The poet Whittier wrote to Garrison, "What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought! Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better would it be for slavery if that law had never been enacted, for it gave occasion for _Uncle Tom's Cabin_!" Longfellow also wrote in praise of the book, and letters were received from most of the noted men who opposed slavery. The possibility of making money by the publication of this book was quite remote from Mrs. Stowe's disinterested mind. As she wrote in a letter to a friend: "Having been poor all my life, and expecting to be poor for the rest of it, the idea of making money by a book which I wrote just because I could not help it, never occurred to me." But from this time forth she was to be free from the anxieties of poverty. As the first payment of three months' sale, Mrs. Stowe received ten thousand dollars. The following year Professor and Mrs. Stowe went to Great Britain, having been urgently invited to visit in many Scotch and English houses. Even in foreign lands, Mrs. Stowe found herself known and loved. Crowds greeted her in Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. Children ran ahead of her carriage, throwing flowers to her, and officials of the Anti-Slavery Societies met her and offered hospitality. A national penny offering, turned into a thousand golden sovereigns, was presented to her on a magnificent silver salver for the advancement of the cause for which she had written. This offering came from all classes of people. A personal gift which Mrs. Stowe valued highly was a superb gold bracelet presented by the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland who entertained her at Stafford House. It was made in the form of a slave's shackle and bore the inscription, "We trust it is a memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." On two of the links were already inscribed the dates of the abolition of slave trade and of slavery in the English territories. Years afterward, on the clasp of the bracelet, Mrs. Stowe had engraved the date of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States. Upon Mrs. Stowe's return from her visit to Europe in the autumn of 1853, she became very active in public affairs. She supported anti-slavery lectures, established schools for the colored people, assisted in buying ill-treated slaves and setting them free, and arranged public meetings for the advancement of anti-slavery opinions, using the money which had been given to her in England to support the work. In addition, she kept up a correspondence with influential men and women on the subject of the abolition of slavery.