Lives of Girls Who Became Famous (2 of 111)

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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (CONT�'D)

"There was not even a momentary expression of impatience, but she sat
down and said, 'My dear children, what you have done makes mamma very
sorry; those were not onion roots, but roots of beautiful flowers;
and if you had let them alone, ma would have had next summer in the
garden, great, beautiful red and yellow flowers, such as you never
saw.' I remember how drooping and disappointed we all grew at this
picture, and how sadly we regarded the empty paper bag."

When Harriet was five years old, a deep shadow fell upon the happy
household. Eight little children were gathered round the bedside of
the dying mother. When they cried and sobbed, she told them, with
inexpressible sweetness, that "God could do more for them than she had
ever done or could do, and that they must trust Him," and urged her
six sons to become ministers of the Gospel. When her heart-broken
husband repeated to her the verse, "You are now come unto Mount Zion,
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an
innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of
the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of
all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the
Mediator of the New Covenant," she looked up into his face with a
beautiful smile, and closed her eyes forever. That smile Mr. Beecher
never forgot to his dying day.

The whole family seemed crushed by the blow. Little Henry (now the
great preacher), who had been told that his mother had been buried
in the ground, and also that she had gone to heaven, was found one
morning digging with all his might under his sister's window, saying,
"I'm going to heaven, to find ma!"

So much did Mr. Beecher miss her counsel and good judgment, that he
sat down and wrote her a long letter, pouring out his whole soul,
hoping somehow that she, his guardian angel, though dead, might see
it. A year later he wrote a friend: "There is a sensation of loss
which nothing alleviates--a solitude which no society interrupts. Amid
the smiles and prattle of children, and the kindness of sympathizing
friends, I am _alone; Roxana is not here_. She partakes in none of my
joys, and bears with me none of my sorrows. I do not murmur; I only
feel daily, constantly, and with deepening impression, how much I have
had for which to be thankful, and how much I have lost.... The whole
year after her death was a year of great emptiness, as if there was
not motive enough in the world to move me. I used to pray earnestly
to God either to take me away, or to restore to me that interest in
things and susceptibility to motive I had had before."

Once, when sleeping in the room where she died, he dreamed that Roxana
came and stood beside him, and "smiled on me as with a smile from
heaven. With that smile," he said, "all my sorrow passed away. I awoke
joyful, and I was lighthearted for weeks after."

Harriet went to live for a time with her aunt and grandmother, and
then came back to the lonesome home, into which Mr. Beecher had
felt the necessity of bringing a new mother. She was a refined and
excellent woman, and won the respect and affection of the family. At
first Harriet, with a not unnatural feeling of injury, said to her:
"Because you have come and married my father, when I am big enough, I
mean to go and marry your father;" but she afterwards learned to love
her very much.

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