Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe _

and Hours with Favorite Authors.-The New Mother.-Litchfield Academy and its

ealthy children, and found five brothers and sisters awaiting her. The eldest was Catherine, born September 6, 1800. Following her were two sturdy boys, William and Edward; then came Mary, then George, and at last Harriet. Another little Harriet born three years before had died when only o

fterwards remained with her as the tenderest, saddest, and most sacred memory of her childhood. Mrs. Stowe's recollections of her mother

the deep interest and veneration that she inspired in all who knew her were such that during all my childhood I was constantly he

t was an intimacy throughout the whole range of their being. There was no human mind in whose decisions he had greater confidence. Both intellectually and morally he regarded her as the be

s of our all running and dancing out before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath mo

ne out, and being strongly seized with the idea that they were good to eat, using all the little English I then possessed to persuade my brothers that these were onions such as grown people ate and would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the whole, and I recollect being somewhat d

ma very sorry. Those were not onions but roots of beautiful flowers, and if you had let them alone we should have next summer in the garden great beautiful re

at came a time when every one said she was sick, and I used to be permitted to go once a day into her room, where she sat bolstered up in bed. I have a vision of a very fair face with a bright red spot on each cheek and he

an see his golden curls and little black frock as he fr

urial-ground, and somebody's speaking at the grave. Then all was closed, and we little o

resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven to find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine's window one morning digging with great zeal and

terring from evil and exciting to good, than the living presence of many mothers. It was a memory that met us everywhere, for every person in the town,

es his mother's influence is a simple reproduction of my own

evailing. It was her wish that all her sons should devote themselves to the ministry, and to it she consecrated them with ferven

bin." After the mother's death the Litchfield home was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt, Harriet Foote, took her away for a long visit

e to stay with her. At the close of what seemed to me a long day's ride we arrived after dark at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large parlor where a cheerful wo

ter. A more energetic human being never undertook the education of a child. Her ideas of education were those of a vigorous English woman of the old school. She believed in the Church, and had she

ettily, to say 'yes ma'am,' and 'no ma'am,' never to tear their clothes, to sew, to knit at regula

servants 'to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,' a portion of the Church catechism that always pleased me, particularly when applied to them, as it insured their calling me 'Miss Harriet,' and treating me with a deg

at my religious education should be entirely out of the sphere of my birth. Therefore when this catechetical exercise was finished she would say, 'Now, niece, you

t so loud and clear, and I was accustomed to compare it with the first question in the Primer, 'What is the chief end of man?' as vastly more difficult for me to answer. In fact, between my aunt's secret unbelief and my own childish impatience of too much

her grandmother's favorite reading. Harriet does not seem to have fully appreciated these; but she did enjoy her grandmother's comments upon their biblical readings. Among the Evangelists especially was the old lady perfectly at home, and her idea of each

ng to memory that wonderful assortment of hymns, poems, and scriptural passages from which in after years she

read very fluently. She has committed to memory twenty-seven hymns and two long chapter

ental food amid barrels of old sermons and pamphlets stored in a corner of the garret. Here it seemed to her were some thousands of the most unintelligible things. "An appeal on the unlawfulness of a man marrying his wife's sister" turned up in every barrel she investigated, by twos, or threes, or dozens, till her soul despaired of finding an end. At last her patient search was rewarded, for at the very bottom of a barrel of musty sermons she discovered an ancient v

o ceiling with the friendly, quiet faces of books, and there stood my father's great writing-chair, on one arm of which lay open always his Cruden's Concordance and his Bible. Here I loved to retreat and niche myself down in a quiet corner with my favorite books around me. I had a kind of sheltered fee

T LITCHFIELD

were books of all sorts, sizes, and bindings, the titles of which I had read so often that I knew them by heart. There were Bell's Sermons, Bonnett's Inquiries, Bogue's Essays, Toplady on Predestination, Boston's Fourfold State, Law's Serious Call, and other works of that kind. Th

in his bookcase Cotton Mather's 'Magnalia,' in a new edition of two volumes. What wonderful stories those! Stories too about my

s and injuries that had driven my nation to this course to feel myself swelling with indignation, and ready with all my little mind and strength to applaud the concluding passage, which Colonel Talmadge rendered with resounding majesty. I was as ready as any of them to pledge my life, for

th my two younger brothers. We knew that father was gone away somewhere on a journey and was expected home, therefore the sound of a bustle in the house the more easily awoke us. As father

so delicate, so elegant, that we were almost afraid to go near her. We must have appeared to her as rough, red-faced, country children, honest, ob

natural and moral ideality. Had it not been that Doctor Payson had set up and kept before her a tender, human, loving Christ, she would have been only a conscientious big

ly family, and with heartfelt gratitude I observed how cheerful and healthy they were. The sentiment is g

implies to her husband's children, and never did the

of her sister Catherine's letters. She says: "Last week we interred Tom junior with funeral honors by the side of old Tom of happy memory. Our Har

lies o

had

cted

with

ace i

e lies

and Harriet was seized with a violent attack of the sam

ng eagerly to the animated theological discussions of the day, visiting her grandmother at Nut Plains, and figuring as one of the brightest scholars in the Litchfield Academy, taug

es, and, under the skillful direction of her beloved teachers, she seemed to absorb knowledge with every sense. She herself writes: "Much of the training and inspiration of my early days consisted not in the things that I was supposed to be studying, but in hearing, while seated unnoticed at my desk,

which he kept the minds of his pupils, the wide and varied regions of thought into which he led them, formed a p

y did she progress that at the school exhibition held when she was twelve years old, hers was one of the tw

e read aloud. When mine was read I noticed that father, who was sitting on high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' '

rst literary production of one who afterwards attained such distinction as a writer, it is deemed of sufficient value and interest to be embodied i

F THE SOUL BE PROVED

and mental, have been subjects of the most critical examination. In the course of these researches many have been at a loss to account for the change w

not annihilated, "What is its destiny after death?" are those which, from th

which we have obtained from the light which revelation has shed over them, and place oursel

elf. It has (say the supporters of this theory) no composition of parts, and therefore, as there are no particles, is no

nce. Therefore, for the validity of this argument, it must either be proved that the "Creator" has not the power to destroy it, or that he has not the will; but as neither of these can be established, our immortality is left dependent on the pleasure of the Creator. But it is said that it is evident that the Creator designed the soul for immortality, or he would never have created it so essentially different

which the Creator is possessed would not have formed man with such vast capacities

prove by the light of Nature that the Creator is benevolent, which, bei

s to answer for the mistakes in his government. Can we look into the council of the "Unsearchable" and see what means are made to answer their ends? We do not kn

tten, of losing all those honors and all that fame awaited them. Many feel this secret horror when they look down upon the vale of futurity and reflect that though now the idols of the world, soon all which will be left them will be the common portion of mankind-oblivion! But this dread does not arise from any idea of their destiny beyond the tomb, and even were this true, it wo

full blown and incapable of further enlargement, I could imagine that she might fall away insensibly and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and travel

general remark that those brilliant talents which in youth expand, in manhood become stationary, and in old age grad

d firmness in time of peace and that profound depth of policy which she displayed in the cabinet? Yet behold the tragical end of this learned, this politic p

ss instances of those talents, which were once adequate to the government of a nation, being so weakened and palsied by the touch of sickness as scarcely to tell to beholders what they once were. Th

d vice punished. This argument, in the first place, takes for its foundation that by the light of nature the distinction between virtue and vice can be discovered. By some this is absolutely disbelieved, and by all considered as extremely doubtful. And, secondly, it puts the Creator under an obligation to

rasmuch as he was not able to manage his government in this world, he must have another in which to re

ble when the mind wishes to be convinced. But it is said that every nation, however circumstanced, possess some idea of a future state. For this we may account by the fact that it was handed down by tradition from the time of the flood. From all these arguments, which, however plausible at first sight, are found to be futile, may be argued the necessity of a

e spirit fled to the God who gave it. He there found that though man has lost the image of his divine Creator, he is still destined, after this earthly house

field came to an end, for that same year she went to Hartford to pursue her studies