It was her wish that all her sons should devote themselves to the
ministry, and to it she consecrated them with fervent prayer. Her
prayers have been heard. All her sons have been converted and are now,
according to her wish, ministers of Christ."
Such was Roxanna Beecher, whose influence upon her four-year-old
daughter was strong enough to mould the whole after-life of the author
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." After the mother's death the Litchfield home
was such a sad, lonely place for the child that her aunt, Harriet
Foote, took her away for a long visit at her grandmother's at Nut
Plains, near Guilford, Conn., the first journey from home the little
one had ever made. Of this visit Mrs. Stowe herself says:--
"Among my earliest recollections are those of a visit to Nut Plains
immediately after my mother's death. Aunt Harriet Foote, who was with
mother during all her last sickness, took me home to stay with her. At
the close of what seemed to me a long day's ride we arrived after dark
at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large
parlor where a cheerful wood fire was crackling; I was placed in the
arms of an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a thing at
which I marveled, for my great loss was already faded from my childish
mind.
"I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a large room, on one side
of which stood the bed appropriated to her and me, and on the other
that of my grandmother.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26