ment. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans, and everybody three months ago in the Republican party prophesied his election. How is it to-day? Why, that man who used to boast that he looked like Napoleon-that man shudders to-day when he thinks that he was nominated on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.

Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever-increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.

Why this change? Ah, my friends, is not the change evident to any one who will look at the matter? It is no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, that can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.

We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue in this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. Why, if they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing we point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of a gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing why try to get rid of it? If the gold standard-and I might call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who are in this convention to day and who tell you that you ought to declare in favor of bimetallism, and thereby declare that the gold standard is wrong, and that the prin ciple of bimetallism is better-these very people four months ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard and telling us that we could not legislate two metals together even with all the world.

I want to suggest this truth, that if the gold standard is a good thing we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing why should we wait until some other nations are willing to help us to let go?

Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that we can present the history of our nation. More than that. We can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle

between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country, and, my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide, upon which side shall the Democratic party fight?

Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual here after. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the founda tion of the Democratic party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to do prosperous that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class and rest upon it.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in this country.

My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question. without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth--and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in this Union.

I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when its citizens are confronted with the proposition, Is this nation able to attend to its own business ?-I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our heipless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has.

If they dare to come out and in the open defend the gold standard as a good thing. we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

"THE

HE greatest of American women, -Harriet Beecher Stowe," were the recent words of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who would probably stand next in order for a claim to that superlative title. So thoroughly have Uncle Tom, Topsy, Eva and Legree become ingrained in the material of our home life, home thoughts, our everyday quotations and points of view, and so quiet have been the later flickering days of the ardent soul who flamed forth into that mighty tract, that it requires some conscious readjustment of perspective to realize that the life which passed away on July 1 belonged to the most notable woman the new world has produced -and if one were to say the most notable woman whom the century has produced, it would be difficult to object with specific instances. Mrs. Stowe has spent the last years of her life in Hartford, in a retirement emphasized by frequent feeble or almost eclipsed mental conditions. A few days before her death she celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday, for she was born at Litchfield, Conn., in 1811 and not in 1812, as most of the cyclopedias and other authorities have it.

From her earliest childhood she was surrounded by an atmosphere of ethical discussion and moral earnestness that was quick to take on the reforming zeal. Her father was the Rev. Lyman Beecher, and five of her brothers, besides the famous Henry Ward, were members of the ministry. She was an imaginative and amiable child, who read voraciously of the great classic romances, for which she found time after the demands of such questions as Can the immortality of the soul be proved by the light of nature," which, at the age of twelve, this very young theologue answered in the negative in a school composition. At fifteen she was one of the assistant teachers in the seminary at Hartford, where her sister Catherine was principal.

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In 1832, when the Rev. Lyman Beecher became President of Lane Theological Seminary, Harriet went with him to Cincinnati, and four years later became the wife of Professor Stowe. This gentle man had the most marked influence on her work. He is described as a typical figure of the German professor, and his appearance did not belie him, for in one of her gossipy letters Mrs. Stowe reproaches him with being in the act of reading "Faust" for the "nine hundred and ninety-ninth time" Mrs. Stowe had no special sympathies with these German studies, but he stood with her for knowledge, exact, certain knowledge; and she depended on him for those attainments which her burning zeal and sympathetic heart left her little energy for. Professor Stowe was not by any means a mere Casaubon. In fact, he was a man who very literally saw visions. Mrs. Fields tells a story illus. trating this peculiar power he possessed of seeing persons who could not be perceived by others; visions so distinct that it was impossible for him at times to distinguish between the real and unreal. "I re

call one illustration which had occurred only a few years previous to their departure from Andover. She had been called to Boston one day on business. Making her preparations hurriedly, she bade the household farewell, and rushed to the station, only to see the train go out as she arrived. There was nothing to do but to return home and wait patiently for the next train; but wishing not to be disturbed, she quietly opened a side door and crept noiselessly up the staircase leading to her own room, sitting down

were something to hold him; and he likes it,-is quite wakeful, so to speak, about it." Professor Stowe accompanied his wife to their Florida home, which they visited during many winters following 1867,

MRS. STOWE AND HENRY WARD BEECHER.

and preached there in a little church built by the authoress from the proceeds of some readings given in the North from her own works. He died twelve years ago.

In Cincinnati Mrs. Stowe fell also under the influence of events, which, from the standpoint of the world's gain from her, were more important in her life than the marriage. In that city in the years preceding 1850 she became zealously interested in the conditions of slavery which led up to the great crisis of '60. She studied the facts connected with the slave-holding state and the ugly sectional problems they gave rise to, with eagerness and thoroughness. She already took an active part in the anti-slavery agitation, and her Cincinnati house was offered as a refuge for the fugitive slaves until Lane Seminary itself was

threatened by rioters who sympathized with the Southerners. Her life-long friend, Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, was the proprietor of an anti-slavery paper in the city on the Ohio, and the mobs did not neglect his office on their rounds. One of her early griefs had been the sale, as part of the assets of a Kentucky estate, of a little colored boy who had been a loved pupil of hers. She had enlisted her sympathies, too, strongly in behalf of one of her family servants, whose husband was a slave, but who would not break his promise to his Southern master when allowed to visit the North, on parole, as it were.

These details of Mrs. Stowe's acquaintance with and interest in matters of slavery agitation are especially referred to because they had a direct and all-powerful effect on the production of her great story, the most famous and widely known book ever written in America and probably the nost universally read secular volume that has ever been given to the world. It was in 1850, when Mrs. Stowe and her husband removed to New Brunswick, Me., that her enthusiasm in the cause of abolition rose to fever heat with the fresh agitation of the runaway slave question. A great many good people favoring abolition had considered that whatever might be their private views, the South should be left to work out its own salvation in the matter of the slaveholding custom, but as soon as the Dred Scott case and the Fugitive Slave law had made it obligatory for people outside the limits of slave-holding states to return runaways, the great problem assumed a new aspect. Mrs. Stowe herself in the fierce controversy which took place between Northern and Southern sympathizers over questions of veracity in the scenes described in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published a "Key" to the book, which gave chapter and verse for each challenged incident in the story. It is said that she had read an account of the actual escape of a slave woman with her child across the ice in the Ohio river in an anti-slavery magazine. The scene of Uncle Tom's death, in which the pathos and dramatic force of the story arrives at a crisis, came to her mind during the communion service in church in New Brunswick. She went home and immediately wrote out the chapter with such effective truth as to capture completely the sympathies of her children. The story was offered to the National Era, an anti-slavery paper of Washington, D. C., published by her old friend Dr. Bailey. It came out in weekly installments, and was enthusiastically received from the first, but, of course, it could have but a limited circulation in that form. It is said that Tichnor & Fields declined to publish the book. A Mr. Jewett finally undertook to launch it, and on March 20, 1852, the story appeared in book form. It immediately attained such a tremendous success as no work of fiction has seen before or since. In a few days 10,000 were sold, and within a year over 300,000 were needed to supply the demand. Eight great presses were kept constantly at work.

Nor was the stupendous popularity of the story at

all confined to the special interest of the critical moment. It is still read in scores of different languages. The British Museum contains translations in twenty distinct tongues, and in each of these there are many different versions, for instance, ten in French, nine in German and six in Spanish. In the short space of eight months twelve different shilling editions appeared in England and the total number of English editions was forty. Mr. Low of Sampson Low & Co. estimated some years ago that the number circulated in Great Britain and its colonies was a million and a half. For the serial rights of the story Mrs. Stowe received only $300, and she was very well satisfied with that. But within four months after its publication in book form, this quiet little woman, the wife of a country professor, found her royalties yielding $10,000.

Many other quotations of figures could be made illustrating the unexampled avidity with which this story was read by all classes of society in nearly every part of the world. A different sort of tribute to the power of its simple pathos, its charming characterization, effective grouping and noble sincerity is shown in the famous people who at once hastened to array themselves under the banner of Mrs. Stowe's friendship. Charles Kingsley, George Sand, Frederica Bremer, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Macaulay and many other people were proud to know the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The last named wrote to her in 1856: "I have just returned from Italy, where your name seems to throw that of all other writers in the shade. There is no place where Uncle Tom (transformed into Il Zil Tom) is not to be found. "When the little Yankee woman went to Europe in 1853 she was greeted with one continuous ovation. Each town visited devoted itself to the task of giving her the handsomest reception in its power, and the best and least accessible houses of English society were thrown open to her. Ever since, one of the noticeable features of the pretty little Hartford home has been a bracelet made to simulate the shackles of a slave, certain of the links bearing the dates of the British abolition of the slave trade in the West Indies. This was presented to Mrs. Stowe by the Duchess of Sutherland, and the remaining links have been successively adorned with the dates which made the landmarks in American emancipation.

In a very unique degree the factors of heredity, of environment and of opportunity, upon which M. Taine lays so much stress in the determination of literary achievements, are apparent and emphatic in the creation of Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece. The Puritan blood and home, the clerical family, the atmosphere of evangelical thought and discussion, the imminence of the huge wrong of slavery, the opportunity of a practically unworked field, and a race of creatures almost as new to literature as were Cooper's Indians,-gave this modest, inexperienced, retiring woman of forty her equipment. All these, however, would have been as naught if she had not brought a tender and sympathetic heart, a mighty

a woman of culture and breadth. When this is said, however, it remains true that her literary work, whether in the masterpiece or in the much less significant publications, was not formed at all from any conscientious or comprehensive study of the best models, nor was the style of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or any of her stories by any means irreproachable. She read largely, but so chiefly for the ideas embodied, that little attention was left for the art of style.

The best commentary on those not infrequent criticisms of "Uncle Tom's Cabin " which question its literary art, is found in the words of George Sand, who said: "If its judges, possessed with the love of what they call artistic work, find unskillful treatment in the book, look well at them to see if their eyes are dry when they are reading this or that

chapter. I cannot say that Mrs. Stowe has talent as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius, as the world manifestly feels the need of genius; the genius of goodness, not that of the world of letters, but of the saint."

Mrs. Stowe was always the first to deny that the great triumph of the book came as a result of its literary art. Indeed, she went further, and with almost mystical literalness insisted that she herself was not the author of the story, but that it was imposed upon her. In her introduction to the illustrated edition she says: "The story might less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her. The book insisted upon getting itself into being and would take no denial." Mrs. Annie Fields tells a story which shows how this idea maintained its force with Mrs. Stowe even when almost all other ideas had left the poor tired brain. "The sense that a great work had been accomplished through her only made her more humble, and her shy, absent-minded ways were continually throwing her admirers into confusion. Late in life (when her failing powers made it impossible for her to speak as one living in a world which she seemed to have left far behind) she was accosted, I was told, in the garden of her country retreat, in the twilight one evening, by a good old retired seacaptain who was her neighbor for the time. When I was younger,' said he respectfully, holding his hat in his hand while he spoke, I read with a great deal of satisfaction and instruction "Uncle Tom's Cabin.” The story impressed me very much, and I am happy to shake hands with you, Mrs. Stowe, who wrote it.' 'I did not write it,' answered the white-haired old lady gently, as she shook the captain's hand. 'You didn't?' he ejaculated in amazement. 'Why, who did, then?' God wrote it,' she replied sim. ply. I merely did His dictation.' Amen,' said the captain reverently, as he walked thoughtfully away.” It was this zeal of the missionary and the prophet which clearly inspired the work—a spirit which we have attempted to account for by explaining the facts of Mrs. Stowe's parentage, surroundings and training. This preacher spirit was indeed strong within her. Mrs. Fields says that the authoress found it necessary to spur herself up before the second of the readings from her own works, for in the first she had not been able to hold her audience as she wished. "She called me into her bedroom, where we stood before the mirror, with her short gray hair, which usually lay in soft curls around her brow, brushed erect and standing stiffly. Look here, my dear,' she said; 'I am exactly like my father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, when he was going to preach.' And she held up her finger warningly. An hour later, when I sat in the ante-room waiting for the moment of her appearance to arrive, I could feel the power surging up within her; I knew she was armed for a good fight."

When "Uncle Tom's Cabin " is considered as it

should be in the first place, as a noble tract,-not only is the question of its æsthetic value answered, but also the still more disturbing query concerning the fairness of its attitude toward the South and the slave holders. If one were to judge it as a novel, aiming above all to reflect truly the typical slave life of the Southern states and give a universal picture of plantation scenes, one would be forced to side at many points with the objections of offended Southerners. And Mrs. Stowe's "Key" would have but little final value in any defense of the realism of the novel. But taking it in its true significance and purposes as the splendid sermon of a zealous preacher, a magnificent appeal to the hearts of the world against such monstrous results of slavery as have undeniably characterized every slaveholding community, it would be difficult to call it unjust. From Mrs. Stowe's point of view, the institution of slavery was as weak as its weakest point, and the Southerners are one in admitting that she described neither the best nor the worst of the slave-holders in the character of Legree.

Mrs. Stowe produced a great quantity of writing of a very varied character during her forty years of literary activity. There is no single fragment which intrinsically deserves mention beside her masterpiece. Yet, as an observer of the quiet village characters, the homely scenes, the meagre social atmosphere, and the mild humor of such Down East communities as she was thoroughly familiar with, she was a very worthy and significant forerunner of the school of writers of whom to-day Miss Wilkins is a chief exponent. "Old Town Folks" is probably the most pleasant of the books of this class; "The Minister's Wooing" has.power and such great pathos which one would expect of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." More nearly along the lines of the greater story is the effort which followed it in 1866"Dred," a tale of the Dismal Swamp. These three volumes are clearly Mrs. Stowe's best works, after "Uncle Tom's Cabin." There are numbers of children's stories, a volume of religious verse, another of ethical essays, some very worthy "House and Home Papers" published in the Atlantic, biographical essays entitled "Men of Our Time," and a small group of novels which were busied with a well meaning attempt on the bettering of social Perhaps a more acute judgment than the writer's might ascribe a greater comparative degree of merit to these scattered writings. Certain it is that if they were measured by their success, greater praise should be due them. So late as 1870 a story from Mrs. Stowe's pen, "Little Pussy Willow," began with an edition of 20,000, an almost unheardof figure in the publishing business.

mores.

The three pictures of Mrs. Stowe published here show her in her most attractive moods at three widely separated periods of her life. She was blessed with a very winning personality, and was a charming talker.