New York - The Novel

especially William Cullen Bryant and August Belmont. They had promised an exhibition of the industry of all nations, and it seemed to Frank they had done a pretty good job. As he conducted Hetty round, they saw scientific instruments and guns, water pumps and ice-cream makers, equipment for taking photographs and for sending telegrams—not to mention the huge statue of George Washington riding a horse. It was the machinery of the new industrial age, and he loved it.
    “Look at this clock,” he’d prompt Hetty. “We should have one of these.” And she’d smile and nod. “Or what about this sewing machine?” he’d try. “Yes dear,” she’d say.
    But though they went round together for an hour, and she dutifully inspected everything, he knew that she wasn’t really paying attention. “Let’s go to the observation tower,” he said.
    The view from the top of the Observatory was very fine. Eastward, one could see over Queens, westward, across the Hudson to New Jersey, and northward, over the miles of rural Manhattan into which, like columns of infantry, the grid lines of avenues were gradually making their way. They both enjoyed the elevator which served the tower’s lower platforms. But when they emerged, another exhibit nearby caught Frank’s eye. Hetty wanted to sit down for a while, so he went in alone.
    “It’s the damnedest thing,” he reported back. “Fellow by the name of Otis. He’s designed an elevator like the one we just rode in, but he’s added a system of safety catches so that if the cable breaks, it won’t fall. I reckon you could install something like that in a big store, or even a house.” He nodded. “He’s setting up in business. Might make an interesting investment, I’d say.”
    “Yes, dear,” said Hetty.
    “Let’s go home,” he said at last, with a sigh.
    He knew what she was going to talk about. She didn’t start at once, but waited a whole block, then began at Thirty-ninth Street.
    “Frank,” she said, “something’s got to be done. I want you to read this book.”
    “Goddammit, Hetty,” he said, “I’m not going to.” And then, to hide his irritation, he smiled. “No need to, when you’ve already told me all that’s in it.”
    The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was no doubt a good and honest woman, but he wished to hell she might have found some other way to occupy her time than writing. For her
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
had been like a plague in his house for nearly a week now. A plague to the whole country, as far as he could see.
    A curse to the slave owners of the South, that was for sure.
    The wretched thing had started quietly enough, as a serial in a little magazine that was only read by the abolitionist crowd anyway. But then, last year, some fool of a publisher had put it out as a book, and it had broken all records. Three hundred thousand copies sold in America already, and still going strong. He’d heard they’d sold another two hundred thousand in England as well. Though a friend just back from London had told him: “The English are delighting in it, not so much for the slavery issue, but because they say it shows what a bunch of savages we uppity Americans really are.” There was no end to its run in America in sight, either. The publisher was putting out a deluxe edition now, with nearly a hundred and twenty illustrations, and the lady herself was publishing another work about how she came to write the book in the first place, called
A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. No doubt that’d be a best-seller too.
    And what was the thing about anyway? The story of a slave family and their trials and tribulations. Nothing new there. But it was written in the sentimental style, with a black mammy, and sweet pickaninny children, and a slave family broken up, and dear old Uncle Tom, the faithful, fatherly, suffering slave, dying at the end. No wonder all the women liked it.
    “Our family had a slave like Uncle Tom,” he remarked. “By name of Hudson. My grandfather knew him. He was happy enough, I believe. I certainly never heard he complained.”
    “He wasn’t a slave, he was free,” Hetty corrected him. “And he lost his only son, who was captured and probably sold into slavery in the South.Your family tried to find the boy for years, but never could. Your father told me all about it.”
    “That may be,” he allowed. “But the book’s just a sentimental tale about an old slave who loves everybody. There are no Uncle Toms in real