'
* * * * *
The Almighty Lord hath disappointed them by the hand of a woman.'"
In reply to this Mrs. Stowe's brother, Henry Ward Beecher, said: "Of
course you all sympathize with me to-day, but, standing in this place,
I do not see your faces more clearly than I see those of my father and
my mother. Her I only knew as a mere babe-child. He was my teacher and
my companion. A more guileless soul than he, a more honest one, more
free from envy, from jealousy, and from selfishness, I never knew.
Though he thought he was great by his theology, everybody else knew he
was great by his religion. My mother is to me what the Virgin Mary is
to a devout Catholic. She was a woman of great nature, profound as a
philosophical thinker, great in argument, with a kind of intellectual
imagination, diffident, not talkative,--in which respect I take after
her,--the woman who gave birth to Mrs. Stowe, whose graces and
excellences she probably more than any of her children--we number but
thirteen--has possessed. I suppose that in bodily resemblance,
perhaps, she is not like my mother, but in mind I presume she is most
like her. I thank you for my father's sake and for my mother's sake
for the courtesy, the friendliness, and the kindness which you give to
Mrs. Stowe."
The following poem from John Greenleaf Whittier was then read:--
"Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
With strength beyond the strength of men,
And, mightier than their sword, her pen;
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log cabin of the slave,
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own,--
North, South, and East and West, made all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
"Welcome from each and all to her
Whose Wooing of the Minister
Revealed the warm heart of the man
Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
And taught the kinship of the love
Of man below and God above;
To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes
Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks,
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay,
In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way,
With Old New England's flavor rife,
Waifs from her rude idyllic life,
Are racy as the legends old
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told;
To her who keeps, through change of place
And time, her native strength and grace,
Alike where warm Sorrento smiles,
Or where, by birchen-shaded isles
Whose summer winds have shivered o'er
The icy drift of Labrador,
She lifts to light the priceless Pearl
Of Harpswell's angel-beckoned girl.
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