to keep them enslaved.  But in these later years several cases have come to my personal knowledge in which old Negroes have died and left what was a considerable fortune to the descendants of their former masters.  I do not think it takes any great stretch of the imagination to believe there was a fairly large class of slave-holders typified in Legree.  And we must also remember that the author depicted a number of worthless if not vicious Negroes, and a slave-holder who was as much of a Christian and a gentleman as it was possible for one in his position to be; that she pictured the happy, singing, shuffling “darky” as well as the mother wailing for her child sold “down river.”

I do not think it is claiming too much to say that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a fair and truthful panorama of slavery; however that may be, it opened my eyes as to who and what I was and what my country considered me; in fact, it gave me my bearing.  But there was no shock; I took the whole revelation in a kind of stoical way.  One of the greatest benefits I derived from reading the book was that I could afterwards talk frankly with my mother on all the questions which had been vaguely troubling my mind.  As a result, she was entirely freed from reserve, and often herself brought up the subject, talking of things directly touching her life and mine and of things which had come down to her through the “old folks.”  What she told me interested and even fascinated me, and, what may seem strange, kindled in me a strong desire to see the South.  She spoke to me quite frankly about herself, my father, and myself:  she, the sewing girl of my father’s mother; he, an impetuous young man home from college; I, the child of this unsanctioned love.  She told me even the principal reason for our coming north.  My father was about to be married to a young lady of another great Southern family; She did not neglect to add that another reason for our being in Connecticut was that he intended to give me an education and make a man of me.  In none of her talks did she ever utter one word of complaint against my father.  She always endeavored to impress upon me how good he had been and still was, and that he was all to us that custom and the law would allow.  She loved him; more, she worshiped him, and she died firmly believing that he loved her more than any other woman in the world.  Perhaps she was right.  Who knows?

All of these newly awakened ideas and thoughts took the form of a definite aspiration on the day I graduated from the grammar school.  And what a day that was!  The girls in white dresses, with fresh ribbons in their hair; the boys in new suits and creaky shoes; the great crowd of parents and friends; the flowers, the prizes and congratulations, made the day seem to me one of the greatest importance.  I was on the program, and played a piano solo which was received by the audience with that amount of applause which I had come to look upon as being only the just due of my talent.