"
Happily more peaceful days were in store for her. Her daughters, now
grown to womanhood, were beginning to take the reins of home work and
government into their own hands; and as the darkest hour foreruns the
dawn, so almost imperceptibly to herself her cares began to fade away
from her.
A new era opened in Mrs. Stowe's life when she made her first visit to
Florida, in the winter of 1867. She was tired and benumbed with care
and cold. Suddenly the thought came to her that she would go to the
South, herself, and see what the stories were worth which she was
constantly hearing about its condition. In the mean time, if she
could, she would enjoy the soft air, and find retirement in which she
might continue her book. She says in one of her letters:--
"Winter weather and cold seem always a kind of nightmare to me. I am
going to take my writing-desk and go down to Florida to F----'s
plantation, where we have now a home, and abide there until the heroic
agony of betweenity, the freeze and thaw of winter, is over, and then
I doubt not I can write my three hours a day. Meanwhile, I have a
pretty good pile of manuscript.... The letters I have got about
blossoming roses and loungers in linen coats, while we have been
frozen and snowed up, have made my very soul long to be away. Cold
weather really seems to torpify my brain. I write with a heavy
numbness. I have not yet had a _good_ spell of writing, though I
have had all through the story abundant clairvoyance, and see just how
it must be written; but for writing some parts I want _warm_
weather, and not to be in the state of a 'froze and thawed apple.
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