Yet not all the breezes that blew were balmy. There were many astonished outcries, some execrations. But these things influenced the mind of the author very little. She knew that they would not change the heart of her friends toward her, and they could not change the truth. So what had she to fear? Very soon editions began to appear in England, and within a year a million and a half copies had been sold in that country. Through France and Germany, Italy and Sweden, too, the book went like wildfire. That good, friendly soul, Frederika Bremer, wrote to Mrs. Stowe that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had been translated and read and praised in Sweden as no book ever was before, adding that she had an unwavering faith in the “strong humanity of the American mind.” She said: “It will ever throw out whatever is at war with that humanity; and to make it fully alive, nothing is needed but a truly strong appeal of heart to heart, and that has been done in ‘Uncle Tom.’” In France George Sand wrote a notable review of the book in which she said that it was no longer permissible to those that could read not to have read it. The people devour it, she said; they cover it with tears. In a short time there were few places in Italy also where “Il Zio Tom” could not be found. Soon the pebble that had been thrown into the water began to make wider circles. Florence Nightingale wrote to Mrs. Stowe that the British soldiers amid the hardships of far eastern campaigns read the story of heroism. The book was printed at Venice by a fraternity of Catholic Armenian monks so that in the Armenian language it now was carried in all the wanderings of that intelligent people, in the towns and villages along the banks of the Euphrates, through southern Russia, and in the farthest confines of Persia. At last it reached Bengal, and, in their own language, became a household book among the Bengalese. Flying across the straits into Siam, it reached the royal group, where a member of the family liberated her own slaves to the number of one hundred and thirty as a result of its influence, and always signed her own name “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” because of her admiration for the author of the book. Professors Lin Shu and Wei-I of Peking together made a translation into Chinese, and Professor Takenobu of the Waseda University, Tokio, translated it into Japanese. A poem by Dr. Holmes sums up, in his characteristic merry vein, the tale of the nations that learned to recognize the author of “Uncle Tom.” If we should call the roll, Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, High Dutchman and low Dutchman, too, The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, Would shout, “We know the lady!”