Gamaliel Bailey. Being the youngest member of the family, I usually
went to the post-office for the paper on the day of its weekly
arrival. One day I brought it home and handed it to my father, who, as
the day was warm, was seated outside of the house. He was soon
apparently very much absorbed in his reading. A call for dinner was
sounded, but he paid no attention to it. The meal was delayed a little
while and then the call was repeated, but with the same result. At
last the meal proceeded without my father's presence, he coming in at
the close and swinging the paper in his hand. His explanation, by way
of apology, was that he had become very much interested in the opening
installment of a story that was begun in the _Era_, and which he
declared would make a sensation. "It will make a renovation," he
repeated several times.
That story, it is almost needless to say, was _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and
it is altogether needless to say that it fully accomplished my
father's prediction as to its sensational effects. Since the
appearance of the Bible in a form that brought it home to the common
people, there has been no work in the English language so extensively
read.
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