HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,

AUTHOR OF THE MOST POPULAR AMERICAN NOVEL.

EW names are more indelibly written upon our country's history than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe. "No book," says George William Curtis, "was ever more a historical event than Uncle Tom's Cabin.' . . . It is the great happiness of Mrs. Stowe not only to have written many delightful books, but to have written one book which will always be famous not only as the most vivid picture of an extinct evil system, but as one of the most powerful influences in overthrowing it. . . . If all whom she has charmed and quickened should unite to sing her praises, the birds of summer would be outdone."

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the sixth child of Reverend Lyman Beecher, the great head of that great family which has left so deep an impress upon the heart and mind of the American people.. She was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in June, 1811,-just two years before her next younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher. Her father was pastor of the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and her girlhood was passed there and at Hartford, where she attended the excellent seminary kept by her elder sister, Catharine E. Beecher. In 1832 her father accepted a call to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary, at Cincinnati, and moved thither with his family. Catharine Beecher went also, and established there a new school, under the name of the Western Female Institute, in which Harriet assisted.

In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her personal notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into Kentucky in company with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in the Western Institute. They visited the estate that afterward figured as that of Mr. Shelby, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and here the young authoress first came into personal contact with the slaves of the South. In speaking, many years afterward, of this visit, Miss Dutton said: "Harriet did not seem to notice anything in particular that happened, but sat much of the time as though abstracted in thought. When the negroes did funny things, and cut up capers, she did not seem to pay the

slightest attention to them. Afterward, however, in reading Uncle Tom,' I recognized scene after scene of that visit portrayed with the most minute fidelity, and knew at once where the material for that portion of the story had been gathered."

Harriet Beecher's life in Cincinnati was such as to bring out all that was best and noblest in her character. Where her father's family was, she could not lack good society, for all that was best intellectually and socially always gath

ered naturally around that centre. Among the professors in Lane Seminary was Calvin E. Stowe, whose wife, a dear friend of Miss Beecher, died soon after Dr. Beecher's removal to Cincinnati. In 1836 Professor Stowe and Harriet Beecher were married. They were admirably suited to each other. Professor Stowe was a typical man of letters,-a learned, amiable, unpractical philosopher, whose philosophy was like that described by Shakespeare as "an excellent horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey." Her practical

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ability and cheerful, inspiring courage were the unfailing support of her husband. Soon after their marriage he sailed for Europe to purchase books for Lane Seminary, and in a characteristic letter given to him at parting, not to be opened until he was at sea, she charges him, "Set your face like a flint against the cultivation of indigo,' as Elizabeth calls it, in any way or shape.. Seriously, dear one, you must give more way to hope than to memory. You are going to a new scene now, and one that I hope will be full of enjoyment to you. I want you to take the good of it."

In 1839 Mrs. Stowe received into her family as a servant a colored girl from Kentucky. By the laws of Ohio she was free, having been brought into the State and left there by her mistress. In spite of this, Professor Stowe received word, after she had lived with them some months, that the girl's master was in the city looking for her, and that if she were not careful she would be seized and taken back into slavery. Finding that this could be accomplished by boldness, perjury, and the connivance of some unscrupulous justice of the peace, Professor Stowe determined to remove the girl to some place of security where she might remain until the search for her should be given up. Accordingly, he and his brother-in-law, Henry Ward Beecher, both armed, drove the fugitive, in a covered wagon, at night, by unfrequented roads, twelve miles back into the country, and left her in safety with the family of old John Van Zandt, the fugitive's friend.

It is from this incident of real life and personal experience that Mrs. Stowe conceived the thrilling episode of Eliza's escape from Tom Loker and Marks, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

In the spring of 1832 Mrs. Stowe visited Hartford, taking her six-year-old daughter Hatty with her. In writing from there to her husband she confides some of her literary plans and aspirations to him, and he answers :—

My dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of fate. Make all your calculations accordingly. Get up a good stock of health, and brush up your mind. Drop the E out of your name. It only encumbers it and interferes with the flow and euphony. Write yourself fully and always Harriet Beecher Stowe, which is a name euphonious, flowing, and full of meaning. Then, my word for it, your husband will lift up his head in the gates, and your children will rise up and call you blessed."

The letter closes with a characteristic appeal :

The fact is I can

"And now, my dear wife, I want you to come home as quick as you can. not live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent, with so little self-conceit; so much reputation, with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense, so much enterprise with so little extravagance, so much tongue with so little scold, so much sweetness with so little softness, so much of so many things and so little of so many other things?"