Uncle Tom's Cabin [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, born at Lichfiel i, in tht United States, in the year 1812, is the second da lghter of Dr. Lyman Beecher, pastor of a Presbyterian church in Cincinnati. She is a person of middle stature, and with little pretension to any other personal beauty than that which homely, motherly benevolence, and eyes radiant with the fires of intelligence, unite to confer. Educated at Boston, she acquired all the accomplishments most in favour with her sex, and much of the learning usually reserved to the other. She thus became competent at an early age to undertake the duties of governess, and rendered her elder sister Catherine important service in the management of a flourishing ladies' school established by the latter—resigning her duties, at length, upon contracting yet higher ones by her marriage with the Rev. Calvin Stowe, professor of Biblical literature in the seminary of which her father was then president. Blessed by a numerous family, the domestic life of Mrs. Stowe has been attended by an equable, quiet happiness not too common even in the homes of pastors' wives. Not that the noon of her day has been all sunshine. Clouds have intervened, of duration and darkness which any bereaved mother who may read these pages needs no aid to comprehend. Six of Mrs. Stowe's children are, however, still living, and much of her time has been devoted to their education.