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story. We certainly cannot be surprised that an exceedingly observing woman, after a residence of fifteen or twenty years in a city commanding the trade of slave states, and through which thousands of slaves escaped during that time, should learn the character of the slaves and their owners and catchers. Besides, Mrs. Stowe made several visits into the neighboring slave states, and became acquainted with slave-masters and mistresses-had opportunities to see the peculiar institution at home, and its effects upon society. For years she calmed her fervid spirit, and kept to herself her thoughts upon the great iniquity. But the tears of the panting fugitive, the thrilling stories of hair-breadth escapes, were never forgotten by her; they were all in her heart. At length with her husband she returned to the east.

The congress of the United States saw fit, at the bidding of the slave-power, to make every man in the free states a slave-catcher. The scenes which followed the enactment of that terrible law caused the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to be written. Night after night Mrs. Stowe wept bitter tears over them, and she resolved to write a story of slavery: the world knows the rest.

Of Mrs. Stowe's personal appearance we have little to say. We think no one could mistake her for an ordinary woman. There is a look of conscious power in her face. There is strength of character

expressed in it. She is not a beautiful woman, and yet her eyes are not often surpassed in beauty. They are dark and dreamy, and look as if some sorrowful scene ever haunted her brain. In dress she is very plain and homely; in manners gentle, without a particle of false gentility.

Previous to commencing in the National Era her great story of Uncle Tom, Mrs. Stowe had written comparatively brief sketches and tales, which were gathered into a little volume entitled "The Mayflower," a quaint and exceedingly appropriate name. Those who have read the little book could not have been surprised when they read her subsequent and more popular volume. For, though the brevity of the little stories and sketches in the earlier volume precluded the possibility of eminent success in the portraiture of individuals, or of great popularity for the book, yet they were executed with wonderful skill. To us, after a fresh reading of the volume, with our eyes yet wet with tears of sympathy, and our sides not yet done aching with laughter, Uncle Tom seems no marvelous advance upon the Mayflower. The one was fragmentary-the other whole, complete. There are passages in the first, almost or quite equal to anything in the last. There are stories, though short, which are told most admirably. In them we see Mrs. Stowe's wonderful skill at sketching character. She describes the old Puritan in such a vivid style,

that he appears to the reader as if painted on canvas by a master artist. There is, too, the same tendency to humor in these little sketches as in Uncle Tom's Cabin also the same inimitable pathos. We cannot do better than to copy one of her sketches. Those of our readers who have read it once, will delight to do so again, and those who have never read it, will thank us for copying it here. It is entitled

"LITTLE EDWARD."

Were any of you born in New England, in the good old catechising, church-going, school-going, orderly times? If so, you may have seen my Uncle Abel; the most perpendicular, rectangular, upright, downright, good man that ever labored six days and rested on the seventh.

You remember his hard, weather-beaten countenance, where every line seemed drawn with "a pen of iron and the point of a diamond;" his considerate, gray eyes, that moved over objects as if it were not best to be in a hurry about seeing; the circumspect opening and shutting of his mouth; his down-sitting and up-rising, all performed with conviction aforethought—— in short, the whole ordering of his life and conversation, which was, according to the tenor of the military order, "to the right about face-forward, march!" Now if you supposed, from all this triangularism of exterior, that this good man had nothing kindly within, you were much mistaken. You often find the greenest grass under a snow-drift; and, though my uncle's mind was not exactly of the flower-garden kind, still there was an abundance of wholesome and kindly vegetation there.

It is true, he seldom laughed and never joked, himself, but no man had a more serious and weighty conviction of what a good joke was in another; and when some exceeding witticism was dispensed in his presence, you might see Uncle Abel's face slowly relax into an expression of solemn satisfaction, and he would look at the author with a sort of quiet wonder, as if it was past his comprehension how such a thing could come into a man's head.

Uncle Abel, too, had some relish for the fine arts; in proof of which I might adduce the pleasure with which he gazed at the plates in his family bible, the likeness whereof is neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth. And he was also such an eminent musician, that he could go through the singingbook at one sitting, without the least fatigue, beating time like a windmill all the way.

He had, too, a liberal hand, though his liberality was all by the rule of three. He did to his neighbor exactly as he would be done by; he loved some things in this world very sincerely: he loved his God much, but he honored and feared him more; he was exact with others, he was more exact with himself, and he expected his God to be more exact still.

Everything in Uncle Abel's house was in the same time, and place, and manner, and form from year's end to year's end. There was old Master Bose, a dog after my uncle's own heart, ⚫ who always walked as if he were studying the multiplicationtable. There was the old clock, forever ticking in the kitchen corner, with a picture on its face of the sun forever setting behind a perpendicular row of poplar trees. There was the never-failing supply of red peppers and onions, hanging over the

chimney. There, too, were the yearly hollyhocks and morningglories, blooming about the windows. There was the "best room," with its sanded floor, the cupboard in one corner, with its glass doors, the evergreen asparagus bushes in the chimney, and there was the stand, with the bible and almanac on it, in another corner. There, too, was Aunt Betsey, who never looked any older, because she always looked as old as she could; who always dried her catnip and wormwood the last of September, and began to clean house the first of May. In short, this was the land of continuance. Old time never took it into his head to practice either addition, or subtraction, or multiplication on its sum total.

This Aunt Betsey aforenamed, was the neatest and most ef ficient piece of human machinery that ever operated in forty places at once. She was always everywhere, predominating over, and seeing to everything; and though my uncle had been twice married, Aunt Betse'ys rule and authority had never been broken. She reigned over his wives when living, and reigned after them when dead, and so seemed likely to reign on to the end of the chapter. But my uncle's latest wife left Aunt Betsey a much less tractable subject than ever before had fallen to her lot. Little Edward was the child of my uncle's old age, and a brighter, merrier little blossom never grew on the verge of an avalanche. He had been committed to the nursing of his grandmamma till he had arrived at the age of indiscretion, and then my old uncle's heart so yearned for him that he was sent for home.

His introduction into the family excited a terrible sensation. Never was there such a contemner of dignities, such a violator

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