Mrs. Stowe’s dowry consisted of eleven dollars’ worth of china. That served her for two years. But when her brother, Edward, with his bride, came to visit her, she found that she could not set the table with the plates and tea cups she possessed. So she bought an additional set for ten dollars, and this supply lasted her for many years. Mrs. Stowe seems to have inherited all the cleverness of her mother, Roxana, in making and making over, in fitting and polishing up all sorts of things for the household. While she was getting settled in Maine she wrote to a sister, “Mrs. Mitchell and myself made two sofas and lounges, a barrel chair, divers bedspreads, pillow-cases, pillows, bolsters and mattresses; we painted rooms; we revarnished furniture; we--what didn’t we do?”[10] She could nail a carpet in the corner and tack gimp on to mended furniture; she could make a loose screw firm, and, I am certain, drive in a nail without hitting her fingers. While she was as feminine as any woman that ever lived, she had the simple practical efficiency that is--or was--supposed to be characteristically masculine. She could lay the cloth on the floor and cut out a dress for herself without any pattern; “I guess I know my own shape,” she said to one who caught her doing this. She made her husband’s coats and her own shoes. In the days when the congress gaiters were in fashion, she made very pretty ones for herself, fitting them nicely; she was an excellent cobbler and could cut the leather soles and nail on the heel with perfect art, and when she found the elastic on the sides difficult to set in she invented a way of lacing the shoe up behind, thus overcoming the trouble and giving a dainty and trim effect to the foot-gear. In the winter of 1839 the Belle Rivière was choked up with ice; provisions could not be brought in and a famine was threatened; consequently there was a stiff rise in prices. Coarse salt was three dollars a bushel, rice was eighteen cents a pound, coffee was fifty cents a pound, white sugar the same; brown sugar was twenty cents a pound, molasses was one dollar a gallon and potatoes were one dollar a bushel. What was to be done? They simply did without these things. For months the diet consisted of bread and bacon, and happy they were to get that!