CHAPTER SUMMARY AND NOTES

CHAPTER 13

Summary

In a Quaker settlement in Indiana, Eliza and Harry are given shelter. Their hosts, Simeon and Rachel Halliday, urge them to stay in the Quaker settlement rather than proceed to Canada. But Eliza is firm in her resolve. By accident, George arrives at the same settlement. The family is reunited, and their new Quaker friends genuinely rejoice with them.

The next morning George and Eliza have breakfast with the Hallidays. For the first time, George is sitting at a table with a white man. The warmth and affection he receives from the Hallidays is new and welcome. He finally starts to understand the word "home." He begins to think there may be a God. Simeon tells George that another Quaker, Phineas Fletcher, will escort him and his family on the next stage of their journey.

Notes

This chapter returns to the George-Eliza plot. The scene shifts to a Quaker settlement in Indiana. There is a feeling of warmth, comfort, and reassurance in the Hallidays' cottage, quite unlike the feelings of fear and anxiety in the previous chapters. Rachel Halliday comes across as a very efficient, warm and understanding person. She and her husband Simeon inspire admiration in their willingness to help anyone in trouble. As Simeon boldly states, he would even help a slaveholder if "the Lord brought him in my door in affliction." He is a person who daily risks penalty for the higher cause of God's will.

George and Eliza are at last reunited. Though their troubles are not yet over, George is optimistic. He is overwhelmed by the kindness accorded to him by Simeon and Rachel Halliday. It is for the first time that he sits on a footing of equality with a white man and a miracle occurs: George, the atheist, begins to believe in God. Stowe's deep sense of piety is reflected here, when the atheist begins to feel Christian love and, as a result, believes in God.

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