to a direct and surprising change in their treatment by the whites.

Part of its success was owing to its candid justice. Mrs. Stowe painted the limitations, the hard position, the kindly feeling of many slaveholders as truly and pitifully as she drew the woes and disasters of the slave. Letters poured in upon her from all quarters, letters of praise, of sympathy, of congratulation, but also of hate, insult, threats, blasphemy, and all uncleanness. The South as one man reviled and abused her; they could not even appreciate the justice of her portraits, she had laid the axe at the root of the tree, and all the foul birds in its branches rent the air with their cries of fury; no less a tribute to her wonderful success than the laud and glory of her admirers.

It was not the artistic value of this book that made its success, for its author has since written much more careful and delicate studies of life and character, and painted with tender and more exquisite colors the beauty of humanity and nature; but "Uncle Tom's Cabin" touched the deepest springs of humanity's heart, and bade the imprisoned waters arise and overflow. The hour had come for this good grain to be sown, and a woman's hand had scattered it. Many a tedious day wore on before its harvest waved on hillside and savanna, to be reaped in tears and blood instead of sun and dew, with swords instead of sickles, and gathered in with cries of battle in place of the gleaner's song. But at last that mighty fruitage is garnered, and the slave is free forever! Brief words to write or read, but eternal fact and immortal reality.

Not only in America did this book achieve its wonderful success; England also was moved from its wonted cold contempt for her offshoot; and the sneering question, "Who reads an American book?" received once for all its answer "Everybody!"

When Mrs. Stowe went abroad a year after "Uncle Tom" was published, she was received with the highest honors. Addresses were poured in upon her signed by thousands of women of every class, and from the inhabitants of separate

cities and towns, all expressing their esteem for, and sympathy with, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Brief sympathy, it is true, for when the war of the rebellion began, the English nation forgot the sorrows of the slave and held out pitiful hands to the slaveholder as the "aristocrat" of America besieged by its commonalty!

One incident of Mrs. Stowe's experience in England was almost prophetic. She was presented with a solid gold bracelet made in shape of a slave's fetters, inscribed with the words, "We trust it is a memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." On one link was engraved the date of the abolition of the slave-trade, and on another that of the abolition of slavery in all England's territories. To-day this bracelet bears upon its other links the dates of emancipation in the District of Columbia; of the President's proclamation abolishing slavery in rebel States; of freedom proclaimed in Maryland and in Missouri; while the clasp bears the date of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery forever in the United States. Its record is finished, and its wearer has the sublime and blessed consciousness that she laid the train which has blown the direst work of hell on earth to utter destruction, and left it only an ignominious memory.

But not only where its native language was spoken has this book been read; it has been translated into nineteen different tongues. Twelve French editions by various translators have been issued, and eleven German. In the eloquent verse of Dr. Holmes, read upon Mrs. Stowe's seventieth birthday, at a garden party, given by Messrs. Houghton and Mifflin in her honor, he alludes to this peculiar circumstance:

"If every tongue that speaks her praise
For whom I shape my tinkling phrase
Were summoned to the table,
The vocal chorus that would meet,
Of mingling accents harsh or sweet,
From every land and tribe, would beat
The polyglots of Babel.

"Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane,
Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine,

Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi,

High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too,
The Russian serf, the Polish Jew,

Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo,

In the library of the British Museum there are thirty-five editions of the original English, complete, and eight abridgments or adaptations.

But after such a success the triumphant pen could not be idle; Mrs. Stowe's visit abroad was chronicled in a charming volume called "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." She wrote then a small "Geography for my Children," and that was followed by a powerful tale of slavery, called "Dred," afterwards renamed "Nina Gordon." Then came a slighter sketch on the training of children, "Our Charley"; and then, published first as a serial in the "Atlantic Monthly," "The Minister's Wooing," an exquisite story of old New England, full of pathos, delicate humor, subtle character-painting, and high religious thought. Mary Scudder is a picture of a Puritan maiden, almost too saintly for real life, yet true to such a life as in those days did sometimes flower into "a lily of the Lord"; Miss Prissy, the queer, kindly, penetrating old maid; Mrs. Scudder, pious, thrifty, ambitious, and stern; sad Mrs. Marvyn, worn out in soul and body with the awful weight of theologic questions and morbid conscientiousness; gay, capricious, sunny, and stormy Madame de Frontignac; and plausible, courtly, devilish Aaron Burr, set over against the great-hearted and high-souled doctor, make a portraitgallery of real personages in the memory of the reader; and show what power and versatility belong to that genius which had already electrified the world.

This was followed by "Agnes of Sorrento," the scene of which is laid in Italy, and does not afford room for the freedom and grace with which the author writes of her own land and people.