Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/852

Rh picture of Uncle Tom came to her mind. When she went home she wrote the chapter on his death and read it to her two sons, ten and twelve years of age. This so affected them that they burst into tears. After two or three more chapters were ready she wrote to Dr. Bailey, her old friend of Cincinnati days, who had removed his press to Washington and was editing the National Era in that city. He accepted her manuscript and it was published as a serial. Mr. Jewett of Boston feared to undertake the work in book form, thinking it too long to be popular, but Uncle Tom's Cabin was published March 20, 1852, as a book. In less than a year over three hundred thousand copies had been sold. Congratulations came from crown heads and the literary world. In 1853, when Professor Stowe and his wife visited England no crowned head was shown greater honor. Other books followed from her pen on her return to America, her husband having taken a position as Professor of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts. Her other works are: "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands," "Dread," an anti-slavery story; "The Minister's Wooing," "Agnes of Sorrento," an Italian story; "Pearl of Orr's Island," a New England coast tale; "Old Town Folks," "House and Home Papers," "My Wife and I," "Pink and White Tyranny," but none has added to the fame of her great work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This book has been translated into almost all the languages. The latter years of Mrs. Stowe's life was spent between her home among the orange groves of Florida, and her summer residence in Hartford, Connecticut. On her seventy-first birthday her publishers, Houghton Mifflin & Company, gave her a monster garden party in Newton, Massachusetts, at the home of Governor Claflin. Poets, artists, statesmen, and our country's greatest men and women came to do her honor, and when her life went out at Hartford, Connecticut, July 1, 1896, we lost one of the famous women of America.

She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, October 18, 1831. Her father, Nathan W. Fiske, was a professor of languages and philosophy in the college of that town. When twelve years of age both her father and mother died, leaving her to the care of her grandfather. She entered the school of Rev. J. S. C. Abbott of New York. At twenty-one she married a young army officer, Captain, afterward Major, Edward B. Hunt. They lived much of their time at West Point and Newport. Major Hunt was killed in Brooklyn, October 2, 1863, while experimenting with a submarine gun of his own invention. After a year abroad and a long illness in Rome, she returned to this country in 1870. In her first small book of verses she was obliged to pay for the plates when they appeared, and it was only after years of hard work that she succeeded in her literary career. Her health becoming somewhat impaired, she moved to Colorado, and here in 1876 she married Mr. William Sharpless Jackson, a banker and cultured gentleman. They made their home at Colorado Springs, and it became one of the attractions of the place, her great love for flowers beautifying her surroundings. Here she wrote her first novels, "Mercy Philbrick's Choice" and "Hetty's Strange History," also, later "Ramona," but her strongest work was brought