens of human beings

as God ever made. They are living somewhere in intense

vitality, I must believe, and you, dear doctor, must

not doubt.