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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 Tom's Cabin."

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

'There is a ladder to heaven." once wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe "whose base God had placed in himan affections, tender instincts, symbloic feelings, sacraments of love through which the sould rises higher 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 paradise, blazes 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 to lose herself in the eternal Love and Beauty, of which all earthly fairness and grandure are bbut 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 spirtit

She lived till she was 85, and from early youth to old ahe 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 ot 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 thats one of the first marks of genius Geniuses, you know, never come down to commone life'

By this definition, Mrs. Stowe could never have been a genius for she came down to common life uncommonly well When she wrote Unlce Toms 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 breasts, and made her forget farigue, so that when the little ones were all in bed the cread set to rise, the clock wound, and the kindiling placed for the morning are 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 may have been the exuberant enthusiasm of a friend and orator but certainlu, the writing of the book placed her in the company of liberators Her name is written first in the list made up of william Lloyd Garrison John Greenleafe Whittler, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglas 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 cast idea for freedom at once must surely 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

Klik Munroe says, concerning this preparation "At the time of lier marriage Mis Stowe was note an acknowledged aboltionist, nor had she given serious consideration to the subject of slavery in Cincinnati, however it was forced upon her at all times and all forms

The city was one of the most important and stations of the underground railway and I slaves were constantly escaping or being recaptured within its limits The Ohio river alone separated it form the slave state of Kentucky and Lane seminary, with which the fortunes of the Beecher family were so closely allied was the rankest holbed of aboition in the country One by one the incidents that afterwards appeared with such telling effect in 'Uncel Tom's Cabin were forced upon the attention of the young authoress Topay was an inmate of her own family She visited 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, diving by night over almost impassable toads conveyed a fugitive slave girl who had been a servant in the Stowe family to a place of saftey from her pursucrs Mrs Stowe brothers, charles acted fro some months as collecting agent for a New Orleans commission house an 1 on one of his trips up the Red river discovered the Legree plantation of which 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 springling into the given with the clasped to her bossom from the deck of steamer on which he was traveling All these and many more similar things Mrs Stowe say or hard of until she gradually became filled with a sense of outrage and indignation

Dr Famelle Badley editor of the National Bra of Washington wrote to Mrs Stow, 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, began "Uncle Tom's Cabin," whie she was recovering from her illness attendant upon the birth of her child, and during the months which followed, she completed it In may, 1801, the serial beagn in the National Era before it was ended the circulation of that paper had increased 1500 it was an inspored story It was as if it emanted from the passion and misery of a while nation I had no control over it" Mrs. Stowe used to say 'It insisted upon being written as it stands, and would suffer not abridgement

After it was finished, John P Jewett, a young Boston publisher, made overtures for the publication of the story in book form Mrs Stowe had received but $100 for the storya s a serial and was glad to suffer its republication An edition of 1000 was issued-and sold the first day Ten thousand coples were then ordered from the peinter 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, partiotism, prejudice, love heroism and hate Mrs Stowe, at the end of six months was given $10000 in rovaties At the end of the year 300,000 copies of the book had been sold. The story was deamatized, 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 twent languages It has reached a sale, approcimately, of 5000000 Only there other books in the history of the world have exveeded it in sale

Praise cames from the distinguished men and women of all countries Denuncitation came, too, and bitter at tacks upon the character of Mrs Stowe-that quiet woman, who had gorwn up a romping country girl, married a profession of the theological history, and tended her home whie she gave birth to and personally cared fro seven children

The hour, the cause and the woman were too great for her to stoop to a defense of herself, but she did wrtie a "Key to Uncle Toms Cabin," in which she pruduced the evidence which sustained her story It was inefutable They cavllers 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 vlood and tears

Mrs Stowe wrote much else Her "Dred Scott' almost rankes with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and, like that book, served to preserve to a forgetfil people a great historical condition and a vital epoch

In the Minister's Wooing "Pink and White Tranny' The Peart of Orrs Island," "Anges of Sortento," "Oldtown Folks," Footsteps of the Master," "My wife and I,' "We and Our Neighbors" and 'Self-made Men there appears nothing that could be termed genius there is not even remarkable art The books come within the realm of literature They are noble, humorous, pure, intellectual They make exvellent reading But they are not great, and white they would have pinced Mrs. Stowe among the best wrtiers of her period in this country, they would not have won her the applause and affection of the work nor the right to be called the greates woman of her time. Far from it

The truth is, as now and then a man is born out of the heart of the people, with no reason for which mortals may account, and by stress of the cumulative power of that nation, sings the songs or fights the victorius batties of the pwople so Inle Tom's Cabin" took shape- a great masterpiece, painted high, where all the nations might read upon the impregnable wall of liberty, and the hand that drew the picture was guided by God, and moved as under Gods holy spell

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

Mrs Stowes life was one crowned with honor and praise The house in which she lived at Hartford was decorated to repietion with the costly and curious souvernirs sent her from every part of the world by those who read her message and wished to show their love When she travled 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 wehre its length of placed waters look most beautiful The house was built in the very heart of some great caks In fact, it was built of them and about them The grounds vets luxurious with semi-tropical foliage The place loted with beauty But after all rs Stowe loved her decorous New England home and garden [?] On one side of her at Hartford 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 Giant with Sheridan Sherman and I Chase, with Whitney Sumner and Carrison

She heard the cry "Prepare for war wake up the mightly men let all the men of war draw near, let them come up Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears Lat the weak say I am strong" And she rode froth to battle as bravely as any man of them all and stood firm while 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