Harriet Beecher Stowe is one of these. Born in 1811, the daughter of Lyman Beecher, and perhaps the most brilliant member of a brilliant family, beginning to write while still a child, and continuing to do so until the end of her long life, Mrs. Stowe's name is nevertheless connected in the public mind with a single book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book which has probably been read by more people than any other ever written by an American author. Mrs. Stowe had lived for some years in Cincinnati and had visited in Kentucky, so that she had some surface knowledge of slavery; she was, of course, by birth and breeding, an abolitionist, and so when, early in 1851, an anti-slavery paper called the "National Era" was started at Washington, she agreed to furnish a "continued story." The first chapter appeared in April, and the story ran through the year, attracting little attention. But its publication in book form marked the beginning of an immense popularity and an influence probably greater than that of any other novel ever written. It crystallized anti-slavery sentiment, it was read all over the world, it was dramatized and gave countless thousands their first visualization of the slave traffic. That her presentation of it was in many respects untrue has long since been admitted, but she was writing a tract and naturally made her case as strong as she could. From a literary standpoint, too, the book is full of faults; but it is alive with an emotional sincerity which sweeps everything before it. She wrote other books, but none of them is read to-day, except as a matter of duty or curiosity. And let us pause here to point out that the underlying principle of every great work of art, whether a novel or poem or painting or statue, is sincerity. Without sincerity it cannot be great, no matter how well it is done, with what care and fidelity; and with sincerity it may often attain greatness without perfection of form, just as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" did. But to lack sincerity is to lack soul; it is a body without a spirit. We must refer, too, to the most distinctive American humorist of the last half century, Samuel Langhorne Clemens--"Mark Twain." Born in Missouri, knocking about from pillar to post in his early years, serving as pilot's boy and afterwards as pilot on a Mississippi steamboat, as printer, editor, and what not, but finally "finding himself" and making an immense reputation by the publication of a burlesque book of European travel, "Innocents Abroad," he followed it up with such widely popular stories as "Tom Sawyer," "Huckleberry Finn," "The Prince and the Pauper," and many others, in some of which, at least, there seems to be an element of permanency. "Huckleberry Finn," indeed, has been hailed as the most distinctive work produced in America--an estimate which must be accepted with reservations.