"Uncle Tom's Cabin"

How in the world did I not read this book till now?

I've known about this classic book since summer reading lists were handed out in 9th grade English class. I had read lots of books on those reading lists, but somehow just never got around to reading this particular story. Story? This book was based on the life of Josiah Henson-- something I didn't realize till just this week. Josiah was an escaped slave.... he fled to Canada with his family in the 1830s. Josiah. He wouldn't have been called Mr. Henson in the 1830s.

I found this hardcover copy (price: one dollar!) of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the local thrift shop, which has become my yard sale for books. It's a beautiful copy, and brand new... looks as if I'm the first reader of this volume. Did someone else buy it for their private bookshelf and never read it? Well, if that's the case-- how lucky for me.

This is a beautifully written book, with such wonderfully constructed sentences and paragraphs that I'm already re-reading them two and three times before I turn the page. And I've put little metal page-clips at the beginning of a few chapters-- the easier to find them for re-reading later on.

Such rich characters........ Tom, and Evangeline, Topsy and Prue, Dinah and Augustine....... the list is endless. I couldn't sleep last night, and I was sitting up in bed with this book, holding a flash light on the page and trying to be quiet with the page-turning so I wouldn't wake up my husband. I don't know why I just didn't go into another room, but the book was right there by the bed, along with the flash light.

It is with books such as these that I find myself reading too fast. I want to get to the next page, and the next, the next chapter, the next character.... and then when I'm at the very end, I'm wishing I were just beginning. I am purposely slowing down now. I am at the chapter where Evangeline is not going to be part of a happy ending.

A friend of ours recently told me that she only reads books with happy endings. "I must have a happy ending," she told me. I didn't know how to reply to that at the time, but I know what to say now: The best books in the world simply do not have happy endings.

One of the paragraphs that I marked, in Chapter XXII--

"Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend Tom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable."


Thank you, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Thank you for the most heart-rending book. It may have taken me this long to finally get around to reading it, but I've been re-reading paragraphs as I turn each and every page.