"
The labor, the shock, were past, but the fatigue and the strain of the
long struggle for freedom which she carried always on her own heart
could never be over-lived. She was already, as Mrs. Hawthorne used to
say, "tired far into the future." The woman who had written "Uncle
Tom" was not to continue a series of equally exciting stories, but she
was to bear the burden and heat of much everyday labor with the
patience and the rejoicing of all faithful souls.
We are reminded, as we study Mrs. Stowe's life, of Swinburne's noble
tribute to Sir Walter Scott after reading his Journals which appeared
in full only five or six years ago. He says: "Now that we have before
us in full--in all reasonable or desired completeness--the great man's
own record of his troubles, his emotions, and his toils, we find it,
from the opening to the close, a record, not only of dauntless
endurance, but of elastic and joyous heroism.... It is no longer pity
that any one may presume to feel for him at the lowest ebb of his
fortunes or his life; it is rapture of sympathy, admiration, and
applause. 'This was a man.'"
The war, the enlistment of her second son, the eldest having already
died, filled her heart and mind afresh with new problems and
anxieties. She wrote the following hurried note from Hartford in 1862,
which gives some idea of her occupations and frame of mind: "I am
going to Washington to see the heads of departments myself, and to
satisfy myself that I may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a
reality and a substance, not a fizzle out at the little end of the
horn, as I should be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in
Europe to any such impotent conclusion.
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