throughout with wonders, with things to make you shudder and also thrill with pleasure, with things to make you cry and laugh. Her emotional invention was the great factor. Here is her own account: "The first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangible vision to her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his sobs, 'Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!'" The description of Uncle Tom's death is the goal and climax of the novel. Its scene is laid far down in the south, hundreds of miles below any place which she or the children had ever seen or studied. It would have been more in order for her to submit the draft to observant residents of that locality; but the fates did not intend that her convictions should be weakened by real information. Evidently she considered that her truth to fact was fully vindicated by the effect of the narrative upon her children, who, like herself, were entirely without knowledge of the subject. They wept and exclaimed over it. Why, of course, like all children they loved horrible tales, which their weeping and lamentation proved that they thought were true. Doubtless these same children had made respectable demonstrations over Bluebeard or Little Red Ridinghood. And now over Uncle Tom's death, which is more dreadful than anything in Dante's Inferno, and as pure figment, their feelings were shaken with storm and tempest as never before. The statement just quoted proceeds thus: "From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial." I often fancy, as I think over it, that the last quotation describes suggestions from the fates. But we must let Mrs. Stowe finish what we have had her tell in part. Informing us that, after writing "two or three first chapters," she made an arrangement for weekly serial publication in the _National Era_, she says: