This house in the village of Brunswick was the birthplace
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but long before her pen could be allowed to
touch the paper the door of the house must be unlocked, the fire made,
and her little children warmed and fed. The walls too must be freshly
papered and painted with her own unassisted hands, and a long table
spread which could serve as a family dining-table and her own and only
place for writing. Here, as Mr. Fields once said in one of his
lectures, "A New England woman once wrote a great novel while beset
with difficulties, pinched by poverty, and surrounded by hard work
from sunrise to midnight, year in and year out. She was a pallid,
earnest, tired little body, who sat in her white cottage down in
Brunswick in the state of Maine. She had been busy all day, perhaps
painting a room, for her means would not allow her to hire it done.
Besides that labor she cooked for the family, and had done all her
other household duties, without assistance, and without flinching or
groaning. The children were hushed to sleep; all was still about the
house, and she trimmed the solitary lamp for a long session at her
writing-table.
"Thus she sat many a night and wrote, and wept, and wrote again, until
she had poured out her soul before the Lord for humanity's sake. And
then came, a little slowly at first, but rolling surely with an awful
sound, that great universal response; the voice of the people of the
whole earth speaking as one.
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