Chapter VIII: Canto II

The man what's so colickish
When his friends are all frolickish
As to turn up his noses
And turn on his toses
Shall have only verses
On tombstones and hearses.

But, seriously, my dear husband, you must try and be
patient, for this cannot last forever. Be patient and
bear it like the toothache, or a driving rain, or
anything else that you cannot escape. To see things as
through a glass darkly is your infirmity, you know;
but the Lord will yet deliver you from this trial. I
know how to pity you, for the last three weeks I have
suffered from an overwhelming mental depression, a
perfect heartsickness. All I wanted was to get home and
die. Die I was very sure I should at any rate, but I
suppose I was never less prepared to do so.

The long exile was ended in the spring of 1847, and in May Mrs. Stowe returned to her Cincinnati home, where she was welcomed with sincere demonstrations of joy by her husband and children.

Her sixth child, Samuel Charles, was born in January of 1848, and about this time her husband's health became so seriously impaired that it was thought desirable for him in turn to spend a season at the Brattleboro' water-cure. He went in June, 1848, and was compelled by the very precarious state of his health to remain until September, 1849. During this period of more than a year Mrs. Stowe remained in Cincinnati caring for her six children, eking out her slender income by taking boarders and writing when she found time, confronting a terrible epidemic of cholera that carried off one of her little flock, and in every way showing herself to be a brave woman, possessed of a spirit that could rise superior to all adversity. Concerning this time she writes in January, 1849, to her dearest friend:--

MY BELOVED GEORGY,--For six months after my return from
Brattleboro' my eyes were so affected that I wrote
scarce any, and my health was in so strange a state
that I felt no disposition to write. After the birth of
little Charley my health improved, but my husband was
sick and I have been so loaded and burdened with cares
as to drain me dry of all capacity of thought, feeling,
memory, or emotion.

Well, Georgy, I am thirty-seven years old! I am glad
of it. I like to grow old and have six children and
cares endless. I wish you could see me with my flock
all around me. They sum up my cares, and were they gone
I should ask myself, What now remains to be done? They
are my work, over which I fear and tremble.

In the early summer of 1849 cholera broke out in Cincinnati, and soon became epidemic. Professor Stowe, absent in Brattleboro', and filled with anxiety for the safety of his family, was most anxious, in spite of his feeble health, to return and share the danger with them, but this his wife would not consent to, as is shown by her letters to him, written at this time. In one of them, dated June 29, 1849, she says:--

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--This week has been unusually fatal.
The disease in the city has been malignant and
virulent. Hearse drivers have scarce been allowed to
unharness their horses, while furniture carts and
common vehicles are often employed for the removal of
the dead. The sable trains which pass our windows, the
frequent indications of crowding haste, and the absence
of reverent decency have, in many cases, been most
painful. Of course all these things, whether we will or
no, bring very doleful images to the mind.

On Tuesday one hundred and sixteen deaths from cholera
were reported, and that night the air was of that
peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind that seems to lie
like lead on the brain and soul.

As regards your coming home, I am decidedly opposed
to it. First, because the chance of your being taken
ill is just as great as the chance of your being able
to render us any help. To exchange the salubrious air
of Brattleboro' for the pestilent atmosphere of this
place with your system rendered sensitive by water-cure
treatment would be extremely dangerous. It is a source
of constant gratitude to me that neither you nor father
are exposed to the dangers here.

Second, none of us are sick, and it is very uncertain
whether we shall be.

Third, if we were sick there are so many of us that it
is not at all likely we shall all be taken at once.

_July 1._ Yesterday Mr. Stagg went to the city and
found all gloomy and discouraged, while a universal
panic seemed to be drawing nearer than ever before.
Large piles of coal were burning on the cross walks
and in the public squares, while those who had talked
confidently of the cholera being confined to the lower
classes and those who were imprudent began to feel as
did the magicians of old, "This is the finger of God."

Yesterday, upon the recommendation of all the clergymen
of the city, the mayor issued a proclamation for a day
of general fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to be
observed on Tuesday next.

_July 3._ We are all in good health and try to maintain
a calm and cheerful frame of mind. The doctors are
nearly used up. Dr. Bowen and Dr. Peck are sick in bed.
Dr. Potter and Dr. Pulte ought, I suppose, to be there
also. The younger physicians have no rest night or day.
Mr. Fisher is laid up from his incessant visitations
with the sick and dying. Our own Dr. Brown is likewise
prostrated, but we are all resolute to stand by each
other, and there are so many of us that it is not
likely we can all be taken sick together.

_July 4._ All well. The meeting yesterday was very
solemn and interesting. There is more or less sickness
about us, but no very dangerous cases. One hundred
and twenty burials from cholera alone yesterday, yet
to-day we see parties bent on pleasure or senseless
carousing, while to-morrow and next day will witness
a fresh harvest of death from them. How we can become
accustomed to anything! Awhile ago ten a day dying of
cholera struck terror to all hearts; but now the tide
has surged up gradually until the deaths average over
a hundred daily, and everybody is getting accustomed
to it. Gentlemen make themselves agreeable to ladies
by reciting the number of deaths in this house or
that. This together with talk of funerals, cholera
medicines, cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form
the ordinary staple of conversation. Serious persons of
course throw in moral reflections to their taste.

_July 10._ Yesterday little Charley was taken ill, not
seriously, and at any other season I should not be
alarmed. Now, however, a slight illness seems like a
death sentence, and I will not dissemble that I feel
from the outset very little hope. I still think it best
that you should not return. By so doing you might lose
all you have gained. You might expose yourself to a
fatal incursion of disease. It is decidedly not your
duty to do so.

_July 12._ Yesterday I carried Charley to Dr. Pulte,
who spoke in such a manner as discouraged and
frightened me. He mentioned dropsy on the brain as
a possible result. I came home with a heavy heart,
sorrowing, desolate, and wishing my husband and father
were here.

About one o'clock this morning Miss Stewart suddenly
opened my door crying, "Mrs. Stowe, Henry is vomiting."
I was on my feet in an instant, and lifted up my heart
for help. He was, however, in a few minutes relieved.
Then I turned my attention to Charley, who was also
suffering, put him into a wet sheet, and kept him there
until he was in a profuse perspiration. He is evidently
getting better, and is auspiciously cross. Never was
crossness in a baby more admired. Anna and I have said
to each other exultingly a score of times, "How cross
the little fellow is! How he does scold!"

_July 15._ Since I last wrote our house has been a
perfect hospital. Charley apparently recovering, but
still weak and feeble, unable to walk or play, and
so miserably fretful and unhappy. Sunday Anna and
I were fairly stricken down, as many others are,
with no particular illness, but with such miserable
prostration. I lay on the bed all day reading my
hymn-book and thinking over passages of Scripture.

_July 17._ To-day we have been attending poor old Aunt
Frankie's[5] funeral. She died yesterday morning,
taken sick the day before while washing. Good, honest,
trustful old soul! She was truly one who hungered and
thirsted for righteousness.

Yesterday morning our poor little dog, Daisy, who had
been ailing the day before, was suddenly seized with
frightful spasms and died in half an hour. Poor little
affectionate thing! If I were half as good for my
nature as she for hers I should be much better than I
am. While we were all mourning over her the news came
that Aunt Frankie was breathing her last. Hatty, Eliza,
Anna, and I made her shroud yesterday, and this morning
I made her cap. We have just come from her grave.

_July 23._ At last, my dear, the hand of the Lord hath
touched us. We have been watching all day by the dying
bed of little Charley, who is gradually sinking. After
a partial recovery from the attack I described in my
last letter he continued for some days very feeble, but
still we hoped for recovery. About four days ago he was
taken with decided cholera, and now there is no hope of
his surviving this night.

Every kindness is shown us by the neighbors. Do not
return. All will be over before you could possibly get
here, and the epidemic is now said by the physicians
to prove fatal to every new case. Bear up. Let us not
faint when we are rebuked of Him. I dare not trust
myself to say more but shall write again soon.

_July 26._

MY DEAR HUSBAND,--At last it is over and our dear
little one is gone from us. He is now among the
blessed. My Charley--my beautiful, loving, gladsome
baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of life and hope
and strength--now lies shrouded, pale and cold, in the
room below. Never was he anything to me but a comfort.
He has been my pride and joy. Many a heartache has he
cured for me. Many an anxious night have I held him to
my bosom and felt the sorrow and loneliness pass out
of me with the touch of his little warm hands. Yet I
have just seen him in his death agony, looked on his
imploring face when I could not help nor soothe nor do
one thing, not one, to mitigate his cruel suffering,
do nothing but pray in my anguish that he might die
soon. I write as though there were no sorrow like my
sorrow, yet there has been in this city, as in the
land of Egypt, scarce a house without its dead. This
heart-break, this anguish, has been everywhere, and
when it will end God alone knows.

With this severest blow of all, the long years of trial and suffering in the West practically end; for in September, 1849, Professor Stowe returned from Brattleboro', and at the same time received a call to the Collins Professorship at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, that he decided to accept.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The governess, Miss Anna Smith.

[5] An old colored woman.