V.
MRS. H. B. STOWE AND UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
If Mrs. Stowe should ever tell the world just how "Uncle Tom" came to be written, and then just how it was written, she would give us a story almost as interesting as a chapter of the work itself. A "little bird" once whispered in my ears the outline of the story. On a certain day, thirty-two years ago, in the month of June, Mrs. Stowe enjoyed the agreeable experience of receiving a letter with an unexpected check for money in it. Few things in 1ife are more pleasing than this. How neatly the little document lies enclosed in the folds of the sheet, and how pleasantly it comes fluttering home to the elated recipient! It is minutely inspected, for a strange check is a revelation. Every bank has its own style, and every great house adds its peculiar mark. What character in the signature! The filling up is in a clerkly hand, acquired at school; but the hand that put its magic scrawl at the bottom was, it may be, toughened in the rude school of the world, where it had many a fight before it proved the victor.
The check which Mrs. Stowe received in June, 1851, came from the editor of a newspaper published in the city of Washington, and tradition reports it to have been of the value of one hundred dollars. The letter in which it was enclosed asked her to write as much of a story as she could afford for the money. The reader is probably aware that, thirty-one years ago, a hundred dollars accompanying such a request was about equivalent to a thousand at the present time. It was really a respectable sum of
