* * * * *

The sun looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but Le Fevre’s and his afflicted son’s.  My Uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant’s room, and sat himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it.

There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby—­not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it—­which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature.  The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to the last citadel, the heart, rallied back.  The film forsook his eyes for a moment.  He looked up wistfully in my Uncle Toby’s face, then cast a look upon his boy.  Nature instantly ebbed again.  The film returned to its place:  the pulse fluttered, stopped, went on—­throbbed, stopped again—­moved, stopped——.

My Uncle Toby, with young Le Fevre in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant as chief mourners to his grave.

* * * * *

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

When the authoress of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, visited the White House in 1863, President Lincoln took her hand, and, looking down from his great height, said, “Is this the little woman who brought on so great a war?” But, strangely enough, the attitude of the writer was thoroughly misunderstood.  A terrible indictment against the principle of slavery the story certainly is.  “Scenes, incidents, conversation, rushed upon her,” says one of her biographers, “with a vividness that would not be denied.  The book insisted upon getting itself into print.”  Yet there is no trace of bitterness against those who inherited slaves throughout the story.  The most attractive personages are Southerners, the most repulsive Northerners.  No more delightful a picture of conditions under slavery has ever been drawn as that with which the book opens—­on the Shelby estate in Kentucky.  Mrs. Stowe was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1812.  Her father was the Rev. Lyman Beecher, her brother Henry Ward Beecher.  She died on July 1, 1896.  “Uncle Tom,” published in book form in 1852, is one of the most successful novels of modern times.  In less than a week of its appearance, 10,000 copies were sold, and before the end of the year 300,000 copies had been supplied to the public.  It was almost at once translated into all European languages.  Mrs. Stowe wrote about forty other stories, but posterity will know her as the authoress of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” only.

I.—­Humane Dealing

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February two gentlemen were sitting over their wine, in a well-furnished parlour in the town of P——­ in Kentucky in the midst of an earnest conversation.