setts, where her husband had removed. Here she wrote "Dred," and collected her book of facts about the

career of Uncle
Tom. There rap-
idly followed her
New England sto-
ries, "The Min-
ister's Wooing,"
and "The Pearl of
Orr's Island."
Somewhat later
came her "Po-
ganuc People,"
and her "Oldtown
Folks," and "Old-
town Fireside Sto-
ries." In 1863 she
removed to Hart-
ford, and a year or
two later she es-
tablished a winter
home in Florida.
To the end of her
life these were the
places of her resi-
dence; and of
Hartford she
came to be an im-
portant part. Of
her several visits
to Europe
word need here be
said; nor is it

no

day. Important features of her career were her interest in the supernatural, and her correspondence with George Eliot. By far more dramatic was her defense of Lady Byron and her attempt to right the wrongs of that long suffering woman. Her minor books have a value of their own, as does everything she wrote or did; but her fame will rest upon the works which have been named.*

necessary to enter upon the incidents of the remarkable expression of affection shown her by American authors on the occasion of her seventieth birth

✓ It may be frankly said of Mrs. Stowe, that she never wrote with a purely literary object in view. She did not regard the novel merely as an artistic production, but she went to the deeper sources of life for her motives and her inspiration. It may be

*Most of Mrs. Stowe's books are now published in uniform edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. The same firm also publishes her "Life compiled from her Letters and Journals," by her son, Rev. C. E. Stowe. Another biography, "The Life-work of the Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Mrs. F. T. McCray, is published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York.

womanly way, as it came to her out of the fullness of her own life. Whatever artistic limitations may have thus resulted, there was a great gain on the side of effectiveness and on the side of the strong appeal which she made to the humanitarian spirit of her time. She was wise in her generation, in this regard; the love of humanity was worth more to her than any æsthetic gift of literary expres

sion.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a great moral and humanitarian protest. Its power over the reader is much greater than that of "Dred," which is far su

perior from an artistic point of view. This was the result of the intense moral conviction with which it was written, as an indignant protest against the evils of slavery. She said of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that "God wrote it, not I." Here is the secret of its power, that it was wrought out of the fires of feeling and imagination, that every page of it glowed with moral indignation or an affectionate love of the lowly and suffering. The condition of mind in which she wrote may be seen from the letter which she sent to Mrs. Follen soon after the publication of "Uncle Tom," and while she was preparing

the "Key" to the novel. "I suffer exquisitely in writing these things. It may be truly said that I write with my heart's blood. Many times in writing Uncle Tom's Cabin' I thought my health would fail utterly; but I prayed earnestly that God would help me till I got through, and still I am pressed beyond measure and above strength. This horror, this nightmare abomination! can it be in my country! It lies like lead on my heart; it shadows my life with sorrow; the more so that I feel, as for my own brothers, for the South, and am pained

by every horror I am obliged to write, as one who is forced by some awful oath to disclose in court some family disgrace."

/ This sensibility, this vigor of sympathetic imagination revealed in all her books, is a striking feature of Mrs. Stowe's writing. Her characters are her own children, a part of her own life, and are of her kith and kin. In this respect her imagination shows a greatness which is rare in literature and which has seldom been exceeded. She had not the power to stand off from her characters and