Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

[79] My dear, it is a wonder to myself. I am tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look only on the present, and leave the future with Him who has hitherto been so kind to me. “ Take no thought for the morrow” is my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose house there are many mansions provided when these fleeting earthly ones pass away.

Dear Georgy, naughty girl that I am, it is a month that I have let the above lie by, because I got into a strain of emotion in it that I dreaded to return to. Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five weeks Mr. Stowe and myself start for New England. He sails the first of May. I am going with him to Boston, New York, and other places, and shall stop finally at Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my intention to return westward.

This reference to her husband as about to leave her relates to his sailing for Europe to purchase books for Lane Seminary, and also as a commissioner appointed by the State of Ohio to investigate the public school systems of the old world. He had long been convinced that higher education was impossible in the West without a higher grade of public schools, and had in 1833 been one of the founders in Cincinnati of The College of teachers, an institution that existed for ten years, and exerted a widespread influence. Its objects were to popularize the common schools, raise the standard of teachers, and create a demand for education among the people. Professor Stowe was associated in this movement with many of the leading intellects of Ohio at that time, and among them were Albert Pickett, Dr. Drake, Smith Grimke, Archbishop Purcell, President