Martha Foote Crow

“ It was not like the five-course banquet we have to-day. The bread was that black compound of rye and Indian meal which the economy of New England made the common form because it could be most easily raised on a hard and stony soil; but Mrs. Stowe in later life informed all whom it might concern that rye and Indian bread, smoking hot, together with savory sausage, pork and beans formed a breakfast fit for a king, if the king had earned it by getting up in a cold room, washing in ice-water, tumbling through snow-drifts and foddering cattle. ”

“ It does possess that consummate quality which supreme works of art always have, namely, that their power over us is great, but that we do not see why it should be so great. Their charm is inexplicable. Mrs. Stowe’s fellow genius, George Sand, said that in art there is but one rule—to paint and to move. By this law, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a great work of art. It painted; it made a great people see; and it moves the whole world. The same generous critic said that Mrs. Stowe may not have “talent, but she has genius as humanity feels genius. ”

“ They saw that men of tact, versatility, talent, and piety, as Harriet put it, qualities absolutely necessary to successful teaching, would be constantly called away to missionary and ministerial and patriotic duties. If such a man were put to the work of teaching, he would be, said Harriet Beecher, like a Hercules with a distaff in hand ready to spring at the first call of the trumpet. The question of salaries also came in, for a man must have enough to support wife and family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once there was sent from Boston to the Litchfield parsonage a barrel of dishes embellished with figures which you could worship without worshiping the image of anything either in the heaven or upon earth—so Henry said; but the children thought them the very embodiment of beauty. When the barrel was unpacked, one of the boys said, “Oh, mother, what rich people we must be to have such wonderful dishes!” Wealth, it seems, consists more in the way one feels than in what one really possesses. ”

“ Stowe was teaching in the Hartford School she was not without pupils that were full of mischief. One of these, being very fond of animals and bugs of all kinds, used to bring her favorites and install them in the desk, shutting down the wide cover as a door to their prison until she should get a chance to show them to her best-loved teacher, Miss Harriet Beecher, who could look unappalled into the desk with its nests of spiders or its families of toads, for there was not a creature that God could create that Harriet did not love. ”

“ At that time there were no amusements especially provided for children, no children’s books, and no Sunday schools to teach bright little songs and to give children picnics and presents. It was a grown people’s world. The toys of the period were so poor and so few that, in comparison with our modern profusion, they could scarcely be said to exist. Harriet was, however, not without some home-made toys, and we are glad to believe that a doll baby, though perhaps only a rag one, was, in the course of providential events, assigned to little, human-hearted Harriet Beecher. ”

“ What young growing soul has not been assailed by moods like this? This half child, half grown woman was developing mentally with great swiftness, and could not understand the meaning of the tumults that were sweeping through her soul. Not being able to answer certain lofty questions, she decided at once that they were unanswerable and that therefore the universe must be all a disastrous affair. Who has not sometime made the same mistake? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stowe motherhood was literally a religion. She knew in her heart what the love of a mother could be, and she said, “God invented mothers’ hearts, and He certainly has the pattern in His own.” So she found within herself a proof of the love of God, a beautiful path to spiritual attainment that is open to every woman that learns in any way to understand the meaning of a mother’s love. ”

“ Again there was the stoning of raisins, the cutting of citron, the slicing of orange-peel. Again the fire was built up more architecturally than usual and roared and crackled up the wide chimney, brightening with its radiance the farthest corner of the ample room. Then a tub of rosy-cheeked apples, another of golden quinces, and a bushel basket full of cranberries were set in the midst of the circle of happy children who were being led in the ways of industry, sorting and cutting, to the tune of the snapping fire. ”

“ Those were very busy, happy days for Harriet, probably the days she had in mind when she wrote in “Oldtown Folks”: “Certainly of all the days that I look back upon, this Academy life in Cloudland was the most perfectly happy.... It was happy because we were in the first flush of belief in ourselves and in life. Oh, that first belief! those incredible first visions! when all things look possible, and one believes in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and sees enchanted palaces in the sunset clouds! ”

“ Shall it breathe odor and languor from the Orient, or chivalry of the Occident; gaiety from France, or vigor from England? No, no; these are all too old, too romance-like, too obviously picturesque for me. No, let me turn to my own land—to my own New England; the land of bright fires and strong hearts; the land of deeds and not of words; the land of fruits and not of flowers; the land often spoken against yet always respected ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Away down West Street in the village of Litchfield was a square pine building standing at the edge of the highway where no tree gave shade and no bush or fence took off the cold hard look. In this Dame School, kept by Ma’am Kilbourne, Harriet Beecher’s school education began. Before the door in winter was a pile of wood for fuel, and in summer all the chips of the winter’s wood still lay there outspread upon the ground. ”

“ In January, 1836, Harriet Beecher and Calvin Edward Stowe were quietly married. A few days later they took a brief wedding journey, going by stage as far as Columbus; but the roads in an Ohio midwinter were not much to boast of, and, as a pleasant journey, the trip was not a success. They were happier when they returned to their own fireside and sat down there peacefully together. Mrs. Stowe was rather astonished to find that such a “wisp of nerve” as herself could pass through the wedding experience with a happiness that was tranquil and serene rather than overwhelming. ”

“ Still, considering the spirit of fun that races through every book Harriet wrote, we cannot believe she was always sitting still in a chair, learning to sew and knit well, and being a good girl in every particular. We think of her also as having something in her of the fascinating little Tina in “Oldtown Folks,” one of Mrs. Stowe’s most powerful stories of New England life. We can even believe it to have been as difficult in Harriet’s case as it was in Tina’s to get her to go to bed at the proper hour. ”

“ This saying of Harriet Beecher makes one think of what Joan of Arc said when she was asked by what charm or magic she made the soldiers go into battle. She simply answered, “I called to them to come on into the battle and then I went right on into the battle myself!” This is the principle that is at the basis of all the charm that lures human beings into glorious heroism; it is the very reason for the existence of leaders and prophets. ”

“ Here was, then, a picture of the slave system at its best. Perhaps her gravity and absorption during the picnic merriment of the day was caused by the thought that the owners of the happy plantation had it in their power to separate any husband and father there from his family or any little girl from her mother, and, if he needed the money, sell them to slave traders who would carry them “down the river” to be lost to their own forever. Of what such a fate might mean Mrs. Stowe learned from her brother Charles, who acted for some months as collecting agent for a New Orleans commission house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The outcome in the next few decades of our national life proves not only that these two young theorists were able to look over the whole situation in the country and to see what was most needed and the best means to attain the desired ends, but also that they were far-sighted as to what the future was sure to bring forth. For the New England migration was to pass over the vast space of the prairies of all our middle states, making possible everywhere schools in which almost the whole burden of the work was to fall to the hands of women. ”

“ The gloom and sorrow of the time had to be borne by her alone, for Professor Stowe was himself at this time at Brattleboro on account of the failure of his own health. At last her own children were attacked and, after a period of acute suspense, little Samuel Charles succumbed to the disease. Broken-hearted over this crushing sorrow, Mrs. Stowe could yet give loving sympathy to those around her who were suffering as she. “I write as if there were no sorrow like my sorrow,” she said to her husband, “yet there has been in this city ... scarce a house without its dead. ”

“ After a long period of darkness and struggle, Catherine took the wisest course that the profoundest philosophy could suggest: she determined to find happiness in living to do good. This thought she clung to and in it she found comfort.
She looked about her to see what use she could make of her life. Writing to her father, she said that she did not see any very extensive sphere of usefulness for a single woman except in teaching, and asked his advice about starting a school or seminary, something like the Litchfield Female Academy, perhaps in Hartford. ”

“ To breakfast with forty people, lunch with three hundred, take tea with a thousand, and go to an evening mass meeting and perhaps to more receptions the same night, would be rather trying to a delicate woman who had come abroad chiefly to seek rest after the strain of writing a great book. Mrs. Stowe began to feel a weariness that made seeing people a burden. ”