Lives of Girls Who Became Famous | Page 6

work. Other books followed from her pen: Dred, a powerful
anti-slavery story; The Minister's Wooing, with lovely Mary Scudder as
its heroine; Agnes of Sorrento, an Italian story; the _Pearl of Orr's
Island, a tale of the New England coast; Old Town Folks; House and
Home Papers; My Wife and I; Pink and White Tyranny_; and some
others, all of which have been widely read.

The sale of Uncle Tom's Cabin has not ceased. It is estimated that over
one and a half million copies have been sold in Great Britain and her
colonies, and probably an equal or greater number in this country.
There have been twelve French editions, eleven German, and six
Spanish. It has been published in nineteen different
languages,--Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, Modern Greek, Finnish,
Welsh, Polish, and others. In Bengal the book is very popular. A lady
of high rank in the court of Siam, liberated her slaves, one hundred and
thirty in number, after reading this book, and said, "I am wishful to be
good like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and never again to buy human bodies,
but only to let them go free once more." In France the sale of the Bible
was increased because the people wished to read the book Uncle Tom
loved so much.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Les Miseràbles, and a few other novels, will
live, because written with a purpose. No work of fiction is permanent
without some great underlying principle or object.
Soon after the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe bought a home among the orange
groves of Florida, and thither she goes each winter, with her family.
She has done much there for the colored people whom she helped to
make free. With the proceeds of some public readings at the North she
built a church, in which her husband preached as long as his health
permitted. Her home at Mandarin, with its great moss-covered oaks and
profusion of flowers, is a restful and happy place after these most
fruitful years.
Her summer residence in Hartford, Conn., beautiful without, and
artistic within, has been visited by thousands, who honor the noble
woman not less than the gifted author.
Many of the Beecher family have died; Lyman Beecher at eighty-three,
and Catharine at seventy-eight. Some of Mrs. Stowe's own children are
waiting for her in the other country. She says, "I am more interested in
the other side of Jordan than this, though this still has its pleasures."
On Mrs. Stowe's seventy-first birthday, her publishers, Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., gave a garden party in her honor, at the

hospitable home of Governor Claflin and his wife, at Newton, Mass.
Poets and artists, statesmen and reformers, were invited to meet the
famous author. On a stage, under a great tent, she sat, while poems
were read and speeches made. The brown curls had become snowy
white, and the bright eyes of girlhood had grown deeper and more
earnest. The manner was the same as ever, unostentatious, courteous,
kindly.
Her life is but another confirmation of the well-known fact, that the
best work of the world is done, not by the loiterers, but by those whose
hearts and hands are full of duties. Mrs. Stowe died about noon, July 1,
1896, of paralysis, at Hartford, Conn., at the age of eighty-five. She
passed away as if to sleep, her son, the Rev. Charles Edward Stowe,
and her daughters, Eliza and Harriet, standing by her bedside. Since the
death of her husband, Professor Calvin E. Stowe, in 1886, Mrs. Stowe
had gradually failed physically and mentally. She was buried July 3 in
the cemetery connected with the Theological Seminary at Andover,
Mass., between the graves of her husband and her son, Henry. The
latter was drowned in the Connecticut River, while a member of
Dartmouth College, July 19, 1857.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
[Illustration: HELEN HUNT JACKSON.]
Thousands were saddened when, Aug. 12, 1885, it was flashed across
the wires that Helen Hunt Jackson was dead. The Nation said, "The
news will probably carry a pang of regret into more American homes
than similar intelligence in regard to any other woman, with the
possible exception of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe."
How, with the simple initials, "H.H.," had she won this place in the
hearts of the people? Was it because she was a poet? Oh no! many
persons of genius have few friends. It was because an earnest life was
back of her gifted writings. A great book needs a great man or woman
behind it to make it a perfect work. Mrs. Jackson's literary work will be

abiding, but her life, with its dark shadow and bright sunlight, its deep
affections and sympathy with the oppressed, will furnish a rich setting
for the gems of thought which she gave to the world.
Born in