r ones in the nursery, and not a servant in
the whole house to do a turn." "Time would fail me," writes Mrs.
Stowe, "to tell you all that I learned incidentally of the slave
system in the history of various slaves who came into my family, and
of the underground railroad which, I may say, ran through our house."

A New England education alone would not have given Mrs. Stowe the
material to write the story of "Uncle Tom." A youth passed on a
Southern plantation would have made her callous and indifferent, as it
did so many tender-hearted women. A New England woman of genius,
educated in New England traditions, was providentially transferred to
the heated border line between freedom and slavery and, during
eighteen years, made to hear a thousand authentic incidents of the
patriarchal system from the victims themselves. Then "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" could be written. Perhaps one other element of preparation
ought to be mentioned since Mrs. Stowe laid stress upon it herself.
The woman who should write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" needed to be a mother
who had known what it is to have a child snatched from her arms
irrevocably and without a moment's notice. It was at her baby's "dying
bed and at his grave that I learned," she says, "what a poor slave
mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In those depths
of sorrow which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to
God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain.... I allude to
this because I have often felt that much that is in that book ('Uncle
Tom') had its roots in the awful scenes and bitter sorrows of that
summer."

In 1850, this western life, with its mixture of sweet and bitter
waters, came to an end. The climate of Cincinnati was unfavorable to
the health of both Mr. and Mrs. Stowe, and Mr. Stowe accepted a
professorship in Bowdoin College, at the small salary of $1,000 a
year, declining at the same time an offer from New York city of
$2,300. Why he accepted the smaller salary is not said. Certainly it
assured him his old felicity, his Master's blessing upon the poor. The
situation, however, was better than it seems, as Mrs. Stowe had
written enough to have confidence in her pen, and she purposed to
make the family income at least $1,700 by her writings. She
accomplished much more than that as we shall presently see.

From the car window, as one passes through Brunswick, Maine, he can
see the house in which Mrs. Stowe passed the three following very
ha