Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/7



, July 9, 1852.

to offer you my thanks for sending me a very remarkable book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which followed on the receipt of your letter of the 25th of April last.

The book horrifies and haunts me; and I cannot help writing to you somewhat at large upon it.

You will perhaps be surprised at my saying the book horrifies me; for, from the interest you have taken in the same subjects which I have cared for, you know well what horrors of various kinds about slavery, about the dwellings of the poor, and about various sanitary matters, I must have waded through. Indeed, when I look back upon the man I was when I first left college, how devoted to the most abstract studies, and how fastidious as re-