The Contraband Dinner, as the dinner of the freed men was called,

was held on November 27, 1862, in the church that had been used as

a hospital and place of rendezvous for the freedmen’s camp at the

end of Twelfth Street East. As Mrs. Stowe entered the room she saw

that a great deal of affectionate pains had been spent in decorating

it for the occasion. Garlands of evergreen had been hung all about,

and wreaths encircled the portraits of great people who had been

working for the cause of the down-trodden. Back of the platform were

the picture of the President with the mottoes, “God bless Abraham

Lincoln,” and “Liberty to the Captive.” Upon the walls were arranged

the portraits of various sympathizers and philanthropists: Senator

Pomeroy and Professor Stowe, Horace Greeley and General Wadsworth were

in one group, and the professors from Oberlin--Finney, Morgan, Dascomb

and Coles, with Thomas Clarkson and Horace Mann were in another circle.

Another group, whose connection will perhaps be a puzzle, contained

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Hortense, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles

V, General Cavaignac and General Havelock. Elsewhere on the walls were

also Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, John Bunyon, John Knox, Hugh Miller, Peter

Melanchthon, Mozart and Haydn. Under this array of inspiring portraits

tables with a comfortable supply of good things to eat were spread for

some hundreds of guests.

Mrs. Stowe was accompanied by a daughter and by her little son, Charles

Edward. To greet them at the foot of the platform stood the Rev. John

Pierpont with Bishop Payne, Senator Pomeroy, Dr. Channing and other

celebrities. Mrs. Stowe’s thoughts, however, were more with the

wonderful audience that was beginning to gather than with the speakers

who were to make the addresses. It was a marvelous sight that greeted

her eyes as she took her seat and looked out over the white expanse of

the tables that filled the audience room of the church. Already the

long procession of strange guests was filing in; from the platform

they looked like rivers of inky blackness flowing through the aisles

and around the table. To the eyes of Mrs. Stowe it was a tragic scene,

for she knew that these poor people had made their escape with untold

sufferings. She saw that many were still in the tattered garments they

had worn as they crept through the swamp; some had no jacket or coat at

all but only a hempen sack with holes cut through for head and arms.

But the look in their eyes was something wonderful to see!

The guests took their places at the tables which were loaded with

meat, cake and fruits. One table also held a great pyramidal cake with

an inscription that read, “To the Contrabands, from the Contraband

Relief Association,” and the banquet began. At the beginning prayer

was offered by Bishop Payne and then the contrabands were invited to

fall in, and the food began to disappear rapidly. When one tableful had

been well supplied the Superintendent said, “Men, you who have been

eating, take something in your hands and give place to others. There,”

he added, “don’t take the plates!” At this point the disappearance of

drumsticks, et cetera, was marvelous to behold.

After some two thousand contrabands had been fed the company on the

platform adjourned to an improvised speakers’ stand where the addresses

were made. Dr. Channing presided and Senator Pomeroy repeated once more

to these poor freedmen the heavenly news that they had a good right to

be where they were, and that universal freedom was at hand. This was a

story that they could not hear told too often; it made every swarthy

face in the room glow with broad delight and every voice break forth

into shouts of joy. No wonder that from every throat burst that one

great song, that psalm of their modern exodus, “Go Down, Moses.”

When Israel was in Egypt Land--

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand--

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

’Way down in Egypt Land;

Tell ol’ Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Stand away dere,

Stand away dere,

Let my people go!

This most famous of negro melodies had so strange a moving power that

the negroes all through the south had been forbidden to use it because

it made them so wild for freedom that nothing could restrain them. But

these freedmen had come through fire and water to reach a place where

they could shout it out freely; and the rich and vital tones of those

negro voices rang out the twenty-five stanzas of the hymn as their

hearts rose in the exaltation of the hour. When they came to the line,

Stand away dere, stand away dere,

And let my people go!

the emotional impulse of the great appeal made an uncontrollable sob

rise to the throats of those that heard it. The agony and the faith and

the triumph of a whole people seemed to breathe forth from that great

company of rescued slaves in the minor swell of this solemn chorus.

Here is the simple music that went with this wonderful primitive song;

but no notes can give any idea of the weird and mystically yearning

effect of it as it was sung by the negroes themselves.

[Music:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land:

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand:

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses

’Way down in Egypt land,

Tell ole Pha-roah

To let my people go!

Stand away dere!

Stand away dere!

And let my people go!]

The words of the song went on to record in a sort of ballad fashion

the dealings of the Lord with the Children of Israel; under this Old

Testament symbolism the negroes always pictured themselves as a nation

and felt they were telling their own sorrows as they followed the Bible

story.

When Israel was in Egypt’s Land--

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand--

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

’Way down in Egypt Land,

Tell ol’ Pharaoh--

Let my people go!

Stand away dere,

Stand away dere,

Let my people go!

The Red Sea incident follows:

The Lord told Moses what to do

To lead the children of Israel through.

O come along Moses, you’ll not get lost,

Stretch out your rod and come across.

As Israel stood at the water side

At the command of God it did divide.

When they had reached the other shore

They sang a song of triumph o’er.

The story of the destruction of Pharaoh they must have sung with

special gusto:

Pharaoh said he would go across

But Pharaoh and his host were lost.

Then comes a song of hope for the Israelites:

O Moses, a cloud shall cleave the way,

A fire by night, a shade by day.

You’ll not get lost in the wilderness

With a lighted candle in your breast.

A general application follows:

O let us all from bondage flee,

And let us all in Christ be free.

We need not always weep and moan

And wear these slavery chains forlorn.

An exhortation:

O brethren, brethren, you’d better engage,

For the devil he’s out on a big rampage.

The devil he thought he had me fast

But I thought I’d break his chains at last.

Then comes the cheering prospect of Heaven:

O take your shoes from off your feet

And walk into the golden street!

And this concluding stanza:

I do believe without a doubt

That a Christian has a right to shout!

As the concluding strain of this psalm of praise and of prayer sank

away into silence they carefully led a very old colored man to the

platform. This was Old John the Baptist, as the negroes affectionately

called him; he was looked up to as a sort of patriarch in Israel on

account of his goodness and spirituality. The whiteness of his matted

hair and the deep furrows in his face testified to the many, many years

in which the pain of slavery had been burned into his soul. As they

assisted him up the steps it could be seen that he was blind, and a

deep hush fell upon the room as he raised his hands and lifted up his

voice in prayer. He gave thanks for the joy of this day of emancipation

and for their escape from the woe of slavery; he prayed for the friends

and relatives so tenderly beloved that they had left behind, and, above

all, he prayed that their feelings of joy and triumph at their own

escape might not lead them into vainglorious pride and arrogance. The

chief burden of his prayer was that humility might dwell in the hearts

of his people. “O God, keep us humble, keep us humble,” he repeated.

“Let not thy people be puffed up with pride and then forget the God

that brought them out of Egypt into Canaan’s land!”

During these simple, but most impressive, ceremonies Mrs. Stowe sat

on the platform, her heart throbbing with the tragedy of the scene.

There was a deep, absorbed, dreamy look in her eyes as she sat there

pondering on all this great national matter. As she looked out over the

vast assemblage, a fragment only of the great exodus from slavery, she

grew more and more assured in her mind that the steps that had been

taken were right. She thought over what had already been done. It was

right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and to exclude it

from the territories of the United States; it had been a good stroke

for the United States to make that treaty with Great Britain for the

suppression of the slave trade, making it legal to hang a convicted

slaver as a pirate. And it was clear to her that the government offer

of compensation to the slave owners in the southern states, to whom the

negro was property, was a just and fair offer. She believed in release

from slavery as a growth rather than as a sudden cut-off, and thought

that this offer had been a move in the right direction.

Therefore, she thought, it is right and sensible to lead up by these

steps to the promise of full freedom to all--which the President had

promised--or perhaps one should say, threatened, in the important

document, the Emancipation Proclamation, which he had given out some

four weeks before. “Oh, if he only will hold firm to this!” she prayed,

“and if the Cabinet and the army and the country will only stand by

him!”

Then she thought of her soldier son and she remembered the other

mothers who had given their boys to the country’s need. With a gush of

agony came the reflection that for the mothers to go themselves and to

give their own lives would have been so much easier!

As these heavy thoughts were passing through her mind a thousand men

just out of slavery were looking toward the quiet little woman on the

platform who in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had so marvelously told their

story. There were many among the freedmen present who had been able

to acquire the valuable and dangerous art of reading printed words,

and who had read the wonderful story Mrs. Stowe had written. There

were others who had listened breathlessly behind closed doors in their

little cabins while the book was being read in low tones to them. So a

great glow of grateful love was being poured out in the direction of

that inconspicuous member of the distinguished company, for they felt

that they knew her heart. As the last strains of “Go down, Moses” were

fading away and the company was dispersing, an aged negress met Mrs.

Stowe in the doorway and, lifting up her hands in blessing, cried out,

“Bressed be de Lord dat brought me to see dis first happy day of my

life! Bressed be de Lord!”

At this time Mrs. Stowe must have looked very much like the picture

which is reproduced as the frontispiece to this book, which is taken

from a _carte de visite_ made in 1862. At this meeting we may imagine

her as this picture shows her, but we must add perhaps some kind of

shawl or drapery for warmth, a pair of black silk mitts of ornamented

net, and a bonnet tied with wide ribbons in a double bow knot under

the chin. This bonnet must have concealed the abundant hair coiled

up at the back, but not the soft wavy brown folds that came down on

either side of the beautiful, refined face. The large breast-pin in the

picture was made from a piece of softly clouded lava; the ring, worn in

the fashion of the day on the first finger, had belonged to her son who

was drowned while in college; this ring she wore and jealously guarded

for his sake. Many people who knew Mrs. Stowe pronounce it one of the

best likenesses of her that we possess.

CHAPTER XIX

A VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Mrs. Stowe spent the next day after the freedmen’s jubilee in driving

frantically from fort to fort in search of the proper officer to give

her permission to extract her son Fred for a time from the military

harness. She was afraid they would not let him come with her; at last,

however, she succeeded, and she was never happier than when he sprang

into the carriage, free for forty-eight hours. He, too, was filled with

uncontrollable delight. “Oh!” he exclaimed in a sort of rapture, “this

pays for a year of hard fighting and hard work!” A year ago she had

bade him farewell at Andover, and, after the trip of his regiment to

New York, she had again seen him for an hour. At that time she found

him even in the two days’ experience of soldierly life mysteriously

changed--an expression of gravity and care marking his face. “It is

thus that our boys,” she said in her heart, “come to manhood in a day!”

But what she felt at that time was as nothing to the feelings that

were now hers when this war-worn man came to her arms! For he was a

lieutenant, having been promoted for bravery on more than one field.

That evening in a quiet little parlor, by a bright coal fire, she sat

with three children around her, the young lieutenant, a daughter, and

the little son who lives now to remember the events of this Washington

visit. Her cup was as full of joy as any mother’s could be who yet must

think what the fortune of war might mean to many a mother’s breaking

heart.

It is now time to refer to the matter that Mrs. Stowe had in mind as

one of the reasons for coming to Washington. During all these days she

was carrying one special burden--something that seemed to her to be of

national importance and also a matter of personal responsibility. To

understand what this was we must recall the “Affectionate and Christian

Address” which had been signed by those five hundred thousand women

of Great Britain and Ireland, by duchesses, countesses, wives of

generals and ambassadors, savants and men of letters, as well as by

hands evidently unused to hold the pen. This “Address” had been sent

to “their sisters, the women of the United States of America,” through

that most representative of American women, Harriet Beecher Stowe,

appealing to them to aid in the removal of slavery from the Christian

world.

“We acknowledge with grief and shame,” they said, “our heavy share in

this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay,

even 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.”

Mrs. Stowe knew that her answer to this important letter would be a

national matter--she could not make it otherwise. She must review the

intricate history of the slave system and face its present problems,

not one of the least of which was the fact that, in spite of letters

and addresses to the contrary by an illuminated few, the great body

of English sympathy was now being given to that party in this country

that favored slavery. Therefore, the international situation was in

a specially critical state. It seemed even possible that England as

a nation would give aid to the forces that were trying to tear our

republic apart. Mrs. Stowe saw that now in the fall of 1862 this was

one of the greatest causes of apprehension. That this state of feeling

should follow the outburst of enthusiasm for freeing the slaves that

she herself had witnessed all over England and Scotland, seemed to her

incomprehensible and heart-breaking, and it made her feel that she must

not let the answer to the “Address” remain in the logic of events

only, but that it now called for some direct expression from the one to

whom it had been intrusted.

Under the circumstances what she should say in her public letter was

a very delicate matter. She might describe the various important

preparatory steps that the President had already taken; and she might

describe the proclamation just given out, that document we now consider

to have ushered in the political regeneration of the American people,

in which the President had made solemn announcement that unless by the

following January the states now in rebellion laid down arms to signify

that they abandoned the system of slavery, the emancipation of all

slaves in those states would at once be enforced.

So far, so good. She could tell what had been already done; but how

much might happen between now and January 1, 1863! What battles and

conquests and losses might be written upon our scroll! What a test the

national spirit might be put to! What failures were perhaps possible!

As Mrs. Elizabeth Browning in an anxious hour said in one of her last

letters: “What I feared most was that the north would compromise; and

I fear still that they are not heroically strong on their legs on the

moral question (meaning slavery). I fear it much. If they can but hold

up it will be noble.” And this expresses the better side of England’s

interest in our national problem.

Mrs. Stowe’s heart cried, “We cannot, we must not fail!” But she had

the wisdom to see that her opinion needed to be bolstered up by some

more weighty judgment. So she said to herself, “When I go to Washington

I will try to see the heads of departments and satisfy myself that I

may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a reality, for I should

be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in Europe to an impotent

conclusion. And I mean to have a talk with Father Abraham himself if

possible.”

For her to gain an interview with President Lincoln was comparatively

easy, for one member of the President’s Cabinet, Mr. Salmon P. Chase,

now Secretary of the Treasury, was an old Ohio friend of hers. Years

back, in Cincinnati, he had been a member of the Semi-colon Club. It

was natural that this former friend should now find it easy to arrange

for Mrs. Stowe to call upon President Lincoln and to have a quiet

conversation with him. Her son, Charles Edward, twelve years old, who

still remembers the distinguished event of that day as though it had

happened yesterday, and her grown-up daughter, Harriet, accompanied

her. It was a wonderful experience for them. The White House with its

Ionic pillars seemed to young Charles a palace of dreamland; as they

passed through the halls and caught a glimpse through an open door

of the wonderful East Room where the carpet, selected for that room

by Mrs. Lincoln, was of a pale green tapestry worked with flowers,

it must have seemed to him that the gleaming transparent waves of

the ocean were tossing roses to his feet. They were conducted up a

staircase and taken to the President’s reception parlor, then called

the Red Room, where the interview was to be held. Though the room was

richly furnished, it seemed like a quiet and cozy place to the little

boy. Perhaps this was because it was a dark chilly day and there was a

bright wood fire burning in the fireplace.

The President was sitting before the fire as they entered. His gaunt

figure was bowed in a melancholy attitude, and he was warming his hands

by turning them first the palms toward the flame and then the backs,

seemingly just for the sheer enjoyment of the genial warmth.

Overcome by a natural feeling of reverence for the great man into whose

presence they were being ushered, Mrs. Stowe and her little group held

back for a moment and waited; but Mr. Chase led them forward and told

the President that he had brought Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe to visit

him. With that awkwardness which is one of our most appealing memories

of him, Mr. Lincoln rose quickly from his chair, revealing his whole

six feet and four inches of height, and came forward eagerly. “Why,

Mrs. Stowe,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand, “I’m right glad to see

you!” Leading her to a chair, he added with a mischievous twinkle in

his eye, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this

great war.” With this pleasantry they sat down together before the fire.

The first thing he said was, “I do love an open fire; I always had one

to home.” The homely phrase “to home!” How near it seemed to bring him!

Like all the other common expressions he used, it only made us love

him more! His advisers used sometimes to try to get him to write in a

more polished manner, but he would say, “Well, it may not be so elegant

or classical, but the people will understand it, the people will

understand it!” And they always did. Mrs. Stowe could hardly have been

more effectually made to feel “to home” than she was.

In response to the President’s humorous remark about her book, Mrs.

Stowe no doubt answered, as she so many times did, by disclaiming any

intention to do anything except to obey the inner voice that commanded

her to write. “I did not write it, not I myself alone,” she always

said. “It seemed to me that God himself made me write it, that I wrote

it at his dictation.” And Lincoln, from the depths of his profoundly

reverent nature, probably answered that he could understand how that

could be said with all simplicity and true worship.

Gazing into that homely, noble, pain-marked face, and knowing so well

how many reasons there were for its look of inexpressible sadness, her

heart was touched with a great pity for him as a man. After they had

talked for a few moments, some one came through the room and spoke with

him for a little while; then in passing out the visitor said casually,

“Where do you dine?” The President answered, “Well, I don’t dine;

I just browse around a little now and then.” To the woman that sat

there waiting and letting nothing escape her eye, there was something

irresistibly pathetic in the tone in which this was spoken. Where

indeed could President Lincoln find an hour of rest in the midst of his

overweighted days? The whole city was one hospital of wounded soldiers,

the borders outside were one vast camp looking for battle. Even the

Emancipation Proclamation, that one firm stone in the wide morass of

despondency on which the wearied man at last had set firm foothold,

did not just now seem to lead toward the land of promise. Struggling

with an extraordinarily difficult problem, he was at that moment

misunderstood on all sides. People criticized him for what he did and

for what he did not do. He was too hasty, he was too slow. They called

him stupid blockhead, satyr, ape, gorilla. They named his military

plans imbecility; his humor they took for irreverence. But Mrs. Stowe

understood him, and she somehow struck the note at the beginning which

made them at home with each other. If this had not been the case, he

would never have said the things to her that we know he did say.

Of her interview with the President, however, Mrs. Stowe never gave

any full account. I suppose it would not have been right for her to

do so. It must, however, have been a very illuminating hour, for her

sketch of Lincoln in a volume called “Men of Our Times,” which she

wrote six years later shows a certainty of impression and an intimacy

of view that could only have come from personal knowledge. Moreover,

she tells us definitely of several things that were said; and from

these as well as from references in that sketch, and from the influence

of this conversation upon the “Reply” to the English “Address” which

she was writing on the evening of the day when she saw the President,

and from what we know was dwelling in the mind of the President and

in hers in this month of November in 1862, we may to some extent

reorganize that hour of vital converse between two souls that were

sharing in the heavy woe of the national conflict.

As early in the conversation as possible, she called his attention

to the “Address” on the part of the five hundred thousand women of

England who had spoken to the women of America through her, and of the

necessity that was upon her now to answer.

“They have called upon us,” she said, “in the name of a common origin,

a common faith, and a common cause. They have said: ‘We appeal to you

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

fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God, for the removal of this

affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.’ Now,” she continued,

“in this eight years we have been answering this appeal. Step after

step has been taken; chain after chain has fallen; now the day of

emancipation has been set. Mr. President, it is of that that I must

speak with you to-day.” Thus Mrs. Stowe brought forward the question

that was pressing upon her mind. “Mr. Lincoln,” she said, “I feel that

I must ask you about your views on emancipation.” At this point the

President withdrew with her to the embrasure of a window-seat, where

they sat together for an hour or more in uninterrupted conversation.

Mrs. Stowe had much to tell him about the condition of thought in

England which she had learned from observation during her visits there

and through the letters she constantly received from people of weight

and importance who were watching with intense interest the progress of

our bitter conflict. He on his part was able to interpret to her his

border state policy which had been a burden of misunderstanding upon

her mind; he explained the reasons why it had been necessary for him

to proceed slowly and why the time for a more decided step had come at

last. We know comparatively little about the conversation that went on

by the window, but we do know that these were its subjects. She said

that she desired, if possible, to have it made clear to her that the

government was not to take any steps backward in the course on which

it had started out, before she could with dignity write the answer to

the “Address.”

Abraham Lincoln made it clear. He set her mind quite at rest on that

point. Before they parted he said in effect what he afterwards repeated

in the Second Inaugural: “If this struggle were to be prolonged till

there was not a home in the land where there was not one dead, till all

the treasure amassed by the unpaid labor of the slave should be wasted,

till every drop of blood drawn by the lash should be atoned by blood

drawn by the sword, we could only bow and say, ‘Just and true are thy

ways, thou King of Saints!’”

This was indeed a passage from his inmost soul. Sometimes a great

man has an hour in which he finds it comforting to open his heart to

the compassionate ear of a woman. Without disrespect to his revered

memory we may believe that President Lincoln did on this day find such

a relief in talking with a woman whose book with its key and whose

letters and articles had proved not only the sensitive sympathy and

flame-like patriotism of her soul, but also the statesman-like grasp of

her mind.

Then perhaps in this interview with its high emotional tension there

may have come a moment when personal things could be mentioned, for

I do not know how otherwise to account for the great confidence he

reposed in her in one of the things that he said in that interview.

Perhaps the way may have been opened by her saying something about

her own feelings in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” She may have told him

how acutely she suffered when she was working on that book. Elsewhere

she has said, “Many times, in writing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ I thought

my health would fail me utterly, but I prayed earnestly that God would

help me till I got through, and still I was pressed beyond measure and

above strength.” Something of this sort she doubtless told Mr. Lincoln.

To this the President must have listened with full understanding.

“It lies like lead on my heart,” she would continue. “It shadows my

life with sorrow. The more so since I feel for the south as for my

own brothers, and am pained for every horror I have been obliged to

describe, as one who is forced by an awful oath to disclose in court

some family disgrace. Many times I have thought I must die, and yet I

pray God that I may live to see the end of this struggle.”

These are the words of Mrs. Stowe; if she used the same words in

speaking with President Lincoln it would surely be in response that

he must have said what we know he did say in some part of this

conversation, that he did not think that it would be given to him to

rejoice in the successful outcome of the great rebellion. “Whichever

way it ends, I have the impression that I shan’t last long after it

is over,” was what he said. Mrs. Stowe afterwards said that she felt

that no man had suffered more or more deeply than he, although it was

a dry, weary, patient pain that seemed to some like insensibility,

but was not--Oh, never was at all! After he was gone his countrymen

understood this perfectly. Mrs. Stowe understood it then. She said,

“When we have passed through this trouble we shall think that no

private or individual sorrow can ever make us wholly comfortless. If

my faith in God’s presence and living power in the affairs of men ever

grows dim, that thought shall make it impossible for me to doubt.”

With her sensitive sympathy, Mrs. Stowe probably knew that Lincoln’s

mind was dwelling upon his own painful loss in the death of his dear

young son the spring before; and she, for her part, was reminded of

the day when, as she stood by the grave of the most beautiful and most

beloved of her seven children, she learned the woe a slave mother feels

when her child is torn away from her. She thought also of the crushing

sorrow that came to her at Andover in the loss by drowning of her

first-born son, Henry Ellis. Perhaps in this hour of quiet, intimate

conversation she was able, in order to give comfort to the man before

her, to speak of these things, for it is by showing to those in deep

suffering that we suffer with them that we comfort them most.

And then perhaps she told the President that she, too, had a son at

Washington, and saw the smile that she remembered so well all her life

afterwards, light up that homely-beautiful face as he said, “One of

the twenty thousand encamped about the city?” and she answered that he

was one of that vast company and that he had been made lieutenant for

honorable service on several battlefields. And then she no doubt told

how he was one of the first to volunteer when the First Massachusetts

Infantry was formed. He had been a student of medicine under Dr.

Holmes, who had tried to persuade him not to become a soldier, but to

finish his studies and then go into the army as a surgeon. The boy

would not hear of this; he threw his hat on the floor and cried, “I

could not look my fellowmen in the face if I did not enlist. People

shall never say that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s son is a coward!” And if

in telling this she took a motherly pride, who shall blame her?

With this the interview ended. Mrs. Stowe was rejoined by her son and

daughter, and the guests took their departure. That evening Mrs. Stowe

wrote the greater part of her “Reply,” and it was soon on its way to

Great Britain.

This “Reply” she wrote far more boldly and confidently than would have

been possible if she had not talked with the President. She courteously

acknowledged the compliment of the “Address” and its great weight with

her and with the American people. She spoke of its influence upon

north and upon south; and then she recounted the history of affairs in

this country up to the Proclamation of Emancipation which was to take

effect in the following January. She spoke frankly of the things that

were filling her with pain and solicitude, especially of the lack of

English sympathy toward us in our struggle for union. “Alas, then, is

it so? In this day of great deeds and great heroisms ... do we hear

such voices from England?” She went on to tell the story of the Jubilee

she had witnessed the day before and of the psalm of the modern exodus,

“Go down, Moses,” sung by that strange company with all the barbaric

fire of the Marseillaise and the religious fervor of the old Hebrew

prophet. Giving free rein to her impassioned eloquence, she said:

“Sisters (in your ‘Address’), 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 hearths and darkened homesteads, by

the blood of sons, husbands and fathers.... Now we beg leave in solemn

sadness to return to you your own words: we appeal to you, as sisters,

as wives, 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.”

Mrs. Stowe’s “Reply” was published widely in Great Britain, and was one

of the most powerful agents in changing the public sentiment from a

hostile to a friendly attitude. Meetings were held all over England and

the tone of the speeches and of the newspapers and of the discussions

in Parliament was no longer favorable to the division of our country

into two separate governments, a north and a south, but was for union

and abolition. John Bright wrote to Mrs. Stowe stating that such had

been the happy result of the outspoken and appealing home-thrust in

her “Reply.” All this, we must remember, happened before the Battle of

Gettysburg, which was the crisis following the 1862 phase of the war.

This assistance that Harriet Beecher Stowe was so fortunate as to be

able to give in one of the epoch-making crises of our history, was one

of her great services to our country. In the next chapter we are to see

how she performed another real service, for which we owe her another

debt of gratitude.

CHAPTER XX

WRITING STORIES OF OLD NEW ENGLAND LIFE

Harriet Beecher Stowe did for her country more than one inestimable

service that should win for her the gratitude of her countrymen. “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin,” besides being a clarion call to the world, happened also

to be a book that was to become immortal. This was incidental; but

it was not a small thing to do--thus to focus the attention of the

whole world upon one American book. And it was no small service to the

literary life and hopes of this country to write a book that should,

as Sir Arthur Helps said, “insist on being read when once begun.” On

the wave of a great enthusiasm of pity and love, her name was carried

around the globe. Therefore, it is not too much to say that it was

because of her that the famous British taunt, “Who reads an American

book?” has now been answered, “Everybody!”

But “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” although the most famous, was not the only

book that Mrs. Stowe wrote. On the contrary, it was one of a long

series of novels, some of which are to be specially valued for their

historical import and some to be read for the sheer enjoyment of the

pictures of life drawn in them. Mrs. Stowe was a great story-teller,

a true raconteur. The story flows from her pen with a delightful

smoothness and ease. In her later books she turned with a very glad and

loving heart to the portrayal of scenes such as she had known in her

girlhood and of the native and unique spirit of that life which was as

the very marrow of her bones. We cannot be sufficiently thankful that

the old-fashioned Thanksgiving, the quilting-bee, and the wood-spell

survived to the year when the seeing eye and the recording memory came

to the Connecticut parsonage in the person of Harriet Beecher. To

every one that values those elements of our national character that

were formed in the struggles of the heroic Pilgrim fathers and mothers

in the wilderness and their inspired successors, this part of Mrs.

Stowe’s writing ought to be doubly precious. Her work in the books that

describe early New England life is a gift that every impulse in us of

patriotic reverence should leap to acknowledge.

It will be remembered that in her first book of stories, “The

Mayflower,” she drew from the rich field that was her native heath.

_Uncle Tim_, the hero of her very first story, was a living, breathing

expression of the New England spirit, and the town, the church, the

ways, the turns and queernesses of speech were of immortal simplicity

and truth to life. Scattered through the stories in that book are

found little character sketches of amazing vividness. How she makes

us see these solemn and important brethren in the church! Here they

are, _Deacon Enos Dudley_, solemn as an ancient Israelite, and, for

contrast, the brisk little _Deacon Abrams_, who came to a meeting to

manage things and to see that everything went off rightly!

“The services Deacon Enos offered to his God were all given with the

exactness of an ancient Israelite. No words could have persuaded him of

the propriety of meditating while the choir were singing, or of sitting

down, even through infirmity, before the close of the longest prayer

that ever was offered. A mighty contrast was he to his fellow-officer,

Deacon Abrams, a tight, little, tripping, well-to-do man, who used to

sit beside him with his hair brushed straight up like a little blaze,

his coat buttoned up trig and close, his psalm-book in hand, and his

quick, gray eyes turned first on one side of the broad aisle, and then

on the other, and then up into the gallery like a man who came to

church on business and felt responsible for everything that was going

on in the house.”

The observant child Harriet, sitting on the bench in the children’s row

from Sabbath to Sabbath in the Litchfield church, must have watched

these grave deacons that seem so much like story-book people as she

gives her accurate memories of them.

“At this instant Deacon Enos Dudley’s mild and venerable form

arose before me, as erst it used to rise from the deacon’s seat, a

straight close slip just below the pulpit. I recollect his quiet and

lowly coming into meeting, precisely ten minutes before the time,

every Sunday, his tall form a little stooping, his best suit of

butternut-colored Sunday clothes, with long flaps and wide cuffs, on

one of which two pins were always to be seen stuck in with the most

reverent precision. When seated, the top of the pew came just to his

chin, so that his silvery placid head rose above it like the moon

above the horizon. His head was one that might have been sketched for

a St. John--bald at the top, and around the temples adorned with a

soft flow of bright, fine hair.... He was then of great age, and every

line of his patient face seemed to say, ‘And now, Lord, what wait I

for?’ Yet still, year after year, he was to be seen in the same place

with the same dutiful regularity.” Those two pins set precisely upon

the deacon’s cuff ought to be immortalized along with the two-pronged

stick in Defoe’s famous “Journal.” In either case it was not in the

least necessary to mention the slight circumstance; yet by the very

casualness of the reference is given the precious air of verisimilitude

that the artist most desires.

Mrs. Stowe was one of the earliest among us to choose our own ancestral

life as a field for story-telling. To fix her place in the literary

procession, we must recall that it was only in 1849 that Longfellow’s

“Kavanagh” appeared, and that that great book, “The Scarlet Letter”

of Hawthorne and that popular one, “The Wide, Wide World,” by Sarah

Warner, were being written at the same time that Mrs. Stowe was writing

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” “The Blithedale Romance” and “Queechy” and “The

Lamplighter” came in the early fifties. The true literary descendants

of Mrs. Stowe in the realm of New England tales are Mary Wilkins

Freeman, Sarah O. Jewett and Kate Douglas Wiggin. It will perhaps be a

help to remember, too, that at the same time when Mrs. Stowe was giving

us our racy _Mary Scudder_, George Eliot was introducing _Mrs. Poyser_

in “Middlemarch” to the British public.

In this New England field Mrs. Stowe had therefore a unique

opportunity. She had seen that life; having been separated from it, it

grew precious to her, and, as her artistic instinct developed, seemed

worthy of preservation. No one else has reproduced as she has done the

first Christmas of New England, the days in the harbor of Cape Cod,

the first day on shore, Christmas tide in Plymouth Harbor, and Elder

Brewster’s Christmas sermon. These were the first fruits of the seed

planted when little Harriet, unperceived in a dim corner of the garret

study of Dr. Lyman Beecher, began to peer into the pages of Cotton

Mather’s “Magnalia” and thought it an excellent story-book.

Finally the more and more highly developed artistic skill of the

novelist and the widened taste of the woman, and the deep and

ineradicable religious nature of her soul united in the production of

the novel, “The Minister’s Wooing,” a book in which Mrs. Stowe lets

her passionate interest in old New England life have full sway. It

is a story built solely upon religious feeling. Nothing like it had

been done before, though since she led the way myriads of novels like

it in this respect have been attempted. It was a torch borne onward

into the dark. Mrs. Stowe maintained the right of the soul’s interests

to a place among themes fit for artistic treatment in the novel as

Elizabeth Barrett Browning did in poetry. Both were pioneers in this

field of artistic endeavor. But people were totally unaccustomed to

think of the novel in the terms of theology, and they at once classed

“The Minister’s Wooing” as a theological treatise. This was not in

the least true. It was a novel pure and simple, however seriously it

dealt with the effects on certain souls of certain kinds of theological

speculation. Gladstone appreciated the true position of the book. In

a letter to Mrs. Stowe he called it a “beautiful and noble picture of

Puritan life,” “exhibited upon a pattern felicitous beyond example as

far as my knowledge goes.” Our knowledge also goes no farther, even to

this day.

The “pattern” shows us the problem of a pure, young New England girl,

_Mary Scudder_ by name, whose mind is formed by religious aspiration,

of the power of which her lover has no understanding. He reveres her

and she stands to him as a religion, as often happens with a sincere

and questioning soul. The lover goes to sea and after a while _Mary_

hears that his ship has gone down and that he is lost. When a long time

has gone by the _Minister_ wooes her and, believing that the lover

is forever gone, _Mary_ consents to marry this man whom she reveres,

though she does not give him the love she gave the lost lover. Shall

I tell how the story comes out? I certainly will not, for that might

destroy the charm that this novel will have for its reader. And the

story must be read to be enjoyed. For who could give any idea of the

charm of the heroine and the manliness of the lover? There are historic

characters, Aaron Burr and Dr. Hopkins and President Stiles, delineated

with genius. Like Shakespeare, Mrs. Stowe, while disregarding dates and

sequences of events, has been loftily true to the spirit of things. One

may look in this book for a true picture, if not for actual events in

their exact order.

The scene of “The Minister’s Wooing” was laid at Newport. Mrs. Stowe’s

next New England story, “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” gives a picture

of the Maine coast, not far from Brunswick, near Harpswell, and deals

with a later time. Both, however, undertake the difficult task of

representing life a century or so back. Whittier called “The Pearl”

the “most charming New England idyl ever written.” He liked it far

better than the “Minister’s Wooing.” Its plot is simpler and there are

fewer characters; but it has the clear background of a whole town with

its quiet life streaked with tragedy, as life especially is along the

sea coast where the waves take their annual toll regardless of human

loves and ties. _Mara Lincoln_, the heroine, dies in the midst of the

story, but her loyal friend, _Sally Kittridge_, takes her place in our

interest; and after many sea-yarns, some ministrations by _Aunt Ruey_

and _Aunt Roxy_, typical characters of the town, a touch of far-away

Gothicism in the fact that the body of a beautiful woman floated

ashore tightly holding a handsome Spanish boy to her breast, and the

unraveling of the puzzle about her, we are allowed a happy wedding-bell

ending to the story at last.

“Oldtown Folks,” published in 1869, Mrs. Stowe considered more than a

story; it was her “résumé of the whole spirit and body of New England.”

In writing it, she tried, she said, to make her “mind as still and

passive as a looking-glass, or a mountain lake,” and then to give

“the images reflected there.” We are not, then, to take any of the

opinions expressed in the book as conclusively Mrs. Stowe’s opinions,

but to think of her as reporting impartially the point of view taken

by the Calvinists, Arminians, High Church Episcopalians, skeptics and

simple believers in the story. It has been said of Mrs. Stowe that

she remained without change the Calvinist, the old New Englander, the

Beecher, to the end of life. A close study of her work and spirit will

reveal that she made the most amazing progress in thought, in spirit

and in art. She herself knew this. One of her old friends who met her

at one time rather late in her life was afraid of what would happen if

she should be told that her friend did not hold exactly the same views

as of old. “Why,” exclaimed Mrs. Stowe, “I should be ashamed to believe

the same this year that I did last!” For “Oldtown Folks” Mrs. Stowe

gathered her “images” in large part from scenes reported to her by

her husband as he remembered them from his own boyhood. Together they

went to the home of his youth, South Natick, Massachusetts, and there

studied the places where the “visionary boy,” who was none other than

Professor Stowe himself, passed through the lonely and dream-haunted

experiences of his youth. From Professor Stowe’s account of the people

and customs in the old village, and from her own memories, Mrs. Stowe

organized a picture of the time a generation before her own.

The consummate masterpiece in the work is the character of _Sam

Lawson_, a literary grandson of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, an own

cousin to _Ichabod Crane_, and a sort of stepfather to _Huckleberry

Finn_. _Sam Lawson_ was a “tall, shambling, loose-jointed man, with a

long, thin visage, prominent, watery blue eyes, very fluttering and

seedy habiliments, who occupied the responsible position of first

do-nothing-in-ordinary in our village of Oldtown.” Why is it that

such a character invariably endears itself to our whole country? Mrs.

Stowe gives us a sort of explanation of the strange phenomenon. She

says that the lovable, lazy genius and factotum of the town was a

necessary appendage of every New England village; for Yankee life was

so “harried by work and thrift and industry,” that society would “burn

itself out with the intense friction if it were not for the lubricating

power of a decided do-nothing!” But that, perhaps, was not all. _Sam_

was the undeveloped artist and had a touch of the artist’s charm. He

was a great singer; he could sing all parts, bass, tenor, counter,

soprano, going from one to another at any point in the midst of the

hymn; and as a story-teller he was beyond compare. “‘Why, didn’t you

ever hear ’bout that?’” he would begin. “‘Want to know! Wal, I’ll

tell ye, then. I know all ’bout it.’” And with this the story started

out and the blissful listening of boys by the roadside or of friends

around some fireside--not his own--would begin. He was a New England

_Scheherazade_, with stories enough to last for a thousand and one

long, lonely, winter nights. _Sam Lawson_ “filled this post with ample

honor.” He would leave any work that ought to be done for his wife and

large family of children and spend hours tinkering some boy’s knife,

tending a dog’s sprained leg, or baiting hooks for a troop of boys in

their fishing. He was a soft-hearted old body and would knock the fish

in the head to put it out of torment. “‘Why, lordy massy!’” he would

say, “‘I can’t bear to see no kind o’ critter in torment. These ’ere

pouts ain’t to blame for bein’ fish, and ye ought to put ’em out of

their misery. Fish has their rights as well as any of us.’” When _Sam_

was engaged to put a clock in order, he would get it all to pieces

about the kitchen and then go away to start in on some other body’s

job, saying that “‘Some things can be druv and then agin some things

can’t, and clocks is that kind. They’s jest got to be humored. Now this

’ere’s a ’mazin’ good clock; give me my time on’t and I’ll have it so

’twill keep straight on to the millennium.’” Speaking of the millennium

starts a theological argument and under cover of this he leaves the

kitchen with the clock wheels scattered all over, and goes off fishing.

_Sam Lawson’s_ philosophy of life is summed up in this: “‘It’s all

fuss, fuss and stew, stew, till we get somewhere; and then it’s fuss,

fuss and stew, stew, to get back agin; jump here and scratch your eyes

out, and jump there and scratch ’em in agin--that ’ere’s life.’”

_Sam_ loved nothing so much as to “‘kind o’ go along and sort o’ see

how things turn out’” with the boys. He told them tales that made their

eyes stand out, constantly interspersing the incidents with moral

persuasions and advice. “‘So, boys,’” he would say, “‘you just mind and

remember and allers see what there is in a providence afore you quarrel

with it.’” With this lofty moral altitude, an intellectual superiority

in _Sam_ combined to make him a popular favorite. For forty years in

the village there had not been a marriage or a birth or a burial or

a slight beginning of a love-making which he did not know all about.

This knowledge made his charm and also his power. A great intellect

had been really wasted in this shiftless fellow. The variety of his

accomplishments was amazing. His work shop was filled with cracked

china, lame tea-pots, rickety tongs and decrepit andirons, and any

one of these would afford opportunity for hours of conversation if a

neighbor came in and if--important consideration!--the sharp, black

eyes of _Hepsy_, his wife, were not at the minute upon him. _Hepsy_ was

a “gnarly, compact, efficient little pepper-box of a woman.” Of course

if she came in his fun was over. “‘You’re always everywhere but where

you’ve business to be,’” her scolding voice would cry out, “‘helpin’

and doin’ for everybody but your own. For my part, I think that charity

ought to begin at home.’” _Hepsy_ was a “great talker.” She frequently

was so bad in this respect that _Sam_, who was not a specially silent

person, could not “get in a word edgeways, nor crossways, nor noways.”

At such times no one could blame _Sam_ if he did “‘go Indianing around

the country a spell till she kind o’ come to.’”

The main interest in “Oldtown Folks” is, however, in a little boy

and girl, _Henry_ and _Eglantine Percival_, or _Harry_ and _Tina_

for short, who are left orphaned and are distributed among the homes

in the Calvinistic and theological town. As _Sam Lawson_ said, they

“‘was real putty children, as putty behaved as ever he see.’” _Harry

Percival_ is a fine, manly little boy and _Tina_, his sister, is the

little witch whose buoyancy and charm can never be crushed out of her

even by a _Miss Asphyxia_. Ah, _Miss Asphyxia_! Every creature in her

service--horse, cow and pig--knew at once the touch of _Miss Asphyxia_;

and when it was she that said, “Get up!” the beast would make the wagon

spin. Into her hands fell the hapless and whimsical _Tina_. _Miss

Asphyxia_ was past fifty and her hair was well streaked with gray; but

this would not matter only that when she did it up, she tied it in a

very tight knot and fastened it with a horn comb; then she gave it a

shake to see if it would certainly stay all day and went about her

work. Her one idea in regard to the little fairy _Tina_ was to give her

efficient discipline. She put a brown towel into her hands and said,

“‘There, keep to work.’” And when _Tina’s_ fingers refused to bend to

the unusual task, _Miss Asphyxia_ rapped her promptly on the head with

the thimble, saying, “‘Keep to work.’” When _Tina_ began to cry _Miss

Asphyxia_ displayed a long birch rod. At night when deluged with soapy

water and rubbed with bony hands, _Tina_ was so suppressed that she

could only breathe out long sighs and whisper “‘Oh, dear!’” But she was

helpless in the hands of _Miss Asphyxia_. Having despoiled the bright

little head of its curls by means of her great shears, she rubbed some

camphor on vigorously to keep the child from taking cold; then, after

dropping the golden curls on the fire, she opened the door into a small

bedroom and, pointing, said to the child, “‘Now go to bed.’” _Tina_

crept in under the blue checked coverlet, thankful to be free of the

dreadful woman. In a moment, however, her tormentor opened the door

again. _Miss Asphyxia_ had forgotten something. “‘Can you say your

prayers?’ she demanded. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ faltered the child. ‘Say ’em,

then,’ said _Miss Asphyxia_; and bang went the door again. ‘There, now,

if I h’ain’t done up my duty to that child, then I don’t know,’ said

_Miss Asphyxia_.”

_Miss Asphyxia_ and her contemporaries thought that a child was

“‘pretty much dead loss the first three or four years; but after that

they’d more’n pay, if they’s fetched up right.’” _Miss Asphyxia_

intended that _Tina_ should be “‘fetched up right.’” Good old _Sol_,

her hired man, suggested that perhaps _Tina_ cried at night because

she was lonesome. “‘All sorts of young critters is,’” he argued;

“‘Puppies is; kittens mew when ye take ’em from the cats. Ye see they’s

used to other critters; and it’s sort o’ cold like, bein’ alone is.’”

_Miss Asphyxia_ gave a sniff of contempt. “‘Well, she’ll have to get

used to it. I guess ’twon’t kill her.’”

When poor _Tina_ broke a saucer and failed to make quick confession,

that is, to speak with accuracy, when she did really and truly let a

lie slip over her lips, we can imagine what an awful thing it seemed

to _Miss Asphyxia_. She proceeded to cure her of lying by scouring out

her mouth. Putting some soap and sand on a rag and grasping the child’s

head under her arm, she rubbed the mixture through her mouth with the

energy of an insulted prophetess. “‘See now if you will tell me another

lie,’” she said, pushing the child from her, and feeling that her own

conscience was quite clear, whatever might be the spiritual condition

of the culprit.

But things were coming to a crisis. Explaining the final fuss, _Sam_

said: “‘Wal, ye see, the young un was spicy; and when Miss Sphyxy was

down on her too hard, the child, she fit her,--ye know a rat’ll bite,

a hen will peck, and a worm will turn,--and finally it come to a fight

between ’em.’”

_Tina’s_ brother did not fare much better than did the little girl.

His cruel master would not allow him to go to visit his sister any

more than _Miss Asphyxia_ would have allowed him to come in if he

had arrived, for she would “‘Just as soon have the red dragon in the

Revelations come into her house as a boy!’” Finally _Harry_ ran away,

went to _Tina’s_ window in the night and told her to come with him.

They went off together, wandering in search of some good people to

give them a home, an event in which they had a firm faith. They went

along the roads and through the fields, playing that they were _Hansel_

and _Gretel_ in the story. They had the adventure of coming upon an

Indian encampment with a little tent and an old woman weaving baskets.

With her they dipped succotash with a clean clam-shell from a wooden

trough and were content and comforted. _Harry_ knelt in prayer before

lying down in the tent and this act made the eyes of the Indian woman

shine, for she, it seems, was the relic of a long since Christianized

tribe. When he was through she said: “‘Me praying Indian; me much love

Jesus.’” The next morning, however, the heathen husband came and drove

the children away.

The children took up their wandering and soon came to an old stately

mansion with an avenue of majestic trees. This, we were told, was the

Dench House, home of a Tory family of pre-revolutionary days and now

deserted with all its furnitures and its mysteries until it could be

decided properly to whom, under the new order, it really belonged.

In this beautiful place they found no giant waiting to execute fell

purpose upon them, so they built a fire, gathered berries, and slept,

until a very human and kind-hearted giant came along in the form of

_Sam Lawson_ himself, who bore them to Oldtown, where the home and the

loving hearts they had had faith would appear, were awaiting them.

So _Tina_ and _Harry_ came to the home of _Horace Henderson_, the

writer, as Mrs. Stowe portrays it, of these annals. _Horace_ and

_Harry_ became the friends of a lifetime. _Tina_ was passed into the

care of _Miss Mehitable Rossiter_, a plain-faced and true-hearted old

maid. When _Tina_ stood at her knee and looked up into her homely face,

_Miss Mehitable_ said: “‘Well, how do you like me?’” _Tina_ considered

attentively, looking long into the honest, open eyes. “‘I do like

you,’ she said, putting out her hands; ‘I think you are good.’” _Miss

Mehitable_ said that it was well that she did, for otherwise, as she

was a fairy, she might turn her into a mouse or a kitten. “‘I like you,

and I will be your kitten,’” said _Tina_. That night _Tina_ slept in

a big four-poster bed with hangings of India linen, on which Oriental

pagodas and peacocks and mandarins mingled together like the phantasms

of a dream. In this pretty little bit of description we have a memory

of Mrs. Stowe’s own childhood when she visited the old Foote homestead

at Nut Plains, and went to sleep behind the famous bed-hangings that

her Uncle Samuel Foote had brought home, and wondered why the mandarins

on the printed India linen did not ring the little bells in the

pagodas and why the birds did not pick off the golden fruits and eat

them.

Thus the children were safely landed on the shores of “quality,”

where they belonged. They became a part of that best of New England

connections, the Rossiter family. They came to know _Parson Lothrop_,

his wig and cocked hat and, above all, his old shay. They paid

reverence to his wife also, the great lady, and to her lady’s maid, who

had “grown up and dried in all the most sacred and sanctified essences

of genteel propriety.” Everywhere _Tina_ went she did more good than

harm. Even to _Lady Lothrop’s_ lonely grandeur she was a blessing.

_Tina_ had been told that in the presence of that great personage she

must not talk. So the active child sat still as long as she could keep

the dismal silence and then burst forth in several long, loud sighs.

“‘What’s the matter, little dear?’ said _Lady Lothrop_.

“‘O dear!’ said _Tina_, ‘I was just wishing that I could go to church.’

“‘Well, you are going to-morrow, dear.’

“‘I just wish I could go now and say one prayer.’

“‘And what is that, my dear?’

“‘I just want to say, “O Lord, open thou my lips,”’ said _Tina_ with

effusion.... ‘I am _so_ tired of not talking. But I promised _Miss

Mehitable_ that I wouldn’t talk unless I was spoken to,’ she added

with an air of virtuous resolution.”

The irresistible child was given permission to talk all she wanted,

and from then on she rattled and sparkled and went on with a verve and

gusto that waked everybody up. The icy chains of silence being thus

broken, everybody talked and _Lady Lothrop_ looked from one to another

in a sort of pleased surprise, for the childless woman had a loving

heart beneath her decorous breast.

All this is but the beginning of the story. Would it be possible

to guess what is going to happen? The old Dench House with its

secret drawers should afford a suggestion to a good guesser, and the

“visionary boy,” who is the teller of the whole story, will think a

great deal about _Tina_, we may be sure. A first-class, fascinating

rascal will be introduced as new material, and the threads of the plot

will work up into tragic crises. Far be it from me, however, to make

known how it is to come out!

When “Oldtown Folks” was published, the reading world was so charmed

with _Sam Lawson_ that they cried out for more. Like Shakespeare with

“Merry Wives,” the writer had to exhibit a favored hero under new

conditions. More, more of _Sam Lawson’s_ stories, they said. For the

garrulous fellow kept up his story-telling habit to the very end of the

book, telling his very best story last of all; therefore, the thought

of the lazy, delightful _Sam_ was in the mind even while the reader

was sighing over the woes of _Tina_. Hence, after a while Mrs. Stowe

wrote another book called “Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories,” in

which she gathered some tales of adventure, ghostly and otherwise,

and let _Sam_ tell them in his inimitable way. To be sure, everybody

does not care for such a character as _Sam Lawson_; but, as he himself

says, “‘Wal, you know there an’t no pleasin’ everybody; and ef Gabriel

himself, right down out o’ Heaven, was to come.... I expect there’d be

a pickin’ at his wings, and sort o’ fault-findin’.’”

As Mrs. Stowe’s first book had been a reflection of her love for old

New England, and her two greatest, considered purely from the artistic

point of view, had also come from the same source, so the last novel

that she wrote, “Poganuc People,” is again an echo from this music of

her youth. The _Tina_ of “Oldtown Folks” is said to be modeled upon her

own daughter, Georgiana May; if this is so, the _Dolly_ of “Poganuc

People” must be Harriet herself. In fact, a copy of “Poganuc People”

exists with Mrs. Stowe’s marginal notes, telling where it is “exact”

in its delineation, “my own experience,” “my own childish experience,”

“the whole chapter drawn from life,” etc. This book has a pathetic

and joyous interest as the very tender memoranda of the child’s life

recalled by that all-remembering mind in declining years.

CHAPTER XXI

A SERENE OLD AGE

In 1863 Mrs. Stowe removed from Andover to Hartford, Connecticut,

where, in a lovely wooded suburb on the bank of a river, she built a

house that was her home until the end of her life. Up to the death of

her husband in 1886 she spent the winters at Mandarin, Florida, called

thither by the condition of her son Frederick, who, at the close of

the war, came back to her in a state of broken health resulting from a

wound in the head received at Gettysburg. In the end that dear son was

a sacrifice, one of thousands that mothers were called upon to make for

their country all over the land from farthest north to farthest south.

The earlier years of this later period, while burdened with family

cares and sorrows, were a time of great literary activity to Mrs.

Stowe. In that time she lengthened the list of her books from ten to

thirty. Among these works there were three novels of importance, “Pink

and White Tyranny,” “My Wife and I,” and “We and Our Neighbors,” all

studies in the conditions of her own time, especially in New York City.

Of “My Wife and I” Mrs. Stowe said that she wrote it for the many dear,

bright young girls whom she numbered among her choicest friends; if

they liked the book, it was no matter what the critics said of it! Then

there were many stories for children, “Little Pussy Willow,” “Betty’s

Bright Idea,” “The Dog’s Mission,” and many more, all as good to-day as

they were thirty years ago. In conjunction with her sister Catherine

she published several books of household papers, wise thoughts on

house economy, on the beautiful in the house, on home religion, etc.

Several books were purely religious in their character; of these

“Bible Heroines” is, strangely enough, not reprinted in her complete

works.[15] A volume of poems among the number reminds us of Harriet’s

passion for poetry in her childhood and of her young ambition to join

the band of immortal poets, so carefully extinguished by her eldest

sister. In spite of Catherine, however, Mrs. Stowe indulged her desire

for poetic expression every now and then all through her life, as she

did also her love for drawing and sketching, and one of her poems, “The

Other World,” has been a favorite with many.

Beloved in her private life and honored as one of the great in our

literature, Mrs. Stowe lived on in her quiet home at Hartford until her

death in July, 1896. On her seventy-first birthday, June 14, 1882,

she was tendered by her publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and

Company, a tribute in the form of a garden party to which many of the

literary people of the country were invited. It was held at the country

residence of the Honorable and Mrs. William Claflin, at Newtonville,

near Boston, Massachusetts. This beautiful place, “The Old Elms,” was

never more lovely than on this perfect day. The majestic elms stood

proudly, as if they, too, felt the responsibility. The friends that

came bore the most honored names among the living writers of the land.

There were Whittier and Holmes, Louise Chandler Moulton and Elizabeth

Stuart Phelps, Lucy Larcom and Thomas Bailey Aldrich and A. Bronson

Alcott and Julia C. R. Dorr. Of Mrs. Beecher’s family there were a

goodly number: her three brothers, Charles, Edward and Henry Ward, and

her sister Isabella (Mrs. Hooker), her daughter Mrs. Allen and her son

Charles, being among the number.

After a time spent in delightful converse, the company gathered in a

tent on the lawn and listened to an address by Mr. H. O. Houghton.

After a tender word for the memory of Longfellow and of Emerson;

Mr. Houghton said that the garden party was being held in honor of

a birthday--but what the number of the birthday was we would not

inquire. If we estimated it by the amount of work accomplished by the

beloved guest of the day we must rank her with the antediluvians;

but if we judged by the vigor and freshness of her writings, by her

universal sympathy with young and old, we should have to say that

she had discovered the fountain of perpetual youth! Then he spoke

of “Uncle Tom,” calling it the “great epic of our age”; his trials,

and the victories he wrought for this epoch were to be our Iliad and

our Æneid for centuries to come. He then ran over the events of Mrs.

Stowe’s life, showing how it had all been a preparation for the work

she did; the New England youth, the western years on the borders of

a slave state, the trials and the disciplines. With such a training,

he said, “who can wonder that, while sitting at the communion table

and meditating on the infinite sorrows and ignominy of Him who gave

Himself for the redemption of humanity, she should have been inspired

with the vision of another life of suffering and sacrifice, by which

a race should be redeemed; and that while she mused the fire burned,

and from the white heat came forth the vivid picture of the death of

that other man of sorrows, so like its great prototype, as like as a

human copy can be to a divine original?” Mr. Houghton then spoke of the

widespread interest and the many translations of the book, telling how

“crowned heads, statesmen, scholars, and the people alike, have read,

wept over, and applauded the simple story.” He also referred to Mrs.

Stowe’s service to American literature in writing the tales of New

England life. Although these alone, he said, were sufficient to make

the reputation of any author, they were, in his opinion, eclipsed by

the glory of “Uncle Tom.”

He thought that her friends through all the world ranked her with the

Deborahs and Miriams and Judiths of old, and when she sang the refrain,

“Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously,” they would

respond, “The Almighty Lord hath disappointed them by the hand of a

woman!” With a heartfelt blessing and benediction, the address closed.

After this an address was made by that beloved and devoted brother of

Mrs. Stowe’s, to whom she had been so loyal a sister and friend ever

since the days when she took him by the hand and led him to Ma’am

Kilbourne’s school. Henry Ward Beecher was introduced and made a speech

full of witticisms and good feeling. He said that people accused him

at first of being the real author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; that he then

wrote his novel “Norwood,” and that killed this rumor dead! He told

how he first read the book and with what tears. Then he gave a most

wonderful tribute to his father and his mother, saying of him that,

while his father thought he was great by his theology, everybody else

knew that he was great by his religion; and of his mother, that the

daughter Harriet was most like her in graces and excellences, though

perhaps not in bodily presence.

Following this came some beautiful poems written for the occasion.

Mr. Whittier’s was the most beautiful of these: there was one also

by Dr. Holmes which was full of his exquisite humor, and there were

others by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mr. J. T.

Trowbridge, Mrs. Fields, and one by Mrs. Stowe’s daughter, Mrs. Allen.

This one at least must be copied here.

A child came down to earth

Just seventy years ago,

And round its form the angels trod,

Whispering low,

“’Tis an instrument

To be played by the hand of God.”

Time sped its steadfast way;

The child grew rosy and strong;

Unconscious she sweetly played,

With music right

And discord wrong

The song that God had made.

The notes of the instrument rose

Sweeter and better each day,

Till it sung in clearest trumpet-tones

“Cast off the bond,

Release the slave;

’Tis thy brother who bleeds and groans!

“Oh, hear the cry of the wronged,

The hapless children of God!

With folded hands and tearful eyes,

Hopeless they stand;

Patient and meek,

They bow and kiss the rod.”

O’er sea and mountain and shore,

The music thundered and roared,

Till the angels in heaven reëchoed its strain,

And the love of man,

With the mercy of God,

Revived in our hearts again.

Though the instrument’s feebler grown,

’Twill sound loud and full until death,

Like the harp with its strings Æolian-blown,

Rising and falling,

Whispering and calling,

With the strength of God’s own breath.

Among other speeches was one by her brother Edward, on the subject of

the favorable influence of the works of his sister on woman suffrage.

Then it was announced that Mrs. Stowe would say a few words. She arose

and with one movement the whole audience arose, too, in reverence to

the “little wisp of a woman” who stood there, slightly bowed and with

the snowy touch upon the waves of her hair. The audience listened with

eager interest, and this is what she said: “I wish to say that I thank

all my friends from my heart--that is all. And one thing more--and that

is, if any of you have doubt or sorrow or pain, if you doubt about this

world, just remember what God has done; just remember that the great

sorrow of slavery has gone, gone forever.” Then she told how happy the

negroes were that she was seeing all the time about her in her home

in Mandarin in Florida. They were working, building for themselves

little houses; and they were happy--they knew how to be happy even

better than white folks, she said. To be sure, they had faults--we must

have patience with them. But they were doing as well as possible, and

were justifying the confidence placed in them. Then she added those

significant words: “Let us never doubt; everything that ought to happen

is going to happen.” And as the audience dispersed they carried the

echo of these brave words with them, as the summing up of the whole

life’s thought of the good and great woman they had come there to honor.

An old age more serenely beautiful than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe

could scarcely be imagined. Honored throughout the world, happy in the

beautiful companionship of children in the Hartford home, she passed

on through the years, living in a dream world full of happy, loving

thoughts. At one time she said: “I thank God that there is one thing

running through my life from the time I was thirteen years old. It

is the intense unwavering sense of God’s educative guiding presence

and care.” She refers, of course, to that Sabbath when at the age

of thirteen, she went to her father in his study and told him about

her new sacred hope. It is not given to every one to find that “one

unceasing purpose” has run all through his life. To her was given the

insight to realize this. She thought so much about the life of the

spirit that at last it seemed as if she lived even more in the spirit

world than she did in this. Wonderful dreams visited her soul in which

she “knew of a certainty” something of a “vivid spiritual life where

the enthusiasm of love is the calm habit of the soul, where without

demonstrations of affection heart beats to heart, soul answers to soul,

we respond to the Infinite Love and we feel His answer in us and there

is no need of words.” This was, she said, “but a glimpse” yet it had

“left a strange sweetness in her mind.”

When Mrs. Stowe was about seventy years old she made a visit to

Wellesley College. The first time that I ever saw her she was sitting

in the seat of honor in the gallery of the old chapel. To me she

seemed like a little fairy godmother needing but the wings of gauze

to be made into a real vision. But there was a look in her eyes that

no soulless fairy ever had. As she leaned upon the railing and looked

out over the audience of young college girls, gathered there from all

parts of the world and throbbing with vivid life, a look of wistful

longing came over her face. It was almost as though she said, “Ah, if

this had but happened to me!” As she viewed that college life so wisely

and broadly organized, apparently so rich in opportunity, she may have

felt with some yearning that these young women were realizing powers

and opportunities furnished with an ease that had been denied to her.

But it is more likely that without any sadness or any reflection upon

the difficulties of her own youthful experience, she enthusiastically

rejoiced in the vigor, the happiness and the promise of power she

saw in that college group, and that, with her characteristic wistful

maternal tenderness, she yearned only for the fruition of that

promise. And we may question whether she would have had a larger life

or a greater influence if she had lived at a later time and had had

the training that is given to young women now. As it was she used

what she had to the full. Her industry was incessant. Her growth was

constantly forced by the fire of her own passion for attainment. Then

came the country’s crisis, and the crisis made the woman. But it would

never have made the woman if she had not stood ready to be made. That

preparation we have seen develop step by step in this story of her life.

It is, therefore, for the spirit of the woman behind the worker that we

are most sharply indebted; for, after all, it is an even greater thing

to live a great life than to write a great book. Harriet had courage;

she had initiative. She was overwhelmingly magnanimous, she was utterly

true. She was true to that part in us that grows, as well as to the

part that inherits the teaching of the past. She was wise enough to

know that the human mind and soul must be always impressionable, always

open to the truth as well as staunch in defending it. She had faith

in herself and she had faith in God. Moreover, it was because of her

faith in God that she had that faith in herself. After all, then,

it was her perfect confidence in God that was the key-note of her

character. “Let us never doubt,” she said; “everything that ought to

happen is going to happen.” This was the supreme note in the harmony of

her life.

A LIST OF MRS. STOWE’S BOOKS

1833. A PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY.

1843. THE MAYFLOWER.

1852. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

1853. A KEY TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

1853. A PEEP INTO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN (for children).

1854. SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS, 2 Vols.

1855. THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE. Dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

1855. A GEOGRAPHY FOR MY CHILDREN. Published in London.

1856. DRED, A TALE OF THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP.

1858. OUR CHARLEY AND WHAT TO DO WITH HIM.

1859. GOLDEN FRUIT IN SILVER BASKETS. Selection from her works,

published in England.

1859. THE MINISTER’S WOOING.

1862. THE PEARL OF ORR’S ISLAND, A STORY OF THE COAST OF MAINE.

1862. AGNES OF SORRENTO.

1863. REPLY ON BEHALF OF THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TO THE CHRISTIAN

ADDRESS OF MANY THOUSAND WOMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN.

1864. HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

1865. LITTLE FOXES.

1866. NINA GORDON (formerly DRED).

1867. QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE.

1867. DAISY’S FIRST WINTER AND OTHER STORIES.

1868. THE CHIMNEY CORNER.

1868. MEN OF OUR TIMES.

1869. OLDTOWN FOLKS.

1869. THE AMERICAN WOMAN’S HOME (WITH CATHERINE BEECHER).

1870. LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW.

1870. LADY BYRON VINDICATED.

1871. THE HISTORY OF THE BYRON CONTROVERSY.

1871. PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.

1871. SAM LAWSON’S OLDTOWN FIRESIDE STORIES.

1872. MY WIFE AND I.

1873. PALMETTO LEAVES.

1873. LIBRARY OF FAMOUS FICTION.

1875. WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS.

1876. BETTY’S BRIGHT IDEA AND OTHER TALES.

1876. FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER.

1878. BIBLE HEROINES.

1878. POGANUC PEOPLE.

1881. A DOG’S MISSION.

INDEX

“Address” to Women of America, 230, 259, 266, 271, 272.

Allen, Mrs., _see_ Stowe, Georgiana May.

Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow, 299.

“Arabian Nights,” 74, 169.

Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest,” 110.

Beecher family, ix-xii, 11, 153, 226, 298.

Beecher, Catherine, 12, 22, 96-109, 146-152, _et seq._

Beecher, Charles, 18, 27, 124, 136, 201, 226, 296.

Beecher, David, 11.

Beecher, Dr. Edward, 8, 18, 19, 117, 124, 296, 300.

Beecher, Mrs. Edward, 212.

Beecher, Esther, 12, 28, 34, 79, 102-103, 126, 128, 143, 144, 189.

Beecher, George, 18, 128, 130, 226.

Beecher, Harriet Elizabeth, _see_ Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

Beecher, Harriet Porter, 126, 128, 143, 144, 226.

Beecher, Henry Ward, 18, 19, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 60, 102, 117, 124,

167, 198, 206, 212, 226, 296, 298.

Beecher, Isabella (Mrs. Hooker), 18, 128, 296.

Beecher, James, 18, 128.

Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 1, 3, 5, 14, 17, 25, 28, 30, 39, 42-43, 48, 63,

66, 71, 73-74, 78, 80, 81, 98, 100, 111, 113, 115, 117, 123, 126,

131, 155, 192, 278, 298.

Beecher, Mary (Mrs. Perkins), 18, 124, 130.

Beecher, Roxana Foote, 7, 44, 52, 54, 56, 57-62, 70, 77, 96, 107, 151,

175, 298.

Beecher, Thomas K., 18, 128.

Beecher, William Henry, 18, 19, 124.

Bible, 10, 14, 17, 73, 75, 81, 82, 87, 103, 295.

_Biblical Repository_, 98.

Border State Policy, Lincoln’s, 268.

Bowling Green, N. Y., 4.

Brace, J. B., 48.

Bracelet, shackle, 230.

Bright, John, 273.

Browning, E. B., 62, 79, 240, 241, 261, 279.

Bunyan’s Pilgrim, 72.

Butler’s “Analogy,” 95, 110, 160.

Byron, 78, 79, 115, 169, 306.

Carpet, the painted, 58.

Chase, S. P., 159, 262.

_Christian Observer_, 70, 77.

Cincinnati, 122, 133-143, 146-152, 186, 197, 200, 202.

Civil War, 193, 242-273.

Claflin, Hon. and Mrs., 296.

“Cleon” (unfinished drama), vii, 90, 115.

Colonization Society, 199.

“Columbian Orator,” 38.

Cutler, George Younglove, 86.

Dame School, 18, 32, 34, 36-37, 298.

Dickens, 131, 135, 137, 215.

“Don Quixote,” 74, 169.

Easthampton, 25, 58, 194.

Edgeworth’s, Miss, “Frank,” 77.

Edwards, J., 75, 98.

Eliot, George, 236, 241, 278.

Emancipation Proclamation, 255-271.

Emerson, 216, 296.

Emma Willard School, 40, 151, 152.

England, relations of U. S. with, 157, 260, 261, 271, 273.

Fisher, A. M., 99.

Fields, Mrs., vii, 236, 299.

Foote, Rev. John, 55.

Foote, J. P., 133.

Foote, Lucinda (Mrs. Cornwall), 54, 151.

Foote, Roxana, _see_ Beecher, Roxana Foote.

Foote, Samuel E., 68, 77, 121, 133, 158, 162.

Garrison, 211, 216.

Gladstone, 279.

“Go down, Moses,” 250-251, 272.

Guilford, Conn., viii, 2, 12, 37, 54, 68-69, 117, 124, 130, 134, 195,

290.

Harrison, Gen., 139-140.

Helps, Sir Arthur, 274.

Holmes, Dr., 219, 271, 296.

Houghton, Mifflin Co., vii, 296.

Howe, J. W., 217.

Howells, W. D., 221.

Hubbard, Mrs. Mary, 69, 192.

Irving, W., 69.

“Jephtha’s Daughter,” 84-86.

Jesus Christ, 119, 289, 297, 306.

“John the Baptist, Old,” freedman, 254.

Kilbourne, Ma’am, _see_ Dame School.

Kingsley, Charles, 215, 236.

Lane Theological Seminary, 124, 143, 171, 199.

_Lawson, Sam_, 173, 282-293.

Lincoln, Abraham, 46, 159, 244, 258-273

Litchfield, Conn., 1-6, 20, 69, 70, 85, 124, 133, 164, 192, 195, 276.

Litchfield Female Academy, 40-43, 45, 62, 84.

Macaulay, 70, 215, 236.

“Magnolia,” 278.

Martineau, H., 135, 137, 138.

May, Georgiana, 104, _et seq._

Milton, 75, 81.

Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 40.

_National Era, The_, 215.

New England life, 1-8, 25, 39, 274-293, 275.

Novels, 80, 115.

Ohio, 106.

Ohio River, 127, 132, 176.

Partridge, Mrs. H. C., viii.

Pierce, Miss Sally, 40, 76.

Phelps, E. S., 296, 299.

Plays in Litchfield, 84-87.

Plutarch’s Lives, 88.

Primer, New England, 35.

“Queen Esther,” 87.

“Reply” to English “Address,” 260, 266, 271, 272.

“Robinson Crusoe,” 75.

Ruskin, 236.

“Ruth,” 87.

Sabbath in New England, 5, 19, 60, 276.

Sand, George, 217, 218, 221.

San Domingo, 56, 192.

Scott, 76-78, 80, 84, 169, 220.

Semi-colon Club, 158, 159.

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 215.

Shakespeare, 75, 83, 292.

“Sir Charles Grandison,” 75.

Slavery, 188-222, 255.

Spiritualism, 241.

Stiles, President Ezra, 55, 280.

Stowe, Rev. C. E., vii, 47, 118, 173, 211, 222, 248, 262, 296.

Stowe, Eliza Taylor, 173.

Stowe, Frederick William, 173, 247, 256, 258, 271, 294.

Stowe, Georgiana May (Mrs. Allen), 173, 293, 296, 299.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, portraits of, viii, 225-227, 257;

chronological outline of life of, xi-xii;

early home of, 1-31;

character of, 4, 8, 38, 72, 102, 104, 115, 120, 121, 134, 177, 188,

225, 227, 232, 236, 268, 303;

family of, 7, 18, 21, 72;

religious influences of, 17, 18, 110-121, 301, 302;

education of, 32-109;

in Cincinnati, _see_ Cincinnati;

literary life of, 161-184;

literary art of, 162, 169, 220, 264, 275, 281;

as a homemaker, 171-184;

in Brunswick, 172, 175, 211, _see also_ “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and

Slavery;

travels of, 223-243;

at Andover, 241;

services of, 273, 274, 278, 297;

at Hartford, 294-300;

in Florida, 294, 300;

public honors tendered to, 295;

serene old age of, 294-304;

works of, 70-82, 305-306.

Stowe, Harriet B., 173, 248, 262.

Stowe, Henry Ellis, 173, 246, 257, 270.

Stowe, Lyman Beecher, vii.

Stowe, Samuel Charles, 173, 187, 270.

Suffrage, Woman’s, 300.

Sun-dial inscription, 121.

Tarbell, Ida, 150.

Thanksgiving, 30, 143, 244-246.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” 188-214, 222, 264, 269, 274, 278, 296-298;

influence of, 216-219, 256.

Underground railway, 197.

Vanderpoel, Miss E. N., 40, 63, 85.

Vanzandt, 206.

Victoria, Queen, 228.

Villard, Mrs. Henry, 216.

Washington in 1862, 243-244, 265.

Weld, Theodore, 199.

Wellesley College, 303.

Wesley, J., 233.

West, the, in 1832, 123.

_Western Monthly Magazine_, 159, 163, 170.

Whittier, 217, 219, 280, 296.

Woman suffrage, 300.

Women, New England, 150, 151.

Women of U. S., 237.

Woodspell, 25-29.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. I, pp. 464-474.

[2] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. I, pp. 85-86.

[3] See the productions of the wonderful lace and embroideries done by

pupils of the Litchfield Female Academy in “Chronicles of a Pioneer

School,” by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, 1903.

[4] By Miss E. N. Vanderpoel, in her charming book, “Chronicles of a

Pioneer School.”

[5] Any one that would like to know more about this Aunt Esther, may

well read the essay of Mrs. Stowe’s called “The Cathedral.” It is found

in her book entitled “The Chimney Corner.” If Harriet could build a

cathedral to suit herself she would have a place therein for “Saint”

Esther.

[6] From Lyman Beecher’s “Autobiography,” 1866, Vol. II, p. 224.

[7] See a very interesting article by Benjamin R. Andrews, Ph.D.,

in _The Journal of Home Economics_ for June, 1913, entitled, “Miss

Catherine Beecher, The Pioneer in Home Economics.” Appended is a long

list of her books.

[8] See Miss Ida Tarbell’s essays on “The American Woman,” in _The

American Magazine_, Dec. 1909, Vol. 69, p. 206.

[9] Quoted by Miss Tarbell, p. 206.

[10] By a queer freak of circumstance, this account of Mrs. Stowe’s

life is now being written on the very table that adorned her parlor at

Walnut Hills. It is a beautiful piece of rosewood and mahogany veneer,

in a quaint old pattern which is now so rare as to be highly valued by

collectors. It must have been one of her household treasures. Together

with the rest of her furniture, it was sold when the family moved to

Maine.

[11] By west, she meant what was then to her the southwest, Kentucky,

Missouri, etc., practically, the south.

[12] See “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Chap. XLV.

[13] Col. T. W. Higginson’s “Common Sense about Women.” 4th Ed., 1891,

Swan Sonnenschein, London, p. 238.

[14] Dowden’s “Life of Robert Browning,” p. 206.

[15] A list of Mrs. Stowe’s works will be found on page 305.