Chapter I: Front Matter

THE WRITINGS
OF
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Riverside Edition

_WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS
PORTRAITS, AND OTHER
ILLUSTRATIONS_

IN SIXTEEN VOLUMES
VOLUME VIII

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO

HOUSEHOLD PAPERS
AND STORIES

BY
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896

Copyright, 1868,
By TICKNOR & FIELDS.

Copyright, 1864, 1892, 1896,
By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

Copyright, 1896,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

_All rights reserved._

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS
I. The Ravages of a Carpet 1
II. Homekeeping vs. Housekeeping 16
III. What is a Home? 33
IV. The Economy of the Beautiful 54
V. Raking Up the Fire 69
VI. The Lady who does her own Work 85
VII. What can be got in America 101
VIII. Economy 112
IX. Servants 133
X. Cookery 153
XI. Our House 182
XII. Home Religion 212

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER
I. What will You do with Her? or, The Woman Question 231
II. Woman's Sphere 249
III. A Family Talk on Reconstruction 274
IV. Is Woman a Worker? 300
V. The Transition 316
VI. Bodily Religion: A Sermon on Good Health 330
VII. How shall we entertain our Company? 347
VIII. How shall we be Amused? 362
IX. Dress, or Who makes the Fashions 374
X. What are the Sources of Beauty in Dress? 395
XI. The Cathedral 412
XII. The New Year 425
XIII. The Noble Army of Martyrs 438

OUR SECOND GIRL 449

A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY 473

TRIALS OF A HOUSEKEEPER 487

The frontispiece is from a photograph of Mrs. Stowe taken in 1884. The vignette of Mrs. Stowe's later Hartford home is from a drawing by Charles Copeland.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Mrs. Stowe had early and very practical acquaintance with the art of housekeeping. It strikes one at first as a little incongruous that an author who devoted her great powers to stirring the conscience of a nation should from time to time, and at one period especially, give her mind to the ordering of family life, but a moment's consideration will show that the same woman was earnestly at the bottom of each effort. In a letter to the late Lord Denman, written in 1853, Mrs. Stowe, speaking of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, said: "I wrote what I did because, as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and heartbroken with the sorrows and injustice which I saw, and because, as a Christian, I felt the dishonor to Christianity." Not under the stress of passionate emotion, yet largely from a sense of real responsibility as a woman, a mother, and a Christian, she occupied herself with those concerns of every-day life which so distinctly appeal to a woman's mind. How to order a household, how to administer that little kingdom over which a woman rules, and, above all, how to make family life stable, pure, and conservative of the highest happiness, these were the questions which she asked herself constantly, and which she tried to solve, not only incidentally in her fiction, but directly in her essays, and in that field of one tenth fiction and nine tenths didacticism, which constitutes most of the present volume.

_A Scholar's Adventures in the Country_ and _Trials of a Housekeeper_ appeared in the miscellany to which she gave the name of _The Mayflower_, and reflect humorously the Cincinnati experiences which again are playfully recounted in letters published in her son's _Life_. The former, contributed in 1850 to _The National Era_, was drawn pretty closely from the experiments of Professor Stowe. It is noticeable that in this paper and in _Our Second Girl_, which was contributed to _The Atlantic Monthly_ for January, 1868, the author poses as the masculine member of the household, as if this assumption gave her some advantage in the point of view. At any rate, she adopted the same role when she came more deliberately to survey a wide field in a series of articles.

_The House_ and _Home Papers_ were contributed first to _The Atlantic Monthly_, and afterward published in book form as the production of one Christopher Crowfield, though there was not the slightest attempt otherwise at disguising the authorship. The immediate occasion of the papers was no doubt the removal of the Stowes from Andover and their establishment in Hartford, an event which took place shortly before the papers began to appear in _The Atlantic_. The years which followed during the first Hartford residence saw also a marriage in the family and new problems of daily life constantly presenting themselves, so that a similar series appeared in the same magazine, purporting to be from the same householder, entitled _The Chimney Corner_. This series, indeed, entered rather more seriously into questions of social morality, and deepened in feeling as it proceeded. The eleventh section is a warm appreciation of the woman who figured so largely in Mrs. Stowe's early life, and the last two papers rose, as the reader will see, to the height of national memories. Mrs. Fields has preserved for us, in her _Days with Mrs. Stowe_, a striking record of the mingling of the great and the near in this writer's mind. The period of which she writes is that in which _The Chimney Corner_ series was drawing to a close:--

"In the autumn of 1864 she wrote: 'I feel I need to write in these days, to keep me from thinking of things that make me dizzy and blind, and fill my eyes with tears, so that I cannot see the paper. I mean such things as are being done where our heroes are dying as Shaw died. It is not wise that all our literature should run in a rut cut through our hearts and red with our blood. I feel the need of a little gentle household merriment and talk of common things, to indulge which I have devised the following.'

"Notwithstanding her view of the need, and her skillfully devised plans to meet it, she soon sent another epistle, showing how impossible it was to stem the current of her thought:--

"'_November 29, 1864._

"'MY DEAR FRIEND,--

"'I have sent my New Year's article, the result of one of those
peculiar experiences which sometimes occur to us writers. I had
planned an article, gay, sprightly, wholly domestic; but as I
began and sketched the pleasant home and quiet fireside, an
irresistible impulse _wrote for me_ what followed,--an offering of
sympathy to the suffering and agonized, whose homes have forever
been darkened. Many causes united at once to force on me this
vision, from which generally I shrink, but which sometimes will
not be denied,--will make itself felt.

"'Just before I went to New York two of my earliest and
most intimate friends lost their oldest sons, captains and
majors,--splendid fellows physically and morally, beautiful,
brave, religious, uniting the courage of soldiers to the
faith of martyrs,--and when I went to Brooklyn it seemed as
if I were hearing some such thing almost every day; and
Henry, in his profession as minister, has so many letters
full of imploring anguish, the cry of hearts breaking that ask
help of him.'"...

HOUSEHOLD PAPERS AND STORIES

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS