s enough during this period, but her severest affliction
came in its last year, in the loss of an infant son by cholera. That
was in 1849, when Cincinnati was devastated; when during the months of
June, July and August more than nine thousand persons died of cholera
within three miles of her house, and among them she says, "My Charley,
my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of
life and hope and strength."

In these years, Mrs. Stowe's life was too full of domestic care to
permit many excursions into the field of literature. In 1842, a
collection of sketches was published by the Harpers under the title of
the "Mayflower." Occasionally she contributed a bright little story to
a monthly or an annual. An amusing account is given of the writing of
one of these stories, by a lady who volunteered to serve as amanuensis
while Mrs. Stowe dictated, and at the same time supervised a new girl
in the kitchen: "You may now write," said Mrs. Stowe, "'Her lover
wept with her, nor dared he again touch the point so sacredly
guarded--(Mina, roll that crust a little thinner). He spoke in
soothing tones.--(Mina, poke the coals).'"

These literary efforts, produced under difficulties, inspired Prof.
Stowe with great confidence in her genius. He wrote her in 1842, "My
dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of
fate." Again he writes, "God has written it in his book that you must
be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against
God! You must therefore make all your calculations to spend the rest
of your life with your pen." Nevertheless the next eight years pass as
the last six have passed without apparently bringing the dream of a
literary career nearer fulfilment. With a few strokes of the pen, Mrs.
Stowe draws a picture of her life at this period: "I was married when
I was twenty-five years old to a man rich in Greek and Hebrew and,
alas, rich in nothing else.... During long years of struggling with
poverty and sickness, and a hot, debilitating climate, my children
grew up around me. The nursery and the kitchen were my principal
fields of labor. Some of my friends, pitying my trials, copied and
sent a number of little sketches from my pen to certain liberally
paying annuals, with my name. With the first money that I earned in
this way I bought a feather bed! for as I had married into poverty and
without a dowry, and as my husband had only a large library of books
and a