[502] mother is to me what the Virgin Mary is to a devout Catholic. She was a woman of great nature, profound as a philosophical thinker, great in argument, with a kind of intellectual imagination, diffident, not talkative, -in which respect I take after her,--the woman who gave birth to Mrs. Stowe, whose graces and excellences she probably more than any of her children — we number but thirteen--has possessed. I suppose that in bodily resemblance, perhaps, she is not like my mother, but in mind I presume she is most like her. I thank you for my father's sake and for my mother's sake for the courtesy, the friendliness, and the kindness which you give to Mrs. Stowe.The following poem from John Greenleaf Whittier was then read:
Thrice welcome from the Land of Flowers
And golden-fruited orange bowers
To this sweet, green-turfed June of ours!
To her who, in our evil time,
Dragged into light the nation's crime
With strength beyond the strength of men,
And, mightier than their sword, her pen;
To her who world-wide entrance gave
To the log cabin of the slave,
Made all his wrongs and sorrows known,
And all earth's languages his own,--
North, South, and East and West, made all
The common air electrical,
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven
Blazed down, and every chain was riven!
Welcome from each and all to her
Whose Wooing of the Minister
Revealed the warm heart of the man
Beneath the creed-bound Puritan,
And taught the kinship of the love
Of man below and God above;
