"No, I should n't a-dreampt on 't," says the Captain; "but what was the adwice that she adwised you that warn't adwisable?"
"I really can't get my consent to tell," says the widow, "now that I 've sot out, for I never expected to reweal it to anybody, unless it was to--well, to some one that either was, or was like to be, my husband. Dear me, I've undertook too much!"
"There," says the enraptured lover; "now can't you go on?"
"I don't know," says the widow, blushing, but not withdrawing her cheek.
"Try, for my sake!" says the Captain, "it 's so interestin'. You 've undertook a good deal, but whatever consarns you consarns me."
"Well, I won't wacillate no more,--not if it plagues you!" And the widow looked fondly in his face, and then, quite supporting herself upon his arm, she drooped her eyelids modestly and resumed.
There is an American lady living at Hartford, in Connecticut, whom the United States has permitted to be robbed by foreigners of $200,000. Her name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. By no disloyal act has she or her family forfeited their right to the protection of the government of the United States. She pays her taxes, keeps the peace, and earns her livelihood by honest industry; she has reared children for the service of the Commonwealth; she was warm and active for her country when many around her were cold or hostile;--in a word, she is a good citizen.
More than that: she is an illustrious citizen. The United States stands higher to-day in the regard of every civilized being in Christendom because she lives in the United States. She is the only woman yet produced on the continent of America to whom the world assigns equal rank in literature with the great authoresses of Europe. If, in addition to the admirable talents with which she is endowed, she had chanced to possess one more, namely, the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate artist, and had produced immortal works. All else she has,--the seeing eye, the discriminating intelligence, the sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the sure and happy touch; and these gifts enabled her to render her country the precise service which it needed most. Others talked about slavery: she made us _see_ it. She showed it to us in its fairest and in its foulest aspect; she revealed its average and ordinary working. There never was a fairer nor a kinder book than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; for the entire odium of the revelation fell upon the Thing, not upon the unhappy mortals who were born and reared under its shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less, but far more, the victim of slavery than Uncle Tom, and the effect of the book was to concentrate wrath upon the system which tortured the slave's body and damned the master's soul. Wonderful magic of genius! The hovels and cotton-fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the world see, and see more vividly and more truly than the busy world can ever see remote objects with its own unassisted eyes. We are very dull and stupid in what does not immediately concern us, until we are roused and enlightened by such as she. Those whom we call "the intelligent," or "the educated," are merely the one in ten of the human family who by some chance learned to read, and thus came under the influence of the class whom Mrs. Stowe represents.