Holmes, and I am, as ever, truly yours,
H, B, STOWE.
About this time Mrs. Stowe paid a visit to her brother Charles, at
Newport, Fla., and, continuing her journey to New Orleans, was made to
feel how little of bitterness towards her was felt by the best class
of Southerners, In both New Orleans and Tallahassee she was warmly
welcomed, and tendered public receptions that gave equal pleasure to
her and to the throngs of cultivated people who attended them. She was
also greeted everywhere with intense enthusiasm by the colored people,
who, whenever they knew of her coming, thronged the railway stations
in order to obtain a glimpse of her whom they venerated above all
women.
The return to her Mandarin home each succeeding winter was always a
source of intense pleasure to this true lover of nature in its
brightest and tenderest moods. Each recurring season was filled with
new delights. In December, 1879, she writes to her son, now married
and settled as a minister in Saco, Me.:--
DEAR CHILDREN,--Well, we have stepped from December to June, and this
morning is sunny and dewy, with a fresh sea-breeze giving life to the
air. I have just been out to cut a great bunch of roses and lilies,
though the garden is grown into such a jungle that I could hardly get
about in it. The cannas, and dwarf bananas, and roses are all tangled
together, so that I can hardly thread my way among them.
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