Stowe describes a most tempestuous
passage between New York and Charleston, during which she and her
husband and daughters suffered so much that they were ready to
forswear the sea forever. The great waves as they rushed, boiling and
seething, past would peer in at the little bull's-eye window of the
state-room, as if eager to swallow up ship and passengers. From
Charleston, however, they had a most delightful run to their journey's
end. She writes:--"We had a triumphal entrance into the St. John's,
and a glorious sail up the river. Arriving at Mandarin, at four
o'clock, we found all the neighbors, black as well as white, on the
wharf to receive us. There was a great waving of handkerchiefs and
flags, clapping of hands and cheering, as we drew near. The house was
open and all ready for us, and we are delighted to be once more in our
beautiful Florida home."
In the following December she writes to her son: "I am again entangled
in writing a serial, a thing I never mean to do again, but the story,
begun for a mere Christmas brochure, grew so under my hands that I
thought I might as well fill it out and make a book of it. It is the
last thing of the kind I ever expect to do. In it I condense my
recollections of a bygone era, that in which I was brought up, the
ways and manners of which are now as nearly obsolete as the Old
England of Dickens's stories is.
"I am so hampered by the necessity of writing this story, that I am
obliged to give up company and visiting of all kinds and keep my
strength for it.
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