“That’s right, Hattie. Finish it and I’ll scatter it thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa.” But there was small need for his endorsement. It was soon published as a book. Would anybody read it, she asked herself doubtfully; the subject was so unpopular. She would help it make its way, if possible, and sent a copy to Queen Victoria, knowing how deeply she was interested in the abolition of slavery. Then this busy woman waited in the quiet Maine home to see what the world would say. The first day three thousand copies were sold, ten thousand in ten days, over three hundred thousand the first year. The magazine had paid her three hundred dollars for the manuscript; the check for her first month’s royalty was ten thousand dollars, when Professor Stowe had hoped the proceeds would buy her a new silk dress. There were translations into twenty different languages, forty editions in England, while the publishers lost count of the number in America. How restful for the tired overworked woman to have more than enough for her daily needs, to be free from the anxieties of poverty! “Having been poor all my life,” she said, “and expecting to be poor for the rest of it, the idea of making money by a book which I wrote just because I couldn’t help it, never occurred to me.” Written with a purpose, a great underlying principle, _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ is distinctly the work of a woman’s heart, not of her head. And this explains the book’s merits as well as its literary defects. “But if critics find unskilful treatment,” wrote George Sand, “look well at them and see if their eyes are dry when they are reading this or that chapter. The life and death of a little child and of a negro slave--that is the whole book. The affection that unites them is the only love story.” Yet this book met with a success that reads like a fairy tale. It was dramatized immediately, six London theaters playing it at the same time. Learned reviews printed long notices of it, leading writers in America and England added their critical appreciation. Even those rating it low as a work of art called it a true picture of slavery. The common people accepted it eagerly, making it the most widely read book of modern times. It was one of the greatest triumphs in literary history, to say nothing of the higher moral triumph. Its effect on the public was electric. The air, already charged with feeling, was ready to become impassioned. After its reading the Missouri Compromise was felt to be monstrous and impossible, enforcing the fugitive slave law absolutely out of the question. Throughout the North the book was received with acclamations. All classes, rich and poor, young and old, religious and irreligious, read it. No one who began it could remain unchanged. Echoes of sympathy came to the author from all parts of the land; the indignation, pity and distress which had long weighed on her soul seemed to pass from her to the readers of the book.