eat
Britain. Not being protected by copyright, eighteen publishing houses
issued editions varying from 6d to 15s a copy, and in twelve months,
more than a million and a half of copies had been sold in the British
dominions. The book was also translated and published in nineteen
European languages. It was dramatized and brought out in New York in
1852, and, a year later it was running still. "Everybody goes," it was
said, "night after night and nothing can stop it." In London, in 1852,
it was the attraction at two theatres.

What the public thought of the story is evident, nor did competent
judges dissent. Longfellow said: "It is one of the greatest triumphs
recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of
its moral effect." George Sand said: "Mrs. Stowe is all instinct; it
is the very reason that she appears to some to have no talent.... I
cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of
letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of it,--the
genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the
saint.... In matters of art, there is but one rule, to paint and to
move." I give but a paragraph of a paper which Senator Sumner called
"a most remarkable tribute, such as was hardly ever offered by such a
genius to any living mortal."

Apologists for the slave system have declared that "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
is a libel upon the system. One must do that before he can begin his
apology; but the remarkable fact is that not even in the South was the
libel detected at the first. That was an after-thought. Whittier knew
a lady who read the story "to some twenty young ladies, daughters of
slave-holders, near New Orleans and amid the scenes described in it,
and they with one accord pronounced it true." It was not till the sale
of the book had run to over 100,000 copies that a reaction set in and
then, strange to say, the note of warning was sounded by that
infallible authority upon American affairs, the London Times.

In 1852, the year following the publication of "Uncle Tom" Prof. Stowe
accepted a chair in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and that
village became the home of the family during the ten following happy
years. In 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Stowe went to England upon the invitation
of Anti-Slavery friends who guaranteed and considerably overpaid the
expenses of the trip. "Should Mrs. Stowe conclude to visit Europe,"
wrote Senator Sumner, "she will have a triumph." Th