After this Mrs. Stowe thought that she had discovered the philosopher’s stone! So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be needed or when at the close of the year it began to be evident that her accounts, like _Dora’s_, “wouldn’t add up,” she used to say to her faithful friend and factotum, the governess, who shared all her joys and sorrows, “Now, Anna, if you will keep the babies and attend to the house for one day, I will write a piece and then we shall be out of the scrape.” She began to make overtures to various editors. She wrote her husband: “I have sent some pieces to W. If he accepts them and pays you for them, take the money and use it as you see necessary; if not, be sure to send the pieces back to me. I am strong in spirit; and God, who has been with me in so many straits, will not desert me now. I know Him well; He is my Father, and though I may be a blind and erring child, He will help me for all that. My trust through all errors and sins is in Him. He will help us, and His arms are about us, so we shall not sink, my dear husband.” Her early successes filled the heart of Professor Stowe with pride and with the desire that she should adopt a literary career. It was so written, he declared, in the book of fate, and she should make all her calculations accordingly. She must get a good stock of health and brush up her mind. She should drop the “E” out of her name because it only encumbered the name and interfered with its flow and harmony. “Harriet Beecher Stowe” it should be, a name euphonious and flowing and full of meaning. “Then my word for it,” he said enthusiastically, “your husband will lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and call you blessed.” Of the tremendous odds under which Mrs. Stowe for a time pursued her literary labors, her sister Catherine gives an amusing account. Harriet had promised that she would get at a certain story when the house-cleaning was done and when baby’s teeth were through! Catherine said that the house-cleaning could be deferred one day longer and as to baby’s teeth, she did not see that there would ever be any end to them; she must have the manuscript that day, she said, for she had promised it to the editor. “Come, my dear,” she said, “in three hours you can finish the courtship, marriage, catastrophe, and all, and this three hours of your brains will earn enough to pay for all the sewing your fingers can do for a year to come. Two dollars a page, my dear, and you can write a page in fifteen minutes!” But Harriet called her sister’s attention to the fact that there was a baby in her arms and two pussies by her side, a great baking in the kitchen to be done, and a green girl to help--it was clearly out of the question for that day at least. Catherine would not take “no” for an answer.