There was nothing to do but to return home and wait
patiently for the next train; but wishing not to be disturbed, she
quietly opened a side door and crept noiselessly up the staircase
leading to her own room, sitting down by her writing-table in the
window. She had been seated about half an hour when Professor Stowe
came in, looked about him with a preoccupied air, but did not speak to
her. She thought his behavior strange, and amused herself by watching
him; at last the situation became so extraordinary that she began to
laugh. "Why," he exclaimed, with a most astonished air, "is that you?
I thought it was one of my visions!"
It may seem a singular antithesis to say of the writer of one of the
greatest stories the world has yet produced that she was not a student
of literature. Books as a medium of the ideas of the age, and as the
promulgators of morals and religion, were of course like the breath of
her life; but a study of the literature of the past as the only true
foundation for a literature of the present was outside the pale of her
occupations, and for the larger portion of her life outside of her
interest. During the riper season of her activity with the pen, the
necessity of studying style and the thoughts of others gained a larger
hold upon her mind; but she always said, with a twinkle of amusement
and pride, that she never could have done anything without Mr. Stowe.
He knew everything, and all she had to do was to go to him.
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