He passed, in the words of that great physician, Sir Thomas Browne,
"in drowsy approaches of sleep;... believing with those resolved
Christians who, looking on the death of this world but as a nativity
of another, do contentedly submit unto the common necessity, and envy
not Enoch or Elias."
DAYS WITH MRS. STOWE
In recalling Mrs. Stowe's life, with the remembrance of what she has
been to her friends, to her country, and to the world, I am overborne
by the sense of a soul instinct from its early consciousness with
power working in her beyond her own thought or knowledge or will. Her
attitude seemed by nature to be that of contemplation. Her heart was
like a burning coal laid upon the altar of humanity; and when she
stole up, as it were, in the night and laid it down for the slave with
tears and supplications, it awakened neither alarm nor wonder in her
spirit that in the morning she saw a bright fire burning there and
lighting the whole earth.
Mrs. Stowe had already passed through this great experience when I saw
her for the first time in Italy. It was only a few weeks before the
war against slavery was openly declared, and she was like one who
having "done all" must now "stand." This year indeed was one of the
happiest of her life. She did not yet see the terrible feet of War
already close upon us, yet she was convinced that the end of slavery
was at hand. She was released at last from the toils which poverty had
laid upon her overtasked body.
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