What wonderful stories those! Stories too about my own country.
Stories that made me feel the very ground I trod on to be consecrated
by some special dealing of God's Providence."

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE AT LITCHFIELD, CONNECTICUT.]

In continuing these reminiscences Mrs. Stowe describes as follows her
sensations upon first hearing the Declaration of Independence: "I had
never heard it before, and even now had but a vague idea of what was
meant by some parts of it. Still I gathered enough from the recital of
the abuses and injuries that had driven my nation to this course to
feel myself swelling with indignation, and ready with all my little
mind and strength to applaud the concluding passage, which Colonel
Talmadge rendered with resounding majesty. I was as ready as any of
them to pledge my life, fortune, and sacred honor for such a cause.
The heroic element was strong in me, having come down by ordinary
generation from a long line of Puritan ancestry, and just now it made
me long to do something, I knew not what: to fight for my country, or
to make some declaration on my own account."

When Harriet was nearly six years old her father married as his second
wife Miss Harriet Porter of Portland, Maine, and Mrs. Stowe thus
describes her new mother: "I slept in the nursery with my two younger
brothers. We knew that father was gone away somewhere on a journey and
was expected home, therefore the sound of a bustle in the house the
more easily awoke us. As father came into our room our new mother
followed him. She was very fair, with bright blue eyes, and soft
auburn hair bound round with a black velvet bandeau, and to us she
seemed very beautiful.