he captain
had died of smallpox on the voyage; his widow, the mate in command of
the vessel, and four seamen reached the shore; Mr. Sumner and the
Ossolis perished. The cruel part of the tragedy is that it seems
probable every soul on board might have been saved. Life-boats, only
three miles away, did not arrive until noon; that is, after eight
precious hours had passed. Moreover, in a moment of penitence, one of
the life-boat crew said, "Oh, if we had known that any such persons of
importance were on board, we should have done our best."

Margaret, the name by which she will always be known, had passed her
fortieth birthday at sea on this voyage. It seems a short life in
which to have crowded so much and such varied experience. She had some
trials even in her youth, but for two-thirds of her existence, she
might have been considered a favorite of fortune. In later life, she
had some battles to fight, but her triumphs were great enough to
dazzle a person with more modesty than was her endowment. She suffered
in Italy, both for her child left to strangers in the mountains, and
for her adopted country, but they were both causes, in which for her,
suffering was a joy. She did not desire to survive her husband and
child, nor to leave them behind, and, we may say, happily they all
went together. "Her life seems to me," says Col. Higginson, "on the
whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one," and that is a reasonable
verdict, however difficult to render in the presence of such a tragedy
as her untimely death.

VI

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE]

"Is this the little woman who made this great war!" exclaimed
President Lincoln when, in 1862, Mrs. Stowe was introduced to him.
There was but one woman in America to whom this could have been said
without absurdity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so conspicuous a factor in
bringing on the war which abolished American slavery that to credit
these results to Mrs. Stowe was not fulsome flattery but graceful
compliment.

There are two excellent biographies of Mrs. Stowe, one published in
1889, by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and one, in 1897, by Mrs.
Annie Fields. That work will hardly need to be done again. The object
of this sketch is to study the influences that moulded Mrs. Stowe, to
present the salient features of her career, and, incidentally, to
discover her characteristic qualities. Her fame rests upon her
literary achievements, and these