Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe | Page 4

not so nice as I had supposed. Then
mother's serene face appeared at the nursery door and we all ran
towards her, telling with one voice of our discovery and achievement.
We had found a bag of onions and had eaten them all up.
"Also I remember that there was not even a momentary expression of
impatience, but that she sat down and said, 'My dear children, what you
have done makes mamma very sorry. Those were not onions but roots
of beautiful flowers, and if you had let them alone we should have next
summer in the garden great beautiful red and yellow flowers such as
you never saw.' I remember how drooping and dispirited we all grew at
this picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag.
"Then I have a recollection of her reading aloud to the children Miss
Edgeworth's 'Frank,' which had just come out, I believe, and was
exciting a good deal of attention among the educational circles of
Litchfield. After that came a time when every one said she was sick,
and I used to be permitted to go once a day into her room, where she sat
bolstered up in bed. I have a vision of a very fair face with a bright red
spot on each cheek and her quiet smile. I remember dreaming one night
that mamma had got well, and of waking with loud transports of joy
that were hushed down by some one who came into the room. My
dream was indeed a true one. She was forever well.

"Then came the funeral. Henry was too little to go. I can see his golden
curls and little black frock as he frolicked in the sun like a kitten, full of
ignorant joy.
"I recollect the mourning dresses, the tears of the older children, the
walking to the burial-ground, and somebody's speaking at the grave.
Then all was closed, and we little ones, to whom it was so confused,
asked where she was gone and would she never come back.
"They told us at one time that she had been laid in the ground, and at
another that she had gone to heaven. Thereupon Henry, putting the two
things together, resolved to dig through the ground and go to heaven to
find her; for being discovered under sister Catherine's window one
morning digging with great zeal and earnestness, she called to him to
know what he was doing. Lifting his curly head, he answered with
great simplicity, 'Why, I'm going to heaven to find mamma.'
"Although our mother's bodily presence thus disappeared from our
circle, I think her memory and example had more influence in
moulding her family, in deterring from evil and exciting to good, than
the living presence of many mothers. It was a memory that met us
everywhere, for every person in the town, from the highest to the
lowest, seemed to have been so impressed by her character and life that
they constantly reflected some portion of it back upon us.
"The passage in 'Uncle Tom' where Augustine St. Clare describes his
mother's influence is a simple reproduction of my own mother's
influence as it has always been felt in her family."
Of his deceased wife Dr. Beecher said: "Few women have attained to
more remarkable piety. Her faith was strong and her prayer prevailing.
It was her wish that all her sons should devote themselves to the
ministry, and to it she consecrated them with fervent prayer. Her
prayers have been heard. All her sons have been converted and are now,
according to her wish, ministers of Christ."
Such was Roxanna Beecher, whose influence upon her four-year-old
daughter was strong enough to mould the whole after-life of the author

of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." After the mother's death the Litchfield home
was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt, Harriet Foote,
took her away for a long visit at her grandmother's at Nut Plains, near
Guilford, Conn., the first journey from home the little one had ever
made. Of this visit Mrs. Stowe herself says:--
"Among my earliest recollections are those of a visit to Nut Plains
immediately after my mother's death. Aunt Harriet Foote, who was
with mother during all her last sickness, took me home to stay with her.
At the close of what seemed to me a long day's ride we arrived after
dark at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large
parlor where a cheerful wood fire was crackling; I was placed in the
arms of an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a thing at
which I marveled, for my great loss was already faded from my
childish mind.
"I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a