Part 3

Three years later, Mr. Beecher, who had now become widely known as a revivalist and brilliant preacher, was called to Boston, where he remained for six years. His six sermons on intemperance had stirred the whole country.

Though he loved Boston, his heart often turned toward the great West, and he longed to help save her young men. When, therefore, he was asked to go to Ohio and become the president of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, he accepted. Singularly dependent upon his family, Catharine and Harriet must needs go with him to the new home. The journey was a toilsome one, over the corduroy roads and across the mountains by stagecoach. Finally they were settled in a pleasant house on Walnut Hills, one of the suburbs of the city, and the sisters opened another school.

Four years later, in 1836, Harriet, now twenty-five, married the professor of biblical criticism and Oriental literature in the seminary, Calvin E. Stowe, a learned and able man.

Meantime the question of slavery had been agitating the minds of Christian people. Cincinnati being near the border-line of Kentucky, was naturally the battle-ground of ideas. Slaves fled into the free State and were helped into Canada by means of the "Underground Railroad," which was in reality only a friendly house about every ten miles, where the colored people could be secreted during the day, and then carried in wagons to the next "station" in the night.

Lane Seminary became a hot-bed of discussion. Many of the Southern students freed their slaves, or helped to establish schools for colored children in Cincinnati, and were disinherited by their fathers in consequence. Dr. Bailey, a Christian man who attempted to carry on a fair discussion of the question in his paper, had his presses broken twice and thrown into the river. The feeling became so intense, that the houses of free colored people were burned, some killed, and the seminary was in danger from the mob. The members of Professor Stowe's family slept with firearms, ready to defend their lives. Finally the trustees of the college forbade all slavery discussion by the students, and as a result, nearly the whole body left the institution.

Dr. Beecher, meantime, was absent at the East, having raised a large sum of money for the seminary, and came back only to find his labor almost hopeless. For several years, however, he and his children stayed and worked on. Mrs. Stowe opened her house to colored children, whom she taught with her own. One bright boy in her school was claimed by an estate in Kentucky, arrested, and was to be sold at auction. The half-crazed mother appealed to Mrs. Stowe, who raised the needed money among her friends, and thus saved the lad.

Finally, worn out with the "irrepressible conflict," the Beecher family, with the Stowes, came North in 1850, Mr. Stowe accepting a professorship at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. A few boarders were taken into the family to eke out the limited salary, and Mrs. Stowe earned a little from a sketch written now and then for the newspapers. She had even obtained a prize of fifty dollars for a New England story. Her six brothers had fulfilled their mother's dying wish, and were all in the ministry. She was now forty years old, a devoted mother, with an infant; a hard-working teacher, with her hands full to overflowing. It seemed improbable that she would ever do other than this quiet, unceasing labor. Most women would have said, "I can do no more than I am doing. My way is hedged up to any outside work."

But Mrs. Stowe's heart burned for those in bondage. The Fugitive Slave Law was hunting colored people and sending them back into servitude and death. The people of the North seemed indifferent. Could she not arouse them by something she could write?

One Sunday, as she sat at the communion table in the little Brunswick church, the pattern of Uncle Tom formed itself in her mind, and, almost overcome by her feelings, she hastened home and wrote out the chapter on his death. When she had finished, she read it to her two sons, ten and twelve, who burst out sobbing, "Oh! mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world."

After two or three more chapters were ready, she wrote to Dr. Bailey, who had moved his paper from Cincinnati to Washington, offering the manuscript for the columns of the National Era, and it was accepted. Now the matter must be prepared each week. She visited Boston, and at the Anti-Slavery rooms borrowed several books to aid in furnishing facts. And then the story wrote itself out of her full heart and brain. When it neared completion, Mr. Jewett of Boston, through the influence of his wife, offered to become the publisher, but feared if the serial were much longer, it would be a failure. She wrote him that she could not stop till it was done.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was published March 20,1852. Then came the reaction in her own mind. Would anybody read this book? The subject was unpopular. It would indeed be a failure, she feared, but she would help the story make its way if possible. She sent a copy of the book to Prince Albert, knowing that both he and Queen Victoria were deeply interested in the subject; another copy to Macaulay, whose father was a friend of Wilberforce; one to Charles Dickens; and another to Charles Kingsley. And then the busy mother, wife, teacher, housekeeper, and author waited in her quiet Maine home to see what the busy world would say.

In ten days, ten thousand copies had been sold. Eight presses were run day and night to supply the demand. Thirty different editions appeared in London in six months. Six theatres in that great city were playing it at one time. Over three hundred thousand copies were sold in less than a year.

Letters poured in upon Mrs. Stowe from all parts of the world. Prince Albert sent his hearty thanks. Dickens said, "Your book is worthy of any head and any heart that ever inspired a book." Kingsley wrote, "It is perfect." The noble Earl of Shaftesbury wrote, "None but a Christian believer could have produced such a book as yours, which has absolutely startled the whole world.... I live in hope--God grant it may rise to faith!--that this system is drawing to a close. It seems as though our Lord had sent out this book as the messenger before His face to prepare His way before Him." He wrote out an address of sympathy "From the women of England to the women of America," to which were appended the signatures of 562,448 women. These were in twenty-six folio volumes, bound in morocco, with the American eagle on the back of each, the whole in a solid oak case, sent to the care of Mrs. Stowe.

The learned reviews gave long notices of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Blackwood said, "There are scenes and touches in this book which no living writer that we know can surpass, and perhaps none can equal." George Eliot wrote her beautiful letters.

How the heart of Lyman Beecher must have been gladdened by this wonderful success of his daughter! How Roxana Beecher must have looked down from heaven, and smiled that never-to-be-forgotten smile! How Harriet Beecher Stowe herself must have thanked God for this unexpected fulness of blessing! Thousands of dollars were soon paid to her as her share of the profits from the sale of the book. How restful it must have seemed to the tired, over-worked woman, to have more than enough for daily needs!

The following year, 1853, Professor Stowe and his now famous wife decided to cross the ocean for needed rest. What was their astonishment, to be welcomed by immense public meetings in Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee; indeed, in every city which they visited. People in the towns stopped her carriage, to fill it with flowers. Boys ran along the streets, shouting, "That's her--see the courls!" A penny offering was made her, given by people of all ranks, consisting of one thousand golden sovereigns on a beautiful silver salver. When the committee having the matter in charge visited one little cottage, they found only a blind woman, and said, "She will feel no interest, as she cannot read the book."

"Indeed," said the old lady, "if I cannot read, my son has read it to me, and I've got my penny saved to give."

The beautiful Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Stowe at her house, where she met Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Argyle, Macaulay, Gladstone, and others. The duchess gave her a solid gold bracelet in the form of a slave's shackle, with the words, "We trust it is a memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." On one link was the date of the abolition of the slave trade, March 25, 1807, and of slavery in the English territories, Aug. 1, 1834. On the other links are now engraved the dates of Emancipation in the District of Columbia; President Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery in the States in rebellion, Jan. 1, 1863; and finally, on the clasp, the date of the Constitutional amendment, abolishing slavery forever in the United States. Only a decade after Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, and nearly all this accomplished! Who could have believed it possible?

On Mrs. Stowe's return from Europe, she wrote Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, which had a large sale. Her husband was now appointed to the professorship of sacred literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., and here they made their home. The students found in her a warm-hearted friend, and an inspiration to intellectual work. Other books followed from her pen: Dred, a powerful anti-slavery story; The Minister's Wooing, with lovely Mary Scudder as its heroine; Agnes of Sorrento, an Italian story; the Pearl of Orr's Island, a tale of the New England coast; Old Town Folks; House and Home Papers; My Wife and I; Pink and White Tyranny; and some others, all of which have been widely read.

The sale of Uncle Tom's Cabin has not ceased. It is estimated that over one and a half million copies have been sold in Great Britain and her colonies, and probably an equal or greater number in this country. There have been twelve French editions, eleven German, and six Spanish. It has been published in nineteen different languages,--Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, Modern Greek, Finnish, Welsh, Polish, and others. In Bengal the book is very popular. A lady of high rank in the court of Siam, liberated her slaves, one hundred and thirty in number, after reading this book, and said, "I am wishful to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and never again to buy human bodies, but only to let them go free once more." In France the sale of the Bible was increased because the people wished to read the book Uncle Tom loved so much.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Les Miseràbles, and a few other novels, will live, because written with a purpose. No work of fiction is permanent without some great underlying principle or object.

Soon after the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe bought a home among the orange groves of Florida, and thither she goes each winter, with her family. She has done much there for the colored people whom she helped to make free. With the proceeds of some public readings at the North she built a church, in which her husband preached as long as his health permitted. Her home at Mandarin, with its great moss-covered oaks and profusion of flowers, is a restful and happy place after these most fruitful years.

Her summer residence in Hartford, Conn., beautiful without, and artistic within, has been visited by thousands, who honor the noble woman not less than the gifted author.

Many of the Beecher family have died; Lyman Beecher at eighty-three, and Catharine at seventy-eight. Some of Mrs. Stowe's own children are waiting for her in the other country. She says, "I am more interested in the other side of Jordan than this, though this still has its pleasures."

On Mrs. Stowe's seventy-first birthday, her publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., gave a garden party in her honor, at the hospitable home of Governor Claflin and his wife, at Newton, Mass. Poets and artists, statesmen and reformers, were invited to meet the famous author. On a stage, under a great tent, she sat, while poems were read and speeches made. The brown curls had become snowy white, and the bright eyes of girlhood had grown deeper and more earnest. The manner was the same as ever, unostentatious, courteous, kindly.

Her life is but another confirmation of the well-known fact, that the best work of the world is done, not by the loiterers, but by those whose hearts and hands are full of duties. Mrs. Stowe died about noon, July 1, 1896, of paralysis, at Hartford, Conn., at the age of eighty-five. She passed away as if to sleep, her son, the Rev. Charles Edward Stowe, and her daughters, Eliza and Harriet, standing by her bedside. Since the death of her husband, Professor Calvin E. Stowe, in 1886, Mrs. Stowe had gradually failed physically and mentally. She was buried July 3 in the cemetery connected with the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., between the graves of her husband and her son, Henry. The latter was drowned in the Connecticut River, while a member of Dartmouth College, July 19, 1857.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

Thousands were saddened when, Aug. 12, 1885, it was flashed across the wires that Helen Hunt Jackson was dead. The Nation said, "The news will probably carry a pang of regret into more American homes than similar intelligence in regard to any other woman, with the possible exception of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe."