Uncle Tom's Cabin Tom and Eva reading the Bible

Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe, illustrations by Charles Howland Hammatt Billings (1818–1874) is published March 20, 1852.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth. It would be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart of her faithful attendant. He loved her as something frail and earthly, yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine. He gazed on her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,— with a mixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies, and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like a many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight. In the market, at morning, his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets for her, and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to give to her when he came back; and the sight that pleased.

Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return. Though a child, she was a beautiful reader;— a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and an instinctive sympathy with what is grand and noble, made her such a reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard. At first, she read to please her humble friend; but soon her own earnest nature threw out its tendrils, and wound itself around the majestic book; and Eva loved it, because it woke in her strange yearnings, and strong, dim emotions, such as impassioned, imaginative children love to feel.

Tom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat, in an arbor, at the foot of the garden. It was Sunday evening, and Eva's Bible lay open on her knee. She read,— "And I saw a sea of glass, mingled with fire."

Title: UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. Author: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Published: 1852. Original from: Harvard University. Digitized: Nov 20, 2007.

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This image is also in the public domain in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris), in this case Charles Howland Hammatt Billings (1818–1874), and that most commonly runs for a period of 50 to 70 years from the last day of that year.