Like the harp with its strings Æolian-blown,
Rising and falling,
Whispering and calling,
With the strength of God’s own breath.
Among other speeches was one by her brother Edward, on the subject of the favorable influence of the works of his sister on woman suffrage.
Then it was announced that Mrs. Stowe would say a few words. She arose and with one movement the whole audience arose, too, in reverence to the “little wisp of a woman” who stood there, slightly bowed and with the snowy touch upon the waves of her hair. The audience listened with eager interest, and this is what she said: “I wish to say that I thank all my friends from my heart—that is all. And one thing more—and that is, if any of you have doubt or sorrow or pain, if you doubt about this world, just remember what God has done; just remember that the great sorrow of slavery has gone, gone forever.” Then she told how happy the negroes were that she was seeing all the time about her in her home in Mandarin in Florida. They were working, building for themselves little houses; and they were happy—they knew how to be happy even better than white folks, she said. To be sure, they had faults—we must have patience with them. But they were doing as well as possible, and were justifying the confidence placed in them. Then she added those significant words: “Let us never doubt; everything that ought to happen is going to happen.” And as the audience dispersed they carried the echo of these brave words with them, as the summing up of the whole life’s thought of the good and great woman they had come there to honor.
An old age more serenely beautiful than that of Harriet Beecher Stowe could scarcely be imagined. Honored throughout the world, happy in the beautiful companionship of children in the Hartford home, she passed on through the years, living in a dream world full of happy, loving thoughts. At one time she said: “I thank God that there is one thing running through my life from the time I was thirteen years old. It is the intense unwavering sense of God’s educative guiding presence and care.” She refers, of course, to that Sabbath when at the age of thirteen, she went to her father in his study and told him about her new sacred hope. It is not given to every one to find that “one unceasing purpose” has run all through his life. To her was given the insight to realize this. She thought so much about the life of the spirit that at last it seemed as if she lived even more in the spirit world than she did in this. Wonderful dreams visited her soul in which she “knew of a certainty” something of a “vivid spiritual life where the enthusiasm of love is the calm habit of the soul, where without demonstrations of affection heart beats to heart, soul answers to soul, we respond to the Infinite Love and we feel His answer in us and there is no need of words.” This was, she said, “but a glimpse” yet it had “left a strange sweetness in her mind.”
When Mrs. Stowe was about seventy years old she made a visit to Wellesley College. The first time that I ever saw her she was sitting in the seat of honor in the gallery of the old chapel. To me she seemed like a little fairy godmother needing but the wings of gauze to be made into a real vision. But there was a look in her eyes that no soulless fairy ever had. As she leaned upon the railing and looked out over the audience of young college girls, gathered there from all parts of the world and throbbing with vivid life, a look of wistful longing came over her face. It was almost as though she said, “Ah, if this had but happened to me!” As she viewed that college life so wisely and broadly organized, apparently so rich in opportunity, she may have felt with some yearning that these young women were realizing powers and opportunities furnished with an ease that had been denied to her. But it is more likely that without any sadness or any reflection upon the difficulties of her own youthful experience, she enthusiastically rejoiced in the vigor, the happiness and the promise of power she saw in that college group, and that, with her characteristic wistful maternal tenderness, she yearned only for the fruition of that promise. And we may question whether she would have had a larger life or a greater influence if she had lived at a later time and had had the training that is given to young women now. As it was she used what she had to the full. Her industry was incessant. Her growth was constantly forced by the fire of her own passion for attainment. Then came the country’s crisis, and the crisis made the woman. But it would never have made the woman if she had not stood ready to be made. That preparation we have seen develop step by step in this story of her life.
It is, therefore, for the spirit of the woman behind the worker that we are most sharply indebted; for, after all, it is an even greater thing to live a great life than to write a great book. Harriet had courage; she had initiative. She was overwhelmingly magnanimous, she was utterly true. She was true to that part in us that grows, as well as to the part that inherits the teaching of the past. She was wise enough to know that the human mind and soul must be always impressionable, always open to the truth as well as staunch in defending it. She had faith in herself and she had faith in God. Moreover, it was because of her faith in God that she had that faith in herself. After all, then, it was her perfect confidence in God that was the key-note of her character. “Let us never doubt,” she said; “everything that ought to happen is going to happen.” This was the supreme note in the harmony of her life.