e prediction was
fulfilled. At Liverpool she is met by friends and breakfasted with a
little company of thirty or forty people; at Glasgow, she drinks tea
with two thousand; at Edinburgh there was "another great tea party,"
and she was presented with a "national penny offering consisting of a
thousand golden sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver." She had
the Highlands yet to see as the guest of the Duke of Argyll, not to
mention London and Paris. After five months, she sailed from Liverpool
on her return, and is it any wonder that she wrote, "Almost sadly as a
child might leave its home, I left the shores of kind, strong Old
England, the mother of us all!"

In 1856, Mrs. Stowe visited Europe a second time for the purpose of
securing an English copyright upon "Dred," having learned something of
business by her experience with "Uncle Tom." It will be interesting
to know that in England "Dred" was considered the better story, that
100,000 copies of it were sold there in four weeks, and that her
English publisher issued it in editions of 125,000 copies each. "After
that," writes Mrs. Stowe, "who cares what the critics say?"

She was abroad nearly a year, visiting France, Switzerland, and Italy,
and returned in June, 1857, to experience another sad bereavement. Her
son Henry was a Freshman in Dartmouth college and, while bathing in
the Connecticut river, he was drowned. This was a severe trial to Mrs.
Stowe and the more so because, whatever her religion may have done for
her, the theology in which she had been educated gave no comfort to
her soul. "Distressing doubts as to Henry's spiritual state were
rudely thrust upon my soul." These doubts she was able to master at
least temporarily, by assuming that they were temptations of the
devil, but three years later in Florence, on a third voyage to Europe,
she wrote her husband, in reply to his allusions to Henry, "Since I
have been in Florence, I have been distressed by inexpressible
yearnings for him,--such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of
utter darkness and separation, not only from him but from all
spiritual communion with my God." It will be interesting to know that
relief was brought her in this painful crisis, by the ministrations of
spiritualism.

Mrs. Stowe returned in 1860 from her third visit to Europe to find the
country hovering upon the verge of Civil War. The war brought her
another sore bereavement. At the battle of Gettysburg, her son, Capt.
Fr