[Boston—Tuesday, 2 July 1872]

Tuesday. Lizzie left for Catskill. Mrs Stowe came to lunch. She has only lately left Florida and was coming to the conclusion she had brought the weather on with her. She says “it amuses me to hear people agitating the question as to who they shall get to perform the labor at the South. Why, there was a nigger, one of those painfully hot days when we could do nothing but part open the balcony, digging muck from a swamp just in front of our house and carrying it in a wheelbarrow up a steep slope where he dumped it down and went back for more. He kept this up when it was so hot that we thought either one of us would die to be five minutes in such heat, so we took a thermometer to see how hot it really was just where he was working. It rose at once to o135! But yet this man kept cheerfully on and when he sat down to his dinner sat with the other negros in the white sand without a bit of shade. Afterward they lay down for a nap in the same sheltered locality! In the evening when the sun was sufficiently low to make it possible for me to go out I went to speak to this man. Martin, said I, you’ve had a warm days work! Hoh! Hoh! Yes’m I’ve had a hot day’s work. Well Martin, how do you stand it—why, I couldn’t for two minutes endure such heat. Hoh! Hoh! No’m I s’ppose you couldn’t; ladies can’t, swan. But Martin aren’t you very tired—Bress your heart no mum. So Martin goes home to his supper and after supper will be found dancing all the evening on the wharf near by. After this when people talk of bringing Germans or Swedes to do such work I am much entertained!”

Mrs Stowe told me also of the death bed of Mrs Howard’s young son Frank. She said he died of quick consumption and while he was still in full possession of his faculties he called to his mother one day—“mother, mother, look look there they are! There are the angels and there is Annie. Really, Really, Really”. What a comfort it must be to his mother to have heard and seen this! What an assurance of reunion! It seems that a young friend of theirs and his, Helen Spring had prayed that he might give some evidence of insight into the future before he went if the vision were granted him.

Mrs Stowe said “I told Mrs Howard that she was such a creature to enjoy life and was always having such a good time here that she never would have wanted to go anywhere else if some of her young people hadn’t gone to heaven first.”

I could not help feeling what a consolation it must have been to Mrs Howard to see Mrs Stowe once more and hear these words from her. Mrs Stowe went dreamily on “How many young people have gone out of our circle during the last few years. Annie Howard, my Henry, my brothers two daughters, and now Frank Howard. (I fear I have omitted some.) They seemed to make a joyous company to her imagination and one whose greeting she was already listening to hear. She talked of Mrs Whitney—“a pure perfect jewel”—of their joint story. “Six of one and half a dozen of the other”. She is gathering her forces together preparatory to reading in the autumn before a large audience in the Tremont Temple.

After lunch she lay down & took a short nap. Shortly after Mr. Robertson, the son of Frederick was announced—Mrs Stowe said she should be delighted to see him, unhappily the poor young man was far less happy to greet her. He was much shocked at what he considered her misuse of lady Byron’s name & fame and has never been able to forgive her. He considers himself as one of the persons most interested “perhaps the most interested person now living in the subject”. I thought myself that was “tall talk” considering the lineal descendants of Lord Byron & his daughter & sister.


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