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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Elia W. Peattie Writes of This Famous Woman and Author.

How the Quiet New England Wife and Mother Write "Uncle Ton's Cabin."

Some of the Characteristics of the Enthusiasitc Friend of the Slave Whose Book Stirred the World.

"There is a ladder to heaven," once write Harriet Beecher Stoww, "whose base God has placed in human affections, tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacraments of love, through which the soul rises highe and higher, refining as she goes, till she outgrows the human and changes, as she rises, into the image of the divine. At the very top of this ladder, at the threshold of parndisc, balzes dazzling and crystaline that celestial grade where the sould knows self no more, having learned, through a long experience of devotion, how blest it is lose herself in the eternal Love and Beauty, of which all earthly fairness and gradure are but the dim type, the distant shadow."

Mrs. Stowe, by the exercise of the affections and instincts, by the use of the sacraments and symbols, has attained to the Love and Beauty of which she wrote, and has found agian, let us hope, the old sweet sanity of mind, the old serene peace of spirit.

She lived till she was 85, and from early youth to old age she was busied with many things. She was not a genius exactly. At least it is safe to infer that she would not have lived to be so spoken of in "Queer Little People," she made Mrs. Nutcracker says:

"Depend upon it my dear, that fellow must be a genius."

"Fiddlesticks on his genius," said old Mr. Nutcracker, "what does he do?"

"Oh nothing, of course; that's one of the first makrs of genius. Geniuses, you know never come to common life."

By this definition, Mrs. Stowe could never have neen a genius, for she come down to common life uncommonly well. When she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" she was-so the story goes-doing all of her own house work and caring for seven children. The passion of patriotism burned white in her breast and made her forget fatigue, so that when the little ones were all in bed, the brend set to rise, the clock wound, and the kindling placed for the morning fire, she wrote the words which stirred the nation.

"If Uncle Tom's Cabin had not been written," Charles Sumner said,, "Abraham Lincoln could not have been elected president of the United States."

This many have been the exuberant enthusiasm of a friend and orator, but certainly, the the writing of the book placed her in the company of liberators. Her name is written first in the list made ip of William Lloyd Garrison, John Greeleaf Whitler, Wendell Phillips, Freerick Dougals Gamallel Bailey, Theodore Weld, James Birney, John Brown and those who helped them.

It is very wonderful and beautiful that the idea of the book should have come to Mrs. Stowe when she laid in bed after having given birth to her seventh child. To have brought forth a dear child and a vast idea for freedom at once must surley have been a happiness past words. Of course the preparation for the work had been long. It was an unconscious preparation, but that was all the better, and helps to account for the spontaneity which throbs in every page of the book.

Kirk Munroe says, concerning this preparation: "At the time of her marriage Mrs. Stowe was not an acknowledged abolitionist, nor had she given serious consideration to the subject of slavery. In Cincinnati, however, it was froced upon her at all times and in all forms.

The city was one of the most important stations of the underground railway, and slaves were constantly escaping or being recaptured within its limits. The Ohio river alone separated it from the slave state of Kentucky; and Lane seminary, with which the frotunes of the Beecher family were so closely allied, was the rankest hotbed of abolition in the country. One by one the incidents that afterwards appeared with sich telling effect in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" were forced upon the attention of the young authoress. Topsy was an inmate of her own family. She cisited the Shelbys in Kentucky; Senator Bird and the great hearted Can Tromp were well-known characters of her acquaintance. Her husband and her brother, Henry Ward, drving by night over almost impassable roads, conveyed a fugitive slave girl,who had been a servant in the Stowe family, to a place of safety from her oursuers. Mrs. Stowe's brother Charles acted fro some months as collecting agent for a New Orleans commission house, and on one of his trips up the Red river, discovered the Legree plantation, of whuch he drew a faithful picture in his next home letter. In another letter he told of the slave mother who sought the liberty of death for her babe by springing into the river, with it clasped to her bosom, form the deck of a steamer on which he was traveling. All these and many more similar things Mrs. Stowe saw or heard of until she gradually became filled with a sense of outrage and indignation."

De. Famallel Bailey, editor of the National Era of Washington, wrote the Mrs. Stowe, the last part of the year 1850, asking for a serial story. Mrs. Stowe, anxious to supply an order which she expected would bring her some much needed money, beagan "Uncle Tom's Cabin," while she was recovering from her illness attendant upon the birth of her child, and during the months which followed, she completed it. In may, 1851, the serial began in the National Era. Before it was ended the circulation of that paper had increased 15,000. It was an inspired story. It was as if it emarated from the passion and misery of a whole nation. "I had no control over it." Mrs. Stowe used to say. "It insisted uponbeing written as it stands, and would suffer no abridgement."

After it was finished, John P. Jewett, a young Boston publisher, made overauters for the publication of the story in book form. Mrs. Stowe had received but $300 for the story as a serial, and was glad to suffer its republication. An edition of 1,000 was issued-and sold the first day. Ten thousand copies were then ordered from the printer and binder, and were sold as fast as they appeared at the book shops. The American people seized upon this book, which they read with terrible emotion. The story was as the core of the national hear. From it throbbed the arteries of politics, patriotism, prejudice, love, heroism and hate. Mrs. Stowe, at the end of six months was given $10,000 in royalties. At the end of the year 300,00 copies of the books had been sold. The story was dramatized, and was everywhere listened to with feelings which it would, in the calm times, be hard to understand. Since then the book has been put in twenty languages. It has reched a sale, approximately, of 5,000,000. Only three other books in the history of the world have exceeded it in sale.

Praise come from the distinguished men and women of all countries. Denunication came, too, and bitter at tacksipon the character of Mrs. Stowe-that quiet woman, who had grown ip a rompting country girl, married a professor of theolgical history, and tended her home while she have birth to and peronally cared for seven children.

The hour, the cause and the soman were too great fro her stoop to a defesnse of herself, but she did write a "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," in such she produced the evidence which sustained her story, it was irrefutable. The cavilers were silenced. And in the legislative chambers, and in the hearts of the people, gathered hour by hour the storm which finally burst over this country, and flooded it for a time with blood and tears.

Mrs. Stowe wrote much else. Her "Dred Scott" and, like that books, servered to preserve to a forgetful people a grent historical conditionand a vital epoch.

In "The Minister's Wooing," "Pink and White Tyranny." "The Peral of Orr's Island," "Agnes of Sorrento," "oldtown Folks." "Foorsteps of the Master," "My Wife and I," "We and Our Neighbors" and "Self-Made Men" there appears nothing that could be termed henius. There is not even remarkable art. The books come within the realm of literature. They are noble humorous, pure, intellectual. They make excellent reading. But they are not great and while they would have placed Mrs. Stoww among the best eriters of her period in this country, they would not have own her the applause and affection of the world, nor the right to be called the greatest woman of her time. Far from it.

The truth is, as now and then a man is born out of the people, with no reason for whith mortals may account by stress of the cumulative power of the nation, sings the songs or fights the victorious battles of people so "Uncle Tom's Cabing" took shape-a great materpiece, painted high, where all the nations might read, upon the impregnable wall of liverty and the hand that drew the picture was guided by God, and moved as under God's holy spell.

Only to the pure in heart may such revelations come. As to Mary of Nagareth was born a Liberator, so to Mrs. Stowe was born this book, also a liberator, and she, also, was blessed among women.

Mrs. Stowe's life was one crowned with honor and praise. The house in which she lived at Hartford was decorated to repletion with the costly and curious soivenirs sent her from every part of the world by those who read her message and wished to show their love. When she traveled abroad her progress was one continued ovation. There were no kings but wished to honor her; no peasant but might shake her kind hand unabashed.

In the winter, for many years, she spent her time in her home at Mandarin, on the St. John's river, where it is broadest and where its length of placed waters looks most beautiful. The house was built in the very heart of some great oaks. In fact, it was built of them and about them. The grounds were luxurious with
semi-tropical follage. The place rioted with beauty. But, after all, Mrs. Stowe loved her decorous New England home and garden best. On one side of her at Hartforf lived Mark Twain, on the other Charles Dudley Warner, and during the last few years, since her brain has been childish and weary, Mrs. Stowe has wandered about these grounds at will with her attendant, soothing herself with the quiet and orderly beauty about her.

Nearly all our great emancipators of the stormy '50s and '60s are now dead. The giants have passed. This last of them was among the greatest. She stands with Lincoln and Grant, with Sheridan, Sherman and Chase, with Whitney, Sumner and Garrison.

She heard the cry, "Prepare for war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, 'I am strong'" And she rode forth the battle as bravely as any man of them all, and stood firm with the rage of half a nation burst upon her.

At her call men volunteered to die; at her encouragement women sacrificed the dearest thing in life. At the sound of her trumpet wrong fell down, and in the day of victory she was crowned with the others.

ElIA W. PEATTIE