When Mrs. Stowe was teaching in the Hartford School she was not without pupils that were full of mischief. One of these, being very fond of animals and bugs of all kinds, used to bring her favorites and install them in the desk, shutting down the wide cover as a door to their prison until she should get a chance to show them to her best-loved teacher, Miss Harriet Beecher, who could look unappalled into the desk with its nests of spiders or its families of toads, for there was not a creature that God could create that Harriet did not love. Nearly every novel that she ever wrote includes in its characters some favorite dog or cat; they were characters, too, for they were as different and as individual as people. Then there is her book called “Queer Little People,” where she tells tales about the Nutcracker family of Nutcracker Lodge, about Tip-top, Toddy, and Speckle of the Robin family, about that fascinating Hum, son of Buz, the humming-bird that was blown in at the window on a chilly day at the seashore, about the Squirrels that lived in a house, about the Mrs. Magpie that put on such airs and could not be cut, and about all the congregation of Carlos and Rovers and Princes, including the wonderful high-bred Giglio who was destined to an early demise, and the aristocratic Italian dog Florence who as they were one day riding along through the streets of Rome barked a familiar greeting to the Pope. Aunt Esther’s wonderful power in telling stories about animals, nineteen in a row on rats only, seems to have been handed down to her clever niece.
Well, this mischievous pupil at Hartford had one morning only one small katydid in her desk. It was very interesting in its fine dress of green and silver, with wings of point lace from Mother Nature’s finest web. It perked itself and stood up airily as if it knew that it was about to be immortalized in a human story. Harriet’s fancy saw the possibilities. She said to the student, “You write a story about it.”
“I? Write a story? I couldn’t do it for my life.”
“Yes, you can. Come; you write one and I will write one, too; then we will read them to each other.”
Harriet wrote that story and the copy of it in her own hand is to-day one of the treasures of that same pupil. The tale was also published later in “Queer Little People.” Strangely enough this story may serve to prove what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s feeling was even in her early life on the great matter that she made the theme of her greatest book.
The story is this: Miss Katydid consulted her cousin, the gallant Colonel Katydid, about the invitations to a grand party that she wanted to give. She was to ask only the higher circles, the Fireflies, of course, and the Butterflies; also the Moths, even though they were rather dull people, indelicately ate up ermine capes and got indigestion thereby. Then they must have that worthy family, the Bees, of course; the Bumblebees, too, who were so dashing and brilliant; the spiteful Hornets, just because they were so spiteful and must not be offended, and the plebeian Mosquitoes since they were becoming literary and had very sharp pens, and—the Crickets—should they be asked? The Locusts, of course, a very old and distinguished family, and the Grasshoppers, though they were not of much account, but the Crickets—no! One must draw the line somewhere.
“I thought they were nice, respectable people,” said Colonel Katydid.
“O yes—very good people. But you must see the difficulty.”
“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”
“Why, their color, to be sure. Don’t you see?”