Little Harriet had only a sweet memory of her mother who had died when she was a small child. Wherever she went, she was told of her mother’s beautiful life. It made her very happy to know that she had a mother whom everyone loved. There were no expensive toys in the Beecher family, but Harriet was well content without them. She played with her glass-eyed wooden doll and a set of cups and saucers made by her own hands out of codfish bones. In the woodpile she found treasures in the moss and lichens on the logs. From them she fashioned little pictures using the moss for green fields, sprigs of spruce for the trees, and bits of glass for lakes and rivers. Some of Harriet’s happiest hours were spent curled up in a corner of her father’s study, surrounded by her favorite books. It was a peaceful, restful place, she thought. She liked to glance up at her dear father as he was writing or thinking over his sermons. She enjoyed looking at the friendly faces of the books on the shelves. Very few of them, however, were books that she could understand. One day while rummaging in a barrel of old sermons in the attic, Harriet came upon a copy of the _Arabian Nights_. How she and her brothers pored over its pages! Another precious treasure discovered in a barrel was Shakespeare’s play, _The Tempest_. Harriet’s delight in stories was satisfied in another way. Every fall it was the custom to make enough apple sauce to last for the winter. It took a whole barrelful for the big Beecher family. All the little fingers were pressed into service to peel or quarter apples. Mr. Beecher would then ask who could tell the best story. As the apples bubbled and hissed in the big brass kettle, story after story went around. Mr. Beecher, himself, recited scenes from Sir Walter Scott’s novels, which were then new. In the unheated, barnlike meetinghouse where Mr. Beecher preached, Harriet also spent many happy hours, although she was cold and cramped from sitting through the long sermons. Usually she did not understand her father’s big words, but one day he spoke so earnestly and simply about God’s love that Harriet never forgot it. When Harriet grew up, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe. He was a professor in the Lane Theological Seminary, in Cincinnati, Ohio, of which her father had become the president. In Ohio, adjacent to the slave state of Kentucky, everybody was thinking and talking about slavery. The Fugitive Slave Law, whereby runaway slaves must be returned to their masters, was causing heated discussions. Mrs. Stowe and her husband believed this to be a very unjust law and they helped a colored girl, the “Eliza” of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, to escape from her pursuers. Mrs. Stowe opened a school for colored children in her house, and raised money to buy the freedom of a slave boy.