It was easy for sympathy to ripen into love, and
after a short engagement Harriet E. Beecher became the wife of
Professor Calvin E. Stowe.
Her last act before the wedding was to write the following note to the
friend of her girlhood, Miss Georgiana May:--
_January_ 6, 1836.
Well, my dear G., about half an hour more and your old friend,
companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease to be Hatty Beecher
and change to nobody knows who. My dear, you are engaged, and pledged
in a year or two to encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to know
how you shall feel? Well, my dear, I have been dreading and dreading
the time, and lying awake all last week wondering how I should live
through this overwhelming crisis, and lo! it has come and I feel
_nothing at all_.
The wedding is to be altogether domestic; nobody present but my own
brothers and sisters, and my old colleague, Mary Dutton; and as there
is a sufficiency of the ministry in our family we have not even to
call in the foreign aid of a minister. Sister Katy is not here, so she
will not witness my departure from her care and guidance to that of
another. None of my numerous friends and acquaintances who have taken
such a deep interest in making the connection for me even know the
day, and it will be all done and over before they know anything about
it.
Well, it is really a mercy to have this entire stupidity come over one
at such a time.
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