three chapters were written she wrote to her friend, Dr.
Bailey, of Washington, the editor of The National Era, to which she
had contributed, that she was planning a story that might run through
several numbers of the Era. The story was at once applied for, and
thereafter weekly installments were sent on regularly, in spite of all
cares and distractions. The installments were mostly written during the
morning, on a little desk in a corner of the dining-room of the cottage
in Brunswick, subject to all the interruptions of house-keeping, her
children bursting into the room continually with the importunity of
childhood. But they did not break the spell or destroy her abstraction.
With a smile and a word and a motion of the hand she would wave them
off, and keep on in her magician's work. Long afterwards they recalled
this, dimly understood at the time, and wondered at her power of
concentration. Usually at night the chapters were read to the family,
who followed the story with intense feeling. The narrative ran on for
nine months, exciting great interest among the limited readers of the
Era, and gaining sympathetic words from the anti-slavery people, but
without making any wide impression on the public.

We may pause here in the narrative to note two things: the story was not
the work of a novice, and it was written out of abundant experience and
from an immense mass of accumulated thought and material. Mrs. Stowe was
in her fortieth year. She had been using her pen since she was twelve
years old, in extensive correspondence, in occasional essays, in short
stories and sketches, some of which appeared in a volume called The
Mayflower, published in 1843, and for many years her writing for
newspapers and periodicals had added appreciably to the small family
income. She was in the maturity of her intellectual powers, she was
trained in the art of writing, and she had, as Walter Scott had when he
began the Waverley Novels at the age of forty-three, abundant store of
materials on which to draw. To be sure, she was on fire with a moral
purpose, but she had the dramatic instinct, and she felt that her object
would not be reached by writing an abolition tract.

"In shaping her material the author had but one purpose, to show the
institution of slavery truly, just as it existed. She had visited in
Kentucky; had formed the acquaintance of people who were just, upright,
and generous, and yet slave-holders. She had heard their views, a