As late as 1850, when Professor Stowe was called to Bowdoin College, and the family removed to Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe had not felt impelled to the duty she afterwards undertook. "In fact, it was a sort of general impression upon her mind, as upon that of many humane people in those days, that the subject was so dark and painful a one, so involved in difficulty and obscurity, so utterly beyond human hope or help, that it was of no use to read, or think, or distress one's self about it." But when she reached New England the excitement over the fugitive slave law was at its height. There was a panic in Boston among the colored people settled there, who were daily fleeing to Canada. Every mail brought her pitiful letters from Boston, from Illinois, and elsewhere, of the terror and despair caused by the law. Still more was the impressed by the apathy of the Christian world at the North, and surely, she said, the people did not understand what the "system" was. Appeals were made to her, who had some personal knowledge of the subject, to take up her pen. The task seemed beyond her in every way. She was not strong, she was in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young infant, with pupils to whom she was giving daily lessons, and the limited income of the family required the strictest economy. The dependence was upon the small salary of Professor Stowe, and the few dollars she could earn by an occasional newspaper or magazine article. But the theme burned in her mind, and finally took this shape: at least she would write some sketches and show the Christian world what slavery really was, and what the system was that they were defending. She wanted to do this with entire fairness, showing all the mitigations of the "patriarchal" system, and all that individuals concerned in it could do to alleviate its misery. While pondering this she came by chance, in a volume of an anti-slavery magazine, upon the authenticated account of the escape of a woman with her child on the ice across the Ohio River from Kentucky. She began to meditate. The faithful slave husband in Kentucky, who had refused to escape from a master who trusted him, when he was about to be sold "down river," came to her as a pattern of Uncle Tom, and the scenes of the story began to form themselves in her mind. "The first part of the book ever committed to writing [this is the statement of Mrs. Stowe] 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, 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!' From