We are not moved in
yet, only our things, and the house presents a scene of the wildest
chaos, the furniture having been tumbled in and lying boxed and
promiscuous.
I sent the sixth number of "House and Home" papers a week ago, and,
not having heard from it, am a little anxious. I always want faith
that a bulky manuscript will go safe,--for all I never lost one.... I
should like to show you the result here when we are fairly in, and the
spring leaves are out. It is the brightest, cheerfullest, homeliest
home that you could see,--not even excepting yours.
The pursuit of literature under such circumstances is neither natural
nor profitable. In Mrs. Stowe's case it proved that she was pursuing,
not literature, but the necessities of life. Everything in the
household economy now depended upon her; and however strong her
tendencies were naturally, she no longer possessed the reserved
strength to forge the work from her brain. In the writing of "Uncle
Tom," great as were the odds against her, she had been preparing to
that end from the moment of her birth. Her father's fiery powers of
expression; her mother's nature absorbed in one still dream of love
and duty; her own solitary childhood in spite of the enormous
household in which she was brought up; above all her brooding nature
quietly absorbing and assimilating the knowledge and thought which
were finding expression around her; the first years of married life in
Cincinnati, where the slaves were continually harbored and assisted,
notwithstanding the risks to life and property;--everything, in short,
within and around her was nourishing the child of her genius which was
to leap into being and gather the armies of America.
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