In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was becoming acquainted with the very heart of the English and Scottish people. But it was not only the great and titled that came forward to represent the leading thought in greeting this woman who stood to them for so much. In the villages through which they drove and along the roadsides, the so-called common people were ready with their greetings also. In the doorways everywhere people stood bowing and smiling, and sometimes running out to offer flowers; and little boys ran after her carriage crying out that they knew her by the curls! She wrote: “The butcher came out of his stall and the baker from his shop, the miller dusty with flour, the blooming, comely young mother with her baby in her arms, all smiling and bowing with that hearty intelligent friendly look as if they knew we should be glad to see them.” Then there were in various cities meetings especially for the working men; and as her train went along, even at night, friendly faces were waiting at the stations, good souls watching through the dark to catch one glimpse of the writer or perhaps to grasp her hand; then as the train moved away, saying, “Good night!” with the unmistakable Scotch accent, making her think that she had felt a throb of the living Scotch heart. Mrs. Stowe felt the spirit that prompted this reverential tribute, a spirit that makes one blood of all the families of earth. She, in fact, considered herself altogether inadequate and disproportionate as an object to call forth such outbursts of applause; she was most modest in her reception of them, and believed them to be, as she afterward said to a friend, but the expression of a great spirit of universal brotherhood, surging forward in a huge sympathetic wave. Beneath the weight of these honors the New England simplicity of her character remained unimpaired.