"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN\n\nor\n\nLife among the Lowly\n\n\nBy Harriet Beecher Stowe\n\n\n\n\nVOLUME I\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nIn Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity\n\n\nLate in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were\nsitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in\nthe town of P----, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the\ngentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some\nsubject with great earnestness.\n\nFor convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two _gentlemen_. One of\nthe parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly\nspeaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man,\nwith coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension\nwhich marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the\nworld. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue\nneckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a\nflaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His\nhands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he\nwore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous\nsize, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,--which, in the\nardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling\nwith evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy\ndefiance of Murray's Grammar,* and was garnished at convenient intervals\nwith various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be\ngraphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe.\n\n     * English Grammar (1795), by Lindley Murray (1745-1826), the\n     most authoritative American grammarian of his day.\n\nHis companion, Mr. Shelby, had the appearance of a gentleman; and the\narrangements of the house, and the general air of the housekeeping,\nindicated easy, and even opulent circumstances. As we before stated, the\ntwo were in the midst of an earnest conversation.\n\n\"That is the way I should arrange the matter,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"I can't make trade that way--I positively can't, Mr. Shelby,\" said the\nother, holding up a glass of wine between his eye and the light.\n\n\"Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly\nworth that sum anywhere,--steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm\nlike a clock.\"\n\n\"You mean honest, as niggers go,\" said Haley, helping himself to a glass\nof brandy.\n\n\"No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He\ngot religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he\nreally _did_ get it. I've trusted him, since then, with everything I\nhave,--money, house, horses,--and let him come and go round the country;\nand I always found him true and square in everything.\"\n\n\"Some folks don't believe there is pious niggers Shelby,\" said Haley,\nwith a candid flourish of his hand, \"but _I do_. I had a fellow, now,\nin this yer last lot I took to Orleans--'t was as good as a meetin, now,\nreally, to hear that critter pray; and he was quite gentle and quiet\nlike. He fetched me a good sum, too, for I bought him cheap of a man\nthat was 'bliged to sell out; so I realized six hundred on him. Yes, I\nconsider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it's the genuine\narticle, and no mistake.\"\n\n\"Well, Tom's got the real article, if ever a fellow had,\" rejoined the\nother. \"Why, last fall, I let him go to Cincinnati alone, to do business\nfor me, and bring home five hundred dollars. 'Tom,' says I to him,\n'I trust you, because I think you're a Christian--I know you wouldn't\ncheat.' Tom comes back, sure enough; I knew he would. Some low fellows,\nthey say, said to him--Tom, why don't you make tracks for Canada?' 'Ah,\nmaster trusted me, and I couldn't,'--they told me about it. I am sorry\nto part with Tom, I must say. You ought to let him cover the whole\nbalance of the debt; and you would, Haley, if you had any conscience.\"\n\n\"Well, I've got just as much conscience as any man in business can\nafford to keep,--just a little, you know, to swear by, as 't were,\" said\nthe trader, jocularly; \"and, then, I'm ready to do anything in reason\nto 'blige friends; but this yer, you see, is a leetle too hard on a\nfellow--a leetle too hard.\" The trader sighed contemplatively, and\npoured out some more brandy.\n\n\"Well, then, Haley, how will you trade?\" said Mr. Shelby, after an\nuneasy interval of silence.\n\n\"Well, haven't you a boy or gal that you could throw in with Tom?\"\n\n\"Hum!--none that I could well spare; to tell the truth, it's only hard\nnecessity makes me willing to sell at all. I don't like parting with any\nof my hands, that's a fact.\"\n\nHere the door opened, and a small quadroon boy, between four and five\nyears of age, entered the room. There was something in his appearance\nremarkably beautiful and engaging. His black hair, fine as floss silk,\nhung in glossy curls about his round, dimpled face, while a pair of\nlarge dark eyes, full of fire and softness, looked out from beneath the\nrich, long lashes, as he peered curiously into the apartment. A gay robe\nof scarlet and yellow plaid, carefully made and neatly fitted, set off\nto advantage the dark and rich style of his beauty; and a certain comic\nair of assurance, blended with bashfulness, showed that he had been not\nunused to being petted and noticed by his master.\n\n\"Hulloa, Jim Crow!\" said Mr. Shelby, whistling, and snapping a bunch of\nraisins towards him, \"pick that up, now!\"\n\nThe child scampered, with all his little strength, after the prize,\nwhile his master laughed.\n\n\"Come here, Jim Crow,\" said he. The child came up, and the master patted\nthe curly head, and chucked him under the chin.\n\n\"Now, Jim, show this gentleman how you can dance and sing.\" The boy\ncommenced one of those wild, grotesque songs common among the negroes,\nin a rich, clear voice, accompanying his singing with many comic\nevolutions of the hands, feet, and whole body, all in perfect time to\nthe music.\n\n\"Bravo!\" said Haley, throwing him a quarter of an orange.\n\n\"Now, Jim, walk like old Uncle Cudjoe, when he has the rheumatism,\" said\nhis master.\n\nInstantly the flexible limbs of the child assumed the appearance of\ndeformity and distortion, as, with his back humped up, and his master's\nstick in his hand, he hobbled about the room, his childish face drawn\ninto a doleful pucker, and spitting from right to left, in imitation of\nan old man.\n\nBoth gentlemen laughed uproariously.\n\n\"Now, Jim,\" said his master, \"show us how old Elder Robbins leads the\npsalm.\" The boy drew his chubby face down to a formidable length, and\ncommenced toning a psalm tune through his nose, with imperturbable\ngravity.\n\n\"Hurrah! bravo! what a young 'un!\" said Haley; \"that chap's a case,\nI'll promise. Tell you what,\" said he, suddenly clapping his hand on Mr.\nShelby's shoulder, \"fling in that chap, and I'll settle the business--I\nwill. Come, now, if that ain't doing the thing up about the rightest!\"\n\nAt this moment, the door was pushed gently open, and a young quadroon\nwoman, apparently about twenty-five, entered the room.\n\nThere needed only a glance from the child to her, to identify her as its\nmother. There was the same rich, full, dark eye, with its long lashes;\nthe same ripples of silky black hair. The brown of her complexion gave\nway on the cheek to a perceptible flush, which deepened as she saw\nthe gaze of the strange man fixed upon her in bold and undisguised\nadmiration. Her dress was of the neatest possible fit, and set off to\nadvantage her finely moulded shape;--a delicately formed hand and a trim\nfoot and ankle were items of appearance that did not escape the quick\neye of the trader, well used to run up at a glance the points of a fine\nfemale article.\n\n\"Well, Eliza?\" said her master, as she stopped and looked hesitatingly\nat him.\n\n\"I was looking for Harry, please, sir;\" and the boy bounded toward her,\nshowing his spoils, which he had gathered in the skirt of his robe.\n\n\"Well, take him away then,\" said Mr. Shelby; and hastily she withdrew,\ncarrying the child on her arm.\n\n\"By Jupiter,\" said the trader, turning to him in admiration, \"there's an\narticle, now! You might make your fortune on that ar gal in Orleans, any\nday. I've seen over a thousand, in my day, paid down for gals not a bit\nhandsomer.\"\n\n\"I don't want to make my fortune on her,\" said Mr. Shelby, dryly; and,\nseeking to turn the conversation, he uncorked a bottle of fresh wine,\nand asked his companion's opinion of it.\n\n\"Capital, sir,--first chop!\" said the trader; then turning, and slapping\nhis hand familiarly on Shelby's shoulder, he added--\n\n\"Come, how will you trade about the gal?--what shall I say for\nher--what'll you take?\"\n\n\"Mr. Haley, she is not to be sold,\" said Shelby. \"My wife would not part\nwith her for her weight in gold.\"\n\n\"Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they ha'nt no sort of\ncalculation. Just show 'em how many watches, feathers, and trinkets,\none's weight in gold would buy, and that alters the case, _I_ reckon.\"\n\n\"I tell you, Haley, this must not be spoken of; I say no, and I mean\nno,\" said Shelby, decidedly.\n\n\"Well, you'll let me have the boy, though,\" said the trader; \"you must\nown I've come down pretty handsomely for him.\"\n\n\"What on earth can you want with the child?\" said Shelby.\n\n\"Why, I've got a friend that's going into this yer branch of the\nbusiness--wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market. Fancy\narticles entirely--sell for waiters, and so on, to rich 'uns, that\ncan pay for handsome 'uns. It sets off one of yer great places--a real\nhandsome boy to open door, wait, and tend. They fetch a good sum; and\nthis little devil is such a comical, musical concern, he's just the\narticle!'\n\n\"I would rather not sell him,\" said Mr. Shelby, thoughtfully; \"the fact\nis, sir, I'm a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother,\nsir.\"\n\n\"O, you do?--La! yes--something of that ar natur. I understand,\nperfectly. It is mighty onpleasant getting on with women, sometimes, I\nal'ays hates these yer screechin,' screamin' times. They are _mighty_\nonpleasant; but, as I manages business, I generally avoids 'em, sir.\nNow, what if you get the girl off for a day, or a week, or so; then the\nthing's done quietly,--all over before she comes home. Your wife might\nget her some ear-rings, or a new gown, or some such truck, to make up\nwith her.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not.\"\n\n\"Lor bless ye, yes! These critters ain't like white folks, you know;\nthey gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say,\" said Haley,\nassuming a candid and confidential air, \"that this kind o' trade is\nhardening to the feelings; but I never found it so. Fact is, I never\ncould do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I've seen\n'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up\nto sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time;--very bad\npolicy--damages the article--makes 'em quite unfit for service\nsometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once, in Orleans, as was entirely\nruined by this sort o' handling. The fellow that was trading for her\ndidn't want her baby; and she was one of your real high sort, when her\nblood was up. I tell you, she squeezed up her child in her arms, and\ntalked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to\nthink of 't; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up,\nshe jest went ravin' mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a\nthousand dollars, just for want of management,--there's where 't\nis. It's always best to do the humane thing, sir; that's been _my_\nexperience.\" And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his\narm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a\nsecond Wilberforce.\n\nThe subject appeared to interest the gentleman deeply; for while Mr.\nShelby was thoughtfully peeling an orange, Haley broke out afresh, with\nbecoming diffidence, but as if actually driven by the force of truth to\nsay a few words more.\n\n\"It don't look well, now, for a feller to be praisin' himself; but I say\nit jest because it's the truth. I believe I'm reckoned to bring in about\nthe finest droves of niggers that is brought in,--at least, I've been\ntold so; if I have once, I reckon I have a hundred times,--all in good\ncase,--fat and likely, and I lose as few as any man in the business. And\nI lays it all to my management, sir; and humanity, sir, I may say, is\nthe great pillar of _my_ management.\"\n\nMr. Shelby did not know what to say, and so he said, \"Indeed!\"\n\n\"Now, I've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I've been talked to.\nThey an't pop'lar, and they an't common; but I stuck to 'em, sir; I've\nstuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em; yes, sir, they have paid their\npassage, I may say,\" and the trader laughed at his joke.\n\nThere was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of\nhumanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company. Perhaps\nyou laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety\nof strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that\nhumane people will say and do.\n\nMr. Shelby's laugh encouraged the trader to proceed.\n\n\"It's strange, now, but I never could beat this into people's heads.\nNow, there was Tom Loker, my old partner, down in Natchez; he was a\nclever fellow, Tom was, only the very devil with niggers,--on principle\n't was, you see, for a better hearted feller never broke bread; 't was\nhis _system_, sir. I used to talk to Tom. 'Why, Tom,' I used to say,\n'when your gals takes on and cry, what's the use o' crackin on' em over\nthe head, and knockin' on 'em round? It's ridiculous,' says I, 'and\ndon't do no sort o' good. Why, I don't see no harm in their cryin','\nsays I; 'it's natur,' says I, 'and if natur can't blow off one way, it\nwill another. Besides, Tom,' says I, 'it jest spiles your gals; they get\nsickly, and down in the mouth; and sometimes they gets ugly,--particular\nyallow gals do,--and it's the devil and all gettin' on 'em broke in.\nNow,' says I, 'why can't you kinder coax 'em up, and speak 'em fair?\nDepend on it, Tom, a little humanity, thrown in along, goes a heap\nfurther than all your jawin' and crackin'; and it pays better,' says I,\n'depend on 't.' But Tom couldn't get the hang on 't; and he spiled\nso many for me, that I had to break off with him, though he was a\ngood-hearted fellow, and as fair a business hand as is goin'.\"\n\n\"And do you find your ways of managing do the business better than\nTom's?\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"Why, yes, sir, I may say so. You see, when I any ways can, I takes\na leetle care about the onpleasant parts, like selling young uns and\nthat,--get the gals out of the way--out of sight, out of mind, you\nknow,--and when it's clean done, and can't be helped, they naturally\ngets used to it. 'Tan't, you know, as if it was white folks, that's\nbrought up in the way of 'spectin' to keep their children and wives, and\nall that. Niggers, you know, that's fetched up properly, ha'n't no kind\nof 'spectations of no kind; so all these things comes easier.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid mine are not properly brought up, then,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"S'pose not; you Kentucky folks spile your niggers. You mean well by\n'em, but 'tan't no real kindness, arter all. Now, a nigger, you see,\nwhat's got to be hacked and tumbled round the world, and sold to Tom,\nand Dick, and the Lord knows who, 'tan't no kindness to be givin' on him\nnotions and expectations, and bringin' on him up too well, for the rough\nand tumble comes all the harder on him arter. Now, I venture to say,\nyour niggers would be quite chop-fallen in a place where some of your\nplantation niggers would be singing and whooping like all possessed.\nEvery man, you know, Mr. Shelby, naturally thinks well of his own ways;\nand I think I treat niggers just about as well as it's ever worth while\nto treat 'em.\"\n\n\"It's a happy thing to be satisfied,\" said Mr. Shelby, with a slight\nshrug, and some perceptible feelings of a disagreeable nature.\n\n\"Well,\" said Haley, after they had both silently picked their nuts for a\nseason, \"what do you say?\"\n\n\"I'll think the matter over, and talk with my wife,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\"Meantime, Haley, if you want the matter carried on in the quiet way\nyou speak of, you'd best not let your business in this neighborhood be\nknown. It will get out among my boys, and it will not be a particularly\nquiet business getting away any of my fellows, if they know it, I'll\npromise you.\"\n\n\"O! certainly, by all means, mum! of course. But I'll tell you. I'm in\na devil of a hurry, and shall want to know, as soon as possible, what I\nmay depend on,\" said he, rising and putting on his overcoat.\n\n\"Well, call up this evening, between six and seven, and you shall have\nmy answer,\" said Mr. Shelby, and the trader bowed himself out of the\napartment.\n\n\"I'd like to have been able to kick the fellow down the steps,\" said\nhe to himself, as he saw the door fairly closed, \"with his impudent\nassurance; but he knows how much he has me at advantage. If anybody\nhad ever said to me that I should sell Tom down south to one of those\nrascally traders, I should have said, 'Is thy servant a dog, that\nhe should do this thing?' And now it must come, for aught I see. And\nEliza's child, too! I know that I shall have some fuss with wife\nabout that; and, for that matter, about Tom, too. So much for being in\ndebt,--heigho! The fellow sees his advantage, and means to push it.\"\n\nPerhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the\nState of Kentucky. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a\nquiet and gradual nature, not requiring those periodic seasons of\nhurry and pressure that are called for in the business of more southern\ndistricts, makes the task of the negro a more healthful and reasonable\none; while the master, content with a more gradual style of acquisition,\nhas not those temptations to hardheartedness which always overcome frail\nhuman nature when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain is weighed in\nthe balance, with no heavier counterpoise than the interests of the\nhelpless and unprotected.\n\nWhoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored\nindulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty\nof some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend\nof a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene\nthere broods a portentous shadow--the shadow of _law_. So long as the\nlaw considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living\naffections, only as so many _things_ belonging to a master,--so long\nas the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest\nowner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection\nand indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil,--so long it is\nimpossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated\nadministration of slavery.\n\nMr. Shelby was a fair average kind of man, good-natured and kindly, and\ndisposed to easy indulgence of those around him, and there had never\nbeen a lack of anything which might contribute to the physical comfort\nof the negroes on his estate. He had, however, speculated largely and\nquite loosely; had involved himself deeply, and his notes to a large\namount had come into the hands of Haley; and this small piece of\ninformation is the key to the preceding conversation.\n\nNow, it had so happened that, in approaching the door, Eliza had caught\nenough of the conversation to know that a trader was making offers to\nher master for somebody.\n\nShe would gladly have stopped at the door to listen, as she came out;\nbut her mistress just then calling, she was obliged to hasten away.\n\nStill she thought she heard the trader make an offer for her boy;--could\nshe be mistaken? Her heart swelled and throbbed, and she involuntarily\nstrained him so tight that the little fellow looked up into her face in\nastonishment.\n\n\"Eliza, girl, what ails you today?\" said her mistress, when Eliza had\nupset the wash-pitcher, knocked down the workstand, and finally was\nabstractedly offering her mistress a long nightgown in place of the silk\ndress she had ordered her to bring from the wardrobe.\n\nEliza started. \"O, missis!\" she said, raising her eyes; then, bursting\ninto tears, she sat down in a chair, and began sobbing.\n\n\"Why, Eliza child, what ails you?\" said her mistress.\n\n\"O! missis, missis,\" said Eliza, \"there's been a trader talking with\nmaster in the parlor! I heard him.\"\n\n\"Well, silly child, suppose there has.\"\n\n\"O, missis, _do_ you suppose mas'r would sell my Harry?\" And the poor\ncreature threw herself into a chair, and sobbed convulsively.\n\n\"Sell him! No, you foolish girl! You know your master never deals with\nthose southern traders, and never means to sell any of his servants, as\nlong as they behave well. Why, you silly child, who do you think would\nwant to buy your Harry? Do you think all the world are set on him as you\nare, you goosie? Come, cheer up, and hook my dress. There now, put my\nback hair up in that pretty braid you learnt the other day, and don't go\nlistening at doors any more.\"\n\n\"Well, but, missis, _you_ never would give your consent--to--to--\"\n\n\"Nonsense, child! to be sure, I shouldn't. What do you talk so for? I\nwould as soon have one of my own children sold. But really, Eliza, you\nare getting altogether too proud of that little fellow. A man can't put\nhis nose into the door, but you think he must be coming to buy him.\"\n\nReassured by her mistress' confident tone, Eliza proceeded nimbly and\nadroitly with her toilet, laughing at her own fears, as she proceeded.\n\nMrs. Shelby was a woman of high class, both intellectually and morally.\nTo that natural magnanimity and generosity of mind which one often marks\nas characteristic of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral and\nreligious sensibility and principle, carried out with great energy and\nability into practical results. Her husband, who made no professions\nto any particular religious character, nevertheless reverenced and\nrespected the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a little in awe\nof her opinion. Certain it was that he gave her unlimited scope in all\nher benevolent efforts for the comfort, instruction, and improvement of\nher servants, though he never took any decided part in them himself. In\nfact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the efficiency of the\nextra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other to fancy\nthat his wife had piety and benevolence enough for two--to indulge a\nshadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her superabundance of\nqualities to which he made no particular pretension.\n\nThe heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation with the trader,\nlay in the foreseen necessity of breaking to his wife the arrangement\ncontemplated,--meeting the importunities and opposition which he knew he\nshould have reason to encounter.\n\nMrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband's embarrassments,\nand knowing only the general kindliness of his temper, had been quite\nsincere in the entire incredulity with which she had met Eliza's\nsuspicions. In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without a\nsecond thought; and being occupied in preparations for an evening visit,\nit passed out of her thoughts entirely.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nThe Mother\n\n\nEliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted\nand indulged favorite.\n\nThe traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of\nrefinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases\nto be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural\ngraces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling\nkind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing\nand agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy\nsketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her, years ago, in\nKentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had\nreached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so fatal\nan inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and talented\nyoung mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighboring estate, and bore the\nname of George Harris.\n\nThis young man had been hired out by his master to work in a bagging\nfactory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered\nthe first hand in the place. He had invented a machine for the cleaning\nof the hemp, which, considering the education and circumstances of\nthe inventor, displayed quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney's\ncotton-gin.*\n\n     *  A machine of this description was really the invention of\n     a young colored man in Kentucky. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]\n\nHe was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a\ngeneral favorite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was\nin the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior\nqualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded,\ntyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of\nGeorge's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what\nthis intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great\nenthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so\nvaluable a slave.\n\nHe was waited upon over the factory, shown the machinery by George, who,\nin high spirits, talked so fluently, held himself so erect, looked\nso handsome and manly, that his master began to feel an uneasy\nconsciousness of inferiority. What business had his slave to be marching\nround the country, inventing machines, and holding up his head among\ngentlemen? He'd soon put a stop to it. He'd take him back, and put\nhim to hoeing and digging, and \"see if he'd step about so smart.\"\nAccordingly, the manufacturer and all hands concerned were astounded\nwhen he suddenly demanded George's wages, and announced his intention of\ntaking him home.\n\n\"But, Mr. Harris,\" remonstrated the manufacturer, \"isn't this rather\nsudden?\"\n\n\"What if it is?--isn't the man _mine_?\"\n\n\"We would be willing, sir, to increase the rate of compensation.\"\n\n\"No object at all, sir. I don't need to hire any of my hands out, unless\nI've a mind to.\"\n\n\"But, sir, he seems peculiarly adapted to this business.\"\n\n\"Dare say he may be; never was much adapted to anything that I set him\nabout, I'll be bound.\"\n\n\"But only think of his inventing this machine,\" interposed one of the\nworkmen, rather unluckily.\n\n\"O yes! a machine for saving work, is it? He'd invent that, I'll be\nbound; let a nigger alone for that, any time. They are all labor-saving\nmachines themselves, every one of 'em. No, he shall tramp!\"\n\nGeorge had stood like one transfixed, at hearing his doom thus suddenly\npronounced by a power that he knew was irresistible. He folded his arms,\ntightly pressed in his lips, but a whole volcano of bitter feelings\nburned in his bosom, and sent streams of fire through his veins. He\nbreathed short, and his large dark eyes flashed like live coals; and he\nmight have broken out into some dangerous ebullition, had not the kindly\nmanufacturer touched him on the arm, and said, in a low tone,\n\n\"Give way, George; go with him for the present. We'll try to help you,\nyet.\"\n\nThe tyrant observed the whisper, and conjectured its import, though he\ncould not hear what was said; and he inwardly strengthened himself in\nhis determination to keep the power he possessed over his victim.\n\nGeorge was taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He\nhad been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye,\nthe gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could\nnot be repressed,--indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the\nman could not become a thing.\n\nIt was during the happy period of his employment in the factory that\nGeorge had seen and married his wife. During that period,--being much\ntrusted and favored by his employer,--he had free liberty to come and go\nat discretion. The marriage was highly approved of by Mrs. Shelby, who,\nwith a little womanly complacency in match-making, felt pleased to unite\nher handsome favorite with one of her own class who seemed in every way\nsuited to her; and so they were married in her mistress' great parlor,\nand her mistress herself adorned the bride's beautiful hair with\norange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which certainly\ncould scarce have rested on a fairer head; and there was no lack of\nwhite gloves, and cake and wine,--of admiring guests to praise the\nbride's beauty, and her mistress' indulgence and liberality. For a\nyear or two Eliza saw her husband frequently, and there was nothing to\ninterrupt their happiness, except the loss of two infant children, to\nwhom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief\nso intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who\nsought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally passionate\nfeelings within the bounds of reason and religion.\n\nAfter the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become\ntranquillized and settled; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve,\nonce more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and\nhealthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband\nwas rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway\nof his legal owner.\n\nThe manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr. Harris a week or two\nafter George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the\noccasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead\nhim to restore him to his former employment.\n\n\"You needn't trouble yourself to talk any longer,\" said he, doggedly; \"I\nknow my own business, sir.\"\n\n\"I did not presume to interfere with it, sir. I only thought that you\nmight think it for your interest to let your man to us on the terms\nproposed.\"\n\n\"O, I understand the matter well enough. I saw your winking and\nwhispering, the day I took him out of the factory; but you don't come it\nover me that way. It's a free country, sir; the man's _mine_, and I do\nwhat I please with him,--that's it!\"\n\nAnd so fell George's last hope;--nothing before him but a life of toil\nand drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation and\nindignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.\n\nA very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is\nto hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is\nWORSE!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nThe Husband and Father\n\n\nMrs. Shelby had gone on her visit, and Eliza stood in the verandah,\nrather dejectedly looking after the retreating carriage, when a hand was\nlaid on her shoulder. She turned, and a bright smile lighted up her fine\neyes.\n\n\"George, is it you? How you frightened me! Well; I am so glad you 's\ncome! Missis is gone to spend the afternoon; so come into my little\nroom, and we'll have the time all to ourselves.\"\n\nSaying this, she drew him into a neat little apartment opening on the\nverandah, where she generally sat at her sewing, within call of her\nmistress.\n\n\"How glad I am!--why don't you smile?--and look at Harry--how he grows.\"\nThe boy stood shyly regarding his father through his curls, holding\nclose to the skirts of his mother's dress. \"Isn't he beautiful?\" said\nEliza, lifting his long curls and kissing him.\n\n\"I wish he'd never been born!\" said George, bitterly. \"I wish I'd never\nbeen born myself!\"\n\nSurprised and frightened, Eliza sat down, leaned her head on her\nhusband's shoulder, and burst into tears.\n\n\"There now, Eliza, it's too bad for me to make you feel so, poor girl!\"\nsaid he, fondly; \"it's too bad: O, how I wish you never had seen me--you\nmight have been happy!\"\n\n\"George! George! how can you talk so? What dreadful thing has happened,\nor is going to happen? I'm sure we've been very happy, till lately.\"\n\n\"So we have, dear,\" said George. Then drawing his child on his knee, he\ngazed intently on his glorious dark eyes, and passed his hands through\nhis long curls.\n\n\"Just like you, Eliza; and you are the handsomest woman I ever saw, and\nthe best one I ever wish to see; but, oh, I wish I'd never seen you, nor\nyou me!\"\n\n\"O, George, how can you!\"\n\n\"Yes, Eliza, it's all misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as\nwormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I'm a poor, miserable,\nforlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that's all. What's\nthe use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to\nbe anything? What's the use of living? I wish I was dead!\"\n\n\"O, now, dear George, that is really wicked! I know how you feel about\nlosing your place in the factory, and you have a hard master; but pray\nbe patient, and perhaps something--\"\n\n\"Patient!\" said he, interrupting her; \"haven't I been patient? Did I say\na word when he came and took me away, for no earthly reason, from the\nplace where everybody was kind to me? I'd paid him truly every cent of\nmy earnings,--and they all say I worked well.\"\n\n\"Well, it _is_ dreadful,\" said Eliza; \"but, after all, he is your\nmaster, you know.\"\n\n\"My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think of--what\nright has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a better man than he\nis. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than\nhe is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand,--and\nI've learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,--I've learned it in\nspite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?--to\ntake me from things I can do, and do better than he can, and put me to\nwork that any horse can do? He tries to do it; he says he'll bring me\ndown and humble me, and he puts me to just the hardest, meanest and\ndirtiest work, on purpose!\"\n\n\"O, George! George! you frighten me! Why, I never heard you talk so; I'm\nafraid you'll do something dreadful. I don't wonder at your feelings, at\nall; but oh, do be careful--do, do--for my sake--for Harry's!\"\n\n\"I have been careful, and I have been patient, but it's growing worse\nand worse; flesh and blood can't bear it any longer;--every chance he\ncan get to insult and torment me, he takes. I thought I could do my work\nwell, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of\nwork hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He says\nthat though I don't say anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and\nhe means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come out in a\nway that he won't like, or I'm mistaken!\"\n\n\"O dear! what shall we do?\" said Eliza, mournfully.\n\n\"It was only yesterday,\" said George, \"as I was busy loading stones into\na cart, that young Mas'r Tom stood there, slashing his whip so near the\nhorse that the creature was frightened. I asked him to stop, as pleasant\nas I could,--he just kept right on. I begged him again, and then he\nturned on me, and began striking me. I held his hand, and then he\nscreamed and kicked and ran to his father, and told him that I was\nfighting him. He came in a rage, and said he'd teach me who was my\nmaster; and he tied me to a tree, and cut switches for young master, and\ntold him that he might whip me till he was tired;--and he did do it! If\nI don't make him remember it, some time!\" and the brow of the young man\ngrew dark, and his eyes burned with an expression that made his young\nwife tremble. \"Who made this man my master? That's what I want to know!\"\nhe said.\n\n\"Well,\" said Eliza, mournfully, \"I always thought that I must obey my\nmaster and mistress, or I couldn't be a Christian.\"\n\n\"There is some sense in it, in your case; they have brought you up like\na child, fed you, clothed you, indulged you, and taught you, so that you\nhave a good education; that is some reason why they should claim you.\nBut I have been kicked and cuffed and sworn at, and at the best only let\nalone; and what do I owe? I've paid for all my keeping a hundred times\nover. I _won't_ bear it. No, I _won't_!\" he said, clenching his hand\nwith a fierce frown.\n\nEliza trembled, and was silent. She had never seen her husband in this\nmood before; and her gentle system of ethics seemed to bend like a reed\nin the surges of such passions.\n\n\"You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me,\" added George; \"the\ncreature has been about all the comfort that I've had. He has slept with\nme nights, and followed me around days, and kind o' looked at me as if\nhe understood how I felt. Well, the other day I was just feeding him\nwith a few old scraps I picked up by the kitchen door, and Mas'r\ncame along, and said I was feeding him up at his expense, and that he\ncouldn't afford to have every nigger keeping his dog, and ordered me to\ntie a stone to his neck and throw him in the pond.\"\n\n\"O, George, you didn't do it!\"\n\n\"Do it? not I!--but he did. Mas'r and Tom pelted the poor drowning\ncreature with stones. Poor thing! he looked at me so mournful, as if\nhe wondered why I didn't save him. I had to take a flogging because I\nwouldn't do it myself. I don't care. Mas'r will find out that I'm one\nthat whipping won't tame. My day will come yet, if he don't look out.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do? O, George, don't do anything wicked; if you\nonly trust in God, and try to do right, he'll deliver you.\"\n\n\"I an't a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart's full of bitterness; I\ncan't trust in God. Why does he let things be so?\"\n\n\"O, George, we must have faith. Mistress says that when all things go\nwrong to us, we must believe that God is doing the very best.\"\n\n\"That's easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas and\nriding in their carriages; but let 'em be where I am, I guess it would\ncome some harder. I wish I could be good; but my heart burns, and can't\nbe reconciled, anyhow. You couldn't in my place,--you can't now, if I\ntell you all I've got to say. You don't know the whole yet.\"\n\n\"What can be coming now?\"\n\n\"Well, lately Mas'r has been saying that he was a fool to let me marry\noff the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his tribe, because they\nare proud, and hold their heads up above him, and that I've got proud\nnotions from you; and he says he won't let me come here any more, and\nthat I shall take a wife and settle down on his place. At first he\nonly scolded and grumbled these things; but yesterday he told me that I\nshould take Mina for a wife, and settle down in a cabin with her, or he\nwould sell me down river.\"\n\n\"Why--but you were married to _me_, by the minister, as much as if you'd\nbeen a white man!\" said Eliza, simply.\n\n\"Don't you know a slave can't be married? There is no law in this\ncountry for that; I can't hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part\nus. That's why I wish I'd never seen you,--why I wish I'd never been\nborn; it would have been better for us both,--it would have been better\nfor this poor child if he had never been born. All this may happen to\nhim yet!\"\n\n\"O, but master is so kind!\"\n\n\"Yes, but who knows?--he may die--and then he may be sold to nobody\nknows who. What pleasure is it that he is handsome, and smart, and\nbright? I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul\nfor every good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him\nworth too much for you to keep.\"\n\nThe words smote heavily on Eliza's heart; the vision of the trader came\nbefore her eyes, and, as if some one had struck her a deadly blow,\nshe turned pale and gasped for breath. She looked nervously out on the\nverandah, where the boy, tired of the grave conversation, had retired,\nand where he was riding triumphantly up and down on Mr. Shelby's\nwalking-stick. She would have spoken to tell her husband her fears, but\nchecked herself.\n\n\"No, no,--he has enough to bear, poor fellow!\" she thought. \"No, I won't\ntell him; besides, it an't true; Missis never deceives us.\"\n\n\"So, Eliza, my girl,\" said the husband, mournfully, \"bear up, now; and\ngood-by, for I'm going.\"\n\n\"Going, George! Going where?\"\n\n\"To Canada,\" said he, straightening himself up; \"and when I'm there, I'll\nbuy you; that's all the hope that's left us. You have a kind master,\nthat won't refuse to sell you. I'll buy you and the boy;--God helping\nme, I will!\"\n\n\"O, dreadful! if you should be taken?\"\n\n\"I won't be taken, Eliza; I'll _die_ first! I'll be free, or I'll die!\"\n\n\"You won't kill yourself!\"\n\n\"No need of that. They will kill me, fast enough; they never will get me\ndown the river alive!\"\n\n\"O, George, for my sake, do be careful! Don't do anything wicked; don't\nlay hands on yourself, or anybody else! You are tempted too much--too\nmuch; but don't--go you must--but go carefully, prudently; pray God to\nhelp you.\"\n\n\"Well, then, Eliza, hear my plan. Mas'r took it into his head to send\nme right by here, with a note to Mr. Symmes, that lives a mile past. I\nbelieve he expected I should come here to tell you what I have. It would\nplease him, if he thought it would aggravate 'Shelby's folks,' as he\ncalls 'em. I'm going home quite resigned, you understand, as if all was\nover. I've got some preparations made,--and there are those that will\nhelp me; and, in the course of a week or so, I shall be among the\nmissing, some day. Pray for me, Eliza; perhaps the good Lord will hear\n_you_.\"\n\n\"O, pray yourself, George, and go trusting in him; then you won't do\nanything wicked.\"\n\n\"Well, now, _good-by_,\" said George, holding Eliza's hands, and gazing\ninto her eyes, without moving. They stood silent; then there were last\nwords, and sobs, and bitter weeping,--such parting as those may make\nwhose hope to meet again is as the spider's web,--and the husband and\nwife were parted.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nAn Evening in Uncle Tom's Cabin\n\n\nThe cabin of Uncle Tom was a small log building, close adjoining to \"the\nhouse,\" as the negro _par excellence_ designates his master's dwelling.\nIn front it had a neat garden-patch, where, every summer, strawberries,\nraspberries, and a variety of fruits and vegetables, flourished under\ncareful tending. The whole front of it was covered by a large\nscarlet bignonia and a native multiflora rose, which, entwisting and\ninterlacing, left scarce a vestige of the rough logs to be seen. Here,\nalso, in summer, various brilliant annuals, such as marigolds, petunias,\nfour-o'clocks, found an indulgent corner in which to unfold their\nsplendors, and were the delight and pride of Aunt Chloe's heart.\n\nLet us enter the dwelling. The evening meal at the house is over, and\nAunt Chloe, who presided over its preparation as head cook, has left\nto inferior officers in the kitchen the business of clearing away and\nwashing dishes, and come out into her own snug territories, to \"get her\nole man's supper\"; therefore, doubt not that it is her you see by the\nfire, presiding with anxious interest over certain frizzling items in\na stew-pan, and anon with grave consideration lifting the cover of\na bake-kettle, from whence steam forth indubitable intimations of\n\"something good.\" A round, black, shining face is hers, so glossy as\nto suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with white of\neggs, like one of her own tea rusks. Her whole plump countenance beams\nwith satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched checked\nturban, bearing on it, however, if we must confess it, a little of\nthat tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the\nneighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be.\n\nA cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not\na chicken or turkey or duck in the barn-yard but looked grave when they\nsaw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their\nlatter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on\ntrussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to\ninspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. Her corn-cake, in all its\nvarieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous\nto mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders; and\nshe would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as she\nwould narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her compeers\nhad made to attain to her elevation.\n\nThe arrival of company at the house, the arranging of dinners and\nsuppers \"in style,\" awoke all the energies of her soul; and no sight\nwas more welcome to her than a pile of travelling trunks launched on the\nverandah, for then she foresaw fresh efforts and fresh triumphs.\n\nJust at present, however, Aunt Chloe is looking into the bake-pan; in\nwhich congenial operation we shall leave her till we finish our picture\nof the cottage.\n\nIn one corner of it stood a bed, covered neatly with a snowy spread; and\nby the side of it was a piece of carpeting, of some considerable size.\nOn this piece of carpeting Aunt Chloe took her stand, as being decidedly\nin the upper walks of life; and it and the bed by which it lay, and the\nwhole corner, in fact, were treated with distinguished consideration,\nand made, so far as possible, sacred from the marauding inroads\nand desecrations of little folks. In fact, that corner was the\n_drawing-room_ of the establishment. In the other corner was a bed of\nmuch humbler pretensions, and evidently designed for _use_. The wall\nover the fireplace was adorned with some very brilliant scriptural\nprints, and a portrait of General Washington, drawn and colored in\na manner which would certainly have astonished that hero, if ever he\nhappened to meet with its like.\n\nOn a rough bench in the corner, a couple of woolly-headed boys,\nwith glistening black eyes and fat shining cheeks, were busy in\nsuperintending the first walking operations of the baby, which, as\nis usually the case, consisted in getting up on its feet, balancing a\nmoment, and then tumbling down,--each successive failure being violently\ncheered, as something decidedly clever.\n\nA table, somewhat rheumatic in its limbs, was drawn out in front of\nthe fire, and covered with a cloth, displaying cups and saucers of a\ndecidedly brilliant pattern, with other symptoms of an approaching meal.\nAt this table was seated Uncle Tom, Mr. Shelby's best hand, who, as he\nis to be the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype for our readers.\nHe was a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man, of a full glossy\nblack, and a face whose truly African features were characterized by an\nexpression of grave and steady good sense, united with much kindliness\nand benevolence. There was something about his whole air self-respecting\nand dignified, yet united with a confiding and humble simplicity.\n\nHe was very busily intent at this moment on a slate lying before him,\non which he was carefully and slowly endeavoring to accomplish a copy\nof some letters, in which operation he was overlooked by young Mas'r\nGeorge, a smart, bright boy of thirteen, who appeared fully to realize\nthe dignity of his position as instructor.\n\n\"Not that way, Uncle Tom,--not that way,\" said he, briskly, as Uncle\nTom laboriously brought up the tail of his _g_ the wrong side out; \"that\nmakes a _q_, you see.\"\n\n\"La sakes, now, does it?\" said Uncle Tom, looking with a respectful,\nadmiring air, as his young teacher flourishingly scrawled _q_'s and\n_g_'s innumerable for his edification; and then, taking the pencil in\nhis big, heavy fingers, he patiently recommenced.\n\n\"How easy white folks al'us does things!\" said Aunt Chloe, pausing\nwhile she was greasing a griddle with a scrap of bacon on her fork, and\nregarding young Master George with pride. \"The way he can write, now!\nand read, too! and then to come out here evenings and read his lessons\nto us,--it's mighty interestin'!\"\n\n\"But, Aunt Chloe, I'm getting mighty hungry,\" said George. \"Isn't that\ncake in the skillet almost done?\"\n\n\"Mose done, Mas'r George,\" said Aunt Chloe, lifting the lid and peeping\nin,--\"browning beautiful--a real lovely brown. Ah! let me alone for dat.\nMissis let Sally try to make some cake, t' other day, jes to _larn_ her,\nshe said. 'O, go way, Missis,' said I; 'it really hurts my feelin's,\nnow, to see good vittles spilt dat ar way! Cake ris all to one side--no\nshape at all; no more than my shoe; go way!\"\n\nAnd with this final expression of contempt for Sally's greenness, Aunt\nChloe whipped the cover off the bake-kettle, and disclosed to view a\nneatly-baked pound-cake, of which no city confectioner need to have been\nashamed. This being evidently the central point of the entertainment,\nAunt Chloe began now to bustle about earnestly in the supper department.\n\n\"Here you, Mose and Pete! get out de way, you niggers! Get away,\nPolly, honey,--mammy'll give her baby some fin, by and by. Now, Mas'r\nGeorge, you jest take off dem books, and set down now with my old man,\nand I'll take up de sausages, and have de first griddle full of cakes on\nyour plates in less dan no time.\"\n\n\"They wanted me to come to supper in the house,\" said George; \"but I\nknew what was what too well for that, Aunt Chloe.\"\n\n\"So you did--so you did, honey,\" said Aunt Chloe, heaping the smoking\nbatter-cakes on his plate; \"you know'd your old aunty'd keep the best\nfor you. O, let you alone for dat! Go way!\" And, with that, aunty gave\nGeorge a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and\nturned again to her griddle with great briskness.\n\n\"Now for the cake,\" said Mas'r George, when the activity of the\ngriddle department had somewhat subsided; and, with that, the youngster\nflourished a large knife over the article in question.\n\n\"La bless you, Mas'r George!\" said Aunt Chloe, with earnestness,\ncatching his arm, \"you wouldn't be for cuttin' it wid dat ar great heavy\nknife! Smash all down--spile all de pretty rise of it. Here, I've got a\nthin old knife, I keeps sharp a purpose. Dar now, see! comes apart light\nas a feather! Now eat away--you won't get anything to beat dat ar.\"\n\n\"Tom Lincon says,\" said George, speaking with his mouth full, \"that\ntheir Jinny is a better cook than you.\"\n\n\"Dem Lincons an't much count, no way!\" said Aunt Chloe, contemptuously;\n\"I mean, set along side _our_ folks. They 's 'spectable folks enough in\na kinder plain way; but, as to gettin' up anything in style, they don't\nbegin to have a notion on 't. Set Mas'r Lincon, now, alongside Mas'r\nShelby! Good Lor! and Missis Lincon,--can she kinder sweep it into a\nroom like my missis,--so kinder splendid, yer know! O, go way! don't\ntell me nothin' of dem Lincons!\"--and Aunt Chloe tossed her head as one\nwho hoped she did know something of the world.\n\n\"Well, though, I've heard you say,\" said George, \"that Jinny was a\npretty fair cook.\"\n\n\"So I did,\" said Aunt Chloe,--\"I may say dat. Good, plain, common\ncookin', Jinny'll do;--make a good pone o' bread,--bile her taters\n_far_,--her corn cakes isn't extra, not extra now, Jinny's corn cakes\nisn't, but then they's far,--but, Lor, come to de higher branches, and\nwhat _can_ she do? Why, she makes pies--sartin she does; but what kinder\ncrust? Can she make your real flecky paste, as melts in your mouth, and\nlies all up like a puff? Now, I went over thar when Miss Mary was gwine\nto be married, and Jinny she jest showed me de weddin' pies. Jinny and\nI is good friends, ye know. I never said nothin'; but go 'long, Mas'r\nGeorge! Why, I shouldn't sleep a wink for a week, if I had a batch of\npies like dem ar. Why, dey wan't no 'count 't all.\"\n\n\"I suppose Jinny thought they were ever so nice,\" said George.\n\n\"Thought so!--didn't she? Thar she was, showing em, as innocent--ye see,\nit's jest here, Jinny _don't know_. Lor, the family an't nothing! She\ncan't be spected to know! 'Ta'nt no fault o' hem. Ah, Mas'r George, you\ndoesn't know half 'your privileges in yer family and bringin' up!\" Here\nAunt Chloe sighed, and rolled up her eyes with emotion.\n\n\"I'm sure, Aunt Chloe, I understand my pie and pudding privileges,\"\nsaid George. \"Ask Tom Lincon if I don't crow over him, every time I meet\nhim.\"\n\nAunt Chloe sat back in her chair, and indulged in a hearty guffaw of\nlaughter, at this witticism of young Mas'r's, laughing till the tears\nrolled down her black, shining cheeks, and varying the exercise with\nplayfully slapping and poking Mas'r Georgey, and telling him to go way,\nand that he was a case--that he was fit to kill her, and that he sartin\nwould kill her, one of these days; and, between each of these sanguinary\npredictions, going off into a laugh, each longer and stronger than the\nother, till George really began to think that he was a very dangerously\nwitty fellow, and that it became him to be careful how he talked \"as\nfunny as he could.\"\n\n\"And so ye telled Tom, did ye? O, Lor! what young uns will be up ter!\nYe crowed over Tom? O, Lor! Mas'r George, if ye wouldn't make a hornbug\nlaugh!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said George, \"I says to him, 'Tom, you ought to see some of Aunt\nChloe's pies; they're the right sort,' says I.\"\n\n\"Pity, now, Tom couldn't,\" said Aunt Chloe, on whose benevolent\nheart the idea of Tom's benighted condition seemed to make a strong\nimpression. \"Ye oughter just ask him here to dinner, some o' these\ntimes, Mas'r George,\" she added; \"it would look quite pretty of ye.\nYe know, Mas'r George, ye oughtenter feel 'bove nobody, on 'count yer\nprivileges, 'cause all our privileges is gi'n to us; we ought al'ays to\n'member that,\" said Aunt Chloe, looking quite serious.\n\n\"Well, I mean to ask Tom here, some day next week,\" said George; \"and\nyou do your prettiest, Aunt Chloe, and we'll make him stare. Won't we\nmake him eat so he won't get over it for a fortnight?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes--sartin,\" said Aunt Chloe, delighted; \"you'll see. Lor! to\nthink of some of our dinners! Yer mind dat ar great chicken pie I made\nwhen we guv de dinner to General Knox? I and Missis, we come pretty near\nquarrelling about dat ar crust. What does get into ladies sometimes,\nI don't know; but, sometimes, when a body has de heaviest kind o'\n'sponsibility on 'em, as ye may say, and is all kinder _'seris'_\nand taken up, dey takes dat ar time to be hangin' round and kinder\ninterferin'! Now, Missis, she wanted me to do dis way, and she wanted\nme to do dat way; and, finally, I got kinder sarcy, and, says I, 'Now,\nMissis, do jist look at dem beautiful white hands o' yourn with long\nfingers, and all a sparkling with rings, like my white lilies when de\ndew 's on 'em; and look at my great black stumpin hands. Now, don't ye\nthink dat de Lord must have meant _me_ to make de pie-crust, and you to\nstay in de parlor? Dar! I was jist so sarcy, Mas'r George.\"\n\n\"And what did mother say?\" said George.\n\n\"Say?--why, she kinder larfed in her eyes--dem great handsome eyes o'\nhern; and, says she, 'Well, Aunt Chloe, I think you are about in the\nright on 't,' says she; and she went off in de parlor. She oughter\ncracked me over de head for bein' so sarcy; but dar's whar 't is--I\ncan't do nothin' with ladies in de kitchen!\"\n\n\"Well, you made out well with that dinner,--I remember everybody said\nso,\" said George.\n\n\"Didn't I? And wan't I behind de dinin'-room door dat bery day? and\ndidn't I see de General pass his plate three times for some more dat\nbery pie?--and, says he, 'You must have an uncommon cook, Mrs. Shelby.'\nLor! I was fit to split myself.\n\n\"And de Gineral, he knows what cookin' is,\" said Aunt Chloe, drawing\nherself up with an air. \"Bery nice man, de Gineral! He comes of one of\nde bery _fustest_ families in Old Virginny! He knows what's what, now,\nas well as I do--de Gineral. Ye see, there's _pints_ in all pies, Mas'r\nGeorge; but tan't everybody knows what they is, or as orter be. But the\nGineral, he knows; I knew by his 'marks he made. Yes, he knows what de\npints is!\"\n\nBy this time, Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a\nboy can come (under uncommon circumstances, when he really could not eat\nanother morsel), and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the pile of\nwoolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their operations\nhungrily from the opposite corner.\n\n\"Here, you Mose, Pete,\" he said, breaking off liberal bits, and throwing\nit at them; \"you want some, don't you? Come, Aunt Chloe, bake them some\ncakes.\"\n\nAnd George and Tom moved to a comfortable seat in the chimney-corner,\nwhile Aunte Chloe, after baking a goodly pile of cakes, took her baby\non her lap, and began alternately filling its mouth and her own, and\ndistributing to Mose and Pete, who seemed rather to prefer eating theirs\nas they rolled about on the floor under the table, tickling each other,\nand occasionally pulling the baby's toes.\n\n\"O! go long, will ye?\" said the mother, giving now and then a kick, in\na kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too\nobstreperous. \"Can't ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye?\nStop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I'll take ye down a\nbutton-hole lower, when Mas'r George is gone!\"\n\nWhat meaning was couched under this terrible threat, it is difficult to\nsay; but certain it is that its awful indistinctness seemed to produce\nvery little impression on the young sinners addressed.\n\n\"La, now!\" said Uncle Tom, \"they are so full of tickle all the while,\nthey can't behave theirselves.\"\n\nHere the boys emerged from under the table, and, with hands and faces\nwell plastered with molasses, began a vigorous kissing of the baby.\n\n\"Get along wid ye!\" said the mother, pushing away their woolly heads.\n\"Ye'll all stick together, and never get clar, if ye do dat fashion.\nGo long to de spring and wash yerselves!\" she said, seconding her\nexhortations by a slap, which resounded very formidably, but which\nseemed only to knock out so much more laugh from the young ones, as they\ntumbled precipitately over each other out of doors, where they fairly\nscreamed with merriment.\n\n\"Did ye ever see such aggravating young uns?\" said Aunt Chloe, rather\ncomplacently, as, producing an old towel, kept for such emergencies,\nshe poured a little water out of the cracked tea-pot on it, and began\nrubbing off the molasses from the baby's face and hands; and, having\npolished her till she shone, she set her down in Tom's lap, while she\nbusied herself in clearing away supper. The baby employed the intervals\nin pulling Tom's nose, scratching his face, and burying her fat hands\nin his woolly hair, which last operation seemed to afford her special\ncontent.\n\n\"Aint she a peart young un?\" said Tom, holding her from him to take a\nfull-length view; then, getting up, he set her on his broad shoulder,\nand began capering and dancing with her, while Mas'r George snapped at\nher with his pocket-handkerchief, and Mose and Pete, now returned again,\nroared after her like bears, till Aunt Chloe declared that they \"fairly\ntook her head off\" with their noise. As, according to her own statement,\nthis surgical operation was a matter of daily occurrence in the cabin,\nthe declaration no whit abated the merriment, till every one had roared\nand tumbled and danced themselves down to a state of composure.\n\n\"Well, now, I hopes you're done,\" said Aunt Chloe, who had been busy\nin pulling out a rude box of a trundle-bed; \"and now, you Mose and you\nPete, get into thar; for we's goin' to have the meetin'.\"\n\n\"O mother, we don't wanter. We wants to sit up to meetin',--meetin's is\nso curis. We likes 'em.\"\n\n\"La, Aunt Chloe, shove it under, and let 'em sit up,\" said Mas'r George,\ndecisively, giving a push to the rude machine.\n\nAunt Chloe, having thus saved appearances, seemed highly delighted to\npush the thing under, saying, as she did so, \"Well, mebbe 't will do 'em\nsome good.\"\n\nThe house now resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to consider\nthe accommodations and arrangements for the meeting.\n\n\"What we's to do for cheers, now, _I_ declar I don't know,\" said Aunt\nChloe. As the meeting had been held at Uncle Tom's weekly, for an\nindefinite length of time, without any more \"cheers,\" there seemed some\nencouragement to hope that a way would be discovered at present.\n\n\"Old Uncle Peter sung both de legs out of dat oldest cheer, last week,\"\nsuggested Mose.\n\n\"You go long! I'll boun' you pulled 'em out; some o' your shines,\" said\nAunt Chloe.\n\n\"Well, it'll stand, if it only keeps jam up agin de wall!\" said Mose.\n\n\"Den Uncle Peter mus'n't sit in it, cause he al'ays hitches when he gets\na singing. He hitched pretty nigh across de room, t' other night,\" said\nPete.\n\n\"Good Lor! get him in it, then,\" said Mose, \"and den he'd begin, 'Come\nsaints--and sinners, hear me tell,' and den down he'd go,\"--and Mose\nimitated precisely the nasal tones of the old man, tumbling on the\nfloor, to illustrate the supposed catastrophe.\n\n\"Come now, be decent, can't ye?\" said Aunt Chloe; \"an't yer shamed?\"\n\nMas'r George, however, joined the offender in the laugh, and declared\ndecidedly that Mose was a \"buster.\" So the maternal admonition seemed\nrather to fail of effect.\n\n\"Well, ole man,\" said Aunt Chloe, \"you'll have to tote in them ar\nbar'ls.\"\n\n\"Mother's bar'ls is like dat ar widder's, Mas'r George was reading\n'bout, in de good book,--dey never fails,\" said Mose, aside to Peter.\n\n\"I'm sure one on 'em caved in last week,\" said Pete, \"and let 'em all\ndown in de middle of de singin'; dat ar was failin', warnt it?\"\n\nDuring this aside between Mose and Pete, two empty casks had been rolled\ninto the cabin, and being secured from rolling, by stones on each side,\nboards were laid across them, which arrangement, together with the\nturning down of certain tubs and pails, and the disposing of the rickety\nchairs, at last completed the preparation.\n\n\"Mas'r George is such a beautiful reader, now, I know he'll stay to\nread for us,\" said Aunt Chloe; \"'pears like 't will be so much more\ninterestin'.\"\n\nGeorge very readily consented, for your boy is always ready for anything\nthat makes him of importance.\n\nThe room was soon filled with a motley assemblage, from the old\ngray-headed patriarch of eighty, to the young girl and lad of fifteen. A\nlittle harmless gossip ensued on various themes, such as where old Aunt\nSally got her new red headkerchief, and how \"Missis was a going to give\nLizzy that spotted muslin gown, when she'd got her new berage made up;\"\nand how Mas'r Shelby was thinking of buying a new sorrel colt, that was\ngoing to prove an addition to the glories of the place. A few of the\nworshippers belonged to families hard by, who had got permission to\nattend, and who brought in various choice scraps of information, about\nthe sayings and doings at the house and on the place, which circulated\nas freely as the same sort of small change does in higher circles.\n\nAfter a while the singing commenced, to the evident delight of all\npresent. Not even all the disadvantage of nasal intonation could prevent\nthe effect of the naturally fine voices, in airs at once wild and\nspirited. The words were sometimes the well-known and common hymns\nsung in the churches about, and sometimes of a wilder, more indefinite\ncharacter, picked up at camp-meetings.\n\nThe chorus of one of them, which ran as follows, was sung with great\nenergy and unction:\n\n     _\"Die on the field of battle,\n     Die on the field of battle,\n     Glory in my soul.\"_\n\nAnother special favorite had oft repeated the words--\n\n     _\"O, I'm going to glory,--won't you come along with me?\n     Don't you see the angels beck'ning, and a calling me away?\n     Don't you see the golden city and the everlasting day?\"_\n\nThere were others, which made incessant mention of \"Jordan's banks,\"\nand \"Canaan's fields,\" and the \"New Jerusalem;\" for the negro mind,\nimpassioned and imaginative, always attaches itself to hymns and\nexpressions of a vivid and pictorial nature; and, as they sung,\nsome laughed, and some cried, and some clapped hands, or shook hands\nrejoicingly with each other, as if they had fairly gained the other side\nof the river.\n\nVarious exhortations, or relations of experience, followed, and\nintermingled with the singing. One old gray-headed woman, long past\nwork, but much revered as a sort of chronicle of the past, rose, and\nleaning on her staff, said--\"Well, chil'en! Well, I'm mighty glad to\nhear ye all and see ye all once more, 'cause I don't know when I'll be\ngone to glory; but I've done got ready, chil'en; 'pears like I'd got\nmy little bundle all tied up, and my bonnet on, jest a waitin' for the\nstage to come along and take me home; sometimes, in the night, I think\nI hear the wheels a rattlin', and I'm lookin' out all the time; now, you\njest be ready too, for I tell ye all, chil'en,\" she said striking her\nstaff hard on the floor, \"dat ar _glory_ is a mighty thing! It's a\nmighty thing, chil'en,--you don'no nothing about it,--it's _wonderful_.\"\nAnd the old creature sat down, with streaming tears, as wholly overcome,\nwhile the whole circle struck up--\n\n     _\"O Canaan, bright Canaan\n     I'm bound for the land of Canaan.\"_\n\nMas'r George, by request, read the last chapters of Revelation, often\ninterrupted by such exclamations as \"The _sakes_ now!\" \"Only hear that!\"\n\"Jest think on 't!\" \"Is all that a comin' sure enough?\"\n\nGeorge, who was a bright boy, and well trained in religious things by\nhis mother, finding himself an object of general admiration, threw\nin expositions of his own, from time to time, with a commendable\nseriousness and gravity, for which he was admired by the young and\nblessed by the old; and it was agreed, on all hands, that \"a minister\ncouldn't lay it off better than he did; that 't was reely 'mazin'!\"\n\nUncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters, in the\nneighborhood. Having, naturally, an organization in which the\n_morale_ was strongly predominant, together with a greater breadth and\ncultivation of mind than obtained among his companions, he was looked up\nto with great respect, as a sort of minister among them; and the simple,\nhearty, sincere style of his exhortations might have edified even better\neducated persons. But it was in prayer that he especially excelled.\nNothing could exceed the touching simplicity, the childlike earnestness,\nof his prayer, enriched with the language of Scripture, which seemed so\nentirely to have wrought itself into his being, as to have become a part\nof himself, and to drop from his lips unconsciously; in the language\nof a pious old negro, he \"prayed right up.\" And so much did his prayer\nalways work on the devotional feelings of his audiences, that there\nseemed often a danger that it would be lost altogether in the abundance\nof the responses which broke out everywhere around him.\n\n\nWhile this scene was passing in the cabin of the man, one quite\notherwise passed in the halls of the master.\n\nThe trader and Mr. Shelby were seated together in the dining room\nafore-named, at a table covered with papers and writing utensils.\n\nMr. Shelby was busy in counting some bundles of bills, which, as they\nwere counted, he pushed over to the trader, who counted them likewise.\n\n\"All fair,\" said the trader; \"and now for signing these yer.\"\n\nMr. Shelby hastily drew the bills of sale towards him, and signed them,\nlike a man that hurries over some disagreeable business, and then pushed\nthem over with the money. Haley produced, from a well-worn valise,\na parchment, which, after looking over it a moment, he handed to Mr.\nShelby, who took it with a gesture of suppressed eagerness.\n\n\"Wal, now, the thing's _done_!\" said the trader, getting up.\n\n\"It's _done_!\" said Mr. Shelby, in a musing tone; and, fetching a long\nbreath, he repeated, _\"It's done!\"_\n\n\"Yer don't seem to feel much pleased with it, 'pears to me,\" said the\ntrader.\n\n\"Haley,\" said Mr. Shelby, \"I hope you'll remember that you promised, on\nyour honor, you wouldn't sell Tom, without knowing what sort of hands\nhe's going into.\"\n\n\"Why, you've just done it sir,\" said the trader.\n\n\"Circumstances, you well know, _obliged_ me,\" said Shelby, haughtily.\n\n\"Wal, you know, they may 'blige _me_, too,\" said the trader.\n\"Howsomever, I'll do the very best I can in gettin' Tom a good berth;\nas to my treatin' on him bad, you needn't be a grain afeard. If there's\nanything that I thank the Lord for, it is that I'm never noways cruel.\"\n\nAfter the expositions which the trader had previously given of his\nhumane principles, Mr. Shelby did not feel particularly reassured by\nthese declarations; but, as they were the best comfort the case admitted\nof, he allowed the trader to depart in silence, and betook himself to a\nsolitary cigar.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nShowing the Feelings of Living Property on Changing Owners\n\n\nMr. and Mrs. Shelby had retired to their apartment for the night. He was\nlounging in a large easy-chair, looking over some letters that had come\nin the afternoon mail, and she was standing before her mirror, brushing\nout the complicated braids and curls in which Eliza had arranged her\nhair; for, noticing her pale cheeks and haggard eyes, she had excused\nher attendance that night, and ordered her to bed. The employment,\nnaturally enough, suggested her conversation with the girl in the\nmorning; and turning to her husband, she said, carelessly,\n\n\"By the by, Arthur, who was that low-bred fellow that you lugged in to\nour dinner-table today?\"\n\n\"Haley is his name,\" said Shelby, turning himself rather uneasily in his\nchair, and continuing with his eyes fixed on a letter.\n\n\"Haley! Who is he, and what may be his business here, pray?\"\n\n\"Well, he's a man that I transacted some business with, last time I was\nat Natchez,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"And he presumed on it to make himself quite at home, and call and dine\nhere, ay?\"\n\n\"Why, I invited him; I had some accounts with him,\" said Shelby.\n\n\"Is he a negro-trader?\" said Mrs. Shelby, noticing a certain\nembarrassment in her husband's manner.\n\n\"Why, my dear, what put that into your head?\" said Shelby, looking up.\n\n\"Nothing,--only Eliza came in here, after dinner, in a great worry,\ncrying and taking on, and said you were talking with a trader, and that\nshe heard him make an offer for her boy--the ridiculous little goose!\"\n\n\"She did, hey?\" said Mr. Shelby, returning to his paper, which he seemed\nfor a few moments quite intent upon, not perceiving that he was holding\nit bottom upwards.\n\n\"It will have to come out,\" said he, mentally; \"as well now as ever.\"\n\n\"I told Eliza,\" said Mrs. Shelby, as she continued brushing her hair,\n\"that she was a little fool for her pains, and that you never had\nanything to do with that sort of persons. Of course, I knew you never\nmeant to sell any of our people,--least of all, to such a fellow.\"\n\n\"Well, Emily,\" said her husband, \"so I have always felt and said; but\nthe fact is that my business lies so that I cannot get on without. I\nshall have to sell some of my hands.\"\n\n\"To that creature? Impossible! Mr. Shelby, you cannot be serious.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry to say that I am,\" said Mr. Shelby. \"I've agreed to sell\nTom.\"\n\n\"What! our Tom?--that good, faithful creature!--been your faithful\nservant from a boy! O, Mr. Shelby!--and you have promised him his\nfreedom, too,--you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it. Well,\nI can believe anything now,--I can believe _now_ that you could sell\nlittle Harry, poor Eliza's only child!\" said Mrs. Shelby, in a tone\nbetween grief and indignation.\n\n\"Well, since you must know all, it is so. I have agreed to sell Tom\nand Harry both; and I don't know why I am to be rated, as if I were a\nmonster, for doing what every one does every day.\"\n\n\"But why, of all others, choose these?\" said Mrs. Shelby. \"Why sell\nthem, of all on the place, if you must sell at all?\"\n\n\"Because they will bring the highest sum of any,--that's why. I could\nchoose another, if you say so. The fellow made me a high bid on Eliza,\nif that would suit you any better,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"The wretch!\" said Mrs. Shelby, vehemently.\n\n\"Well, I didn't listen to it, a moment,--out of regard to your feelings,\nI wouldn't;--so give me some credit.\"\n\n\"My dear,\" said Mrs. Shelby, recollecting herself, \"forgive me. I have\nbeen hasty. I was surprised, and entirely unprepared for this;--but\nsurely you will allow me to intercede for these poor creatures. Tom is\na noble-hearted, faithful fellow, if he is black. I do believe, Mr.\nShelby, that if he were put to it, he would lay down his life for you.\"\n\n\"I know it,--I dare say;--but what's the use of all this?--I can't help\nmyself.\"\n\n\"Why not make a pecuniary sacrifice? I'm willing to bear my part of the\ninconvenience. O, Mr. Shelby, I have tried--tried most faithfully, as a\nChristian woman should--to do my duty to these poor, simple, dependent\ncreatures. I have cared for them, instructed them, watched over them,\nand know all their little cares and joys, for years; and how can I ever\nhold up my head again among them, if, for the sake of a little paltry\ngain, we sell such a faithful, excellent, confiding creature as poor\nTom, and tear from him in a moment all we have taught him to love and\nvalue? I have taught them the duties of the family, of parent and\nchild, and husband and wife; and how can I bear to have this open\nacknowledgment that we care for no tie, no duty, no relation, however\nsacred, compared with money? I have talked with Eliza about her boy--her\nduty to him as a Christian mother, to watch over him, pray for him, and\nbring him up in a Christian way; and now what can I say, if you tear him\naway, and sell him, soul and body, to a profane, unprincipled man, just\nto save a little money? I have told her that one soul is worth more than\nall the money in the world; and how will she believe me when she sees\nus turn round and sell her child?--sell him, perhaps, to certain ruin of\nbody and soul!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you feel so about it,--indeed I am,\" said Mr. Shelby; \"and\nI respect your feelings, too, though I don't pretend to share them to\ntheir full extent; but I tell you now, solemnly, it's of no use--I can't\nhelp myself. I didn't mean to tell you this Emily; but, in plain words,\nthere is no choice between selling these two and selling everything.\nEither they must go, or _all_ must. Haley has come into possession of\na mortgage, which, if I don't clear off with him directly, will take\neverything before it. I've raked, and scraped, and borrowed, and all but\nbegged,--and the price of these two was needed to make up the balance,\nand I had to give them up. Haley fancied the child; he agreed to settle\nthe matter that way, and no other. I was in his power, and _had_ to do\nit. If you feel so to have them sold, would it be any better to have\n_all_ sold?\"\n\nMrs. Shelby stood like one stricken. Finally, turning to her toilet, she\nrested her face in her hands, and gave a sort of groan.\n\n\"This is God's curse on slavery!--a bitter, bitter, most accursed\nthing!--a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to\nthink I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin\nto hold a slave under laws like ours,--I always felt it was,--I always\nthought so when I was a girl,--I thought so still more after I joined\nthe church; but I thought I could gild it over,--I thought, by kindness,\nand care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better\nthan freedom--fool that I was!\"\n\n\"Why, wife, you are getting to be an abolitionist, quite.\"\n\n\"Abolitionist! if they knew all I know about slavery, they _might_ talk!\nWe don't need them to tell us; you know I never thought that slavery was\nright--never felt willing to own slaves.\"\n\n\"Well, therein you differ from many wise and pious men,\" said Mr.\nShelby. \"You remember Mr. B.'s sermon, the other Sunday?\"\n\n\"I don't want to hear such sermons; I never wish to hear Mr. B. in our\nchurch again. Ministers can't help the evil, perhaps,--can't cure it,\nany more than we can,--but defend it!--it always went against my common\nsense. And I think you didn't think much of that sermon, either.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Shelby, \"I must say these ministers sometimes carry matters\nfurther than we poor sinners would exactly dare to do. We men of the\nworld must wink pretty hard at various things, and get used to a deal\nthat isn't the exact thing. But we don't quite fancy, when women and\nministers come out broad and square, and go beyond us in matters of\neither modesty or morals, that's a fact. But now, my dear, I trust you\nsee the necessity of the thing, and you see that I have done the very\nbest that circumstances would allow.\"\n\n\"O yes, yes!\" said Mrs. Shelby, hurriedly and abstractedly fingering\nher gold watch,--\"I haven't any jewelry of any amount,\" she added,\nthoughtfully; \"but would not this watch do something?--it was an\nexpensive one, when it was bought. If I could only at least save Eliza's\nchild, I would sacrifice anything I have.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, very sorry, Emily,\" said Mr. Shelby, \"I'm sorry this takes\nhold of you so; but it will do no good. The fact is, Emily, the thing's\ndone; the bills of sale are already signed, and in Haley's hands; and\nyou must be thankful it is no worse. That man has had it in his power\nto ruin us all,--and now he is fairly off. If you knew the man as I do,\nyou'd think that we had had a narrow escape.\"\n\n\"Is he so hard, then?\"\n\n\"Why, not a cruel man, exactly, but a man of leather,--a man alive to\nnothing but trade and profit,--cool, and unhesitating, and unrelenting,\nas death and the grave. He'd sell his own mother at a good\npercentage--not wishing the old woman any harm, either.\"\n\n\"And this wretch owns that good, faithful Tom, and Eliza's child!\"\n\n\"Well, my dear, the fact is that this goes rather hard with me; it's\na thing I hate to think of. Haley wants to drive matters, and take\npossession tomorrow. I'm going to get out my horse bright and early,\nand be off. I can't see Tom, that's a fact; and you had better arrange a\ndrive somewhere, and carry Eliza off. Let the thing be done when she is\nout of sight.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Mrs. Shelby; \"I'll be in no sense accomplice or help in\nthis cruel business. I'll go and see poor old Tom, God help him, in his\ndistress! They shall see, at any rate, that their mistress can feel for\nand with them. As to Eliza, I dare not think about it. The Lord forgive\nus! What have we done, that this cruel necessity should come on us?\"\n\nThere was one listener to this conversation whom Mr. and Mrs. Shelby\nlittle suspected.\n\nCommunicating with their apartment was a large closet, opening by a door\ninto the outer passage. When Mrs. Shelby had dismissed Eliza for the\nnight, her feverish and excited mind had suggested the idea of this\ncloset; and she had hidden herself there, and, with her ear pressed\nclose against the crack of the door, had lost not a word of the\nconversation.\n\nWhen the voices died into silence, she rose and crept stealthily away.\nPale, shivering, with rigid features and compressed lips, she looked\nan entirely altered being from the soft and timid creature she had been\nhitherto. She moved cautiously along the entry, paused one moment at her\nmistress' door, and raised her hands in mute appeal to Heaven, and then\nturned and glided into her own room. It was a quiet, neat apartment,\non the same floor with her mistress. There was a pleasant sunny window,\nwhere she had often sat singing at her sewing; there a little case of\nbooks, and various little fancy articles, ranged by them, the gifts of\nChristmas holidays; there was her simple wardrobe in the closet and in\nthe drawers:--here was, in short, her home; and, on the whole, a happy\none it had been to her. But there, on the bed, lay her slumbering boy,\nhis long curls falling negligently around his unconscious face, his rosy\nmouth half open, his little fat hands thrown out over the bedclothes,\nand a smile spread like a sunbeam over his whole face.\n\n\"Poor boy! poor fellow!\" said Eliza; \"they have sold you! but your\nmother will save you yet!\"\n\nNo tear dropped over that pillow; in such straits as these, the heart\nhas no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in\nsilence. She took a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote, hastily,\n\n\"O, Missis! dear Missis! don't think me ungrateful,--don't think hard of\nme, any way,--I heard all you and master said tonight. I am going to try\nto save my boy--you will not blame me! God bless and reward you for all\nyour kindness!\"\n\nHastily folding and directing this, she went to a drawer and made up\na little package of clothing for her boy, which she tied with a\nhandkerchief firmly round her waist; and, so fond is a mother's\nremembrance, that, even in the terrors of that hour, she did not forget\nto put in the little package one or two of his favorite toys, reserving\na gayly painted parrot to amuse him, when she should be called on to\nawaken him. It was some trouble to arouse the little sleeper; but, after\nsome effort, he sat up, and was playing with his bird, while his mother\nwas putting on her bonnet and shawl.\n\n\"Where are you going, mother?\" said he, as she drew near the bed, with\nhis little coat and cap.\n\nHis mother drew near, and looked so earnestly into his eyes, that he at\nonce divined that something unusual was the matter.\n\n\"Hush, Harry,\" she said; \"mustn't speak loud, or they will hear us. A\nwicked man was coming to take little Harry away from his mother, and\ncarry him 'way off in the dark; but mother won't let him--she's going to\nput on her little boy's cap and coat, and run off with him, so the ugly\nman can't catch him.\"\n\nSaying these words, she had tied and buttoned on the child's simple\noutfit, and, taking him in her arms, she whispered to him to be\nvery still; and, opening a door in her room which led into the outer\nverandah, she glided noiselessly out.\n\nIt was a sparkling, frosty, starlight night, and the mother wrapped the\nshawl close round her child, as, perfectly quiet with vague terror, he\nclung round her neck.\n\nOld Bruno, a great Newfoundland, who slept at the end of the porch,\nrose, with a low growl, as she came near. She gently spoke his name,\nand the animal, an old pet and playmate of hers, instantly, wagging his\ntail, prepared to follow her, though apparently revolving much, in this\nsimple dog's head, what such an indiscreet midnight promenade might\nmean. Some dim ideas of imprudence or impropriety in the measure seemed\nto embarrass him considerably; for he often stopped, as Eliza glided\nforward, and looked wistfully, first at her and then at the house, and\nthen, as if reassured by reflection, he pattered along after her again.\nA few minutes brought them to the window of Uncle Tom's cottage, and\nEliza stopping, tapped lightly on the window-pane.\n\nThe prayer-meeting at Uncle Tom's had, in the order of hymn-singing,\nbeen protracted to a very late hour; and, as Uncle Tom had indulged\nhimself in a few lengthy solos afterwards, the consequence was, that,\nalthough it was now between twelve and one o'clock, he and his worthy\nhelpmeet were not yet asleep.\n\n\"Good Lord! what's that?\" said Aunt Chloe, starting up and hastily\ndrawing the curtain. \"My sakes alive, if it an't Lizy! Get on your\nclothes, old man, quick!--there's old Bruno, too, a pawin round; what on\nairth! I'm gwine to open the door.\"\n\nAnd suiting the action to the word, the door flew open, and the light\nof the tallow candle, which Tom had hastily lighted, fell on the haggard\nface and dark, wild eyes of the fugitive.\n\n\"Lord bless you!--I'm skeered to look at ye, Lizy! Are ye tuck sick, or\nwhat's come over ye?\"\n\n\"I'm running away--Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe--carrying off my\nchild--Master sold him!\"\n\n\"Sold him?\" echoed both, lifting up their hands in dismay.\n\n\"Yes, sold him!\" said Eliza, firmly; \"I crept into the closet by\nMistress' door tonight, and I heard Master tell Missis that he had sold\nmy Harry, and you, Uncle Tom, both, to a trader; and that he was going\noff this morning on his horse, and that the man was to take possession\ntoday.\"\n\nTom had stood, during this speech, with his hands raised, and his eyes\ndilated, like a man in a dream. Slowly and gradually, as its meaning\ncame over him, he collapsed, rather than seated himself, on his old\nchair, and sunk his head down upon his knees.\n\n\"The good Lord have pity on us!\" said Aunt Chloe. \"O! it don't seem as\nif it was true! What has he done, that Mas'r should sell _him_?\"\n\n\"He hasn't done anything,--it isn't for that. Master don't want to sell,\nand Missis she's always good. I heard her plead and beg for us; but he\ntold her 't was no use; that he was in this man's debt, and that this\nman had got the power over him; and that if he didn't pay him off clear,\nit would end in his having to sell the place and all the people, and\nmove off. Yes, I heard him say there was no choice between selling these\ntwo and selling all, the man was driving him so hard. Master said he was\nsorry; but oh, Missis--you ought to have heard her talk! If she an't a\nChristian and an angel, there never was one. I'm a wicked girl to leave\nher so; but, then, I can't help it. She said, herself, one soul was\nworth more than the world; and this boy has a soul, and if I let him be\ncarried off, who knows what'll become of it? It must be right: but, if\nit an't right, the Lord forgive me, for I can't help doing it!\"\n\n\"Well, old man!\" said Aunt Chloe, \"why don't you go, too? Will you\nwait to be toted down river, where they kill niggers with hard work and\nstarving? I'd a heap rather die than go there, any day! There's time for\nye,--be off with Lizy,--you've got a pass to come and go any time. Come,\nbustle up, and I'll get your things together.\"\n\nTom slowly raised his head, and looked sorrowfully but quietly around,\nand said,\n\n\"No, no--I an't going. Let Eliza go--it's her right! I wouldn't be the\none to say no--'tan't in _natur_ for her to stay; but you heard what she\nsaid! If I must be sold, or all the people on the place, and everything\ngo to rack, why, let me be sold. I s'pose I can bar it as well as\nany on 'em,\" he added, while something like a sob and a sigh shook his\nbroad, rough chest convulsively. \"Mas'r always found me on the spot--he\nalways will. I never have broke trust, nor used my pass no ways contrary\nto my word, and I never will. It's better for me alone to go, than to\nbreak up the place and sell all. Mas'r an't to blame, Chloe, and he'll\ntake care of you and the poor--\"\n\nHere he turned to the rough trundle bed full of little woolly heads, and\nbroke fairly down. He leaned over the back of the chair, and covered\nhis face with his large hands. Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the\nchair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor; just such\ntears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born\nson; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your\ndying babe. For, sir, he was a man,--and you are but another man. And,\nwoman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in\nlife's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!\n\n\"And now,\" said Eliza, as she stood in the door, \"I saw my husband\nonly this afternoon, and I little knew then what was to come. They have\npushed him to the very last standing place, and he told me, today, that\nhe was going to run away. Do try, if you can, to get word to him. Tell\nhim how I went, and why I went; and tell him I'm going to try and find\nCanada. You must give my love to him, and tell him, if I never see him\nagain,\" she turned away, and stood with her back to them for a moment,\nand then added, in a husky voice, \"tell him to be as good as he can, and\ntry and meet me in the kingdom of heaven.\"\n\n\"Call Bruno in there,\" she added. \"Shut the door on him, poor beast! He\nmustn't go with me!\"\n\nA few last words and tears, a few simple adieus and blessings, and\nclasping her wondering and affrighted child in her arms, she glided\nnoiselessly away.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nDiscovery\n\n\nMr. and Mrs. Shelby, after their protracted discussion of the night\nbefore, did not readily sink to repose, and, in consequence, slept\nsomewhat later than usual, the ensuing morning.\n\n\"I wonder what keeps Eliza,\" said Mrs. Shelby, after giving her bell\nrepeated pulls, to no purpose.\n\nMr. Shelby was standing before his dressing-glass, sharpening his razor;\nand just then the door opened, and a colored boy entered, with his\nshaving-water.\n\n\"Andy,\" said his mistress, \"step to Eliza's door, and tell her I have\nrung for her three times. Poor thing!\" she added, to herself, with a\nsigh.\n\nAndy soon returned, with eyes very wide in astonishment.\n\n\"Lor, Missis! Lizy's drawers is all open, and her things all lying every\nwhich way; and I believe she's just done clared out!\"\n\nThe truth flashed upon Mr. Shelby and his wife at the same moment. He\nexclaimed,\n\n\"Then she suspected it, and she's off!\"\n\n\"The Lord be thanked!\" said Mrs. Shelby. \"I trust she is.\"\n\n\"Wife, you talk like a fool! Really, it will be something pretty awkward\nfor me, if she is. Haley saw that I hesitated about selling this child,\nand he'll think I connived at it, to get him out of the way. It touches\nmy honor!\" And Mr. Shelby left the room hastily.\n\nThere was great running and ejaculating, and opening and shutting of\ndoors, and appearance of faces in all shades of color in different\nplaces, for about a quarter of an hour. One person only, who might have\nshed some light on the matter, was entirely silent, and that was the\nhead cook, Aunt Chloe. Silently, and with a heavy cloud settled down\nover her once joyous face, she proceeded making out her breakfast\nbiscuits, as if she heard and saw nothing of the excitement around her.\n\nVery soon, about a dozen young imps were roosting, like so many crows,\non the verandah railings, each one determined to be the first one to\napprize the strange Mas'r of his ill luck.\n\n\"He'll be rael mad, I'll be bound,\" said Andy.\n\n\"_Won't_ he swar!\" said little black Jake.\n\n\"Yes, for he _does_ swar,\" said woolly-headed Mandy. \"I hearn him\nyesterday, at dinner. I hearn all about it then, 'cause I got into the\ncloset where Missis keeps the great jugs, and I hearn every word.\" And\nMandy, who had never in her life thought of the meaning of a word she\nhad heard, more than a black cat, now took airs of superior wisdom,\nand strutted about, forgetting to state that, though actually coiled up\namong the jugs at the time specified, she had been fast asleep all the\ntime.\n\nWhen, at last, Haley appeared, booted and spurred, he was saluted with\nthe bad tidings on every hand. The young imps on the verandah were not\ndisappointed in their hope of hearing him \"swar,\" which he did with a\nfluency and fervency which delighted them all amazingly, as they\nducked and dodged hither and thither, to be out of the reach of his\nriding-whip; and, all whooping off together, they tumbled, in a pile of\nimmeasurable giggle, on the withered turf under the verandah, where they\nkicked up their heels and shouted to their full satisfaction.\n\n\"If I had the little devils!\" muttered Haley, between his teeth.\n\n\"But you ha'nt got 'em, though!\" said Andy, with a triumphant flourish,\nand making a string of indescribable mouths at the unfortunate trader's\nback, when he was fairly beyond hearing.\n\n\"I say now, Shelby, this yer 's a most extro'rnary business!\" said\nHaley, as he abruptly entered the parlor. \"It seems that gal 's off,\nwith her young un.\"\n\n\"Mr. Haley, Mrs. Shelby is present,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"I beg pardon, ma'am,\" said Haley, bowing slightly, with a still\nlowering brow; \"but still I say, as I said before, this yer's a sing'lar\nreport. Is it true, sir?\"\n\n\"Sir,\" said Mr. Shelby, \"if you wish to communicate with me, you must\nobserve something of the decorum of a gentleman. Andy, take Mr. Haley's\nhat and riding-whip. Take a seat, sir. Yes, sir; I regret to say that\nthe young woman, excited by overhearing, or having reported to her,\nsomething of this business, has taken her child in the night, and made\noff.\"\n\n\"I did expect fair dealing in this matter, I confess,\" said Haley.\n\n\"Well, sir,\" said Mr. Shelby, turning sharply round upon him, \"what am\nI to understand by that remark? If any man calls my honor in question, I\nhave but one answer for him.\"\n\nThe trader cowered at this, and in a somewhat lower tone said that \"it\nwas plaguy hard on a fellow, that had made a fair bargain, to be gulled\nthat way.\"\n\n\"Mr. Haley,\" said Mr. Shelby, \"if I did not think you had some cause\nfor disappointment, I should not have borne from you the rude and\nunceremonious style of your entrance into my parlor this morning. I say\nthus much, however, since appearances call for it, that I shall allow\nof no insinuations cast upon me, as if I were at all partner to any\nunfairness in this matter. Moreover, I shall feel bound to give you\nevery assistance, in the use of horses, servants, &c., in the recovery\nof your property. So, in short, Haley,\" said he, suddenly dropping from\nthe tone of dignified coolness to his ordinary one of easy frankness,\n\"the best way for you is to keep good-natured and eat some breakfast,\nand we will then see what is to be done.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby now rose, and said her engagements would prevent her being\nat the breakfast-table that morning; and, deputing a very respectable\nmulatto woman to attend to the gentlemen's coffee at the side-board, she\nleft the room.\n\n\"Old lady don't like your humble servant, over and above,\" said Haley,\nwith an uneasy effort to be very familiar.\n\n\"I am not accustomed to hear my wife spoken of with such freedom,\" said\nMr. Shelby, dryly.\n\n\"Beg pardon; of course, only a joke, you know,\" said Haley, forcing a\nlaugh.\n\n\"Some jokes are less agreeable than others,\" rejoined Shelby.\n\n\"Devilish free, now I've signed those papers, cuss him!\" muttered Haley\nto himself; \"quite grand, since yesterday!\"\n\nNever did fall of any prime minister at court occasion wider surges of\nsensation than the report of Tom's fate among his compeers on the place.\nIt was the topic in every mouth, everywhere; and nothing was done in\nthe house or in the field, but to discuss its probable results. Eliza's\nflight--an unprecedented event on the place--was also a great accessory\nin stimulating the general excitement.\n\nBlack Sam, as he was commonly called, from his being about three shades\nblacker than any other son of ebony on the place, was revolving\nthe matter profoundly in all its phases and bearings, with a\ncomprehensiveness of vision and a strict lookout to his own personal\nwell-being, that would have done credit to any white patriot in\nWashington.\n\n\"It's an ill wind dat blow nowhar,--dat ar a fact,\" said Sam,\nsententiously, giving an additional hoist to his pantaloons,\nand adroitly substituting a long nail in place of a missing\nsuspender-button, with which effort of mechanical genius he seemed\nhighly delighted.\n\n\"Yes, it's an ill wind blows nowhar,\" he repeated. \"Now, dar, Tom's\ndown--wal, course der's room for some nigger to be up--and why not\ndis nigger?--dat's de idee. Tom, a ridin' round de country--boots\nblacked--pass in his pocket--all grand as Cuffee--but who he? Now, why\nshouldn't Sam?--dat's what I want to know.\"\n\n\"Halloo, Sam--O Sam! Mas'r wants you to cotch Bill and Jerry,\" said\nAndy, cutting short Sam's soliloquy.\n\n\"High! what's afoot now, young un?\"\n\n\"Why, you don't know, I s'pose, that Lizy's cut stick, and clared out,\nwith her young un?\"\n\n\"You teach your granny!\" said Sam, with infinite contempt; \"knowed it a\nheap sight sooner than you did; this nigger an't so green, now!\"\n\n\"Well, anyhow, Mas'r wants Bill and Jerry geared right up; and you and I\n's to go with Mas'r Haley, to look arter her.\"\n\n\"Good, now! dat's de time o' day!\" said Sam. \"It's Sam dat's called\nfor in dese yer times. He's de nigger. See if I don't cotch her, now;\nMas'r'll see what Sam can do!\"\n\n\"Ah! but, Sam,\" said Andy, \"you'd better think twice; for Missis don't\nwant her cotched, and she'll be in yer wool.\"\n\n\"High!\" said Sam, opening his eyes. \"How you know dat?\"\n\n\"Heard her say so, my own self, dis blessed mornin', when I bring in\nMas'r's shaving-water. She sent me to see why Lizy didn't come to dress\nher; and when I telled her she was off, she jest ris up, and ses she,\n'The Lord be praised;' and Mas'r, he seemed rael mad, and ses he, 'Wife,\nyou talk like a fool.' But Lor! she'll bring him to! I knows well enough\nhow that'll be,--it's allers best to stand Missis' side the fence, now I\ntell yer.\"\n\nBlack Sam, upon this, scratched his woolly pate, which, if it did\nnot contain very profound wisdom, still contained a great deal of a\nparticular species much in demand among politicians of all complexions\nand countries, and vulgarly denominated \"knowing which side the bread is\nbuttered;\" so, stopping with grave consideration, he again gave a hitch\nto his pantaloons, which was his regularly organized method of assisting\nhis mental perplexities.\n\n\"Der an't no saying'--never--'bout no kind o' thing in _dis_ yer world,\"\nhe said, at last. Sam spoke like a philosopher, emphasizing _this_--as\nif he had had a large experience in different sorts of worlds, and\ntherefore had come to his conclusions advisedly.\n\n\"Now, sartin I'd a said that Missis would a scoured the varsal world\nafter Lizy,\" added Sam, thoughtfully.\n\n\"So she would,\" said Andy; \"but can't ye see through a ladder, ye black\nnigger? Missis don't want dis yer Mas'r Haley to get Lizy's boy; dat's\nde go!\"\n\n\"High!\" said Sam, with an indescribable intonation, known only to those\nwho have heard it among the negroes.\n\n\"And I'll tell yer more 'n all,\" said Andy; \"I specs you'd better be\nmaking tracks for dem hosses,--mighty sudden, too,---for I hearn Missis\n'quirin' arter yer,--so you've stood foolin' long enough.\"\n\nSam, upon this, began to bestir himself in real earnest, and after a\nwhile appeared, bearing down gloriously towards the house, with Bill and\nJerry in a full canter, and adroitly throwing himself off before they\nhad any idea of stopping, he brought them up alongside of the horse-post\nlike a tornado. Haley's horse, which was a skittish young colt, winced,\nand bounced, and pulled hard at his halter.\n\n\"Ho, ho!\" said Sam, \"skeery, ar ye?\" and his black visage lighted up\nwith a curious, mischievous gleam. \"I'll fix ye now!\" said he.\n\nThere was a large beech-tree overshadowing the place, and the small,\nsharp, triangular beech-nuts lay scattered thickly on the ground.\nWith one of these in his fingers, Sam approached the colt, stroked\nand patted, and seemed apparently busy in soothing his agitation. On\npretence of adjusting the saddle, he adroitly slipped under it the sharp\nlittle nut, in such a manner that the least weight brought upon the\nsaddle would annoy the nervous sensibilities of the animal, without\nleaving any perceptible graze or wound.\n\n\"Dar!\" he said, rolling his eyes with an approving grin; \"me fix 'em!\"\n\nAt this moment Mrs. Shelby appeared on the balcony, beckoning to him.\nSam approached with as good a determination to pay court as did ever\nsuitor after a vacant place at St. James' or Washington.\n\n\"Why have you been loitering so, Sam? I sent Andy to tell you to hurry.\"\n\n\"Lord bless you, Missis!\" said Sam, \"horses won't be cotched all in a\nminit; they'd done clared out way down to the south pasture, and the\nLord knows whar!\"\n\n\"Sam, how often must I tell you not to say 'Lord bless you, and the Lord\nknows,' and such things? It's wicked.\"\n\n\"O, Lord bless my soul! I done forgot, Missis! I won't say nothing of de\nsort no more.\"\n\n\"Why, Sam, you just _have_ said it again.\"\n\n\"Did I? O, Lord! I mean--I didn't go fur to say it.\"\n\n\"You must be _careful_, Sam.\"\n\n\"Just let me get my breath, Missis, and I'll start fair. I'll be bery\ncareful.\"\n\n\"Well, Sam, you are to go with Mr. Haley, to show him the road, and help\nhim. Be careful of the horses, Sam; you know Jerry was a little lame\nlast week; _don't ride them too fast_.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby spoke the last words with a low voice, and strong emphasis.\n\n\"Let dis child alone for dat!\" said Sam, rolling up his eyes with a\nvolume of meaning. \"Lord knows! High! Didn't say dat!\" said he, suddenly\ncatching his breath, with a ludicrous flourish of apprehension, which\nmade his mistress laugh, spite of herself. \"Yes, Missis, I'll look out\nfor de hosses!\"\n\n\"Now, Andy,\" said Sam, returning to his stand under the beech-trees,\n\"you see I wouldn't be 't all surprised if dat ar gen'lman's crittur\nshould gib a fling, by and by, when he comes to be a gettin' up. You\nknow, Andy, critturs _will_ do such things;\" and therewith Sam poked\nAndy in the side, in a highly suggestive manner.\n\n\"High!\" said Andy, with an air of instant appreciation.\n\n\"Yes, you see, Andy, Missis wants to make time,--dat ar's clar to der\nmost or'nary 'bserver. I jis make a little for her. Now, you see, get\nall dese yer hosses loose, caperin' permiscus round dis yer lot and down\nto de wood dar, and I spec Mas'r won't be off in a hurry.\"\n\nAndy grinned.\n\n\"Yer see,\" said Sam, \"yer see, Andy, if any such thing should happen as\nthat Mas'r Haley's horse _should_ begin to act contrary, and cut up, you\nand I jist lets go of our'n to help him, and _we'll help him_--oh yes!\"\nAnd Sam and Andy laid their heads back on their shoulders, and broke\ninto a low, immoderate laugh, snapping their fingers and flourishing\ntheir heels with exquisite delight.\n\nAt this instant, Haley appeared on the verandah. Somewhat mollified by\ncertain cups of very good coffee, he came out smiling and talking, in\ntolerably restored humor. Sam and Andy, clawing for certain fragmentary\npalm-leaves, which they were in the habit of considering as hats, flew\nto the horseposts, to be ready to \"help Mas'r.\"\n\nSam's palm-leaf had been ingeniously disentangled from all pretensions\nto braid, as respects its brim; and the slivers starting apart, and\nstanding upright, gave it a blazing air of freedom and defiance, quite\nequal to that of any Fejee chief; while the whole brim of Andy's being\ndeparted bodily, he rapped the crown on his head with a dexterous thump,\nand looked about well pleased, as if to say, \"Who says I haven't got a\nhat?\"\n\n\"Well, boys,\" said Haley, \"look alive now; we must lose no time.\"\n\n\"Not a bit of him, Mas'r!\" said Sam, putting Haley's rein in his hand,\nand holding his stirrup, while Andy was untying the other two horses.\n\nThe instant Haley touched the saddle, the mettlesome creature bounded\nfrom the earth with a sudden spring, that threw his master sprawling,\nsome feet off, on the soft, dry turf. Sam, with frantic ejaculations,\nmade a dive at the reins, but only succeeded in brushing the blazing\npalm-leaf afore-named into the horse's eyes, which by no means tended\nto allay the confusion of his nerves. So, with great vehemence, he\noverturned Sam, and, giving two or three contemptuous snorts, flourished\nhis heels vigorously in the air, and was soon prancing away towards the\nlower end of the lawn, followed by Bill and Jerry, whom Andy had not\nfailed to let loose, according to contract, speeding them off with\nvarious direful ejaculations. And now ensued a miscellaneous scene\nof confusion. Sam and Andy ran and shouted,--dogs barked here and\nthere,--and Mike, Mose, Mandy, Fanny, and all the smaller specimens\non the place, both male and female, raced, clapped hands, whooped, and\nshouted, with outrageous officiousness and untiring zeal.\n\nHaley's horse, which was a white one, and very fleet and spirited,\nappeared to enter into the spirit of the scene with great gusto; and\nhaving for his coursing ground a lawn of nearly half a mile in extent,\ngently sloping down on every side into indefinite woodland, he appeared\nto take infinite delight in seeing how near he could allow his pursuers\nto approach him, and then, when within a hand's breadth, whisk off with\na start and a snort, like a mischievous beast as he was and career far\ndown into some alley of the wood-lot. Nothing was further from Sam's\nmind than to have any one of the troop taken until such season as\nshould seem to him most befitting,--and the exertions that he made were\ncertainly most heroic. Like the sword of Coeur De Lion, which always\nblazed in the front and thickest of the battle, Sam's palm-leaf was to\nbe seen everywhere when there was the least danger that a horse could be\ncaught; there he would bear down full tilt, shouting, \"Now for it! cotch\nhim! cotch him!\" in a way that would set everything to indiscriminate\nrout in a moment.\n\nHaley ran up and down, and cursed and swore and stamped miscellaneously.\nMr. Shelby in vain tried to shout directions from the balcony, and Mrs.\nShelby from her chamber window alternately laughed and wondered,--not\nwithout some inkling of what lay at the bottom of all this confusion.\n\nAt last, about twelve o'clock, Sam appeared triumphant, mounted on\nJerry, with Haley's horse by his side, reeking with sweat, but with\nflashing eyes and dilated nostrils, showing that the spirit of freedom\nhad not yet entirely subsided.\n\n\"He's cotched!\" he exclaimed, triumphantly. \"If 't hadn't been for me,\nthey might a bust themselves, all on 'em; but I cotched him!\"\n\n\"You!\" growled Haley, in no amiable mood. \"If it hadn't been for you,\nthis never would have happened.\"\n\n\"Lord bless us, Mas'r,\" said Sam, in a tone of the deepest concern, \"and\nme that has been racin' and chasin' till the sweat jest pours off me!\"\n\n\"Well, well!\" said Haley, \"you've lost me near three hours, with your\ncursed nonsense. Now let's be off, and have no more fooling.\"\n\n\"Why, Mas'r,\" said Sam, in a deprecating tone, \"I believe you mean to\nkill us all clar, horses and all. Here we are all just ready to drop\ndown, and the critters all in a reek of sweat. Why, Mas'r won't think of\nstartin' on now till arter dinner. Mas'r's hoss wants rubben down; see\nhow he splashed hisself; and Jerry limps too; don't think Missis would\nbe willin' to have us start dis yer way, no how. Lord bless you, Mas'r,\nwe can ketch up, if we do stop. Lizy never was no great of a walker.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby, who, greatly to her amusement, had overheard this\nconversation from the verandah, now resolved to do her part. She came\nforward, and, courteously expressing her concern for Haley's accident,\npressed him to stay to dinner, saying that the cook should bring it on\nthe table immediately.\n\nThus, all things considered, Haley, with rather an equivocal grace,\nproceeded to the parlor, while Sam, rolling his eyes after him\nwith unutterable meaning, proceeded gravely with the horses to the\nstable-yard.\n\n\"Did yer see him, Andy? _did_ yer see him?\" said Sam, when he had got\nfairly beyond the shelter of the barn, and fastened the horse to a post.\n\"O, Lor, if it warn't as good as a meetin', now, to see him a dancin'\nand kickin' and swarin' at us. Didn't I hear him? Swar away, ole fellow\n(says I to myself ); will yer have yer hoss now, or wait till you cotch\nhim? (says I). Lor, Andy, I think I can see him now.\" And Sam and Andy\nleaned up against the barn and laughed to their hearts' content.\n\n\"Yer oughter seen how mad he looked, when I brought the hoss up.\nLord, he'd a killed me, if he durs' to; and there I was a standin' as\ninnercent and as humble.\"\n\n\"Lor, I seed you,\" said Andy; \"an't you an old hoss, Sam?\"\n\n\"Rather specks I am,\" said Sam; \"did yer see Missis up stars at the\nwinder? I seed her laughin'.\"\n\n\"I'm sure, I was racin' so, I didn't see nothing,\" said Andy.\n\n\"Well, yer see,\" said Sam, proceeding gravely to wash down Haley's pony,\n\"I 'se 'quired what yer may call a habit _o' bobservation_, Andy. It's a\nvery 'portant habit, Andy; and I 'commend yer to be cultivatin' it,\nnow yer young. Hist up that hind foot, Andy. Yer see, Andy, it's\n_bobservation_ makes all de difference in niggers. Didn't I see which\nway the wind blew dis yer mornin'? Didn't I see what Missis wanted,\nthough she never let on? Dat ar's bobservation, Andy. I 'spects it's\nwhat you may call a faculty. Faculties is different in different\npeoples, but cultivation of 'em goes a great way.\"\n\n\"I guess if I hadn't helped your bobservation dis mornin', yer wouldn't\nhave seen your way so smart,\" said Andy.\n\n\"Andy,\" said Sam, \"you's a promisin' child, der an't no manner o' doubt.\nI thinks lots of yer, Andy; and I don't feel no ways ashamed to take\nidees from you. We oughtenter overlook nobody, Andy, cause the smartest\non us gets tripped up sometimes. And so, Andy, let's go up to the house\nnow. I'll be boun' Missis'll give us an uncommon good bite, dis yer\ntime.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nThe Mother's Struggle\n\n\nIt is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate\nand forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's\ncabin.\n\nHer husband's suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all\nblended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she\nwas running, in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting\nloose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered. Then\nthere was the parting from every familiar object,--the place where she\nhad grown up, the trees under which she had played, the groves where\nshe had walked many an evening in happier days, by the side of her young\nhusband,--everything, as it lay in the clear, frosty starlight, seemed\nto speak reproachfully to her, and ask her whither could she go from a\nhome like that?\n\nBut stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of\nfrenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough\nto have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only\nhave led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out\nof her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a\nconvulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward.\n\nThe frosty ground creaked beneath her feet, and she trembled at the\nsound; every quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward\nto her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself\nat the strength that seemed to be come upon her; for she felt the weight\nof her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed\nto increase the supernatural power that bore her on, while from her\npale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend\nabove--\"Lord, help! Lord, save me!\"\n\nIf it were _your_ Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be\ntorn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning,--if you had seen the\nman, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had\nonly from twelve o'clock till morning to make good your escape,--how\nfast could _you_ walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief\nhours, with the darling at your bosom,--the little sleepy head on your\nshoulder,--the small, soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck?\n\nFor the child slept. At first, the novelty and alarm kept him waking;\nbut his mother so hurriedly repressed every breath or sound, and so\nassured him that if he were only still she would certainly save him,\nthat he clung quietly round her neck, only asking, as he found himself\nsinking to sleep,\n\n\"Mother, I don't need to keep awake, do I?\"\n\n\"No, my darling; sleep, if you want to.\"\n\n\"But, mother, if I do get asleep, you won't let him get me?\"\n\n\"No! so may God help me!\" said his mother, with a paler cheek, and a\nbrighter light in her large dark eyes.\n\n\"You're _sure_, an't you, mother?\"\n\n\"Yes, _sure_!\" said the mother, in a voice that startled herself; for it\nseemed to her to come from a spirit within, that was no part of her;\nand the boy dropped his little weary head on her shoulder, and was soon\nasleep. How the touch of those warm arms, the gentle breathings that\ncame in her neck, seemed to add fire and spirit to her movements! It\nseemed to her as if strength poured into her in electric streams,\nfrom every gentle touch and movement of the sleeping, confiding child.\nSublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can\nmake flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so\nthat the weak become so mighty.\n\nThe boundaries of the farm, the grove, the wood-lot, passed by her\ndizzily, as she walked on; and still she went, leaving one familiar\nobject after another, slacking not, pausing not, till reddening daylight\nfound her many a long mile from all traces of any familiar objects upon\nthe open highway.\n\nShe had often been, with her mistress, to visit some connections, in the\nlittle village of T----, not far from the Ohio river, and knew the road\nwell. To go thither, to escape across the Ohio river, were the first\nhurried outlines of her plan of escape; beyond that, she could only hope\nin God.\n\nWhen horses and vehicles began to move along the highway, with that\nalert perception peculiar to a state of excitement, and which seems to\nbe a sort of inspiration, she became aware that her headlong pace and\ndistracted air might bring on her remark and suspicion. She therefore\nput the boy on the ground, and, adjusting her dress and bonnet,\nshe walked on at as rapid a pace as she thought consistent with the\npreservation of appearances. In her little bundle she had provided a\nstore of cakes and apples, which she used as expedients for quickening\nthe speed of the child, rolling the apple some yards before them, when\nthe boy would run with all his might after it; and this ruse, often\nrepeated, carried them over many a half-mile.\n\nAfter a while, they came to a thick patch of woodland, through which\nmurmured a clear brook. As the child complained of hunger and thirst,\nshe climbed over the fence with him; and, sitting down behind a large\nrock which concealed them from the road, she gave him a breakfast out of\nher little package. The boy wondered and grieved that she could not eat;\nand when, putting his arms round her neck, he tried to wedge some of\nhis cake into her mouth, it seemed to her that the rising in her throat\nwould choke her.\n\n\"No, no, Harry darling! mother can't eat till you are safe! We must go\non--on--till we come to the river!\" And she hurried again into the road,\nand again constrained herself to walk regularly and composedly forward.\n\nShe was many miles past any neighborhood where she was personally known.\nIf she should chance to meet any who knew her, she reflected that\nthe well-known kindness of the family would be of itself a blind to\nsuspicion, as making it an unlikely supposition that she could be a\nfugitive. As she was also so white as not to be known as of colored\nlineage, without a critical survey, and her child was white also, it was\nmuch easier for her to pass on unsuspected.\n\nOn this presumption, she stopped at noon at a neat farmhouse, to rest\nherself, and buy some dinner for her child and self; for, as the danger\ndecreased with the distance, the supernatural tension of the nervous\nsystem lessened, and she found herself both weary and hungry.\n\nThe good woman, kindly and gossipping, seemed rather pleased than\notherwise with having somebody come in to talk with; and accepted,\nwithout examination, Eliza's statement, that she \"was going on a little\npiece, to spend a week with her friends,\"--all which she hoped in her\nheart might prove strictly true.\n\nAn hour before sunset, she entered the village of T----, by the Ohio\nriver, weary and foot-sore, but still strong in heart. Her first glance\nwas at the river, which lay, like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of\nliberty on the other side.\n\nIt was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great\ncakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid\nwaters. Owing to the peculiar form of the shore on the Kentucky side,\nthe land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and\ndetained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round\nthe bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming\na temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a\ngreat, undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost\nto the Kentucky shore.\n\nEliza stood, for a moment, contemplating this unfavorable aspect of\nthings, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from\nrunning, and then turned into a small public house on the bank, to make\na few inquiries.\n\nThe hostess, who was busy in various fizzing and stewing operations over\nthe fire, preparatory to the evening meal, stopped, with a fork in her\nhand, as Eliza's sweet and plaintive voice arrested her.\n\n\"What is it?\" she said.\n\n\"Isn't there any ferry or boat, that takes people over to B----, now?\"\nshe said.\n\n\"No, indeed!\" said the woman; \"the boats has stopped running.\"\n\nEliza's look of dismay and disappointment struck the woman, and she\nsaid, inquiringly,\n\n\"May be you're wanting to get over?--anybody sick? Ye seem mighty\nanxious?\"\n\n\"I've got a child that's very dangerous,\" said Eliza. \"I never heard of\nit till last night, and I've walked quite a piece today, in hopes to get\nto the ferry.\"\n\n\"Well, now, that's onlucky,\" said the woman, whose motherly sympathies\nwere much aroused; \"I'm re'lly consarned for ye. Solomon!\" she called,\nfrom the window, towards a small back building. A man, in leather apron\nand very dirty hands, appeared at the door.\n\n\"I say, Sol,\" said the woman, \"is that ar man going to tote them bar'ls\nover tonight?\"\n\n\"He said he should try, if 't was any way prudent,\" said the man.\n\n\"There's a man a piece down here, that's going over with some truck this\nevening, if he durs' to; he'll be in here to supper tonight, so you'd\nbetter set down and wait. That's a sweet little fellow,\" added the\nwoman, offering him a cake.\n\nBut the child, wholly exhausted, cried with weariness.\n\n\"Poor fellow! he isn't used to walking, and I've hurried him on so,\"\nsaid Eliza.\n\n\"Well, take him into this room,\" said the woman, opening into a small\nbed-room, where stood a comfortable bed. Eliza laid the weary boy upon\nit, and held his hands in hers till he was fast asleep. For her there\nwas no rest. As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged\nher on; and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters\nthat lay between her and liberty.\n\nHere we must take our leave of her for the present, to follow the course\nof her pursuers.\n\n\nThough Mrs. Shelby had promised that the dinner should be hurried on\ntable, yet it was soon seen, as the thing has often been seen before,\nthat it required more than one to make a bargain. So, although the order\nwas fairly given out in Haley's hearing, and carried to Aunt Chloe by at\nleast half a dozen juvenile messengers, that dignitary only gave certain\nvery gruff snorts, and tosses of her head, and went on with every\noperation in an unusually leisurely and circumstantial manner.\n\nFor some singular reason, an impression seemed to reign among the\nservants generally that Missis would not be particularly disobliged by\ndelay; and it was wonderful what a number of counter accidents occurred\nconstantly, to retard the course of things. One luckless wight contrived\nto upset the gravy; and then gravy had to be got up _de novo_, with\ndue care and formality, Aunt Chloe watching and stirring with dogged\nprecision, answering shortly, to all suggestions of haste, that she\n\"warn't a going to have raw gravy on the table, to help nobody's\ncatchings.\" One tumbled down with the water, and had to go to the spring\nfor more; and another precipitated the butter into the path of events;\nand there was from time to time giggling news brought into the kitchen\nthat \"Mas'r Haley was mighty oneasy, and that he couldn't sit in his\ncheer no ways, but was a walkin' and stalkin' to the winders and through\nthe porch.\"\n\n\"Sarves him right!\" said Aunt Chloe, indignantly. \"He'll get wus nor\noneasy, one of these days, if he don't mend his ways. _His_ master'll be\nsending for him, and then see how he'll look!\"\n\n\"He'll go to torment, and no mistake,\" said little Jake.\n\n\"He desarves it!\" said Aunt Chloe, grimly; \"he's broke a many, many,\nmany hearts,--I tell ye all!\" she said, stopping, with a fork uplifted\nin her hands; \"it's like what Mas'r George reads in Ravelations,--souls\na callin' under the altar! and a callin' on the Lord for vengeance on\nsich!--and by and by the Lord he'll hear 'em--so he will!\"\n\nAunt Chloe, who was much revered in the kitchen, was listened to with\nopen mouth; and, the dinner being now fairly sent in, the whole kitchen\nwas at leisure to gossip with her, and to listen to her remarks.\n\n\"Sich'll be burnt up forever, and no mistake; won't ther?\" said Andy.\n\n\"I'd be glad to see it, I'll be boun',\" said little Jake.\n\n\"Chil'en!\" said a voice, that made them all start. It was Uncle Tom, who\nhad come in, and stood listening to the conversation at the door.\n\n\"Chil'en!\" he said, \"I'm afeard you don't know what ye're sayin'.\nForever is a _dre'ful_ word, chil'en; it's awful to think on 't. You\noughtenter wish that ar to any human crittur.\"\n\n\"We wouldn't to anybody but the soul-drivers,\" said Andy; \"nobody can\nhelp wishing it to them, they 's so awful wicked.\"\n\n\"Don't natur herself kinder cry out on 'em?\" said Aunt Chloe. \"Don't dey\ntear der suckin' baby right off his mother's breast, and sell him, and\nder little children as is crying and holding on by her clothes,--don't\ndey pull 'em off and sells 'em? Don't dey tear wife and husband apart?\"\nsaid Aunt Chloe, beginning to cry, \"when it's jest takin' the very life\non 'em?--and all the while does they feel one bit, don't dey drink and\nsmoke, and take it oncommon easy? Lor, if the devil don't get them,\nwhat's he good for?\" And Aunt Chloe covered her face with her checked\napron, and began to sob in good earnest.\n\n\"Pray for them that 'spitefully use you, the good book says,\" says Tom.\n\n\"Pray for 'em!\" said Aunt Chloe; \"Lor, it's too tough! I can't pray for\n'em.\"\n\n\"It's natur, Chloe, and natur 's strong,\" said Tom, \"but the Lord's\ngrace is stronger; besides, you oughter think what an awful state a poor\ncrittur's soul 's in that'll do them ar things,--you oughter thank\nGod that you an't _like_ him, Chloe. I'm sure I'd rather be sold, ten\nthousand times over, than to have all that ar poor crittur's got to\nanswer for.\"\n\n\"So 'd I, a heap,\" said Jake. \"Lor, _shouldn't_ we cotch it, Andy?\"\n\nAndy shrugged his shoulders, and gave an acquiescent whistle.\n\n\"I'm glad Mas'r didn't go off this morning, as he looked to,\" said Tom;\n\"that ar hurt me more than sellin', it did. Mebbe it might have been\nnatural for him, but 't would have come desp't hard on me, as has known\nhim from a baby; but I've seen Mas'r, and I begin ter feel sort o'\nreconciled to the Lord's will now. Mas'r couldn't help hisself; he did\nright, but I'm feared things will be kinder goin' to rack, when I'm gone\nMas'r can't be spected to be a pryin' round everywhar, as I've done, a\nkeepin' up all the ends. The boys all means well, but they 's powerful\ncar'less. That ar troubles me.\"\n\nThe bell here rang, and Tom was summoned to the parlor.\n\n\"Tom,\" said his master, kindly, \"I want you to notice that I give this\ngentleman bonds to forfeit a thousand dollars if you are not on the spot\nwhen he wants you; he's going today to look after his other business,\nand you can have the day to yourself. Go anywhere you like, boy.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Mas'r,\" said Tom.\n\n\"And mind yourself,\" said the trader, \"and don't come it over your\nmaster with any o' yer nigger tricks; for I'll take every cent out of\nhim, if you an't thar. If he'd hear to me, he wouldn't trust any on\nye--slippery as eels!\"\n\n\"Mas'r,\" said Tom,--and he stood very straight,--\"I was jist eight years\nold when ole Missis put you into my arms, and you wasn't a year old.\n'Thar,' says she, 'Tom, that's to be _your_ young Mas'r; take good care\non him,' says she. And now I jist ask you, Mas'r, have I ever broke word\nto you, or gone contrary to you, 'specially since I was a Christian?\"\n\nMr. Shelby was fairly overcome, and the tears rose to his eyes.\n\n\"My good boy,\" said he, \"the Lord knows you say but the truth; and if I\nwas able to help it, all the world shouldn't buy you.\"\n\n\"And sure as I am a Christian woman,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"you shall be\nredeemed as soon as I can any way bring together means. Sir,\" she said to\nHaley, \"take good account of who you sell him to, and let me know.\"\n\n\"Lor, yes, for that matter,\" said the trader, \"I may bring him up in a\nyear, not much the wuss for wear, and trade him back.\"\n\n\"I'll trade with you then, and make it for your advantage,\" said Mrs.\nShelby.\n\n\"Of course,\" said the trader, \"all 's equal with me; li'ves trade 'em\nup as down, so I does a good business. All I want is a livin', you know,\nma'am; that's all any on us wants, I, s'pose.\"\n\nMr. and Mrs. Shelby both felt annoyed and degraded by the familiar\nimpudence of the trader, and yet both saw the absolute necessity of\nputting a constraint on their feelings. The more hopelessly sordid and\ninsensible he appeared, the greater became Mrs. Shelby's dread of his\nsucceeding in recapturing Eliza and her child, and of course the greater\nher motive for detaining him by every female artifice. She therefore\ngraciously smiled, assented, chatted familiarly, and did all she could\nto make time pass imperceptibly.\n\nAt two o'clock Sam and Andy brought the horses up to the posts,\napparently greatly refreshed and invigorated by the scamper of the\nmorning.\n\nSam was there new oiled from dinner, with an abundance of zealous\nand ready officiousness. As Haley approached, he was boasting, in\nflourishing style, to Andy, of the evident and eminent success of the\noperation, now that he had \"farly come to it.\"\n\n\"Your master, I s'pose, don't keep no dogs,\" said Haley, thoughtfully,\nas he prepared to mount.\n\n\"Heaps on 'em,\" said Sam, triumphantly; \"thar's Bruno--he's a roarer!\nand, besides that, 'bout every nigger of us keeps a pup of some natur or\nuther.\"\n\n\"Poh!\" said Haley,--and he said something else, too, with regard to the\nsaid dogs, at which Sam muttered,\n\n\"I don't see no use cussin' on 'em, no way.\"\n\n\"But your master don't keep no dogs (I pretty much know he don't) for\ntrackin' out niggers.\"\n\nSam knew exactly what he meant, but he kept on a look of earnest and\ndesperate simplicity.\n\n\"Our dogs all smells round considable sharp. I spect they's the kind,\nthough they han't never had no practice. They 's _far_ dogs, though,\nat most anything, if you'd get 'em started. Here, Bruno,\" he called,\nwhistling to the lumbering Newfoundland, who came pitching tumultuously\ntoward them.\n\n\"You go hang!\" said Haley, getting up. \"Come, tumble up now.\"\n\nSam tumbled up accordingly, dexterously contriving to tickle Andy as\nhe did so, which occasioned Andy to split out into a laugh, greatly to\nHaley's indignation, who made a cut at him with his riding-whip.\n\n\"I 's 'stonished at yer, Andy,\" said Sam, with awful gravity. \"This\nyer's a seris bisness, Andy. Yer mustn't be a makin' game. This yer an't\nno way to help Mas'r.\"\n\n\"I shall take the straight road to the river,\" said Haley, decidedly,\nafter they had come to the boundaries of the estate. \"I know the way of\nall of 'em,--they makes tracks for the underground.\"\n\n\"Sartin,\" said Sam, \"dat's de idee. Mas'r Haley hits de thing right\nin de middle. Now, der's two roads to de river,--de dirt road and der\npike,--which Mas'r mean to take?\"\n\nAndy looked up innocently at Sam, surprised at hearing this new\ngeographical fact, but instantly confirmed what he said, by a vehement\nreiteration.\n\n\"Cause,\" said Sam, \"I'd rather be 'clined to 'magine that Lizy 'd take\nde dirt road, bein' it's the least travelled.\"\n\nHaley, notwithstanding that he was a very old bird, and naturally\ninclined to be suspicious of chaff, was rather brought up by this view\nof the case.\n\n\"If yer warn't both on yer such cussed liars, now!\" he said,\ncontemplatively as he pondered a moment.\n\nThe pensive, reflective tone in which this was spoken appeared to\namuse Andy prodigiously, and he drew a little behind, and shook so as\napparently to run a great risk of failing off his horse, while Sam's\nface was immovably composed into the most doleful gravity.\n\n\"Course,\" said Sam, \"Mas'r can do as he'd ruther, go de straight road,\nif Mas'r thinks best,--it's all one to us. Now, when I study 'pon it, I\nthink de straight road de best, _deridedly_.\"\n\n\"She would naturally go a lonesome way,\" said Haley, thinking aloud, and\nnot minding Sam's remark.\n\n\"Dar an't no sayin',\" said Sam; \"gals is pecular; they never does\nnothin' ye thinks they will; mose gen'lly the contrary. Gals is nat'lly\nmade contrary; and so, if you thinks they've gone one road, it is sartin\nyou'd better go t' other, and then you'll be sure to find 'em. Now, my\nprivate 'pinion is, Lizy took der road; so I think we'd better take de\nstraight one.\"\n\nThis profound generic view of the female sex did not seem to dispose\nHaley particularly to the straight road, and he announced decidedly that\nhe should go the other, and asked Sam when they should come to it.\n\n\"A little piece ahead,\" said Sam, giving a wink to Andy with the eye\nwhich was on Andy's side of the head; and he added, gravely, \"but I've\nstudded on de matter, and I'm quite clar we ought not to go dat ar way.\nI nebber been over it no way. It's despit lonesome, and we might lose\nour way,--whar we'd come to, de Lord only knows.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless,\" said Haley, \"I shall go that way.\"\n\n\"Now I think on 't, I think I hearn 'em tell that dat ar road was all\nfenced up and down by der creek, and thar, an't it, Andy?\"\n\nAndy wasn't certain; he'd only \"hearn tell\" about that road, but never\nbeen over it. In short, he was strictly noncommittal.\n\nHaley, accustomed to strike the balance of probabilities between lies\nof greater or lesser magnitude, thought that it lay in favor of the dirt\nroad aforesaid. The mention of the thing he thought he perceived\nwas involuntary on Sam's part at first, and his confused attempts to\ndissuade him he set down to a desperate lying on second thoughts, as\nbeing unwilling to implicate Liza.\n\nWhen, therefore, Sam indicated the road, Haley plunged briskly into it,\nfollowed by Sam and Andy.\n\nNow, the road, in fact, was an old one, that had formerly been a\nthoroughfare to the river, but abandoned for many years after the laying\nof the new pike. It was open for about an hour's ride, and after that it\nwas cut across by various farms and fences. Sam knew this fact perfectly\nwell,--indeed, the road had been so long closed up, that Andy had never\nheard of it. He therefore rode along with an air of dutiful submission,\nonly groaning and vociferating occasionally that 't was \"desp't rough,\nand bad for Jerry's foot.\"\n\n\"Now, I jest give yer warning,\" said Haley, \"I know yer; yer won't get\nme to turn off this road, with all yer fussin'--so you shet up!\"\n\n\"Mas'r will go his own way!\" said Sam, with rueful submission, at the\nsame time winking most portentously to Andy, whose delight was now very\nnear the explosive point.\n\nSam was in wonderful spirits,--professed to keep a very brisk\nlookout,--at one time exclaiming that he saw \"a gal's bonnet\" on the top\nof some distant eminence, or calling to Andy \"if that thar wasn't 'Lizy'\ndown in the hollow;\" always making these exclamations in some rough\nor craggy part of the road, where the sudden quickening of speed was a\nspecial inconvenience to all parties concerned, and thus keeping Haley\nin a state of constant commotion.\n\nAfter riding about an hour in this way, the whole party made a\nprecipitate and tumultuous descent into a barn-yard belonging to a large\nfarming establishment. Not a soul was in sight, all the hands being\nemployed in the fields; but, as the barn stood conspicuously and plainly\nsquare across the road, it was evident that their journey in that\ndirection had reached a decided finale.\n\n\"Wan't dat ar what I telled Mas'r?\" said Sam, with an air of injured\ninnocence. \"How does strange gentleman spect to know more about a\ncountry dan de natives born and raised?\"\n\n\"You rascal!\" said Haley, \"you knew all about this.\"\n\n\"Didn't I tell yer I _knowd_, and yer wouldn't believe me? I telled\nMas'r 't was all shet up, and fenced up, and I didn't spect we could get\nthrough,--Andy heard me.\"\n\nIt was all too true to be disputed, and the unlucky man had to pocket\nhis wrath with the best grace he was able, and all three faced to the\nright about, and took up their line of march for the highway.\n\nIn consequence of all the various delays, it was about three-quarters\nof an hour after Eliza had laid her child to sleep in the village tavern\nthat the party came riding into the same place. Eliza was standing\nby the window, looking out in another direction, when Sam's quick eye\ncaught a glimpse of her. Haley and Andy were two yards behind. At this\ncrisis, Sam contrived to have his hat blown off, and uttered a loud\nand characteristic ejaculation, which startled her at once; she drew\nsuddenly back; the whole train swept by the window, round to the front\ndoor.\n\nA thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza.\nHer room opened by a side door to the river. She caught her child, and\nsprang down the steps towards it. The trader caught a full glimpse of\nher just as she was disappearing down the bank; and throwing himself\nfrom his horse, and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her\nlike a hound after a deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce\nseemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water's\nedge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God\ngives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap, she\nvaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of\nice beyond. It was a desperate leap--impossible to anything but madness\nand despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy, instinctively cried out, and\nlifted up their hands, as she did it.\n\nThe huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked\nas her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild\ncries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;\nstumbling--leaping--slipping--springing upwards again! Her shoes are\ngone--her stockings cut from her feet--while blood marked every step;\nbut she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw\nthe Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.\n\n\"Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!\" said the man, with an oath.\n\nEliza recognized the voice and face for a man who owned a farm not far\nfrom her old home.\n\n\"O, Mr. Symmes!--save me--do save me--do hide me!\" said Elia.\n\n\"Why, what's this?\" said the man. \"Why, if 'tan't Shelby's gal!\"\n\n\"My child!--this boy!--he'd sold him! There is his Mas'r,\" said she,\npointing to the Kentucky shore. \"O, Mr. Symmes, you've got a little\nboy!\"\n\n\"So I have,\" said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the\nsteep bank. \"Besides, you're a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I\nsee it.\"\n\nWhen they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.\n\n\"I'd be glad to do something for ye,\" said he; \"but then there's nowhar\nI could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go _thar_,\" said\nhe, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main\nstreet of the village. \"Go thar; they're kind folks. Thar's no kind o'\ndanger but they'll help you,--they're up to all that sort o' thing.\"\n\n\"The Lord bless you!\" said Eliza, earnestly.\n\n\"No 'casion, no 'casion in the world,\" said the man. \"What I've done's\nof no 'count.\"\n\n\"And, oh, surely, sir, you won't tell any one!\"\n\n\"Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? In course not,\" said\nthe man. \"Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you are.\nYou've arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all me.\"\n\nThe woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly\naway. The man stood and looked after her.\n\n\"Shelby, now, mebbe won't think this yer the most neighborly thing in\nthe world; but what's a feller to do? If he catches one of my gals in\nthe same fix, he's welcome to pay back. Somehow I never could see no\nkind o' critter a strivin' and pantin', and trying to clar theirselves,\nwith the dogs arter 'em and go agin 'em. Besides, I don't see no kind of\n'casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither.\"\n\nSo spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed\nin his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into\nacting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better\nsituated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.\n\nHaley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza\nhad disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on\nSam and Andy.\n\n\"That ar was a tolable fair stroke of business,\" said Sam.\n\n\"The gal 's got seven devils in her, I believe!\" said Haley. \"How like a\nwildcat she jumped!\"\n\n\"Wal, now,\" said Sam, scratching his head, \"I hope Mas'r'll 'scuse us\ntrying dat ar road. Don't think I feel spry enough for dat ar, no way!\"\nand Sam gave a hoarse chuckle.\n\n\"_You_ laugh!\" said the trader, with a growl.\n\n\"Lord bless you, Mas'r, I couldn't help it now,\" said Sam, giving way to\nthe long pent-up delight of his soul. \"She looked so curi's, a leapin'\nand springin'--ice a crackin'--and only to hear her,--plump! ker chunk!\nker splash! Spring! Lord! how she goes it!\" and Sam and Andy laughed\ntill the tears rolled down their cheeks.\n\n\"I'll make ye laugh t' other side yer mouths!\" said the trader, laying\nabout their heads with his riding-whip.\n\nBoth ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their horses\nbefore he was up.\n\n\"Good-evening, Mas'r!\" said Sam, with much gravity. \"I berry much spect\nMissis be anxious 'bout Jerry. Mas'r Haley won't want us no longer.\nMissis wouldn't hear of our ridin' the critters over Lizy's bridge\ntonight;\" and, with a facetious poke into Andy's ribs, he started off,\nfollowed by the latter, at full speed,--their shouts of laughter coming\nfaintly on the wind.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nEliza's Escape\n\n\nEliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk\nof twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river,\nenveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current\nand floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her\nand her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned\nto the little tavern, to ponder further what was to be done. The woman\nopened to him the door of a little parlor, covered with a rag carpet,\nwhere stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank,\nhigh-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colors\non the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood\nsettle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley sat\nhim down to meditate on the instability of human hopes and happiness in\ngeneral.\n\n\"What did I want with the little cuss, now,\" he said to himself, \"that\nI should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?\" and\nHaley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of\nimprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible\nreason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter of taste, omit.\n\nHe was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man who was\napparently dismounting at the door. He hurried to the window.\n\n\"By the land! if this yer an't the nearest, now, to what I've heard\nfolks call Providence,\" said Haley. \"I do b'lieve that ar's Tom Loker.\"\n\nHaley hastened out. Standing by the bar, in the corner of the room,\nwas a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and broad in\nproportion. He was dressed in a coat of buffalo-skin, made with the hair\noutward, which gave him a shaggy and fierce appearance, perfectly in\nkeeping with the whole air of his physiognomy. In the head and face\nevery organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating violence\nwas in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed, could our\nreaders fancy a bull-dog come unto man's estate, and walking about in\na hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general style and\neffect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling companion,\nin many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short and slender,\nlithe and catlike in his motions, and had a peering, mousing expression\nabout his keen black eyes, with which every feature of his face seemed\nsharpened into sympathy; his thin, long nose, ran out as if it was eager\nto bore into the nature of things in general; his sleek, thin, black\nhair was stuck eagerly forward, and all his motions and evolutions\nexpressed a dry, cautious acuteness. The great man poured out a big\ntumbler half full of raw spirits, and gulped it down without a word. The\nlittle man stood tiptoe, and putting his head first to one side and then\nthe other, and snuffing considerately in the directions of the various\nbottles, ordered at last a mint julep, in a thin and quivering voice,\nand with an air of great circumspection. When poured out, he took it and\nlooked at it with a sharp, complacent air, like a man who thinks he has\ndone about the right thing, and hit the nail on the head, and proceeded\nto dispose of it in short and well-advised sips.\n\n\"Wal, now, who'd a thought this yer luck 'ad come to me? Why, Loker, how\nare ye?\" said Haley, coming forward, and extending his hand to the big\nman.\n\n\"The devil!\" was the civil reply. \"What brought you here, Haley?\"\n\nThe mousing man, who bore the name of Marks, instantly stopped his\nsipping, and, poking his head forward, looked shrewdly on the new\nacquaintance, as a cat sometimes looks at a moving dry leaf, or some\nother possible object of pursuit.\n\n\"I say, Tom, this yer's the luckiest thing in the world. I'm in a devil\nof a hobble, and you must help me out.\"\n\n\"Ugh? aw! like enough!\" grunted his complacent acquaintance. \"A body may\nbe pretty sure of that, when _you're_ glad to see 'em; something to be\nmade off of 'em. What's the blow now?\"\n\n\"You've got a friend here?\" said Haley, looking doubtfully at Marks;\n\"partner, perhaps?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have. Here, Marks! here's that ar feller that I was in with in\nNatchez.\"\n\n\"Shall be pleased with his acquaintance,\" said Marks, thrusting out a\nlong, thin hand, like a raven's claw. \"Mr. Haley, I believe?\"\n\n\"The same, sir,\" said Haley. \"And now, gentlemen, seein' as we've met so\nhappily, I think I'll stand up to a small matter of a treat in this here\nparlor. So, now, old coon,\" said he to the man at the bar, \"get us hot\nwater, and sugar, and cigars, and plenty of the _real stuff_ and we'll\nhave a blow-out.\"\n\nBehold, then, the candles lighted, the fire stimulated to the burning\npoint in the grate, and our three worthies seated round a table, well\nspread with all the accessories to good fellowship enumerated before.\n\nHaley began a pathetic recital of his peculiar troubles. Loker shut up\nhis mouth, and listened to him with gruff and surly attention. Marks,\nwho was anxiously and with much fidgeting compounding a tumbler of punch\nto his own peculiar taste, occasionally looked up from his employment,\nand, poking his sharp nose and chin almost into Haley's face, gave the\nmost earnest heed to the whole narrative. The conclusion of it appeared\nto amuse him extremely, for he shook his shoulders and sides in silence,\nand perked up his thin lips with an air of great internal enjoyment.\n\n\"So, then, ye'r fairly sewed up, an't ye?\" he said; \"he! he! he! It's\nneatly done, too.\"\n\n\"This yer young-un business makes lots of trouble in the trade,\" said\nHaley, dolefully.\n\n\"If we could get a breed of gals that didn't care, now, for their young\nuns,\" said Marks; \"tell ye, I think 't would be 'bout the greatest\nmod'rn improvement I knows on,\"--and Marks patronized his joke by a\nquiet introductory sniggle.\n\n\"Jes so,\" said Haley; \"I never couldn't see into it; young uns is heaps\nof trouble to 'em; one would think, now, they'd be glad to get clar on\n'em; but they arn't. And the more trouble a young un is, and the more\ngood for nothing, as a gen'l thing, the tighter they sticks to 'em.\"\n\n\"Wal, Mr. Haley,\" said Marks, \"'est pass the hot water. Yes, sir, you\nsay 'est what I feel and all'us have. Now, I bought a gal once, when\nI was in the trade,--a tight, likely wench she was, too, and quite\nconsiderable smart,--and she had a young un that was mis'able sickly; it\nhad a crooked back, or something or other; and I jest gin 't away to\na man that thought he'd take his chance raising on 't, being it didn't\ncost nothin';--never thought, yer know, of the gal's takin' on about\nit,--but, Lord, yer oughter seen how she went on. Why, re'lly, she did\nseem to me to valley the child more 'cause _'t was_ sickly and cross,\nand plagued her; and she warn't making b'lieve, neither,--cried about\nit, she did, and lopped round, as if she'd lost every friend she had.\nIt re'lly was droll to think on 't. Lord, there ain't no end to women's\nnotions.\"\n\n\"Wal, jest so with me,\" said Haley. \"Last summer, down on Red River, I\ngot a gal traded off on me, with a likely lookin' child enough, and his\neyes looked as bright as yourn; but, come to look, I found him stone\nblind. Fact--he was stone blind. Wal, ye see, I thought there warn't no\nharm in my jest passing him along, and not sayin' nothin'; and I'd got\nhim nicely swapped off for a keg o' whiskey; but come to get him away\nfrom the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So 't was before we started,\nand I hadn't got my gang chained up; so what should she do but ups on\na cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the deck hands,\nand, I tell ye, she made all fly for a minit, till she saw 't wan't no\nuse; and she jest turns round, and pitches head first, young un and all,\ninto the river,--went down plump, and never ris.\"\n\n\"Bah!\" said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with\nill-repressed disgust,--\"shif'less, both on ye! _my_ gals don't cut up\nno such shines, I tell ye!\"\n\n\"Indeed! how do you help it?\" said Marks, briskly.\n\n\"Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she's got a young un to be sold, I\njest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says, 'Look here, now,\nif you give me one word out of your head, I'll smash yer face in. I\nwon't hear one word--not the beginning of a word.' I says to 'em, 'This\nyer young un's mine, and not yourn, and you've no kind o' business with\nit. I'm going to sell it, first chance; mind, you don't cut up none o'\nyer shines about it, or I'll make ye wish ye'd never been born.' I tell\nye, they sees it an't no play, when I gets hold. I makes 'em as whist as\nfishes; and if one on 'em begins and gives a yelp, why,--\" and Mr. Loker\nbrought down his fist with a thump that fully explained the hiatus.\n\n\"That ar's what ye may call _emphasis_,\" said Marks, poking Haley in the\nside, and going into another small giggle. \"An't Tom peculiar? he! he! I\nsay, Tom, I s'pect you make 'em _understand_, for all niggers' heads is\nwoolly. They don't never have no doubt o' your meaning, Tom. If you an't\nthe devil, Tom, you 's his twin brother, I'll say that for ye!\"\n\nTom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and began to look\nas affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says, \"with his doggish\nnature.\"\n\nHaley, who had been imbibing very freely of the staple of the evening,\nbegan to feel a sensible elevation and enlargement of his moral\nfaculties,--a phenomenon not unusual with gentlemen of a serious and\nreflective turn, under similar circumstances.\n\n\"Wal, now, Tom,\" he said, \"ye re'lly is too bad, as I al'ays have told\nye; ye know, Tom, you and I used to talk over these yer matters down in\nNatchez, and I used to prove to ye that we made full as much, and was as\nwell off for this yer world, by treatin' on 'em well, besides keepin'\na better chance for comin' in the kingdom at last, when wust comes to\nwust, and thar an't nothing else left to get, ye know.\"\n\n\"Boh!\" said Tom, \"_don't_ I know?--don't make me too sick with any yer\nstuff,--my stomach is a leetle riled now;\" and Tom drank half a glass of\nraw brandy.\n\n\"I say,\" said Haley, and leaning back in his chair and gesturing\nimpressively, \"I'll say this now, I al'ays meant to drive my trade so as\nto make money on 't _fust and foremost_, as much as any man; but, then,\ntrade an't everything, and money an't everything, 'cause we 's all got\nsouls. I don't care, now, who hears me say it,--and I think a cussed\nsight on it,--so I may as well come out with it. I b'lieve in religion,\nand one of these days, when I've got matters tight and snug, I\ncalculates to tend to my soul and them ar matters; and so what's the use\nof doin' any more wickedness than 's re'lly necessary?--it don't seem to\nme it's 't all prudent.\"\n\n\"Tend to yer soul!\" repeated Tom, contemptuously; \"take a bright lookout\nto find a soul in you,--save yourself any care on that score. If the\ndevil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won't find one.\"\n\n\"Why, Tom, you're cross,\" said Haley; \"why can't ye take it pleasant,\nnow, when a feller's talking for your good?\"\n\n\"Stop that ar jaw o' yourn, there,\" said Tom, gruffly. \"I can stand most\nany talk o' yourn but your pious talk,--that kills me right up. After\nall, what's the odds between me and you? 'Tan't that you care one bit\nmore, or have a bit more feelin'--it's clean, sheer, dog meanness,\nwanting to cheat the devil and save your own skin; don't I see through\nit? And your 'gettin' religion,' as you call it, arter all, is too\np'isin mean for any crittur;--run up a bill with the devil all your\nlife, and then sneak out when pay time comes! Bob!\"\n\n\"Come, come, gentlemen, I say; this isn't business,\" said Marks.\n\"There's different ways, you know, of looking at all subjects. Mr. Haley\nis a very nice man, no doubt, and has his own conscience; and, Tom, you\nhave your ways, and very good ones, too, Tom; but quarrelling, you know,\nwon't answer no kind of purpose. Let's go to business. Now, Mr. Haley,\nwhat is it?--you want us to undertake to catch this yer gal?\"\n\n\"The gal's no matter of mine,--she's Shelby's; it's only the boy. I was\na fool for buying the monkey!\"\n\n\"You're generally a fool!\" said Tom, gruffly.\n\n\"Come, now, Loker, none of your huffs,\" said Marks, licking his lips;\n\"you see, Mr. Haley 's a puttin' us in a way of a good job, I reckon;\njust hold still--these yer arrangements is my forte. This yer gal, Mr.\nHaley, how is she? what is she?\"\n\n\"Wal! white and handsome--well brought up. I'd a gin Shelby eight\nhundred or a thousand, and then made well on her.\"\n\n\"White and handsome--well brought up!\" said Marks, his sharp eyes,\nnose and mouth, all alive with enterprise. \"Look here, now, Loker, a\nbeautiful opening. We'll do a business here on our own account;--we does\nthe catchin'; the boy, of course, goes to Mr. Haley,--we takes the gal\nto Orleans to speculate on. An't it beautiful?\"\n\nTom, whose great heavy mouth had stood ajar during this communication,\nnow suddenly snapped it together, as a big dog closes on a piece of\nmeat, and seemed to be digesting the idea at his leisure.\n\n\"Ye see,\" said Marks to Haley, stirring his punch as he did so, \"ye see,\nwe has justices convenient at all p'ints along shore, that does up any\nlittle jobs in our line quite reasonable. Tom, he does the knockin' down\nand that ar; and I come in all dressed up--shining boots--everything\nfirst chop, when the swearin' 's to be done. You oughter see, now,\" said\nMarks, in a glow of professional pride, \"how I can tone it off. One day,\nI'm Mr. Twickem, from New Orleans; 'nother day, I'm just come from my\nplantation on Pearl River, where I works seven hundred niggers; then,\nagain, I come out a distant relation of Henry Clay, or some old cock in\nKentuck. Talents is different, you know. Now, Tom's roarer when there's\nany thumping or fighting to be done; but at lying he an't good, Tom\nan't,--ye see it don't come natural to him; but, Lord, if thar's a\nfeller in the country that can swear to anything and everything, and put\nin all the circumstances and flourishes with a long face, and carry 't\nthrough better 'n I can, why, I'd like to see him, that's all! I b'lieve\nmy heart, I could get along and snake through, even if justices were\nmore particular than they is. Sometimes I rather wish they was more\nparticular; 't would be a heap more relishin' if they was,--more fun,\nyer know.\"\n\nTom Loker, who, as we have made it appear, was a man of slow thoughts\nand movements, here interrupted Marks by bringing his heavy fist down on\nthe table, so as to make all ring again, _\"It'll do!\"_ he said.\n\n\"Lord bless ye, Tom, ye needn't break all the glasses!\" said Marks;\n\"save your fist for time o' need.\"\n\n\"But, gentlemen, an't I to come in for a share of the profits?\" said\nHaley.\n\n\"An't it enough we catch the boy for ye?\" said Loker. \"What do ye want?\"\n\n\"Wal,\" said Haley, \"if I gives you the job, it's worth something,--say\nten per cent. on the profits, expenses paid.\"\n\n\"Now,\" said Loker, with a tremendous oath, and striking the table with\nhis heavy fist, \"don't I know _you_, Dan Haley? Don't you think to come\nit over me! Suppose Marks and I have taken up the catchin' trade, jest\nto 'commodate gentlemen like you, and get nothin' for ourselves?--Not by\na long chalk! we'll have the gal out and out, and you keep quiet, or, ye\nsee, we'll have both,--what's to hinder? Han't you show'd us the game?\nIt's as free to us as you, I hope. If you or Shelby wants to chase us,\nlook where the partridges was last year; if you find them or us, you're\nquite welcome.\"\n\n\"O, wal, certainly, jest let it go at that,\" said Haley, alarmed; \"you\ncatch the boy for the job;--you allers did trade _far_ with me, Tom, and\nwas up to yer word.\"\n\n\"Ye know that,\" said Tom; \"I don't pretend none of your snivelling ways,\nbut I won't lie in my 'counts with the devil himself. What I ses I'll\ndo, I will do,--you know _that_, Dan Haley.\"\n\n\"Jes so, jes so,--I said so, Tom,\" said Haley; \"and if you'd only\npromise to have the boy for me in a week, at any point you'll name,\nthat's all I want.\"\n\n\"But it an't all I want, by a long jump,\" said Tom. \"Ye don't think I\ndid business with you, down in Natchez, for nothing, Haley; I've learned\nto hold an eel, when I catch him. You've got to fork over fifty dollars,\nflat down, or this child don't start a peg. I know yer.\"\n\n\"Why, when you have a job in hand that may bring a clean profit\nof somewhere about a thousand or sixteen hundred, why, Tom, you're\nonreasonable,\" said Haley.\n\n\"Yes, and hasn't we business booked for five weeks to come,--all we can\ndo? And suppose we leaves all, and goes to bush-whacking round arter yer\nyoung uns, and finally doesn't catch the gal,--and gals allers is the\ndevil _to_ catch,--what's then? would you pay us a cent--would you? I\nthink I see you a doin' it--ugh! No, no; flap down your fifty. If we\nget the job, and it pays, I'll hand it back; if we don't, it's for our\ntrouble,--that's _far_, an't it, Marks?\"\n\n\"Certainly, certainly,\" said Marks, with a conciliatory tone; \"it's only\na retaining fee, you see,--he! he! he!--we lawyers, you know. Wal, we\nmust all keep good-natured,--keep easy, yer know. Tom'll have the boy\nfor yer, anywhere ye'll name; won't ye, Tom?\"\n\n\"If I find the young un, I'll bring him on to Cincinnati, and leave him\nat Granny Belcher's, on the landing,\" said Loker.\n\nMarks had got from his pocket a greasy pocket-book, and taking a long\npaper from thence, he sat down, and fixing his keen black eyes on it,\nbegan mumbling over its contents: \"Barnes--Shelby County--boy Jim, three\nhundred dollars for him, dead or alive.\n\n\"Edwards--Dick and Lucy--man and wife, six hundred dollars; wench Polly\nand two children--six hundred for her or her head.\n\n\"I'm jest a runnin' over our business, to see if we can take up this yer\nhandily. Loker,\" he said, after a pause, \"we must set Adams and Springer\non the track of these yer; they've been booked some time.\"\n\n\"They'll charge too much,\" said Tom.\n\n\"I'll manage that ar; they 's young in the business, and must spect to\nwork cheap,\" said Marks, as he continued to read. \"Ther's three on 'em\neasy cases, 'cause all you've got to do is to shoot 'em, or swear they\nis shot; they couldn't, of course, charge much for that. Them other\ncases,\" he said, folding the paper, \"will bear puttin' off a spell. So\nnow let's come to the particulars. Now, Mr. Haley, you saw this yer gal\nwhen she landed?\"\n\n\"To be sure,--plain as I see you.\"\n\n\"And a man helpin' on her up the bank?\" said Loker.\n\n\"To be sure, I did.\"\n\n\"Most likely,\" said Marks, \"she's took in somewhere; but where, 's a\nquestion. Tom, what do you say?\"\n\n\"We must cross the river tonight, no mistake,\" said Tom.\n\n\"But there's no boat about,\" said Marks. \"The ice is running awfully,\nTom; an't it dangerous?\"\n\n\"Don'no nothing 'bout that,--only it's got to be done,\" said Tom,\ndecidedly.\n\n\"Dear me,\" said Marks, fidgeting, \"it'll be--I say,\" he said, walking to\nthe window, \"it's dark as a wolf's mouth, and, Tom--\"\n\n\"The long and short is, you're scared, Marks; but I can't help\nthat,--you've got to go. Suppose you want to lie by a day or two, till\nthe gal 's been carried on the underground line up to Sandusky or so,\nbefore you start.\"\n\n\"O, no; I an't a grain afraid,\" said Marks, \"only--\"\n\n\"Only what?\" said Tom.\n\n\"Well, about the boat. Yer see there an't any boat.\"\n\n\"I heard the woman say there was one coming along this evening, and that\na man was going to cross over in it. Neck or nothing, we must go with\nhim,\" said Tom.\n\n\"I s'pose you've got good dogs,\" said Haley.\n\n\"First rate,\" said Marks. \"But what's the use? you han't got nothin' o'\nhers to smell on.\"\n\n\"Yes, I have,\" said Haley, triumphantly. \"Here's her shawl she left on\nthe bed in her hurry; she left her bonnet, too.\"\n\n\"That ar's lucky,\" said Loker; \"fork over.\"\n\n\"Though the dogs might damage the gal, if they come on her unawars,\"\nsaid Haley.\n\n\"That ar's a consideration,\" said Marks. \"Our dogs tore a feller half to\npieces, once, down in Mobile, 'fore we could get 'em off.\"\n\n\"Well, ye see, for this sort that's to be sold for their looks, that ar\nwon't answer, ye see,\" said Haley.\n\n\"I do see,\" said Marks. \"Besides, if she's got took in, 'tan't no go,\nneither. Dogs is no 'count in these yer up states where these critters\ngets carried; of course, ye can't get on their track. They only does\ndown in plantations, where niggers, when they runs, has to do their own\nrunning, and don't get no help.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Loker, who had just stepped out to the bar to make some\ninquiries, \"they say the man's come with the boat; so, Marks--\"\n\nThat worthy cast a rueful look at the comfortable quarters he was\nleaving, but slowly rose to obey. After exchanging a few words of\nfurther arrangement, Haley, with visible reluctance, handed over the\nfifty dollars to Tom, and the worthy trio separated for the night.\n\nIf any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into\nwhich this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer\ntheir prejudices in time. The catching business, we beg to remind them,\nis rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all\nthe broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great\nmarket for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive\ntendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be\namong our aristocracy.\n\n\nWhile this scene was going on at the tavern, Sam and Andy, in a state of\nhigh felicitation, pursued their way home.\n\nSam was in the highest possible feather, and expressed his exultation by\nall sorts of supernatural howls and ejaculations, by divers odd motions\nand contortions of his whole system. Sometimes he would sit backward,\nwith his face to the horse's tail and sides, and then, with a whoop and\na somerset, come right side up in his place again, and, drawing on a\ngrave face, begin to lecture Andy in high-sounding tones for laughing\nand playing the fool. Anon, slapping his sides with his arms, he would\nburst forth in peals of laughter, that made the old woods ring as they\npassed. With all these evolutions, he contrived to keep the horses up\nto the top of their speed, until, between ten and eleven, their heels\nresounded on the gravel at the end of the balcony. Mrs. Shelby flew to\nthe railings.\n\n\"Is that you, Sam? Where are they?\"\n\n\"Mas'r Haley 's a-restin' at the tavern; he's drefful fatigued, Missis.\"\n\n\"And Eliza, Sam?\"\n\n\"Wal, she's clar 'cross Jordan. As a body may say, in the land o'\nCanaan.\"\n\n\"Why, Sam, what _do_ you mean?\" said Mrs. Shelby, breathless, and almost\nfaint, as the possible meaning of these words came over her.\n\n\"Wal, Missis, de Lord he persarves his own. Lizy's done gone over the\nriver into 'Hio, as 'markably as if de Lord took her over in a charrit\nof fire and two hosses.\"\n\nSam's vein of piety was always uncommonly fervent in his mistress'\npresence; and he made great capital of scriptural figures and images.\n\n\"Come up here, Sam,\" said Mr. Shelby, who had followed on to the\nverandah, \"and tell your mistress what she wants. Come, come, Emily,\"\nsaid he, passing his arm round her, \"you are cold and all in a shiver;\nyou allow yourself to feel too much.\"\n\n\"Feel too much! Am not I a woman,--a mother? Are we not both responsible\nto God for this poor girl? My God! lay not this sin to our charge.\"\n\n\"What sin, Emily? You see yourself that we have only done what we were\nobliged to.\"\n\n\"There's an awful feeling of guilt about it, though,\" said Mrs. Shelby.\n\"I can't reason it away.\"\n\n\"Here, Andy, you nigger, be alive!\" called Sam, under the verandah;\n\"take these yer hosses to der barn; don't ye hear Mas'r a callin'?\" and\nSam soon appeared, palm-leaf in hand, at the parlor door.\n\n\"Now, Sam, tell us distinctly how the matter was,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\"Where is Eliza, if you know?\"\n\n\"Wal, Mas'r, I saw her, with my own eyes, a crossin' on the floatin'\nice. She crossed most 'markably; it wasn't no less nor a miracle; and I\nsaw a man help her up the 'Hio side, and then she was lost in the dusk.\"\n\n\"Sam, I think this rather apocryphal,--this miracle. Crossing on\nfloating ice isn't so easily done,\" said Mr. Shelby.\n\n\"Easy! couldn't nobody a done it, without de Lord. Why, now,\" said Sam,\n\"'t was jist dis yer way. Mas'r Haley, and me, and Andy, we comes up\nto de little tavern by the river, and I rides a leetle ahead,--(I's so\nzealous to be a cotchin' Lizy, that I couldn't hold in, no way),--and\nwhen I comes by the tavern winder, sure enough there she was, right in\nplain sight, and dey diggin' on behind. Wal, I loses off my hat, and\nsings out nuff to raise the dead. Course Lizy she hars, and she dodges\nback, when Mas'r Haley he goes past the door; and then, I tell ye, she\nclared out de side door; she went down de river bank;--Mas'r Haley he\nseed her, and yelled out, and him, and me, and Andy, we took arter. Down\nshe come to the river, and thar was the current running ten feet wide\nby the shore, and over t' other side ice a sawin' and a jiggling up and\ndown, kinder as 't were a great island. We come right behind her, and I\nthought my soul he'd got her sure enough,--when she gin sich a screech\nas I never hearn, and thar she was, clar over t' other side of\nthe current, on the ice, and then on she went, a screeching and a\njumpin',--the ice went crack! c'wallop! cracking! chunk! and she a\nboundin' like a buck! Lord, the spring that ar gal's got in her an't\ncommon, I'm o' 'pinion.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby sat perfectly silent, pale with excitement, while Sam told\nhis story.\n\n\"God be praised, she isn't dead!\" she said; \"but where is the poor child\nnow?\"\n\n\"De Lord will pervide,\" said Sam, rolling up his eyes piously. \"As I've\nbeen a sayin', dis yer 's a providence and no mistake, as Missis has\nallers been a instructin' on us. Thar's allers instruments ris up to do\nde Lord's will. Now, if 't hadn't been for me today, she'd a been took\na dozen times. Warn't it I started off de hosses, dis yer mornin' and\nkept 'em chasin' till nigh dinner time? And didn't I car Mas'r Haley\nnight five miles out of de road, dis evening, or else he'd a come up\nwith Lizy as easy as a dog arter a coon. These yer 's all providences.\"\n\n\"They are a kind of providences that you'll have to be pretty sparing\nof, Master Sam. I allow no such practices with gentlemen on my place,\"\nsaid Mr. Shelby, with as much sternness as he could command, under the\ncircumstances.\n\nNow, there is no more use in making believe be angry with a negro than\nwith a child; both instinctively see the true state of the case, through\nall attempts to affect the contrary; and Sam was in no wise disheartened\nby this rebuke, though he assumed an air of doleful gravity, and stood\nwith the corners of his mouth lowered in most penitential style.\n\n\"Mas'r quite right,--quite; it was ugly on me,--there's no disputin'\nthat ar; and of course Mas'r and Missis wouldn't encourage no such\nworks. I'm sensible of dat ar; but a poor nigger like me 's 'mazin'\ntempted to act ugly sometimes, when fellers will cut up such shines as\ndat ar Mas'r Haley; he an't no gen'l'man no way; anybody's been raised\nas I've been can't help a seein' dat ar.\"\n\n\"Well, Sam,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"as you appear to have a proper sense of\nyour errors, you may go now and tell Aunt Chloe she may get you some\nof that cold ham that was left of dinner today. You and Andy must be\nhungry.\"\n\n\"Missis is a heap too good for us,\" said Sam, making his bow with\nalacrity, and departing.\n\nIt will be perceived, as has been before intimated, that Master Sam had\na native talent that might, undoubtedly, have raised him to eminence\nin political life,--a talent of making capital out of everything that\nturned up, to be invested for his own especial praise and glory;\nand having done up his piety and humility, as he trusted, to the\nsatisfaction of the parlor, he clapped his palm-leaf on his head, with\na sort of rakish, free-and-easy air, and proceeded to the dominions of\nAunt Chloe, with the intention of flourishing largely in the kitchen.\n\n\"I'll speechify these yer niggers,\" said Sam to himself, \"now I've got a\nchance. Lord, I'll reel it off to make 'em stare!\"\n\nIt must be observed that one of Sam's especial delights had been to ride\nin attendance on his master to all kinds of political gatherings, where,\nroosted on some rail fence, or perched aloft in some tree, he would\nsit watching the orators, with the greatest apparent gusto, and then,\ndescending among the various brethren of his own color, assembled on\nthe same errand, he would edify and delight them with the most ludicrous\nburlesques and imitations, all delivered with the most imperturbable\nearnestness and solemnity; and though the auditors immediately about him\nwere generally of his own color, it not infrequently happened that\nthey were fringed pretty deeply with those of a fairer complexion, who\nlistened, laughing and winking, to Sam's great self-congratulation.\nIn fact, Sam considered oratory as his vocation, and never let slip an\nopportunity of magnifying his office.\n\nNow, between Sam and Aunt Chloe there had existed, from ancient times,\na sort of chronic feud, or rather a decided coolness; but, as Sam was\nmeditating something in the provision department, as the necessary and\nobvious foundation of his operations, he determined, on the present\noccasion, to be eminently conciliatory; for he well knew that although\n\"Missis' orders\" would undoubtedly be followed to the letter, yet\nhe should gain a considerable deal by enlisting the spirit also. He\ntherefore appeared before Aunt Chloe with a touchingly subdued, resigned\nexpression, like one who has suffered immeasurable hardships in behalf\nof a persecuted fellow-creature,--enlarged upon the fact that Missis had\ndirected him to come to Aunt Chloe for whatever might be wanting to\nmake up the balance in his solids and fluids,--and thus unequivocally\nacknowledged her right and supremacy in the cooking department, and all\nthereto pertaining.\n\nThe thing took accordingly. No poor, simple, virtuous body was ever\ncajoled by the attentions of an electioneering politician with more ease\nthan Aunt Chloe was won over by Master Sam's suavities; and if he had\nbeen the prodigal son himself, he could not have been overwhelmed with\nmore maternal bountifulness; and he soon found himself seated, happy and\nglorious, over a large tin pan, containing a sort of _olla podrida_ of\nall that had appeared on the table for two or three days past. Savory\nmorsels of ham, golden blocks of corn-cake, fragments of pie of\nevery conceivable mathematical figure, chicken wings, gizzards, and\ndrumsticks, all appeared in picturesque confusion; and Sam, as monarch\nof all he surveyed, sat with his palm-leaf cocked rejoicingly to one\nside, and patronizing Andy at his right hand.\n\nThe kitchen was full of all his compeers, who had hurried and crowded\nin, from the various cabins, to hear the termination of the day's\nexploits. Now was Sam's hour of glory. The story of the day was\nrehearsed, with all kinds of ornament and varnishing which might be\nnecessary to heighten its effect; for Sam, like some of our fashionable\ndilettanti, never allowed a story to lose any of its gilding by passing\nthrough his hands. Roars of laughter attended the narration, and were\ntaken up and prolonged by all the smaller fry, who were lying, in any\nquantity, about on the floor, or perched in every corner. In the\nheight of the uproar and laughter, Sam, however, preserved an immovable\ngravity, only from time to time rolling his eyes up, and giving his\nauditors divers inexpressibly droll glances, without departing from the\nsententious elevation of his oratory.\n\n\"Yer see, fellow-countrymen,\" said Sam, elevating a turkey's leg, with\nenergy, \"yer see, now what dis yer chile 's up ter, for fendin' yer\nall,--yes, all on yer. For him as tries to get one o' our people is as\ngood as tryin' to get all; yer see the principle 's de same,--dat ar's\nclar. And any one o' these yer drivers that comes smelling round arter\nany our people, why, he's got _me_ in his way; _I'm_ the feller he's got\nto set in with,--I'm the feller for yer all to come to, bredren,--I'll\nstand up for yer rights,--I'll fend 'em to the last breath!\"\n\n\"Why, but Sam, yer telled me, only this mornin', that you'd help this\nyer Mas'r to cotch Lizy; seems to me yer talk don't hang together,\" said\nAndy.\n\n\"I tell you now, Andy,\" said Sam, with awful superiority, \"don't yer\nbe a talkin' 'bout what yer don't know nothin' on; boys like you,\nAndy, means well, but they can't be spected to collusitate the great\nprinciples of action.\"\n\nAndy looked rebuked, particularly by the hard word collusitate, which\nmost of the youngerly members of the company seemed to consider as a\nsettler in the case, while Sam proceeded.\n\n\"Dat ar was _conscience_, Andy; when I thought of gwine arter Lizy, I\nrailly spected Mas'r was sot dat way. When I found Missis was sot the\ncontrar, dat ar was conscience _more yet_,--cause fellers allers gets\nmore by stickin' to Missis' side,--so yer see I 's persistent either\nway, and sticks up to conscience, and holds on to principles. Yes,\n_principles_,\" said Sam, giving an enthusiastic toss to a chicken's\nneck,--\"what's principles good for, if we isn't persistent, I wanter\nknow? Thar, Andy, you may have dat ar bone,--tan't picked quite clean.\"\n\nSam's audience hanging on his words with open mouth, he could not but\nproceed.\n\n\"Dis yer matter 'bout persistence, feller-niggers,\" said Sam, with the\nair of one entering into an abstruse subject, \"dis yer 'sistency 's a\nthing what an't seed into very clar, by most anybody. Now, yer see, when\na feller stands up for a thing one day and night, de contrar de next,\nfolks ses (and nat'rally enough dey ses), why he an't persistent,--hand\nme dat ar bit o' corn-cake, Andy. But let's look inter it. I hope\nthe gen'lmen and der fair sex will scuse my usin' an or'nary sort o'\n'parison. Here! I'm a trying to get top o' der hay. Wal, I puts up my\nlarder dis yer side; 'tan't no go;--den, cause I don't try dere no\nmore, but puts my larder right de contrar side, an't I persistent? I'm\npersistent in wantin' to get up which ary side my larder is; don't you\nsee, all on yer?\"\n\n\"It's the only thing ye ever was persistent in, Lord knows!\" muttered\nAunt Chloe, who was getting rather restive; the merriment of the evening\nbeing to her somewhat after the Scripture comparison,--like \"vinegar\nupon nitre.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed!\" said Sam, rising, full of supper and glory, for a closing\neffort. \"Yes, my feller-citizens and ladies of de other sex in general,\nI has principles,--I'm proud to 'oon 'em,--they 's perquisite to dese\nyer times, and ter _all_ times. I has principles, and I sticks to 'em\nlike forty,--jest anything that I thinks is principle, I goes in to\n't;--I wouldn't mind if dey burnt me 'live,--I'd walk right up to de\nstake, I would, and say, here I comes to shed my last blood fur my\nprinciples, fur my country, fur de gen'l interests of society.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Aunt Chloe, \"one o' yer principles will have to be to\nget to bed some time tonight, and not be a keepin' everybody up till\nmornin'; now, every one of you young uns that don't want to be cracked,\nhad better be scase, mighty sudden.\"\n\n\"Niggers! all on yer,\" said Sam, waving his palm-leaf with benignity, \"I\ngive yer my blessin'; go to bed now, and be good boys.\"\n\nAnd, with this pathetic benediction, the assembly dispersed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nIn Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man\n\n\nThe light of the cheerful fire shone on the rug and carpet of a cosey\nparlor, and glittered on the sides of the tea-cups and well-brightened\ntea-pot, as Senator Bird was drawing off his boots, preparatory to\ninserting his feet in a pair of new handsome slippers, which his wife\nhad been working for him while away on his senatorial tour. Mrs. Bird,\nlooking the very picture of delight, was superintending the arrangements\nof the table, ever and anon mingling admonitory remarks to a number of\nfrolicsome juveniles, who were effervescing in all those modes of untold\ngambol and mischief that have astonished mothers ever since the flood.\n\n\"Tom, let the door-knob alone,--there's a man! Mary! Mary! don't pull\nthe cat's tail,--poor pussy! Jim, you mustn't climb on that table,--no,\nno!--You don't know, my dear, what a surprise it is to us all, to see\nyou here tonight!\" said she, at last, when she found a space to say\nsomething to her husband.\n\n\"Yes, yes, I thought I'd just make a run down, spend the night, and have\na little comfort at home. I'm tired to death, and my head aches!\"\n\nMrs. Bird cast a glance at a camphor-bottle, which stood in the\nhalf-open closet, and appeared to meditate an approach to it, but her\nhusband interposed.\n\n\"No, no, Mary, no doctoring! a cup of your good hot tea, and some of\nour good home living, is what I want. It's a tiresome business, this\nlegislating!\"\n\nAnd the senator smiled, as if he rather liked the idea of considering\nhimself a sacrifice to his country.\n\n\"Well,\" said his wife, after the business of the tea-table was getting\nrather slack, \"and what have they been doing in the Senate?\"\n\nNow, it was a very unusual thing for gentle little Mrs. Bird ever to\ntrouble her head with what was going on in the house of the state, very\nwisely considering that she had enough to do to mind her own. Mr. Bird,\ntherefore, opened his eyes in surprise, and said,\n\n\"Not very much of importance.\"\n\n\"Well; but is it true that they have been passing a law forbidding\npeople to give meat and drink to those poor colored folks that come\nalong? I heard they were talking of some such law, but I didn't think\nany Christian legislature would pass it!\"\n\n\"Why, Mary, you are getting to be a politician, all at once.\"\n\n\"No, nonsense! I wouldn't give a fig for all your politics, generally,\nbut I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope,\nmy dear, no such law has been passed.\"\n\n\"There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves\nthat come over from Kentucky, my dear; so much of that thing has been\ndone by these reckless Abolitionists, that our brethren in Kentucky\nare very strongly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than\nChristian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet\nthe excitement.\"\n\n\"And what is the law? It don't forbid us to shelter those poor creatures\na night, does it, and to give 'em something comfortable to eat, and a\nfew old clothes, and send them quietly about their business?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, my dear; that would be aiding and abetting, you know.\"\n\nMrs. Bird was a timid, blushing little woman, of about four feet in\nheight, and with mild blue eyes, and a peach-blow complexion, and the\ngentlest, sweetest voice in the world;--as for courage, a moderate-sized\ncock-turkey had been known to put her to rout at the very first gobble,\nand a stout house-dog, of moderate capacity, would bring her into\nsubjection merely by a show of his teeth. Her husband and children were\nher entire world, and in these she ruled more by entreaty and persuasion\nthan by command or argument. There was only one thing that was capable\nof arousing her, and that provocation came in on the side of her\nunusually gentle and sympathetic nature;--anything in the shape of\ncruelty would throw her into a passion, which was the more alarming\nand inexplicable in proportion to the general softness of her nature.\nGenerally the most indulgent and easy to be entreated of all mothers,\nstill her boys had a very reverent remembrance of a most vehement\nchastisement she once bestowed on them, because she found them leagued\nwith several graceless boys of the neighborhood, stoning a defenceless\nkitten.\n\n\"I'll tell you what,\" Master Bill used to say, \"I was scared that time.\nMother came at me so that I thought she was crazy, and I was whipped\nand tumbled off to bed, without any supper, before I could get over\nwondering what had come about; and, after that, I heard mother crying\noutside the door, which made me feel worse than all the rest. I'll tell\nyou what,\" he'd say, \"we boys never stoned another kitten!\"\n\nOn the present occasion, Mrs. Bird rose quickly, with very red cheeks,\nwhich quite improved her general appearance, and walked up to her\nhusband, with quite a resolute air, and said, in a determined tone,\n\n\"Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and\nChristian?\"\n\n\"You won't shoot me, now, Mary, if I say I do!\"\n\n\"I never could have thought it of you, John; you didn't vote for it?\"\n\n\"Even so, my fair politician.\"\n\n\"You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures!\nIt's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one,\nthe first time I get a chance; and I hope I _shall_ have a chance, I do!\nThings have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper\nand a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and\nhave been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!\"\n\n\"But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear,\nand interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn't\nsuffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider\nit's a matter of private feeling,--there are great public interests\ninvolved,--there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we\nmust put aside our private feelings.\"\n\n\"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my\nBible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked,\nand comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.\"\n\n\"But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil--\"\n\n\"Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can't. It's always\nsafest, all round, to _do as He_ bids us.\n\n\"Now, listen to me, Mary, and I can state to you a very clear argument,\nto show--\"\n\n\"O, nonsense, John! you can talk all night, but you wouldn't do it.\nI put it to you, John,--would _you_ now turn away a poor, shivering,\nhungry creature from your door, because he was a runaway? _Would_ you,\nnow?\"\n\nNow, if the truth must be told, our senator had the misfortune to be\na man who had a particularly humane and accessible nature, and turning\naway anybody that was in trouble never had been his forte; and what was\nworse for him in this particular pinch of the argument was, that\nhis wife knew it, and, of course was making an assault on rather an\nindefensible point. So he had recourse to the usual means of gaining\ntime for such cases made and provided; he said \"ahem,\" and coughed\nseveral times, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began to wipe his\nglasses. Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenceless condition of the enemy's\nterritory, had no more conscience than to push her advantage.\n\n\"I should like to see you doing that, John--I really should! Turning a\nwoman out of doors in a snowstorm, for instance; or may be you'd take\nher up and put her in jail, wouldn't you? You would make a great hand at\nthat!\"\n\n\"Of course, it would be a very painful duty,\" began Mr. Bird, in a\nmoderate tone.\n\n\"Duty, John! don't use that word! You know it isn't a duty--it can't be\na duty! If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let 'em\ntreat 'em well,--that's my doctrine. If I had slaves (as I hope I never\nshall have), I'd risk their wanting to run away from me, or you either,\nJohn. I tell you folks don't run away when they are happy; and when\nthey do run, poor creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and\nfear, without everybody's turning against them; and, law or no law, I\nnever will, so help me God!\"\n\n\"Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you.\"\n\n\"I hate reasoning, John,--especially reasoning on such subjects. There's\na way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain\nright thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to\npractice. I know _you_ well enough, John. You don't believe it's right\nany more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I.\"\n\nAt this critical juncture, old Cudjoe, the black man-of-all-work,\nput his head in at the door, and wished \"Missis would come into the\nkitchen;\" and our senator, tolerably relieved, looked after his little\nwife with a whimsical mixture of amusement and vexation, and, seating\nhimself in the arm-chair, began to read the papers.\n\nAfter a moment, his wife's voice was heard at the door, in a quick,\nearnest tone,--\"John! John! I do wish you'd come here, a moment.\"\n\nHe laid down his paper, and went into the kitchen, and started, quite\namazed at the sight that presented itself:--A young and slender woman,\nwith garments torn and frozen, with one shoe gone, and the stocking torn\naway from the cut and bleeding foot, was laid back in a deadly swoon\nupon two chairs. There was the impress of the despised race on her face,\nyet none could help feeling its mournful and pathetic beauty, while its\nstony sharpness, its cold, fixed, deathly aspect, struck a solemn chill\nover him. He drew his breath short, and stood in silence. His wife,\nand their only colored domestic, old Aunt Dinah, were busily engaged in\nrestorative measures; while old Cudjoe had got the boy on his knee, and\nwas busy pulling off his shoes and stockings, and chafing his little\ncold feet.\n\n\"Sure, now, if she an't a sight to behold!\" said old Dinah,\ncompassionately; \"'pears like 't was the heat that made her faint.\nShe was tol'able peart when she cum in, and asked if she couldn't warm\nherself here a spell; and I was just a-askin' her where she cum from,\nand she fainted right down. Never done much hard work, guess, by the\nlooks of her hands.\"\n\n\"Poor creature!\" said Mrs. Bird, compassionately, as the woman slowly\nunclosed her large, dark eyes, and looked vacantly at her. Suddenly an\nexpression of agony crossed her face, and she sprang up, saying, \"O, my\nHarry! Have they got him?\"\n\nThe boy, at this, jumped from Cudjoe's knee, and running to her side put\nup his arms. \"O, he's here! he's here!\" she exclaimed.\n\n\"O, ma'am!\" said she, wildly, to Mrs. Bird, \"do protect us! don't let\nthem get him!\"\n\n\"Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman,\" said Mrs. Bird, encouragingly.\n\"You are safe; don't be afraid.\"\n\n\"God bless you!\" said the woman, covering her face and sobbing; while\nthe little boy, seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap.\n\nWith many gentle and womanly offices, which none knew better how to\nrender than Mrs. Bird, the poor woman was, in time, rendered more calm.\nA temporary bed was provided for her on the settle, near the fire; and,\nafter a short time, she fell into a heavy slumber, with the child,\nwho seemed no less weary, soundly sleeping on her arm; for the mother\nresisted, with nervous anxiety, the kindest attempts to take him from\nher; and, even in sleep, her arm encircled him with an unrelaxing clasp,\nas if she could not even then be beguiled of her vigilant hold.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Bird had gone back to the parlor, where, strange as it\nmay appear, no reference was made, on either side, to the preceding\nconversation; but Mrs. Bird busied herself with her knitting-work, and\nMr. Bird pretended to be reading the paper.\n\n\"I wonder who and what she is!\" said Mr. Bird, at last, as he laid it\ndown.\n\n\"When she wakes up and feels a little rested, we will see,\" said Mrs.\nBird.\n\n\"I say, wife!\" said Mr. Bird after musing in silence over his newspaper.\n\n\"Well, dear!\"\n\n\"She couldn't wear one of your gowns, could she, by any letting down, or\nsuch matter? She seems to be rather larger than you are.\"\n\nA quite perceptible smile glimmered on Mrs. Bird's face, as she\nanswered, \"We'll see.\"\n\nAnother pause, and Mr. Bird again broke out,\n\n\"I say, wife!\"\n\n\"Well! What now?\"\n\n\"Why, there's that old bombazin cloak, that you keep on purpose to\nput over me when I take my afternoon's nap; you might as well give her\nthat,--she needs clothes.\"\n\nAt this instant, Dinah looked in to say that the woman was awake, and\nwanted to see Missis.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Bird went into the kitchen, followed by the two eldest\nboys, the smaller fry having, by this time, been safely disposed of in\nbed.\n\nThe woman was now sitting up on the settle, by the fire. She was looking\nsteadily into the blaze, with a calm, heart-broken expression, very\ndifferent from her former agitated wildness.\n\n\"Did you want me?\" said Mrs. Bird, in gentle tones. \"I hope you feel\nbetter now, poor woman!\"\n\nA long-drawn, shivering sigh was the only answer; but she lifted her\ndark eyes, and fixed them on her with such a forlorn and imploring\nexpression, that the tears came into the little woman's eyes.\n\n\"You needn't be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman!\nTell me where you came from, and what you want,\" said she.\n\n\"I came from Kentucky,\" said the woman.\n\n\"When?\" said Mr. Bird, taking up the interogatory.\n\n\"Tonight.\"\n\n\"How did you come?\"\n\n\"I crossed on the ice.\"\n\n\"Crossed on the ice!\" said every one present.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the woman, slowly, \"I did. God helping me, I crossed on the\nice; for they were behind me--right behind--and there was no other way!\"\n\n\"Law, Missis,\" said Cudjoe, \"the ice is all in broken-up blocks, a\nswinging and a tetering up and down in the water!\"\n\n\"I know it was--I know it!\" said she, wildly; \"but I did it! I wouldn't\nhave thought I could,--I didn't think I should get over, but I didn't\ncare! I could but die, if I didn't. The Lord helped me; nobody knows\nhow much the Lord can help 'em, till they try,\" said the woman, with a\nflashing eye.\n\n\"Were you a slave?\" said Mr. Bird.\n\n\"Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky.\"\n\n\"Was he unkind to you?\"\n\n\"No, sir; he was a good master.\"\n\n\"And was your mistress unkind to you?\"\n\n\"No, sir--no! my mistress was always good to me.\"\n\n\"What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go\nthrough such dangers?\"\n\nThe woman looked up at Mrs. Bird, with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and\nit did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.\n\n\"Ma'am,\" she said, suddenly, \"have you ever lost a child?\"\n\nThe question was unexpected, and it was thrust on a new wound; for it\nwas only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid in\nthe grave.\n\nMr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst\ninto tears; but, recovering her voice, she said,\n\n\"Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one.\"\n\n\"Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another,--left\n'em buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left. I\nnever slept a night without him; he was all I had. He was my comfort and\npride, day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him away from\nme,--to _sell_ him,--sell him down south, ma'am, to go all alone,--a\nbaby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I couldn't\nstand it, ma'am. I knew I never should be good for anything, if they\ndid; and when I knew the papers the papers were signed, and he was sold,\nI took him and came off in the night; and they chased me,--the man that\nbought him, and some of Mas'r's folks,--and they were coming down right\nbehind me, and I heard 'em. I jumped right on to the ice; and how I got\nacross, I don't know,--but, first I knew, a man was helping me up the\nbank.\"\n\nThe woman did not sob nor weep. She had gone to a place where tears\nare dry; but every one around her was, in some way characteristic of\nthemselves, showing signs of hearty sympathy.\n\nThe two little boys, after a desperate rummaging in their pockets, in\nsearch of those pocket-handkerchiefs which mothers know are never to\nbe found there, had thrown themselves disconsolately into the skirts of\ntheir mother's gown, where they were sobbing, and wiping their eyes and\nnoses, to their hearts' content;--Mrs. Bird had her face fairly hidden\nin her pocket-handkerchief; and old Dinah, with tears streaming down her\nblack, honest face, was ejaculating, \"Lord have mercy on us!\" with all\nthe fervor of a camp-meeting;--while old Cudjoe, rubbing his eyes very\nhard with his cuffs, and making a most uncommon variety of wry faces,\noccasionally responded in the same key, with great fervor. Our senator\nwas a statesman, and of course could not be expected to cry, like other\nmortals; and so he turned his back to the company, and looked out of the\nwindow, and seemed particularly busy in clearing his throat and wiping\nhis spectacle-glasses, occasionally blowing his nose in a manner that\nwas calculated to excite suspicion, had any one been in a state to\nobserve critically.\n\n\"How came you to tell me you had a kind master?\" he suddenly exclaimed,\ngulping down very resolutely some kind of rising in his throat, and\nturning suddenly round upon the woman.\n\n\"Because he _was_ a kind master; I'll say that of him, any way;--and my\nmistress was kind; but they couldn't help themselves. They were owing\nmoney; and there was some way, I can't tell how, that a man had a hold\non them, and they were obliged to give him his will. I listened, and\nheard him telling mistress that, and she begging and pleading for\nme,--and he told her he couldn't help himself, and that the papers were\nall drawn;--and then it was I took him and left my home, and came away.\nI knew 't was no use of my trying to live, if they did it; for 't 'pears\nlike this child is all I have.\"\n\n\"Have you no husband?\"\n\n\"Yes, but he belongs to another man. His master is real hard to him,\nand won't let him come to see me, hardly ever; and he's grown harder and\nharder upon us, and he threatens to sell him down south;--it's like I'll\nnever see _him_ again!\"\n\nThe quiet tone in which the woman pronounced these words might have led\na superficial observer to think that she was entirely apathetic; but\nthere was a calm, settled depth of anguish in her large, dark eye, that\nspoke of something far otherwise.\n\n\"And where do you mean to go, my poor woman?\" said Mrs. Bird.\n\n\"To Canada, if I only knew where that was. Is it very far off, is\nCanada?\" said she, looking up, with a simple, confiding air, to Mrs.\nBird's face.\n\n\"Poor thing!\" said Mrs. Bird, involuntarily.\n\n\"Is 't a very great way off, think?\" said the woman, earnestly.\n\n\"Much further than you think, poor child!\" said Mrs. Bird; \"but we will\ntry to think what can be done for you. Here, Dinah, make her up a bed in\nyour own room, close by the kitchen, and I'll think what to do for her\nin the morning. Meanwhile, never fear, poor woman; put your trust in\nGod; he will protect you.\"\n\nMrs. Bird and her husband reentered the parlor. She sat down in her\nlittle rocking-chair before the fire, swaying thoughtfully to and fro.\nMr. Bird strode up and down the room, grumbling to himself, \"Pish!\npshaw! confounded awkward business!\" At length, striding up to his wife,\nhe said,\n\n\"I say, wife, she'll have to get away from here, this very night. That\nfellow will be down on the scent bright and early tomorrow morning: if\n't was only the woman, she could lie quiet till it was over; but that\nlittle chap can't be kept still by a troop of horse and foot, I'll\nwarrant me; he'll bring it all out, popping his head out of some window\nor door. A pretty kettle of fish it would be for me, too, to be caught\nwith them both here, just now! No; they'll have to be got off tonight.\"\n\n\"Tonight! How is it possible?--where to?\"\n\n\"Well, I know pretty well where to,\" said the senator, beginning to put\non his boots, with a reflective air; and, stopping when his leg was half\nin, he embraced his knee with both hands, and seemed to go off in deep\nmeditation.\n\n\"It's a confounded awkward, ugly business,\" said he, at last, beginning\nto tug at his boot-straps again, \"and that's a fact!\" After one boot\nwas fairly on, the senator sat with the other in his hand, profoundly\nstudying the figure of the carpet. \"It will have to be done, though, for\naught I see,--hang it all!\" and he drew the other boot anxiously on, and\nlooked out of the window.\n\nNow, little Mrs. Bird was a discreet woman,--a woman who never in her\nlife said, \"I told you so!\" and, on the present occasion, though pretty\nwell aware of the shape her husband's meditations were taking, she very\nprudently forbore to meddle with them, only sat very quietly in her\nchair, and looked quite ready to hear her liege lord's intentions, when\nhe should think proper to utter them.\n\n\"You see,\" he said, \"there's my old client, Van Trompe, has come over\nfrom Kentucky, and set all his slaves free; and he has bought a place\nseven miles up the creek, here, back in the woods, where nobody goes,\nunless they go on purpose; and it's a place that isn't found in a hurry.\nThere she'd be safe enough; but the plague of the thing is, nobody could\ndrive a carriage there tonight, but _me_.\"\n\n\"Why not? Cudjoe is an excellent driver.\"\n\n\"Ay, ay, but here it is. The creek has to be crossed twice; and the\nsecond crossing is quite dangerous, unless one knows it as I do. I have\ncrossed it a hundred times on horseback, and know exactly the turns to\ntake. And so, you see, there's no help for it. Cudjoe must put in the\nhorses, as quietly as may be, about twelve o'clock, and I'll take her\nover; and then, to give color to the matter, he must carry me on to the\nnext tavern to take the stage for Columbus, that comes by about three or\nfour, and so it will look as if I had had the carriage only for that.\nI shall get into business bright and early in the morning. But I'm\nthinking I shall feel rather cheap there, after all that's been said and\ndone; but, hang it, I can't help it!\"\n\n\"Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John,\" said the\nwife, laying her little white hand on his. \"Could I ever have loved you,\nhad I not known you better than you know yourself?\" And the little\nwoman looked so handsome, with the tears sparkling in her eyes, that\nthe senator thought he must be a decidedly clever fellow, to get such a\npretty creature into such a passionate admiration of him; and so, what\ncould he do but walk off soberly, to see about the carriage. At the\ndoor, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he said, with\nsome hesitation.\n\n\"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer\nfull of things--of--of--poor little Henry's.\" So saying, he turned\nquickly on his heel, and shut the door after him.\n\nHis wife opened the little bed-room door adjoining her room and, taking\nthe candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small\nrecess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer,\nand made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy like, had followed\nclose on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at\ntheir mother. And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in\nyour house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you\nlike the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are,\nif it has not been so.\n\nMrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a\nform and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even\na pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping\nfrom the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a\nball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She\nsat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it, wept\ntill the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly\nraising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest\nand most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle.\n\n\"Mamma,\" said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, \"you going to\ngive away _those_ things?\"\n\n\"My dear boys,\" she said, softly and earnestly, \"if our dear, loving\nlittle Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do\nthis. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common\nperson--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more\nheart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his\nblessings with them!\"\n\nThere are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into\njoys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears,\nare the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate\nand the distressed. Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by\nthe lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her\nown lost one for the outcast wanderer.\n\nAfter a while, Mrs. Bird opened a wardrobe, and, taking from thence a\nplain, serviceable dress or two, she sat down busily to her work-table,\nand, with needle, scissors, and thimble, at hand, quietly commenced the\n\"letting down\" process which her husband had recommended, and continued\nbusily at it till the old clock in the corner struck twelve, and she\nheard the low rattling of wheels at the door.\n\n\"Mary,\" said her husband, coming in, with his overcoat in his hand, \"you\nmust wake her up now; we must be off.\"\n\nMrs. Bird hastily deposited the various articles she had collected in a\nsmall plain trunk, and locking it, desired her husband to see it in\nthe carriage, and then proceeded to call the woman. Soon, arrayed in\na cloak, bonnet, and shawl, that had belonged to her benefactress, she\nappeared at the door with her child in her arms. Mr. Bird hurried her\ninto the carriage, and Mrs. Bird pressed on after her to the carriage\nsteps. Eliza leaned out of the carriage, and put out her hand,--a hand\nas soft and beautiful as was given in return. She fixed her large, dark\neyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird's face, and seemed going\nto speak. Her lips moved,--she tried once or twice, but there was no\nsound,--and pointing upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she\nfell back in the seat, and covered her face. The door was shut, and the\ncarriage drove on.\n\nWhat a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the\nweek before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more\nstringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and\nabettors!\n\nOur good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of his\nbrethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them\nimmortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets,\nand scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare\nof a few miserable fugitives before great state interests!\n\nHe was as bold as a lion about it, and \"mightily convinced\" not only\nhimself, but everybody that heard him;--but then his idea of a fugitive\nwas only an idea of the letters that spell the word,--or at the most,\nthe image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle\nwith \"Ran away from the subscriber\" under it. The magic of the real\npresence of distress,--the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling\nhuman hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had never\ntried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother,\na defenceless child,--like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's\nlittle well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or\nsteel,--as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,--he\nwas, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. And you\nneed not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we\nhave some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances,\nwould not do much better. We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in\nMississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to whom never was tale of\nsuffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect\nof us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you\nto render, were you in our place?\n\nBe that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in\na fair way to expiate it by his night's penance. There had been a long\ncontinuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as\nevery one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud--and the\nroad was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.\n\n\"And pray, what sort of a road may that be?\" says some eastern\ntraveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad,\nbut those of smoothness or speed.\n\nKnow, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the\nwest, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made\nof round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over\nin their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to\nhand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway\nessayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time, the rains wash off\nall the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither, in\npicturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with divers chasms and\nruts of black mud intervening.\n\nOver such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making\nmoral reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be\nexpected,--the carriage proceeding along much as follows,--bump! bump!\nbump! slush! down in the mud!--the senator, woman and child, reversing\ntheir positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate\nadjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks\nfast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among\nthe horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as\nthe senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights\nitself with a bounce,--two front wheels go down into another abyss,\nand senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the\nfront seat,--senator's hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite\nunceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished;--child\ncries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the\nhorses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated\ncracks of the whip. Carriage springs up, with another bounce,--down go\nthe hind wheels,--senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back\nseat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed\ninto his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the\n\"slough\" is passed, and the horses stop, panting;--the senator finds\nhis hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her child, and they\nbrace themselves for what is yet to come.\n\nFor a while only the continuous bump! bump! intermingled, just by way of\nvariety, with divers side plunges and compound shakes; and they begin to\nflatter themselves that they are not so badly off, after all. At last,\nwith a square plunge, which puts all on to their feet and then down into\ntheir seats with incredible quickness, the carriage stops,--and, after\nmuch outside commotion, Cudjoe appears at the door.\n\n\"Please, sir, it's powerful bad spot, this' yer. I don't know how we's\nto get clar out. I'm a thinkin' we'll have to be a gettin' rails.\"\n\nThe senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm\nfoothold; down goes one foot an immeasurable depth,--he tries to pull it\nup, loses his balance, and tumbles over into the mud, and is fished out,\nin a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.\n\nBut we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers' bones. Western\ntravellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting\nprocess of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud\nholes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate\nhero. We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.\n\nIt was full late in the night when the carriage emerged, dripping\nand bespattered, out of the creek, and stood at the door of a large\nfarmhouse.\n\nIt took no inconsiderable perseverance to arouse the inmates; but at\nlast the respectable proprietor appeared, and undid the door. He was a\ngreat, tall, bristling Orson of a fellow, full six feet and some inches\nin his stockings, and arrayed in a red flannel hunting-shirt. A very\nheavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard\nof some days' growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the\nleast, not particularly prepossessing. He stood for a few minutes\nholding the candle aloft, and blinking on our travellers with a dismal\nand mystified expression that was truly ludicrous. It cost some effort\nof our senator to induce him to comprehend the case fully; and while he\nis doing his best at that, we shall give him a little introduction to\nour readers.\n\nHonest old John Van Trompe was once quite a considerable land-owner and\nslave-owner in the State of Kentucky. Having \"nothing of the bear about\nhim but the skin,\" and being gifted by nature with a great, honest, just\nheart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some years\nwitnessing with repressed uneasiness the workings of a system equally\nbad for oppressor and oppressed. At last, one day, John's great heart\nhad swelled altogether too big to wear his bonds any longer; so he\njust took his pocket-book out of his desk, and went over into Ohio, and\nbought a quarter of a township of good, rich land, made out free papers\nfor all his people,--men, women, and children,--packed them up in\nwagons, and sent them off to settle down; and then honest John turned\nhis face up the creek, and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to\nenjoy his conscience and his reflections.\n\n\"Are you the man that will shelter a poor woman and child from\nslave-catchers?\" said the senator, explicitly.\n\n\"I rather think I am,\" said honest John, with some considerable\nemphasis.\n\n\"I thought so,\" said the senator.\n\n\"If there's anybody comes,\" said the good man, stretching his tall,\nmuscular form upward, \"why here I'm ready for him: and I've got seven\nsons, each six foot high, and they'll be ready for 'em. Give our\nrespects to 'em,\" said John; \"tell 'em it's no matter how soon they\ncall,--make no kinder difference to us,\" said John, running his fingers\nthrough the shock of hair that thatched his head, and bursting out into\na great laugh.\n\nWeary, jaded, and spiritless, Eliza dragged herself up to the door,\nwith her child lying in a heavy sleep on her arm. The rough man held the\ncandle to her face, and uttering a kind of compassionate grunt, opened\nthe door of a small bed-room adjoining to the large kitchen where they\nwere standing, and motioned her to go in. He took down a candle, and\nlighting it, set it upon the table, and then addressed himself to Eliza.\n\n\"Now, I say, gal, you needn't be a bit afeard, let who will come here.\nI'm up to all that sort o' thing,\" said he, pointing to two or three\ngoodly rifles over the mantel-piece; \"and most people that know me know\nthat 't wouldn't be healthy to try to get anybody out o' my house when\nI'm agin it. So _now_ you jist go to sleep now, as quiet as if yer\nmother was a rockin' ye,\" said he, as he shut the door.\n\n\"Why, this is an uncommon handsome un,\" he said to the senator. \"Ah,\nwell; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they has\nany kind o' feelin, such as decent women should. I know all about that.\"\n\nThe senator, in a few words, briefly explained Eliza's history.\n\n\"O! ou! aw! now, I want to know?\" said the good man, pitifully;\n\"sho! now sho! That's natur now, poor crittur! hunted down now like a\ndeer,--hunted down, jest for havin' natural feelin's, and doin' what no\nkind o' mother could help a doin'! I tell ye what, these yer things make\nme come the nighest to swearin', now, o' most anything,\" said honest\nJohn, as he wiped his eyes with the back of a great, freckled, yellow\nhand. \"I tell yer what, stranger, it was years and years before I'd jine\nthe church, 'cause the ministers round in our parts used to preach that\nthe Bible went in for these ere cuttings up,--and I couldn't be up to\n'em with their Greek and Hebrew, and so I took up agin 'em, Bible and\nall. I never jined the church till I found a minister that was up to 'em\nall in Greek and all that, and he said right the contrary; and then I\ntook right hold, and jined the church,--I did now, fact,\" said John, who\nhad been all this time uncorking some very frisky bottled cider, which\nat this juncture he presented.\n\n\"Ye'd better jest put up here, now, till daylight,\" said he, heartily,\n\"and I'll call up the old woman, and have a bed got ready for you in no\ntime.\"\n\n\"Thank you, my good friend,\" said the senator, \"I must be along, to take\nthe night stage for Columbus.\"\n\n\"Ah! well, then, if you must, I'll go a piece with you, and show you a\ncross road that will take you there better than the road you came on.\nThat road's mighty bad.\"\n\nJohn equipped himself, and, with a lantern in hand, was soon seen\nguiding the senator's carriage towards a road that ran down in a hollow,\nback of his dwelling. When they parted, the senator put into his hand a\nten-dollar bill.\n\n\"It's for her,\" he said, briefly.\n\n\"Ay, ay,\" said John, with equal conciseness.\n\nThey shook hands, and parted.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nThe Property Is Carried Off\n\n\nThe February morning looked gray and drizzling through the window of\nUncle Tom's cabin. It looked on downcast faces, the images of mournful\nhearts. The little table stood out before the fire, covered with an\nironing-cloth; a coarse but clean shirt or two, fresh from the iron,\nhung on the back of a chair by the fire, and Aunt Chloe had another\nspread out before her on the table. Carefully she rubbed and ironed\nevery fold and every hem, with the most scrupulous exactness, every now\nand then raising her hand to her face to wipe off the tears that were\ncoursing down her cheeks.\n\nTom sat by, with his Testament open on his knee, and his head leaning\nupon his hand;--but neither spoke. It was yet early, and the children\nlay all asleep together in their little rude trundle-bed.\n\nTom, who had, to the full, the gentle, domestic heart, which woe for\nthem! has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy race, got up and\nwalked silently to look at his children.\n\n\"It's the last time,\" he said.\n\nAunt Chloe did not answer, only rubbed away over and over on the coarse\nshirt, already as smooth as hands could make it; and finally setting her\niron suddenly down with a despairing plunge, she sat down to the table,\nand \"lifted up her voice and wept.\"\n\n\"S'pose we must be resigned; but oh Lord! how ken I? If I know'd\nanything whar you 's goin', or how they'd sarve you! Missis says she'll\ntry and 'deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that\ngoes down thar! They kills 'em! I've hearn 'em tell how dey works 'em up\non dem ar plantations.\"\n\n\"There'll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Aunt Chloe, \"s'pose dere will; but de Lord lets drefful\nthings happen, sometimes. I don't seem to get no comfort dat way.\"\n\n\"I'm in the Lord's hands,\" said Tom; \"nothin' can go no furder than he\nlets it;--and thar's _one_ thing I can thank him for. It's _me_\nthat's sold and going down, and not you nur the chil'en. Here you're\nsafe;--what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he'll help me,--I\nknow he will.\"\n\nAh, brave, manly heart,--smothering thine own sorrow, to comfort thy\nbeloved ones! Tom spoke with a thick utterance, and with a bitter\nchoking in his throat,--but he spoke brave and strong.\n\n\"Let's think on our marcies!\" he added, tremulously, as if he was quite\nsure he needed to think on them very hard indeed.\n\n\"Marcies!\" said Aunt Chloe; \"don't see no marcy in 't! 'tan't right!\ntan't right it should be so! Mas'r never ought ter left it so that ye\n_could_ be took for his debts. Ye've arnt him all he gets for ye, twice\nover. He owed ye yer freedom, and ought ter gin 't to yer years ago.\nMebbe he can't help himself now, but I feel it's wrong. Nothing can't\nbeat that ar out o' me. Sich a faithful crittur as ye've been,--and\nallers sot his business 'fore yer own every way,--and reckoned on him\nmore than yer own wife and chil'en! Them as sells heart's love and\nheart's blood, to get out thar scrapes, de Lord'll be up to 'em!\"\n\n\"Chloe! now, if ye love me, ye won't talk so, when perhaps jest the last\ntime we'll ever have together! And I'll tell ye, Chloe, it goes agin me\nto hear one word agin Mas'r. Wan't he put in my arms a baby?--it's natur\nI should think a heap of him. And he couldn't be spected to think so\nmuch of poor Tom. Mas'rs is used to havin' all these yer things done for\n'em, and nat'lly they don't think so much on 't. They can't be spected\nto, no way. Set him 'longside of other Mas'rs--who's had the treatment\nand livin' I've had? And he never would have let this yer come on me, if\nhe could have seed it aforehand. I know he wouldn't.\"\n\n\"Wal, any way, thar's wrong about it _somewhar_,\" said Aunt Chloe, in\nwhom a stubborn sense of justice was a predominant trait; \"I can't jest\nmake out whar 't is, but thar's wrong somewhar, I'm _clar_ o' that.\"\n\n\"Yer ought ter look up to the Lord above--he's above all--thar don't a\nsparrow fall without him.\"\n\n\"It don't seem to comfort me, but I spect it orter,\" said Aunt Chloe.\n\"But dar's no use talkin'; I'll jes wet up de corn-cake, and get ye one\ngood breakfast, 'cause nobody knows when you'll get another.\"\n\nIn order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it\nmust be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are\npeculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are\nnot naturally daring and enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate.\nAdd to this all the terrors with which ignorance invests the unknown,\nand add to this, again, that selling to the south is set before the\nnegro from childhood as the last severity of punishment. The threat that\nterrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind is the threat of\nbeing sent down river. We have ourselves heard this feeling expressed by\nthem, and seen the unaffected horror with which they will sit in their\ngossipping hours, and tell frightful stories of that \"down river,\" which\nto them is\n\n     _\"That undiscovered country, from whose bourn\n     No traveller returns.\"_*\n\n\n     *  A slightly inaccurate quotation from _Hamlet_, Act III,\n     scene I, lines 369-370.\n\nA missionary figure among the fugitives in Canada told us that many of\nthe fugitives confessed themselves to have escaped from comparatively\nkind masters, and that they were induced to brave the perils of escape,\nin almost every case, by the desperate horror with which they regarded\nbeing sold south,--a doom which was hanging either over themselves\nor their husbands, their wives or children. This nerves the African,\nnaturally patient, timid and unenterprising, with heroic courage, and\nleads him to suffer hunger, cold, pain, the perils of the wilderness,\nand the more dread penalties of recapture.\n\nThe simple morning meal now smoked on the table, for Mrs. Shelby had\nexcused Aunt Chloe's attendance at the great house that morning.\nThe poor soul had expended all her little energies on this farewell\nfeast,--had killed and dressed her choicest chicken, and prepared her\ncorn-cake with scrupulous exactness, just to her husband's taste, and\nbrought out certain mysterious jars on the mantel-piece, some preserves\nthat were never produced except on extreme occasions.\n\n\"Lor, Pete,\" said Mose, triumphantly, \"han't we got a buster of a\nbreakfast!\" at the same time catching at a fragment of the chicken.\n\nAunt Chloe gave him a sudden box on the ear. \"Thar now! crowing over the\nlast breakfast yer poor daddy's gwine to have to home!\"\n\n\"O, Chloe!\" said Tom, gently.\n\n\"Wal, I can't help it,\" said Aunt Chloe, hiding her face in her apron;\n\"I 's so tossed about it, it makes me act ugly.\"\n\nThe boys stood quite still, looking first at their father and then\nat their mother, while the baby, climbing up her clothes, began an\nimperious, commanding cry.\n\n\"Thar!\" said Aunt Chloe, wiping her eyes and taking up the baby; \"now\nI's done, I hope,--now do eat something. This yer's my nicest chicken.\nThar, boys, ye shall have some, poor critturs! Yer mammy's been cross to\nyer.\"\n\nThe boys needed no second invitation, and went in with great zeal for\nthe eatables; and it was well they did so, as otherwise there would have\nbeen very little performed to any purpose by the party.\n\n\"Now,\" said Aunt Chloe, bustling about after breakfast, \"I must put\nup yer clothes. Jest like as not, he'll take 'em all away. I know thar\nways--mean as dirt, they is! Wal, now, yer flannels for rhumatis is in\nthis corner; so be careful, 'cause there won't nobody make ye no more.\nThen here's yer old shirts, and these yer is new ones. I toed off these\nyer stockings last night, and put de ball in 'em to mend with. But Lor!\nwho'll ever mend for ye?\" and Aunt Chloe, again overcome, laid her head\non the box side, and sobbed. \"To think on 't! no crittur to do for ye,\nsick or well! I don't railly think I ought ter be good now!\"\n\nThe boys, having eaten everything there was on the breakfast-table,\nbegan now to take some thought of the case; and, seeing their mother\ncrying, and their father looking very sad, began to whimper and put\ntheir hands to their eyes. Uncle Tom had the baby on his knee, and was\nletting her enjoy herself to the utmost extent, scratching his face\nand pulling his hair, and occasionally breaking out into clamorous\nexplosions of delight, evidently arising out of her own internal\nreflections.\n\n\"Ay, crow away, poor crittur!\" said Aunt Chloe; \"ye'll have to come to\nit, too! ye'll live to see yer husband sold, or mebbe be sold yerself;\nand these yer boys, they's to be sold, I s'pose, too, jest like as\nnot, when dey gets good for somethin'; an't no use in niggers havin'\nnothin'!\"\n\nHere one of the boys called out, \"Thar's Missis a-comin' in!\"\n\n\"She can't do no good; what's she coming for?\" said Aunt Chloe.\n\nMrs. Shelby entered. Aunt Chloe set a chair for her in a manner\ndecidedly gruff and crusty. She did not seem to notice either the action\nor the manner. She looked pale and anxious.\n\n\"Tom,\" she said, \"I come to--\" and stopping suddenly, and regarding the\nsilent group, she sat down in the chair, and, covering her face with her\nhandkerchief, began to sob.\n\n\"Lor, now, Missis, don't--don't!\" said Aunt Chloe, bursting out in her\nturn; and for a few moments they all wept in company. And in those tears\nthey all shed together, the high and the lowly, melted away all\nthe heart-burnings and anger of the oppressed. O, ye who visit the\ndistressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a\ncold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?\n\n\"My good fellow,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"I can't give you anything to do\nyou any good. If I give you money, it will only be taken from you. But\nI tell you solemnly, and before God, that I will keep trace of you,\nand bring you back as soon as I can command the money;--and, till then,\ntrust in God!\"\n\nHere the boys called out that Mas'r Haley was coming, and then an\nunceremonious kick pushed open the door. Haley stood there in very\nill humor, having ridden hard the night before, and being not at all\npacified by his ill success in recapturing his prey.\n\n\"Come,\" said he, \"ye nigger, ye'r ready? Servant, ma'am!\" said he,\ntaking off his hat, as he saw Mrs. Shelby.\n\nAunt Chloe shut and corded the box, and, getting up, looked gruffly on\nthe trader, her tears seeming suddenly turned to sparks of fire.\n\nTom rose up meekly, to follow his new master, and raised up his heavy\nbox on his shoulder. His wife took the baby in her arms to go with him\nto the wagon, and the children, still crying, trailed on behind.\n\nMrs. Shelby, walking up to the trader, detained him for a few moments,\ntalking with him in an earnest manner; and while she was thus talking,\nthe whole family party proceeded to a wagon, that stood ready harnessed\nat the door. A crowd of all the old and young hands on the place stood\ngathered around it, to bid farewell to their old associate. Tom had been\nlooked up to, both as a head servant and a Christian teacher, by all\nthe place, and there was much honest sympathy and grief about him,\nparticularly among the women.\n\n\"Why, Chloe, you bar it better 'n we do!\" said one of the women, who had\nbeen weeping freely, noticing the gloomy calmness with which Aunt Chloe\nstood by the wagon.\n\n\"I's done _my_ tears!\" she said, looking grimly at the trader, who was\ncoming up. \"I does not feel to cry 'fore dat ar old limb, no how!\"\n\n\"Get in!\" said Haley to Tom, as he strode through the crowd of servants,\nwho looked at him with lowering brows.\n\nTom got in, and Haley, drawing out from under the wagon seat a heavy\npair of shackles, made them fast around each ankle.\n\nA smothered groan of indignation ran through the whole circle, and\nMrs. Shelby spoke from the verandah,--\"Mr. Haley, I assure you that\nprecaution is entirely unnecessary.\"\n\n\"Don' know, ma'am; I've lost one five hundred dollars from this yer\nplace, and I can't afford to run no more risks.\"\n\n\"What else could she spect on him?\" said Aunt Chloe, indignantly,\nwhile the two boys, who now seemed to comprehend at once their father's\ndestiny, clung to her gown, sobbing and groaning vehemently.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Tom, \"that Mas'r George happened to be away.\"\n\nGeorge had gone to spend two or three days with a companion on a\nneighboring estate, and having departed early in the morning, before\nTom's misfortune had been made public, had left without hearing of it.\n\n\"Give my love to Mas'r George,\" he said, earnestly.\n\nHaley whipped up the horse, and, with a steady, mournful look, fixed to\nthe last on the old place, Tom was whirled away.\n\nMr. Shelby at this time was not at home. He had sold Tom under the\nspur of a driving necessity, to get out of the power of a man whom he\ndreaded,--and his first feeling, after the consummation of the bargain,\nhad been that of relief. But his wife's expostulations awoke his\nhalf-slumbering regrets; and Tom's manly disinterestedness increased the\nunpleasantness of his feelings. It was in vain that he said to himself\nthat he had a _right_ to do it,--that everybody did it,--and that some\ndid it without even the excuse of necessity;--he could not satisfy his\nown feelings; and that he might not witness the unpleasant scenes of\nthe consummation, he had gone on a short business tour up the country,\nhoping that all would be over before he returned.\n\nTom and Haley rattled on along the dusty road, whirling past every old\nfamiliar spot, until the bounds of the estate were fairly passed, and\nthey found themselves out on the open pike. After they had ridden about\na mile, Haley suddenly drew up at the door of a blacksmith's shop, when,\ntaking out with him a pair of handcuffs, he stepped into the shop, to\nhave a little alteration in them.\n\n\"These yer 's a little too small for his build,\" said Haley, showing the\nfetters, and pointing out to Tom.\n\n\"Lor! now, if thar an't Shelby's Tom. He han't sold him, now?\" said the\nsmith.\n\n\"Yes, he has,\" said Haley.\n\n\"Now, ye don't! well, reely,\" said the smith, \"who'd a thought it! Why,\nye needn't go to fetterin' him up this yer way. He's the faithfullest,\nbest crittur--\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" said Haley; \"but your good fellers are just the critturs to\nwant ter run off. Them stupid ones, as doesn't care whar they go, and\nshifless, drunken ones, as don't care for nothin', they'll stick by,\nand like as not be rather pleased to be toted round; but these yer\nprime fellers, they hates it like sin. No way but to fetter 'em; got\nlegs,--they'll use 'em,--no mistake.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the smith, feeling among his tools, \"them plantations down\nthar, stranger, an't jest the place a Kentuck nigger wants to go to;\nthey dies thar tol'able fast, don't they?\"\n\n\"Wal, yes, tol'able fast, ther dying is; what with the 'climating and\none thing and another, they dies so as to keep the market up pretty\nbrisk,\" said Haley.\n\n\"Wal, now, a feller can't help thinkin' it's a mighty pity to have a\nnice, quiet, likely feller, as good un as Tom is, go down to be fairly\nground up on one of them ar sugar plantations.\"\n\n\"Wal, he's got a fa'r chance. I promised to do well by him. I'll get\nhim in house-servant in some good old family, and then, if he stands the\nfever and 'climating, he'll have a berth good as any nigger ought ter\nask for.\"\n\n\"He leaves his wife and chil'en up here, s'pose?\"\n\n\"Yes; but he'll get another thar. Lord, thar's women enough everywhar,\"\nsaid Haley.\n\nTom was sitting very mournfully on the outside of the shop while this\nconversation was going on. Suddenly he heard the quick, short click of\na horse's hoof behind him; and, before he could fairly awake from his\nsurprise, young Master George sprang into the wagon, threw his arms\ntumultuously round his neck, and was sobbing and scolding with energy.\n\n\"I declare, it's real mean! I don't care what they say, any of 'em! It's\na nasty, mean shame! If I was a man, they shouldn't do it,--they should\nnot, _so_!\" said George, with a kind of subdued howl.\n\n\"O! Mas'r George! this does me good!\" said Tom. \"I couldn't bar to go\noff without seein' ye! It does me real good, ye can't tell!\" Here Tom\nmade some movement of his feet, and George's eye fell on the fetters.\n\n\"What a shame!\" he exclaimed, lifting his hands. \"I'll knock that old\nfellow down--I will!\"\n\n\"No you won't, Mas'r George; and you must not talk so loud. It won't\nhelp me any, to anger him.\"\n\n\"Well, I won't, then, for your sake; but only to think of it--isn't it\na shame? They never sent for me, nor sent me any word, and, if it hadn't\nbeen for Tom Lincon, I shouldn't have heard it. I tell you, I blew 'em\nup well, all of 'em, at home!\"\n\n\"That ar wasn't right, I'm 'feard, Mas'r George.\"\n\n\"Can't help it! I say it's a shame! Look here, Uncle Tom,\" said he,\nturning his back to the shop, and speaking in a mysterious tone, _\"I've\nbrought you my dollar!\"_\n\n\"O! I couldn't think o' takin' on 't, Mas'r George, no ways in the\nworld!\" said Tom, quite moved.\n\n\"But you _shall_ take it!\" said George; \"look here--I told Aunt Chloe\nI'd do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a\nstring through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of\nsight; else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want\nto blow him up! it would do me good!\"\n\n\"No, don't Mas'r George, for it won't do _me_ any good.\"\n\n\"Well, I won't, for your sake,\" said George, busily tying his dollar\nround Tom's neck; \"but there, now, button your coat tight over it, and\nkeep it, and remember, every time you see it, that I'll come down after\nyou, and bring you back. Aunt Chloe and I have been talking about it. I\ntold her not to fear; I'll see to it, and I'll tease father's life out,\nif he don't do it.\"\n\n\"O! Mas'r George, ye mustn't talk so 'bout yer father!\"\n\n\"Lor, Uncle Tom, I don't mean anything bad.\"\n\n\"And now, Mas'r George,\" said Tom, \"ye must be a good boy; 'member how\nmany hearts is sot on ye. Al'ays keep close to yer mother. Don't be\ngettin' into any of them foolish ways boys has of gettin' too big to\nmind their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas'r George, the Lord gives good many\nthings twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never\nsee sich another woman, Mas'r George, if ye live to be a hundred years\nold. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her,\nthar's my own good boy,--you will now, won't ye?\"\n\n\"Yes, I will, Uncle Tom,\" said George seriously.\n\n\"And be careful of yer speaking, Mas'r George. Young boys, when they\ncomes to your age, is wilful, sometimes--it is natur they should be.\nBut real gentlemen, such as I hopes you'll be, never lets fall on words\nthat isn't 'spectful to thar parents. Ye an't 'fended, Mas'r George?\"\n\n\"No, indeed, Uncle Tom; you always did give me good advice.\"\n\n\"I's older, ye know,\" said Tom, stroking the boy's fine, curly head with\nhis large, strong hand, but speaking in a voice as tender as a woman's,\n\"and I sees all that's bound up in you. O, Mas'r George, you has\neverything,--l'arnin', privileges, readin', writin',--and you'll grow\nup to be a great, learned, good man and all the people on the place and\nyour mother and father'll be so proud on ye! Be a good Mas'r, like yer\nfather; and be a Christian, like yer mother. 'Member yer Creator in the\ndays o' yer youth, Mas'r George.\"\n\n\"I'll be _real_ good, Uncle Tom, I tell you,\" said George. \"I'm going to\nbe a _first-rater_; and don't you be discouraged. I'll have you back to\nthe place, yet. As I told Aunt Chloe this morning, I'll build our house\nall over, and you shall have a room for a parlor with a carpet on it,\nwhen I'm a man. O, you'll have good times yet!\"\n\nHaley now came to the door, with the handcuffs in his hands.\n\n\"Look here, now, Mister,\" said George, with an air of great superiority,\nas he got out, \"I shall let father and mother know how you treat Uncle\nTom!\"\n\n\"You're welcome,\" said the trader.\n\n\"I should think you'd be ashamed to spend all your life buying men and\nwomen, and chaining them, like cattle! I should think you'd feel mean!\"\nsaid George.\n\n\"So long as your grand folks wants to buy men and women, I'm as good\nas they is,\" said Haley; \"'tan't any meaner sellin' on 'em, that 't is\nbuyin'!\"\n\n\"I'll never do either, when I'm a man,\" said George; \"I'm ashamed, this\nday, that I'm a Kentuckian. I always was proud of it before;\" and George\nsat very straight on his horse, and looked round with an air, as if he\nexpected the state would be impressed with his opinion.\n\n\"Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip,\" said George.\n\n\"Good-by, Mas'r George,\" said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him.\n\"God Almighty bless you! Ah! Kentucky han't got many like you!\" he said,\nin the fulness of his heart, as the frank, boyish face was lost to his\nview. Away he went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse's\nheels died away, the last sound or sight of his home. But over his heart\nthere seemed to be a warm spot, where those young hands had placed that\nprecious dollar. Tom put up his hand, and held it close to his heart.\n\n\"Now, I tell ye what, Tom,\" said Haley, as he came up to the wagon, and\nthrew in the handcuffs, \"I mean to start fa'r with ye, as I gen'ally do\nwith my niggers; and I'll tell ye now, to begin with, you treat me fa'r,\nand I'll treat you fa'r; I an't never hard on my niggers. Calculates to\ndo the best for 'em I can. Now, ye see, you'd better jest settle down\ncomfortable, and not be tryin' no tricks; because nigger's tricks of all\nsorts I'm up to, and it's no use. If niggers is quiet, and don't try to\nget off, they has good times with me; and if they don't, why, it's thar\nfault, and not mine.\"\n\nTom assured Haley that he had no present intentions of running off. In\nfact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to a man with a\ngreat pair of iron fetters on his feet. But Mr. Haley had got in\nthe habit of commencing his relations with his stock with little\nexhortations of this nature, calculated, as he deemed, to inspire\ncheerfulness and confidence, and prevent the necessity of any unpleasant\nscenes.\n\nAnd here, for the present, we take our leave of Tom, to pursue the\nfortunes of other characters in our story.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nIn Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind\n\nIt was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveler alighted at the door\nof a small country hotel, in the village of N----, in Kentucky. In the\nbarroom he found assembled quite a miscellaneous company, whom stress of\nweather had driven to harbor, and the place presented the usual scenery\nof such reunions. Great, tall, raw-boned Kentuckians, attired in\nhunting-shirts, and trailing their loose joints over a vast extent of\nterritory, with the easy lounge peculiar to the race,--rifles stacked\naway in the corner, shot-pouches, game-bags, hunting-dogs, and little\nnegroes, all rolled together in the corners,--were the characteristic\nfeatures in the picture. At each end of the fireplace sat a long-legged\ngentleman, with his chair tipped back, his hat on his head, and the\nheels of his muddy boots reposing sublimely on the mantel-piece,--a\nposition, we will inform our readers, decidedly favorable to the turn\nof reflection incident to western taverns, where travellers exhibit\na decided preference for this particular mode of elevating their\nunderstandings.\n\nMine host, who stood behind the bar, like most of his country men, was\ngreat of stature, good-natured and loose-jointed, with an enormous shock\nof hair on his head, and a great tall hat on the top of that.\n\nIn fact, everybody in the room bore on his head this characteristic\nemblem of man's sovereignty; whether it were felt hat, palm-leaf, greasy\nbeaver, or fine new chapeau, there it reposed with true republican\nindependence. In truth, it appeared to be the characteristic mark of\nevery individual. Some wore them tipped rakishly to one side--these\nwere your men of humor, jolly, free-and-easy dogs; some had them jammed\nindependently down over their noses--these were your hard characters,\nthorough men, who, when they wore their hats, _wanted_ to wear them, and\nto wear them just as they had a mind to; there were those who had them\nset far over back--wide-awake men, who wanted a clear prospect; while\ncareless men, who did not know, or care, how their hats sat, had them\nshaking about in all directions. The various hats, in fact, were quite a\nShakespearean study.\n\nDivers negroes, in very free-and-easy pantaloons, and with no redundancy\nin the shirt line, were scuttling about, hither and thither, without\nbringing to pass any very particular results, except expressing a\ngeneric willingness to turn over everything in creation generally\nfor the benefit of Mas'r and his guests. Add to this picture a\njolly, crackling, rollicking fire, going rejoicingly up a great wide\nchimney,--the outer door and every window being set wide open, and the\ncalico window-curtain flopping and snapping in a good stiff breeze\nof damp raw air,--and you have an idea of the jollities of a Kentucky\ntavern.\n\nYour Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the\ndoctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were\nmighty hunters,--men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free,\nopen heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant\nto this day always acts as if the house were his camp,--wears his hat\nat all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of\nchairs or mantelpieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward,\nand put his upon trees and logs,--keeps all the windows and doors\nopen, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great\nlungs,--calls everybody \"stranger,\" with nonchalant _bonhommie_, and\nis altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living.\n\nInto such an assembly of the free and easy our traveller entered. He was\na short, thick-set man, carefully dressed, with a round, good-natured\ncountenance, and something rather fussy and particular in his\nappearance. He was very careful of his valise and umbrella, bringing\nthem in with his own hands, and resisting, pertinaciously, all offers\nfrom the various servants to relieve him of them. He looked round the\nbarroom with rather an anxious air, and, retreating with his valuables\nto the warmest corner, disposed them under his chair, sat down, and\nlooked rather apprehensively up at the worthy whose heels illustrated\nthe end of the mantel-piece, who was spitting from right to left, with\na courage and energy rather alarming to gentlemen of weak nerves and\nparticular habits.\n\n\"I say, stranger, how are ye?\" said the aforesaid gentleman, firing an\nhonorary salute of tobacco-juice in the direction of the new arrival.\n\n\"Well, I reckon,\" was the reply of the other, as he dodged, with some\nalarm, the threatening honor.\n\n\"Any news?\" said the respondent, taking out a strip of tobacco and a\nlarge hunting-knife from his pocket.\n\n\"Not that I know of,\" said the man.\n\n\"Chaw?\" said the first speaker, handing the old gentleman a bit of his\ntobacco, with a decidedly brotherly air.\n\n\"No, thank ye--it don't agree with me,\" said the little man, edging off.\n\n\"Don't, eh?\" said the other, easily, and stowing away the morsel in\nhis own mouth, in order to keep up the supply of tobacco-juice, for the\ngeneral benefit of society.\n\nThe old gentleman uniformly gave a little start whenever his long-sided\nbrother fired in his direction; and this being observed by his\ncompanion, he very good-naturedly turned his artillery to another\nquarter, and proceeded to storm one of the fire-irons with a degree of\nmilitary talent fully sufficient to take a city.\n\n\"What's that?\" said the old gentleman, observing some of the company\nformed in a group around a large handbill.\n\n\"Nigger advertised!\" said one of the company, briefly.\n\nMr. Wilson, for that was the old gentleman's name, rose up, and, after\ncarefully adjusting his valise and umbrella, proceeded deliberately to\ntake out his spectacles and fix them on his nose; and, this operation\nbeing performed, read as follows:\n\n     \"Ran away from the subscriber, my mulatto boy, George. Said\n     George six feet in height, a very light mulatto, brown curly\n     hair; is very intelligent, speaks handsomely, can read and\n     write, will probably try to pass for a white man, is deeply\n     scarred on his back and shoulders, has been branded in his\n     right hand with the letter H.\n\n     \"I will give four hundred dollars for him alive, and the\n     same sum for satisfactory proof that he has been _killed.\"_\n\nThe old gentleman read this advertisement from end to end in a low\nvoice, as if he were studying it.\n\nThe long-legged veteran, who had been besieging the fire-iron, as before\nrelated, now took down his cumbrous length, and rearing aloft his tall\nform, walked up to the advertisement and very deliberately spit a full\ndischarge of tobacco-juice on it.\n\n\"There's my mind upon that!\" said he, briefly, and sat down again.\n\n\"Why, now, stranger, what's that for?\" said mine host.\n\n\"I'd do it all the same to the writer of that ar paper, if he was\nhere,\" said the long man, coolly resuming his old employment of cutting\ntobacco. \"Any man that owns a boy like that, and can't find any better\nway o' treating on him, _deserves_ to lose him. Such papers as these\nis a shame to Kentucky; that's my mind right out, if anybody wants to\nknow!\"\n\n\"Well, now, that's a fact,\" said mine host, as he made an entry in his\nbook.\n\n\"I've got a gang of boys, sir,\" said the long man, resuming his attack\non the fire-irons, \"and I jest tells 'em--'Boys,' says I,--'_run_ now!\ndig! put! jest when ye want to! I never shall come to look after you!'\nThat's the way I keep mine. Let 'em know they are free to run any time,\nand it jest breaks up their wanting to. More 'n all, I've got free\npapers for 'em all recorded, in case I gets keeled up any o' these\ntimes, and they know it; and I tell ye, stranger, there an't a fellow in\nour parts gets more out of his niggers than I do. Why, my boys have been\nto Cincinnati, with five hundred dollars' worth of colts, and brought\nme back the money, all straight, time and agin. It stands to reason\nthey should. Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs'\nactions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works.\" And the\nhonest drover, in his warmth, endorsed this moral sentiment by firing a\nperfect _feu de joi_ at the fireplace.\n\n\"I think you're altogether right, friend,\" said Mr. Wilson; \"and this\nboy described here _is_ a fine fellow--no mistake about that. He worked\nfor me some half-dozen years in my bagging factory, and he was my best\nhand, sir. He is an ingenious fellow, too: he invented a machine for\nthe cleaning of hemp--a really valuable affair; it's gone into use in\nseveral factories. His master holds the patent of it.\"\n\n\"I'll warrant ye,\" said the drover, \"holds it and makes money out of it,\nand then turns round and brands the boy in his right hand. If I had a\nfair chance, I'd mark him, I reckon so that he'd carry it _one_ while.\"\n\n\"These yer knowin' boys is allers aggravatin' and sarcy,\" said a\ncoarse-looking fellow, from the other side of the room; \"that's why they\ngets cut up and marked so. If they behaved themselves, they wouldn't.\"\n\n\"That is to say, the Lord made 'em men, and it's a hard squeeze gettin\n'em down into beasts,\" said the drover, dryly.\n\n\"Bright niggers isn't no kind of 'vantage to their masters,\" continued\nthe other, well entrenched, in a coarse, unconscious obtuseness, from\nthe contempt of his opponent; \"what's the use o' talents and them\nthings, if you can't get the use on 'em yourself? Why, all the use they\nmake on 't is to get round you. I've had one or two of these fellers,\nand I jest sold 'em down river. I knew I'd got to lose 'em, first or\nlast, if I didn't.\"\n\n\"Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out\ntheir souls entirely,\" said the drover.\n\nHere the conversation was interrupted by the approach of a small\none-horse buggy to the inn. It had a genteel appearance, and a\nwell-dressed, gentlemanly man sat on the seat, with a colored servant\ndriving.\n\nThe whole party examined the new comer with the interest with which a\nset of loafers in a rainy day usually examine every newcomer. He was\nvery tall, with a dark, Spanish complexion, fine, expressive black eyes,\nand close-curling hair, also of a glossy blackness. His well-formed\naquiline nose, straight thin lips, and the admirable contour of his\nfinely-formed limbs, impressed the whole company instantly with the idea\nof something uncommon. He walked easily in among the company, and with\na nod indicated to his waiter where to place his trunk, bowed to the\ncompany, and, with his hat in his hand, walked up leisurely to the bar,\nand gave in his name as Henry Butter, Oaklands, Shelby County. Turning,\nwith an indifferent air, he sauntered up to the advertisement, and read\nit over.\n\n\"Jim,\" he said to his man, \"seems to me we met a boy something like\nthis, up at Beman's, didn't we?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Jim, \"only I an't sure about the hand.\"\n\n\"Well, I didn't look, of course,\" said the stranger with a careless\nyawn. Then walking up to the landlord, he desired him to furnish him\nwith a private apartment, as he had some writing to do immediately.\n\nThe landlord was all obsequious, and a relay of about seven negroes, old\nand young, male and female, little and big, were soon whizzing about,\nlike a covey of partridges, bustling, hurrying, treading on each other's\ntoes, and tumbling over each other, in their zeal to get Mas'r's room\nready, while he seated himself easily on a chair in the middle of the\nroom, and entered into conversation with the man who sat next to him.\n\nThe manufacturer, Mr. Wilson, from the time of the entrance of\nthe stranger, had regarded him with an air of disturbed and uneasy\ncuriosity. He seemed to himself to have met and been acquainted with him\nsomewhere, but he could not recollect. Every few moments, when the man\nspoke, or moved, or smiled, he would start and fix his eyes on him, and\nthen suddenly withdraw them, as the bright, dark eyes met his with such\nunconcerned coolness. At last, a sudden recollection seemed to flash\nupon him, for he stared at the stranger with such an air of blank\namazement and alarm, that he walked up to him.\n\n\"Mr. Wilson, I think,\" said he, in a tone of recognition, and extending\nhis hand. \"I beg your pardon, I didn't recollect you before. I see you\nremember me,--Mr. Butler, of Oaklands, Shelby County.\"\n\n\"Ye--yes--yes, sir,\" said Mr. Wilson, like one speaking in a dream.\n\nJust then a negro boy entered, and announced that Mas'r's room was\nready.\n\n\"Jim, see to the trunks,\" said the gentleman, negligently; then\naddressing himself to Mr. Wilson, he added--\"I should like to have a few\nmoments' conversation with you on business, in my room, if you please.\"\n\nMr. Wilson followed him, as one who walks in his sleep; and they\nproceeded to a large upper chamber, where a new-made fire was crackling,\nand various servants flying about, putting finishing touches to the\narrangements.\n\nWhen all was done, and the servants departed, the young man deliberately\nlocked the door, and putting the key in his pocket, faced about, and\nfolding his arms on his bosom, looked Mr. Wilson full in the face.\n\n\"George!\" said Mr. Wilson.\n\n\"Yes, George,\" said the young man.\n\n\"I couldn't have thought it!\"\n\n\"I am pretty well disguised, I fancy,\" said the young man, with a smile.\n\"A little walnut bark has made my yellow skin a genteel brown, and I've\ndyed my hair black; so you see I don't answer to the advertisement at\nall.\"\n\n\"O, George! but this is a dangerous game you are playing. I could not\nhave advised you to it.\"\n\n\"I can do it on my own responsibility,\" said George, with the same proud\nsmile.\n\nWe remark, _en passant_, that George was, by his father's side, of white\ndescent. His mother was one of those unfortunates of her race, marked\nout by personal beauty to be the slave of the passions of her possessor,\nand the mother of children who may never know a father. From one of the\nproudest families in Kentucky he had inherited a set of fine European\nfeatures, and a high, indomitable spirit. From his mother he had\nreceived only a slight mulatto tinge, amply compensated by its\naccompanying rich, dark eye. A slight change in the tint of the skin\nand the color of his hair had metamorphosed him into the Spanish-looking\nfellow he then appeared; and as gracefulness of movement and gentlemanly\nmanners had always been perfectly natural to him, he found no difficulty\nin playing the bold part he had adopted--that of a gentleman travelling\nwith his domestic.\n\nMr. Wilson, a good-natured but extremely fidgety and cautious old\ngentleman, ambled up and down the room, appearing, as John Bunyan hath\nit, \"much tumbled up and down in his mind,\" and divided between his wish\nto help George, and a certain confused notion of maintaining law and\norder: so, as he shambled about, he delivered himself as follows:\n\n\"Well, George, I s'pose you're running away--leaving your lawful\nmaster, George--(I don't wonder at it)--at the same time, I'm sorry,\nGeorge,--yes, decidedly--I think I must say that, George--it's my duty\nto tell you so.\"\n\n\"Why are you sorry, sir?\" said George, calmly.\n\n\"Why, to see you, as it were, setting yourself in opposition to the laws\nof your country.\"\n\n\"_My_ country!\" said George, with a strong and bitter emphasis; \"what\ncountry have I, but the grave,--and I wish to God that I was laid\nthere!\"\n\n\"Why, George, no--no--it won't do; this way of talking is\nwicked--unscriptural. George, you've got a hard master--in fact, he\nis--well he conducts himself reprehensibly--I can't pretend to defend\nhim. But you know how the angel commanded Hagar to return to her\nmistress, and submit herself under the hand;* and the apostle sent back\nOnesimus to his master.\"**\n\n     *  Gen. 16.  The angel bade the pregnant Hagar return to her\n     mistress Sarai, even though Sarai had dealt harshly with\n     her.\n\n     **  Phil. 1:10.  Onesimus went back to his master to become\n     no longer a servant but a \"brother beloved.\"\n\n\"Don't quote Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson,\" said George, with a\nflashing eye, \"don't! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be,\nif ever I get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my\ncircumstances, is enough to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to\nGod Almighty;--I'm willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I\ndo wrong to seek my freedom.\"\n\n\"These feelings are quite natural, George,\" said the good-natured\nman, blowing his nose. \"Yes, they're natural, but it is my duty not to\nencourage 'em in you. Yes, my boy, I'm sorry for you, now; it's a\nbad case--very bad; but the apostle says, 'Let everyone abide in the\ncondition in which he is called.' We must all submit to the indications\nof Providence, George,--don't you see?\"\n\nGeorge stood with his head drawn back, his arms folded tightly over his\nbroad breast, and a bitter smile curling his lips.\n\n\"I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a\nprisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your\nlife hoeing corn for them, if you'd think it your duty to abide in the\ncondition in which you were called. I rather think that you'd think the\nfirst stray horse you could find an indication of Providence--shouldn't\nyou?\"\n\nThe little old gentleman stared with both eyes at this illustration of\nthe case; but, though not much of a reasoner, he had the sense in which\nsome logicians on this particular subject do not excel,--that of saying\nnothing, where nothing could be said. So, as he stood carefully stroking\nhis umbrella, and folding and patting down all the creases in it, he\nproceeded on with his exhortations in a general way.\n\n\"You see, George, you know, now, I always have stood your friend; and\nwhatever I've said, I've said for your good. Now, here, it seems to me,\nyou're running an awful risk. You can't hope to carry it out. If you're\ntaken, it will be worse with you than ever; they'll only abuse you, and\nhalf kill you, and sell you down the river.\"\n\n\"Mr. Wilson, I know all this,\" said George. \"I _do_ run a risk, but--\"\nhe threw open his overcoat, and showed two pistols and a bowie-knife.\n\"There!\" he said, \"I'm ready for 'em! Down south I never _will_ go.\nNo! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free\nsoil,--the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!\"\n\n\"Why, George, this state of mind is awful; it's getting really desperate\nGeorge. I'm concerned. Going to break the laws of your country!\"\n\n\"My country again! Mr. Wilson, _you_ have a country; but what country\nhave _I_, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there\nfor us? We don't make them,--we don't consent to them,--we have nothing\nto do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down.\nHaven't I heard your Fourth-of-July speeches? Don't you tell us all,\nonce a year, that governments derive their just power from the consent\nof the governed? Can't a fellow _think_, that hears such things? Can't\nhe put this and that together, and see what it comes to?\"\n\nMr. Wilson's mind was one of those that may not unaptly be represented\nby a bale of cotton,--downy, soft, benevolently fuzzy and confused.\nHe really pitied George with all his heart, and had a sort of dim and\ncloudy perception of the style of feeling that agitated him; but\nhe deemed it his duty to go on talking _good_ to him, with infinite\npertinacity.\n\n\"George, this is bad. I must tell you, you know, as a friend, you'd\nbetter not be meddling with such notions; they are bad, George, very\nbad, for boys in your condition,--very;\" and Mr. Wilson sat down to a\ntable, and began nervously chewing the handle of his umbrella.\n\n\"See here, now, Mr. Wilson,\" said George, coming up and sitting himself\ndeterminately down in front of him; \"look at me, now. Don't I sit before\nyou, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,--look at\nmy hands,--look at my body,\" and the young man drew himself up proudly;\n\"why am I _not_ a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I\ncan tell you. I had a father--one of your Kentucky gentlemen--who didn't\nthink enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses,\nto satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's\nsale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by\none, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and\nkneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that\nshe might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with\nhis heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans\nand screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to\nhis place.\"\n\n\"Well, then?\"\n\n\"My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister.\nShe was a pious, good girl,--a member of the Baptist church,--and as\nhandsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had\ngood manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend\nnear me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and\nheard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked\nheart, and I couldn't do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir,\nfor wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give\nno slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a\ntrader's gang, to be sent to market in Orleans,--sent there for\nnothing else but that,--and that's the last I know of her. Well, I\ngrew up,--long years and years,--no father, no mother, no sister, not\na living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping,\nscolding, starving. Why, sir, I've been so hungry that I have been glad\nto take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little\nfellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it\nwasn't the whipping, I cried for. No, sir, it was for _my mother_ and\n_my sisters_,--it was because I hadn't a friend to love me on earth. I\nnever knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to\nme till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well;\nyou encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to\ntry to make something of myself; and God knows how grateful I am for it.\nThen, sir, I found my wife; you've seen her,--you know how beautiful\nshe is. When I found she loved me, when I married her, I scarcely could\nbelieve I was alive, I was so happy; and, sir, she is as good as she is\nbeautiful. But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away\nfrom my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into\nthe very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says,\nto teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he\ncomes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live\nwith another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in\nspite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't _one_ of all\nthese things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister,\nand my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to\ndo, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws\nof _my_ country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any\nfather. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of _your_\ncountry, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I\nget to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, _that_ shall\nbe my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop\nme, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to\nthe last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right\nfor them, it is right for me!\"\n\nThis speech, delivered partly while sitting at the table, and partly\nwalking up and down the room,--delivered with tears, and flashing eyes,\nand despairing gestures,--was altogether too much for the good-natured\nold body to whom it was addressed, who had pulled out a great yellow\nsilk pocket-handkerchief, and was mopping up his face with great energy.\n\n\"Blast 'em all!\" he suddenly broke out. \"Haven't I always said so--the\ninfernal old cusses! I hope I an't swearing, now. Well! go ahead,\nGeorge, go ahead; but be careful, my boy; don't shoot anybody, George,\nunless--well--you'd _better_ not shoot, I reckon; at least, I wouldn't\n_hit_ anybody, you know. Where is your wife, George?\" he added, as he\nnervously rose, and began walking the room.\n\n\"Gone, sir gone, with her child in her arms, the Lord only knows\nwhere;--gone after the north star; and when we ever meet, or whether we\nmeet at all in this world, no creature can tell.\"\n\n\"Is it possible! astonishing! from such a kind family?\"\n\n\"Kind families get in debt, and the laws of _our_ country allow them\nto sell the child out of its mother's bosom to pay its master's debts,\"\nsaid George, bitterly.\n\n\"Well, well,\" said the honest old man, fumbling in his pocket: \"I\ns'pose, perhaps, I an't following my judgment,--hang it, I _won't_\nfollow my judgment!\" he added, suddenly; \"so here, George,\" and, taking\nout a roll of bills from his pocket-book, he offered them to George.\n\n\"No, my kind, good sir!\" said George, \"you've done a great deal for me,\nand this might get you into trouble. I have money enough, I hope, to\ntake me as far as I need it.\"\n\n\"No; but you must, George. Money is a great help everywhere;--can't have\ntoo much, if you get it honestly. Take it,--_do_ take it, _now_,--do, my\nboy!\"\n\n\"On condition, sir, that I may repay it at some future time, I will,\"\nsaid George, taking up the money.\n\n\"And now, George, how long are you going to travel in this way?--not\nlong or far, I hope. It's well carried on, but too bold. And this black\nfellow,--who is he?\"\n\n\"A true fellow, who went to Canada more than a year ago. He heard, after\nhe got there, that his master was so angry at him for going off that\nhe had whipped his poor old mother; and he has come all the way back to\ncomfort her, and get a chance to get her away.\"\n\n\"Has he got her?\"\n\n\"Not yet; he has been hanging about the place, and found no chance yet.\nMeanwhile, he is going with me as far as Ohio, to put me among friends\nthat helped him, and then he will come back after her.\n\n\"Dangerous, very dangerous!\" said the old man.\n\nGeorge drew himself up, and smiled disdainfully.\n\nThe old gentleman eyed him from head to foot, with a sort of innocent\nwonder.\n\n\"George, something has brought you out wonderfully. You hold up your\nhead, and speak and move like another man,\" said Mr. Wilson.\n\n\"Because I'm a _freeman_!\" said George, proudly. \"Yes, sir; I've said\nMas'r for the last time to any man. _I'm free!\"_\n\n\"Take care! You are not sure,--you may be taken.\"\n\n\"All men are free and equal _in the grave_, if it comes to that, Mr.\nWilson,\" said George.\n\n\"I'm perfectly dumb-founded with your boldness!\" said Mr. Wilson,--\"to\ncome right here to the nearest tavern!\"\n\n\"Mr. Wilson, it is _so_ bold, and this tavern is so near, that they\nwill never think of it; they will look for me on ahead, and you yourself\nwouldn't know me. Jim's master don't live in this county; he isn't known\nin these parts. Besides, he is given up; nobody is looking after him,\nand nobody will take me up from the advertisement, I think.\"\n\n\"But the mark in your hand?\"\n\nGeorge drew off his glove, and showed a newly-healed scar in his hand.\n\n\"That is a parting proof of Mr. Harris' regard,\" he said, scornfully.\n\"A fortnight ago, he took it into his head to give it to me, because\nhe said he believed I should try to get away one of these days. Looks\ninteresting, doesn't it?\" he said, drawing his glove on again.\n\n\"I declare, my very blood runs cold when I think of it,--your condition\nand your risks!\" said Mr. Wilson.\n\n\"Mine has run cold a good many years, Mr. Wilson; at present, it's about\nup to the boiling point,\" said George.\n\n\"Well, my good sir,\" continued George, after a few moments' silence, \"I\nsaw you knew me; I thought I'd just have this talk with you, lest your\nsurprised looks should bring me out. I leave early tomorrow morning,\nbefore daylight; by tomorrow night I hope to sleep safe in Ohio. I shall\ntravel by daylight, stop at the best hotels, go to the dinner-tables\nwith the lords of the land. So, good-by, sir; if you hear that I'm\ntaken, you may know that I'm dead!\"\n\nGeorge stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a\nprince. The friendly little old man shook it heartily, and after a\nlittle shower of caution, he took his umbrella, and fumbled his way out\nof the room.\n\nGeorge stood thoughtfully looking at the door, as the old man closed it.\nA thought seemed to flash across his mind. He hastily stepped to it, and\nopening it, said,\n\n\"Mr. Wilson, one word more.\"\n\nThe old gentleman entered again, and George, as before, locked the door,\nand then stood for a few moments looking on the floor, irresolutely. At\nlast, raising his head with a sudden effort--\"Mr. Wilson, you have shown\nyourself a Christian in your treatment of me,--I want to ask one last\ndeed of Christian kindness of you.\"\n\n\"Well, George.\"\n\n\"Well, sir,--what you said was true. I _am_ running a dreadful risk.\nThere isn't, on earth, a living soul to care if I die,\" he added,\ndrawing his breath hard, and speaking with a great effort,--\"I shall\nbe kicked out and buried like a dog, and nobody'll think of it a day\nafter,--_only my poor wife!_ Poor soul! she'll mourn and grieve; and\nif you'd only contrive, Mr. Wilson, to send this little pin to her. She\ngave it to me for a Christmas present, poor child! Give it to her,\nand tell her I loved her to the last. Will you? _Will_ you?\" he added,\nearnestly.\n\n\"Yes, certainly--poor fellow!\" said the old gentleman, taking the pin,\nwith watery eyes, and a melancholy quiver in his voice.\n\n\"Tell her one thing,\" said George; \"it's my last wish, if she _can_ get\nto Canada, to go there. No matter how kind her mistress is,--no matter\nhow much she loves her home; beg her not to go back,--for slavery always\nends in misery. Tell her to bring up our boy a free man, and then he\nwon't suffer as I have. Tell her this, Mr. Wilson, will you?\"\n\n\"Yes, George. I'll tell her; but I trust you won't die; take\nheart,--you're a brave fellow. Trust in the Lord, George. I wish in my\nheart you were safe through, though,--that's what I do.\"\n\n\"_Is_ there a God to trust in?\" said George, in such a tone of bitter\ndespair as arrested the old gentleman's words. \"O, I've seen things all\nmy life that have made me feel that there can't be a God. You Christians\ndon't know how these things look to us. There's a God for you, but is\nthere any for us?\"\n\n\"O, now, don't--don't, my boy!\" said the old man, almost sobbing as\nhe spoke; \"don't feel so! There is--there is; clouds and darkness are\naround about him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of\nhis throne. There's a _God_, George,--believe it; trust in Him, and I'm\nsure He'll help you. Everything will be set right,--if not in this life,\nin another.\"\n\nThe real piety and benevolence of the simple old man invested him with\na temporary dignity and authority, as he spoke. George stopped his\ndistracted walk up and down the room, stood thoughtfully a moment, and\nthen said, quietly,\n\n\"Thank you for saying that, my good friend; I'll _think of that_.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nSelect Incident of Lawful Trade\n\n\n\"In Ramah there was a voice heard,--weeping, and lamentation, and great\nmourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted.\"*\n\n     * Jer. 31:15.\n\nMr. Haley and Tom jogged onward in their wagon, each, for a time,\nabsorbed in his own reflections. Now, the reflections of two men sitting\nside by side are a curious thing,--seated on the same seat, having the\nsame eyes, ears, hands and organs of all sorts, and having pass before\ntheir eyes the same objects,--it is wonderful what a variety we shall\nfind in these same reflections!\n\nAs, for example, Mr. Haley: he thought first of Tom's length, and\nbreadth, and height, and what he would sell for, if he was kept fat and\nin good case till he got him into market. He thought of how he should\nmake out his gang; he thought of the respective market value of certain\nsupposititious men and women and children who were to compose it, and\nother kindred topics of the business; then he thought of himself, and\nhow humane he was, that whereas other men chained their \"niggers\" hand\nand foot both, he only put fetters on the feet, and left Tom the use\nof his hands, as long as he behaved well; and he sighed to think how\nungrateful human nature was, so that there was even room to doubt\nwhether Tom appreciated his mercies. He had been taken in so by\n\"niggers\" whom he had favored; but still he was astonished to consider\nhow good-natured he yet remained!\n\nAs to Tom, he was thinking over some words of an unfashionable old book,\nwhich kept running through his head, again and again, as follows: \"We\nhave here no continuing city, but we seek one to come; wherefore God\nhimself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for\nus a city.\" These words of an ancient volume, got up principally by\n\"ignorant and unlearned men,\" have, through all time, kept up, somehow,\na strange sort of power over the minds of poor, simple fellows, like\nTom. They stir up the soul from its depths, and rouse, as with trumpet\ncall, courage, energy, and enthusiasm, where before was only the\nblackness of despair.\n\nMr. Haley pulled out of his pocket sundry newspapers, and began\nlooking over their advertisements, with absorbed interest. He was not a\nremarkably fluent reader, and was in the habit of reading in a sort\nof recitative half-aloud, by way of calling in his ears to verify the\ndeductions of his eyes. In this tone he slowly recited the following\nparagraph:\n\n\n\"EXECUTOR'S SALE,--NEGROES!--Agreeably to order of court, will be sold,\non Tuesday, February 20, before the Court-house door, in the town of\nWashington, Kentucky, the following negroes: Hagar, aged 60; John, aged\n30; Ben, aged 21; Saul, aged 25; Albert, aged 14. Sold for the benefit\nof the creditors and heirs of the estate of Jesse Blutchford,\n\n\"SAMUEL MORRIS, THOMAS FLINT, _Executors_.\"\n\n\n\"This yer I must look at,\" said he to Tom, for want of somebody else to\ntalk to.\n\n\"Ye see, I'm going to get up a prime gang to take down with ye, Tom;\nit'll make it sociable and pleasant like,--good company will, ye know.\nWe must drive right to Washington first and foremost, and then I'll clap\nyou into jail, while I does the business.\"\n\nTom received this agreeable intelligence quite meekly; simply wondering,\nin his own heart, how many of these doomed men had wives and children,\nand whether they would feel as he did about leaving them. It is to be\nconfessed, too, that the naive, off-hand information that he was to be\nthrown into jail by no means produced an agreeable impression on a poor\nfellow who had always prided himself on a strictly honest and upright\ncourse of life. Yes, Tom, we must confess it, was rather proud of his\nhonesty, poor fellow,--not having very much else to be proud of;--if he\nhad belonged to some of the higher walks of society, he, perhaps, would\nnever have been reduced to such straits. However, the day wore on,\nand the evening saw Haley and Tom comfortably accommodated in\nWashington,--the one in a tavern, and the other in a jail.\n\nAbout eleven o'clock the next day, a mixed throng was gathered around\nthe court-house steps,--smoking, chewing, spitting, swearing, and\nconversing, according to their respective tastes and turns,--waiting\nfor the auction to commence. The men and women to be sold sat in a\ngroup apart, talking in a low tone to each other. The woman who had been\nadvertised by the name of Hagar was a regular African in feature and\nfigure. She might have been sixty, but was older than that by hard work\nand disease, was partially blind, and somewhat crippled with rheumatism.\nBy her side stood her only remaining son, Albert, a bright-looking\nlittle fellow of fourteen years. The boy was the only survivor of a\nlarge family, who had been successively sold away from her to a southern\nmarket. The mother held on to him with both her shaking hands, and eyed\nwith intense trepidation every one who walked up to examine him.\n\n\"Don't be feard, Aunt Hagar,\" said the oldest of the men, \"I spoke to\nMas'r Thomas 'bout it, and he thought he might manage to sell you in a\nlot both together.\"\n\n\"Dey needn't call me worn out yet,\" said she, lifting her shaking hands.\n\"I can cook yet, and scrub, and scour,--I'm wuth a buying, if I do come\ncheap;--tell em dat ar,--you _tell_ em,\" she added, earnestly.\n\nHaley here forced his way into the group, walked up to the old man,\npulled his mouth open and looked in, felt of his teeth, made him stand\nand straighten himself, bend his back, and perform various evolutions\nto show his muscles; and then passed on to the next, and put him\nthrough the same trial. Walking up last to the boy, he felt of his arms,\nstraightened his hands, and looked at his fingers, and made him jump, to\nshow his agility.\n\n\"He an't gwine to be sold widout me!\" said the old woman, with\npassionate eagerness; \"he and I goes in a lot together; I 's rail strong\nyet, Mas'r and can do heaps o' work,--heaps on it, Mas'r.\"\n\n\"On plantation?\" said Haley, with a contemptuous glance. \"Likely story!\"\nand, as if satisfied with his examination, he walked out and looked, and\nstood with his hands in his pocket, his cigar in his mouth, and his hat\ncocked on one side, ready for action.\n\n\"What think of 'em?\" said a man who had been following Haley's\nexamination, as if to make up his own mind from it.\n\n\"Wal,\" said Haley, spitting, \"I shall put in, I think, for the youngerly\nones and the boy.\"\n\n\"They want to sell the boy and the old woman together,\" said the man.\n\n\"Find it a tight pull;--why, she's an old rack o' bones,--not worth her\nsalt.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't then?\" said the man.\n\n\"Anybody 'd be a fool 't would. She's half blind, crooked with\nrheumatis, and foolish to boot.\"\n\n\"Some buys up these yer old critturs, and ses there's a sight more wear\nin 'em than a body 'd think,\" said the man, reflectively.\n\n\"No go, 't all,\" said Haley; \"wouldn't take her for a\npresent,--fact,--I've _seen_, now.\"\n\n\"Wal, 't is kinder pity, now, not to buy her with her son,--her heart\nseems so sot on him,--s'pose they fling her in cheap.\"\n\n\"Them that's got money to spend that ar way, it's all well enough.\nI shall bid off on that ar boy for a plantation-hand;--wouldn't be\nbothered with her, no way, not if they'd give her to me,\" said Haley.\n\n\"She'll take on desp't,\" said the man.\n\n\"Nat'lly, she will,\" said the trader, coolly.\n\nThe conversation was here interrupted by a busy hum in the audience;\nand the auctioneer, a short, bustling, important fellow, elbowed his\nway into the crowd. The old woman drew in her breath, and caught\ninstinctively at her son.\n\n\"Keep close to yer mammy, Albert,--close,--dey'll put us up togedder,\"\nshe said.\n\n\"O, mammy, I'm feard they won't,\" said the boy.\n\n\"Dey must, child; I can't live, no ways, if they don't\" said the old\ncreature, vehemently.\n\nThe stentorian tones of the auctioneer, calling out to clear the way,\nnow announced that the sale was about to commence. A place was cleared,\nand the bidding began. The different men on the list were soon knocked\noff at prices which showed a pretty brisk demand in the market; two of\nthem fell to Haley.\n\n\"Come, now, young un,\" said the auctioneer, giving the boy a touch with\nhis hammer, \"be up and show your springs, now.\"\n\n\"Put us two up togedder, togedder,--do please, Mas'r,\" said the old\nwoman, holding fast to her boy.\n\n\"Be off,\" said the man, gruffly, pushing her hands away; \"you come last.\nNow, darkey, spring;\" and, with the word, he pushed the boy toward the\nblock, while a deep, heavy groan rose behind him. The boy paused, and\nlooked back; but there was no time to stay, and, dashing the tears from\nhis large, bright eyes, he was up in a moment.\n\nHis fine figure, alert limbs, and bright face, raised an instant\ncompetition, and half a dozen bids simultaneously met the ear of the\nauctioneer. Anxious, half-frightened, he looked from side to side, as\nhe heard the clatter of contending bids,--now here, now there,--till the\nhammer fell. Haley had got him. He was pushed from the block toward his\nnew master, but stopped one moment, and looked back, when his poor old\nmother, trembling in every limb, held out her shaking hands toward him.\n\n\"Buy me too, Mas'r, for de dear Lord's sake!--buy me,--I shall die if\nyou don't!\"\n\n\"You'll die if I do, that's the kink of it,\" said Haley,--\"no!\" And he\nturned on his heel.\n\nThe bidding for the poor old creature was summary. The man who had\naddressed Haley, and who seemed not destitute of compassion, bought her\nfor a trifle, and the spectators began to disperse.\n\nThe poor victims of the sale, who had been brought up in one place\ntogether for years, gathered round the despairing old mother, whose\nagony was pitiful to see.\n\n\"Couldn't dey leave me one? Mas'r allers said I should have one,--he\ndid,\" she repeated over and over, in heart-broken tones.\n\n\"Trust in the Lord, Aunt Hagar,\" said the oldest of the men,\nsorrowfully.\n\n\"What good will it do?\" said she, sobbing passionately.\n\n\"Mother, mother,--don't! don't!\" said the boy. \"They say you 's got a\ngood master.\"\n\n\"I don't care,--I don't care. O, Albert! oh, my boy! you 's my last\nbaby. Lord, how ken I?\"\n\n\"Come, take her off, can't some of ye?\" said Haley, dryly; \"don't do no\ngood for her to go on that ar way.\"\n\nThe old men of the company, partly by persuasion and partly by force,\nloosed the poor creature's last despairing hold, and, as they led her\noff to her new master's wagon, strove to comfort her.\n\n\"Now!\" said Haley, pushing his three purchases together, and producing\na bundle of handcuffs, which he proceeded to put on their wrists; and\nfastening each handcuff to a long chain, he drove them before him to the\njail.\n\nA few days saw Haley, with his possessions, safely deposited on one of\nthe Ohio boats. It was the commencement of his gang, to be augmented, as\nthe boat moved on, by various other merchandise of the same kind, which\nhe, or his agent, had stored for him in various points along shore.\n\nThe La Belle Riviere, as brave and beautiful a boat as ever walked the\nwaters of her namesake river, was floating gayly down the stream,\nunder a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and\nfluttering over head; the guards crowded with well-dressed ladies and\ngentlemen walking and enjoying the delightful day. All was full of life,\nbuoyant and rejoicing;--all but Haley's gang, who were stored, with\nother freight, on the lower deck, and who, somehow, did not seem to\nappreciate their various privileges, as they sat in a knot, talking to\neach other in low tones.\n\n\"Boys,\" said Haley, coming up, briskly, \"I hope you keep up good heart,\nand are cheerful. Now, no sulks, ye see; keep stiff upper lip, boys; do\nwell by me, and I'll do well by you.\"\n\nThe boys addressed responded the invariable \"Yes, Mas'r,\" for ages\nthe watchword of poor Africa; but it's to be owned they did not look\nparticularly cheerful; they had their various little prejudices in favor\nof wives, mothers, sisters, and children, seen for the last time,--and\nthough \"they that wasted them required of them mirth,\" it was not\ninstantly forthcoming.\n\n\"I've got a wife,\" spoke out the article enumerated as \"John, aged\nthirty,\" and he laid his chained hand on Tom's knee,--\"and she don't\nknow a word about this, poor girl!\"\n\n\"Where does she live?\" said Tom.\n\n\"In a tavern a piece down here,\" said John; \"I wish, now, I _could_ see\nher once more in this world,\" he added.\n\nPoor John! It _was_ rather natural; and the tears that fell, as he\nspoke, came as naturally as if he had been a white man. Tom drew a long\nbreath from a sore heart, and tried, in his poor way, to comfort him.\n\nAnd over head, in the cabin, sat fathers and mothers, husbands and\nwives; and merry, dancing children moved round among them, like so\nmany little butterflies, and everything was going on quite easy and\ncomfortable.\n\n\"O, mamma,\" said a boy, who had just come up from below, \"there's a\nnegro trader on board, and he's brought four or five slaves down there.\"\n\n\"Poor creatures!\" said the mother, in a tone between grief and\nindignation.\n\n\"What's that?\" said another lady.\n\n\"Some poor slaves below,\" said the mother.\n\n\"And they've got chains on,\" said the boy.\n\n\"What a shame to our country that such sights are to be seen!\" said\nanother lady.\n\n\"O, there's a great deal to be said on both sides of the subject,\" said\na genteel woman, who sat at her state-room door sewing, while her little\ngirl and boy were playing round her. \"I've been south, and I must say I\nthink the negroes are better off than they would be to be free.\"\n\n\"In some respects, some of them are well off, I grant,\" said the lady to\nwhose remark she had answered. \"The most dreadful part of slavery, to my\nmind, is its outrages on the feelings and affections,--the separating of\nfamilies, for example.\"\n\n\"That _is_ a bad thing, certainly,\" said the other lady, holding up\na baby's dress she had just completed, and looking intently on its\ntrimmings; \"but then, I fancy, it don't occur often.\"\n\n\"O, it does,\" said the first lady, eagerly; \"I've lived many years in\nKentucky and Virginia both, and I've seen enough to make any one's heart\nsick. Suppose, ma'am, your two children, there, should be taken from\nyou, and sold?\"\n\n\"We can't reason from our feelings to those of this class of persons,\"\nsaid the other lady, sorting out some worsteds on her lap.\n\n\"Indeed, ma'am, you can know nothing of them, if you say so,\" answered\nthe first lady, warmly. \"I was born and brought up among them. I know\nthey _do_ feel, just as keenly,--even more so, perhaps,--as we do.\"\n\nThe lady said \"Indeed!\" yawned, and looked out the cabin window,\nand finally repeated, for a finale, the remark with which she had\nbegun,--\"After all, I think they are better off than they would be to be\nfree.\"\n\n\"It's undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race\nshould be servants,--kept in a low condition,\" said a grave-looking\ngentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. \"'Cursed be\nCanaan; a servant of servants shall he be,' the scripture says.\"*\n\n     * Gen. 9:25.  This is what Noah says when he wakes out of\n     drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father\n     of Canaan, has seen him naked.\n\n\"I say, stranger, is that ar what that text means?\" said a tall man,\nstanding by.\n\n\"Undoubtedly. It pleased Providence, for some inscrutable reason, to\ndoom the race to bondage, ages ago; and we must not set up our opinion\nagainst that.\"\n\n\"Well, then, we'll all go ahead and buy up niggers,\" said the man, \"if\nthat's the way of Providence,--won't we, Squire?\" said he, turning to\nHaley, who had been standing, with his hands in his pockets, by the\nstove and intently listening to the conversation.\n\n\"Yes,\" continued the tall man, \"we must all be resigned to the decrees\nof Providence. Niggers must be sold, and trucked round, and kept\nunder; it's what they's made for. 'Pears like this yer view 's quite\nrefreshing, an't it, stranger?\" said he to Haley.\n\n\"I never thought on 't,\" said Haley, \"I couldn't have said as much,\nmyself; I ha'nt no larning. I took up the trade just to make a living;\nif 'tan't right, I calculated to 'pent on 't in time, ye know.\"\n\n\"And now you'll save yerself the trouble, won't ye?\" said the tall man.\n\"See what 't is, now, to know scripture. If ye'd only studied yer Bible,\nlike this yer good man, ye might have know'd it before, and saved ye\na heap o' trouble. Ye could jist have said, 'Cussed be'--what's his\nname?--'and 't would all have come right.'\" And the stranger, who was\nno other than the honest drover whom we introduced to our readers in the\nKentucky tavern, sat down, and began smoking, with a curious smile on\nhis long, dry face.\n\nA tall, slender young man, with a face expressive of great feeling\nand intelligence, here broke in, and repeated the words, \"'All things\nwhatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto\nthem.' I suppose,\" he added, \"_that_ is scripture, as much as 'Cursed be\nCanaan.'\"\n\n\"Wal, it seems quite _as_ plain a text, stranger,\" said John the drover,\n\"to poor fellows like us, now;\" and John smoked on like a volcano.\n\nThe young man paused, looked as if he was going to say more, when\nsuddenly the boat stopped, and the company made the usual steamboat\nrush, to see where they were landing.\n\n\"Both them ar chaps parsons?\" said John to one of the men, as they were\ngoing out.\n\nThe man nodded.\n\nAs the boat stopped, a black woman came running wildly up the plank,\ndarted into the crowd, flew up to where the slave gang sat, and\nthrew her arms round that unfortunate piece of merchandise before\nenumerate--\"John, aged thirty,\" and with sobs and tears bemoaned him as\nher husband.\n\nBut what needs tell the story, told too oft,--every day told,--of\nheart-strings rent and broken,--the weak broken and torn for the profit\nand convenience of the strong! It needs not to be told;--every day is\ntelling it,--telling it, too, in the ear of One who is not deaf, though\nhe be long silent.\n\nThe young man who had spoken for the cause of humanity and God before\nstood with folded arms, looking on this scene. He turned, and Haley\nwas standing at his side. \"My friend,\" he said, speaking with thick\nutterance, \"how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look\nat those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am\ngoing home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal\nto carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife\nforever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this.\"\n\nThe trader turned away in silence.\n\n\"I say, now,\" said the drover, touching his elbow, \"there's differences\nin parsons, an't there? 'Cussed be Canaan' don't seem to go down with\nthis 'un, does it?\"\n\nHaley gave an uneasy growl.\n\n\"And that ar an't the worst on 't,\" said John; \"mabbee it won't go down\nwith the Lord, neither, when ye come to settle with Him, one o' these\ndays, as all on us must, I reckon.\"\n\nHaley walked reflectively to the other end of the boat.\n\n\"If I make pretty handsomely on one or two next gangs,\" he thought, \"I\nreckon I'll stop off this yer; it's really getting dangerous.\" And he\ntook out his pocket-book, and began adding over his accounts,--a process\nwhich many gentlemen besides Mr. Haley have found a specific for an\nuneasy conscience.\n\nThe boat swept proudly away from the shore, and all went on merrily, as\nbefore. Men talked, and loafed, and read, and smoked. Women sewed, and\nchildren played, and the boat passed on her way.\n\nOne day, when she lay to for a while at a small town in Kentucky, Haley\nwent up into the place on a little matter of business.\n\nTom, whose fetters did not prevent his taking a moderate circuit, had\ndrawn near the side of the boat, and stood listlessly gazing over the\nrailing. After a time, he saw the trader returning, with an alert step,\nin company with a colored woman, bearing in her arms a young child. She\nwas dressed quite respectably, and a colored man followed her, bringing\nalong a small trunk. The woman came cheerfully onward, talking, as she\ncame, with the man who bore her trunk, and so passed up the plank into\nthe boat. The bell rung, the steamer whizzed, the engine groaned and\ncoughed, and away swept the boat down the river.\n\nThe woman walked forward among the boxes and bales of the lower deck,\nand, sitting down, busied herself with chirruping to her baby.\n\nHaley made a turn or two about the boat, and then, coming up, seated\nhimself near her, and began saying something to her in an indifferent\nundertone.\n\nTom soon noticed a heavy cloud passing over the woman's brow; and that\nshe answered rapidly, and with great vehemence.\n\n\"I don't believe it,--I won't believe it!\" he heard her say. \"You're\njist a foolin' with me.\"\n\n\"If you won't believe it, look here!\" said the man, drawing out a paper;\n\"this yer's the bill of sale, and there's your master's name to it; and\nI paid down good solid cash for it, too, I can tell you,--so, now!\"\n\n\"I don't believe Mas'r would cheat me so; it can't be true!\" said the\nwoman, with increasing agitation.\n\n\"You can ask any of these men here, that can read writing. Here!\" he\nsaid, to a man that was passing by, \"jist read this yer, won't you! This\nyer gal won't believe me, when I tell her what 't is.\"\n\n\"Why, it's a bill of sale, signed by John Fosdick,\" said the man,\n\"making over to you the girl Lucy and her child. It's all straight\nenough, for aught I see.\"\n\nThe woman's passionate exclamations collected a crowd around her, and\nthe trader briefly explained to them the cause of the agitation.\n\n\"He told me that I was going down to Louisville, to hire out as cook to\nthe same tavern where my husband works,--that's what Mas'r told me, his\nown self; and I can't believe he'd lie to me,\" said the woman.\n\n\"But he has sold you, my poor woman, there's no doubt about it,\" said\na good-natured looking man, who had been examining the papers; \"he has\ndone it, and no mistake.\"\n\n\"Then it's no account talking,\" said the woman, suddenly growing quite\ncalm; and, clasping her child tighter in her arms, she sat down on her\nbox, turned her back round, and gazed listlessly into the river.\n\n\"Going to take it easy, after all!\" said the trader. \"Gal's got grit, I\nsee.\"\n\nThe woman looked calm, as the boat went on; and a beautiful soft summer\nbreeze passed like a compassionate spirit over her head,--the gentle\nbreeze, that never inquires whether the brow is dusky or fair that it\nfans. And she saw sunshine sparkling on the water, in golden ripples,\nand heard gay voices, full of ease and pleasure, talking around her\neverywhere; but her heart lay as if a great stone had fallen on it.\nHer baby raised himself up against her, and stroked her cheeks with his\nlittle hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed\ndetermined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in\nher arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering,\nunconscious face; and gradually she seemed, and little by little, to\ngrow calmer, and busied herself with tending and nursing him.\n\nThe child, a boy of ten months, was uncommonly large and strong of his\nage, and very vigorous in his limbs. Never, for a moment, still, he kept\nhis mother constantly busy in holding him, and guarding his springing\nactivity.\n\n\"That's a fine chap!\" said a man, suddenly stopping opposite to him,\nwith his hands in his pockets. \"How old is he?\"\n\n\"Ten months and a half,\" said the mother.\n\nThe man whistled to the boy, and offered him part of a stick of candy,\nwhich he eagerly grabbed at, and very soon had it in a baby's general\ndepository, to wit, his mouth.\n\n\"Rum fellow!\" said the man \"Knows what's what!\" and he whistled, and\nwalked on. When he had got to the other side of the boat, he came across\nHaley, who was smoking on top of a pile of boxes.\n\nThe stranger produced a match, and lighted a cigar, saying, as he did\nso,\n\n\"Decentish kind o' wench you've got round there, stranger.\"\n\n\"Why, I reckon she _is_ tol'able fair,\" said Haley, blowing the smoke\nout of his mouth.\n\n\"Taking her down south?\" said the man.\n\nHaley nodded, and smoked on.\n\n\"Plantation hand?\" said the man.\n\n\"Wal,\" said Haley, \"I'm fillin' out an order for a plantation, and I\nthink I shall put her in. They telled me she was a good cook; and they\ncan use her for that, or set her at the cotton-picking. She's got the\nright fingers for that; I looked at 'em. Sell well, either way;\" and\nHaley resumed his cigar.\n\n\"They won't want the young 'un on the plantation,\" said the man.\n\n\"I shall sell him, first chance I find,\" said Haley, lighting another\ncigar.\n\n\"S'pose you'd be selling him tol'able cheap,\" said the stranger,\nmounting the pile of boxes, and sitting down comfortably.\n\n\"Don't know 'bout that,\" said Haley; \"he's a pretty smart young 'un,\nstraight, fat, strong; flesh as hard as a brick!\"\n\n\"Very true, but then there's the bother and expense of raisin'.\"\n\n\"Nonsense!\" said Haley; \"they is raised as easy as any kind of critter\nthere is going; they an't a bit more trouble than pups. This yer chap\nwill be running all around, in a month.\"\n\n\"I've got a good place for raisin', and I thought of takin' in a little\nmore stock,\" said the man. \"One cook lost a young 'un last week,--got\ndrownded in a washtub, while she was a hangin' out the clothes,--and I\nreckon it would be well enough to set her to raisin' this yer.\"\n\nHaley and the stranger smoked a while in silence, neither seeming\nwilling to broach the test question of the interview. At last the man\nresumed:\n\n\"You wouldn't think of wantin' more than ten dollars for that ar chap,\nseeing you _must_ get him off yer hand, any how?\"\n\nHaley shook his head, and spit impressively.\n\n\"That won't do, no ways,\" he said, and began his smoking again.\n\n\"Well, stranger, what will you take?\"\n\n\"Well, now,\" said Haley, \"I _could_ raise that ar chap myself, or get\nhim raised; he's oncommon likely and healthy, and he'd fetch a hundred\ndollars, six months hence; and, in a year or two, he'd bring two\nhundred, if I had him in the right spot; I shan't take a cent less nor\nfifty for him now.\"\n\n\"O, stranger! that's rediculous, altogether,\" said the man.\n\n\"Fact!\" said Haley, with a decisive nod of his head.\n\n\"I'll give thirty for him,\" said the stranger, \"but not a cent more.\"\n\n\"Now, I'll tell ye what I will do,\" said Haley, spitting again, with\nrenewed decision. \"I'll split the difference, and say forty-five; and\nthat's the most I will do.\"\n\n\"Well, agreed!\" said the man, after an interval.\n\n\"Done!\" said Haley. \"Where do you land?\"\n\n\"At Louisville,\" said the man.\n\n\"Louisville,\" said Haley. \"Very fair, we get there about dusk. Chap will\nbe asleep,--all fair,--get him off quietly, and no screaming,--happens\nbeautiful,--I like to do everything quietly,--I hates all kind of\nagitation and fluster.\" And so, after a transfer of certain bills had\npassed from the man's pocket-book to the trader's, he resumed his cigar.\n\nIt was a bright, tranquil evening when the boat stopped at the wharf at\nLouisville. The woman had been sitting with her baby in her arms, now\nwrapped in a heavy sleep. When she heard the name of the place called\nout, she hastily laid the child down in a little cradle formed by the\nhollow among the boxes, first carefully spreading under it her cloak;\nand then she sprung to the side of the boat, in hopes that, among the\nvarious hotel-waiters who thronged the wharf, she might see her husband.\nIn this hope, she pressed forward to the front rails, and, stretching\nfar over them, strained her eyes intently on the moving heads on the\nshore, and the crowd pressed in between her and the child.\n\n\"Now's your time,\" said Haley, taking the sleeping child up, and handing\nhim to the stranger. \"Don't wake him up, and set him to crying, now;\nit would make a devil of a fuss with the gal.\" The man took the bundle\ncarefully, and was soon lost in the crowd that went up the wharf.\n\nWhen the boat, creaking, and groaning, and puffing, had loosed from\nthe wharf, and was beginning slowly to strain herself along, the woman\nreturned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there,--the child was\ngone!\n\n\"Why, why,--where?\" she began, in bewildered surprise.\n\n\"Lucy,\" said the trader, \"your child's gone; you may as well know it\nfirst as last. You see, I know'd you couldn't take him down south; and\nI got a chance to sell him to a first-rate family, that'll raise him\nbetter than you can.\"\n\nThe trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political\nperfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians\nof the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane\nweakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine\ncould be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild look\nof anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have\ndisturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that\nsame look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my\nfriend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole\nnorthern community used to them, for the glory of the Union. So the\ntrader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those\ndark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as\nnecessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was\ngoing to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other\nsupporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.\n\nBut the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and\ndirect through the heart, for cry or tear.\n\nDizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her\neyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and\nhum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her\nbewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry not\ntear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.\n\nThe trader, who, considering his advantages, was almost as humane as\nsome of our politicians, seemed to feel called on to administer such\nconsolation as the case admitted of.\n\n\"I know this yer comes kinder hard, at first, Lucy,\" said he; \"but such\na smart, sensible gal as you are, won't give way to it. You see it's\n_necessary_, and can't be helped!\"\n\n\"O! don't, Mas'r, don't!\" said the woman, with a voice like one that is\nsmothering.\n\n\"You're a smart wench, Lucy,\" he persisted; \"I mean to do well by\nye, and get ye a nice place down river; and you'll soon get another\nhusband,--such a likely gal as you--\"\n\n\"O! Mas'r, if you _only_ won't talk to me now,\" said the woman, in a\nvoice of such quick and living anguish that the trader felt that there\nwas something at present in the case beyond his style of operation. He\ngot up, and the woman turned away, and buried her head in her cloak.\n\nThe trader walked up and down for a time, and occasionally stopped and\nlooked at her.\n\n\"Takes it hard, rather,\" he soliloquized, \"but quiet, tho';--let her\nsweat a while; she'll come right, by and by!\"\n\nTom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a\nperfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something\nunutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he\nhad not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had\nonly been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have\nthought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful\ntrade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an\nAmerican divine* tells us has _\"no evils but such as are inseparable\nfrom any other relations in social and domestic life_.\" But Tom, as\nwe see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined\nentirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with\nviews like these. His very soul bled within him for what seemed to him\nthe _wrongs_ of the poor suffering thing that lay like a crushed reed\non the boxes; the feeling, living, bleeding, yet immortal _thing_,\nwhich American state law coolly classes with the bundles, and bales, and\nboxes, among which she is lying.\n\n     * Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]\n     Presbyterian clergyman (1799-1873), a friend of the Beecher\n     family. Mrs. Stowe attempted unsuccessfully to have this\n     identifying note removed from the stereotype-plate of the\n     first edition.\n\nTom drew near, and tried to say something; but she only groaned.\nHonestly, and with tears running down his own cheeks, he spoke of a\nheart of love in the skies, of a pitying Jesus, and an eternal home; but\nthe ear was deaf with anguish, and the palsied heart could not feel.\n\nNight came on,--night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with\nher innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent.\nThere was no speech nor language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from\nthat distant sky. One after another, the voices of business or pleasure\ndied away; all on the boat were sleeping, and the ripples at the prow\nwere plainly heard. Tom stretched himself out on a box, and there, as he\nlay, he heard, ever and anon, a smothered sob or cry from the prostrate\ncreature,--\"O! what shall I do? O Lord! O good Lord, do help me!\" and\nso, ever and anon, until the murmur died away in silence.\n\nAt midnight, Tom waked, with a sudden start. Something black passed\nquickly by him to the side of the boat, and he heard a splash in the\nwater. No one else saw or heard anything. He raised his head,--the\nwoman's place was vacant! He got up, and sought about him in vain.\nThe poor bleeding heart was still, at last, and the river rippled and\ndimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it.\n\nPatience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like\nthese. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is\nforgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient,\ngenerous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him,\nin patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, \"the year of his\nredeemed _shall_ come.\"\n\nThe trader waked up bright and early, and came out to see to his live\nstock. It was now his turn to look about in perplexity.\n\n\"Where alive is that gal?\" he said to Tom.\n\nTom, who had learned the wisdom of keeping counsel, did not feel called\nupon to state his observations and suspicions, but said he did not know.\n\n\"She surely couldn't have got off in the night at any of the landings,\nfor I was awake, and on the lookout, whenever the boat stopped. I never\ntrust these yer things to other folks.\"\n\nThis speech was addressed to Tom quite confidentially, as if it was\nsomething that would be specially interesting to him. Tom made no\nanswer.\n\nThe trader searched the boat from stem to stern, among boxes, bales and\nbarrels, around the machinery, by the chimneys, in vain.\n\n\"Now, I say, Tom, be fair about this yer,\" he said, when, after a\nfruitless search, he came where Tom was standing. \"You know something\nabout it, now. Don't tell me,--I know you do. I saw the gal stretched\nout here about ten o'clock, and ag'in at twelve, and ag'in between one\nand two; and then at four she was gone, and you was a sleeping right\nthere all the time. Now, you know something,--you can't help it.\"\n\n\"Well, Mas'r,\" said Tom, \"towards morning something brushed by me, and I\nkinder half woke; and then I hearn a great splash, and then I clare woke\nup, and the gal was gone. That's all I know on 't.\"\n\nThe trader was not shocked nor amazed; because, as we said before, he\nwas used to a great many things that you are not used to. Even the awful\npresence of Death struck no solemn chill upon him. He had seen Death\nmany times,--met him in the way of trade, and got acquainted with\nhim,--and he only thought of him as a hard customer, that embarrassed\nhis property operations very unfairly; and so he only swore that the\ngal was a baggage, and that he was devilish unlucky, and that, if things\nwent on in this way, he should not make a cent on the trip. In short, he\nseemed to consider himself an ill-used man, decidedly; but there was no\nhelp for it, as the woman had escaped into a state which _never will_\ngive up a fugitive,--not even at the demand of the whole glorious\nUnion. The trader, therefore, sat discontentedly down, with his little\naccount-book, and put down the missing body and soul under the head of\n_losses!_\n\n\"He's a shocking creature, isn't he,--this trader? so unfeeling! It's\ndreadful, really!\"\n\n\"O, but nobody thinks anything of these traders! They are universally\ndespised,--never received into any decent society.\"\n\nBut who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened,\ncultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader\nis the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the\npublic statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves\nhim, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?\n\nAre you educated and he ignorant, you high and he low, you refined and\nhe coarse, you talented and he simple?\n\nIn the day of a future judgment, these very considerations may make it\nmore tolerable for him than for you.\n\nIn concluding these little incidents of lawful trade, we must beg the\nworld not to think that American legislators are entirely destitute of\nhumanity, as might, perhaps, be unfairly inferred from the great efforts\nmade in our national body to protect and perpetuate this species of\ntraffic.\n\nWho does not know how our great men are outdoing themselves, in\ndeclaiming against the _foreign_ slave-trade. There are a perfect host\nof Clarksons and Wilberforces* risen up among us on that subject, most\nedifying to hear and behold. Trading negroes from Africa, dear reader,\nis so horrid! It is not to be thought of! But trading them from\nKentucky,--that's quite another thing!\n\n     * Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-\n     1833), English philanthropists and anti-slavery agitators\n     who helped to secure passage of the Emancipation Bill by\n     Parliament in 1833.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nThe Quaker Settlement\n\n\nA quiet scene now rises before us. A large, roomy, neatly-painted\nkitchen, its yellow floor glossy and smooth, and without a particle\nof dust; a neat, well-blacked cooking-stove; rows of shining tin,\nsuggestive of unmentionable good things to the appetite; glossy green\nwood chairs, old and firm; a small flag-bottomed rocking-chair, with\na patch-work cushion in it, neatly contrived out of small pieces of\ndifferent colored woollen goods, and a larger sized one, motherly and\nold, whose wide arms breathed hospitable invitation, seconded by the\nsolicitation of its feather cushions,--a real comfortable, persuasive\nold chair, and worth, in the way of honest, homely enjoyment, a dozen of\nyour plush or _brochetelle_ drawing-room gentry; and in the chair, gently\nswaying back and forward, her eyes bent on some fine sewing, sat our\nfine old friend Eliza. Yes, there she is, paler and thinner than in her\nKentucky home, with a world of quiet sorrow lying under the shadow of\nher long eyelashes, and marking the outline of her gentle mouth! It\nwas plain to see how old and firm the girlish heart was grown under\nthe discipline of heavy sorrow; and when, anon, her large dark eye was\nraised to follow the gambols of her little Harry, who was sporting, like\nsome tropical butterfly, hither and thither over the floor, she showed a\ndepth of firmness and steady resolve that was never there in her earlier\nand happier days.\n\nBy her side sat a woman with a bright tin pan in her lap, into which\nshe was carefully sorting some dried peaches. She might be fifty-five or\nsixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only\nto brighten and adorn. The snowy lisse crape cap, made after the strait\nQuaker pattern,--the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid\nfolds across her bosom,--the drab shawl and dress,--showed at once the\ncommunity to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with\na healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair,\npartially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placid\nforehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on\nearth, good will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear,\nhonest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them,\nto feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever\nthrobbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful\nyoung girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? If\nany want to get up an inspiration under this head, we refer them to\nour good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little\nrocking-chair. It had a turn for quacking and squeaking,--that chair\nhad,--either from having taken cold in early life, or from some\nasthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement; but, as she\ngently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of subdued\n\"creechy crawchy,\" that would have been intolerable in any other chair.\nBut old Simeon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to\nhim, and the children all avowed that they wouldn't miss of hearing\nmother's chair for anything in the world. For why? for twenty years\nor more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly\nloving kindness, had come from that chair;--head-aches and heart-aches\ninnumerable had been cured there,--difficulties spiritual and temporal\nsolved there,--all by one good, loving woman, God bless her!\n\n\"And so thee still thinks of going to Canada, Eliza?\" she said, as she\nwas quietly looking over her peaches.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" said Eliza, firmly. \"I must go onward. I dare not stop.\"\n\n\"And what'll thee do, when thee gets there? Thee must think about that,\nmy daughter.\"\n\n\"My daughter\" came naturally from the lips of Rachel Halliday; for hers\nwas just the face and form that made \"mother\" seem the most natural word\nin the world.\n\nEliza's hands trembled, and some tears fell on her fine work; but she\nanswered, firmly,\n\n\"I shall do--anything I can find. I hope I can find something.\"\n\n\"Thee knows thee can stay here, as long as thee pleases,\" said Rachel.\n\n\"O, thank you,\" said Eliza, \"but\"--she pointed to Harry--\"I can't sleep\nnights; I can't rest. Last night I dreamed I saw that man coming into\nthe yard,\" she said, shuddering.\n\n\"Poor child!\" said Rachel, wiping her eyes; \"but thee mustn't feel so.\nThe Lord hath ordered it so that never hath a fugitive been stolen from\nour village. I trust thine will not be the first.\"\n\nThe door here opened, and a little short, round, pin-cushiony woman\nstood at the door, with a cheery, blooming face, like a ripe apple. She\nwas dressed, like Rachel, in sober gray, with the muslin folded neatly\nacross her round, plump little chest.\n\n\"Ruth Stedman,\" said Rachel, coming joyfully forward; \"how is thee,\nRuth? she said, heartily taking both her hands.\n\n\"Nicely,\" said Ruth, taking off her little drab bonnet, and dusting it\nwith her handkerchief, displaying, as she did so, a round little head,\non which the Quaker cap sat with a sort of jaunty air, despite all the\nstroking and patting of the small fat hands, which were busily applied\nto arranging it. Certain stray locks of decidedly curly hair, too, had\nescaped here and there, and had to be coaxed and cajoled into\ntheir place again; and then the new comer, who might have been\nfive-and-twenty, turned from the small looking-glass, before which she\nhad been making these arrangements, and looked well pleased,--as most\npeople who looked at her might have been,--for she was decidedly a\nwholesome, whole-hearted, chirruping little woman, as ever gladdened\nman's heart withal.\n\n\"Ruth, this friend is Eliza Harris; and this is the little boy I told\nthee of.\"\n\n\"I am glad to see thee, Eliza,--very,\" said Ruth, shaking hands, as if\nEliza were an old friend she had long been expecting; \"and this is thy\ndear boy,--I brought a cake for him,\" she said, holding out a little\nheart to the boy, who came up, gazing through his curls, and accepted it\nshyly.\n\n\"Where's thy baby, Ruth?\" said Rachel.\n\n\"O, he's coming; but thy Mary caught him as I came in, and ran off with\nhim to the barn, to show him to the children.\"\n\nAt this moment, the door opened, and Mary, an honest, rosy-looking girl,\nwith large brown eyes, like her mother's, came in with the baby.\n\n\"Ah! ha!\" said Rachel, coming up, and taking the great, white, fat\nfellow in her arms, \"how good he looks, and how he does grow!\"\n\n\"To be sure, he does,\" said little bustling Ruth, as she took the child,\nand began taking off a little blue silk hood, and various layers and\nwrappers of outer garments; and having given a twitch here, and a pull\nthere, and variously adjusted and arranged him, and kissed him heartily,\nshe set him on the floor to collect his thoughts. Baby seemed quite used\nto this mode of proceeding, for he put his thumb in his mouth (as if\nit were quite a thing of course), and seemed soon absorbed in his own\nreflections, while the mother seated herself, and taking out a long\nstocking of mixed blue and white yarn, began to knit with briskness.\n\n\"Mary, thee'd better fill the kettle, hadn't thee?\" gently suggested the\nmother.\n\nMary took the kettle to the well, and soon reappearing, placed it over\nthe stove, where it was soon purring and steaming, a sort of censer of\nhospitality and good cheer. The peaches, moreover, in obedience to a few\ngentle whispers from Rachel, were soon deposited, by the same hand, in a\nstew-pan over the fire.\n\nRachel now took down a snowy moulding-board, and, tying on an\napron, proceeded quietly to making up some biscuits, first saying to\nMary,--\"Mary, hadn't thee better tell John to get a chicken ready?\" and\nMary disappeared accordingly.\n\n\"And how is Abigail Peters?\" said Rachel, as she went on with her\nbiscuits.\n\n\"O, she's better,\" said Ruth; \"I was in, this morning; made the bed,\ntidied up the house. Leah Hills went in, this afternoon, and baked bread\nand pies enough to last some days; and I engaged to go back to get her\nup, this evening.\"\n\n\"I will go in tomorrow, and do any cleaning there may be, and look over\nthe mending,\" said Rachel.\n\n\"Ah! that is well,\" said Ruth. \"I've heard,\" she added, \"that Hannah\nStanwood is sick. John was up there, last night,--I must go there\ntomorrow.\"\n\n\"John can come in here to his meals, if thee needs to stay all day,\"\nsuggested Rachel.\n\n\"Thank thee, Rachel; will see, tomorrow; but, here comes Simeon.\"\n\nSimeon Halliday, a tall, straight, muscular man, in drab coat and\npantaloons, and broad-brimmed hat, now entered.\n\n\"How is thee, Ruth?\" he said, warmly, as he spread his broad open hand\nfor her little fat palm; \"and how is John?\"\n\n\"O! John is well, and all the rest of our folks,\" said Ruth, cheerily.\n\n\"Any news, father?\" said Rachel, as she was putting her biscuits into\nthe oven.\n\n\"Peter Stebbins told me that they should be along tonight, with\n_friends_,\" said Simeon, significantly, as he was washing his hands at a\nneat sink, in a little back porch.\n\n\"Indeed!\" said Rachel, looking thoughtfully, and glancing at Eliza.\n\n\"Did thee say thy name was Harris?\" said Simeon to Eliza, as he\nreentered.\n\nRachel glanced quickly at her husband, as Eliza tremulously answered\n\"yes;\" her fears, ever uppermost, suggesting that possibly there might\nbe advertisements out for her.\n\n\"Mother!\" said Simeon, standing in the porch, and calling Rachel out.\n\n\"What does thee want, father?\" said Rachel, rubbing her floury hands, as\nshe went into the porch.\n\n\"This child's husband is in the settlement, and will be here tonight,\"\nsaid Simeon.\n\n\"Now, thee doesn't say that, father?\" said Rachel, all her face radiant\nwith joy.\n\n\"It's really true. Peter was down yesterday, with the wagon, to the\nother stand, and there he found an old woman and two men; and one said\nhis name was George Harris; and from what he told of his history, I am\ncertain who he is. He is a bright, likely fellow, too.\"\n\n\"Shall we tell her now?\" said Simeon.\n\n\"Let's tell Ruth,\" said Rachel. \"Here, Ruth,--come here.\"\n\nRuth laid down her knitting-work, and was in the back porch in a moment.\n\n\"Ruth, what does thee think?\" said Rachel. \"Father says Eliza's husband\nis in the last company, and will be here tonight.\"\n\nA burst of joy from the little Quakeress interrupted the speech. She\ngave such a bound from the floor, as she clapped her little hands, that\ntwo stray curls fell from under her Quaker cap, and lay brightly on her\nwhite neckerchief.\n\n\"Hush thee, dear!\" said Rachel, gently; \"hush, Ruth! Tell us, shall we\ntell her now?\"\n\n\"Now! to be sure,--this very minute. Why, now, suppose 't was my John,\nhow should I feel? Do tell her, right off.\"\n\n\"Thee uses thyself only to learn how to love thy neighbor, Ruth,\" said\nSimeon, looking, with a beaming face, on Ruth.\n\n\"To be sure. Isn't it what we are made for? If I didn't love John and\nthe baby, I should not know how to feel for her. Come, now do tell\nher,--do!\" and she laid her hands persuasively on Rachel's arm. \"Take\nher into thy bed-room, there, and let me fry the chicken while thee does\nit.\"\n\nRachel came out into the kitchen, where Eliza was sewing, and opening\nthe door of a small bed-room, said, gently, \"Come in here with me, my\ndaughter; I have news to tell thee.\"\n\nThe blood flushed in Eliza's pale face; she rose, trembling with nervous\nanxiety, and looked towards her boy.\n\n\"No, no,\" said little Ruth, darting up, and seizing her hands. \"Never\nthee fear; it's good news, Eliza,--go in, go in!\" And she gently pushed\nher to the door which closed after her; and then, turning round, she\ncaught little Harry in her arms, and began kissing him.\n\n\"Thee'll see thy father, little one. Does thee know it? Thy father is\ncoming,\" she said, over and over again, as the boy looked wonderingly at\nher.\n\nMeanwhile, within the door, another scene was going on. Rachel Halliday\ndrew Eliza toward her, and said, \"The Lord hath had mercy on thee,\ndaughter; thy husband hath escaped from the house of bondage.\"\n\nThe blood flushed to Eliza's cheek in a sudden glow, and went back to\nher heart with as sudden a rush. She sat down, pale and faint.\n\n\"Have courage, child,\" said Rachel, laying her hand on her head. \"He is\namong friends, who will bring him here tonight.\"\n\n\"Tonight!\" Eliza repeated, \"tonight!\" The words lost all meaning to her;\nher head was dreamy and confused; all was mist for a moment.\n\n\nWhen she awoke, she found herself snugly tucked up on the bed, with a\nblanket over her, and little Ruth rubbing her hands with camphor. She\nopened her eyes in a state of dreamy, delicious languor, such as one\nwho has long been bearing a heavy load, and now feels it gone, and would\nrest. The tension of the nerves, which had never ceased a moment since\nthe first hour of her flight, had given way, and a strange feeling of\nsecurity and rest came over her; and as she lay, with her large, dark\neyes open, she followed, as in a quiet dream, the motions of those about\nher. She saw the door open into the other room; saw the supper-table,\nwith its snowy cloth; heard the dreamy murmur of the singing tea-kettle;\nsaw Ruth tripping backward and forward, with plates of cake and saucers\nof preserves, and ever and anon stopping to put a cake into Harry's\nhand, or pat his head, or twine his long curls round her snowy fingers.\nShe saw the ample, motherly form of Rachel, as she ever and anon came to\nthe bedside, and smoothed and arranged something about the bedclothes,\nand gave a tuck here and there, by way of expressing her good-will;\nand was conscious of a kind of sunshine beaming down upon her from her\nlarge, clear, brown eyes. She saw Ruth's husband come in,--saw her fly\nup to him, and commence whispering very earnestly, ever and anon, with\nimpressive gesture, pointing her little finger toward the room. She saw\nher, with the baby in her arms, sitting down to tea; she saw them all\nat table, and little Harry in a high chair, under the shadow of\nRachel's ample wing; there were low murmurs of talk, gentle tinkling of\ntea-spoons, and musical clatter of cups and saucers, and all mingled\nin a delightful dream of rest; and Eliza slept, as she had not slept\nbefore, since the fearful midnight hour when she had taken her child and\nfled through the frosty starlight.\n\nShe dreamed of a beautiful country,--a land, it seemed to her, of\nrest,--green shores, pleasant islands, and beautifully glittering water;\nand there, in a house which kind voices told her was a home, she saw her\nboy playing, free and happy child. She heard her husband's footsteps;\nshe felt him coming nearer; his arms were around her, his tears falling\non her face, and she awoke! It was no dream. The daylight had long\nfaded; her child lay calmly sleeping by her side; a candle was burning\ndimly on the stand, and her husband was sobbing by her pillow.\n\n\nThe next morning was a cheerful one at the Quaker house. \"Mother\" was up\nbetimes, and surrounded by busy girls and boys, whom we had scarce time\nto introduce to our readers yesterday, and who all moved obediently to\nRachel's gentle \"Thee had better,\" or more gentle \"Hadn't thee better?\"\nin the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the luxurious\nvalleys of Indiana is a thing complicated and multiform, and, like\npicking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, asking\nother hands than those of the original mother. While, therefore, John\nran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted meal\nfor corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently, and quietly\nabout, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a sort of\nsunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there was any\ndanger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of so many\nyoung operators, her gentle \"Come! come!\" or \"I wouldn't, now,\" was\nquite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the\ncestus of Venus, that turned the heads of all the world in successive\ngenerations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel\nHalliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on\nharmoniously. We think it is more suited to our modern days, decidedly.\n\nWhile all other preparations were going on, Simeon the elder stood in\nhis shirt-sleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged\nin the anti-patriarchal operation of shaving. Everything went on so\nsociably, so quietly, so harmoniously, in the great kitchen,--it seemed\nso pleasant to every one to do just what they were doing, there was such\nan atmosphere of mutual confidence and good fellowship everywhere,--even\nthe knives and forks had a social clatter as they went on to the table;\nand the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous fizzle in the pan, as\nif they rather enjoyed being cooked than otherwise;--and when George\nand Eliza and little Harry came out, they met such a hearty, rejoicing\nwelcome, no wonder it seemed to them like a dream.\n\nAt last, they were all seated at breakfast, while Mary stood at the\nstove, baking griddle-cakes, which, as they gained the true exact\ngolden-brown tint of perfection, were transferred quite handily to the\ntable.\n\nRachel never looked so truly and benignly happy as at the head of her\ntable. There was so much motherliness and full-heartedness even in\nthe way she passed a plate of cakes or poured a cup of coffee, that it\nseemed to put a spirit into the food and drink she offered.\n\nIt was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at\nany white man's table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint\nand awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the\ngenial morning rays of this simple, overflowing kindness.\n\nThis, indeed, was a home,--_home_,--a word that George had never yet\nknown a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in his providence,\nbegan to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and\nconfidence, dark, misanthropic, pining atheistic doubts, and fierce\ndespair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in\nliving faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good\nwill, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple,\nshall never lose their reward.\n\n\"Father, what if thee should get found out again?\" said Simeon second,\nas he buttered his cake.\n\n\"I should pay my fine,\" said Simeon, quietly.\n\n\"But what if they put thee in prison?\"\n\n\"Couldn't thee and mother manage the farm?\" said Simeon, smiling.\n\n\"Mother can do almost everything,\" said the boy. \"But isn't it a shame\nto make such laws?\"\n\n\"Thee mustn't speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon,\" said his father,\ngravely. \"The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do\njustice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must\ndeliver it up.\n\n\"Well, I hate those old slaveholders!\" said the boy, who felt as\nunchristian as became any modern reformer.\n\n\"I am surprised at thee, son,\" said Simeon; \"thy mother never taught\nthee so. I would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave,\nif the Lord brought him to my door in affliction.\"\n\nSimeon second blushed scarlet; but his mother only smiled, and said,\n\"Simeon is my good boy; he will grow older, by and by, and then he will\nbe like his father.\"\n\n\"I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our\naccount,\" said George, anxiously.\n\n\"Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If\nwe would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our\nname.\"\n\n\"But, for _me_,\" said George, \"I could not bear it.\"\n\n\"Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and man,\nwe do it,\" said Simeon. \"And now thou must lie by quietly this day, and\ntonight, at ten o'clock, Phineas Fletcher will carry thee onward to the\nnext stand,--thee and the rest of thy company. The pursuers are hard\nafter thee; we must not delay.\"\n\n\"If that is the case, why wait till evening?\" said George.\n\n\"Thou art safe here by daylight, for every one in the settlement is\na Friend, and all are watching. It has been found safer to travel by\nnight.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nEvangeline\n\n     \"A young star! which shone\n     O'er life--too sweet an image, for such glass!\n     A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded;\n     A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.\"\n\nThe Mississippi! How, as by an enchanted wand, have its scenes been\nchanged, since Chateaubriand wrote his prose-poetic description of it,*\nas a river of mighty, unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed wonders\nof vegetable and animal existence.\n\n     * _In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in\n     the Desert_ (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de\n     Chateaubriand (1768-1848).\n\nBut as in an hour, this river of dreams and wild romance has emerged to\na reality scarcely less visionary and splendid. What other river of the\nworld bears on its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise of\nsuch another country?--a country whose products embrace all between the\ntropics and the poles! Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming, tearing\nalong, an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business which is\npoured along its wave by a race more vehement and energetic than any the\nold world ever saw. Ah! would that they did not also bear along a more\nfearful freight,--the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the helpless,\nthe bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown God--unknown,\nunseen and silent, but who will yet \"come out of his place to save all\nthe poor of the earth!\"\n\nThe slanting light of the setting sun quivers on the sea-like expanse\nof the river; the shivery canes, and the tall, dark cypress, hung\nwith wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray, as the\nheavily-laden steamboat marches onward.\n\nPiled with cotton-bales, from many a plantation, up over deck and sides,\ntill she seems in the distance a square, massive block of gray, she\nmoves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time among\nits crowded decks before we shall find again our humble friend Tom. High\non the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere predominant\ncotton-bales, at last we may find him.\n\nPartly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, and\npartly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man,\nTom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a\nman as Haley.\n\nAt first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed\nhim to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and\napparent contentment of Tom's manner led him gradually to discontinue\nthese restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole\nof honor, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on the\nboat.\n\nEver quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every\nemergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the good\nopinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with as\nhearty a good will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm.\n\nWhen there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he would climb to a nook\namong the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studying\nover his Bible,--and it is there we see him now.\n\nFor a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is higher than\nthe surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume between\nmassive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of the\nsteamer, as from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole country\nfor miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out full before\nhim, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he was\napproaching.\n\nHe saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages of\nhuts gleaming out in long rows on many a plantation, distant from the\nstately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master;--and as the moving\npicture passed on, his poor, foolish heart would be turning backward to\nthe Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches,--to the master's house,\nwith its wide, cool halls, and, near by, the little cabin overgrown with\nthe multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces of\ncomrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife,\nbustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry\nlaugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his\nknee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakes\nand cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and\ngroaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that\nphase of life had gone by forever.\n\nIn such a case, you write to your wife, and send messages to your\nchildren; but Tom could not write,--the mail for him had no existence,\nand the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word or\nsignal.\n\nIs it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as\nhe lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading his\nslow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late\nin life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse\nto verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was\none which slow reading cannot injure,--nay, one whose words, like ingots\nof gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may\ntake in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing\nto each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,\n\n\"Let--not--your--heart--be--troubled. In--my\n--Father's--house--are--many--mansions.\nI--go--to--prepare--a--place--for--you.\"\n\nCicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as\nfull of honest grief as poor Tom's,--perhaps no fuller, for both were\nonly men;--but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope,\nand look to no such future reunion; and if he _had_ seen them, ten to\none he would not have believed,--he must fill his head first with a\nthousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of\ntranslation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so\nevidently true and divine that the possibility of a question never\nentered his simple head. It must be true; for, if not true, how could he\nlive?\n\nAs for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin\nfrom learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain\nway-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him\nmore than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been\nhis custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children,\nin particular by young Master George; and, as they read, he would\ndesignate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the\npassages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his\nheart. His Bible was thus marked through, from one end to the other,\nwith a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment seize\nupon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out what\nlay between them;--and while it lay there before him, every passage\nbreathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment,\nhis Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the\npromise of a future one.\n\nAmong the passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune and\nfamily, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name of St. Clare. He had\nwith him a daughter between five and six years of age, together with a\nlady who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the little\none especially under her charge.\n\nTom had often caught glimpses of this little girl,--for she was one of\nthose busy, tripping creatures, that can be no more contained in one\nplace than a sunbeam or a summer breeze,--nor was she one that, once\nseen, could be easily forgotten.\n\nHer form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual\nchubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating\nand aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and\nallegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty\nof feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression,\nwhich made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the\ndullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why.\nThe shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarly\nnoble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around\nit, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy\nfringes of golden brown,--all marked her out from other children, and\nmade every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither\non the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would have\ncalled either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and\ninnocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves\nover her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always\nin motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and\nthither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself\nas she moved as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were\nincessantly busy in pursuit of her,--but, when caught, she melted from\nthem again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof\never fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own\nway all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like\na shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain;\nand there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy\nfootsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deep\nblue eyes, fleeted along.\n\nThe fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found those\neyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, and\nfearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in some dreadful\ndanger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as the\npicture-like head gleamed through the window of the round house, and\nin a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessed\nher, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as she\npassed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough,\nsooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her\npath.\n\nTom, who had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, ever\nyearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creature\nwith daily increasing interest. To him she seemed something almost\ndivine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out upon\nhim from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or looked down upon him over\nsome ridge of packages, he half believed that he saw one of the angels\nstepped out of his New Testament.\n\nOften and often she walked mournfully round the place where Haley's gang\nof men and women sat in their chains. She would glide in among them,\nand look at them with an air of perplexed and sorrowful earnestness; and\nsometimes she would lift their chains with her slender hands, and then\nsigh wofully, as she glided away. Several times she appeared suddenly\namong them, with her hands full of candy, nuts, and oranges, which she\nwould distribute joyfully to them, and then be gone again.\n\nTom watched the little lady a great deal, before he ventured on any\novertures towards acquaintanceship. He knew an abundance of simple acts\nto propitiate and invite the approaches of the little people, and he\nresolved to play his part right skilfully. He could cut cunning\nlittle baskets out of cherry-stones, could make grotesque faces on\nhickory-nuts, or odd-jumping figures out of elder-pith, and he was a\nvery Pan in the manufacture of whistles of all sizes and sorts. His\npockets were full of miscellaneous articles of attraction, which he\nhad hoarded in days of old for his master's children, and which he\nnow produced, with commendable prudence and economy, one by one, as\novertures for acquaintance and friendship.\n\nThe little one was shy, for all her busy interest in everything going\non, and it was not easy to tame her. For a while, she would perch like\na canary-bird on some box or package near Tom, while busy in the little\narts afore-named, and take from him, with a kind of grave bashfulness,\nthe little articles he offered. But at last they got on quite\nconfidential terms.\n\n\"What's little missy's name?\" said Tom, at last, when he thought matters\nwere ripe to push such an inquiry.\n\n\"Evangeline St. Clare,\" said the little one, \"though papa and everybody\nelse call me Eva. Now, what's your name?\"\n\n\"My name's Tom; the little chil'en used to call me Uncle Tom, way back\nthar in Kentuck.\"\n\n\"Then I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you,\" said\nEva. \"So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Miss Eva.\"\n\n\"Don't know?\" said Eva.\n\n\"No, I am going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who.\"\n\n\"My papa can buy you,\" said Eva, quickly; \"and if he buys you, you will\nhave good times. I mean to ask him, this very day.\"\n\n\"Thank you, my little lady,\" said Tom.\n\nThe boat here stopped at a small landing to take in wood, and Eva,\nhearing her father's voice, bounded nimbly away. Tom rose up, and went\nforward to offer his service in wooding, and soon was busy among the\nhands.\n\nEva and her father were standing together by the railings to see the\nboat start from the landing-place, the wheel had made two or three\nrevolutions in the water, when, by some sudden movement, the little one\nsuddenly lost her balance and fell sheer over the side of the boat into\nthe water. Her father, scarce knowing what he did, was plunging in after\nher, but was held back by some behind him, who saw that more efficient\naid had followed his child.\n\nTom was standing just under her on the lower deck, as she fell. He\nsaw her strike the water, and sink, and was after her in a moment.\nA broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keep\nafloat in the water, till, in a moment or two the child rose to the\nsurface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to the\nboat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds of\nhands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretched\neagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore\nher, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where, as is usual\nin cases of the kind, there ensued a very well-meaning and kind-hearted\nstrife among the female occupants generally, as to who should do the\nmost things to make a disturbance, and to hinder her recovery in every\nway possible.\n\n\nIt was a sultry, close day, the next day, as the steamer drew near to\nNew Orleans. A general bustle of expectation and preparation was spread\nthrough the boat; in the cabin, one and another were gathering their\nthings together, and arranging them, preparatory to going ashore. The\nsteward and chambermaid, and all, were busily engaged in cleaning,\nfurbishing, and arranging the splendid boat, preparatory to a grand\nentree.\n\nOn the lower deck sat our friend Tom, with his arms folded, and\nanxiously, from time to time, turning his eyes towards a group on the\nother side of the boat.\n\nThere stood the fair Evangeline, a little paler than the day before, but\notherwise exhibiting no traces of the accident which had befallen her.\nA graceful, elegantly-formed young man stood by her, carelessly leaning\none elbow on a bale of cotton while a large pocket-book lay open before\nhim. It was quite evident, at a glance, that the gentleman was Eva's\nfather. There was the same noble cast of head, the same large blue eyes,\nthe same golden-brown hair; yet the expression was wholly different. In\nthe large, clear blue eyes, though in form and color exactly similar,\nthere was wanting that misty, dreamy depth of expression; all was clear,\nbold, and bright, but with a light wholly of this world: the beautifully\ncut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression, while an air\nof free-and-easy superiority sat not ungracefully in every turn and\nmovement of his fine form. He was listening, with a good-humored,\nnegligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was very\nvolubly expatiating on the quality of the article for which they were\nbargaining.\n\n\"All the moral and Christian virtues bound in black Morocco, complete!\"\nhe said, when Haley had finished. \"Well, now, my good fellow, what's\nthe damage, as they say in Kentucky; in short, what's to be paid out for\nthis business? How much are you going to cheat me, now? Out with it!\"\n\n\"Wal,\" said Haley, \"if I should say thirteen hundred dollars for that ar\nfellow, I shouldn't but just save myself; I shouldn't, now, re'ly.\"\n\n\"Poor fellow!\" said the young man, fixing his keen, mocking blue eye on\nhim; \"but I suppose you'd let me have him for that, out of a particular\nregard for me.\"\n\n\"Well, the young lady here seems to be sot on him, and nat'lly enough.\"\n\n\"O! certainly, there's a call on your benevolence, my friend. Now, as a\nmatter of Christian charity, how cheap could you afford to let him go,\nto oblige a young lady that's particular sot on him?\"\n\n\"Wal, now, just think on 't,\" said the trader; \"just look at them\nlimbs,--broad-chested, strong as a horse. Look at his head; them high\nforrads allays shows calculatin niggers, that'll do any kind o' thing.\nI've, marked that ar. Now, a nigger of that ar heft and build is worth\nconsiderable, just as you may say, for his body, supposin he's stupid;\nbut come to put in his calculatin faculties, and them which I can show\nhe has oncommon, why, of course, it makes him come higher. Why, that ar\nfellow managed his master's whole farm. He has a strornary talent for\nbusiness.\"\n\n\"Bad, bad, very bad; knows altogether too much!\" said the young man,\nwith the same mocking smile playing about his mouth. \"Never will do, in\nthe world. Your smart fellows are always running off, stealing horses,\nand raising the devil generally. I think you'll have to take off a\ncouple of hundred for his smartness.\"\n\n\"Wal, there might be something in that ar, if it warnt for his\ncharacter; but I can show recommends from his master and others, to\nprove he is one of your real pious,--the most humble, prayin, pious\ncrittur ye ever did see. Why, he's been called a preacher in them parts\nhe came from.\"\n\n\"And I might use him for a family chaplain, possibly,\" added the young\nman, dryly. \"That's quite an idea. Religion is a remarkably scarce\narticle at our house.\"\n\n\"You're joking, now.\"\n\n\"How do you know I am? Didn't you just warrant him for a preacher? Has\nhe been examined by any synod or council? Come, hand over your papers.\"\n\nIf the trader had not been sure, by a certain good-humored twinkle in\nthe large eye, that all this banter was sure, in the long run, to turn\nout a cash concern, he might have been somewhat out of patience; as it\nwas, he laid down a greasy pocket-book on the cotton-bales, and began\nanxiously studying over certain papers in it, the young man standing by,\nthe while, looking down on him with an air of careless, easy drollery.\n\n\"Papa, do buy him! it's no matter what you pay,\" whispered Eva, softly,\ngetting up on a package, and putting her arm around her father's neck.\n\"You have money enough, I know. I want him.\"\n\n\"What for, pussy? Are you going to use him for a rattle-box, or a\nrocking-horse, or what?\n\n\"I want to make him happy.\"\n\n\"An original reason, certainly.\"\n\nHere the trader handed up a certificate, signed by Mr. Shelby, which\nthe young man took with the tips of his long fingers, and glanced over\ncarelessly.\n\n\"A gentlemanly hand,\" he said, \"and well spelt, too. Well, now, but\nI'm not sure, after all, about this religion,\" said he, the old wicked\nexpression returning to his eye; \"the country is almost ruined with\npious white people; such pious politicians as we have just before\nelections,--such pious goings on in all departments of church and state,\nthat a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next. I don't know, either,\nabout religion's being up in the market, just now. I have not looked in\nthe papers lately, to see how it sells. How many hundred dollars, now,\ndo you put on for this religion?\"\n\n\"You like to be jokin, now,\" said the trader; \"but, then, there's\n_sense_ under all that ar. I know there's differences in religion. Some\nkinds is mis'rable: there's your meetin pious; there's your singin,\nroarin pious; them ar an't no account, in black or white;--but these\nrayly is; and I've seen it in niggers as often as any, your rail softly,\nquiet, stiddy, honest, pious, that the hull world couldn't tempt 'em\nto do nothing that they thinks is wrong; and ye see in this letter what\nTom's old master says about him.\"\n\n\"Now,\" said the young man, stooping gravely over his book of bills, \"if\nyou can assure me that I really can buy _this_ kind of pious, and that\nit will be set down to my account in the book up above, as something\nbelonging to me, I wouldn't care if I did go a little extra for it. How\nd'ye say?\"\n\n\"Wal, raily, I can't do that,\" said the trader. \"I'm a thinkin that\nevery man'll have to hang on his own hook, in them ar quarters.\"\n\n\"Rather hard on a fellow that pays extra on religion, and can't trade\nwith it in the state where he wants it most, an't it, now?\" said\nthe young man, who had been making out a roll of bills while he was\nspeaking. \"There, count your money, old boy!\" he added, as he handed the\nroll to the trader.\n\n\"All right,\" said Haley, his face beaming with delight; and pulling out\nan old inkhorn, he proceeded to fill out a bill of sale, which, in a few\nmoments, he handed to the young man.\n\n\"I wonder, now, if I was divided up and inventoried,\" said the latter\nas he ran over the paper, \"how much I might bring. Say so much for the\nshape of my head, so much for a high forehead, so much for arms, and\nhands, and legs, and then so much for education, learning, talent,\nhonesty, religion! Bless me! there would be small charge on that last,\nI'm thinking. But come, Eva,\" he said; and taking the hand of his\ndaughter, he stepped across the boat, and carelessly putting the tip of\nhis finger under Tom's chin, said, good-humoredly, \"Look-up, Tom, and\nsee how you like your new master.\"\n\nTom looked up. It was not in nature to look into that gay, young,\nhandsome face, without a feeling of pleasure; and Tom felt the tears\nstart in his eyes as he said, heartily, \"God bless you, Mas'r!\"\n\n\"Well, I hope he will. What's your name? Tom? Quite as likely to do it\nfor your asking as mine, from all accounts. Can you drive horses, Tom?\"\n\n\"I've been allays used to horses,\" said Tom. \"Mas'r Shelby raised heaps\nof 'em.\"\n\n\"Well, I think I shall put you in coachy, on condition that you won't be\ndrunk more than once a week, unless in cases of emergency, Tom.\"\n\nTom looked surprised, and rather hurt, and said, \"I never drink, Mas'r.\"\n\n\"I've heard that story before, Tom; but then we'll see. It will be a\nspecial accommodation to all concerned, if you don't. Never mind, my\nboy,\" he added, good-humoredly, seeing Tom still looked grave; \"I don't\ndoubt you mean to do well.\"\n\n\"I sartin do, Mas'r,\" said Tom.\n\n\"And you shall have good times,\" said Eva. \"Papa is very good to\neverybody, only he always will laugh at them.\"\n\n\"Papa is much obliged to you for his recommendation,\" said St. Clare,\nlaughing, as he turned on his heel and walked away.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nOf Tom's New Master, and Various Other Matters\n\n\nSince the thread of our humble hero's life has now become interwoven\nwith that of higher ones, it is necessary to give some brief\nintroduction to them.\n\nAugustine St. Clare was the son of a wealthy planter of Louisiana.\nThe family had its origin in Canada. Of two brothers, very similar in\ntemperament and character, one had settled on a flourishing farm in\nVermont, and the other became an opulent planter in Louisiana. The\nmother of Augustine was a Huguenot French lady, whose family had\nemigrated to Louisiana during the days of its early settlement.\nAugustine and another brother were the only children of their parents.\nHaving inherited from his mother an exceeding delicacy of constitution,\nhe was, at the instance of physicians, during many years of his boyhood,\nsent to the care of his uncle in Vermont, in order that his constitution\nmight be strengthened by the cold of a more bracing climate.\n\nIn childhood, he was remarkable for an extreme and marked sensitiveness\nof character, more akin to the softness of woman than the ordinary\nhardness of his own sex. Time, however, overgrew this softness with the\nrough bark of manhood, and but few knew how living and fresh it still\nlay at the core. His talents were of the very first order, although his\nmind showed a preference always for the ideal and the aesthetic, and\nthere was about him that repugnance to the actual business of life which\nis the common result of this balance of the faculties. Soon after the\ncompletion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into\none intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His\nhour came,--the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the\nhorizon,--that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered\nonly as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the\nfigure,--he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman,\nin one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned\nsouth to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly,\nhis letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her\nguardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the\nwife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has\ndone, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort.\nToo proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once\ninto a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time\nof the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the\nseason; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband\nof a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand\ndollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.\n\nThe married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining\na brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake\nPontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in _that_\nwell-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide\nof gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company.\nHe turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his\ncomposure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at\nthe moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after,\nwas missed from the circle. In his room, alone, he opened and read the\nletter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her,\ngiving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by\nher guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and\nshe related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how\nshe had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how\nher health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had\ndiscovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The\nletter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions\nof undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy\nyoung man. He wrote to her immediately:\n\n\"I have received yours,--but too late. I believed all I heard. I was\ndesperate. _I am married_, and all is over. Only forget,--it is all that\nremains for either of us.\"\n\nAnd thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St.\nClare. But the _real_ remained,--the _real_, like the flat, bare, oozy\ntide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding\nboats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has\ngone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,--exceedingly real.\n\nOf course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is\nthe end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life\nwe do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a\nmost busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking,\nvisiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up\nwhat is commonly called _living_, yet to be gone through; and this yet\nremained to Augustine. Had his wife been a whole woman, she might yet\nhave done something--as woman can--to mend the broken threads of life,\nand weave again into a tissue of brightness. But Marie St. Clare could\nnot even see that they had been broken. As before stated, she consisted\nof a fine figure, a pair of splendid eyes, and a hundred thousand\ndollars; and none of these items were precisely the ones to minister to\na mind diseased.\n\nWhen Augustine, pale as death, was found lying on the sofa, and pleaded\nsudden sick-headache as the cause of his distress, she recommended to\nhim to smell of hartshorn; and when the paleness and headache came on\nweek after week, she only said that she never thought Mr. St. Clare was\nsickly; but it seems he was very liable to sick-headaches, and that it\nwas a very unfortunate thing for her, because he didn't enjoy going into\ncompany with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when they were\njust married. Augustine was glad in his heart that he had married so\nundiscerning a woman; but as the glosses and civilities of the honeymoon\nwore away, he discovered that a beautiful young woman, who has lived all\nher life to be caressed and waited on, might prove quite a hard\nmistress in domestic life. Marie never had possessed much capability of\naffection, or much sensibility, and the little that she had, had been\nmerged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness; a selfishness\nthe more hopeless, from its quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of\nany claims but her own. From her infancy, she had been surrounded with\nservants, who lived only to study her caprices; the idea that they had\neither feelings or rights had never dawned upon her, even in distant\nperspective. Her father, whose only child she had been, had never denied\nher anything that lay within the compass of human possibility; and when\nshe entered life, beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress, she had, of\ncourse, all the eligibles and non-eligibles of the other sex sighing at\nher feet, and she had no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man\nin having obtained her. It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman\nwith no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection.\nThere is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than\na thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more\njealously and scrupulously she exacts love, to the uttermost farthing.\nWhen, therefore, St. Clare began to drop off those gallantries and small\nattentions which flowed at first through the habitude of courtship, he\nfound his sultana no way ready to resign her slave; there were abundance\nof tears, poutings, and small tempests, there were discontents, pinings,\nupbraidings. St. Clare was good-natured and self-indulgent, and sought\nto buy off with presents and flatteries; and when Marie became mother to\na beautiful daughter, he really felt awakened, for a time, to something\nlike tenderness.\n\nSt. Clare's mother had been a woman of uncommon elevation and purity of\ncharacter, and he gave to his child his mother's name, fondly fancying\nthat she would prove a reproduction of her image. The thing had been\nremarked with petulant jealousy by his wife, and she regarded her\nhusband's absorbing devotion to the child with suspicion and dislike;\nall that was given to her seemed so much taken from herself. From the\ntime of the birth of this child, her health gradually sunk. A life of\nconstant inaction, bodily and mental,--the friction of ceaseless ennui\nand discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the\nperiod of maternity,--in course of a few years changed the blooming\nyoung belle into a yellow faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided\namong a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself, in\nevery sense, the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.\n\nThere was no end of her various complaints; but her principal forte\nappeared to lie in sick-headache, which sometimes would confine her to\nher room three days out of six. As, of course, all family arrangements\nfell into the hands of servants, St. Clare found his menage anything but\ncomfortable. His only daughter was exceedingly delicate, and he feared\nthat, with no one to look after her and attend to her, her health and\nlife might yet fall a sacrifice to her mother's inefficiency. He had\ntaken her with him on a tour to Vermont, and had persuaded his cousin,\nMiss Ophelia St. Clare, to return with him to his southern residence;\nand they are now returning on this boat, where we have introduced them\nto our readers.\n\nAnd now, while the distant domes and spires of New Orleans rise to our\nview, there is yet time for an introduction to Miss Ophelia.\n\nWhoever has travelled in the New England States will remember, in some\ncool village, the large farmhouse, with its clean-swept grassy yard,\nshaded by the dense and massive foliage of the sugar maple; and remember\nthe air of order and stillness, of perpetuity and unchanging repose,\nthat seemed to breathe over the whole place. Nothing lost, or out of\norder; not a picket loose in the fence, not a particle of litter in\nthe turfy yard, with its clumps of lilac bushes growing up under the\nwindows. Within, he will remember wide, clean rooms, where nothing ever\nseems to be doing or going to be done, where everything is once and\nforever rigidly in place, and where all household arrangements move with\nthe punctual exactness of the old clock in the corner. In the family\n\"keeping-room,\" as it is termed, he will remember the staid, respectable\nold book-case, with its glass doors, where Rollin's History,* Milton's\nParadise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Scott's Family Bible,**\nstand side by side in decorous order, with multitudes of other books,\nequally solemn and respectable. There are no servants in the house, but\nthe lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every\nafternoon among her daughters, as if nothing ever had been done, or were\nto be done,--she and her girls, in some long-forgotten fore part of the\nday, \"_did up the work_,\" and for the rest of the time, probably, at all\nhours when you would see them, it is \"_done up_.\" The old kitchen floor\nnever seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various\ncooking utensils, never seem deranged or disordered; though three and\nsometimes four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and\nironing is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are\nin some silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.\n\n     * _The Ancient History_, ten volumes (1730-1738), by the\n     French historian Charles Rollin (1661-1741).\n\n     ** _Scott's Family Bible_ (1788-1792), edited with notes by\n     the English Biblical commentator, Thomas Scott (1747-1821).\n\nOn such a farm, in such a house and family, Miss Ophelia had spent a\nquiet existence of some forty-five years, when her cousin invited her to\nvisit his southern mansion. The eldest of a large family, she was still\nconsidered by her father and mother as one of \"the children,\" and the\nproposal that she should go to _Orleans_ was a most momentous one to the\nfamily circle. The old gray-headed father took down Morse's Atlas* out\nof the book-case, and looked out the exact latitude and longitude; and\nread Flint's Travels in the South and West,** to make up his own mind as\nto the nature of the country.\n\n     * _The Cerographic Atlas of the United States_ (1842-1845),\n     by Sidney Edwards Morse (1794-1871), son of the geographer,\n     Jedidiah Morse, and brother of the painter-inventor, Samuel\n     F. B. Morse.\n\n     ** _Recollections of the Last Ten Years_ (1826) by Timothy\n     Flint (1780-1840), missionary of Presbyterianism to the\n     trans-Allegheny West.\n\nThe good mother inquired, anxiously, \"if Orleans wasn't an awful wicked\nplace,\" saying, \"that it seemed to her most equal to going to the\nSandwich Islands, or anywhere among the heathen.\"\n\nIt was known at the minister's and at the doctor's, and at Miss\nPeabody's milliner shop, that Ophelia St. Clare was \"talking about\"\ngoing away down to Orleans with her cousin; and of course the whole\nvillage could do no less than help this very important process of\n_talking about_ the matter. The minister, who inclined strongly to\nabolitionist views, was quite doubtful whether such a step might not\ntend somewhat to encourage the southerners in holding on to their\nslaves; while the doctor, who was a stanch colonizationist, inclined to\nthe opinion that Miss Ophelia ought to go, to show the Orleans people\nthat we don't think hardly of them, after all. He was of opinion, in\nfact, that southern people needed encouraging. When however, the fact\nthat she had resolved to go was fully before the public mind, she was\nsolemnly invited out to tea by all her friends and neighbors for the\nspace of a fortnight, and her prospects and plans duly canvassed and\ninquired into. Miss Moseley, who came into the house to help to do\nthe dress-making, acquired daily accessions of importance from the\ndevelopments with regard to Miss Ophelia's wardrobe which she had been\nenabled to make. It was credibly ascertained that Squire Sinclare, as\nhis name was commonly contracted in the neighborhood, had counted out\nfifty dollars, and given them to Miss Ophelia, and told her to buy any\nclothes she thought best; and that two new silk dresses, and a bonnet,\nhad been sent for from Boston. As to the propriety of this extraordinary\noutlay, the public mind was divided,--some affirming that it was well\nenough, all things considered, for once in one's life, and others\nstoutly affirming that the money had better have been sent to the\nmissionaries; but all parties agreed that there had been no such parasol\nseen in those parts as had been sent on from New York, and that she had\none silk dress that might fairly be trusted to stand alone, whatever\nmight be said of its mistress. There were credible rumors, also, of a\nhemstitched pocket-handkerchief; and report even went so far as to\nstate that Miss Ophelia had one pocket-handkerchief with lace all around\nit,--it was even added that it was worked in the corners; but this\nlatter point was never satisfactorily ascertained, and remains, in fact,\nunsettled to this day.\n\nMiss Ophelia, as you now behold her, stands before you, in a very\nshining brown linen travelling-dress, tall, square-formed, and\nangular. Her face was thin, and rather sharp in its outlines; the lips\ncompressed, like those of a person who is in the habit of making up\nher mind definitely on all subjects; while the keen, dark eyes had a\npeculiarly searching, advised movement, and travelled over everything,\nas if they were looking for something to take care of.\n\nAll her movements were sharp, decided, and energetic; and, though she\nwas never much of a talker, her words were remarkably direct, and to the\npurpose, when she did speak.\n\nIn her habits, she was a living impersonation of order, method, and\nexactness. In punctuality, she was as inevitable as a clock, and as\ninexorable as a railroad engine; and she held in most decided contempt\nand abomination anything of a contrary character.\n\nThe great sin of sins, in her eyes,--the sum of all evils,--was\nexpressed by one very common and important word in her\nvocabulary--\"shiftlessness.\" Her finale and ultimatum of contempt\nconsisted in a very emphatic pronunciation of the word \"shiftless;\" and\nby this she characterized all modes of procedure which had not a\ndirect and inevitable relation to accomplishment of some purpose then\ndefinitely had in mind. People who did nothing, or who did not know\nexactly what they were going to do, or who did not take the most direct\nway to accomplish what they set their hands to, were objects of her\nentire contempt,--a contempt shown less frequently by anything she said,\nthan by a kind of stony grimness, as if she scorned to say anything\nabout the matter.\n\nAs to mental cultivation,--she had a clear, strong, active mind, was\nwell and thoroughly read in history and the older English classics,\nand thought with great strength within certain narrow limits. Her\ntheological tenets were all made up, labelled in most positive and\ndistinct forms, and put by, like the bundles in her patch trunk; there\nwere just so many of them, and there were never to be any more.\nSo, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical\nlife,--such as housekeeping in all its branches, and the various\npolitical relations of her native village. And, underlying all, deeper\nthan anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle\nof her being--conscientiousness. Nowhere is conscience so dominant and\nall-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation,\nwhich lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest\nmountains.\n\nMiss Ophelia was the absolute bond-slave of the \"_ought_.\" Once make her\ncertain that the \"path of duty,\" as she commonly phrased it, lay in\nany given direction, and fire and water could not keep her from it. She\nwould walk straight down into a well, or up to a loaded cannon's mouth,\nif she were only quite sure that there the path lay. Her standard\nof right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few\nconcessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardor\nto reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with\na constant and often harassing sense of deficiency;--this gave a severe\nand somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.\n\nBut, how in the world can Miss Ophelia get along with Augustine\nSt. Clare,--gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical,--in\nshort,--walking with impudent and nonchalant freedom over every one of\nher most cherished habits and opinions?\n\nTo tell the truth, then, Miss Ophelia loved him. When a boy, it had been\nhers to teach him his catechism, mend his clothes, comb his hair, and\nbring him up generally in the way he should go; and her heart having\na warm side to it, Augustine had, as he usually did with most people,\nmonopolized a large share of it for himself, and therefore it was that\nhe succeeded very easily in persuading her that the \"path of duty\" lay\nin the direction of New Orleans, and that she must go with him to take\ncare of Eva, and keep everything from going to wreck and ruin during the\nfrequent illnesses of his wife. The idea of a house without anybody\nto take care of it went to her heart; then she loved the lovely little\ngirl, as few could help doing; and though she regarded Augustine as very\nmuch of a heathen, yet she loved him, laughed at his jokes, and forbore\nwith his failings, to an extent which those who knew him thought\nperfectly incredible. But what more or other is to be known of Miss\nOphelia our reader must discover by a personal acquaintance.\n\nThere she is, sitting now in her state-room, surrounded by a mixed\nmultitude of little and big carpet-bags, boxes, baskets, each containing\nsome separate responsibility which she is tying, binding up, packing, or\nfastening, with a face of great earnestness.\n\n\"Now, Eva, have you kept count of your things? Of course you\nhaven't,--children never do: there's the spotted carpet-bag and the\nlittle blue band-box with your best bonnet,--that's two; then the India\nrubber satchel is three; and my tape and needle box is four; and my\nband-box, five; and my collar-box; and that little hair trunk, seven.\nWhat have you done with your sunshade? Give it to me, and let me put a\npaper round it, and tie it to my umbrella with my shade;--there, now.\"\n\n\"Why, aunty, we are only going up home;--what is the use?\"\n\n\"To keep it nice, child; people must take care of their things, if they\never mean to have anything; and now, Eva, is your thimble put up?\"\n\n\"Really, aunty, I don't know.\"\n\n\"Well, never mind; I'll look your box over,--thimble, wax, two spools,\nscissors, knife, tape-needle; all right,--put it in here. What did you\never do, child, when you were coming on with only your papa. I should\nhave thought you'd a lost everything you had.\"\n\n\"Well, aunty, I did lose a great many; and then, when we stopped\nanywhere, papa would buy some more of whatever it was.\"\n\n\"Mercy on us, child,--what a way!\"\n\n\"It was a very easy way, aunty,\" said Eva.\n\n\"It's a dreadful shiftless one,\" said aunty.\n\n\"Why, aunty, what'll you do now?\" said Eva; \"that trunk is too full to\nbe shut down.\"\n\n\"It _must_ shut down,\" said aunty, with the air of a general, as she\nsqueezed the things in, and sprung upon the lid;--still a little gap\nremained about the mouth of the trunk.\n\n\"Get up here, Eva!\" said Miss Ophelia, courageously; \"what has been done\ncan be done again. This trunk has _got to be_ shut and locked--there are\nno two ways about it.\"\n\nAnd the trunk, intimidated, doubtless, by this resolute statement, gave\nin. The hasp snapped sharply in its hole, and Miss Ophelia turned the\nkey, and pocketed it in triumph.\n\n\"Now we're ready. Where's your papa? I think it time this baggage was\nset out. Do look out, Eva, and see if you see your papa.\"\n\n\"O, yes, he's down the other end of the gentlemen's cabin, eating an\norange.\"\n\n\"He can't know how near we are coming,\" said aunty; \"hadn't you better\nrun and speak to him?\"\n\n\"Papa never is in a hurry about anything,\" said Eva, \"and we haven't\ncome to the landing. Do step on the guards, aunty. Look! there's our\nhouse, up that street!\"\n\nThe boat now began, with heavy groans, like some vast, tired monster,\nto prepare to push up among the multiplied steamers at the levee. Eva\njoyously pointed out the various spires, domes, and way-marks, by which\nshe recognized her native city.\n\n\"Yes, yes, dear; very fine,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"But mercy on us! the\nboat has stopped! where is your father?\"\n\nAnd now ensued the usual turmoil of landing--waiters running twenty ways\nat once--men tugging trunks, carpet-bags, boxes--women anxiously calling\nto their children, and everybody crowding in a dense mass to the plank\ntowards the landing.\n\nMiss Ophelia seated herself resolutely on the lately vanquished trunk,\nand marshalling all her goods and chattels in fine military order,\nseemed resolved to defend them to the last.\n\n\"Shall I take your trunk, ma'am?\" \"Shall I take your baggage?\" \"Let me\n'tend to your baggage, Missis?\" \"Shan't I carry out these yer, Missis?\"\nrained down upon her unheeded. She sat with grim determination, upright\nas a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding on her bundle of umbrella\nand parasols, and replying with a determination that was enough to\nstrike dismay even into a hackman, wondering to Eva, in each interval,\n\"what upon earth her papa could be thinking of; he couldn't have fallen\nover, now,--but something must have happened;\"--and just as she had\nbegun to work herself into a real distress, he came up, with his usually\ncareless motion, and giving Eva a quarter of the orange he was eating,\nsaid,\n\n\"Well, Cousin Vermont, I suppose you are all ready.\"\n\n\"I've been ready, waiting, nearly an hour,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"I began\nto be really concerned about you.\n\n\"That's a clever fellow, now,\" said he. \"Well, the carriage is waiting,\nand the crowd are now off, so that one can walk out in a decent and\nChristian manner, and not be pushed and shoved. Here,\" he added to a\ndriver who stood behind him, \"take these things.\"\n\n\"I'll go and see to his putting them in,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"O, pshaw, cousin, what's the use?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Well, at any rate, I'll carry this, and this, and this,\" said Miss\nOphelia, singling out three boxes and a small carpet-bag.\n\n\"My dear Miss Vermont, positively you mustn't come the Green Mountains\nover us that way. You must adopt at least a piece of a southern\nprinciple, and not walk out under all that load. They'll take you for a\nwaiting-maid; give them to this fellow; he'll put them down as if they\nwere eggs, now.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia looked despairingly as her cousin took all her treasures\nfrom her, and rejoiced to find herself once more in the carriage with\nthem, in a state of preservation.\n\n\"Where's Tom?\" said Eva.\n\n\"O, he's on the outside, Pussy. I'm going to take Tom up to mother for\na peace-offering, to make up for that drunken fellow that upset the\ncarriage.\"\n\n\"O, Tom will make a splendid driver, I know,\" said Eva; \"he'll never get\ndrunk.\"\n\nThe carriage stopped in front of an ancient mansion, built in that odd\nmixture of Spanish and French style, of which there are specimens in\nsome parts of New Orleans. It was built in the Moorish fashion,--a\nsquare building enclosing a court-yard, into which the carriage drove\nthrough an arched gateway. The court, in the inside, had evidently\nbeen arranged to gratify a picturesque and voluptuous ideality. Wide\ngalleries ran all around the four sides, whose Moorish arches, slender\npillars, and arabesque ornaments, carried the mind back, as in a dream,\nto the reign of oriental romance in Spain. In the middle of the court, a\nfountain threw high its silvery water, falling in a never-ceasing spray\ninto a marble basin, fringed with a deep border of fragrant violets. The\nwater in the fountain, pellucid as crystal, was alive with myriads of\ngold and silver fishes, twinkling and darting through it like so many\nliving jewels. Around the fountain ran a walk, paved with a mosaic\nof pebbles, laid in various fanciful patterns; and this, again, was\nsurrounded by turf, smooth as green velvet, while a carriage-drive\nenclosed the whole. Two large orange-trees, now fragrant with blossoms,\nthrew a delicious shade; and, ranged in a circle round upon the turf,\nwere marble vases of arabesque sculpture, containing the choicest\nflowering plants of the tropics. Huge pomegranate trees, with their\nglossy leaves and flame-colored flowers, dark-leaved Arabian jessamines,\nwith their silvery stars, geraniums, luxuriant roses bending beneath\ntheir heavy abundance of flowers, golden jessamines, lemon-scented\nverbenum, all united their bloom and fragrance, while here and there a\nmystic old aloe, with its strange, massive leaves, sat looking like some\nold enchanter, sitting in weird grandeur among the more perishable bloom\nand fragrance around it.\n\nThe galleries that surrounded the court were festooned with a curtain\nof some kind of Moorish stuff, and could be drawn down at pleasure, to\nexclude the beams of the sun. On the whole, the appearance of the place\nwas luxurious and romantic.\n\nAs the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from a\ncage, with the wild eagerness of her delight.\n\n\"O, isn't it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!\" she said to\nMiss Ophelia. \"Isn't it beautiful?\"\n\n\"'T is a pretty place,\" said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; \"though it\nlooks rather old and heathenish to me.\"\n\nTom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm,\nstill enjoyment. The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the\nmost gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his\nheart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion\nwhich, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule\nof the colder and more correct white race.\n\nSt. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss\nOphelia made her remark on his premises, and, turning to Tom, who was\nstanding looking round, his beaming black face perfectly radiant with\nadmiration, he said,\n\n\"Tom, my boy, this seems to suit you.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r, it looks about the right thing,\" said Tom.\n\nAll this passed in a moment, while trunks were being hustled off,\nhackman paid, and while a crowd, of all ages and sizes,--men, women, and\nchildren,--came running through the galleries, both above and below\nto see Mas'r come in. Foremost among them was a highly-dressed young\nmulatto man, evidently a very _distingue_ personage, attired in the\nultra extreme of the mode, and gracefully waving a scented cambric\nhandkerchief in his hand.\n\nThis personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in\ndriving all the flock of domestics to the other end of the verandah.\n\n\"Back! all of you. I am ashamed of you,\" he said, in a tone of\nauthority. \"Would you intrude on Master's domestic relations, in the\nfirst hour of his return?\"\n\nAll looked abashed at this elegant speech, delivered with quite an air,\nand stood huddled together at a respectful distance, except two stout\nporters, who came up and began conveying away the baggage.\n\nOwing to Mr. Adolph's systematic arrangements, when St. Clare turned\nround from paying the hackman, there was nobody in view but Mr. Adolph\nhimself, conspicuous in satin vest, gold guard-chain, and white pants,\nand bowing with inexpressible grace and suavity.\n\n\"Ah, Adolph, is it you?\" said his master, offering his hand to him;\n\"how are you, boy?\" while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an\nextemporary speech, which he had been preparing, with great care, for a\nfortnight before.\n\n\"Well, well,\" said St. Clare, passing on, with his usual air of\nnegligent drollery, \"that's very well got up, Adolph. See that the\nbaggage is well bestowed. I'll come to the people in a minute;\" and,\nso saying, he led Miss Ophelia to a large parlor that opened on the\nverandah.\n\nWhile this had been passing, Eva had flown like a bird, through the\nporch and parlor, to a little boudoir opening likewise on the verandah.\n\nA tall, dark-eyed, sallow woman, half rose from a couch on which she was\nreclining.\n\n\"Mamma!\" said Eva, in a sort of a rapture, throwing herself on her neck,\nand embracing her over and over again.\n\n\"That'll do,--take care, child,--don't, you make my head ache,\" said the\nmother, after she had languidly kissed her.\n\nSt. Clare came in, embraced his wife in true, orthodox, husbandly\nfashion, and then presented to her his cousin. Marie lifted her large\neyes on her cousin with an air of some curiosity, and received her with\nlanguid politeness. A crowd of servants now pressed to the entry\ndoor, and among them a middle-aged mulatto woman, of very respectable\nappearance, stood foremost, in a tremor of expectation and joy, at the\ndoor.\n\n\"O, there's Mammy!\" said Eva, as she flew across the room; and, throwing\nherself into her arms, she kissed her repeatedly.\n\nThis woman did not tell her that she made her head ache, but, on the\ncontrary, she hugged her, and laughed, and cried, till her sanity was a\nthing to be doubted of; and when released from her, Eva flew from one\nto another, shaking hands and kissing, in a way that Miss Ophelia\nafterwards declared fairly turned her stomach.\n\n\"Well!\" said Miss Ophelia, \"you southern children can do something that\n_I_ couldn't.\"\n\n\"What, now, pray?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Well, I want to be kind to everybody, and I wouldn't have anything\nhurt; but as to kissing--\"\n\n\"Niggers,\" said St. Clare, \"that you're not up to,--hey?\"\n\n\"Yes, that's it. How can she?\"\n\nSt. Clare laughed, as he went into the passage. \"Halloa, here, what's\nto pay out here? Here, you all--Mammy, Jimmy, Polly, Sukey--glad to see\nMas'r?\" he said, as he went shaking hands from one to another. \"Look out\nfor the babies!\" he added, as he stumbled over a sooty little urchin,\nwho was crawling upon all fours. \"If I step upon anybody, let 'em\nmention it.\"\n\nThere was an abundance of laughing and blessing Mas'r, as St. Clare\ndistributed small pieces of change among them.\n\n\"Come, now, take yourselves off, like good boys and girls,\" he said; and\nthe whole assemblage, dark and light, disappeared through a door into a\nlarge verandah, followed by Eva, who carried a large satchel, which she\nhad been filling with apples, nuts, candy, ribbons, laces, and toys of\nevery description, during her whole homeward journey.\n\nAs St. Clare turned to go back his eye fell upon Tom, who was standing\nuneasily, shifting from one foot to the other, while Adolph stood\nnegligently leaning against the banisters, examining Tom through an\nopera-glass, with an air that would have done credit to any dandy\nliving.\n\n\"Puh! you puppy,\" said his master, striking down the opera glass; \"is\nthat the way you treat your company? Seems to me, Dolph,\" he added,\nlaying his finger on the elegant figured satin vest that Adolph was\nsporting, \"seems to me that's _my_ vest.\"\n\n\"O! Master, this vest all stained with wine; of course, a gentleman in\nMaster's standing never wears a vest like this. I understood I was to\ntake it. It does for a poor nigger-fellow, like me.\"\n\nAnd Adolph tossed his head, and passed his fingers through his scented\nhair, with a grace.\n\n\"So, that's it, is it?\" said St. Clare, carelessly. \"Well, here, I'm\ngoing to show this Tom to his mistress, and then you take him to the\nkitchen; and mind you don't put on any of your airs to him. He's worth\ntwo such puppies as you.\"\n\n\"Master always will have his joke,\" said Adolph, laughing. \"I'm\ndelighted to see Master in such spirits.\"\n\n\"Here, Tom,\" said St. Clare, beckoning.\n\nTom entered the room. He looked wistfully on the velvet carpets, and the\nbefore unimagined splendors of mirrors, pictures, statues, and curtains,\nand, like the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, there was no more spirit in\nhim. He looked afraid even to set his feet down.\n\n\"See here, Marie,\" said St. Clare to his wife, \"I've bought you a\ncoachman, at last, to order. I tell you, he's a regular hearse for\nblackness and sobriety, and will drive you like a funeral, if you want.\nOpen your eyes, now, and look at him. Now, don't say I never think about\nyou when I'm gone.\"\n\nMarie opened her eyes, and fixed them on Tom, without rising.\n\n\"I know he'll get drunk,\" she said.\n\n\"No, he's warranted a pious and sober article.\"\n\n\"Well, I hope he may turn out well,\" said the lady; \"it's more than I\nexpect, though.\"\n\n\"Dolph,\" said St. Clare, \"show Tom down stairs; and, mind yourself,\" he\nadded; \"remember what I told you.\"\n\nAdolph tripped gracefully forward, and Tom, with lumbering tread, went\nafter.\n\n\"He's a perfect behemoth!\" said Marie.\n\n\"Come, now, Marie,\" said St. Clare, seating himself on a stool beside\nher sofa, \"be gracious, and say something pretty to a fellow.\"\n\n\"You've been gone a fortnight beyond the time,\" said the lady, pouting.\n\n\"Well, you know I wrote you the reason.\"\n\n\"Such a short, cold letter!\" said the lady.\n\n\"Dear me! the mail was just going, and it had to be that or nothing.\"\n\n\"That's just the way, always,\" said the lady; \"always something to make\nyour journeys long, and letters short.\"\n\n\"See here, now,\" he added, drawing an elegant velvet case out of his\npocket, and opening it, \"here's a present I got for you in New York.\"\n\nIt was a daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva\nand her father sitting hand in hand.\n\nMarie looked at it with a dissatisfied air.\n\n\"What made you sit in such an awkward position?\" she said.\n\n\"Well, the position may be a matter of opinion; but what do you think of\nthe likeness?\"\n\n\"If you don't think anything of my opinion in one case, I suppose you\nwouldn't in another,\" said the lady, shutting the daguerreotype.\n\n\"Hang the woman!\" said St. Clare, mentally; but aloud he added, \"Come,\nnow, Marie, what do you think of the likeness? Don't be nonsensical,\nnow.\"\n\n\"It's very inconsiderate of you, St. Clare,\" said the lady, \"to insist\non my talking and looking at things. You know I've been lying all day\nwith the sick-headache; and there's been such a tumult made ever since\nyou came, I'm half dead.\"\n\n\"You're subject to the sick-headache, ma'am!\" said Miss Ophelia,\nsuddenly rising from the depths of the large arm-chair, where she had\nsat quietly, taking an inventory of the furniture, and calculating its\nexpense.\n\n\"Yes, I'm a perfect martyr to it,\" said the lady.\n\n\"Juniper-berry tea is good for sick-headache,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"at\nleast, Auguste, Deacon Abraham Perry's wife, used to say so; and she was\na great nurse.\"\n\n\"I'll have the first juniper-berries that get ripe in our garden by\nthe lake brought in for that special purpose,\" said St. Clare, gravely\npulling the bell as he did so; \"meanwhile, cousin, you must be wanting\nto retire to your apartment, and refresh yourself a little, after your\njourney. Dolph,\" he added, \"tell Mammy to come here.\" The decent mulatto\nwoman whom Eva had caressed so rapturously soon entered; she was dressed\nneatly, with a high red and yellow turban on her head, the recent gift\nof Eva, and which the child had been arranging on her head. \"Mammy,\"\nsaid St. Clare, \"I put this lady under your care; she is tired,\nand wants rest; take her to her chamber, and be sure she is made\ncomfortable,\" and Miss Ophelia disappeared in the rear of Mammy.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTom's Mistress and Her Opinions\n\n\"And now, Marie,\" said St. Clare, \"your golden days are dawning. Here is\nour practical, business-like New England cousin, who will take the\nwhole budget of cares off your shoulders, and give you time to refresh\nyourself, and grow young and handsome. The ceremony of delivering the\nkeys had better come off forthwith.\"\n\nThis remark was made at the breakfast-table, a few mornings after Miss\nOphelia had arrived.\n\n\"I'm sure she's welcome,\" said Marie, leaning her head languidly on her\nhand. \"I think she'll find one thing, if she does, and that is, that\nit's we mistresses that are the slaves, down here.\"\n\n\"O, certainly, she will discover that, and a world of wholesome truths\nbesides, no doubt,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Talk about our keeping slaves, as if we did it for our _convenience_,\"\nsaid Marie. \"I'm sure, if we consulted _that_, we might let them all go\nat once.\"\n\nEvangeline fixed her large, serious eyes on her mother's face, with an\nearnest and perplexed expression, and said, simply, \"What do you keep\nthem for, mamma?\"\n\n\"I don't know, I'm sure, except for a plague; they are the plague of my\nlife. I believe that more of my ill health is caused by them than by any\none thing; and ours, I know, are the very worst that ever anybody was\nplagued with.\"\n\n\"O, come, Marie, you've got the blues, this morning,\" said St. Clare.\n\"You know 't isn't so. There's Mammy, the best creature living,--what\ncould you do without her?\"\n\n\"Mammy is the best I ever knew,\" said Marie; \"and yet Mammy, now, is\nselfish--dreadfully selfish; it's the fault of the whole race.\"\n\n\"Selfishness _is_ a dreadful fault,\" said St. Clare, gravely.\n\n\"Well, now, there's Mammy,\" said Marie, \"I think it's selfish of her to\nsleep so sound nights; she knows I need little attentions almost every\nhour, when my worst turns are on, and yet she's so hard to wake. I\nabsolutely am worse, this very morning, for the efforts I had to make to\nwake her last night.\"\n\n\"Hasn't she sat up with you a good many nights, lately, mamma?\" said\nEva.\n\n\"How should you know that?\" said Marie, sharply; \"she's been\ncomplaining, I suppose.\"\n\n\"She didn't complain; she only told me what bad nights you'd had,--so\nmany in succession.\"\n\n\"Why don't you let Jane or Rosa take her place, a night or two,\" said\nSt. Clare, \"and let her rest?\"\n\n\"How can you propose it?\" said Marie. \"St. Clare, you really are\ninconsiderate. So nervous as I am, the least breath disturbs me; and a\nstrange hand about me would drive me absolutely frantic. If Mammy felt\nthe interest in me she ought to, she'd wake easier,--of course, she\nwould. I've heard of people who had such devoted servants, but it never\nwas _my_ luck;\" and Marie sighed.\n\nMiss Ophelia had listened to this conversation with an air of shrewd,\nobservant gravity; and she still kept her lips tightly compressed, as\nif determined fully to ascertain her longitude and position, before she\ncommitted herself.\n\n\"Now, Mammy has a _sort_ of goodness,\" said Marie; \"she's smooth and\nrespectful, but she's selfish at heart. Now, she never will be done\nfidgeting and worrying about that husband of hers. You see, when I was\nmarried and came to live here, of course, I had to bring her with me,\nand her husband my father couldn't spare. He was a blacksmith, and, of\ncourse, very necessary; and I thought and said, at the time, that\nMammy and he had better give each other up, as it wasn't likely to\nbe convenient for them ever to live together again. I wish, now, I'd\ninsisted on it, and married Mammy to somebody else; but I was foolish\nand indulgent, and didn't want to insist. I told Mammy, at the time,\nthat she mustn't ever expect to see him more than once or twice in her\nlife again, for the air of father's place doesn't agree with my health,\nand I can't go there; and I advised her to take up with somebody else;\nbut no--she wouldn't. Mammy has a kind of obstinacy about her, in spots,\nthat everybody don't see as I do.\"\n\n\"Has she children?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Yes; she has two.\"\n\n\"I suppose she feels the separation from them?\"\n\n\"Well, of course, I couldn't bring them. They were little dirty\nthings--I couldn't have them about; and, besides, they took up too\nmuch of her time; but I believe that Mammy has always kept up a sort of\nsulkiness about this. She won't marry anybody else; and I do believe,\nnow, though she knows how necessary she is to me, and how feeble my\nhealth is, she would go back to her husband tomorrow, if she only could.\nI _do_, indeed,\" said Marie; \"they are just so selfish, now, the best of\nthem.\"\n\n\"It's distressing to reflect upon,\" said St. Clare, dryly.\n\nMiss Ophelia looked keenly at him, and saw the flush of mortification\nand repressed vexation, and the sarcastic curl of the lip, as he spoke.\n\n\"Now, Mammy has always been a pet with me,\" said Marie. \"I wish some of\nyour northern servants could look at her closets of dresses,--silks and\nmuslins, and one real linen cambric, she has hanging there. I've worked\nsometimes whole afternoons, trimming her caps, and getting her ready\nto go to a party. As to abuse, she don't know what it is. She never was\nwhipped more than once or twice in her whole life. She has her strong\ncoffee or her tea every day, with white sugar in it. It's abominable, to\nbe sure; but St. Clare will have high life below-stairs, and they every\none of them live just as they please. The fact is, our servants are\nover-indulged. I suppose it is partly our fault that they are selfish,\nand act like spoiled children; but I've talked to St. Clare till I am\ntired.\"\n\n\"And I, too,\" said St. Clare, taking up the morning paper.\n\nEva, the beautiful Eva, had stood listening to her mother, with that\nexpression of deep and mystic earnestness which was peculiar to her. She\nwalked softly round to her mother's chair, and put her arms round her\nneck.\n\n\"Well, Eva, what now?\" said Marie.\n\n\"Mamma, couldn't I take care of you one night--just one? I know I\nshouldn't make you nervous, and I shouldn't sleep. I often lie awake\nnights, thinking--\"\n\n\"O, nonsense, child--nonsense!\" said Marie; \"you are such a strange\nchild!\"\n\n\"But may I, mamma? I think,\" she said, timidly, \"that Mammy isn't well.\nShe told me her head ached all the time, lately.\"\n\n\"O, that's just one of Mammy's fidgets! Mammy is just like all the rest\nof them--makes such a fuss about every little headache or finger-ache;\nit'll never do to encourage it--never! I'm principled about this\nmatter,\" said she, turning to Miss Ophelia; \"you'll find the necessity\nof it. If you encourage servants in giving way to every little\ndisagreeable feeling, and complaining of every little ailment, you'll\nhave your hands full. I never complain myself--nobody knows what I\nendure. I feel it a duty to bear it quietly, and I do.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia's round eyes expressed an undisguised amazement at this\nperoration, which struck St. Clare as so supremely ludicrous, that he\nburst into a loud laugh.\n\n\"St. Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to my ill\nhealth,\" said Marie, with the voice of a suffering martyr. \"I only\nhope the day won't come when he'll remember it!\" and Marie put her\nhandkerchief to her eyes.\n\nOf course, there was rather a foolish silence. Finally, St. Clare got\nup, looked at his watch, and said he had an engagement down street. Eva\ntripped away after him, and Miss Ophelia and Marie remained at the table\nalone.\n\n\"Now, that's just like St. Clare!\" said the latter, withdrawing her\nhandkerchief with somewhat of a spirited flourish when the criminal to\nbe affected by it was no longer in sight. \"He never realizes, never\ncan, never will, what I suffer, and have, for years. If I was one of the\ncomplaining sort, or ever made any fuss about my ailments, there would\nbe some reason for it. Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining\nwife. But I've kept things to myself, and borne, and borne, till St.\nClare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia did not exactly know what she was expected to answer to\nthis.\n\nWhile she was thinking what to say, Marie gradually wiped away her\ntears, and smoothed her plumage in a general sort of way, as a dove\nmight be supposed to make toilet after a shower, and began a housewifely\nchat with Miss Ophelia, concerning cupboards, closets, linen-presses,\nstore-rooms, and other matters, of which the latter was, by common\nunderstanding, to assume the direction,--giving her so many cautious\ndirections and charges, that a head less systematic and business-like\nthan Miss Ophelia's would have been utterly dizzied and confounded.\n\n\"And now,\" said Marie, \"I believe I've told you everything; so that,\nwhen my next sick turn comes on, you'll be able to go forward entirely,\nwithout consulting me;--only about Eva,--she requires watching.\"\n\n\"She seems to be a good child, very,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"I never saw a\nbetter child.\"\n\n\"Eva's peculiar,\" said her mother, \"very. There are things about her so\nsingular; she isn't like me, now, a particle;\" and Marie sighed, as if\nthis was a truly melancholy consideration.\n\nMiss Ophelia in her own heart said, \"I hope she isn't,\" but had prudence\nenough to keep it down.\n\n\"Eva always was disposed to be with servants; and I think that well\nenough with some children. Now, I always played with father's little\nnegroes--it never did me any harm. But Eva somehow always seems to put\nherself on an equality with every creature that comes near her. It's a\nstrange thing about the child. I never have been able to break her of\nit. St. Clare, I believe, encourages her in it. The fact is, St. Clare\nindulges every creature under this roof but his own wife.\"\n\nAgain Miss Ophelia sat in blank silence.\n\n\"Now, there's no way with servants,\" said Marie, \"but to _put them\ndown_, and keep them down. It was always natural to me, from a child.\nEva is enough to spoil a whole house-full. What she will do when she\ncomes to keep house herself, I'm sure I don't know. I hold to being\n_kind_ to servants--I always am; but you must make 'em _know their\nplace_. Eva never does; there's no getting into the child's head the\nfirst beginning of an idea what a servant's place is! You heard her\noffering to take care of me nights, to let Mammy sleep! That's just a\nspecimen of the way the child would be doing all the time, if she was\nleft to herself.\"\n\n\"Why,\" said Miss Ophelia, bluntly, \"I suppose you think your servants\nare human creatures, and ought to have some rest when they are tired.\"\n\n\"Certainly, of course. I'm very particular in letting them have\neverything that comes convenient,--anything that doesn't put one at\nall out of the way, you know. Mammy can make up her sleep, some time\nor other; there's no difficulty about that. She's the sleepiest concern\nthat ever I saw; sewing, standing, or sitting, that creature will go to\nsleep, and sleep anywhere and everywhere. No danger but Mammy gets sleep\nenough. But this treating servants as if they were exotic flowers, or\nchina vases, is really ridiculous,\" said Marie, as she plunged languidly\ninto the depths of a voluminous and pillowy lounge, and drew towards her\nan elegant cut-glass vinaigrette.\n\n\"You see,\" she continued, in a faint and lady-like voice, like the last\ndying breath of an Arabian jessamine, or something equally ethereal,\n\"you see, Cousin Ophelia, I don't often speak of myself. It isn't my\n_habit_; 't isn't agreeable to me. In fact, I haven't strength to do\nit. But there are points where St. Clare and I differ. St. Clare never\nunderstood me, never appreciated me. I think it lies at the root of all\nmy ill health. St. Clare means well, I am bound to believe; but men are\nconstitutionally selfish and inconsiderate to woman. That, at least, is\nmy impression.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia, who had not a small share of the genuine New England\ncaution, and a very particular horror of being drawn into family\ndifficulties, now began to foresee something of this kind impending; so,\ncomposing her face into a grim neutrality, and drawing out of her pocket\nabout a yard and a quarter of stocking, which she kept as a specific\nagainst what Dr. Watts asserts to be a personal habit of Satan when\npeople have idle hands, she proceeded to knit most energetically,\nshutting her lips together in a way that said, as plain as words could,\n\"You needn't try to make me speak. I don't want anything to do with your\naffairs,\"--in fact, she looked about as sympathizing as a stone lion.\nBut Marie didn't care for that. She had got somebody to talk to, and she\nfelt it her duty to talk, and that was enough; and reinforcing herself\nby smelling again at her vinaigrette, she went on.\n\n\"You see, I brought my own property and servants into the connection,\nwhen I married St. Clare, and I am legally entitled to manage them my\nown way. St. Clare had his fortune and his servants, and I'm well\nenough content he should manage them his way; but St. Clare will be\ninterfering. He has wild, extravagant notions about things, particularly\nabout the treatment of servants. He really does act as if he set his\nservants before me, and before himself, too; for he lets them make him\nall sorts of trouble, and never lifts a finger. Now, about some things,\nSt. Clare is really frightful--he frightens me--good-natured as he\nlooks, in general. Now, he has set down his foot that, come what will,\nthere shall not be a blow struck in this house, except what he or I\nstrike; and he does it in a way that I really dare not cross him. Well,\nyou may see what that leads to; for St. Clare wouldn't raise his hand,\nif every one of them walked over him, and I--you see how cruel it would\nbe to require me to make the exertion. Now, you know these servants are\nnothing but grown-up children.\"\n\n\"I don't know anything about it, and I thank the Lord that I don't!\"\nsaid Miss Ophelia, shortly.\n\n\"Well, but you will have to know something, and know it to your cost,\nif you stay here. You don't know what a provoking, stupid, careless,\nunreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are.\"\n\nMarie seemed wonderfully supported, always, when she got upon this\ntopic; and she now opened her eyes, and seemed quite to forget her\nlanguor.\n\n\"You don't know, and you can't, the daily, hourly trials that beset\na housekeeper from them, everywhere and every way. But it's no use to\ncomplain to St. Clare. He talks the strangest stuff. He says we have\nmade them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their\nfaults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault\nand punish it too. He says we shouldn't do any better, in their place;\njust as if one could reason from them to us, you know.\"\n\n\"Don't you believe that the Lord made them of one blood with us?\" said\nMiss Ophelia, shortly.\n\n\"No, indeed not I! A pretty story, truly! They are a degraded race.\"\n\n\"Don't you think they've got immortal souls?\" said Miss Ophelia, with\nincreasing indignation.\n\n\"O, well,\" said Marie, yawning, \"that, of course--nobody doubts that.\nBut as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if\nwe could be compared, why, it's impossible! Now, St. Clare really has\ntalked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me\nfrom mine. There's no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn't have the\nfeelings that I should. It's a different thing altogether,--of course,\nit is,--and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy\ncould love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once\nreally and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my\nweak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody\nelse in her place. That was a little too much even for _me_ to bear. I\ndon't often show my feelings, I make it a principle to endure everything\nin silence; it's a wife's hard lot, and I bear it. But I did break out,\nthat time; so that he has never alluded to the subject since. But I know\nby his looks, and little things that he says, that he thinks so as much\nas ever; and it's so trying, so provoking!\"\n\nMiss Ophelia looked very much as if she was afraid she should say\nsomething; but she rattled away with her needles in a way that had\nvolumes of meaning in it, if Marie could only have understood it.\n\n\"So, you just see,\" she continued, \"what you've got to manage. A\nhousehold without any rule; where servants have it all their own way, do\nwhat they please, and have what they please, except so far as I, with\nmy feeble health, have kept up government. I keep my cowhide about, and\nsometimes I do lay it on; but the exertion is always too much for me. If\nSt. Clare would only have this thing done as others do--\"\n\n\"And how's that?\"\n\n\"Why, send them to the calaboose, or some of the other places to be\nflogged. That's the only way. If I wasn't such a poor, feeble piece, I\nbelieve I should manage with twice the energy that St. Clare does.\"\n\n\"And how does St. Clare contrive to manage?\" said Miss Ophelia. \"You say\nhe never strikes a blow.\"\n\n\"Well, men have a more commanding way, you know; it is easier for\nthem; besides, if you ever looked full in his eye, it's peculiar,--that\neye,--and if he speaks decidedly, there's a kind of flash. I'm afraid of\nit, myself; and the servants know they must mind. I couldn't do as much\nby a regular storm and scolding as St. Clare can by one turn of his eye,\nif once he is in earnest. O, there's no trouble about St. Clare; that's\nthe reason he's no more feeling for me. But you'll find, when you come\nto manage, that there's no getting along without severity,--they are so\nbad, so deceitful, so lazy.\"\n\n\"The old tune,\" said St. Clare, sauntering in. \"What an awful account\nthese wicked creatures will have to settle, at last, especially for\nbeing lazy! You see, cousin,\" said he, as he stretched himself at full\nlength on a lounge opposite to Marie, \"it's wholly inexcusable in them,\nin the light of the example that Marie and I set them,--this laziness.\"\n\n\"Come, now, St. Clare, you are too bad!\" said Marie.\n\n\"Am I, now? Why, I thought I was talking good, quite remarkably for me.\nI try to enforce your remarks, Marie, always.\"\n\n\"You know you meant no such thing, St. Clare,\" said Marie.\n\n\"O, I must have been mistaken, then. Thank you, my dear, for setting me\nright.\"\n\n\"You do really try to be provoking,\" said Marie.\n\n\"O, come, Marie, the day is growing warm, and I have just had a long\nquarrel with Dolph, which has fatigued me excessively; so, pray be\nagreeable, now, and let a fellow repose in the light of your smile.\"\n\n\"What's the matter about Dolph?\" said Marie. \"That fellow's impudence\nhas been growing to a point that is perfectly intolerable to me. I\nonly wish I had the undisputed management of him a while. I'd bring him\ndown!\"\n\n\"What you say, my dear, is marked with your usual acuteness and good\nsense,\" said St. Clare. \"As to Dolph, the case is this: that he has so\nlong been engaged in imitating my graces and perfections, that he has,\nat last, really mistaken himself for his master; and I have been obliged\nto give him a little insight into his mistake.\"\n\n\"How?\" said Marie.\n\n\"Why, I was obliged to let him understand explicitly that I preferred to\nkeep _some_ of my clothes for my own personal wearing; also, I put his\nmagnificence upon an allowance of cologne-water, and actually was so\ncruel as to restrict him to one dozen of my cambric handkerchiefs. Dolph\nwas particularly huffy about it, and I had to talk to him like a father,\nto bring him round.\"\n\n\"O! St. Clare, when will you learn how to treat your servants? It's\nabominable, the way you indulge them!\" said Marie.\n\n\"Why, after all, what's the harm of the poor dog's wanting to be like\nhis master; and if I haven't brought him up any better than to find his\nchief good in cologne and cambric handkerchiefs, why shouldn't I give\nthem to him?\"\n\n\"And why haven't you brought him up better?\" said Miss Ophelia, with\nblunt determination.\n\n\"Too much trouble,--laziness, cousin, laziness,--which ruins more souls\nthan you can shake a stick at. If it weren't for laziness, I should have\nbeen a perfect angel, myself. I'm inclined to think that laziness is\nwhat your old Dr. Botherem, up in Vermont, used to call the 'essence of\nmoral evil.' It's an awful consideration, certainly.\"\n\n\"I think you slaveholders have an awful responsibility upon you,\" said\nMiss Ophelia. \"I wouldn't have it, for a thousand worlds. You ought to\neducate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures,--like\nimmortal creatures, that you've got to stand before the bar of God with.\nThat's my mind,\" said the good lady, breaking suddenly out with a tide\nof zeal that had been gaining strength in her mind all the morning.\n\n\"O! come, come,\" said St. Clare, getting up quickly; \"what do you know\nabout us?\" And he sat down to the piano, and rattled a lively piece of\nmusic. St. Clare had a decided genius for music. His touch was brilliant\nand firm, and his fingers flew over the keys with a rapid and bird-like\nmotion, airy, and yet decided. He played piece after piece, like a man\nwho is trying to play himself into a good humor. After pushing the music\naside, he rose up, and said, gayly, \"Well, now, cousin, you've given us\na good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I think the better of you\nfor it. I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth\nat me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn't\nexactly appreciated, at first.\"\n\n\"For my part, I don't see any use in such sort of talk,\" said Marie.\n\"I'm sure, if anybody does more for servants than we do, I'd like to\nknow who; and it don't do 'em a bit good,--not a particle,--they get\nworse and worse. As to talking to them, or anything like that, I'm sure\nI have talked till I was tired and hoarse, telling them their duty, and\nall that; and I'm sure they can go to church when they like, though they\ndon't understand a word of the sermon, more than so many pigs,--so it\nisn't of any great use for them to go, as I see; but they do go, and so\nthey have every chance; but, as I said before, they are a degraded race,\nand always will be, and there isn't any help for them; you can't make\nanything of them, if you try. You see, Cousin Ophelia, I've tried, and\nyou haven't; I was born and bred among them, and I know.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia thought she had said enough, and therefore sat silent. St.\nClare whistled a tune.\n\n\"St. Clare, I wish you wouldn't whistle,\" said Marie; \"it makes my head\nworse.\"\n\n\"I won't,\" said St. Clare. \"Is there anything else you wouldn't wish me\nto do?\"\n\n\"I wish you _would_ have some kind of sympathy for my trials; you never\nhave any feeling for me.\"\n\n\"My dear accusing angel!\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"It's provoking to be talked to in that way.\"\n\n\"Then, how will you be talked to? I'll talk to order,--any way you'll\nmention,--only to give satisfaction.\"\n\nA gay laugh from the court rang through the silken curtains of the\nverandah. St. Clare stepped out, and lifting up the curtain, laughed\ntoo.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Miss Ophelia, coming to the railing.\n\nThere sat Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his\nbutton-holes stuck full of cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing, was\nhanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on his\nknee, like a chip-sparrow, still laughing.\n\n\"O, Tom, you look so funny!\"\n\nTom had a sober, benevolent smile, and seemed, in his quiet way, to be\nenjoying the fun quite as much as his little mistress. He lifted his\neyes, when he saw his master, with a half-deprecating, apologetic air.\n\n\"How can you let her?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Why not?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Why, I don't know, it seems so dreadful!\"\n\n\"You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he\nwas black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is\nimmortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among\nsome of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of\nvirtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity\nought to do,--obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have\noften noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you\nthan with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you\nare indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you\ndon't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send\nthem to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary\nor two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.\nIsn't that it?\"\n\n\"Well, cousin,\" said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, \"there may be some\ntruth in this.\"\n\n\"What would the poor and lowly do, without children?\" said St. Clare,\nleaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading\nTom with her. \"Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now\nis a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs and\nMethodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and little bits\nof trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most wonderful Tom\nthat ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses of Eden that the\nLord has dropped down expressly for the poor and lowly, who get few\nenough of any other kind.\"\n\n\"It's strange, cousin,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"one might almost think you\nwere a _professor_, to hear you talk.\"\n\n\"A professor?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Yes; a professor of religion.\"\n\n\"Not at all; not a professor, as your town-folks have it; and, what is\nworse, I'm afraid, not a _practiser_, either.\"\n\n\"What makes you talk so, then?\"\n\n\"Nothing is easier than talking,\" said St. Clare. \"I believe Shakespeare\nmakes somebody say, 'I could sooner show twenty what were good to be\ndone, than be one of the twenty to follow my own showing.'* Nothing like\ndivision of labor. My forte lies in talking, and yours, cousin, lies in\ndoing.\"\n\n     * _The Merchant of Venice_, Act 1, scene 2, lines 17-18.\n\n\nIn Tom's external situation, at this time, there was, as the world\nsays, nothing to complain of Little Eva's fancy for him--the instinctive\ngratitude and loveliness of a noble nature--had led her to petition her\nfather that he might be her especial attendant, whenever she needed the\nescort of a servant, in her walks or rides; and Tom had general orders\nto let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted\nhim,--orders which our readers may fancy were far from disagreeable to\nhim. He was kept well dressed, for St. Clare was fastidiously particular\non this point. His stable services were merely a sinecure, and consisted\nsimply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an under-servant\nin his duties; for Marie St. Clare declared that she could not have any\nsmell of the horses about him when he came near her, and that he must\npositively not be put to any service that would make him unpleasant to\nher, as her nervous system was entirely inadequate to any trial of\nthat nature; one snuff of anything disagreeable being, according to her\naccount, quite sufficient to close the scene, and put an end to all her\nearthly trials at once. Tom, therefore, in his well-brushed broadcloth\nsuit, smooth beaver, glossy boots, faultless wristbands and collar, with\nhis grave, good-natured black face, looked respectable enough to be a\nBishop of Carthage, as men of his color were, in other ages.\n\nThen, too, he was in a beautiful place, a consideration to which his\nsensitive race was never indifferent; and he did enjoy with a quiet joy\nthe birds, the flowers, the fountains, the perfume, and light and\nbeauty of the court, the silken hangings, and pictures, and lustres,\nand statuettes, and gilding, that made the parlors within a kind of\nAladdin's palace to him.\n\nIf ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,--and come\nit must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human\nimprovement.--life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of\nwhich our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. In that far-off\nmystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and\nwondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of\nart, new styles of splendor; and the negro race, no longer despised\nand trodden down, will, perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most\nmagnificent revelations of human life. Certainly they will, in their\ngentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on a\nsuperior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simplicity of\naffection, and facility of forgiveness. In all these they will exhibit\nthe highest form of the peculiarly _Christian life_, and, perhaps, as\nGod chasteneth whom he loveth, he hath chosen poor Africa in the furnace\nof affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in that kingdom which\nhe will set up, when every other kingdom has been tried, and failed; for\nthe first shall be last, and the last first.\n\nWas this what Marie St. Clare was thinking of, as she stood, gorgeously\ndressed, on the verandah, on Sunday morning, clasping a diamond bracelet\non her slender wrist? Most likely it was. Or, if it wasn't that, it was\nsomething else; for Marie patronized good things, and she was going now,\nin full force,--diamonds, silk, and lace, and jewels, and all,--to a\nfashionable church, to be very religious. Marie always made a point to\nbe very pious on Sundays. There she stood, so slender, so elegant, so\nairy and undulating in all her motions, her lace scarf enveloping her\nlike a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she felt very good and\nvery elegant indeed. Miss Ophelia stood at her side, a perfect contrast.\nIt was not that she had not as handsome a silk dress and shawl, and\nas fine a pocket-handkerchief; but stiffness and squareness, and\nbolt-uprightness, enveloped her with as indefinite yet appreciable\na presence as did grace her elegant neighbor; not the grace of God,\nhowever,--that is quite another thing!\n\n\"Where's Eva?\" said Marie.\n\n\"The child stopped on the stairs, to say something to Mammy.\"\n\nAnd what was Eva saying to Mammy on the stairs? Listen, reader, and you\nwill hear, though Marie does not.\n\n\"Dear Mammy, I know your head is aching dreadfully.\"\n\n\"Lord bless you, Miss Eva! my head allers aches lately. You don't need\nto worry.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm glad you're going out; and here,\"--and the little girl threw\nher arms around her,--\"Mammy, you shall take my vinaigrette.\"\n\n\"What! your beautiful gold thing, thar, with them diamonds! Lor, Miss,\n't wouldn't be proper, no ways.\"\n\n\"Why not? You need it, and I don't. Mamma always uses it for headache,\nand it'll make you feel better. No, you shall take it, to please me,\nnow.\"\n\n\"Do hear the darlin talk!\" said Mammy, as Eva thrust it into her bosom,\nand kissing her, ran down stairs to her mother.\n\n\"What were you stopping for?\"\n\n\"I was just stopping to give Mammy my vinaigrette, to take to church\nwith her.\"\n\n\"Eva\" said Marie, stamping impatiently,--\"your gold vinaigrette to\n_Mammy!_ When will you learn what's _proper_? Go right and take it back\nthis moment!\"\n\nEva looked downcast and aggrieved, and turned slowly.\n\n\"I say, Marie, let the child alone; she shall do as she pleases,\" said\nSt. Clare.\n\n\"St. Clare, how will she ever get along in the world?\" said Marie.\n\n\"The Lord knows,\" said St. Clare, \"but she'll get along in heaven better\nthan you or I.\"\n\n\"O, papa, don't,\" said Eva, softly touching his elbow; \"it troubles\nmother.\"\n\n\"Well, cousin, are you ready to go to meeting?\" said Miss Ophelia,\nturning square about on St. Clare.\n\n\"I'm not going, thank you.\"\n\n\"I do wish St. Clare ever would go to church,\" said Marie; \"but he\nhasn't a particle of religion about him. It really isn't respectable.\"\n\n\"I know it,\" said St. Clare. \"You ladies go to church to learn how to\nget along in the world, I suppose, and your piety sheds respectability\non us. If I did go at all, I would go where Mammy goes; there's\nsomething to keep a fellow awake there, at least.\"\n\n\"What! those shouting Methodists? Horrible!\" said Marie.\n\n\"Anything but the dead sea of your respectable churches, Marie.\nPositively, it's too much to ask of a man. Eva, do you like to go? Come,\nstay at home and play with me.\"\n\n\"Thank you, papa; but I'd rather go to church.\"\n\n\"Isn't it dreadful tiresome?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"I think it is tiresome, some,\" said Eva, \"and I am sleepy, too, but I\ntry to keep awake.\"\n\n\"What do you go for, then?\"\n\n\"Why, you know, papa,\" she said, in a whisper, \"cousin told me that God\nwants to have us; and he gives us everything, you know; and it isn't\nmuch to do it, if he wants us to. It isn't so very tiresome after all.\"\n\n\"You sweet, little obliging soul!\" said St. Clare, kissing her; \"go\nalong, that's a good girl, and pray for me.\"\n\n\"Certainly, I always do,\" said the child, as she sprang after her mother\ninto the carriage.\n\nSt. Clare stood on the steps and kissed his hand to her, as the carriage\ndrove away; large tears were in his eyes.\n\n\"O, Evangeline! rightly named,\" he said; \"hath not God made thee an\nevangel to me?\"\n\nSo he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune,\nand forgot his little gospel. Was he much unlike other folks?\n\n\"You see, Evangeline,\" said her mother, \"it's always right and proper\nto be kind to servants, but it isn't proper to treat them _just_ as we\nwould our relations, or people in our own class of life. Now, if Mammy\nwas sick, you wouldn't want to put her in your own bed.\"\n\n\"I should feel just like it, mamma,\" said Eva, \"because then it would\nbe handier to take care of her, and because, you know, my bed is better\nthan hers.\"\n\nMarie was in utter despair at the entire want of moral perception\nevinced in this reply.\n\n\"What can I do to make this child understand me?\" she said.\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Miss Ophelia, significantly.\n\nEva looked sorry and disconcerted for a moment; but children, luckily,\ndo not keep to one impression long, and in a few moments she was merrily\nlaughing at various things which she saw from the coach-windows, as it\nrattled along.\n\n*****\n\n\"Well, ladies,\" said St. Clare, as they were comfortably seated at the\ndinner-table, \"and what was the bill of fare at church today?\"\n\n\"O, Dr. G---- preached a splendid sermon,\" said Marie. \"It was just such\na sermon as you ought to hear; it expressed all my views exactly.\"\n\n\"It must have been very improving,\" said St. Clare. \"The subject must\nhave been an extensive one.\"\n\n\"Well, I mean all my views about society, and such things,\" said Marie.\n\"The text was, 'He hath made everything beautiful in its season;' and he\nshowed how all the orders and distinctions in society came from God; and\nthat it was so appropriate, you know, and beautiful, that some should\nbe high and some low, and that some were born to rule and some to serve,\nand all that, you know; and he applied it so well to all this ridiculous\nfuss that is made about slavery, and he proved distinctly that the Bible\nwas on our side, and supported all our institutions so convincingly. I\nonly wish you'd heard him.\"\n\n\"O, I didn't need it,\" said St. Clare. \"I can learn what does me as much\ngood as that from the Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar besides;\nwhich I can't do, you know, in a church.\"\n\n\"Why,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"don't you believe in these views?\"\n\n\"Who,--I? You know I'm such a graceless dog that these religious aspects\nof such subjects don't edify me much. If I was to say anything on this\nslavery matter, I would say out, fair and square, 'We're in for it;\nwe've got 'em, and mean to keep 'em,--it's for our convenience and our\ninterest;' for that's the long and short of it,--that's just the whole\nof what all this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think\nthat it will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere.\"\n\n\"I do think, Augustine, you are so irreverent!\" said Marie. \"I think\nit's shocking to hear you talk.\"\n\n\"Shocking! it's the truth. This religious talk on such matters,--why\ndon't they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its\nseason, of a fellow's taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too\nlate over his cards, and various providential arrangements of that sort,\nwhich are pretty frequent among us young men;--we'd like to hear that\nthose are right and godly, too.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"do you think slavery right or wrong?\"\n\n\"I'm not going to have any of your horrid New England directness,\ncousin,\" said St. Clare, gayly. \"If I answer that question, I know\nyou'll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last;\nand I'm not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that\nlives by throwing stones at other people's glass houses, but I never\nmean to put up one for them to stone.\"\n\n\"That's just the way he's always talking,\" said Marie; \"you can't get\nany satisfaction out of him. I believe it's just because he don't like\nreligion, that he's always running out in this way he's been doing.\"\n\n\"Religion!\" said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him.\n\"Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can bend\nand turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish,\nworldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous,\nless generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own\nungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must\nlook for something above me, and not something beneath.\"\n\n\"Then you don't believe that the Bible justifies slavery,\" said Miss\nOphelia.\n\n\"The Bible was my _mother's_ book,\" said St. Clare. \"By it she lived and\ndied, and I would be very sorry to think it did. I'd as soon desire\nto have it proved that my mother could drink brandy, chew tobacco, and\nswear, by way of satisfying me that I did right in doing the same. It\nwouldn't make me at all more satisfied with these things in myself, and\nit would take from me the comfort of respecting her; and it really is a\ncomfort, in this world, to have anything one can respect. In short,\nyou see,\" said he, suddenly resuming his gay tone, \"all I want is that\ndifferent things be kept in different boxes. The whole frame-work of\nsociety, both in Europe and America, is made up of various things which\nwill not stand the scrutiny of any very ideal standard of morality. It's\npretty generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute\nright, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. Now, when\nany one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary to us, we\ncan't get along without it, we should be beggared if we give it up,\nand, of course, we mean to hold on to it,--this is strong, clear,\nwell-defined language; it has the respectability of truth to it; and, if\nwe may judge by their practice, the majority of the world will bear us\nout in it. But when he begins to put on a long face, and snuffle, and\nquote Scripture, I incline to think he isn't much better than he should\nbe.\"\n\n\"You are very uncharitable,\" said Marie.\n\n\"Well,\" said St. Clare, \"suppose that something should bring down the\nprice of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a\ndrug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version\nof the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the\nchurch, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that\neverything in the Bible and reason went the other way!\"\n\n\"Well, at any rate,\" said Marie, as she reclined herself on a lounge,\n\"I'm thankful I'm born where slavery exists; and I believe it's\nright,--indeed, I feel it must be; and, at any rate, I'm sure I couldn't\nget along without it.\"\n\n\"I say, what do you think, Pussy?\" said her father to Eva, who came in\nat this moment, with a flower in her hand.\n\n\"What about, papa?\"\n\n\"Why, which do you like the best,--to live as they do at your uncle's,\nup in Vermont, or to have a house-full of servants, as we do?\"\n\n\"O, of course, our way is the pleasantest,\" said Eva.\n\n\"Why so?\" said St. Clare, stroking her head.\n\n\"Why, it makes so many more round you to love, you know,\" said Eva,\nlooking up earnestly.\n\n\"Now, that's just like Eva,\" said Marie; \"just one of her odd speeches.\"\n\n\"Is it an odd speech, papa?\" said Eva, whisperingly, as she got upon his\nknee.\n\n\"Rather, as this world goes, Pussy,\" said St. Clare. \"But where has my\nlittle Eva been, all dinner-time?\"\n\n\"O, I've been up in Tom's room, hearing him sing, and Aunt Dinah gave me\nmy dinner.\"\n\n\"Hearing Tom sing, hey?\"\n\n\"O, yes! he sings such beautiful things about the New Jerusalem, and\nbright angels, and the land of Canaan.\"\n\n\"I dare say; it's better than the opera, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, and he's going to teach them to me.\"\n\n\"Singing lessons, hey?--you _are_ coming on.\"\n\n\"Yes, he sings for me, and I read to him in my Bible; and he explains\nwhat it means, you know.\"\n\n\"On my word,\" said Marie, laughing, \"that is the latest joke of the\nseason.\"\n\n\"Tom isn't a bad hand, now, at explaining Scripture, I'll dare swear,\"\nsaid St. Clare. \"Tom has a natural genius for religion. I wanted the\nhorses out early, this morning, and I stole up to Tom's cubiculum there,\nover the stables, and there I heard him holding a meeting by himself;\nand, in fact, I haven't heard anything quite so savory as Tom's prayer,\nthis some time. He put in for me, with a zeal that was quite apostolic.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he guessed you were listening. I've heard of that trick\nbefore.\"\n\n\"If he did, he wasn't very polite; for he gave the Lord his opinion\nof me, pretty freely. Tom seemed to think there was decidedly room for\nimprovement in me, and seemed very earnest that I should be converted.\"\n\n\"I hope you'll lay it to heart,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I suppose you are much of the same opinion,\" said St. Clare. \"Well, we\nshall see,--shan't we, Eva?\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nThe Freeman's Defence\n\n\nThere was a gentle bustle at the Quaker house, as the afternoon drew to\na close. Rachel Halliday moved quietly to and fro, collecting from her\nhousehold stores such needments as could be arranged in the smallest\ncompass, for the wanderers who were to go forth that night. The\nafternoon shadows stretched eastward, and the round red sun stood\nthoughtfully on the horizon, and his beams shone yellow and calm into\nthe little bed-room where George and his wife were sitting. He was\nsitting with his child on his knee, and his wife's hand in his. Both\nlooked thoughtful and serious and traces of tears were on their cheeks.\n\n\"Yes, Eliza,\" said George, \"I know all you say is true. You are a good\nchild,--a great deal better than I am; and I will try to do as you say.\nI'll try to act worthy of a free man. I'll try to feel like a Christian.\nGod Almighty knows that I've meant to do well,--tried hard to do\nwell,--when everything has been against me; and now I'll forget all the\npast, and put away every hard and bitter feeling, and read my Bible, and\nlearn to be a good man.\"\n\n\"And when we get to Canada,\" said Eliza, \"I can help you. I can do\ndress-making very well; and I understand fine washing and ironing; and\nbetween us we can find something to live on.\"\n\n\"Yes, Eliza, so long as we have each other and our boy. O! Eliza, if\nthese people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that\nhis wife and child belong to _him_! I've often wondered to see men that\ncould call their wives and children _their own_ fretting and worrying\nabout anything else. Why, I feel rich and strong, though we have nothing\nbut our bare hands. I feel as if I could scarcely ask God for any more.\nYes, though I've worked hard every day, till I am twenty-five years old,\nand have not a cent of money, nor a roof to cover me, nor a spot of\nland to call my own, yet, if they will only let me alone now, I will be\nsatisfied,--thankful; I will work, and send back the money for you and\nmy boy. As to my old master, he has been paid five times over for all he\never spent for me. I don't owe him anything.\"\n\n\"But yet we are not quite out of danger,\" said Eliza; \"we are not yet in\nCanada.\"\n\n\"True,\" said George, \"but it seems as if I smelt the free air, and it\nmakes me strong.\"\n\nAt this moment, voices were heard in the outer apartment, in earnest\nconversation, and very soon a rap was heard on the door. Eliza started\nand opened it.\n\nSimeon Halliday was there, and with him a Quaker brother, whom he\nintroduced as Phineas Fletcher. Phineas was tall and lathy, red-haired,\nwith an expression of great acuteness and shrewdness in his face. He\nhad not the placid, quiet, unworldly air of Simeon Halliday; on the\ncontrary, a particularly wide-awake and _au fait_ appearance, like a\nman who rather prides himself on knowing what he is about, and keeping\na bright lookout ahead; peculiarities which sorted rather oddly with his\nbroad brim and formal phraseology.\n\n\"Our friend Phineas hath discovered something of importance to the\ninterests of thee and thy party, George,\" said Simeon; \"it were well for\nthee to hear it.\"\n\n\"That I have,\" said Phineas, \"and it shows the use of a man's always\nsleeping with one ear open, in certain places, as I've always said.\nLast night I stopped at a little lone tavern, back on the road. Thee\nremembers the place, Simeon, where we sold some apples, last year, to\nthat fat woman, with the great ear-rings. Well, I was tired with hard\ndriving; and, after my supper I stretched myself down on a pile of bags\nin the corner, and pulled a buffalo over me, to wait till my bed was\nready; and what does I do, but get fast asleep.\"\n\n\"With one ear open, Phineas?\" said Simeon, quietly.\n\n\"No; I slept, ears and all, for an hour or two, for I was pretty well\ntired; but when I came to myself a little, I found that there were some\nmen in the room, sitting round a table, drinking and talking; and I\nthought, before I made much muster, I'd just see what they were up to,\nespecially as I heard them say something about the Quakers. 'So,' says\none, 'they are up in the Quaker settlement, no doubt,' says he. Then I\nlistened with both ears, and I found that they were talking about this\nvery party. So I lay and heard them lay off all their plans. This young\nman, they said, was to be sent back to Kentucky, to his master, who was\ngoing to make an example of him, to keep all niggers from running away;\nand his wife two of them were going to run down to New Orleans to sell,\non their own account, and they calculated to get sixteen or eighteen\nhundred dollars for her; and the child, they said, was going to a\ntrader, who had bought him; and then there was the boy, Jim, and his\nmother, they were to go back to their masters in Kentucky. They said\nthat there were two constables, in a town a little piece ahead, who\nwould go in with 'em to get 'em taken up, and the young woman was to\nbe taken before a judge; and one of the fellows, who is small and\nsmooth-spoken, was to swear to her for his property, and get her\ndelivered over to him to take south. They've got a right notion of the\ntrack we are going tonight; and they'll be down after us, six or eight\nstrong. So now, what's to be done?\"\n\nThe group that stood in various attitudes, after this communication,\nwere worthy of a painter. Rachel Halliday, who had taken her hands out\nof a batch of biscuit, to hear the news, stood with them upraised and\nfloury, and with a face of the deepest concern. Simeon looked profoundly\nthoughtful; Eliza had thrown her arms around her husband, and was\nlooking up to him. George stood with clenched hands and glowing eyes,\nand looking as any other man might look, whose wife was to be sold at\nauction, and son sent to a trader, all under the shelter of a Christian\nnation's laws.\n\n\"What _shall_ we do, George?\" said Eliza faintly.\n\n\"I know what _I_ shall do,\" said George, as he stepped into the little\nroom, and began examining pistols.\n\n\"Ay, ay,\" said Phineas, nodding his head to Simeon; \"thou seest, Simeon,\nhow it will work.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Simeon, sighing; \"I pray it come not to that.\"\n\n\"I don't want to involve any one with or for me,\" said George. \"If you\nwill lend me your vehicle and direct me, I will drive alone to the next\nstand. Jim is a giant in strength, and brave as death and despair, and\nso am I.\"\n\n\"Ah, well, friend,\" said Phineas, \"but thee'll need a driver, for all\nthat. Thee's quite welcome to do all the fighting, thee knows; but I\nknow a thing or two about the road, that thee doesn't.\"\n\n\"But I don't want to involve you,\" said George.\n\n\"Involve,\" said Phineas, with a curious and keen expression of face,\n\"When thee does involve me, please to let me know.\"\n\n\"Phineas is a wise and skilful man,\" said Simeon. \"Thee does well,\nGeorge, to abide by his judgment; and,\" he added, laying his hand kindly\non George's shoulder, and pointing to the pistols, \"be not over hasty\nwith these,--young blood is hot.\"\n\n\"I will attack no man,\" said George. \"All I ask of this country is to be\nlet alone, and I will go out peaceably; but,\"--he paused, and his brow\ndarkened and his face worked,--\"I've had a sister sold in that New\nOrleans market. I know what they are sold for; and am I going to stand\nby and see them take my wife and sell her, when God has given me a pair\nof strong arms to defend her? No; God help me! I'll fight to the last\nbreath, before they shall take my wife and son. Can you blame me?\"\n\n\"Mortal man cannot blame thee, George. Flesh and blood could not do\notherwise,\" said Simeon. \"Woe unto the world because of offences, but\nwoe unto them through whom the offence cometh.\"\n\n\"Would not even you, sir, do the same, in my place?\"\n\n\"I pray that I be not tried,\" said Simeon; \"the flesh is weak.\"\n\n\"I think my flesh would be pretty tolerable strong, in such a case,\"\nsaid Phineas, stretching out a pair of arms like the sails of a\nwindmill. \"I an't sure, friend George, that I shouldn't hold a fellow\nfor thee, if thee had any accounts to settle with him.\"\n\n\"If man should _ever_ resist evil,\" said Simeon, \"then George should\nfeel free to do it now: but the leaders of our people taught a more\nexcellent way; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of\nGod; but it goes sorely against the corrupt will of man, and none can\nreceive it save they to whom it is given. Let us pray the Lord that we\nbe not tempted.\"\n\n\"And so _I_ do,\" said Phineas; \"but if we are tempted too much--why, let\nthem look out, that's all.\"\n\n\"It's quite plain thee wasn't born a Friend,\" said Simeon, smiling. \"The\nold nature hath its way in thee pretty strong as yet.\"\n\nTo tell the truth, Phineas had been a hearty, two-fisted backwoodsman,\na vigorous hunter, and a dead shot at a buck; but, having wooed a pretty\nQuakeress, had been moved by the power of her charms to join the society\nin his neighborhood; and though he was an honest, sober, and efficient\nmember, and nothing particular could be alleged against him, yet the\nmore spiritual among them could not but discern an exceeding lack of\nsavor in his developments.\n\n\"Friend Phineas will ever have ways of his own,\" said Rachel Halliday,\nsmiling; \"but we all think that his heart is in the right place, after\nall.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said George, \"isn't it best that we hasten our flight?\"\n\n\"I got up at four o'clock, and came on with all speed, full two or three\nhours ahead of them, if they start at the time they planned. It isn't\nsafe to start till dark, at any rate; for there are some evil persons\nin the villages ahead, that might be disposed to meddle with us, if they\nsaw our wagon, and that would delay us more than the waiting; but in\ntwo hours I think we may venture. I will go over to Michael Cross, and\nengage him to come behind on his swift nag, and keep a bright lookout\non the road, and warn us if any company of men come on. Michael keeps a\nhorse that can soon get ahead of most other horses; and he could shoot\nahead and let us know, if there were any danger. I am going out now\nto warn Jim and the old woman to be in readiness, and to see about the\nhorse. We have a pretty fair start, and stand a good chance to get to\nthe stand before they can come up with us. So, have good courage, friend\nGeorge; this isn't the first ugly scrape that I've been in with thy\npeople,\" said Phineas, as he closed the door.\n\n\"Phineas is pretty shrewd,\" said Simeon. \"He will do the best that can\nbe done for thee, George.\"\n\n\"All I am sorry for,\" said George, \"is the risk to you.\"\n\n\"Thee'll much oblige us, friend George, to say no more about that. What\nwe do we are conscience bound to do; we can do no other way. And now,\nmother,\" said he, turning to Rachel, \"hurry thy preparations for these\nfriends, for we must not send them away fasting.\"\n\nAnd while Rachel and her children were busy making corn-cake, and\ncooking ham and chicken, and hurrying on the _et ceteras_ of the evening\nmeal, George and his wife sat in their little room, with their arms\nfolded about each other, in such talk as husband and wife have when they\nknow that a few hours may part them forever.\n\n\"Eliza,\" said George, \"people that have friends, and houses, and lands,\nand money, and all those things _can't_ love as we do, who have nothing\nbut each other. Till I knew you, Eliza, no creature had loved me, but my\npoor, heart-broken mother and sister. I saw poor Emily that morning the\ntrader carried her off. She came to the corner where I was lying asleep,\nand said, 'Poor George, your last friend is going. What will become of\nyou, poor boy?' And I got up and threw my arms round her, and cried and\nsobbed, and she cried too; and those were the last kind words I got for\nten long years; and my heart all withered up, and felt as dry as ashes,\ntill I met you. And your loving me,--why, it was almost like raising one\nfrom the dead! I've been a new man ever since! And now, Eliza, I'll give\nmy last drop of blood, but they _shall not_ take you from me. Whoever\ngets you must walk over my dead body.\"\n\n\"O, Lord, have mercy!\" said Eliza, sobbing. \"If he will only let us get\nout of this country together, that is all we ask.\"\n\n\"Is God on their side?\" said George, speaking less to his wife than\npouring out his own bitter thoughts. \"Does he see all they do? Why does\nhe let such things happen? And they tell us that the Bible is on their\nside; certainly all the power is. They are rich, and healthy, and happy;\nthey are members of churches, expecting to go to heaven; and they get\nalong so easy in the world, and have it all their own way; and poor,\nhonest, faithful Christians,--Christians as good or better than\nthey,--are lying in the very dust under their feet. They buy 'em\nand sell 'em, and make trade of their heart's blood, and groans and\ntears,--and God _lets_ them.\"\n\n\"Friend George,\" said Simeon, from the kitchen, \"listen to this Psalm;\nit may do thee good.\"\n\nGeorge drew his seat near the door, and Eliza, wiping her tears, came\nforward also to listen, while Simeon read as follows:\n\n\"But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh\nslipped. For I was envious of the foolish, when I saw the prosperity\nof the wicked. They are not in trouble like other men, neither are they\nplagued like other men. Therefore, pride compasseth them as a chain;\nviolence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness;\nthey have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak\nwickedly concerning oppression; they speak loftily. Therefore his people\nreturn, and the waters of a full cup are wrung out to them, and they\nsay, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?\"\n\n\"Is not that the way thee feels, George?\"\n\n\"It is so indeed,\" said George,--\"as well as I could have written it\nmyself.\"\n\n\"Then, hear,\" said Simeon: \"When I thought to know this, it was too\npainful for me until I went unto the sanctuary of God. Then understood I\ntheir end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst\nthem down to destruction. As a dream when one awaketh, so, oh Lord,\nwhen thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Nevertheless I am\ncontinually with thee; thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt\nguide me by thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. It is good\nfor me to draw near unto God. I have put my trust in the Lord God.\"*\n\n     * Ps. 73, \"The End of the Wicked contrasted with that of the\n     Righteous.\"\n\nThe words of holy trust, breathed by the friendly old man, stole like\nsacred music over the harassed and chafed spirit of George; and after\nhe ceased, he sat with a gentle and subdued expression on his fine\nfeatures.\n\n\"If this world were all, George,\" said Simeon, \"thee might, indeed, ask\nwhere is the Lord? But it is often those who have least of all in this\nlife whom he chooseth for the kingdom. Put thy trust in him and, no\nmatter what befalls thee here, he will make all right hereafter.\"\n\nIf these words had been spoken by some easy, self-indulgent exhorter,\nfrom whose mouth they might have come merely as pious and rhetorical\nflourish, proper to be used to people in distress, perhaps they might\nnot have had much effect; but coming from one who daily and calmly\nrisked fine and imprisonment for the cause of God and man, they had a\nweight that could not but be felt, and both the poor, desolate fugitives\nfound calmness and strength breathing into them from it.\n\nAnd now Rachel took Eliza's hand kindly, and led the way to the\nsupper-table. As they were sitting down, a light tap sounded at the\ndoor, and Ruth entered.\n\n\"I just ran in,\" she said, \"with these little stockings for the\nboy,--three pair, nice, warm woollen ones. It will be so cold, thee\nknows, in Canada. Does thee keep up good courage, Eliza?\" she added,\ntripping round to Eliza's side of the table, and shaking her warmly\nby the hand, and slipping a seed-cake into Harry's hand. \"I brought a\nlittle parcel of these for him,\" she said, tugging at her pocket to get\nout the package. \"Children, thee knows, will always be eating.\"\n\n\"O, thank you; you are too kind,\" said Eliza.\n\n\"Come, Ruth, sit down to supper,\" said Rachel.\n\n\"I couldn't, any way. I left John with the baby, and some biscuits in\nthe oven; and I can't stay a moment, else John will burn up all the\nbiscuits, and give the baby all the sugar in the bowl. That's the way\nhe does,\" said the little Quakeress, laughing. \"So, good-by, Eliza;\ngood-by, George; the Lord grant thee a safe journey;\" and, with a few\ntripping steps, Ruth was out of the apartment.\n\nA little while after supper, a large covered-wagon drew up before the\ndoor; the night was clear starlight; and Phineas jumped briskly down\nfrom his seat to arrange his passengers. George walked out of the door,\nwith his child on one arm and his wife on the other. His step was firm,\nhis face settled and resolute. Rachel and Simeon came out after them.\n\n\"You get out, a moment,\" said Phineas to those inside, \"and let me fix\nthe back of the wagon, there, for the women-folks and the boy.\"\n\n\"Here are the two buffaloes,\" said Rachel. \"Make the seats as\ncomfortable as may be; it's hard riding all night.\"\n\nJim came out first, and carefully assisted out his old mother, who clung\nto his arm, and looked anxiously about, as if she expected the pursuer\nevery moment.\n\n\"Jim, are your pistols all in order?\" said George, in a low, firm voice.\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" said Jim.\n\n\"And you've no doubt what you shall do, if they come?\"\n\n\"I rather think I haven't,\" said Jim, throwing open his broad chest, and\ntaking a deep breath. \"Do you think I'll let them get mother again?\"\n\nDuring this brief colloquy, Eliza had been taking her leave of her\nkind friend, Rachel, and was handed into the carriage by Simeon,\nand, creeping into the back part with her boy, sat down among the\nbuffalo-skins. The old woman was next handed in and seated and George\nand Jim placed on a rough board seat front of them, and Phineas mounted\nin front.\n\n\"Farewell, my friends,\" said Simeon, from without.\n\n\"God bless you!\" answered all from within.\n\nAnd the wagon drove off, rattling and jolting over the frozen road.\n\nThere was no opportunity for conversation, on account of the roughness\nof the way and the noise of the wheels. The vehicle, therefore,\nrumbled on, through long, dark stretches of woodland,--over wide dreary\nplains,--up hills, and down valleys,--and on, on, on they jogged, hour\nafter hour. The child soon fell asleep, and lay heavily in his mother's\nlap. The poor, frightened old woman at last forgot her fears; and, even\nEliza, as the night waned, found all her anxieties insufficient to keep\nher eyes from closing. Phineas seemed, on the whole, the briskest of\nthe company, and beguiled his long drive with whistling certain very\nunquaker-like songs, as he went on.\n\nBut about three o'clock George's ear caught the hasty and decided click\nof a horse's hoof coming behind them at some distance and jogged Phineas\nby the elbow. Phineas pulled up his horses, and listened.\n\n\"That must be Michael,\" he said; \"I think I know the sound of his\ngallop;\" and he rose up and stretched his head anxiously back over the\nroad.\n\nA man riding in hot haste was now dimly descried at the top of a distant\nhill.\n\n\"There he is, I do believe!\" said Phineas. George and Jim both sprang\nout of the wagon before they knew what they were doing. All stood\nintensely silent, with their faces turned towards the expected\nmessenger. On he came. Now he went down into a valley, where they could\nnot see him; but they heard the sharp, hasty tramp, rising nearer and\nnearer; at last they saw him emerge on the top of an eminence, within\nhail.\n\n\"Yes, that's Michael!\" said Phineas; and, raising his voice, \"Halloa,\nthere, Michael!\"\n\n\"Phineas! is that thee?\"\n\n\"Yes; what news--they coming?\"\n\n\"Right on behind, eight or ten of them, hot with brandy, swearing and\nfoaming like so many wolves.\"\n\nAnd, just as he spoke, a breeze brought the faint sound of galloping\nhorsemen towards them.\n\n\"In with you,--quick, boys, _in!_\" said Phineas. \"If you must fight,\nwait till I get you a piece ahead.\" And, with the word, both jumped\nin, and Phineas lashed the horses to a run, the horseman keeping close\nbeside them. The wagon rattled, jumped, almost flew, over the frozen\nground; but plainer, and still plainer, came the noise of pursuing\nhorsemen behind. The women heard it, and, looking anxiously out, saw,\nfar in the rear, on the brow of a distant hill, a party of men looming\nup against the red-streaked sky of early dawn. Another hill, and\ntheir pursuers had evidently caught sight of their wagon, whose white\ncloth-covered top made it conspicuous at some distance, and a loud yell\nof brutal triumph came forward on the wind. Eliza sickened, and strained\nher child closer to her bosom; the old woman prayed and groaned, and\nGeorge and Jim clenched their pistols with the grasp of despair. The\npursuers gained on them fast; the carriage made a sudden turn, and\nbrought them near a ledge of a steep overhanging rock, that rose in an\nisolated ridge or clump in a large lot, which was, all around it, quite\nclear and smooth. This isolated pile, or range of rocks, rose up black\nand heavy against the brightening sky, and seemed to promise shelter and\nconcealment. It was a place well known to Phineas, who had been familiar\nwith the spot in his hunting days; and it was to gain this point he had\nbeen racing his horses.\n\n\"Now for it!\" said he, suddenly checking his horses, and springing from\nhis seat to the ground. \"Out with you, in a twinkling, every one, and up\ninto these rocks with me. Michael, thee tie thy horse to the wagon, and\ndrive ahead to Amariah's and get him and his boys to come back and talk\nto these fellows.\"\n\nIn a twinkling they were all out of the carriage.\n\n\"There,\" said Phineas, catching up Harry, \"you, each of you, see to the\nwomen; and run, _now_ if you ever _did_ run!\"\n\nThey needed no exhortation. Quicker than we can say it, the whole party\nwere over the fence, making with all speed for the rocks, while Michael,\nthrowing himself from his horse, and fastening the bridle to the wagon,\nbegan driving it rapidly away.\n\n\"Come ahead,\" said Phineas, as they reached the rocks, and saw in the\nmingled starlight and dawn, the traces of a rude but plainly marked\nfoot-path leading up among them; \"this is one of our old hunting-dens.\nCome up!\"\n\nPhineas went before, springing up the rocks like a goat, with the boy\nin his arms. Jim came second, bearing his trembling old mother over\nhis shoulder, and George and Eliza brought up the rear. The party of\nhorsemen came up to the fence, and, with mingled shouts and oaths,\nwere dismounting, to prepare to follow them. A few moments' scrambling\nbrought them to the top of the ledge; the path then passed between a\nnarrow defile, where only one could walk at a time, till suddenly they\ncame to a rift or chasm more than a yard in breadth, and beyond which\nlay a pile of rocks, separate from the rest of the ledge, standing full\nthirty feet high, with its sides steep and perpendicular as those of\na castle. Phineas easily leaped the chasm, and sat down the boy on a\nsmooth, flat platform of crisp white moss, that covered the top of the\nrock.\n\n\"Over with you!\" he called; \"spring, now, once, for your lives!\" said\nhe, as one after another sprang across. Several fragments of loose stone\nformed a kind of breast-work, which sheltered their position from the\nobservation of those below.\n\n\"Well, here we all are,\" said Phineas, peeping over the stone\nbreast-work to watch the assailants, who were coming tumultuously up\nunder the rocks. \"Let 'em get us, if they can. Whoever comes here has to\nwalk single file between those two rocks, in fair range of your pistols,\nboys, d'ye see?\"\n\n\"I do see,\" said George! \"and now, as this matter is ours, let us take\nall the risk, and do all the fighting.\"\n\n\"Thee's quite welcome to do the fighting, George,\" said Phineas, chewing\nsome checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; \"but I may have the fun of looking\non, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there,\nand looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost.\nHadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just\nto tell 'em handsomely they'll be shot if they do?\"\n\nThe party beneath, now more apparent in the light of the dawn, consisted\nof our old acquaintances, Tom Loker and Marks, with two constables,\nand a posse consisting of such rowdies at the last tavern as could be\nengaged by a little brandy to go and help the fun of trapping a set of\nniggers.\n\n\"Well, Tom, yer coons are farly treed,\" said one.\n\n\"Yes, I see 'em go up right here,\" said Tom; \"and here's a path. I'm for\ngoing right up. They can't jump down in a hurry, and it won't take long\nto ferret 'em out.\"\n\n\"But, Tom, they might fire at us from behind the rocks,\" said Marks.\n\"That would be ugly, you know.\"\n\n\"Ugh!\" said Tom, with a sneer. \"Always for saving your skin, Marks! No\ndanger! niggers are too plaguy scared!\"\n\n\"I don't know why I _shouldn't_ save my skin,\" said Marks. \"It's the\nbest I've got; and niggers _do_ fight like the devil, sometimes.\"\n\nAt this moment, George appeared on the top of a rock above them, and,\nspeaking in a calm, clear voice, said,\n\n\"Gentlemen, who are you, down there, and what do you want?\"\n\n\"We want a party of runaway niggers,\" said Tom Loker. \"One George\nHarris, and Eliza Harris, and their son, and Jim Selden, and an old\nwoman. We've got the officers, here, and a warrant to take 'em; and\nwe're going to have 'em, too. D'ye hear? An't you George Harris, that\nbelongs to Mr. Harris, of Shelby county, Kentucky?\"\n\n\"I am George Harris. A Mr. Harris, of Kentucky, did call me his\nproperty. But now I'm a free man, standing on God's free soil; and my\nwife and my child I claim as mine. Jim and his mother are here. We have\narms to defend ourselves, and we mean to do it. You can come up, if\nyou like; but the first one of you that comes within the range of our\nbullets is a dead man, and the next, and the next; and so on till the\nlast.\"\n\n\"O, come! come!\" said a short, puffy man, stepping forward, and blowing\nhis nose as he did so. \"Young man, this an't no kind of talk at all for\nyou. You see, we're officers of justice. We've got the law on our side,\nand the power, and so forth; so you'd better give up peaceably, you see;\nfor you'll certainly have to give up, at last.\"\n\n\"I know very well that you've got the law on your side, and the power,\"\nsaid George, bitterly. \"You mean to take my wife to sell in New Orleans,\nand put my boy like a calf in a trader's pen, and send Jim's old mother\nto the brute that whipped and abused her before, because he couldn't\nabuse her son. You want to send Jim and me back to be whipped and\ntortured, and ground down under the heels of them that you call masters;\nand your laws _will_ bear you out in it,--more shame for you and them!\nBut you haven't got us. We don't own your laws; we don't own your\ncountry; we stand here as free, under God's sky, as you are; and, by the\ngreat God that made us, we'll fight for our liberty till we die.\"\n\nGeorge stood out in fair sight, on the top of the rock, as he made\nhis declaration of independence; the glow of dawn gave a flush to his\nswarthy cheek, and bitter indignation and despair gave fire to his dark\neye; and, as if appealing from man to the justice of God, he raised his\nhand to heaven as he spoke.\n\nIf it had been only a Hungarian youth, now bravely defending in some\nmountain fastness the retreat of fugitives escaping from Austria into\nAmerica, this would have been sublime heroism; but as it was a youth of\nAfrican descent, defending the retreat of fugitives through America into\nCanada, of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any\nheroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their\nown private responsibility. When despairing Hungarian fugitives make\ntheir way, against all the search-warrants and authorities of their\nlawful government, to America, press and political cabinet ring with\napplause and welcome. When despairing African fugitives do the same\nthing,--it is--what _is_ it?\n\nBe it as it may, it is certain that the attitude, eye, voice, manner,\nof the speaker for a moment struck the party below to silence. There is\nsomething in boldness and determination that for a time hushes even the\nrudest nature. Marks was the only one who remained wholly untouched. He\nwas deliberately cocking his pistol, and, in the momentary silence that\nfollowed George's speech, he fired at him.\n\n\"Ye see ye get jist as much for him dead as alive in Kentucky,\" he said\ncoolly, as he wiped his pistol on his coat-sleeve.\n\nGeorge sprang backward,--Eliza uttered a shriek,--the ball had passed\nclose to his hair, had nearly grazed the cheek of his wife, and struck\nin the tree above.\n\n\"It's nothing, Eliza,\" said George, quickly.\n\n\"Thee'd better keep out of sight, with thy speechifying,\" said Phineas;\n\"they're mean scamps.\"\n\n\"Now, Jim,\" said George, \"look that your pistols are all right, and\nwatch that pass with me. The first man that shows himself I fire at; you\ntake the second, and so on. It won't do, you know, to waste two shots on\none.\"\n\n\"But what if you don't hit?\"\n\n\"I _shall_ hit,\" said George, coolly.\n\n\"Good! now, there's stuff in that fellow,\" muttered Phineas, between his\nteeth.\n\nThe party below, after Marks had fired, stood, for a moment, rather\nundecided.\n\n\"I think you must have hit some on 'em,\" said one of the men. \"I heard a\nsqueal!\"\n\n\"I'm going right up for one,\" said Tom. \"I never was afraid of niggers,\nand I an't going to be now. Who goes after?\" he said, springing up the\nrocks.\n\nGeorge heard the words distinctly. He drew up his pistol, examined it,\npointed it towards that point in the defile where the first man would\nappear.\n\nOne of the most courageous of the party followed Tom, and, the way being\nthus made, the whole party began pushing up the rock,--the hindermost\npushing the front ones faster than they would have gone of themselves.\nOn they came, and in a moment the burly form of Tom appeared in sight,\nalmost at the verge of the chasm.\n\nGeorge fired,--the shot entered his side,--but, though wounded, he would\nnot retreat, but, with a yell like that of a mad bull, he was leaping\nright across the chasm into the party.\n\n\"Friend,\" said Phineas, suddenly stepping to the front, and meeting him\nwith a push from his long arms, \"thee isn't wanted here.\"\n\nDown he fell into the chasm, crackling down among trees, bushes, logs,\nloose stones, till he lay bruised and groaning thirty feet below. The\nfall might have killed him, had it not been broken and moderated by his\nclothes catching in the branches of a large tree; but he came down with\nsome force, however,--more than was at all agreeable or convenient.\n\n\"Lord help us, they are perfect devils!\" said Marks, heading the retreat\ndown the rocks with much more of a will than he had joined the ascent,\nwhile all the party came tumbling precipitately after him,--the fat\nconstable, in particular, blowing and puffing in a very energetic\nmanner.\n\n\"I say, fellers,\" said Marks, \"you jist go round and pick up Tom, there,\nwhile I run and get on to my horse to go back for help,--that's you;\"\nand, without minding the hootings and jeers of his company, Marks was as\ngood as his word, and was soon seen galloping away.\n\n\"Was ever such a sneaking varmint?\" said one of the men; \"to come on his\nbusiness, and he clear out and leave us this yer way!\"\n\n\"Well, we must pick up that feller,\" said another. \"Cuss me if I much\ncare whether he is dead or alive.\"\n\nThe men, led by the groans of Tom, scrambled and crackled through\nstumps, logs and bushes, to where that hero lay groaning and swearing\nwith alternate vehemence.\n\n\"Ye keep it agoing pretty loud, Tom,\" said one. \"Ye much hurt?\"\n\n\"Don't know. Get me up, can't ye? Blast that infernal Quaker! If it\nhadn't been for him, I'd a pitched some on 'em down here, to see how\nthey liked it.\"\n\nWith much labor and groaning, the fallen hero was assisted to rise; and,\nwith one holding him up under each shoulder, they got him as far as the\nhorses.\n\n\"If you could only get me a mile back to that ar tavern. Give me a\nhandkerchief or something, to stuff into this place, and stop this\ninfernal bleeding.\"\n\nGeorge looked over the rocks, and saw them trying to lift the burly\nform of Tom into the saddle. After two or three ineffectual attempts, he\nreeled, and fell heavily to the ground.\n\n\"O, I hope he isn't killed!\" said Eliza, who, with all the party, stood\nwatching the proceeding.\n\n\"Why not?\" said Phineas; \"serves him right.\"\n\n\"Because after death comes the judgment,\" said Eliza.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the old woman, who had been groaning and praying, in her\nMethodist fashion, during all the encounter, \"it's an awful case for the\npoor crittur's soul.\"\n\n\"On my word, they're leaving him, I do believe,\" said Phineas.\n\nIt was true; for after some appearance of irresolution and consultation,\nthe whole party got on their horses and rode away. When they were quite\nout of sight, Phineas began to bestir himself.\n\n\"Well, we must go down and walk a piece,\" he said. \"I told Michael to\ngo forward and bring help, and be along back here with the wagon; but we\nshall have to walk a piece along the road, I reckon, to meet them. The\nLord grant he be along soon! It's early in the day; there won't be much\ntravel afoot yet a while; we an't much more than two miles from our\nstopping-place. If the road hadn't been so rough last night, we could\nhave outrun 'em entirely.\"\n\nAs the party neared the fence, they discovered in the distance, along\nthe road, their own wagon coming back, accompanied by some men on\nhorseback.\n\n\"Well, now, there's Michael, and Stephen and Amariah,\" exclaimed\nPhineas, joyfully. \"Now we _are_ made--as safe as if we'd got there.\"\n\n\"Well, do stop, then,\" said Eliza, \"and do something for that poor man;\nhe's groaning dreadfully.\"\n\n\"It would be no more than Christian,\" said George; \"let's take him up\nand carry him on.\"\n\n\"And doctor him up among the Quakers!\" said Phineas; \"pretty well,\nthat! Well, I don't care if we do. Here, let's have a look at him;\"\nand Phineas, who in the course of his hunting and backwoods life had\nacquired some rude experience of surgery, kneeled down by the wounded\nman, and began a careful examination of his condition.\n\n\"Marks,\" said Tom, feebly, \"is that you, Marks?\"\n\n\"No; I reckon 'tan't friend,\" said Phineas. \"Much Marks cares for thee,\nif his own skin's safe. He's off, long ago.\"\n\n\"I believe I'm done for,\" said Tom. \"The cussed sneaking dog, to leave\nme to die alone! My poor old mother always told me 't would be so.\"\n\n\"La sakes! jist hear the poor crittur. He's got a mammy, now,\" said the\nold negress. \"I can't help kinder pityin' on him.\"\n\n\"Softly, softly; don't thee snap and snarl, friend,\" said Phineas, as\nTom winced and pushed his hand away. \"Thee has no chance, unless I stop\nthe bleeding.\" And Phineas busied himself with making some off-hand\nsurgical arrangements with his own pocket-handkerchief, and such as\ncould be mustered in the company.\n\n\"You pushed me down there,\" said Tom, faintly.\n\n\"Well if I hadn't thee would have pushed us down, thee sees,\" said\nPhineas, as he stooped to apply his bandage. \"There, there,--let me fix\nthis bandage. We mean well to thee; we bear no malice. Thee shall be\ntaken to a house where they'll nurse thee first rate, well as thy own\nmother could.\"\n\nTom groaned, and shut his eyes. In men of his class, vigor and\nresolution are entirely a physical matter, and ooze out with the flowing\nof the blood; and the gigantic fellow really looked piteous in his\nhelplessness.\n\nThe other party now came up. The seats were taken out of the wagon. The\nbuffalo-skins, doubled in fours, were spread all along one side, and\nfour men, with great difficulty, lifted the heavy form of Tom into it.\nBefore he was gotten in, he fainted entirely. The old negress, in the\nabundance of her compassion, sat down on the bottom, and took his head\nin her lap. Eliza, George and Jim, bestowed themselves, as well as they\ncould, in the remaining space and the whole party set forward.\n\n\"What do you think of him?\" said George, who sat by Phineas in front.\n\n\"Well it's only a pretty deep flesh-wound; but, then, tumbling and\nscratching down that place didn't help him much. It has bled pretty\nfreely,--pretty much drained him out, courage and all,--but he'll get\nover it, and may be learn a thing or two by it.\"\n\n\"I'm glad to hear you say so,\" said George. \"It would always be a heavy\nthought to me, if I'd caused his death, even in a just cause.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Phineas, \"killing is an ugly operation, any way they'll fix\nit,--man or beast. I've seen a buck that was shot down and a dying, look\nthat way on a feller with his eye, that it reely most made a feller\nfeel wicked for killing on him; and human creatures is a more serious\nconsideration yet, bein', as thy wife says, that the judgment comes\nto 'em after death. So I don't know as our people's notions on these\nmatters is too strict; and, considerin' how I was raised, I fell in with\nthem pretty considerably.\"\n\n\"What shall you do with this poor fellow?\" said George.\n\n\"O, carry him along to Amariah's. There's old Grandmam Stephens\nthere,--Dorcas, they call her,--she's most an amazin' nurse. She takes\nto nursing real natural, and an't never better suited than when she\ngets a sick body to tend. We may reckon on turning him over to her for a\nfortnight or so.\"\n\nA ride of about an hour more brought the party to a neat farmhouse,\nwhere the weary travellers were received to an abundant breakfast. Tom\nLoker was soon carefully deposited in a much cleaner and softer bed than\nhe had ever been in the habit of occupying. His wound was carefully\ndressed and bandaged, and he lay languidly opening and shutting his\neyes on the white window-curtains and gently-gliding figures of his sick\nroom, like a weary child. And here, for the present, we shall take our\nleave of one party.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nMiss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions\n\n\nOur friend Tom, in his own simple musings, often compared his more\nfortunate lot, in the bondage into which he was cast, with that of\nJoseph in Egypt; and, in fact, as time went on, and he developed more\nand more under the eye of his master, the strength of the parallel\nincreased.\n\nSt. Clare was indolent and careless of money. Hitherto the providing and\nmarketing had been principally done by Adolph, who was, to the full, as\ncareless and extravagant as his master; and, between them both, they had\ncarried on the dispersing process with great alacrity. Accustomed, for\nmany years, to regard his master's property as his own care, Tom saw,\nwith an uneasiness he could scarcely repress, the wasteful expenditure\nof the establishment; and, in the quiet, indirect way which his class\noften acquire, would sometimes make his own suggestions.\n\nSt. Clare at first employed him occasionally; but, struck with his\nsoundness of mind and good business capacity, he confided in him more\nand more, till gradually all the marketing and providing for the family\nwere intrusted to him.\n\n\"No, no, Adolph,\" he said, one day, as Adolph was deprecating the\npassing of power out of his hands; \"let Tom alone. You only understand\nwhat you want; Tom understands cost and come to; and there may be some\nend to money, bye and bye if we don't let somebody do that.\"\n\nTrusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a\nbill without looking at it, and pocketed the change without counting it,\nTom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty; and nothing but an\nimpregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could\nhave kept him from it. But, to that nature, the very unbounded trust\nreposed in him was bond and seal for the most scrupulous accuracy.\n\nWith Adolph the case had been different. Thoughtless and self-indulgent,\nand unrestrained by a master who found it easier to indulge than to\nregulate, he had fallen into an absolute confusion as to _meum tuum_\nwith regard to himself and his master, which sometimes troubled even\nSt. Clare. His own good sense taught him that such a training of his\nservants was unjust and dangerous. A sort of chronic remorse went with\nhim everywhere, although not strong enough to make any decided change\nin his course; and this very remorse reacted again into indulgence. He\npassed lightly over the most serious faults, because he told himself\nthat, if he had done his part, his dependents had not fallen into them.\n\nTom regarded his gay, airy, handsome young master with an odd mixture\nof fealty, reverence, and fatherly solicitude. That he never read the\nBible; never went to church; that he jested and made free with any and\nevery thing that came in the way of his wit; that he spent his Sunday\nevenings at the opera or theatre; that he went to wine parties, and\nclubs, and suppers, oftener than was at all expedient,--were all things\nthat Tom could see as plainly as anybody, and on which he based a\nconviction that \"Mas'r wasn't a Christian;\"--a conviction, however,\nwhich he would have been very slow to express to any one else, but on\nwhich he founded many prayers, in his own simple fashion, when he was\nby himself in his little dormitory. Not that Tom had not his own way\nof speaking his mind occasionally, with something of the tact often\nobservable in his class; as, for example, the very day after the Sabbath\nwe have described, St. Clare was invited out to a convivial party of\nchoice spirits, and was helped home, between one and two o'clock at\nnight, in a condition when the physical had decidedly attained the upper\nhand of the intellectual. Tom and Adolph assisted to get him composed\nfor the night, the latter in high spirits, evidently regarding the\nmatter as a good joke, and laughing heartily at the rusticity of Tom's\nhorror, who really was simple enough to lie awake most of the rest of\nthe night, praying for his young master.\n\n\"Well, Tom, what are you waiting for?\" said St. Clare, the next day, as\nhe sat in his library, in dressing-gown and slippers. St. Clare had just\nbeen entrusting Tom with some money, and various commissions. \"Isn't all\nright there, Tom?\" he added, as Tom still stood waiting.\n\n\"I'm 'fraid not, Mas'r,\" said Tom, with a grave face.\n\nSt. Clare laid down his paper, and set down his coffee-cup, and looked\nat Tom.\n\n\"Why Tom, what's the case? You look as solemn as a coffin.\"\n\n\"I feel very bad, Mas'r. I allays have thought that Mas'r would be good\nto everybody.\"\n\n\"Well, Tom, haven't I been? Come, now, what do you want? There's\nsomething you haven't got, I suppose, and this is the preface.\"\n\n\"Mas'r allays been good to me. I haven't nothing to complain of on that\nhead. But there is one that Mas'r isn't good to.\"\n\n\"Why, Tom, what's got into you? Speak out; what do you mean?\"\n\n\"Last night, between one and two, I thought so. I studied upon the\nmatter then. Mas'r isn't good to _himself_.\"\n\nTom said this with his back to his master, and his hand on the\ndoor-knob. St. Clare felt his face flush crimson, but he laughed.\n\n\"O, that's all, is it?\" he said, gayly.\n\n\"All!\" said Tom, turning suddenly round and falling on his knees. \"O,\nmy dear young Mas'r; I'm 'fraid it will be _loss of all--all_--body and\nsoul. The good Book says, 'it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an\nadder!' my dear Mas'r!\"\n\nTom's voice choked, and the tears ran down his cheeks.\n\n\"You poor, silly fool!\" said St. Clare, with tears in his own eyes. \"Get\nup, Tom. I'm not worth crying over.\"\n\nBut Tom wouldn't rise, and looked imploring.\n\n\"Well, I won't go to any more of their cursed nonsense, Tom,\" said St.\nClare; \"on my honor, I won't. I don't know why I haven't stopped long\nago. I've always despised _it_, and myself for it,--so now, Tom, wipe\nup your eyes, and go about your errands. Come, come,\" he added, \"no\nblessings. I'm not so wonderfully good, now,\" he said, as he gently\npushed Tom to the door. \"There, I'll pledge my honor to you, Tom, you\ndon't see me so again,\" he said; and Tom went off, wiping his eyes, with\ngreat satisfaction.\n\n\"I'll keep my faith with him, too,\" said St. Clare, as he closed the\ndoor.\n\nAnd St. Clare did so,--for gross sensualism, in any form, was not the\npeculiar temptation of his nature.\n\nBut, all this time, who shall detail the tribulations manifold of our\nfriend Miss Ophelia, who had begun the labors of a Southern housekeeper?\n\nThere is all the difference in the world in the servants of Southern\nestablishments, according to the character and capacity of the\nmistresses who have brought them up.\n\nSouth as well as north, there are women who have an extraordinary talent\nfor command, and tact in educating. Such are enabled, with apparent\nease, and without severity, to subject to their will, and bring into\nharmonious and systematic order, the various members of their small\nestate,--to regulate their peculiarities, and so balance and compensate\nthe deficiencies of one by the excess of another, as to produce a\nharmonious and orderly system.\n\nSuch a housekeeper was Mrs. Shelby, whom we have already described; and\nsuch our readers may remember to have met with. If they are not common\nat the South, it is because they are not common in the world. They are\nto be found there as often as anywhere; and, when existing, find in\nthat peculiar state of society a brilliant opportunity to exhibit their\ndomestic talent.\n\nSuch a housekeeper Marie St. Clare was not, nor her mother before her.\nIndolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be\nexpected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise;\nand she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion\nshe would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it to the\nproper cause.\n\nThe first morning of her regency, Miss Ophelia was up at four o'clock;\nand having attended to all the adjustments of her own chamber, as\nshe had done ever since she came there, to the great amazement of the\nchambermaid, she prepared for a vigorous onslaught on the cupboards and\nclosets of the establishment of which she had the keys.\n\nThe store-room, the linen-presses, the china-closet, the kitchen and\ncellar, that day, all went under an awful review. Hidden things of\ndarkness were brought to light to an extent that alarmed all the\nprincipalities and powers of kitchen and chamber, and caused many\nwonderings and murmurings about \"dese yer northern ladies\" from the\ndomestic cabinet.\n\nOld Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in\nthe kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered\nan invasion of privilege. No feudal baron in _Magna Charta_ times could\nhave more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown.\n\nDinah was a character in her own way, and it would be injustice to her\nmemory not to give the reader a little idea of her. She was a native\nand essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe,--cooking being an indigenous\ntalent of the African race; but Chloe was a trained and methodical one,\nwho moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a self-taught\ngenius, and, like geniuses in general, was positive, opinionated and\nerratic, to the last degree.\n\nLike a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned\nlogic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive\ncertainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of\ntalent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe\nthat any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had\npursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had\nbeen a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and \"Miss\nMarie,\" as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her\nmarriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled\nsupreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that\ndiplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the\nutmost inflexibility as to measure.\n\nDinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in all\nits branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no\nwrong; and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and\nshoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain\nher own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure,\nthere were fifty indisputably good reasons for it; and it was the fault\nundeniably of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing\nzeal.\n\nBut it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last\nresults. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering\nand circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and\nplace,--though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged\nby a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for\neach cooking utensil as there were days in the year,--yet, if one would\nhave patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in\nperfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could\nfind no fault.\n\nIt was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who\nrequired large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of\nease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a\nshort, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she\nalways kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of\nan inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the\ndomestic Muses.\n\nSeated around her were various members of that rising race with which a\nSouthern household abounds, engaged in shelling peas, peeling\npotatoes, picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other preparatory\narrangements,--Dinah every once in a while interrupting her meditations\nto give a poke, or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators,\nwith the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled over\nthe woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed\nto consider them born for no earthly purpose but to \"save her steps,\"\nas she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had\ngrown up, and she carried it out to its full extent.\n\nMiss Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through all the\nother parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had\nheard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand\non defensive and conservative ground,--mentally determined to oppose and\nignore every new measure, without any actual observable contest.\n\nThe kitchen was a large brick-floored apartment, with a great\nold-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it,--an arrangement\nwhich St. Clare had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for\nthe convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Puseyite,* or\nconservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to\ntime-honored inconveniences than Dinah.\n\n     * Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the\n     orthodoxy of revealed religion, defender of the Oxford\n     movement, and Regius professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ\n     Church, Oxford.\n\nWhen St. Clare had first returned from the north, impressed with the\nsystem and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had largely\nprovided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various\napparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine\nillusion that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her\narrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a\nmagpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes\ncould Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old\nshoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of\n_vertu_, wherein her soul delighted.\n\nWhen Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen Dinah did not rise, but smoked on\nin sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the\ncorner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around\nher.\n\nMiss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.\n\n\"What is this drawer for, Dinah?\" she said.\n\n\"It's handy for most anything, Missis,\" said Dinah. So it appeared to\nbe. From the variety it contained, Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine\ndamask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to\nenvelop some raw meat.\n\n\"What's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress' best\ntable-cloths?\"\n\n\"O Lor, Missis, no; the towels was all a missin'--so I jest did it. I\nlaid out to wash that a,--that's why I put it thar.\"\n\n\"Shif'less!\" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over\nthe drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a\nMethodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn\nand knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or\ntwo gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old\nshoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white\nonions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some\ntwine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry\nsweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.\n\n\"Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?\" said Miss Ophelia, with the air\nof one who prayed for patience.\n\n\"Most anywhar, Missis; there's some in that cracked tea-cup, up there,\nand there's some over in that ar cupboard.\"\n\n\"Here are some in the grater,\" said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.\n\n\"Laws, yes, I put 'em there this morning,--I likes to keep my things\nhandy,\" said Dinah. \"You, Jake! what are you stopping for! You'll\ncotch it! Be still, thar!\" she added, with a dive of her stick at the\ncriminal.\n\n\"What's this?\" said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.\n\n\"Laws, it's my har _grease_;--I put it thar to have it handy.\"\n\n\"Do you use your mistress' best saucers for that?\"\n\n\"Law! it was cause I was driv, and in sich a hurry;--I was gwine to\nchange it this very day.\"\n\n\"Here are two damask table-napkins.\"\n\n\"Them table-napkins I put thar, to get 'em washed out, some day.\"\n\n\"Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?\"\n\n\"Well, Mas'r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes\nto mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it an't\nhandy a liftin' up the lid.\"\n\n\"Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?\"\n\n\"Law, Missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another,\nder an't no room, noway--\"\n\n\"But you should _wash_ your dishes, and clear them away.\"\n\n\"Wash my dishes!\" said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise\nover her habitual respect of manner; \"what does ladies know 'bout work,\nI want to know? When 'd Mas'r ever get his dinner, if I vas to spend all\nmy time a washin' and a puttin' up dishes? Miss Marie never telled me\nso, nohow.\"\n\n\"Well, here are these onions.\"\n\n\"Laws, yes!\" said Dinah; \"thar _is_ whar I put 'em, now. I couldn't\n'member. Them 's particular onions I was a savin' for dis yer very stew.\nI'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs.\n\n\"I wish Missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I\nknows whar to go to 'em,\" said Dinah, rather decidedly.\n\n\"But you don't want these holes in the papers.\"\n\n\"Them 's handy for siftin' on 't out,\" said Dinah.\n\n\"But you see it spills all over the drawer.\"\n\n\"Laws, yes! if Missis will go a tumblin' things all up so, it will.\nMissis has spilt lots dat ar way,\" said Dinah, coming uneasily to the\ndrawers. \"If Missis only will go up stars till my clarin' up time comes,\nI'll have everything right; but I can't do nothin' when ladies is round,\na henderin'. You, Sam, don't you gib the baby dat ar sugar-bowl! I'll\ncrack ye over, if ye don't mind!\"\n\n\"I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order,\n_once_, Dinah; and then I'll expect you to _keep_ it so.\"\n\n\"Lor, now! Miss Phelia; dat ar an't no way for ladies to do. I never did\nsee ladies doin' no sich; my old Missis nor Miss Marie never did, and\nI don't see no kinder need on 't;\" and Dinah stalked indignantly about,\nwhile Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of scattering\nbowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins, table-cloths, and\ntowels, for washing; washing, wiping, and arranging with her own hands,\nand with a speed and alacrity which perfectly amazed Dinah.\n\n\"Lor now! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey an't ladies,\nnohow,\" she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe hearing\ndistance. \"I has things as straight as anybody, when my clarin' up times\ncomes; but I don't want ladies round, a henderin', and getting my things\nall where I can't find 'em.\"\n\nTo do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of\nreformation and arrangement, which she called \"clarin' up times,\" when\nshe would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong\nside outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion\nseven-fold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe, and leisurely\ngo over her arrangements, looking things over, and discoursing upon\nthem; making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things,\nand keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of confusion,\nwhich she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers, by the\nremark that she was a \"clarin' up.\" \"She couldn't hev things a gwine on\nso as they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep\nbetter order;\" for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that\nshe, herself, was the soul of order, and it was only the _young uns_,\nand the everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything\nthat fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were\nscoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could\noffend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress\nherself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras\nturban, and tell all marauding \"young uns\" to keep out of the kitchen,\nfor she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic\nseasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household; for Dinah\nwould contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin, as\nto insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible\npurpose,--at least, till the ardor of the \"clarin' up\" period abated.\n\nMiss Ophelia, in a few days, thoroughly reformed every department of the\nhouse to a systematic pattern; but her labors in all departments that\ndepended on the cooperation of servants were like those of Sisyphus or\nthe Danaides. In despair, she one day appealed to St. Clare.\n\n\"There is no such thing as getting anything like a system in this\nfamily!\"\n\n\"To be sure, there isn't,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Such shiftless management, such waste, such confusion, I never saw!\"\n\n\"I dare say you didn't.\"\n\n\"You would not take it so coolly, if you were housekeeper.\"\n\n\"My dear cousin, you may as well understand, once for all, that we\nmasters are divided into two classes, oppressors and oppressed. We who\nare good-natured and hate severity make up our minds to a good deal of\ninconvenience. If we _will keep_ a shambling, loose, untaught set in the\ncommunity, for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence. Some\nrare cases I have seen, of persons, who, by a peculiar tact, can produce\norder and system without severity; but I'm not one of them,--and so I\nmade up my mind, long ago, to let things go just as they do. I will not\nhave the poor devils thrashed and cut to pieces, and they know it,--and,\nof course, they know the staff is in their own hands.\"\n\n\"But to have no time, no place, no order,--all going on in this\nshiftless way!\"\n\n\"My dear Vermont, you natives up by the North Pole set an extravagant\nvalue on time! What on earth is the use of time to a fellow who has\ntwice as much of it as he knows what to do with? As to order and system,\nwhere there is nothing to be done but to lounge on the sofa and read, an\nhour sooner or later in breakfast or dinner isn't of much account. Now,\nthere's Dinah gets you a capital dinner,--soup, ragout, roast fowl,\ndessert, ice-creams and all,--and she creates it all out of chaos and\nold night down there, in that kitchen. I think it really sublime, the\nway she manages. But, Heaven bless us! if we are to go down there, and\nview all the smoking and squatting about, and hurryscurryation of the\npreparatory process, we should never eat more! My good cousin, absolve\nyourself from that! It's more than a Catholic penance, and does no more\ngood. You'll only lose your own temper, and utterly confound Dinah. Let\nher go her own way.\"\n\n\"But, Augustine, you don't know how I found things.\"\n\n\"Don't I? Don't I know that the rolling-pin is under her bed, and the\nnutmeg-grater in her pocket with her tobacco,--that there are sixty-five\ndifferent sugar-bowls, one in every hole in the house,--that she washes\ndishes with a dinner-napkin one day, and with a fragment of an old\npetticoat the next? But the upshot is, she gets up glorious dinners,\nmakes superb coffee; and you must judge her as warriors and statesmen\nare judged, _by her success_.\"\n\n\"But the waste,--the expense!\"\n\n\"O, well! Lock everything you can, and keep the key. Give out by\ndriblets, and never inquire for odds and ends,--it isn't best.\"\n\n\"That troubles me, Augustine. I can't help feeling as if these servants\nwere not _strictly honest_. Are you sure they can be relied on?\"\n\nAugustine laughed immoderately at the grave and anxious face with which\nMiss Ophelia propounded the question.\n\n\"O, cousin, that's too good,--_honest!_--as if that's a thing to be\nexpected! Honest!--why, of course, they arn't. Why should they be? What\nupon earth is to make them so?\"\n\n\"Why don't you instruct?\"\n\n\"Instruct! O, fiddlestick! What instructing do you think I should do?\nI look like it! As to Marie, she has spirit enough, to be sure, to kill\noff a whole plantation, if I'd let her manage; but she wouldn't get the\ncheatery out of them.\"\n\n\"Are there no honest ones?\"\n\n\"Well, now and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple,\ntruthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can't destroy\nit. But, you see, from the mother's breast the colored child feels and\nsees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along\nno other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie\nplay-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable\nhabits. It isn't fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to\nbe punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependent,\nsemi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of\nproperty, or feel that his master's goods are not his own, if he can get\nthem. For my part, I don't see how they _can_ be honest. Such a fellow\nas Tom, here, is,--is a moral miracle!\"\n\n\"And what becomes of their souls?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"That isn't my affair, as I know of,\" said St. Clare; \"I am only dealing\nin facts of the present life. The fact is, that the whole race are\npretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our\nbenefit, in this world, however it may turn out in another!\"\n\n\"This is perfectly horrible!\" said Miss Ophelia; \"you ought to be ashamed\nof yourselves!\"\n\n\"I don't know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for all that,\"\nsaid St. Clare, \"as people in the broad road generally are. Look at\nthe high and the low, all the world over, and it's the same story,--the\nlower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper.\nIt is so in England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom stands\naghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the thing in a little\ndifferent shape from what they do it.\"\n\n\"It isn't so in Vermont.\"\n\n\"Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better\nof us, I grant. But there's the bell; so, Cousin, let us for a while lay\naside our sectional prejudices, and come out to dinner.\"\n\nAs Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the afternoon,\nsome of the sable children called out, \"La, sakes! thar's Prue a coming,\ngrunting along like she allers does.\"\n\nA tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen, bearing on her head\na basket of rusks and hot rolls.\n\n\"Ho, Prue! you've come,\" said Dinah.\n\nPrue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen,\ngrumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted herself down, and\nresting her elbows on her knees said,\n\n\"O Lord! I wish't I 's dead!\"\n\n\"Why do you wish you were dead?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I'd be out o' my misery,\" said the woman, gruffly, without taking her\neyes from the floor.\n\n\"What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?\" said a spruce\nquadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.\n\nThe woman looked at her with a sour surly glance.\n\n\"Maybe you'll come to it, one of these yer days. I'd be glad to see you,\nI would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your misery.\"\n\n\"Come, Prue,\" said Dinah, \"let's look at your rusks. Here's Missis will\npay for them.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen.\n\n\"Thar's some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the top shelf,\" said\nDinah. \"You, Jake, climb up and get it down.\"\n\n\"Tickets,--what are they for?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"We buy tickets of her Mas'r, and she gives us bread for 'em.\"\n\n\"And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I 's\ngot the change; and if I han't, they half kills me.\"\n\n\"And serves you right,\" said Jane, the pert chambermaid, \"if you will\ntake their money to get drunk on. That's what she does, Missis.\"\n\n\"And that's what I _will_ do,--I can't live no other ways,--drink and\nforget my misery.\"\n\n\"You are very wicked and very foolish,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"to steal\nyour master's money to make yourself a brute with.\"\n\n\"It's mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it,--yes, I will. O Lord!\nI wish I 's dead, I do,--I wish I 's dead, and out of my misery!\" and\nslowly and stiffly the old creature rose, and got her basket on her head\nagain; but before she went out, she looked at the quadroon girl, who\nstill stood playing with her ear-drops.\n\n\"Ye think ye're mighty fine with them ar, a frolickin' and a tossin'\nyour head, and a lookin' down on everybody. Well, never mind,--you may\nlive to be a poor, old, cut-up crittur, like me. Hope to the Lord ye\nwill, I do; then see if ye won't drink,--drink,--drink,--yerself into\ntorment; and sarve ye right, too--ugh!\" and, with a malignant howl, the\nwoman left the room.\n\n\"Disgusting old beast!\" said Adolph, who was getting his master's\nshaving-water. \"If I was her master, I'd cut her up worse than she is.\"\n\n\"Ye couldn't do that ar, no ways,\" said Dinah. \"Her back's a far sight\nnow,--she can't never get a dress together over it.\"\n\n\"I think such low creatures ought not to be allowed to go round to\ngenteel families,\" said Miss Jane. \"What do you think, Mr. St. Clare?\"\nshe said, coquettishly tossing her head at Adolph.\n\nIt must be observed that, among other appropriations from his master's\nstock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his name and address; and\nthat the style under which he moved, among the colored circles of New\nOrleans, was that of _Mr. St. Clare_.\n\n\"I'm certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir,\" said Adolph.\n\nBenoir was the name of Marie St. Clare's family, and Jane was one of her\nservants.\n\n\"Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those drops are for the\nball, tomorrow night? They are certainly bewitching!\"\n\n\"I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of you men will come\nto!\" said Jane, tossing her pretty head 'til the ear-drops twinkled\nagain. \"I shan't dance with you for a whole evening, if you go to asking\nme any more questions.\"\n\n\"O, you couldn't be so cruel, now! I was just dying to know whether you\nwould appear in your pink tarletane,\" said Adolph.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon who came\nskipping down stairs at this moment.\n\n\"Why, Mr. St. Clare's so impudent!\"\n\n\"On my honor,\" said Adolph, \"I'll leave it to Miss Rosa now.\"\n\n\"I know he's always a saucy creature,\" said Rosa, poising herself on\none of her little feet, and looking maliciously at Adolph. \"He's always\ngetting me so angry with him.\"\n\n\"O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart, between you,\"\nsaid Adolph. \"I shall be found dead in my bed, some morning, and you'll\nhave it to answer for.\"\n\n\"Do hear the horrid creature talk!\" said both ladies, laughing\nimmoderately.\n\n\"Come,--clar out, you! I can't have you cluttering up the kitchen,\" said\nDinah; \"in my way, foolin' round here.\"\n\n\"Aunt Dinah's glum, because she can't go to the ball,\" said Rosa.\n\n\"Don't want none o' your light-colored balls,\" said Dinah; \"cuttin'\nround, makin' b'lieve you's white folks. Arter all, you's niggers, much\nas I am.\"\n\n\"Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it lie straight,\"\nsaid Jane.\n\n\"And it will be wool, after all,\" said Rosa, maliciously shaking down\nher long, silky curls.\n\n\"Well, in the Lord's sight, an't wool as good as har, any time?\" said\nDinah. \"I'd like to have Missis say which is worth the most,--a couple\nsuch as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,--I won't have\nye round!\"\n\nHere the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner. St. Clare's\nvoice was heard at the head of the stairs, asking Adolph if he meant to\nstay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of\nthe dining-room, said,\n\n\"Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and\nattend to your muslins.\"\n\nOur friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation with\nthe old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw her go\non, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she set\nher basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded shawl\nwhich covered her shoulders.\n\n\"I'll carry your basket a piece,\" said Tom, compassionately.\n\n\"Why should ye?\" said the woman. \"I don't want no help.\"\n\n\"You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin',\" said Tom.\n\n\"I an't sick,\" said the woman, shortly.\n\n\"I wish,\" said Tom, looking at her earnestly,--\"I wish I could persuade\nyou to leave off drinking. Don't you know it will be the ruin of ye,\nbody and soul?\"\n\n\"I knows I'm gwine to torment,\" said the woman, sullenly. \"Ye don't\nneed to tell me that ar. I 's ugly, I 's wicked,--I 's gwine straight to\ntorment. O, Lord! I wish I 's thar!\"\n\nTom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen,\nimpassioned earnestness.\n\n\"O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han't ye never heard of Jesus\nChrist?\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ,--who's he?\"\n\n\"Why, he's _the Lord_,\" said Tom.\n\n\"I think I've hearn tell o' the Lord, and the judgment and torment. I've\nheard o' that.\"\n\n\"But didn't anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor\nsinners, and died for us?\"\n\n\"Don't know nothin' 'bout that,\" said the woman; \"nobody han't never\nloved me, since my old man died.\"\n\n\"Where was you raised?\" said Tom.\n\n\"Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil'en for market, and sold 'em\nas fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a speculator,\nand my Mas'r got me o' him.\"\n\n\"What set you into this bad way of drinkin'?\"\n\n\"To get shet o' my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I\nthought then I'd have one to raise, cause Mas'r wasn't a speculator. It\nwas de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on\n't, at first; it never cried,--it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck\nsick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me,\nand the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn't buy milk\nfor it. She wouldn't hear to me, when I telled her I hadn't milk. She\nsaid she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child\nkinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got\nall gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said 't\nwan't nothin' but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she\nwouldn't let me have it o' nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake,\nand made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had\nto put it away off in a little kind o' garret, and thar it cried itself\nto death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin', to keep its crying\nout of my ears! I did,--and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment\nfor it! Mas'r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I've got thar\nnow!\"\n\n\"O, ye poor crittur!\" said Tom, \"han't nobody never telled ye how the\nLord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han't they telled ye that he'll\nhelp ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?\"\n\n\"I looks like gwine to heaven,\" said the woman; \"an't thar where white\nfolks is gwine? S'pose they'd have me thar? I'd rather go to torment,\nand get away from Mas'r and Missis. I had _so_,\" she said, as with her\nusual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.\n\nTom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he\nmet little Eva,--a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant\nwith delight.\n\n\"O, Tom! here you are. I'm glad I've found you. Papa says you may\nget out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage,\" she said,\ncatching his hand. \"But what's the matter Tom?--you look sober.\"\n\n\"I feel bad, Miss Eva,\" said Tom, sorrowfully. \"But I'll get the horses\nfor you.\"\n\n\"But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross old\nPrue.\"\n\nTom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman's history. She did\nnot exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew\npale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both\nhands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.\n\n\n\n\nVOLUME II\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nMiss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions Continued\n\n\n\"Tom, you needn't get me the horses. I don't want to go,\" she said.\n\n\"Why not, Miss Eva?\"\n\n\"These things sink into my heart, Tom,\" said Eva,--\"they sink into my\nheart,\" she repeated, earnestly. \"I don't want to go;\" and she turned\nfrom Tom, and went into the house.\n\nA few days after, another woman came, in old Prue's place, to bring the\nrusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.\n\n\"Lor!\" said Dinah, \"what's got Prue?\"\n\n\"Prue isn't coming any more,\" said the woman, mysteriously.\n\n\"Why not?\" said Dinah, \"she an't dead, is she?\"\n\n\"We doesn't exactly know. She's down cellar,\" said the woman, glancing\nat Miss Ophelia.\n\nAfter Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the\ndoor.\n\n\"What _has_ got Prue, any how?\" she said.\n\nThe woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in\nlow, mysterious tone.\n\n\"Well, you mustn't tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,--and they\nhad her down cellar,--and thar they left her all day,--and I hearn 'em\nsaying that the _flies had got to her_,--and _she's dead_!\"\n\nDinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the\nspirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with\nhorror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.\n\n\"Lor bless us! Miss Eva's gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let\nher har such talk? Her pa'll be rail mad.\"\n\n\"I shan't faint, Dinah,\" said the child, firmly; \"and why shouldn't I\nhear it? It an't so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer\nit.\"\n\n\"_Lor sakes_! it isn't for sweet, delicate young ladies, like\nyou,--these yer stories isn't; it's enough to kill 'em!\"\n\nEva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.\n\nMiss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman's story. Dinah gave a very\ngarrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he had\ndrawn from her that morning.\n\n\"An abominable business,--perfectly horrible!\" she exclaimed, as she\nentered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.\n\n\"Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?\" said he.\n\n\"What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!\" said Miss\nOphelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and\nenlarging on its most shocking particulars.\n\n\"I thought it would come to that, some time,\" said St. Clare, going on\nwith his paper.\n\n\"Thought so!--an't you going to _do_ anything about it?\" said Miss\nOphelia. \"Haven't you got any _selectmen_, or anybody, to interfere and\nlook after such matters?\"\n\n\"It's commonly supposed that the _property_ interest is a sufficient\nguard in these cases. If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I\ndon't know what's to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief and\na drunkard; and so there won't be much hope to get up sympathy for her.\"\n\n\"It is perfectly outrageous,--it is horrid, Augustine! It will certainly\nbring down vengeance upon you.\"\n\n\"My dear cousin, I didn't do it, and I can't help it; I would, if I\ncould. If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I\nto do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots. There\nwould be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to anything\npractically, for such a case. The best we can do is to shut our eyes and\nears, and let it alone. It's the only resource left us.\"\n\n\"How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things\nalone?\"\n\n\"My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,--debased,\nuneducated, indolent, provoking,--put, without any sort of terms or\nconditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in\nour world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control,\nwho haven't even an enlightened regard to their own interest,--for\nthat's the case with the largest half of mankind. Of course, in a\ncommunity so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings\ndo, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can't buy\nevery poor wretch I see. I can't turn knight-errant, and undertake to\nredress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most\nI can do is to try and keep out of the way of it.\"\n\nSt. Clare's fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,\n\n\"Come, cousin, don't stand there looking like one of the Fates; you've\nonly seen a peep through the curtain,--a specimen of what is going\non, the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying\nand spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to\nanything. 'T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah's\nkitchen;\" and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with\nhis paper.\n\nMiss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there\ngrim with indignation. She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire\nburned; at last she broke out--\"I tell you, Augustine, I can't get over\nthings so, if you can. It's a perfect abomination for you to defend such\na system,--that's _my_ mind!\"\n\n\"What now?\" said St. Clare, looking up. \"At it again, hey?\"\n\n\"I say it's perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!\" said\nMiss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.\n\n\"_I_ defend it, my dear lady? Who ever said I did defend it?\" said St.\nClare.\n\n\"Of course, you defend it,--you all do,--all you Southerners. What do\nyou have slaves for, if you don't?\"\n\n\"Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever\ndoes what they don't think is right? Don't you, or didn't you ever, do\nanything that you did not think quite right?\"\n\n\"If I do, I repent of it, I hope,\" said Miss Ophelia, rattling her\nneedles with energy.\n\n\"So do I,\" said St. Clare, peeling his orange; \"I'm repenting of it all\nthe time.\"\n\n\"What do you keep on doing it for?\"\n\n\"Didn't you ever keep on doing wrong, after you'd repented, my good\ncousin?\"\n\n\"Well, only when I've been very much tempted,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Well, I'm very much tempted,\" said St. Clare; \"that's just my\ndifficulty.\"\n\n\"But I always resolve I won't and I try to break off.\"\n\n\"Well, I have been resolving I won't, off and on, these ten years,\" said\nSt. Clare; \"but I haven't, some how, got clear. Have you got clear of\nall your sins, cousin?\"\n\n\"Cousin Augustine,\" said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down\nher knitting-work, \"I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my\nshort-comings. I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels\nthem more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some\ndifference between me and you. It seems to me I would cut off my right\nhand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was\nwrong. But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I\ndon't wonder you reprove me.\"\n\n\"O, now, cousin,\" said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying\nhis head back in her lap, \"don't take on so awfully serious! You know\nwhat a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was. I love to poke you\nup,--that's all,--just to see you get earnest. I do think you are\ndesperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it.\"\n\n\"But this is a serious subject, my boy, Auguste,\" said Miss Ophelia,\nlaying her hand on his forehead.\n\n\"Dismally so,\" said he; \"and I--well, I never want to talk seriously in\nhot weather. What with mosquitos and all, a fellow can't get himself\nup to any very sublime moral flights; and I believe,\" said St. Clare,\nsuddenly rousing himself up, \"there's a theory, now! I understand now\nwhy northern nations are always more virtuous than southern ones,--I see\ninto that whole subject.\"\n\n\"O, Augustine, you are a sad rattle-brain!\"\n\n\"Am I? Well, so I am, I suppose; but for once I will be serious, now;\nbut you must hand me that basket of oranges;--you see, you'll have to\n'stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples,' if I'm going to make\nthis effort. Now,\" said Augustine, drawing the basket up, \"I'll begin:\nWhen, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a fellow\nto hold two or three dozen of his fellow-worms in captivity, a decent\nregard to the opinions of society requires--\"\n\n\"I don't see that you are growing more serious,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Wait,--I'm coming on,--you'll hear. The short of the matter is,\ncousin,\" said he, his handsome face suddenly settling into an earnest\nand serious expression, \"on this abstract question of slavery there\ncan, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by\nit,--clergymen, who have planters to please,--politicians, who want\nto rule by it,--may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that\nshall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and\nthe Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service; but, after all,\nneither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more. It comes\nfrom the devil, that's the short of it;--and, to my mind, it's a pretty\nrespectable specimen of what he can do in his own line.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia stopped her knitting, and looked surprised, and St. Clare,\napparently enjoying her astonishment, went on.\n\n\"You seem to wonder; but if you will get me fairly at it, I'll make a\nclean breast of it. This cursed business, accursed of God and man, what\nis it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus\nof the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant\nand weak, and I am intelligent and strong,--because I know how, and\n_can_ do it,--therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give\nhim only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, too\ndirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I\ndon't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy\nshall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it.\nQuashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod.\nQuashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal\nlife, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find\nconvenient. This I take to be about what slavery _is_. I defy anybody\non earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make\nanything else of it. Talk of the _abuses_ of slavery! Humbug! The _thing\nitself_ is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why the land\ndon't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is _used_ in\na way infinitely better than it is. For pity's sake, for shame's sake,\nbecause we are men born of women, and not savage beasts, many of us do\nnot, and dare not,--we would _scorn_ to use the full power which our\nsavage laws put into our hands. And he who goes the furthest, and does\nthe worst, only uses within limits the power that the law gives him.\"\n\nSt. Clare had started up, and, as his manner was when excited, was\nwalking, with hurried steps, up and down the floor. His fine face,\nclassic as that of a Greek statue, seemed actually to burn with the\nfervor of his feelings. His large blue eyes flashed, and he gestured\nwith an unconscious eagerness. Miss Ophelia had never seen him in this\nmood before, and she sat perfectly silent.\n\n\"I declare to you,\" said he, suddenly stopping before his cousin \"(It's\nno sort of use to talk or to feel on this subject), but I declare to\nyou, there have been times when I have thought, if the whole country\nwould sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I\nwould willingly sink with it. When I have been travelling up and down\non our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every\nbrutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our\nlaws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as\nhe could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,--when I have seen\nsuch men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and\nwomen,--I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!\"\n\n\"Augustine! Augustine!\" said Miss Ophelia, \"I'm sure you've said enough.\nI never, in my life, heard anything like this, even at the North.\"\n\n\"At the North!\" said St. Clare, with a sudden change of expression, and\nresuming something of his habitual careless tone. \"Pooh! your northern\nfolks are cold-blooded; you are cool in everything! You can't begin to\ncurse up hill and down as we can, when we get fairly at it.\"\n\n\"Well, but the question is,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"O, yes, to be sure, the _question is_,--and a deuce of a question it\nis! How came _you_ in this state of sin and misery? Well, I shall\nanswer in the good old words you used to teach me, Sundays. I came so by\nordinary generation. My servants were my father's, and, what is more,\nmy mother's; and now they are mine, they and their increase, which bids\nfair to be a pretty considerable item. My father, you know, came first\nfrom New England; and he was just such another man as your father,--a\nregular old Roman,--upright, energetic, noble-minded, with an iron will.\nYour father settled down in New England, to rule over rocks and stones,\nand to force an existence out of Nature; and mine settled in Louisiana,\nto rule over men and women, and force existence out of them. My mother,\"\nsaid St. Clare, getting up and walking to a picture at the end of the\nroom, and gazing upward with a face fervent with veneration, \"_she was\ndivine!_ Don't look at me so!--you know what I mean! She probably was of\nmortal birth; but, as far as ever I could observe, there was no trace\nof any human weakness or error about her; and everybody that lives to\nremember her, whether bond or free, servant, acquaintance, relation,\nall say the same. Why, cousin, that mother has been all that has stood\nbetween me and utter unbelief for years. She was a direct embodiment and\npersonification of the New Testament,--a living fact, to be accounted\nfor, and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth. O,\nmother! mother!\" said St. Clare, clasping his hands, in a sort of\ntransport; and then suddenly checking himself, he came back, and seating\nhimself on an ottoman, he went on:\n\n\"My brother and I were twins; and they say, you know, that twins ought\nto resemble each other; but we were in all points a contrast. He had\nblack, fiery eyes, coal-black hair, a strong, fine Roman profile, and\na rich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden hair, a Greek outline,\nand fair complexion. He was active and observing, I dreamy and inactive.\nHe was generous to his friends and equals, but proud, dominant,\noverbearing, to inferiors, and utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself\nup against him. Truthful we both were; he from pride and courage, I from\na sort of abstract ideality. We loved each other about as boys generally\ndo,--off and on, and in general;--he was my father's pet, and I my\nmother's.\n\n\"There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on\nall possible subjects, of which he and my father had no kind of\nunderstanding, and with which they could have no possible sympathy. But\nmother did; and so, when I had quarreled with Alfred, and father looked\nsternly on me, I used to go off to mother's room, and sit by her. I\nremember just how she used to look, with her pale cheeks, her deep,\nsoft, serious eyes, her white dress,--she always wore white; and I used\nto think of her whenever I read in Revelations about the saints that\nwere arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. She had a great deal of\ngenius of one sort and another, particularly in music; and she used\nto sit at her organ, playing fine old majestic music of the Catholic\nchurch, and singing with a voice more like an angel than a mortal\nwoman; and I would lay my head down on her lap, and cry, and dream, and\nfeel,--oh, immeasurably!--things that I had no language to say!\n\n\"In those days, this matter of slavery had never been canvassed as it\nhas now; nobody dreamed of any harm in it.\n\n\"My father was a born aristocrat. I think, in some preexistent state, he\nmust have been in the higher circles of spirits, and brought all his old\ncourt pride along with him; for it was ingrain, bred in the bone, though\nhe was originally of poor and not in any way of noble family. My brother\nwas begotten in his image.\n\n\"Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies,\nbeyond a certain line in society. In England the line is in one place,\nin Burmah in another, and in America in another; but the aristocrat\nof all these countries never goes over it. What would be hardship and\ndistress and injustice in his own class, is a cool matter of course in\nanother one. My father's dividing line was that of color. _Among his\nequals_, never was a man more just and generous; but he considered the\nnegro, through all possible gradations of color, as an intermediate\nlink between man and animals, and graded all his ideas of justice or\ngenerosity on this hypothesis. I suppose, to be sure, if anybody had\nasked him, plump and fair, whether they had human immortal souls, he\nmight have hemmed and hawed, and said yes. But my father was not a man\nmuch troubled with spiritualism; religious sentiment he had none, beyond\na veneration for God, as decidedly the head of the upper classes.\n\n\"Well, my father worked some five hundred negroes; he was an inflexible,\ndriving, punctilious business man; everything was to move by system,--to\nbe sustained with unfailing accuracy and precision. Now, if you take\ninto account that all this was to be worked out by a set of lazy,\ntwaddling, shiftless laborers, who had grown up, all their lives, in\nthe absence of every possible motive to learn how to do anything\nbut 'shirk,' as you Vermonters say, and you'll see that there might\nnaturally be, on his plantation, a great many things that looked\nhorrible and distressing to a sensitive child, like me.\n\n\"Besides all, he had an overseer,--great, tall, slab-sided, two-fisted\nrenegade son of Vermont--(begging your pardon),--who had gone through a\nregular apprenticeship in hardness and brutality and taken his degree to\nbe admitted to practice. My mother never could endure him, nor I; but\nhe obtained an entire ascendency over my father; and this man was the\nabsolute despot of the estate.\n\n\"I was a little fellow then, but I had the same love that I have now for\nall kinds of human things,--a kind of passion for the study of humanity,\ncome in what shape it would. I was found in the cabins and among the\nfield-hands a great deal, and, of course, was a great favorite; and all\nsorts of complaints and grievances were breathed in my ear; and I told\nthem to mother, and we, between us, formed a sort of committee for\na redress of grievances. We hindered and repressed a great deal of\ncruelty, and congratulated ourselves on doing a vast deal of good, till,\nas often happens, my zeal overacted. Stubbs complained to my father that\nhe couldn't manage the hands, and must resign his position. Father was\na fond, indulgent husband, but a man that never flinched from anything\nthat he thought necessary; and so he put down his foot, like a rock,\nbetween us and the field-hands. He told my mother, in language\nperfectly respectful and deferential, but quite explicit, that over\nthe house-servants she should be entire mistress, but that with the\nfield-hands he could allow no interference. He revered and respected her\nabove all living beings; but he would have said it all the same to the\nvirgin Mary herself, if she had come in the way of his system.\n\n\"I used sometimes to hear my mother reasoning cases with\nhim,--endeavoring to excite his sympathies. He would listen to the most\npathetic appeals with the most discouraging politeness and equanimity.\n'It all resolves itself into this,' he would say; 'must I part with\nStubbs, or keep him? Stubbs is the soul of punctuality, honesty, and\nefficiency,--a thorough business hand, and as humane as the general\nrun. We can't have perfection; and if I keep him, I must sustain his\nadministration as a _whole_, even if there are, now and then, things\nthat are exceptionable. All government includes some necessary hardness.\nGeneral rules will bear hard on particular cases.' This last maxim my\nfather seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of cruelty.\nAfter he had said _that_, he commonly drew up his feet on the sofa, like\na man that has disposed of a business, and betook himself to a nap, or\nthe newspaper, as the case might be.\n\n\"The fact is my father showed the exact sort of talent for a statesman.\nHe could have divided Poland as easily as an orange, or trod on Ireland\nas quietly and systematically as any man living. At last my mother gave\nup, in despair. It never will be known, till the last account, what\nnoble and sensitive natures like hers have felt, cast, utterly helpless,\ninto what seems to them an abyss of injustice and cruelty, and which\nseems so to nobody about them. It has been an age of long sorrow of such\nnatures, in such a hell-begotten sort of world as ours. What remained\nfor her, but to train her children in her own views and sentiments?\nWell, after all you say about training, children will grow up\nsubstantially what they _are_ by nature, and only that. From the cradle,\nAlfred was an aristocrat; and as he grew up, instinctively, all his\nsympathies and all his reasonings were in that line, and all mother's\nexhortations went to the winds. As to me, they sunk deep into me. She\nnever contradicted, in form, anything my father said, or seemed directly\nto differ from him; but she impressed, burnt into my very soul, with all\nthe force of her deep, earnest nature, an idea of the dignity and worth\nof the meanest human soul. I have looked in her face with solemn awe,\nwhen she would point up to the stars in the evening, and say to me, 'See\nthere, Auguste! the poorest, meanest soul on our place will be living,\nwhen all these stars are gone forever,--will live as long as God lives!'\n\n\"She had some fine old paintings; one, in particular, of Jesus healing\na blind man. They were very fine, and used to impress me strongly. 'See\nthere, Auguste,' she would say; 'the blind man was a beggar, poor and\nloathsome; therefore, he would not heal him _afar off!_ He called him to\nhim, and put _his hands on him!_ Remember this, my boy.' If I had lived\nto grow up under her care, she might have stimulated me to I know not\nwhat of enthusiasm. I might have been a saint, reformer, martyr,--but,\nalas! alas! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw\nher again!\"\n\nSt. Clare rested his head on his hands, and did not speak for some\nminutes. After a while, he looked up, and went on:\n\n\"What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere\nmatter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical\nposition, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing\nbut an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town\nwhere all are, in fact, free and equal; becomes a regular church member\nand deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and thinks\nus all little better than heathens. Yet he is, for all the world, in\nconstitution and habit, a duplicate of my father. I can see it leaking\nout in fifty different ways,--just the same strong, overbearing,\ndominant spirit. You know very well how impossible it is to persuade\nsome of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair does not feel\nabove them. The fact is, though he has fallen on democratic times, and\nembraced a democratic theory, he is to the heart an aristocrat, as much\nas my father, who ruled over five or six hundred slaves.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was\nlaying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.\n\n\"Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they _were_\nalike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted against\nthe natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and\nso one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and\nthe other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned plantations in\nLouisiana, they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the\nsame mould.\"\n\n\"What an undutiful boy you are!\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I don't mean them any disrespect,\" said St. Clare. \"You know reverence\nis not my forte. But, to go back to my history:\n\n\"When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be\ndivided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God's earth a\nnobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns\nhis equals; and we got on admirably with this property question,\nwithout a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the\nplantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities\nhad double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a\nwonderfully successful one.\n\n\"But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that\nmatter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know\npersonally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven,\nhoused, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military\nprecision,--the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments\nwould keep them in working order being a constantly recurring\nproblem,--the necessity of drivers and overseers,--the ever-necessary\nwhip, first, last, and only argument,--the whole thing was insufferably\ndisgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother's\nestimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!\n\n\"It's all nonsense to talk to me about slaves _enjoying_ all this! To\nthis day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of\nyour patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize\nfor our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to\nwork all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a\nmaster, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition,\non the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs\nof pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter\nto keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human beings can,\nas a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other,\nI wish he might try it. I'd buy the dog, and work him, with a clear\nconscience!\"\n\n\"I always have supposed,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"that you, all of you,\napproved of these things, and thought them _right_--according to\nScripture.\"\n\n\"Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as\ndetermined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of\ndefence;--no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable\nground, _the right of the strongest_; and he says, and I think quite\nsensibly, that the American planter is 'only doing, in another form,\nwhat the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower\nclasses;' that is, I take it, _appropriating_ them, body and bone, soul\nand spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both,--and I think,\nat least, _consistently_. He says that there can be no high civilization\nwithout enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must,\nhe says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an\nanimal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for\na more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing\nsoul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an\naristocrat;--so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat.\"\n\n\"How in the world can the two things be compared?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\"The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family,\nwhipped.\"\n\n\"He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.\nThe slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,--the capitalist\ncan starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which\nis the worst,--to have one's children sold, or see them starve to death\nat home.\"\n\n\"But it's no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn't worse\nthan some other bad thing.\"\n\n\"I didn't give it for one,--nay, I'll say, besides, that ours is the\nmore bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a\nman up, like a horse,--looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and\ntrying his paces and then paying down for him,--having speculators,\nbreeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls,--sets the\nthing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form,\nthough the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is,\nappropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of\nanother without any regard to their own.\"\n\n\"I never thought of the matter in this light,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Well, I've travelled in England some, and I've looked over a good many\ndocuments as to the state of their lower classes; and I really think\nthere is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off\nthan a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not\ninfer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard\nmaster; for he isn't. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination;\nhe would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot\na buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in\nhaving his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.\n\n\"When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their\ninstruction; and, to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have\nthem catechized Sunday, though, I believe, in his heart, that he thought\nit would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs and\nhorses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every\nbad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every\nweek-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours\non Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing\npopulation of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could\nperhaps testify to the same result, _there and here_. Yet some striking\nexceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is naturally\nmore impressible to religious sentiment than the white.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"how came you to give up your plantation\nlife?\"\n\n\"Well, we jogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that\nI was no planter. He thought it absurd, after he had reformed, and\naltered, and improved everywhere, to suit my notions, that I still\nremained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that\nI hated--the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this\nignorance, brutality and vice,--just to make money for me!\n\n\"Besides, I was always interfering in the details. Being myself one of\nthe laziest of mortals, I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for the\nlazy; and when poor, shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their\ncotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks with\ndirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I should do\nif I were they, I couldn't and wouldn't have them flogged for it. Well,\nof course, there was an end of plantation discipline; and Alf and I\ncame to about the same point that I and my respected father did, years\nbefore. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would\nnever do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock and\nthe New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him\nmanage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here.\"\n\n\"But why didn't you free your slaves?\"\n\n\"Well, I wasn't up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I\ncould not;--have them to help spend money, you know, didn't look quite\nso ugly to me. Some of them were old house-servants, to whom I was much\nattached; and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well\nsatisfied to be as they were.\" He paused, and walked reflectively up and\ndown the room.\n\n\"There was,\" said St. Clare, \"a time in my life when I had plans and\nhopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I\nhad vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,--to free\nmy native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such\nfever-fits, I suppose, some time,--but then--\"\n\n\"Why didn't you?\" said Miss Ophelia;--\"you ought not to put your hand to\nthe plough, and look back.\"\n\n\"O, well, things didn't go with me as I expected, and I got the despair\nof living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to\nwisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and\nregenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been\nfloating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time\nwe meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,--for he really does\nsomething; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a\ncontemptible _non sequitur_.\"\n\n\"My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your\nprobation?\"\n\n\"Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to come\nback to this point,--we were on this liberation business. I don't think\nmy feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their\nhearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and, bad as\nit is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master. It\ntakes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident,\ndegraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as to themselves.\nThe capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do,\nbecause they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do. They\nare in our homes; they are the associates of our children, and they form\ntheir minds faster than we can; for they are a race that children always\nwill cling to and assimilate with. If Eva, now, was not more angel than\nordinary, she would be ruined. We might as well allow the small-pox to\nrun among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them\nbe uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be affected\nby that. Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient\ngeneral educational system, and they do it wisely, too; for, just begin\nand thoroughly educate one generation, and the whole thing would be\nblown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it.\"\n\n\"And what do you think will be the end of this?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I don't know. One thing is certain,--that there is a mustering among\nthe masses, the world over; and there is a _dies iræ_ coming on, sooner\nor later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this\ncountry. My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming,\nwhen Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she\ntaught me, when I was a boy, to pray, 'thy kingdom come.' Sometimes I\nthink all this sighing, and groaning, and stirring among the dry bones\nforetells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the day\nof His appearing?\"\n\n\"Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,\" said\nMiss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her\ncousin.\n\n\"Thank you for your good opinion, but it's up and down with me,--up to\nheaven's gate in theory, down in earth's dust in practice. But there's\nthe teabell,--do let's go,--and don't say, now, I haven't had one\ndownright serious talk, for once in my life.\"\n\nAt table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. \"I suppose you'll\nthink, cousin,\" she said, \"that we are all barbarians.\"\n\n\"I think that's a barbarous thing,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"but I don't\nthink you are all barbarians.\"\n\n\"Well, now,\" said Marie, \"I know it's impossible to get along with some\nof these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don't feel\na particle of sympathy for such cases. If they'd only behave themselves,\nit would not happen.\"\n\n\"But, mamma,\" said Eva, \"the poor creature was unhappy; that's what made\nher drink.\"\n\n\"O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I'm unhappy, very often. I\npresume,\" she said, pensively, \"that I've had greater trials than ever\nshe had. It's just because they are so bad. There's some of them that\nyou cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a\nman that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie\nround in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That\nman was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him any\ngood; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn't but just go,\nand died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father's\nhands were always treated kindly.\"\n\n\"I broke a fellow in, once,\" said St. Clare, \"that all the overseers and\nmasters had tried their hands on in vain.\"\n\n\"You!\" said Marie; \"well, I'd be glad to know when _you_ ever did\nanything of the sort.\"\n\n\"Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow,--a native-born African; and\nhe appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon\ndegree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody\ncould do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to\noverseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could\nmanage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly\noff into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf's plantation, for it was\nafter we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated;\nbut I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I\ncould break the man; and finally it was agreed that, if I caught him, I\nshould have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some\nsix or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can\nget up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only\ncustomary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only put\nin as a sort of mediator, in case he was caught.\n\n\"Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally\nwe started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the\nrear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket\nof cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right\ngallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and actually killed three\nof them with only his naked fists, when a shot from a gun brought him\ndown, and he fell, wounded and bleeding, almost at my feet. The poor\nfellow looked up at me with manhood and despair both in his eye. I kept\nback the dogs and the party, as they came pressing up, and claimed him\nas my prisoner. It was all I could do to keep them from shooting him, in\nthe flush of success; but I persisted in my bargain, and Alfred sold him\nto me. Well, I took him in hand, and in one fortnight I had him tamed\ndown as submissive and tractable as heart could desire.\"\n\n\"What in the world did you do to him?\" said Marie.\n\n\"Well, it was quite a simple process. I took him to my own room, had a\ngood bed made for him, dressed his wounds, and tended him myself, until\nhe got fairly on his feet again. And, in process of time, I had free\npapers made out for him, and told him he might go where he liked.\"\n\n\"And did he go?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two, and absolutely refused\nto leave me. I never had a braver, better fellow,--trusty and true as\nsteel. He embraced Christianity afterwards, and became as gentle as a\nchild. He used to oversee my place on the lake, and did it capitally,\ntoo. I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life\nfor me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic,\neverybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually\nbrought me back into life again. But, poor fellow! he was taken, right\nafter, and there was no saving him. I never felt anybody's loss more.\"\n\nEva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father, as he told the\nstory,--her small lips apart, her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing\ninterest.\n\nAs he finished, she suddenly threw her arms around his neck, burst into\ntears, and sobbed convulsively.\n\n\"Eva, dear child! what is the matter?\" said St. Clare, as the child's\nsmall frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings. \"This\nchild,\" he added, \"ought not to hear any of this kind of thing,--she's\nnervous.\"\n\n\"No, papa, I'm not nervous,\" said Eva, controlling herself, suddenly,\nwith a strength of resolution singular in such a child. \"I'm not\nnervous, but these things _sink into my heart_.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Eva?\"\n\n\"I can't tell you, papa, I think a great many thoughts. Perhaps some day\nI shall tell you.\"\n\n\"Well, think away, dear,--only don't cry and worry your papa,\" said St.\nClare, \"Look here,--see what a beautiful peach I have got for you.\"\n\nEva took it and smiled, though there was still a nervous twiching about\nthe corners of her mouth.\n\n\"Come, look at the gold-fish,\" said St. Clare, taking her hand and\nstepping on to the verandah. A few moments, and merry laughs were heard\nthrough the silken curtains, as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each\nother with roses, and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.\n\n\nThere is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the\nadventures of the higher born; but, if our readers will accompany us up\nto a little loft over the stable, they may, perhaps, learn a little\nof his affairs. It was a decent room, containing a bed, a chair, and a\nsmall, rough stand, where lay Tom's Bible and hymn-book; and where he\nsits, at present, with his slate before him, intent on something that\nseems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.\n\nThe fact was, that Tom's home-yearnings had become so strong that he had\nbegged a sheet of writing-paper of Eva, and, mustering up all his small\nstock of literary attainment acquired by Mas'r George's instructions, he\nconceived the bold idea of writing a letter; and he was busy now, on his\nslate, getting out his first draft. Tom was in a good deal of trouble,\nfor the forms of some of the letters he had forgotten entirely; and of\nwhat he did remember, he did not know exactly which to use. And while he\nwas working, and breathing very hard, in his earnestness, Eva alighted,\nlike a bird, on the round of his chair behind him, and peeped over his\nshoulder.\n\n\"O, Uncle Tom! what funny things you _are_ making, there!\"\n\n\"I'm trying to write to my poor old woman, Miss Eva, and my little\nchil'en,\" said Tom, drawing the back of his hand over his eyes; \"but,\nsome how, I'm feard I shan't make it out.\"\n\n\"I wish I could help you, Tom! I've learnt to write some. Last year I\ncould make all the letters, but I'm afraid I've forgotten.\"\n\nSo Eva put her golden head close to his, and the two commenced a grave\nand anxious discussion, each one equally earnest, and about equally\nignorant; and, with a deal of consulting and advising over every word,\nthe composition began, as they both felt very sanguine, to look quite\nlike writing.\n\n\"Yes, Uncle Tom, it really begins to look beautiful,\" said Eva, gazing\ndelightedly on it. \"How pleased your wife'll be, and the poor little\nchildren! O, it's a shame you ever had to go away from them! I mean to\nask papa to let you go back, some time.\"\n\n\"Missis said that she would send down money for me, as soon as they\ncould get it together,\" said Tom. \"I'm 'spectin, she will. Young Mas'r\nGeorge, he said he'd come for me; and he gave me this yer dollar as a\nsign;\" and Tom drew from under his clothes the precious dollar.\n\n\"O, he'll certainly come, then!\" said Eva. \"I'm so glad!\"\n\n\"And I wanted to send a letter, you know, to let 'em know whar I was,\nand tell poor Chloe that I was well off,--cause she felt so drefful,\npoor soul!\"\n\n\"I say Tom!\" said St. Clare's voice, coming in the door at this moment.\n\nTom and Eva both started.\n\n\"What's here?\" said St. Clare, coming up and looking at the slate.\n\n\"O, it's Tom's letter. I'm helping him to write it,\" said Eva; \"isn't it\nnice?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't discourage either of you,\" said St. Clare, \"but I rather\nthink, Tom, you'd better get me to write your letter for you. I'll do\nit, when I come home from my ride.\"\n\n\"It's very important he should write,\" said Eva, \"because his mistress\nis going to send down money to redeem him, you know, papa; he told me\nthey told him so.\"\n\nSt. Clare thought, in his heart, that this was probably only one\nof those things which good-natured owners say to their servants,\nto alleviate their horror of being sold, without any intention of\nfulfilling the expectation thus excited. But he did not make any audible\ncomment upon it,--only ordered Tom to get the horses out for a ride.\n\nTom's letter was written in due form for him that evening, and safely\nlodged in the post-office.\n\nMiss Ophelia still persevered in her labors in the housekeeping line. It\nwas universally agreed, among all the household, from Dinah down to the\nyoungest urchin, that Miss Ophelia was decidedly \"curis,\"--a term by\nwhich a southern servant implies that his or her betters don't exactly\nsuit them.\n\nThe higher circle in the family--to wit, Adolph, Jane and Rosa--agreed\nthat she was no lady; ladies never keep working about as she did,--that\nshe had no _air_ at all; and they were surprised that she should be any\nrelation of the St. Clares. Even Marie declared that it was absolutely\nfatiguing to see Cousin Ophelia always so busy. And, in fact, Miss\nOphelia's industry was so incessant as to lay some foundation for the\ncomplaint. She sewed and stitched away, from daylight till dark, with\nthe energy of one who is pressed on by some immediate urgency; and then,\nwhen the light faded, and the work was folded away, with one turn out\ncame the ever-ready knitting-work, and there she was again, going on as\nbriskly as ever. It really was a labor to see her.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nTopsy\n\n\nOne morning, while Miss Ophelia was busy in some of her domestic cares,\nSt. Clare's voice was heard, calling her at the foot of the stairs.\n\n\"Come down here, Cousin, I've something to show you.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" said Miss Ophelia, coming down, with her sewing in her\nhand.\n\n\"I've made a purchase for your department,--see here,\" said St. Clare;\nand, with the word, he pulled along a little negro girl, about eight or\nnine years of age.\n\nShe was one of the blackest of her race; and her round shining eyes,\nglittering as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances over\neverything in the room. Her mouth, half open with astonishment at the\nwonders of the new Mas'r's parlor, displayed a white and brilliant set\nof teeth. Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails, which\nstuck out in every direction. The expression of her face was an odd\nmixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly drawn, like a\nkind of veil, an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity.\nShe was dressed in a single filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and\nstood with her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether, there was\nsomething odd and goblin-like about her appearance,--something, as Miss\nOphelia afterwards said, \"so heathenish,\" as to inspire that good lady\nwith utter dismay; and turning to St. Clare, she said,\n\n\"Augustine, what in the world have you brought that thing here for?\"\n\n\"For you to educate, to be sure, and train in the way she should go.\nI thought she was rather a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line. Here,\nTopsy,\" he added, giving a whistle, as a man would to call the attention\nof a dog, \"give us a song, now, and show us some of your dancing.\"\n\nThe black, glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and the\nthing struck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro melody, to which\nshe kept time with her hands and feet, spinning round, clapping her\nhands, knocking her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of\ntime, and producing in her throat all those odd guttural sounds which\ndistinguish the native music of her race; and finally, turning a\nsummerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing note, as odd and\nunearthly as that of a steam-whistle, she came suddenly down on the\ncarpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious\nexpression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the\ncunning glances which she shot askance from the corners of her eyes.\n\nMiss Ophelia stood silent, perfectly paralyzed with amazement. St.\nClare, like a mischievous fellow as he was, appeared to enjoy her\nastonishment; and, addressing the child again, said,\n\n\"Topsy, this is your new mistress. I'm going to give you up to her; see\nnow that you behave yourself.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Topsy, with sanctimonious gravity, her wicked eyes\ntwinkling as she spoke.\n\n\"You're going to be good, Topsy, you understand,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"O yes, Mas'r,\" said Topsy, with another twinkle, her hands still\ndevoutly folded.\n\n\"Now, Augustine, what upon earth is this for?\" said Miss Ophelia. \"Your\nhouse is so full of these little plagues, now, that a body can't set\ndown their foot without treading on 'em. I get up in the morning, and\nfind one asleep behind the door, and see one black head poking out from\nunder the table, one lying on the door-mat,--and they are mopping and\nmowing and grinning between all the railings, and tumbling over the\nkitchen floor! What on earth did you want to bring this one for?\"\n\n\"For you to educate--didn't I tell you? You're always preaching about\neducating. I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught\nspecimen, and let you try your hand on her, and bring her up in the way\nshe should go.\"\n\n\"_I_ don't want her, I am sure;--I have more to do with 'em now than I\nwant to.\"\n\n\"That's you Christians, all over!--you'll get up a society, and get some\npoor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let\nme see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take\nthe labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that,\nthey are dirty and disagreeable, and it's too much care, and so on.\"\n\n\"Augustine, you know I didn't think of it in that light,\" said Miss\nOphelia, evidently softening. \"Well, it might be a real missionary\nwork,\" said she, looking rather more favorably on the child.\n\nSt. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelia's conscientiousness\nwas ever on the alert. \"But,\" she added, \"I really didn't see the need\nof buying this one;--there are enough now, in your house, to take all my\ntime and skill.\"\n\n\"Well, then, Cousin,\" said St. Clare, drawing her aside, \"I ought to\nbeg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches. You are so good,\nafter all, that there's no sense in them. Why, the fact is, this concern\nbelonged to a couple of drunken creatures that keep a low restaurant\nthat I have to pass by every day, and I was tired of hearing her\nscreaming, and them beating and swearing at her. She looked bright and\nfunny, too, as if something might be made of her;--so I bought her, and\nI'll give her to you. Try, now, and give her a good orthodox New England\nbringing up, and see what it'll make of her. You know I haven't any gift\nthat way; but I'd like you to try.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll do what I can,\" said Miss Ophelia; and she approached her\nnew subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black\nspider, supposing them to have benevolent designs toward it.\n\n\"She's dreadfully dirty, and half naked,\" she said.\n\n\"Well, take her down stairs, and make some of them clean and clothe her\nup.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.\n\n\"Don't see what Mas'r St. Clare wants of 'nother nigger!\" said Dinah,\nsurveying the new arrival with no friendly air. \"Won't have her around\nunder _my_ feet, _I_ know!\"\n\n\"Pah!\" said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust; \"let her keep out of\nour way! What in the world Mas'r wanted another of these low niggers\nfor, I can't see!\"\n\n\"You go long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa,\" said Dinah,\nwho felt this last remark a reflection on herself. \"You seem to tink\nyourself white folks. You an't nerry one, black _nor_ white, I'd like to\nbe one or turrer.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that would undertake\nto oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new arrival; and so she\nwas forced to do it herself, with some very ungracious and reluctant\nassistance from Jane.\n\nIt is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of\na neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live\nand die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of\ntheir fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss Ophelia had a good,\nstrong, practical deal of resolution; and she went through all the\ndisgusting details with heroic thoroughness, though, it must be\nconfessed, with no very gracious air,--for endurance was the utmost\nto which her principles could bring her. When she saw, on the back and\nshoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable\nmarks of the system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart\nbecame pitiful within her.\n\n\"See there!\" said Jane, pointing to the marks, \"don't that show she's\na limb? We'll have fine works with her, I reckon. I hate these nigger\nyoung uns! so disgusting! I wonder that Mas'r would buy her!\"\n\nThe \"young un\" alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and\ndoleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and\nfurtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in\nher ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole\nclothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some\nsatisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in\nher own mind began to mature some plans for her instruction.\n\nSitting down before her, she began to question her.\n\n\"How old are you, Topsy?\"\n\n\"Dun no, Missis,\" said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth.\n\n\"Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Who was your\nmother?\"\n\n\"Never had none!\" said the child, with another grin.\n\n\"Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?\"\n\n\"Never was born!\" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so\ngoblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might\nhave fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land\nof Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and\nbusiness-like, and she said, with some sternness,\n\n\"You mustn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you.\nTell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were.\"\n\n\"Never was born,\" reiterated the creature, more emphatically; \"never had\nno father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with\nlots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us.\"\n\nThe child was evidently sincere, and Jane, breaking into a short laugh,\nsaid,\n\n\"Laws, Missis, there's heaps of 'em. Speculators buys 'em up cheap, when\nthey's little, and gets 'em raised for market.\"\n\n\"How long have you lived with your master and mistress?\"\n\n\"Dun no, Missis.\"\n\n\"Is it a year, or more, or less?\"\n\n\"Dun no, Missis.\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis, those low negroes,--they can't tell; they don't know\nanything about time,\" said Jane; \"they don't know what a year is; they\ndon't know their own ages.\n\n\"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?\"\n\nThe child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.\n\n\"Do you know who made you?\"\n\n\"Nobody, as I knows on,\" said the child, with a short laugh.\n\nThe idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and\nshe added,\n\n\"I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me.\"\n\n\"Do you know how to sew?\" said Miss Ophelia, who thought she would turn\nher inquiries to something more tangible.\n\n\"No, Missis.\"\n\n\"What can you do?--what did you do for your master and mistress?\"\n\n\"Fetch water, and wash dishes, and rub knives, and wait on folks.\"\n\n\"Were they good to you?\"\n\n\"Spect they was,\" said the child, scanning Miss Ophelia cunningly.\n\nMiss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare was leaning\nover the back of her chair.\n\n\"You find virgin soil there, Cousin; put in your own ideas,--you won't\nfind many to pull up.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia's ideas of education, like all her other ideas, were\nvery set and definite; and of the kind that prevailed in New England\na century ago, and which are still preserved in some very retired and\nunsophisticated parts, where there are no railroads. As nearly as could\nbe expressed, they could be comprised in very few words: to teach them\nto mind when they were spoken to; to teach them the catechism, sewing,\nand reading; and to whip them if they told lies. And though, of course,\nin the flood of light that is now poured on education, these are left\nfar away in the rear, yet it is an undisputed fact that our grandmothers\nraised some tolerably fair men and women under this regime, as many of\nus can remember and testify. At all events, Miss Ophelia knew of nothing\nelse to do; and, therefore, applied her mind to her heathen with the\nbest diligence she could command.\n\nThe child was announced and considered in the family as Miss Ophelia's\ngirl; and, as she was looked upon with no gracious eye in the kitchen,\nMiss Ophelia resolved to confine her sphere of operation and instruction\nchiefly to her own chamber. With a self-sacrifice which some of our\nreaders will appreciate, she resolved, instead of comfortably making her\nown bed, sweeping and dusting her own chamber,--which she had hitherto\ndone, in utter scorn of all offers of help from the chambermaid of the\nestablishment,--to condemn herself to the martyrdom of instructing Topsy\nto perform these operations,--ah, woe the day! Did any of our readers\never do the same, they will appreciate the amount of her self-sacrifice.\n\nMiss Ophelia began with Topsy by taking her into her chamber, the first\nmorning, and solemnly commencing a course of instruction in the art and\nmystery of bed-making.\n\nBehold, then, Topsy, washed and shorn of all the little braided\ntails wherein her heart had delighted, arrayed in a clean gown, with\nwell-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an\nexpression of solemnity well befitting a funeral.\n\n\"Now, Topsy, I'm going to show you just how my bed is to be made. I am\nvery particular about my bed. You must learn exactly how to do it.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" says Topsy, with a deep sigh, and a face of woful\nearnestness.\n\n\"Now, Topsy, look here;--this is the hem of the sheet,--this is the\nright side of the sheet, and this is the wrong;--will you remember?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" says Topsy, with another sigh.\n\n\"Well, now, the under sheet you must bring over the bolster,--so--and\ntuck it clear down under the mattress nice and smooth,--so,--do you\nsee?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" said Topsy, with profound attention.\n\n\"But the upper sheet,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"must be brought down in this\nway, and tucked under firm and smooth at the foot,--so,--the narrow hem\nat the foot.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" said Topsy, as before;--but we will add, what Miss Ophelia\ndid not see, that, during the time when the good lady's back was turned\nin the zeal of her manipulations, the young disciple had contrived to\nsnatch a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she had adroitly slipped\ninto her sleeves, and stood with her hands dutifully folded, as before.\n\n\"Now, Topsy, let's see _you_ do this,\" said Miss Ophelia, pulling off\nthe clothes, and seating herself.\n\nTopsy, with great gravity and adroitness, went through the exercise\ncompletely to Miss Ophelia's satisfaction; smoothing the sheets, patting\nout every wrinkle, and exhibiting, through the whole process, a gravity\nand seriousness with which her instructress was greatly edified. By an\nunlucky slip, however, a fluttering fragment of the ribbon hung out of\none of her sleeves, just as she was finishing, and caught Miss Ophelia's\nattention. Instantly, she pounced upon it. \"What's this? You naughty,\nwicked child,--you've been stealing this!\"\n\nThe ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve, yet was she not in\nthe least disconcerted; she only looked at it with an air of the most\nsurprised and unconscious innocence.\n\n\"Laws! why, that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How could it a got\ncaught in my sleeve?\n\n\"Topsy, you naughty girl, don't you tell me a lie,--you stole that\nribbon!\"\n\n\"Missis, I declar for 't, I didn't;--never seed it till dis yer blessed\nminnit.\"\n\n\"Topsy,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"don't you know it's wicked to tell lies?\"\n\n\"I never tell no lies, Miss Feely,\" said Topsy, with virtuous gravity;\n\"it's jist the truth I've been a tellin now, and an't nothin else.\"\n\n\"Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so.\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis, if you's to whip all day, couldn't say no other way,\"\nsaid Topsy, beginning to blubber. \"I never seed dat ar,--it must a got\ncaught in my sleeve. Miss Feeley must have left it on the bed, and it\ngot caught in the clothes, and so got in my sleeve.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie, that she caught the\nchild and shook her.\n\n\"Don't you tell me that again!\"\n\nThe shake brought the glove on to the floor, from the other sleeve.\n\n\"There, you!\" said Miss Ophelia, \"will you tell me now, you didn't steal\nthe ribbon?\"\n\nTopsy now confessed to the gloves, but still persisted in denying the\nribbon.\n\n\"Now, Topsy,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"if you'll confess all about it, I\nwon't whip you this time.\" Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon\nand gloves, with woful protestations of penitence.\n\n\"Well, now, tell me. I know you must have taken other things since you\nhave been in the house, for I let you run about all day yesterday. Now,\ntell me if you took anything, and I shan't whip you.\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis! I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her neck.\"\n\n\"You did, you naughty child!--Well, what else?\"\n\n\"I took Rosa's yer-rings,--them red ones.\"\n\n\"Go bring them to me this minute, both of 'em.\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis! I can't,--they 's burnt up!\"\n\n\"Burnt up!--what a story! Go get 'em, or I'll whip you.\"\n\nTopsy, with loud protestations, and tears, and groans, declared that she\n_could_ not. \"They 's burnt up,--they was.\"\n\n\"What did you burn 'em for?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Cause I 's wicked,--I is. I 's mighty wicked, any how. I can't help\nit.\"\n\nJust at this moment, Eva came innocently into the room, with the\nidentical coral necklace on her neck.\n\n\"Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Get it? Why, I've had it on all day,\" said Eva.\n\n\"Did you have it on yesterday?\"\n\n\"Yes; and what is funny, Aunty, I had it on all night. I forgot to take\nit off when I went to bed.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered; the more so, as Rosa, at that\ninstant, came into the room, with a basket of newly-ironed linen poised\non her head, and the coral ear-drops shaking in her ears!\n\n\"I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child!\" she said,\nin despair. \"What in the world did you tell me you took those things\nfor, Topsy?\"\n\n\"Why, Missis said I must 'fess; and I couldn't think of nothin' else to\n'fess,\" said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.\n\n\"But, of course, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do,\"\nsaid Miss Ophelia; \"that's telling a lie, just as much as the other.\"\n\n\"Laws, now, is it?\" said Topsy, with an air of innocent wonder.\n\n\"La, there an't any such thing as truth in that limb,\" said Rosa,\nlooking indignantly at Topsy. \"If I was Mas'r St. Clare, I'd whip her\ntill the blood run. I would,--I'd let her catch it!\"\n\n\"No, no Rosa,\" said Eva, with an air of command, which the child could\nassume at times; \"you mustn't talk so, Rosa. I can't bear to hear it.\"\n\n\"La sakes! Miss Eva, you 's so good, you don't know nothing how to get\nalong with niggers. There's no way but to cut 'em well up, I tell ye.\"\n\n\"Rosa!\" said Eva, \"hush! Don't you say another word of that sort!\" and\nthe eye of the child flashed, and her cheek deepened its color.\n\nRosa was cowed in a moment.\n\n\"Miss Eva has got the St. Clare blood in her, that's plain. She can\nspeak, for all the world, just like her papa,\" she said, as she passed\nout of the room.\n\nEva stood looking at Topsy.\n\nThere stood the two children representatives of the two extremes of\nsociety. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes,\nher spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her\nblack, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the\nrepresentatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation,\ncommand, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages\nof oppression, submission, ignorance, toil and vice!\n\nSomething, perhaps, of such thoughts struggled through Eva's mind. But a\nchild's thoughts are rather dim, undefined instincts; and in Eva's noble\nnature many such were yearning and working, for which she had no power\nof utterance. When Miss Ophelia expatiated on Topsy's naughty, wicked\nconduct, the child looked perplexed and sorrowful, but said, sweetly.\n\n\"Poor Topsy, why need you steal? You're going to be taken good care of\nnow. I'm sure I'd rather give you anything of mine, than have you steal\nit.\"\n\nIt was the first word of kindness the child had ever heard in her life;\nand the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild, rude\nheart, and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen, round,\nglittering eye; but it was followed by the short laugh and habitual\ngrin. No! the ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely\nincredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness; and Topsy only thought\nEva's speech something funny and inexplicable,--she did not believe it.\n\nBut what was to be done with Topsy? Miss Ophelia found the case a\npuzzler; her rules for bringing up didn't seem to apply. She thought she\nwould take time to think of it; and, by the way of gaining time, and in\nhopes of some indefinite moral virtues supposed to be inherent in dark\nclosets, Miss Ophelia shut Topsy up in one till she had arranged her\nideas further on the subject.\n\n\"I don't see,\" said Miss Ophelia to St. Clare, \"how I'm going to manage\nthat child, without whipping her.\"\n\n\"Well, whip her, then, to your heart's content; I'll give you full power\nto do what you like.\"\n\n\"Children always have to be whipped,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"I never heard\nof bringing them up without.\"\n\n\"O, well, certainly,\" said St. Clare; \"do as you think best. Only I'll\nmake one suggestion: I've seen this child whipped with a poker, knocked\ndown with the shovel or tongs, whichever came handiest, &c.; and, seeing\nthat she is used to that style of operation, I think your whippings will\nhave to be pretty energetic, to make much impression.\"\n\n\"What is to be done with her, then?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"You have started a serious question,\" said St. Clare; \"I wish you'd\nanswer it. What is to be done with a human being that can be governed\nonly by the lash,--_that_ fails,--it's a very common state of things\ndown here!\"\n\n\"I'm sure I don't know; I never saw such a child as this.\"\n\n\"Such children are very common among us, and such men and women, too.\nHow are they to be governed?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"I'm sure it's more than I can say,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Or I either,\" said St. Clare. \"The horrid cruelties and outrages that\nonce and a while find their way into the papers,--such cases as Prue's,\nfor example,--what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual\nhardening process on both sides,--the owner growing more and more\ncruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like\nlaudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.\nI saw this very early when I became an owner; and I resolved never to\nbegin, because I did not know when I should stop,--and I resolved,\nat least, to protect my own moral nature. The consequence is, that my\nservants act like spoiled children; but I think that better than for us\nboth to be brutalized together. You have talked a great deal about our\nresponsibilities in educating, Cousin. I really wanted you to _try_ with\none child, who is a specimen of thousands among us.\"\n\n\"It is your system makes such children,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I know it; but they are _made_,--they exist,--and what _is_ to be done\nwith them?\"\n\n\"Well, I can't say I thank you for the experiment. But, then, as it\nappears to be a duty, I shall persevere and try, and do the best I\ncan,\" said Miss Ophelia; and Miss Ophelia, after this, did labor, with\na commendable degree of zeal and energy, on her new subject. She\ninstituted regular hours and employments for her, and undertook to teach\nher to read and sew.\n\nIn the former art, the child was quick enough. She learned her letters\nas if by magic, and was very soon able to read plain reading; but the\nsewing was a more difficult matter. The creature was as lithe as a\ncat, and as active as a monkey, and the confinement of sewing was her\nabomination; so she broke her needles, threw them slyly out of the\nwindow, or down in chinks of the walls; she tangled, broke, and\ndirtied her thread, or, with a sly movement, would throw a spool away\naltogether. Her motions were almost as quick as those of a practised\nconjurer, and her command of her face quite as great; and though Miss\nOphelia could not help feeling that so many accidents could not possibly\nhappen in succession, yet she could not, without a watchfulness which\nwould leave her no time for anything else, detect her.\n\nTopsy was soon a noted character in the establishment. Her talent for\nevery species of drollery, grimace, and mimicry,--for dancing, tumbling,\nclimbing, singing, whistling, imitating every sound that hit her\nfancy,--seemed inexhaustible. In her play-hours, she invariably had\nevery child in the establishment at her heels, open-mouthed with\nadmiration and wonder,--not excepting Miss Eva, who appeared to be\nfascinated by her wild diablerie, as a dove is sometimes charmed by\na glittering serpent. Miss Ophelia was uneasy that Eva should fancy\nTopsy's society so much, and implored St. Clare to forbid it.\n\n\"Poh! let the child alone,\" said St. Clare. \"Topsy will do her good.\"\n\n\"But so depraved a child,--are you not afraid she will teach her some\nmischief?\"\n\n\"She can't teach her mischief; she might teach it to some children, but\nevil rolls off Eva's mind like dew off a cabbage-leaf,--not a drop sinks\nin.\"\n\n\"Don't be too sure,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"I know I'd never let a child of\nmine play with Topsy.\"\n\n\"Well, your children needn't,\" said St. Clare, \"but mine may; if Eva\ncould have been spoiled, it would have been done years ago.\"\n\nTopsy was at first despised and contemned by the upper servants. They\nsoon found reason to alter their opinion. It was very soon discovered\nthat whoever cast an indignity on Topsy was sure to meet with some\ninconvenient accident shortly after;--either a pair of ear-rings or\nsome cherished trinket would be missing, or an article of dress would\nbe suddenly found utterly ruined, or the person would stumble\naccidently into a pail of hot water, or a libation of dirty slop would\nunaccountably deluge them from above when in full gala dress;-and on all\nthese occasions, when investigation was made, there was nobody found to\nstand sponsor for the indignity. Topsy was cited, and had up before\nall the domestic judicatories, time and again; but always sustained her\nexaminations with most edifying innocence and gravity of appearance.\nNobody in the world ever doubted who did the things; but not a scrap of\nany direct evidence could be found to establish the suppositions, and\nMiss Ophelia was too just to feel at liberty to proceed to any length\nwithout it.\n\nThe mischiefs done were always so nicely timed, also, as further to\nshelter the aggressor. Thus, the times for revenge on Rosa and Jane,\nthe two chamber maids, were always chosen in those seasons when (as not\nunfrequently happened) they were in disgrace with their mistress, when\nany complaint from them would of course meet with no sympathy. In short,\nTopsy soon made the household understand the propriety of letting her\nalone; and she was let alone, accordingly.\n\nTopsy was smart and energetic in all manual operations, learning\neverything that was taught her with surprising quickness. With a few\nlessons, she had learned to do the proprieties of Miss Ophelia's chamber\nin a way with which even that particular lady could find no fault.\nMortal hands could not lay spread smoother, adjust pillows more\naccurately, sweep and dust and arrange more perfectly, than Topsy, when\nshe chose,--but she didn't very often choose. If Miss Ophelia, after\nthree or four days of careful patient supervision, was so sanguine as\nto suppose that Topsy had at last fallen into her way, could do without\nover-looking, and so go off and busy herself about something else, Topsy\nwould hold a perfect carnival of confusion, for some one or two hours.\nInstead of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the\npillowcases, butting her woolly head among the pillows, till it would\nsometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking out in\nvarious directions; she would climb the posts, and hang head downward\nfrom the tops; flourish the sheets and spreads all over the apartment;\ndress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's night-clothes, and enact various\nperformances with that,--singing and whistling, and making grimaces\nat herself in the looking-glass; in short, as Miss Ophelia phrased it,\n\"raising Cain\" generally.\n\nOn one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet\nIndia Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban, going on\nwith her rehearsals before the glass in great style,--Miss Ophelia\nhaving, with carelessness most unheard-of in her, left the key for once\nin her drawer.\n\n\"Topsy!\" she would say, when at the end of all patience, \"what does make\nyou act so?\"\n\n\"Dunno, Missis,--I spects cause I 's so wicked!\"\n\n\"I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy.\"\n\n\"Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers whipped me. I an't\nused to workin' unless I gets whipped.\"\n\n\"Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well, if you've a mind\nto; what is the reason you won't?\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis, I 's used to whippin'; I spects it's good for me.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a terrible\ncommotion, screaming, groaning and imploring, though half an hour\nafterwards, when roosted on some projection of the balcony, and\nsurrounded by a flock of admiring \"young uns,\" she would express the\nutmost contempt of the whole affair.\n\n\"Law, Miss Feely whip!--wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whippins. Oughter\nsee how old Mas'r made the flesh fly; old Mas'r know'd how!\"\n\nTopsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormities,\nevidently considering them as something peculiarly distinguishing.\n\n\"Law, you niggers,\" she would say to some of her auditors, \"does you\nknow you 's all sinners? Well, you is--everybody is. White folks is\nsinners too,--Miss Feely says so; but I spects niggers is the biggest\nones; but lor! ye an't any on ye up to me. I 's so awful wicked there\ncan't nobody do nothin' with me. I used to keep old Missis a swarin' at\nme half de time. I spects I 's the wickedest critter in the world;\"\nand Topsy would cut a summerset, and come up brisk and shining on to a\nhigher perch, and evidently plume herself on the distinction.\n\nMiss Ophelia busied herself very earnestly on Sundays, teaching Topsy\nthe catechism. Topsy had an uncommon verbal memory, and committed with a\nfluency that greatly encouraged her instructress.\n\n\"What good do you expect it is going to do her?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Why, it always has done children good. It's what children always have\nto learn, you know,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Understand it or not,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"O, children never understand it at the time; but, after they are grown\nup, it'll come to them.\"\n\n\"Mine hasn't come to me yet,\" said St. Clare, \"though I'll bear\ntestimony that you put it into me pretty thoroughly when I was a boy.\"'\n\n\"Ah, you were always good at learning, Augustine. I used to have great\nhopes of you,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Well, haven't you now?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"I wish you were as good as you were when you were a boy, Augustine.\"\n\n\"So do I, that's a fact, Cousin,\" said St. Clare. \"Well, go ahead and\ncatechize Topsy; may be you'll make out something yet.\"\n\nTopsy, who had stood like a black statue during this discussion, with\nhands decently folded, now, at a signal from Miss Ophelia, went on:\n\n\"Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell\nfrom the state wherein they were created.\"\n\nTopsy's eyes twinkled, and she looked inquiringly.\n\n\"What is it, Topsy?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Please, Missis, was dat ar state Kintuck?\"\n\n\"What state, Topsy?\"\n\n\"Dat state dey fell out of. I used to hear Mas'r tell how we came down\nfrom Kintuck.\"\n\nSt. Clare laughed.\n\n\"You'll have to give her a meaning, or she'll make one,\" said he. \"There\nseems to be a theory of emigration suggested there.\"\n\n\"O! Augustine, be still,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"how can I do anything, if\nyou will be laughing?\"\n\n\"Well, I won't disturb the exercises again, on my honor;\" and St. Clare\ntook his paper into the parlor, and sat down, till Topsy had finished\nher recitations. They were all very well, only that now and then she\nwould oddly transpose some important words, and persist in the mistake,\nin spite of every effort to the contrary; and St. Clare, after all his\npromises of goodness, took a wicked pleasure in these mistakes, calling\nTopsy to him whenever he had a mind to amuse himself, and getting her to\nrepeat the offending passages, in spite of Miss Ophelia's remonstrances.\n\n\"How do you think I can do anything with the child, if you will go on\nso, Augustine?\" she would say.\n\n\"Well, it is too bad,--I won't again; but I do like to hear the droll\nlittle image stumble over those big words!\"\n\n\"But you confirm her in the wrong way.\"\n\n\"What's the odds? One word is as good as another to her.\"\n\n\"You wanted me to bring her up right; and you ought to remember she is a\nreasonable creature, and be careful of your influence over her.\"\n\n\"O, dismal! so I ought; but, as Topsy herself says, 'I 's so wicked!'\"\n\nIn very much this way Topsy's training proceeded, for a year or\ntwo,--Miss Ophelia worrying herself, from day to day, with her, as a\nkind of chronic plague, to whose inflictions she became, in time, as\naccustomed, as persons sometimes do to the neuralgia or sick headache.\n\nSt. Clare took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might\nin the tricks of a parrot or a pointer. Topsy, whenever her sins brought\nher into disgrace in other quarters, always took refuge behind his\nchair; and St. Clare, in one way or other, would make peace for her.\nFrom him she got many a stray picayune, which she laid out in nuts and\ncandies, and distributed, with careless generosity, to all the children\nin the family; for Topsy, to do her justice, was good-natured and\nliberal, and only spiteful in self-defence. She is fairly introduced\ninto our _corps de ballet_, and will figure, from time to time, in her\nturn, with other performers.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nKentuck\n\n\nOur readers may not be unwilling to glance back, for a brief interval,\nat Uncle Tom's Cabin, on the Kentucky farm, and see what has been\ntranspiring among those whom he had left behind.\n\nIt was late in the summer afternoon, and the doors and windows of the\nlarge parlor all stood open, to invite any stray breeze, that might feel\nin a good humor, to enter. Mr. Shelby sat in a large hall opening\ninto the room, and running through the whole length of the house, to\na balcony on either end. Leisurely tipped back on one chair, with his\nheels in another, he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar. Mrs. Shelby\nsat in the door, busy about some fine sewing; she seemed like one who\nhad something on her mind, which she was seeking an opportunity to\nintroduce.\n\n\"Do you know,\" she said, \"that Chloe has had a letter from Tom?\"\n\n\"Ah! has she? Tom 's got some friend there, it seems. How is the old\nboy?\"\n\n\"He has been bought by a very fine family, I should think,\" said Mrs.\nShelby,--\"is kindly treated, and has not much to do.\"\n\n\"Ah! well, I'm glad of it,--very glad,\" said Mr. Shelby, heartily. \"Tom,\nI suppose, will get reconciled to a Southern residence;--hardly want to\ncome up here again.\"\n\n\"On the contrary he inquires very anxiously,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"when\nthe money for his redemption is to be raised.\"\n\n\"I'm sure _I_ don't know,\" said Mr. Shelby. \"Once get business running\nwrong, there does seem to be no end to it. It's like jumping from one\nbog to another, all through a swamp; borrow of one to pay another, and\nthen borrow of another to pay one,--and these confounded notes falling\ndue before a man has time to smoke a cigar and turn round,--dunning\nletters and dunning messages,--all scamper and hurry-scurry.\"\n\n\"It does seem to me, my dear, that something might be done to straighten\nmatters. Suppose we sell off all the horses, and sell one of your farms,\nand pay up square?\"\n\n\"O, ridiculous, Emily! You are the finest woman in Kentucky; but still\nyou haven't sense to know that you don't understand business;--women\nnever do, and never can.\n\n\"But, at least,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"could not you give me some little\ninsight into yours; a list of all your debts, at least, and of all\nthat is owed to you, and let me try and see if I can't help you to\neconomize.\"\n\n\"O, bother! don't plague me, Emily!--I can't tell exactly. I know\nsomewhere about what things are likely to be; but there's no trimming\nand squaring my affairs, as Chloe trims crust off her pies. You don't\nknow anything about business, I tell you.\"\n\nAnd Mr. Shelby, not knowing any other way of enforcing his ideas, raised\nhis voice,--a mode of arguing very convenient and convincing, when a\ngentleman is discussing matters of business with his wife.\n\nMrs. Shelby ceased talking, with something of a sigh. The fact was,\nthat though her husband had stated she was a woman, she had a clear,\nenergetic, practical mind, and a force of character every way superior\nto that of her husband; so that it would not have been so very absurd\na supposition, to have allowed her capable of managing, as Mr. Shelby\nsupposed. Her heart was set on performing her promise to Tom and Aunt\nChloe, and she sighed as discouragements thickened around her.\n\n\"Don't you think we might in some way contrive to raise that money? Poor\nAunt Chloe! her heart is so set on it!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, if it is. I think I was premature in promising. I'm not\nsure, now, but it's the best way to tell Chloe, and let her make up\nher mind to it. Tom'll have another wife, in a year or two; and she had\nbetter take up with somebody else.\"\n\n\"Mr. Shelby, I have taught my people that their marriages are as sacred\nas ours. I never could think of giving Chloe such advice.\"\n\n\"It's a pity, wife, that you have burdened them with a morality above\ntheir condition and prospects. I always thought so.\"\n\n\"It's only the morality of the Bible, Mr. Shelby.\"\n\n\"Well, well, Emily, I don't pretend to interfere with your religious\nnotions; only they seem extremely unfitted for people in that\ncondition.\"\n\n\"They are, indeed,\" said Mrs. Shelby, \"and that is why, from my soul,\nI hate the whole thing. I tell you, my dear, _I_ cannot absolve myself\nfrom the promises I make to these helpless creatures. If I can get the\nmoney no other way I will take music-scholars;--I could get enough, I\nknow, and earn the money myself.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't degrade yourself that way, Emily? I never could consent to\nit.\"\n\n\"Degrade! would it degrade me as much as to break my faith with the\nhelpless? No, indeed!\"\n\n\"Well, you are always heroic and transcendental,\" said Mr. Shelby,\n\"but I think you had better think before you undertake such a piece of\nQuixotism.\"\n\nHere the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Aunt Chloe,\nat the end of the verandah.\n\n\"If you please, Missis,\" said she.\n\n\"Well, Chloe, what is it?\" said her mistress, rising, and going to the\nend of the balcony.\n\n\"If Missis would come and look at dis yer lot o' poetry.\"\n\nChloe had a particular fancy for calling poultry poetry,--an application\nof language in which she always persisted, notwithstanding frequent\ncorrections and advisings from the young members of the family.\n\n\"La sakes!\" she would say, \"I can't see; one jis good as turry,--poetry\nsuthin good, any how;\" and so poetry Chloe continued to call it.\n\nMrs. Shelby smiled as she saw a prostrate lot of chickens and ducks,\nover which Chloe stood, with a very grave face of consideration.\n\n\"I'm a thinkin whether Missis would be a havin a chicken pie o' dese\nyer.\"\n\n\"Really, Aunt Chloe, I don't much care;--serve them any way you like.\"\n\nChloe stood handling them over abstractedly; it was quite evident that\nthe chickens were not what she was thinking of. At last, with the short\nlaugh with which her tribe often introduce a doubtful proposal, she\nsaid,\n\n\"Laws me, Missis! what should Mas'r and Missis be a troublin theirselves\n'bout de money, and not a usin what's right in der hands?\" and Chloe\nlaughed again.\n\n\"I don't understand you, Chloe,\" said Mrs. Shelby, nothing doubting,\nfrom her knowledge of Chloe's manner, that she had heard every word of\nthe conversation that had passed between her and her husband.\n\n\"Why, laws me, Missis!\" said Chloe, laughing again, \"other folks hires\nout der niggers and makes money on 'em! Don't keep sich a tribe eatin\n'em out of house and home.\"\n\n\"Well, Chloe, who do you propose that we should hire out?\"\n\n\"Laws! I an't a proposin nothin; only Sam he said der was one of dese\nyer _perfectioners_, dey calls 'em, in Louisville, said he wanted a good\nhand at cake and pastry; and said he'd give four dollars a week to one,\nhe did.\"\n\n\"Well, Chloe.\"\n\n\"Well, laws, I 's a thinkin, Missis, it's time Sally was put along to\nbe doin' something. Sally 's been under my care, now, dis some time, and\nshe does most as well as me, considerin; and if Missis would only let\nme go, I would help fetch up de money. I an't afraid to put my cake, nor\npies nother, 'long side no _perfectioner's_.\n\n\"Confectioner's, Chloe.\"\n\n\"Law sakes, Missis! 'tan't no odds;--words is so curis, can't never get\n'em right!\"\n\n\"But, Chloe, do you want to leave your children?\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis! de boys is big enough to do day's works; dey does well\nenough; and Sally, she'll take de baby,--she's such a peart young un,\nshe won't take no lookin arter.\"\n\n\"Louisville is a good way off.\"\n\n\"Law sakes! who's afeard?--it's down river, somer near my old man,\nperhaps?\" said Chloe, speaking the last in the tone of a question, and\nlooking at Mrs. Shelby.\n\n\"No, Chloe; it's many a hundred miles off,\" said Mrs. Shelby.\n\nChloe's countenance fell.\n\n\"Never mind; your going there shall bring you nearer, Chloe. Yes, you\nmay go; and your wages shall every cent of them be laid aside for your\nhusband's redemption.\"\n\nAs when a bright sunbeam turns a dark cloud to silver, so Chloe's dark\nface brightened immediately,--it really shone.\n\n\"Laws! if Missis isn't too good! I was thinking of dat ar very thing;\ncause I shouldn't need no clothes, nor shoes, nor nothin,--I could save\nevery cent. How many weeks is der in a year, Missis?\"\n\n\"Fifty-two,\" said Mrs. Shelby.\n\n\"Laws! now, dere is? and four dollars for each on em. Why, how much 'd\ndat ar be?\"\n\n\"Two hundred and eight dollars,\" said Mrs. Shelby.\n\n\"Why-e!\" said Chloe, with an accent of surprise and delight; \"and how\nlong would it take me to work it out, Missis?\"\n\n\"Some four or five years, Chloe; but, then, you needn't do it all,--I\nshall add something to it.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't hear to Missis' givin lessons nor nothin. Mas'r's quite\nright in dat ar;--'t wouldn't do, no ways. I hope none our family ever\nbe brought to dat ar, while I 's got hands.\"\n\n\"Don't fear, Chloe; I'll take care of the honor of the family,\" said\nMrs. Shelby, smiling. \"But when do you expect to go?\"\n\n\"Well, I want spectin nothin; only Sam, he's a gwine to de river with\nsome colts, and he said I could go long with him; so I jes put my things\ntogether. If Missis was willin, I'd go with Sam tomorrow morning, if\nMissis would write my pass, and write me a commendation.\"\n\n\"Well, Chloe, I'll attend to it, if Mr. Shelby has no objections. I must\nspeak to him.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby went up stairs, and Aunt Chloe, delighted, went out to her\ncabin, to make her preparation.\n\n\"Law sakes, Mas'r George! ye didn't know I 's a gwine to Louisville\ntomorrow!\" she said to George, as entering her cabin, he found her busy\nin sorting over her baby's clothes. \"I thought I'd jis look over sis's\nthings, and get 'em straightened up. But I'm gwine, Mas'r George,--gwine\nto have four dollars a week; and Missis is gwine to lay it all up, to\nbuy back my old man agin!\"\n\n\"Whew!\" said George, \"here's a stroke of business, to be sure! How are\nyou going?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow, wid Sam. And now, Mas'r George, I knows you'll jis sit down\nand write to my old man, and tell him all about it,--won't ye?\"\n\n\"To be sure,\" said George; \"Uncle Tom'll be right glad to hear from us.\nI'll go right in the house, for paper and ink; and then, you know, Aunt\nChloe, I can tell about the new colts and all.\"\n\n\"Sartin, sartin, Mas'r George; you go 'long, and I'll get ye up a bit o'\nchicken, or some sich; ye won't have many more suppers wid yer poor old\naunty.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII\n\n\"The Grass Withereth--the Flower Fadeth\"\n\n\nLife passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend\nTom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held\ndear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never\npositively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human\nfeeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can\nwholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review\nappear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that\neach hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so\nthat, though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable.\n\nTom read, in his only literary cabinet, of one who had \"learned in\nwhatsoever state he was, therewith to be content.\" It seemed to him\ngood and reasonable doctrine, and accorded well with the settled and\nthoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same\nbook.\n\nHis letter homeward, as we related in the last chapter, was in due time\nanswered by Master George, in a good, round, school-boy hand, that\nTom said might be read \"most acrost the room.\" It contained various\nrefreshing items of home intelligence, with which our reader is fully\nacquainted: stated how Aunt Chloe had been hired out to a confectioner\nin Louisville, where her skill in the pastry line was gaining wonderful\nsums of money, all of which, Tom was informed, was to be laid up to go\nto make up the sum of his redemption money; Mose and Pete were thriving,\nand the baby was trotting all about the house, under the care of Sally\nand the family generally.\n\nTom's cabin was shut up for the present; but George expatiated\nbrilliantly on ornaments and additions to be made to it when Tom came\nback.\n\nThe rest of this letter gave a list of George's school studies, each\none headed by a flourishing capital; and also told the names of four new\ncolts that appeared on the premises since Tom left; and stated, in the\nsame connection, that father and mother were well. The style of the\nletter was decidedly concise and terse; but Tom thought it the most\nwonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times. He\nwas never tired of looking at it, and even held a council with Eva on\nthe expediency of getting it framed, to hang up in his room. Nothing but\nthe difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show\nat once stood in the way of this undertaking.\n\nThe friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth. It\nwould be hard to say what place she held in the soft, impressible heart\nof her faithful attendant. He loved her as something frail and earthly,\nyet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine. He gazed on\nher as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,--with a\nmixture of reverence and tenderness; and to humor her graceful fancies,\nand meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like\na many-colored rainbow, was Tom's chief delight. In the market, at\nmorning, his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets\nfor her, and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to\ngive to her when he came back; and the sight that pleased him most was\nher sunny head looking out the gate for his distant approach, and her\nchildish questions,--\"Well, Uncle Tom, what have you got for me today?\"\n\nNor was Eva less zealous in kind offices, in return. Though a child, she\nwas a beautiful reader;--a fine musical ear, a quick poetic fancy, and\nan instinctive sympathy with what's grand and noble, made her such a\nreader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard. At first, she read to\nplease her humble friend; but soon her own earnest nature threw out its\ntendrils, and wound itself around the majestic book; and Eva loved it,\nbecause it woke in her strange yearnings, and strong, dim emotions, such\nas impassioned, imaginative children love to feel.\n\nThe parts that pleased her most were the Revelations and the\nProphecies,--parts whose dim and wondrous imagery, and fervent\nlanguage, impressed her the more, that she questioned vainly of their\nmeaning;--and she and her simple friend, the old child and the young\none, felt just alike about it. All that they knew was, that they spoke\nof a glory to be revealed,--a wondrous something yet to come, wherein\ntheir soul rejoiced, yet knew not why; and though it be not so in the\nphysical, yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not\nalways profitless. For the soul awakes, a trembling stranger, between\ntwo dim eternities,--the eternal past, the eternal future. The light\nshines only on a small space around her; therefore, she needs must yearn\ntowards the unknown; and the voices and shadowy movings which come to\nher from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and\nanswers in her own expecting nature. Its mystic imagery are so many\ntalismans and gems inscribed with unknown hieroglyphics; she folds them\nin her bosom, and expects to read them when she passes beyond the veil.\n\nAt this time in our story, the whole St. Clare establishment is, for the\ntime being, removed to their villa on Lake Pontchartrain. The heats of\nsummer had driven all who were able to leave the sultry and unhealthy\ncity, to seek the shores of the lake, and its cool sea-breezes.\n\nSt. Clare's villa was an East Indian cottage, surrounded by light\nverandahs of bamboo-work, and opening on all sides into gardens and\npleasure-grounds. The common sitting-room opened on to a large garden,\nfragrant with every picturesque plant and flower of the tropics, where\nwinding paths ran down to the very shores of the lake, whose silvery\nsheet of water lay there, rising and falling in the sunbeams,--a picture\nnever for an hour the same, yet every hour more beautiful.\n\nIt is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the whole\nhorizon into one blaze of glory, and makes the water another sky. The\nlake lay in rosy or golden streaks, save where white-winged vessels\nglided hither and thither, like so many spirits, and little golden\nstars twinkled through the glow, and looked down at themselves as they\ntrembled in the water.\n\nTom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat, in an arbor, at the foot\nof the garden. It was Sunday evening, and Eva's Bible lay open on her\nknee. She read,--\"And I saw a sea of glass, mingled with fire.\"\n\n\"Tom,\" said Eva, suddenly stopping, and pointing to the lake, \"there 't\nis.\"\n\n\"What, Miss Eva?\"\n\n\"Don't you see,--there?\" said the child, pointing to the glassy water,\nwhich, as it rose and fell, reflected the golden glow of the sky.\n\"There's a 'sea of glass, mingled with fire.'\"\n\n\"True enough, Miss Eva,\" said Tom; and Tom sang--\n\n     \"O, had I the wings of the morning,\n     I'd fly away to Canaan's shore;\n     Bright angels should convey me home,\n     To the new Jerusalem.\"\n\n\"Where do you suppose new Jerusalem is, Uncle Tom?\" said Eva.\n\n\"O, up in the clouds, Miss Eva.\"\n\n\"Then I think I see it,\" said Eva. \"Look in those clouds!--they look\nlike great gates of pearl; and you can see beyond them--far, far\noff--it's all gold. Tom, sing about 'spirits bright.'\"\n\nTom sung the words of a well-known Methodist hymn,\n\n     \"I see a band of spirits bright,\n     That taste the glories there;\n     They all are robed in spotless white,\n     And conquering palms they bear.\"\n\n\"Uncle Tom, I've seen _them_,\" said Eva.\n\nTom had no doubt of it at all; it did not surprise him in the least.\nIf Eva had told him she had been to heaven, he would have thought it\nentirely probable.\n\n\"They come to me sometimes in my sleep, those spirits;\" and Eva's eyes\ngrew dreamy, and she hummed, in a low voice,\n\n     \"They are all robed in spotless white,\n     And conquering palms they bear.\"\n\n\"Uncle Tom,\" said Eva, \"I'm going there.\"\n\n\"Where, Miss Eva?\"\n\nThe child rose, and pointed her little hand to the sky; the glow of\nevening lit her golden hair and flushed cheek with a kind of unearthly\nradiance, and her eyes were bent earnestly on the skies.\n\n\"I'm going _there_,\" she said, \"to the spirits bright, Tom; _I'm going,\nbefore long_.\"\n\nThe faithful old heart felt a sudden thrust; and Tom thought how often\nhe had noticed, within six months, that Eva's little hands had grown\nthinner, and her skin more transparent, and her breath shorter; and how,\nwhen she ran or played in the garden, as she once could for hours, she\nbecame soon so tired and languid. He had heard Miss Ophelia speak often\nof a cough, that all her medicaments could not cure; and even now that\nfervent cheek and little hand were burning with hectic fever; and yet\nthe thought that Eva's words suggested had never come to him till now.\n\nHas there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their\nnames are always on grave-stones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly\neyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of\nyearning hearts. In how many families do you hear the legend that all\nthe goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms\nof one who _is not_. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels,\nwhose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the\nwayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in\ntheir homeward flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the\neye,--when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser\nthan the ordinary words of children,--hope not to retain that child; for\nthe seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from\nits eyes.\n\nEven so, beloved Eva! fair star of thy dwelling! Thou art passing away;\nbut they that love thee dearest know it not.\n\nThe colloquy between Tom and Eva was interrupted by a hasty call from\nMiss Ophelia.\n\n\"Eva--Eva!--why, child, the dew is falling; you mustn't be out there!\"\n\nEva and Tom hastened in.\n\nMiss Ophelia was old, and skilled in the tactics of nursing. She was\nfrom New England, and knew well the first guileful footsteps of that\nsoft, insidious disease, which sweeps away so many of the fairest\nand loveliest, and, before one fibre of life seems broken, seals them\nirrevocably for death.\n\nShe had noted the slight, dry cough, the daily brightening cheek;\nnor could the lustre of the eye, and the airy buoyancy born of fever,\ndeceive her.\n\nShe tried to communicate her fears to St. Clare; but he threw back\nher suggestions with a restless petulance, unlike his usual careless\ngood-humor.\n\n\"Don't be croaking, Cousin,--I hate it!\" he would say; \"don't you see\nthat the child is only growing. Children always lose strength when they\ngrow fast.\"\n\n\"But she has that cough!\"\n\n\"O! nonsense of that cough!--it is not anything. She has taken a little\ncold, perhaps.\"\n\n\"Well, that was just the way Eliza Jane was taken, and Ellen and Maria\nSanders.\"\n\n\"O! stop these hobgoblin' nurse legends. You old hands got so wise, that\na child cannot cough, or sneeze, but you see desperation and ruin at\nhand. Only take care of the child, keep her from the night air, and\ndon't let her play too hard, and she'll do well enough.\"\n\nSo St. Clare said; but he grew nervous and restless. He watched Eva\nfeverishly day by day, as might be told by the frequency with which\nhe repeated over that \"the child was quite well\"--that there wasn't\nanything in that cough,--it was only some little stomach affection, such\nas children often had. But he kept by her more than before, took her\noftener to ride with him, brought home every few days some receipt or\nstrengthening mixture,--\"not,\" he said, \"that the child _needed_ it, but\nthen it would not do her any harm.\"\n\nIf it must be told, the thing that struck a deeper pang to his heart\nthan anything else was the daily increasing maturity of the child's mind\nand feelings. While still retaining all a child's fanciful graces, yet\nshe often dropped, unconsciously, words of such a reach of thought, and\nstrange unworldly wisdom, that they seemed to be an inspiration. At such\ntimes, St. Clare would feel a sudden thrill, and clasp her in his arms,\nas if that fond clasp could save her; and his heart rose up with wild\ndetermination to keep her, never to let her go.\n\nThe child's whole heart and soul seemed absorbed in works of love and\nkindness. Impulsively generous she had always been; but there was\na touching and womanly thoughtfulness about her now, that every one\nnoticed. She still loved to play with Topsy, and the various colored\nchildren; but she now seemed rather a spectator than an actor of their\nplays, and she would sit for half an hour at a time, laughing at the odd\ntricks of Topsy,--and then a shadow would seem to pass across her face,\nher eyes grew misty, and her thoughts were afar.\n\n\"Mamma,\" she said, suddenly, to her mother, one day, \"why don't we teach\nour servants to read?\"\n\n\"What a question child! People never do.\"\n\n\"Why don't they?\" said Eva.\n\n\"Because it is no use for them to read. It don't help them to work any\nbetter, and they are not made for anything else.\"\n\n\"But they ought to read the Bible, mamma, to learn God's will.\"\n\n\"O! they can get that read to them all _they_ need.\"\n\n\"It seems to me, mamma, the Bible is for every one to read themselves.\nThey need it a great many times when there is nobody to read it.\"\n\n\"Eva, you are an odd child,\" said her mother.\n\n\"Miss Ophelia has taught Topsy to read,\" continued Eva.\n\n\"Yes, and you see how much good it does. Topsy is the worst creature I\never saw!\"\n\n\"Here's poor Mammy!\" said Eva. \"She does love the Bible so much, and\nwishes so she could read! And what will she do when I can't read to\nher?\"\n\nMarie was busy, turning over the contents of a drawer, as she answered,\n\n\"Well, of course, by and by, Eva, you will have other things to think\nof besides reading the Bible round to servants. Not but that is very\nproper; I've done it myself, when I had health. But when you come to\nbe dressing and going into company, you won't have time. See here!\" she\nadded, \"these jewels I'm going to give you when you come out. I wore\nthem to my first ball. I can tell you, Eva, I made a sensation.\"\n\nEva took the jewel-case, and lifted from it a diamond necklace. Her\nlarge, thoughtful eyes rested on them, but it was plain her thoughts\nwere elsewhere.\n\n\"How sober you look child!\" said Marie.\n\n\"Are these worth a great deal of money, mamma?\"\n\n\"To be sure, they are. Father sent to France for them. They are worth a\nsmall fortune.\"\n\n\"I wish I had them,\" said Eva, \"to do what I pleased with!\"\n\n\"What would you do with them?\"\n\n\"I'd sell them, and buy a place in the free states, and take all our\npeople there, and hire teachers, to teach them to read and write.\"\n\nEva was cut short by her mother's laughing.\n\n\"Set up a boarding-school! Wouldn't you teach them to play on the piano,\nand paint on velvet?\"\n\n\"I'd teach them to read their own Bible, and write their own letters,\nand read letters that are written to them,\" said Eva, steadily. \"I know,\nmamma, it does come very hard on them that they can't do these things.\nTom feels it--Mammy does,--a great many of them do. I think it's wrong.\"\n\n\"Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You don't know anything about\nthese things,\" said Marie; \"besides, your talking makes my head ache.\"\n\nMarie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not\nexactly suit her.\n\nEva stole away; but after that, she assiduously gave Mammy reading\nlessons.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\n\nHenrique\n\n\nAbout this time, St. Clare's brother Alfred, with his eldest son, a boy\nof twelve, spent a day or two with the family at the lake.\n\nNo sight could be more singular and beautiful than that of these twin\nbrothers. Nature, instead of instituting resemblances between them, had\nmade them opposites on every point; yet a mysterious tie seemed to unite\nthem in a closer friendship than ordinary.\n\nThey used to saunter, arm in arm, up and down the alleys and walks\nof the garden. Augustine, with his blue eyes and golden hair, his\nethereally flexible form and vivacious features; and Alfred, dark-eyed,\nwith haughty Roman profile, firmly-knit limbs, and decided bearing. They\nwere always abusing each other's opinions and practices, and yet never\na whit the less absorbed in each other's society; in fact, the very\ncontrariety seemed to unite them, like the attraction between opposite\npoles of the magnet.\n\nHenrique, the eldest son of Alfred, was a noble, dark-eyed, princely\nboy, full of vivacity and spirit; and, from the first moment of\nintroduction, seemed to be perfectly fascinated by the spirituelle\ngraces of his cousin Evangeline.\n\nEva had a little pet pony, of a snowy whiteness. It was easy as a\ncradle, and as gentle as its little mistress; and this pony was now\nbrought up to the back verandah by Tom, while a little mulatto boy of\nabout thirteen led along a small black Arabian, which had just been\nimported, at a great expense, for Henrique.\n\nHenrique had a boy's pride in his new possession; and, as he advanced\nand took the reins out of the hands of his little groom, he looked\ncarefully over him, and his brow darkened.\n\n\"What's this, Dodo, you little lazy dog! you haven't rubbed my horse\ndown, this morning.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Dodo, submissively; \"he got that dust on his own\nself.\"\n\n\"You rascal, shut your mouth!\" said Henrique, violently raising his\nriding-whip. \"How dare you speak?\"\n\nThe boy was a handsome, bright-eyed mulatto, of just Henrique's size,\nand his curling hair hung round a high, bold forehead. He had white\nblood in his veins, as could be seen by the quick flush in his cheek,\nand the sparkle of his eye, as he eagerly tried to speak.\n\n\"Mas'r Henrique!--\" he began.\n\nHenrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip, and, seizing\none of his arms, forced him on to his knees, and beat him till he was\nout of breath.\n\n\"There, you impudent dog! Now will you learn not to answer back when I\nspeak to you? Take the horse back, and clean him properly. I'll teach\nyou your place!\"\n\n\"Young Mas'r,\" said Tom, \"I specs what he was gwine to say was, that the\nhorse would roll when he was bringing him up from the stable; he's so\nfull of spirits,--that's the way he got that dirt on him; I looked to\nhis cleaning.\"\n\n\"You hold your tongue till you're asked to speak!\" said Henrique,\nturning on his heel, and walking up the steps to speak to Eva, who stood\nin her riding-dress.\n\n\"Dear Cousin, I'm sorry this stupid fellow has kept you waiting,\" he\nsaid. \"Let's sit down here, on this seat till they come. What's the\nmatter, Cousin?--you look sober.\"\n\n\"How could you be so cruel and wicked to poor Dodo?\" asked Eva.\n\n\"Cruel,--wicked!\" said the boy, with unaffected surprise. \"What do you\nmean, dear Eva?\"\n\n\"I don't want you to call me dear Eva, when you do so,\" said Eva.\n\n\"Dear Cousin, you don't know Dodo; it's the only way to manage him,\nhe's so full of lies and excuses. The only way is to put him down at\nonce,--not let him open his mouth; that's the way papa manages.\"\n\n\"But Uncle Tom said it was an accident, and he never tells what isn't\ntrue.\"\n\n\"He's an uncommon old nigger, then!\" said Henrique. \"Dodo will lie as\nfast as he can speak.\"\n\n\"You frighten him into deceiving, if you treat him so.\"\n\n\"Why, Eva, you've really taken such a fancy to Dodo, that I shall be\njealous.\"\n\n\"But you beat him,--and he didn't deserve it.\"\n\n\"O, well, it may go for some time when he does, and don't get it. A few\ncuts never come amiss with Dodo,--he's a regular spirit, I can tell you;\nbut I won't beat him again before you, if it troubles you.\"\n\nEva was not satisfied, but found it in vain to try to make her handsome\ncousin understand her feelings.\n\nDodo soon appeared, with the horses.\n\n\"Well, Dodo, you've done pretty well, this time,\" said his young master,\nwith a more gracious air. \"Come, now, and hold Miss Eva's horse while I\nput her on to the saddle.\"\n\nDodo came and stood by Eva's pony. His face was troubled; his eyes\nlooked as if he had been crying.\n\nHenrique, who valued himself on his gentlemanly adroitness in all\nmatters of gallantry, soon had his fair cousin in the saddle, and,\ngathering the reins, placed them in her hands.\n\nBut Eva bent to the other side of the horse, where Dodo was standing,\nand said, as he relinquished the reins,--\"That's a good boy,\nDodo;--thank you!\"\n\nDodo looked up in amazement into the sweet young face; the blood rushed\nto his cheeks, and the tears to his eyes.\n\n\"Here, Dodo,\" said his master, imperiously.\n\nDodo sprang and held the horse, while his master mounted.\n\n\"There's a picayune for you to buy candy with, Dodo,\" said Henrique; \"go\nget some.\"\n\nAnd Henrique cantered down the walk after Eva. Dodo stood looking after\nthe two children. One had given him money; and one had given him what he\nwanted far more,--a kind word, kindly spoken. Dodo had been only a\nfew months away from his mother. His master had bought him at a slave\nwarehouse, for his handsome face, to be a match to the handsome pony;\nand he was now getting his breaking in, at the hands of his young\nmaster.\n\nThe scene of the beating had been witnessed by the two brothers St.\nClare, from another part of the garden.\n\nAugustine's cheek flushed; but he only observed, with his usual\nsarcastic carelessness.\n\n\"I suppose that's what we may call republican education, Alfred?\"\n\n\"Henrique is a devil of a fellow, when his blood's up,\" said Alfred,\ncarelessly.\n\n\"I suppose you consider this an instructive practice for him,\" said\nAugustine, drily.\n\n\"I couldn't help it, if I didn't. Henrique is a regular little\ntempest;--his mother and I have given him up, long ago. But, then, that\nDodo is a perfect sprite,--no amount of whipping can hurt him.\"\n\n\"And this by way of teaching Henrique the first verse of a republican's\ncatechism, 'All men are born free and equal!'\"\n\n\"Poh!\" said Alfred; \"one of Tom Jefferson's pieces of French sentiment\nand humbug. It's perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds\namong us, to this day.\"\n\n\"I think it is,\" said St. Clare, significantly.\n\n\"Because,\" said Alfred, \"we can see plainly enough that all men are\n_not_ born free, nor born equal; they are born anything else. For\nmy part, I think half this republican talk sheer humbug. It is the\neducated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have\nequal rights and not the canaille.\"\n\n\"If you can keep the canaille of that opinion,\" said Augustine. \"They\ntook _their_ turn once, in France.\"\n\n\"Of course, they must be _kept down_, consistently, steadily, as\nI _should_,\" said Alfred, setting his foot hard down as if he were\nstanding on somebody.\n\n\"It makes a terrible slip when they get up,\" said Augustine,--\"in St.\nDomingo, for instance.\"\n\n\"Poh!\" said Alfred, \"we'll take care of that, in this country. We must\nset our face against all this educating, elevating talk, that is getting\nabout now; the lower class must not be educated.\"\n\n\"That is past praying for,\" said Augustine; \"educated they will be, and\nwe have only to say how. Our system is educating them in barbarism and\nbrutality. We are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute\nbeasts; and, if they get the upper hand, such we shall find them.\"\n\n\"They shall never get the upper hand!\" said Alfred.\n\n\"That's right,\" said St. Clare; \"put on the steam, fasten down the\nescape-valve, and sit on it, and see where you'll land.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Alfred, \"we _will_ see. I'm not afraid to sit on the\nescape-valve, as long as the boilers are strong, and the machinery works\nwell.\"\n\n\"The nobles in Louis XVI.'s time thought just so; and Austria and Pius\nIX. think so now; and, some pleasant morning, you may all be caught up\nto meet each other in the air, _when the boilers burst_.\"\n\n\"_Dies declarabit_,\" said Alfred, laughing.\n\n\"I tell you,\" said Augustine, \"if there is anything that is revealed\nwith the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses\nare to rise, and the under class become the upper one.\"\n\n\"That's one of your red republican humbugs, Augustine! Why didn't you\never take to the stump;--you'd make a famous stump orator! Well, I hope\nI shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses comes on.\"\n\n\"Greasy or not greasy, they will govern _you_, when their time comes,\"\nsaid Augustine; \"and they will be just such rulers as you make them. The\nFrench noblesse chose to have the people '_sans culottes_,' and they\nhad '_sans culotte_' governors to their hearts' content. The people of\nHayti--\"\n\n\"O, come, Augustine! as if we hadn't had enough of that abominable,\ncontemptible Hayti!* The Haytiens were not Anglo Saxons; if they\nhad been there would have been another story. The Anglo Saxon is the\ndominant race of the world, and _is to be so_.\"\n\n     * In August 1791, as a consequence of the French Revolution,\n     the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt\n     against the whites, and in the period of turmoil that\n     followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.\n     The \"Emperor\" Dessalines, come to power in 1804, massacred\n     all the whites on the island.  Haitian bloodshed became an\n     argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro, a\n     doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated\n     lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.\n\n\"Well, there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our\nslaves, now,\" said Augustine. \"There are plenty among them who have only\nenough of the African to give a sort of tropical warmth and fervor to\nour calculating firmness and foresight. If ever the San Domingo hour\ncomes, Anglo Saxon blood will lead on the day. Sons of white fathers,\nwith all our haughty feelings burning in their veins, will not always\nbe bought and sold and traded. They will rise, and raise with them their\nmother's race.\"\n\n\"Stuff!--nonsense!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Augustine, \"there goes an old saying to this effect, 'As\nit was in the days of Noah so shall it be;--they ate, they drank, they\nplanted, they builded, and knew not till the flood came and took them.'\"\n\n\"On the whole, Augustine, I think your talents might do for a circuit\nrider,\" said Alfred, laughing. \"Never you fear for us; possession is our\nnine points. We've got the power. This subject race,\" said he, stamping\nfirmly, \"is down and shall _stay_ down! We have energy enough to manage\nour own powder.\"\n\n\"Sons trained like your Henrique will be grand guardians of your\npowder-magazines,\" said Augustine,--\"so cool and self-possessed!\nThe proverb says, 'They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern\nothers.'\"\n\n\"There is a trouble there\" said Alfred, thoughtfully; \"there's no doubt\nthat our system is a difficult one to train children under. It gives too\nfree scope to the passions, altogether, which, in our climate, are\nhot enough. I find trouble with Henrique. The boy is generous and\nwarm-hearted, but a perfect fire-cracker when excited. I believe I shall\nsend him North for his education, where obedience is more fashionable,\nand where he will associate more with equals, and less with dependents.\"\n\n\"Since training children is the staple work of the human race,\" said\nAugustine, \"I should think it something of a consideration that our\nsystem does not work well there.\"\n\n\"It does not for some things,\" said Alfred; \"for others, again, it does.\nIt makes boys manly and courageous; and the very vices of an abject race\ntend to strengthen in them the opposite virtues. I think Henrique,\nnow, has a keener sense of the beauty of truth, from seeing lying and\ndeception the universal badge of slavery.\"\n\n\"A Christian-like view of the subject, certainly!\" said Augustine.\n\n\"It's true, Christian-like or not; and is about as Christian-like as\nmost other things in the world,\" said Alfred.\n\n\"That may be,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Well, there's no use in talking, Augustine. I believe we've been round\nand round this old track five hundred times, more or less. What do you\nsay to a game of backgammon?\"\n\nThe two brothers ran up the verandah steps, and were soon seated at a\nlight bamboo stand, with the backgammon-board between them. As they were\nsetting their men, Alfred said,\n\n\"I tell you, Augustine, if I thought as you do, I should do something.\"\n\n\"I dare say you would,--you are one of the doing sort,--but what?\"\n\n\"Why, elevate your own servants, for a specimen,\" said Alfred, with a\nhalf-scornful smile.\n\n\"You might as well set Mount Ætna on them flat, and tell them to\nstand up under it, as tell me to elevate my servants under all the\nsuperincumbent mass of society upon them. One man can do nothing,\nagainst the whole action of a community. Education, to do anything, must\nbe a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a\ncurrent.\"\n\n\"You take the first throw,\" said Alfred; and the brothers were soon lost\nin the game, and heard no more till the scraping of horses' feet was\nheard under the verandah.\n\n\"There come the children,\" said Augustine, rising. \"Look here, Alf! Did\nyou ever see anything so beautiful?\" And, in truth, it _was_ a beautiful\nsight. Henrique, with his bold brow, and dark, glossy curls, and glowing\ncheek, was laughing gayly as he bent towards his fair cousin, as they\ncame on. She was dressed in a blue riding dress, with a cap of the same\ncolor. Exercise had given a brilliant hue to her cheeks, and heightened\nthe effect of her singularly transparent skin, and golden hair.\n\n\"Good heavens! what perfectly dazzling beauty!\" said Alfred. \"I tell\nyou, Auguste, won't she make some hearts ache, one of these days?\"\n\n\"She will, too truly,--God knows I'm afraid so!\" said St. Clare, in a\ntone of sudden bitterness, as he hurried down to take her off her horse.\n\n\"Eva darling! you're not much tired?\" he said, as he clasped her in his\narms.\n\n\"No, papa,\" said the child; but her short, hard breathing alarmed her\nfather.\n\n\"How could you ride so fast, dear?--you know it's bad for you.\"\n\n\"I felt so well, papa, and liked it so much, I forgot.\"\n\nSt. Clare carried her in his arms into the parlor, and laid her on the\nsofa.\n\n\"Henrique, you must be careful of Eva,\" said he; \"you mustn't ride fast\nwith her.\"\n\n\"I'll take her under my care,\" said Henrique, seating himself by the\nsofa, and taking Eva's hand.\n\nEva soon found herself much better. Her father and uncle resumed their\ngame, and the children were left together.\n\n\"Do you know, Eva, I'm sorry papa is only going to stay two days here,\nand then I shan't see you again for ever so long! If I stay with you,\nI'd try to be good, and not be cross to Dodo, and so on. I don't mean\nto treat Dodo ill; but, you know, I've got such a quick temper. I'm not\nreally bad to him, though. I give him a picayune, now and then; and you\nsee he dresses well. I think, on the whole, Dodo 's pretty well off.\"\n\n\"Would you think you were well off, if there were not one creature in\nthe world near you to love you?\"\n\n\"I?--Well, of course not.\"\n\n\"And you have taken Dodo away from all the friends he ever had, and now\nhe has not a creature to love him;--nobody can be good that way.\"\n\n\"Well, I can't help it, as I know of. I can't get his mother and I can't\nlove him myself, nor anybody else, as I know of.\"\n\n\"Why can't you?\" said Eva.\n\n\"_Love_ Dodo! Why, Eva, you wouldn't have me! I may _like_ him well\nenough; but you don't _love_ your servants.\"\n\n\"I do, indeed.\"\n\n\"How odd!\"\n\n\"Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?\"\n\n\"O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many such things; but, then,\nnobody ever thinks of doing them,--you know, Eva, nobody does.\"\n\nEva did not speak; her eyes were fixed and thoughtful for a few moments.\n\n\"At any rate,\" she said, \"dear Cousin, do love poor Dodo, and be kind to\nhim, for my sake!\"\n\n\"I could love anything, for your sake, dear Cousin; for I really think\nyou are the loveliest creature that I ever saw!\" And Henrique spoke\nwith an earnestness that flushed his handsome face. Eva received it with\nperfect simplicity, without even a change of feature; merely saying,\n\"I'm glad you feel so, dear Henrique! I hope you will remember.\"\n\nThe dinner-bell put an end to the interview.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIV\n\nForeshadowings\n\n\nTwo days after this, Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted; and Eva, who\nhad been stimulated, by the society of her young cousin, to exertions\nbeyond her strength, began to fail rapidly. St. Clare was at last\nwilling to call in medical advice,--a thing from which he had always\nshrunk, because it was the admission of an unwelcome truth.\n\nBut, for a day or two, Eva was so unwell as to be confined to the house;\nand the doctor was called.\n\nMarie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child's gradually decaying\nhealth and strength, because she was completely absorbed in studying out\ntwo or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was\na victim. It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever\nwas or could be so great a sufferer as _herself_; and, therefore, she\nalways repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her\ncould be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it was nothing\nbut laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had the suffering\n_she_ had, they would soon know the difference.\n\nMiss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about\nEva; but to no avail.\n\n\"I don't see as anything ails the child,\" she would say; \"she runs\nabout, and plays.\"\n\n\"But she has a cough.\"\n\n\"Cough! you don't need to tell _me_ about a cough. I've always been\nsubject to a cough, all my days. When I was of Eva's age, they thought\nI was in a consumption. Night after night, Mammy used to sit up with me.\nO! Eva's cough is not anything.\"\n\n\"But she gets weak, and is short-breathed.\"\n\n\"Law! I've had that, years and years; it's only a nervous affection.\"\n\n\"But she sweats so, nights!\"\n\n\"Well, I have, these ten years. Very often, night after night, my\nclothes will be wringing wet. There won't be a dry thread in my\nnight-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up\nto dry! Eva doesn't sweat anything like that!\"\n\nMiss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season. But, now that Eva was fairly\nand visibly prostrated, and a doctor called, Marie, all on a sudden,\ntook a new turn.\n\n\"She knew it,\" she said; \"she always felt it, that she was destined\nto be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched\nhealth, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her\neyes;\"--and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded,\nwith more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery.\n\n\"My dear Marie, don't talk so!\" said St. Clare. \"You ought not to give up\nthe case so, at once.\"\n\n\"You have not a mother's feelings, St. Clare! You never could understand\nme!--you don't now.\"\n\n\"But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case!\"\n\n\"I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If _you_ don't\nfeel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It's a blow\ntoo much for me, with all I was bearing before.\"\n\n\"It's true,\" said St. Clare, \"that Eva is very delicate, _that_ I always\nknew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her strength; and\nthat her situation is critical. But just now she is only prostrated by\nthe heat of the weather, and by the excitement of her cousin's visit,\nand the exertions she made. The physician says there is room for hope.\"\n\n\"Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do; it's a\nmercy if people haven't sensitive feelings, in this world. I am sure I\nwish I didn't feel as I do; it only makes me completely wretched! I wish\nI _could_ be as easy as the rest of you!\"\n\nAnd the \"rest of them\" had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for\nMarie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts\nof inflictions on every one about her. Every word that was spoken by\nanybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only\na new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings,\nwho were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of these\nspeeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her mamma,\nand in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.\n\nIn a week or two, there was a great improvement of symptoms,--one of\nthose deceitful lulls, by which her inexorable disease so often beguiles\nthe anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva's step was again\nin the garden,--in the balconies; she played and laughed again,--and\nher father, in a transport, declared that they should soon have her\nas hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no\nencouragement from this illusive truce. There was one other heart, too,\nthat felt the same certainty, and that was the little heart of Eva. What\nis it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its\nearthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or\nthe soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be it what it may,\nit rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty\nthat Heaven was near; calm as the light of sunset, sweet as the bright\nstillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by\nsorrow for those who loved her so dearly.\n\nFor the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding\nbefore her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had no\nregret for herself in dying.\n\nIn that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much\ntogether, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who\nloved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased to\nbe an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a living,\nall-surrounding reality. His love enfolded her childish heart with more\nthan mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was going, and\nto his home.\n\nBut her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave\nbehind. Her father most,--for Eva, though she never distinctly thought\nso, had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than\nany other. She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature,\nand all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and\nperplexed her; for she had a child's implicit trust that her mother\ncould not do wrong. There was something about her that Eva never could\nmake out; and she always smoothed it over with thinking that, after all,\nit was mamma, and she loved her very dearly indeed.\n\nShe felt, too, for those fond, faithful servants, to whom she was as\ndaylight and sunshine. Children do not usually generalize; but Eva was\nan uncommonly mature child, and the things that she had witnessed of the\nevils of the system under which they were living had fallen, one by\none, into the depths of her thoughtful, pondering heart. She had vague\nlongings to do something for them,--to bless and save not only them,\nbut all in their condition,--longings that contrasted sadly with the\nfeebleness of her little frame.\n\n\"Uncle Tom,\" she said, one day, when she was reading to her friend, \"I\ncan understand why Jesus _wanted_ to die for us.\"\n\n\"Why, Miss Eva?\"\n\n\"Because I've felt so, too.\"\n\n\"What is it Miss Eva?--I don't understand.\"\n\n\"I can't tell you; but, when I saw those poor creatures on the boat,\nyou know, when you came up and I,--some had lost their mothers, and some\ntheir husbands, and some mothers cried for their little children--and\nwhen I heard about poor Prue,--oh, wasn't that dreadful!--and a great\nmany other times, I've felt that I would be glad to die, if my dying\ncould stop all this misery. _I would_ die for them, Tom, if I could,\"\nsaid the child, earnestly, laying her little thin hand on his.\n\nTom looked at the child with awe; and when she, hearing her father's\nvoice, glided away, he wiped his eyes many times, as he looked after\nher.\n\n\"It's jest no use tryin' to keep Miss Eva here,\" he said to Mammy, whom\nhe met a moment after. \"She's got the Lord's mark in her forehead.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, yes,\" said Mammy, raising her hands; \"I've allers said so.\nShe wasn't never like a child that's to live--there was allers something\ndeep in her eyes. I've told Missis so, many the time; it's a comin'\ntrue,--we all sees it,--dear, little, blessed lamb!\"\n\nEva came tripping up the verandah steps to her father. It was late in\nthe afternoon, and the rays of the sun formed a kind of glory behind\nher, as she came forward in her white dress, with her golden hair and\nglowing cheeks, her eyes unnaturally bright with the slow fever that\nburned in her veins.\n\nSt. Clare had called her to show a statuette that he had been buying\nfor her; but her appearance, as she came on, impressed him suddenly and\npainfully. There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that we\ncannot bear to look at it. Her father folded her suddenly in his arms,\nand almost forgot what he was going to tell her.\n\n\"Eva, dear, you are better now-a-days,--are you not?\"\n\n\"Papa,\" said Eva, with sudden firmness \"I've had things I wanted to say\nto you, a great while. I want to say them now, before I get weaker.\"\n\nSt. Clare trembled as Eva seated herself in his lap. She laid her head\non his bosom, and said,\n\n\"It's all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer. The time is\ncoming that I am going to leave you. I am going, and never to come\nback!\" and Eva sobbed.\n\n\"O, now, my dear little Eva!\" said St. Clare, trembling as he spoke, but\nspeaking cheerfully, \"you've got nervous and low-spirited; you mustn't\nindulge such gloomy thoughts. See here, I've bought a statuette for\nyou!\"\n\n\"No, papa,\" said Eva, putting it gently away, \"don't deceive\nyourself!--I am _not_ any better, I know it perfectly well,--and I am\ngoing, before long. I am not nervous,--I am not low-spirited. If it were\nnot for you, papa, and my friends, I should be perfectly happy. I want\nto go,--I long to go!\"\n\n\"Why, dear child, what has made your poor little heart so sad? You have\nhad everything, to make you happy, that could be given you.\"\n\n\"I had rather be in heaven; though, only for my friends' sake, I would\nbe willing to live. There are a great many things here that make me sad,\nthat seem dreadful to me; I had rather be there; but I don't want to\nleave you,--it almost breaks my heart!\"\n\n\"What makes you sad, and seems dreadful, Eva?\"\n\n\"O, things that are done, and done all the time. I feel sad for our poor\npeople; they love me dearly, and they are all good and kind to me. I\nwish, papa, they were all _free_.\"\n\n\"Why, Eva, child, don't you think they are well enough off now?\"\n\n\"O, but, papa, if anything should happen to you, what would become of\nthem? There are very few men like you, papa. Uncle Alfred isn't like\nyou, and mamma isn't; and then, think of poor old Prue's owners! What\nhorrid things people do, and can do!\" and Eva shuddered.\n\n\"My dear child, you are too sensitive. I'm sorry I ever let you hear\nsuch stories.\"\n\n\"O, that's what troubles me, papa. You want me to live so happy, and\nnever to have any pain,--never suffer anything,--not even hear a sad\nstory, when other poor creatures have nothing but pain and sorrow, all\ntheir lives;--it seems selfish. I ought to know such things, I ought to\nfeel about them! Such things always sunk into my heart; they went down\ndeep; I've thought and thought about them. Papa, isn't there any way to\nhave all slaves made free?\"\n\n\"That's a difficult question, dearest. There's no doubt that this way\nis a very bad one; a great many people think so; I do myself I heartily\nwish that there were not a slave in the land; but, then, I don't know\nwhat is to be done about it!\"\n\n\"Papa, you are such a good man, and so noble, and kind, and you always\nhave a way of saying things that is so pleasant, couldn't you go all\nround and try to persuade people to do right about this? When I am dead,\npapa, then you will think of me, and do it for my sake. I would do it,\nif I could.\"\n\n\"When you are dead, Eva,\" said St. Clare, passionately. \"O, child, don't\ntalk to me so! You are all I have on earth.\"\n\n\"Poor old Prue's child was all that she had,--and yet she had to hear it\ncrying, and she couldn't help it! Papa, these poor creatures love their\nchildren as much as you do me. O! do something for them! There's poor\nMammy loves her children; I've seen her cry when she talked about them.\nAnd Tom loves his children; and it's dreadful, papa, that such things\nare happening, all the time!\"\n\n\"There, there, darling,\" said St. Clare, soothingly; \"only don't\ndistress yourself, don't talk of dying, and I will do anything you\nwish.\"\n\n\"And promise me, dear father, that Tom shall have his freedom as soon\nas\"--she stopped, and said, in a hesitating tone--\"I am gone!\"\n\n\"Yes, dear, I will do anything in the world,--anything you could ask me\nto.\"\n\n\"Dear papa,\" said the child, laying her burning cheek against his, \"how\nI wish we could go together!\"\n\n\"Where, dearest?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"To our Saviour's home; it's so sweet and peaceful there--it is all so\nloving there!\" The child spoke unconsciously, as of a place where she\nhad often been. \"Don't you want to go, papa?\" she said.\n\nSt. Clare drew her closer to him, but was silent.\n\n\"You will come to me,\" said the child, speaking in a voice of calm\ncertainty which she often used unconsciously.\n\n\"I shall come after you. I shall not forget you.\"\n\nThe shadows of the solemn evening closed round them deeper and deeper,\nas St. Clare sat silently holding the little frail form to his bosom.\nHe saw no more the deep eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit\nvoice, and, as in a sort of judgment vision, his whole past life rose in\na moment before his eyes: his mother's prayers and hymns; his own early\nyearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this hour, years\nof worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls respectable living.\nWe can think _much_, very much, in a moment. St. Clare saw and felt many\nthings, but spoke nothing; and, as it grew darker, he took his child\nto her bed-room; and, when she was prepared for rest; he sent away the\nattendants, and rocked her in his arms, and sung to her till she was\nasleep.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV\n\nThe Little Evangelist\n\nIt was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge in\nthe verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclined on a\nsofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely secluded,\nunder an awning of transparent gauze, from the outrages of the\nmosquitos, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly bound\nprayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she imagined\nshe had been reading it,--though, in fact, she had been only taking a\nsuccession of short naps, with it open in her hand.\n\nMiss Ophelia, who, after some rummaging, had hunted up a small Methodist\nmeeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom as driver, to\nattend it; and Eva had accompanied them.\n\n\"I say, Augustine,\" said Marie after dozing a while, \"I must send to the\ncity after my old Doctor Posey; I'm sure I've got the complaint of the\nheart.\"\n\n\"Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems\nskilful.\"\n\n\"I would not trust him in a critical case,\" said Marie; \"and I think\nI may say mine is becoming so! I've been thinking of it, these two\nor three nights past; I have such distressing pains, and such strange\nfeelings.\"\n\n\"O, Marie, you are blue; I don't believe it's heart complaint.\"\n\n\"I dare say _you_ don't,\" said Marie; \"I was prepared to expect _that_.\nYou can be alarmed enough, if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the\nmatter with her; but you never think of me.\"\n\n\"If it's particularly agreeable to you to have heart disease, why, I'll\ntry and maintain you have it,\" said St. Clare; \"I didn't know it was.\"\n\n\"Well, I only hope you won't be sorry for this, when it's too late!\"\nsaid Marie; \"but, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the\nexertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have\nlong suspected.\"\n\nWhat the _exertions_ were which Marie referred to, it would have been\ndifficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself,\nand went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was,\ntill a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia\nalighted.\n\nMiss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her bonnet\nand shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word on any\nsubject; while Eva came, at St. Clare's call, and was sitting on his\nknee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.\n\nThey soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia's room, which,\nlike the one in which they were sitting, opened on to the verandah and\nviolent reproof addressed to somebody.\n\n\"What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?\" asked St. Clare. \"That\ncommotion is of her raising, I'll be bound!\"\n\nAnd, in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came dragging\nthe culprit along.\n\n\"Come out here, now!\" she said. \"I _will_ tell your master!\"\n\n\"What's the case now?\" asked Augustine.\n\n\"The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child, any longer! It's\npast all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I locked her\nup, and gave her a hymn to study; and what does she do, but spy\nout where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau, and got a\nbonnet-trimming, and cut it all to pieces to make dolls' jackets! I never\nsaw anything like it, in my life!\"\n\n\"I told you, Cousin,\" said Marie, \"that you'd find out that these\ncreatures can't be brought up without severity. If I had _my_ way, now,\"\nshe said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, \"I'd send that child out,\nand have her thoroughly whipped; I'd have her whipped till she couldn't\nstand!\"\n\n\"I don't doubt it,\" said St. Clare. \"Tell me of the lovely rule of\nwoman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn't half kill a horse,\nor a servant, either, if they had their own way with them!--let alone a\nman.\"\n\n\"There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, St. Clare!\" said\nMarie. \"Cousin is a woman of sense, and she sees it now, as plain as I\ndo.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia had just the capability of indignation that belongs to the\nthorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively roused\nby the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many of my\nlady readers must own that they should have felt just so in her\ncircumstances; but Marie's words went beyond her, and she felt less\nheat.\n\n\"I wouldn't have the child treated so, for the world,\" she said; \"but,\nI am sure, Augustine, I don't know what to do. I've taught and taught;\nI've talked till I'm tired; I've whipped her; I've punished her in every\nway I can think of, and she's just what she was at first.\"\n\n\"Come here, Tops, you monkey!\" said St. Clare, calling the child up to\nhim.\n\nTopsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a\nmixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.\n\n\"What makes you behave so?\" said St. Clare, who could not help being\namused with the child's expression.\n\n\"Spects it's my wicked heart,\" said Topsy, demurely; \"Miss Feely says\nso.\"\n\n\"Don't you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says she has\ndone everything she can think of.\"\n\n\"Lor, yes, Mas'r! old Missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap\nharder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but\nit didn't do me no good! I spects, if they 's to pull every spire o' har\nout o' my head, it wouldn't do no good, neither,--I 's so wicked! Laws!\nI 's nothin but a nigger, no ways!\"\n\n\"Well, I shall have to give her up,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"I can't have\nthat trouble any longer.\"\n\n\"Well, I'd just like to ask one question,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"What is it?\"\n\n\"Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child,\nthat you can have at home here, all to yourself, what's the use of\nsending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just\nsuch? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of\nyour heathen are.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a\nsilent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to\nfollow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah,\nwhich St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy\ndisappeared into this place.\n\n\"What's Eva going about, now?\" said St. Clare; \"I mean to see.\"\n\nAnd, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the\nglass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips,\nhe made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the\ntwo children on the floor, with their side faces towards them. Topsy,\nwith her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to\nher, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large\neyes.\n\n\"What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won't you try and be good? Don't\nyou love _anybody_, Topsy?\"\n\n\"Donno nothing 'bout love; I loves candy and sich, that's all,\" said\nTopsy.\n\n\"But you love your father and mother?\"\n\n\"Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva.\"\n\n\"O, I know,\" said Eva, sadly; \"but hadn't you any brother, or sister, or\naunt, or--\"\n\n\"No, none on 'em,--never had nothing nor nobody.\"\n\n\"But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might--\"\n\n\"Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,\" said\nTopsy. \"If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.\"\n\n\"But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would\nlove you, if you were good.\"\n\nTopsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing\nincredulity.\n\n\"Don't you think so?\" said Eva.\n\n\"No; she can't bar me, 'cause I'm a nigger!--she'd 's soon have a\ntoad touch her! There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do\nnothin'! _I_ don't care,\" said Topsy, beginning to whistle.\n\n\"O, Topsy, poor child, _I_ love you!\" said Eva, with a sudden burst of\nfeeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder;\n\"I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or\nfriends;--because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I\nwant you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live\na great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I\nwish you would try to be good, for my sake;--it's only a little while I\nshall be with you.\"\n\nThe round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with\ntears;--large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on\nthe little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray\nof heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She\nlaid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,--while the\nbeautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some\nbright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.\n\n\"Poor Topsy!\" said Eva, \"don't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He\nis just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do,--only\nmore, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go\nto Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you\nwere white. Only think of it, Topsy!--_you_ can be one of those spirits\nbright, Uncle Tom sings about.\"\n\n\"O, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva!\" said the child; \"I will try, I will\ntry; I never did care nothin' about it before.\"\n\nSt. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. \"It puts me in mind of\nmother,\" he said to Miss Ophelia. \"It is true what she told me; if we\nwant to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ\ndid,--call them to us, and _put our hands on them_.\"\n\n\"I've always had a prejudice against negroes,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"and\nit's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I\ndon't think she knew it.\"\n\n\"Trust any child to find that out,\" said St. Clare; \"there's no keeping\nit from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit\na child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never\nexcite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance\nremains in the heart;--it's a queer kind of a fact,--but so it is.\"\n\n\"I don't know how I can help it,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"they _are_\ndisagreeable to me,--this child in particular,--how can I help feeling\nso?\"\n\n\"Eva does, it seems.\"\n\n\"Well, she's so loving! After all, though, she's no more than\nChrist-like,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"I wish I were like her. She might\nteach me a lesson.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct\nan old disciple, if it _were_ so,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\n\nDeath\n\n     Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,\n     In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes.*\n\n\n     * \"Weep Not for Those,\" a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).\n\nEva's bed-room was a spacious apartment, which, like all the other\nrooms in the house, opened on to the broad verandah. The room\ncommunicated, on one side, with her father and mother's apartment;\non the other, with that appropriated to Miss Ophelia. St. Clare had\ngratified his own eye and taste, in furnishing this room in a style\nthat had a peculiar keeping with the character of her for whom it was\nintended. The windows were hung with curtains of rose-colored and white\nmuslin, the floor was spread with a matting which had been ordered\nin Paris, to a pattern of his own device, having round it a border of\nrose-buds and leaves, and a centre-piece with full-flown roses. The\nbedstead, chairs, and lounges, were of bamboo, wrought in peculiarly\ngraceful and fanciful patterns. Over the head of the bed was an\nalabaster bracket, on which a beautiful sculptured angel stood,\nwith drooping wings, holding out a crown of myrtle-leaves. From this\ndepended, over the bed, light curtains of rose-colored gauze, striped\nwith silver, supplying that protection from mosquitos which is an\nindispensable addition to all sleeping accommodation in that climate.\nThe graceful bamboo lounges were amply supplied with cushions of\nrose-colored damask, while over them, depending from the hands of\nsculptured figures, were gauze curtains similar to those of the bed. A\nlight, fanciful bamboo table stood in the middle of the room, where a\nParian vase, wrought in the shape of a white lily, with its buds, stood,\never filled with flowers. On this table lay Eva's books and little\ntrinkets, with an elegantly wrought alabaster writing-stand, which her\nfather had supplied to her when he saw her trying to improve herself\nin writing. There was a fireplace in the room, and on the marble mantle\nabove stood a beautifully wrought statuette of Jesus receiving little\nchildren, and on either side marble vases, for which it was Tom's pride\nand delight to offer bouquets every morning. Two or three exquisite\npaintings of children, in various attitudes, embellished the wall. In\nshort, the eye could turn nowhere without meeting images of childhood,\nof beauty, and of peace. Those little eyes never opened, in the morning\nlight, without falling on something which suggested to the heart\nsoothing and beautiful thoughts.\n\nThe deceitful strength which had buoyed Eva up for a little while was\nfast passing away; seldom and more seldom her light footstep was heard\nin the verandah, and oftener and oftener she was found reclined on a\nlittle lounge by the open window, her large, deep eyes fixed on the\nrising and falling waters of the lake.\n\nIt was towards the middle of the afternoon, as she was so\nreclining,--her Bible half open, her little transparent fingers lying\nlistlessly between the leaves,--suddenly she heard her mother's voice,\nin sharp tones, in the verandah.\n\n\"What now, you baggage!--what new piece of mischief! You've been picking\nthe flowers, hey?\" and Eva heard the sound of a smart slap.\n\n\"Law, Missis! they 's for Miss Eva,\" she heard a voice say, which she\nknew belonged to Topsy.\n\n\"Miss Eva! A pretty excuse!--you suppose she wants _your_ flowers, you\ngood-for-nothing nigger! Get along off with you!\"\n\nIn a moment, Eva was off from her lounge, and in the verandah.\n\n\"O, don't, mother! I should like the flowers; do give them to me; I want\nthem!\"\n\n\"Why, Eva, your room is full now.\"\n\n\"I can't have too many,\" said Eva. \"Topsy, do bring them here.\"\n\nTopsy, who had stood sullenly, holding down her head, now came up\nand offered her flowers. She did it with a look of hesitation and\nbashfulness, quite unlike the eldrich boldness and brightness which was\nusual with her.\n\n\"It's a beautiful bouquet!\" said Eva, looking at it.\n\nIt was rather a singular one,--a brilliant scarlet geranium, and one\nsingle white japonica, with its glossy leaves. It was tied up with an\nevident eye to the contrast of color, and the arrangement of every leaf\nhad carefully been studied.\n\nTopsy looked pleased, as Eva said,--\"Topsy, you arrange flowers very\nprettily. Here,\" she said, \"is this vase I haven't any flowers for. I\nwish you'd arrange something every day for it.\"\n\n\"Well, that's odd!\" said Marie. \"What in the world do you want that\nfor?\"\n\n\"Never mind, mamma; you'd as lief as not Topsy should do it,--had you\nnot?\"\n\n\"Of course, anything you please, dear! Topsy, you hear your young\nmistress;--see that you mind.\"\n\nTopsy made a short courtesy, and looked down; and, as she turned away,\nEva saw a tear roll down her dark cheek.\n\n\"You see, mamma, I knew poor Topsy wanted to do something for me,\" said\nEva to her mother.\n\n\"O, nonsense! it's only because she likes to do mischief. She knows she\nmustn't pick flowers,--so she does it; that's all there is to it. But,\nif you fancy to have her pluck them, so be it.\"\n\n\"Mamma, I think Topsy is different from what she used to be; she's\ntrying to be a good girl.\"\n\n\"She'll have to try a good while before _she_ gets to be good,\" said\nMarie, with a careless laugh.\n\n\"Well, you know, mamma, poor Topsy! everything has always been against\nher.\"\n\n\"Not since she's been here, I'm sure. If she hasn't been talked to, and\npreached to, and every earthly thing done that anybody could do;--and\nshe's just so ugly, and always will be; you can't make anything of the\ncreature!\"\n\n\"But, mamma, it's so different to be brought up as I've been, with\nso many friends, so many things to make me good and happy; and to be\nbrought up as she's been, all the time, till she came here!\"\n\n\"Most likely,\" said Marie, yawning,--\"dear me, how hot it is!\"\n\n\"Mamma, you believe, don't you, that Topsy could become an angel, as\nwell as any of us, if she were a Christian?\"\n\n\"Topsy! what a ridiculous idea! Nobody but you would ever think of it. I\nsuppose she could, though.\"\n\n\"But, mamma, isn't God her father, as much as ours? Isn't Jesus her\nSaviour?\"\n\n\"Well, that may be. I suppose God made everybody,\" said Marie. \"Where is\nmy smelling-bottle?\"\n\n\"It's such a pity,--oh! _such_ a pity!\" said Eva, looking out on the\ndistant lake, and speaking half to herself.\n\n\"What's a pity?\" said Marie.\n\n\"Why, that any one, who could be a bright angel, and live with angels,\nshould go all down, down down, and nobody help them!--oh dear!\"\n\n\"Well, we can't help it; it's no use worrying, Eva! I don't know what's\nto be done; we ought to be thankful for our own advantages.\"\n\n\"I hardly can be,\" said Eva, \"I'm so sorry to think of poor folks that\nhaven't any.\"\n\n\"That's odd enough,\" said Marie;--\"I'm sure my religion makes me\nthankful for my advantages.\"\n\n\"Mamma,\" said Eva, \"I want to have some of my hair cut off,--a good deal\nof it.\"\n\n\"What for?\" said Marie.\n\n\"Mamma, I want to give some away to my friends, while I am able to give\nit to them myself. Won't you ask aunty to come and cut it for me?\"\n\nMarie raised her voice, and called Miss Ophelia, from the other room.\n\nThe child half rose from her pillow as she came in, and, shaking down\nher long golden-brown curls, said, rather playfully, \"Come aunty, shear\nthe sheep!\"\n\n\"What's that?\" said St. Clare, who just then entered with some fruit he\nhad been out to get for her.\n\n\"Papa, I just want aunty to cut off some of my hair;--there's too much\nof it, and it makes my head hot. Besides, I want to give some of it\naway.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia came, with her scissors.\n\n\"Take care,--don't spoil the looks of it!\" said her father; \"cut\nunderneath, where it won't show. Eva's curls are my pride.\"\n\n\"O, papa!\" said Eva, sadly.\n\n\"Yes, and I want them kept handsome against the time I take you up to\nyour uncle's plantation, to see Cousin Henrique,\" said St. Clare, in a\ngay tone.\n\n\"I shall never go there, papa;--I am going to a better country. O, do\nbelieve me! Don't you see, papa, that I get weaker, every day?\"\n\n\"Why do you insist that I shall believe such a cruel thing, Eva?\" said\nher father.\n\n\"Only because it is _true_, papa: and, if you will believe it now,\nperhaps you will get to feel about it as I do.\"\n\nSt. Clare closed his lips, and stood gloomily eying the long, beautiful\ncurls, which, as they were separated from the child's head, were laid,\none by one, in her lap. She raised them up, looked earnestly at them,\ntwined them around her thin fingers, and looked from time to time,\nanxiously at her father.\n\n\"It's just what I've been foreboding!\" said Marie; \"it's just what has\nbeen preying on my health, from day to day, bringing me downward to the\ngrave, though nobody regards it. I have seen this, long. St. Clare, you\nwill see, after a while, that I was right.\"\n\n\"Which will afford you great consolation, no doubt!\" said St. Clare, in\na dry, bitter tone.\n\nMarie lay back on a lounge, and covered her face with her cambric\nhandkerchief.\n\nEva's clear blue eye looked earnestly from one to the other. It was the\ncalm, comprehending gaze of a soul half loosed from its earthly bonds;\nit was evident she saw, felt, and appreciated, the difference between\nthe two.\n\nShe beckoned with her hand to her father. He came and sat down by her.\n\n\"Papa, my strength fades away every day, and I know I must go. There are\nsome things I want to say and do,--that I ought to do; and you are so\nunwilling to have me speak a word on this subject. But it must come;\nthere's no putting it off. Do be willing I should speak now!\"\n\n\"My child, I _am_ willing!\" said St. Clare, covering his eyes with one\nhand, and holding up Eva's hand with the other.\n\n\"Then, I want to see all our people together. I have some things I\n_must_ say to them,\" said Eva.\n\n\"_Well_,\" said St. Clare, in a tone of dry endurance.\n\nMiss Ophelia despatched a messenger, and soon the whole of the servants\nwere convened in the room.\n\nEva lay back on her pillows; her hair hanging loosely about her face,\nher crimson cheeks contrasting painfully with the intense whiteness of\nher complexion and the thin contour of her limbs and features, and her\nlarge, soul-like eyes fixed earnestly on every one.\n\nThe servants were struck with a sudden emotion. The spiritual face, the\nlong locks of hair cut off and lying by her, her father's averted face,\nand Marie's sobs, struck at once upon the feelings of a sensitive and\nimpressible race; and, as they came in, they looked one on another,\nsighed, and shook their heads. There was a deep silence, like that of a\nfuneral.\n\nEva raised herself, and looked long and earnestly round at every one.\nAll looked sad and apprehensive. Many of the women hid their faces in\ntheir aprons.\n\n\"I sent for you all, my dear friends,\" said Eva, \"because I love you.\nI love you all; and I have something to say to you, which I want you\nalways to remember. . . . I am going to leave you. In a few more weeks\nyou will see me no more--\"\n\nHere the child was interrupted by bursts of groans, sobs, and\nlamentations, which broke from all present, and in which her slender\nvoice was lost entirely. She waited a moment, and then, speaking in a\ntone that checked the sobs of all, she said,\n\n\"If you love me, you must not interrupt me so. Listen to what I say. I\nwant to speak to you about your souls. . . . Many of you, I am afraid,\nare very careless. You are thinking only about this world. I want you\nto remember that there is a beautiful world, where Jesus is. I am going\nthere, and you can go there. It is for you, as much as me. But, if you\nwant to go there, you must not live idle, careless, thoughtless lives.\nYou must be Christians. You must remember that each one of you\ncan become angels, and be angels forever. . . . If you want to be\nChristians, Jesus will help you. You must pray to him; you must read--\"\n\nThe child checked herself, looked piteously at them, and said,\nsorrowfully,\n\n\"O dear! you _can't_ read--poor souls!\" and she hid her face in the\npillow and sobbed, while many a smothered sob from those she was\naddressing, who were kneeling on the floor, aroused her.\n\n\"Never mind,\" she said, raising her face and smiling brightly through\nher tears, \"I have prayed for you; and I know Jesus will help you, even\nif you can't read. Try all to do the best you can; pray every day; ask\nHim to help you, and get the Bible read to you whenever you can; and I\nthink I shall see you all in heaven.\"\n\n\"Amen,\" was the murmured response from the lips of Tom and Mammy,\nand some of the elder ones, who belonged to the Methodist church. The\nyounger and more thoughtless ones, for the time completely overcome,\nwere sobbing, with their heads bowed upon their knees.\n\n\"I know,\" said Eva, \"you all love me.\"\n\n\"Yes; oh, yes! indeed we do! Lord bless her!\" was the involuntary answer\nof all.\n\n\"Yes, I know you do! There isn't one of you that hasn't always been very\nkind to me; and I want to give you something that, when you look at,\nyou shall always remember me, I'm going to give all of you a curl of my\nhair; and, when you look at it, think that I loved you and am gone to\nheaven, and that I want to see you all there.\"\n\nIt is impossible to describe the scene, as, with tears and sobs, they\ngathered round the little creature, and took from her hands what seemed\nto them a last mark of her love. They fell on their knees; they sobbed,\nand prayed, and kissed the hem of her garment; and the elder ones poured\nforth words of endearment, mingled in prayers and blessings, after the\nmanner of their susceptible race.\n\nAs each one took their gift, Miss Ophelia, who was apprehensive for the\neffect of all this excitement on her little patient, signed to each one\nto pass out of the apartment.\n\nAt last, all were gone but Tom and Mammy.\n\n\"Here, Uncle Tom,\" said Eva, \"is a beautiful one for you. O, I am so\nhappy, Uncle Tom, to think I shall see you in heaven,--for I'm sure I\nshall; and Mammy,--dear, good, kind Mammy!\" she said, fondly throwing\nher arms round her old nurse,--\"I know you'll be there, too.\"\n\n\"O, Miss Eva, don't see how I can live without ye, no how!\" said the\nfaithful creature. \"'Pears like it's just taking everything off the\nplace to oncet!\" and Mammy gave way to a passion of grief.\n\nMiss Ophelia pushed her and Tom gently from the apartment, and thought\nthey were all gone; but, as she turned, Topsy was standing there.\n\n\"Where did you start up from?\" she said, suddenly.\n\n\"I was here,\" said Topsy, wiping the tears from her eyes. \"O, Miss Eva,\nI've been a bad girl; but won't you give _me_ one, too?\"\n\n\"Yes, poor Topsy! to be sure, I will. There--every time you look at\nthat, think that I love you, and wanted you to be a good girl!\"\n\n\"O, Miss Eva, I _is_ tryin!\" said Topsy, earnestly; \"but, Lor, it's so\nhard to be good! 'Pears like I an't used to it, no ways!\"\n\n\"Jesus knows it, Topsy; he is sorry for you; he will help you.\"\n\nTopsy, with her eyes hid in her apron, was silently passed from the\napartment by Miss Ophelia; but, as she went, she hid the precious curl\nin her bosom.\n\nAll being gone, Miss Ophelia shut the door. That worthy lady had wiped\naway many tears of her own, during the scene; but concern for the\nconsequence of such an excitement to her young charge was uppermost in\nher mind.\n\nSt. Clare had been sitting, during the whole time, with his hand shading\nhis eyes, in the same attitude.\n\nWhen they were all gone, he sat so still.\n\n\"Papa!\" said Eva, gently, laying her hand on his.\n\nHe gave a sudden start and shiver; but made no answer.\n\n\"Dear papa!\" said Eva.\n\n\"_I cannot_,\" said St. Clare, rising, \"I _cannot_ have it so! The\nAlmighty hath dealt _very bitterly_ with me!\" and St. Clare pronounced\nthese words with a bitter emphasis, indeed.\n\n\"Augustine! has not God a right to do what he will with his own?\" said\nMiss Ophelia.\n\n\"Perhaps so; but that doesn't make it any easier to bear,\" said he, with\na dry, hard, tearless manner, as he turned away.\n\n\"Papa, you break my heart!\" said Eva, rising and throwing herself into\nhis arms; \"you must not feel so!\" and the child sobbed and wept with\na violence which alarmed them all, and turned her father's thoughts at\nonce to another channel.\n\n\"There, Eva,--there, dearest! Hush! hush! I was wrong; I was wicked. I\nwill feel any way, do any way,--only don't distress yourself; don't sob\nso. I will be resigned; I was wicked to speak as I did.\"\n\nEva soon lay like a wearied dove in her father's arms; and he, bending\nover her, soothed her by every tender word he could think of.\n\nMarie rose and threw herself out of the apartment into her own, when she\nfell into violent hysterics.\n\n\"You didn't give me a curl, Eva,\" said her father, smiling sadly.\n\n\"They are all yours, papa,\" said she, smiling--\"yours and mamma's; and\nyou must give dear aunty as many as she wants. I only gave them to our\npoor people myself, because you know, papa, they might be forgotten when\nI am gone, and because I hoped it might help them remember. . . . You\nare a Christian, are you not, papa?\" said Eva, doubtfully.\n\n\"Why do you ask me?\"\n\n\"I don't know. You are so good, I don't see how you can help it.\"\n\n\"What is being a Christian, Eva?\"\n\n\"Loving Christ most of all,\" said Eva.\n\n\"Do you, Eva?\"\n\n\"Certainly I do.\"\n\n\"You never saw him,\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"That makes no difference,\" said Eva. \"I believe him, and in a few days\nI shall _see_ him;\" and the young face grew fervent, radiant with joy.\n\nSt. Clare said no more. It was a feeling which he had seen before in his\nmother; but no chord within vibrated to it.\n\nEva, after this, declined rapidly; there was no more any doubt of the\nevent; the fondest hope could not be blinded. Her beautiful room was\navowedly a sick room; and Miss Ophelia day and night performed the\nduties of a nurse,--and never did her friends appreciate her value more\nthan in that capacity. With so well-trained a hand and eye, such perfect\nadroitness and practice in every art which could promote neatness\nand comfort, and keep out of sight every disagreeable incident of\nsickness,--with such a perfect sense of time, such a clear, untroubled\nhead, such exact accuracy in remembering every prescription and\ndirection of the doctors,--she was everything to him. They who had\nshrugged their shoulders at her little peculiarities and setnesses, so\nunlike the careless freedom of southern manners, acknowledged that now\nshe was the exact person that was wanted.\n\nUncle Tom was much in Eva's room. The child suffered much from nervous\nrestlessness, and it was a relief to her to be carried; and it was Tom's\ngreatest delight to carry her little frail form in his arms, resting on\na pillow, now up and down her room, now out into the verandah; and when\nthe fresh sea-breezes blew from the lake,--and the child felt freshest\nin the morning,--he would sometimes walk with her under the orange-trees\nin the garden, or, sitting down in some of their old seats, sing to her\ntheir favorite old hymns.\n\nHer father often did the same thing; but his frame was slighter, and\nwhen he was weary, Eva would say to him,\n\n\"O, papa, let Tom take me. Poor fellow! it pleases him; and you know\nit's all he can do now, and he wants to do something!\"\n\n\"So do I, Eva!\" said her father.\n\n\"Well, papa, you can do everything, and are everything to me. You read\nto me,--you sit up nights,--and Tom has only this one thing, and his\nsinging; and I know, too, he does it easier than you can. He carries me\nso strong!\"\n\nThe desire to do something was not confined to Tom. Every servant in the\nestablishment showed the same feeling, and in their way did what they\ncould.\n\nPoor Mammy's heart yearned towards her darling; but she found no\nopportunity, night or day, as Marie declared that the state of her mind\nwas such, it was impossible for her to rest; and, of course, it was\nagainst her principles to let any one else rest. Twenty times in a\nnight, Mammy would be roused to rub her feet, to bathe her head, to find\nher pocket-handkerchief, to see what the noise was in Eva's room, to let\ndown a curtain because it was too light, or to put it up because it was\ntoo dark; and, in the daytime, when she longed to have some share in the\nnursing of her pet, Marie seemed unusually ingenious in keeping her busy\nanywhere and everywhere all over the house, or about her own person; so\nthat stolen interviews and momentary glimpses were all she could obtain.\n\n\"I feel it my duty to be particularly careful of myself, now,\" she would\nsay, \"feeble as I am, and with the whole care and nursing of that dear\nchild upon me.\"\n\n\"Indeed, my dear,\" said St. Clare, \"I thought our cousin relieved you of\nthat.\"\n\n\"You talk like a man, St. Clare,--just as if a mother _could_ be\nrelieved of the care of a child in that state; but, then, it's all\nalike,--no one ever knows what I feel! I can't throw things off, as you\ndo.\"\n\nSt. Clare smiled. You must excuse him, he couldn't help it,--for St.\nClare could smile yet. For so bright and placid was the farewell voyage\nof the little spirit,--by such sweet and fragrant breezes was the small\nbark borne towards the heavenly shores,--that it was impossible to\nrealize that it was death that was approaching. The child felt no\npain,--only a tranquil, soft weakness, daily and almost insensibly\nincreasing; and she was so beautiful, so loving, so trustful, so\nhappy, that one could not resist the soothing influence of that air of\ninnocence and peace which seemed to breathe around her. St. Clare found\na strange calm coming over him. It was not hope,--that was impossible;\nit was not resignation; it was only a calm resting in the present, which\nseemed so beautiful that he wished to think of no future. It was like\nthat hush of spirit which we feel amid the bright, mild woods of autumn,\nwhen the bright hectic flush is on the trees, and the last lingering\nflowers by the brook; and we joy in it all the more, because we know\nthat soon it will all pass away.\n\nThe friend who knew most of Eva's own imaginings and foreshadowings was\nher faithful bearer, Tom. To him she said what she would not disturb her\nfather by saying. To him she imparted those mysterious intimations which\nthe soul feels, as the cords begin to unbind, ere it leaves its clay\nforever.\n\nTom, at last, would not sleep in his room, but lay all night in the\nouter verandah, ready to rouse at every call.\n\n\"Uncle Tom, what alive have you taken to sleeping anywhere and\neverywhere, like a dog, for?\" said Miss Ophelia. \"I thought you was one\nof the orderly sort, that liked to lie in bed in a Christian way.\"\n\n\"I do, Miss Feely,\" said Tom, mysteriously. \"I do, but now--\"\n\n\"Well, what now?\"\n\n\"We mustn't speak loud; Mas'r St. Clare won't hear on 't; but Miss\nFeely, you know there must be somebody watchin' for the bridegroom.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Tom?\"\n\n\"You know it says in Scripture, 'At midnight there was a great cry\nmade. Behold, the bridegroom cometh.' That's what I'm spectin now, every\nnight, Miss Feely,--and I couldn't sleep out o' hearin, no ways.\"\n\n\"Why, Uncle Tom, what makes you think so?\"\n\n\"Miss Eva, she talks to me. The Lord, he sends his messenger in the\nsoul. I must be thar, Miss Feely; for when that ar blessed child goes\ninto the kingdom, they'll open the door so wide, we'll all get a look in\nat the glory, Miss Feely.\"\n\n\"Uncle Tom, did Miss Eva say she felt more unwell than usual tonight?\"\n\n\"No; but she telled me, this morning, she was coming nearer,--thar's\nthem that tells it to the child, Miss Feely. It's the angels,--'it's\nthe trumpet sound afore the break o' day,'\" said Tom, quoting from a\nfavorite hymn.\n\nThis dialogue passed between Miss Ophelia and Tom, between ten and\neleven, one evening, after her arrangements had all been made for the\nnight, when, on going to bolt her outer door, she found Tom stretched\nalong by it, in the outer verandah.\n\nShe was not nervous or impressible; but the solemn, heart-felt manner\nstruck her. Eva had been unusually bright and cheerful, that afternoon,\nand had sat raised in her bed, and looked over all her little trinkets\nand precious things, and designated the friends to whom she would\nhave them given; and her manner was more animated, and her voice more\nnatural, than they had known it for weeks. Her father had been in, in\nthe evening, and had said that Eva appeared more like her former self\nthan ever she had done since her sickness; and when he kissed her for\nthe night, he said to Miss Ophelia,--\"Cousin, we may keep her with us,\nafter all; she is certainly better;\" and he had retired with a lighter\nheart in his bosom than he had had there for weeks.\n\nBut at midnight,--strange, mystic hour!--when the veil between the frail\npresent and the eternal future grows thin,--then came the messenger!\n\nThere was a sound in that chamber, first of one who stepped quickly. It\nwas Miss Ophelia, who had resolved to sit up all night with her\nlittle charge, and who, at the turn of the night, had discerned what\nexperienced nurses significantly call \"a change.\" The outer door was\nquickly opened, and Tom, who was watching outside, was on the alert, in\na moment.\n\n\"Go for the doctor, Tom! lose not a moment,\" said Miss Ophelia; and,\nstepping across the room, she rapped at St. Clare's door.\n\n\"Cousin,\" she said, \"I wish you would come.\"\n\nThose words fell on his heart like clods upon a coffin. Why did they?\nHe was up and in the room in an instant, and bending over Eva, who still\nslept.\n\nWhat was it he saw that made his heart stand still? Why was no word\nspoken between the two? Thou canst say, who hast seen that same\nexpression on the face dearest to thee;--that look indescribable,\nhopeless, unmistakable, that says to thee that thy beloved is no longer\nthine.\n\nOn the face of the child, however, there was no ghastly imprint,--only\na high and almost sublime expression,--the overshadowing presence of\nspiritual natures, the dawning of immortal life in that childish soul.\n\nThey stood there so still, gazing upon her, that even the ticking of the\nwatch seemed too loud. In a few moments, Tom returned, with the doctor.\nHe entered, gave one look, and stood silent as the rest.\n\n\"When did this change take place?\" said he, in a low whisper, to Miss\nOphelia.\n\n\"About the turn of the night,\" was the reply.\n\nMarie, roused by the entrance of the doctor, appeared, hurriedly, from\nthe next room.\n\n\"Augustine! Cousin!--O!--what!\" she hurriedly began.\n\n\"Hush!\" said St. Clare, hoarsely; _\"she is dying!\"_\n\nMammy heard the words, and flew to awaken the servants. The house was\nsoon roused,--lights were seen, footsteps heard, anxious faces thronged\nthe verandah, and looked tearfully through the glass doors; but St.\nClare heard and said nothing,--he saw only _that look_ on the face of\nthe little sleeper.\n\n\"O, if she would only wake, and speak once more!\" he said; and, stooping\nover her, he spoke in her ear,--\"Eva, darling!\"\n\nThe large blue eyes unclosed--a smile passed over her face;--she tried\nto raise her head, and to speak.\n\n\"Do you know me, Eva?\"\n\n\"Dear papa,\" said the child, with a last effort, throwing her arms about\nhis neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his\nhead, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face,--she struggled\nfor breath, and threw up her little hands.\n\n\"O, God, this is dreadful!\" he said, turning away in agony, and wringing\nTom's hand, scarce conscious what he was doing. \"O, Tom, my boy, it is\nkilling me!\"\n\nTom had his master's hands between his own; and, with tears streaming\ndown his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used\nto look.\n\n\"Pray that this may be cut short!\" said St. Clare,--\"this wrings my\nheart.\"\n\n\"O, bless the Lord! it's over,--it's over, dear Master!\" said Tom; \"look\nat her.\"\n\nThe child lay panting on her pillows, as one exhausted,--the large clear\neyes rolled up and fixed. Ah, what said those eyes, that spoke so\nmuch of heaven! Earth was past,--and earthly pain; but so solemn, so\nmysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it\nchecked even the sobs of sorrow. They pressed around her, in breathless\nstillness.\n\n\"Eva,\" said St. Clare, gently.\n\nShe did not hear.\n\n\"O, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?\" said her father.\n\nA bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said,\nbrokenly,--\"O! love,--joy,--peace!\" gave one sigh and passed from death\nunto life!\n\n\"Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after\nthee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. O, woe for them who watched\nthy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold\ngray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\n\"This Is the Last of Earth\"*\n\n     *  \"This is the last of Earth!  I am content,\" last words of\n     John Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.\n\nThe statuettes and pictures in Eva's room were shrouded in white\nnapkins, and only hushed breathings and muffled footfalls were heard\nthere, and the light stole in solemnly through windows partially\ndarkened by closed blinds.\n\nThe bed was draped in white; and there, beneath the drooping\nangel-figure, lay a little sleeping form,--sleeping never to waken!\n\nThere she lay, robed in one of the simple white dresses she had been\nwont to wear when living; the rose-colored light through the curtains\ncast over the icy coldness of death a warm glow. The heavy eyelashes\ndrooped softly on the pure cheek; the head was turned a little to\none side, as if in natural sleep, but there was diffused over every\nlineament of the face that high celestial expression, that mingling of\nrapture and repose, which showed it was no earthly or temporary sleep,\nbut the long, sacred rest which \"He giveth to his beloved.\"\n\nThere is no death to such as thou, dear Eva! neither darkness nor shadow\nof death; only such a bright fading as when the morning star fades in\nthe golden dawn. Thine is the victory without the battle,--the crown\nwithout the conflict.\n\nSo did St. Clare think, as, with folded arms, he stood there gazing.\nAh! who shall say what he did think? for, from the hour that voices\nhad said, in the dying chamber, \"she is gone,\" it had been all a dreary\nmist, a heavy \"dimness of anguish.\" He had heard voices around him; he\nhad had questions asked, and answered them; they had asked him when\nhe would have the funeral, and where they should lay her; and he had\nanswered, impatiently, that he cared not.\n\nAdolph and Rosa had arranged the chamber; volatile, fickle and childish,\nas they generally were, they were soft-hearted and full of feeling;\nand, while Miss Ophelia presided over the general details of order and\nneatness, it was their hands that added those soft, poetic touches to\nthe arrangements, that took from the death-room the grim and ghastly air\nwhich too often marks a New England funeral.\n\nThere were still flowers on the shelves,--all white, delicate and\nfragrant, with graceful, drooping leaves. Eva's little table, covered\nwith white, bore on it her favorite vase, with a single white moss\nrose-bud in it. The folds of the drapery, the fall of the curtains, had\nbeen arranged and rearranged, by Adolph and Rosa, with that nicety of\neye which characterizes their race. Even now, while St. Clare stood\nthere thinking, little Rosa tripped softly into the chamber with a\nbasket of white flowers. She stepped back when she saw St. Clare, and\nstopped respectfully; but, seeing that he did not observe her, she came\nforward to place them around the dead. St. Clare saw her as in a dream,\nwhile she placed in the small hands a fair cape jessamine, and, with\nadmirable taste, disposed other flowers around the couch.\n\nThe door opened again, and Topsy, her eyes swelled with crying,\nappeared, holding something under her apron. Rosa made a quick\nforbidding gesture; but she took a step into the room.\n\n\"You must go out,\" said Rosa, in a sharp, positive whisper; \"_you_\nhaven't any business here!\"\n\n\"O, do let me! I brought a flower,--such a pretty one!\" said Topsy,\nholding up a half-blown tea rose-bud. \"Do let me put just one there.\"\n\n\"Get along!\" said Rosa, more decidedly.\n\n\"Let her stay!\" said St. Clare, suddenly stamping his foot. \"She shall\ncome.\"\n\nRosa suddenly retreated, and Topsy came forward and laid her offering at\nthe feet of the corpse; then suddenly, with a wild and bitter cry,\nshe threw herself on the floor alongside the bed, and wept, and moaned\naloud.\n\nMiss Ophelia hastened into the room, and tried to raise and silence her;\nbut in vain.\n\n\"O, Miss Eva! oh, Miss Eva! I wish I 's dead, too,--I do!\"\n\nThere was a piercing wildness in the cry; the blood flushed into St.\nClare's white, marble-like face, and the first tears he had shed since\nEva died stood in his eyes.\n\n\"Get up, child,\" said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice; \"don't cry so.\nMiss Eva is gone to heaven; she is an angel.\"\n\n\"But I can't see her!\" said Topsy. \"I never shall see her!\" and she\nsobbed again.\n\nThey all stood a moment in silence.\n\n\"_She_ said she _loved_ me,\" said Topsy,--\"she did! O, dear! oh, dear!\nthere an't _nobody_ left now,--there an't!\"\n\n\"That's true enough\" said St. Clare; \"but do,\" he said to Miss Ophelia,\n\"see if you can't comfort the poor creature.\"\n\n\"I jist wish I hadn't never been born,\" said Topsy. \"I didn't want to be\nborn, no ways; and I don't see no use on 't.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia raised her gently, but firmly, and took her from the room;\nbut, as she did so, some tears fell from her eyes.\n\n\"Topsy, you poor child,\" she said, as she led her into her room, \"don't\ngive up! _I_ can love you, though I am not like that dear little child.\nI hope I've learnt something of the love of Christ from her. I can love\nyou; I do, and I'll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia's voice was more than her words, and more than that were\nthe honest tears that fell down her face. From that hour, she acquired\nan influence over the mind of the destitute child that she never lost.\n\n\"O, my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much of good,\" thought St.\nClare, \"what account have I to give for my long years?\"\n\nThere were, for a while, soft whisperings and footfalls in the chamber,\nas one after another stole in, to look at the dead; and then came the\nlittle coffin; and then there was a funeral, and carriages drove to the\ndoor, and strangers came and were seated; and there were white scarfs\nand ribbons, and crape bands, and mourners dressed in black crape; and\nthere were words read from the Bible, and prayers offered; and St. Clare\nlived, and walked, and moved, as one who has shed every tear;--to the\nlast he saw only one thing, that golden head in the coffin; but then\nhe saw the cloth spread over it, the lid of the coffin closed; and he\nwalked, when he was put beside the others, down to a little place at the\nbottom of the garden, and there, by the mossy seat where she and Tom\nhad talked, and sung, and read so often, was the little grave. St. Clare\nstood beside it,--looked vacantly down; he saw them lower the little\ncoffin; he heard, dimly, the solemn words, \"I am the resurrection and\nthe Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he\nlive;\" and, as the earth was cast in and filled up the little grave,\nhe could not realize that it was his Eva that they were hiding from his\nsight.\n\nNor was it!--not Eva, but only the frail seed of that bright, immortal\nform with which she shall yet come forth, in the day of the Lord Jesus!\n\nAnd then all were gone, and the mourners went back to the place which\nshould know her no more; and Marie's room was darkened, and she lay on\nthe bed, sobbing and moaning in uncontrollable grief, and calling every\nmoment for the attentions of all her servants. Of course, they had no\ntime to cry,--why should they? the grief was _her_ grief, and she was\nfully convinced that nobody on earth did, could, or would feel it as she\ndid.\n\n\"St. Clare did not shed a tear,\" she said; \"he didn't sympathize with\nher; it was perfectly wonderful to think how hard-hearted and unfeeling\nhe was, when he must know how she suffered.\"\n\nSo much are people the slave of their eye and ear, that many of the\nservants really thought that Missis was the principal sufferer in the\ncase, especially as Marie began to have hysterical spasms, and sent for\nthe doctor, and at last declared herself dying; and, in the running and\nscampering, and bringing up hot bottles, and heating of flannels, and\nchafing, and fussing, that ensued, there was quite a diversion.\n\nTom, however, had a feeling at his own heart, that drew him to his\nmaster. He followed him wherever he walked, wistfully and sadly; and\nwhen he saw him sitting, so pale and quiet, in Eva's room, holding\nbefore his eyes her little open Bible, though seeing no letter or word\nof what was in it, there was more sorrow to Tom in that still, fixed,\ntearless eye, than in all Marie's moans and lamentations.\n\nIn a few days the St. Clare family were back again in the city;\nAugustine, with the restlessness of grief, longing for another scene, to\nchange the current of his thoughts. So they left the house and garden,\nwith its little grave, and came back to New Orleans; and St. Clare\nwalked the streets busily, and strove to fill up the chasm in his heart\nwith hurry and bustle, and change of place; and people who saw him in\nthe street, or met him at the cafe, knew of his loss only by the weed\non his hat; for there he was, smiling and talking, and reading the\nnewspaper, and speculating on politics, and attending to business\nmatters; and who could see that all this smiling outside was but a\nhollowed shell over a heart that was a dark and silent sepulchre?\n\n\"Mr. St. Clare is a singular man,\" said Marie to Miss Ophelia, in a\ncomplaining tone. \"I used to think, if there was anything in the world\nhe did love, it was our dear little Eva; but he seems to be forgetting\nher very easily. I cannot ever get him to talk about her. I really did\nthink he would show more feeling!\"\n\n\"Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me,\" said Miss Ophelia,\noracularly.\n\n\"O, I don't believe in such things; it's all talk. If people have\nfeeling, they will show it,--they can't help it; but, then, it's a great\nmisfortune to have feeling. I'd rather have been made like St. Clare. My\nfeelings prey upon me so!\"\n\n\"Sure, Missis, Mas'r St. Clare is gettin' thin as a shader. They say, he\ndon't never eat nothin',\" said Mammy. \"I know he don't forget Miss Eva;\nI know there couldn't nobody,--dear, little, blessed cretur!\" she added,\nwiping her eyes.\n\n\"Well, at all events, he has no consideration for me,\" said Marie; \"he\nhasn't spoken one word of sympathy, and he must know how much more a\nmother feels than any man can.\"\n\n\"The heart knoweth its own bitterness,\" said Miss Ophelia, gravely.\n\n\"That's just what I think. I know just what I feel,--nobody else seems\nto. Eva used to, but she is gone!\" and Marie lay back on her lounge, and\nbegan to sob disconsolately.\n\nMarie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose\neyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in\npossession. Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in\nit; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.\n\nWhile this conversation was taking place in the parlor another was going\non in St. Clare's library.\n\nTom, who was always uneasily following his master about, had seen him go\nto his library, some hours before; and, after vainly waiting for him to\ncome out, determined, at last, to make an errand in. He entered softly.\nSt. Clare lay on his lounge, at the further end of the room. He was\nlying on his face, with Eva's Bible open before him, at a little\ndistance. Tom walked up, and stood by the sofa. He hesitated; and, while\nhe was hesitating, St. Clare suddenly raised himself up. The honest\nface, so full of grief, and with such an imploring expression of\naffection and sympathy, struck his master. He laid his hand on Tom's,\nand bowed down his forehead on it.\n\n\"O, Tom, my boy, the whole world is as empty as an egg-shell.\"\n\n\"I know it, Mas'r,--I know it,\" said Tom; \"but, oh, if Mas'r could only\nlook up,--up where our dear Miss Eva is,--up to the dear Lord Jesus!\"\n\n\"Ah, Tom! I do look up; but the trouble is, I don't see anything, when I\ndo, I wish I could.\"\n\nTom sighed heavily.\n\n\"It seems to be given to children, and poor, honest fellows, like you,\nto see what we can't,\" said St. Clare. \"How comes it?\"\n\n\"Thou has 'hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes,'\"\nmurmured Tom; \"'even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.'\"\n\n\"Tom, I don't believe,--I can't believe,--I've got the habit of\ndoubting,\" said St. Clare. \"I want to believe this Bible,--and I can't.\"\n\n\"Dear Mas'r, pray to the good Lord,--'Lord, I believe; help thou my\nunbelief.'\"\n\n\"Who knows anything about anything?\" said St. Clare, his eyes wandering\ndreamily, and speaking to himself. \"Was all that beautiful love and\nfaith only one of the ever-shifting phases of human feeling, having\nnothing real to rest on, passing away with the little breath? And is\nthere no more Eva,--no heaven,--no Christ,--nothing?\"\n\n\"O, dear Mas'r, there is! I know it; I'm sure of it,\" said Tom, falling\non his knees. \"Do, do, dear Mas'r, believe it!\"\n\n\"How do you know there's any Christ, Tom! You never saw the Lord.\"\n\n\"Felt Him in my soul, Mas'r,--feel Him now! O, Mas'r, when I was sold\naway from my old woman and the children, I was jest a'most broke up. I\nfelt as if there warn't nothin' left; and then the good Lord, he stood\nby me, and he says, 'Fear not, Tom;' and he brings light and joy in\na poor feller's soul,--makes all peace; and I 's so happy, and loves\neverybody, and feels willin' jest to be the Lord's, and have the Lord's\nwill done, and be put jest where the Lord wants to put me. I know it\ncouldn't come from me, cause I 's a poor, complainin' cretur; it comes\nfrom the Lord; and I know He's willin' to do for Mas'r.\"\n\nTom spoke with fast-running tears and choking voice. St. Clare leaned\nhis head on his shoulder, and wrung the hard, faithful, black hand.\n\n\"Tom, you love me,\" he said.\n\n\"I 's willin' to lay down my life, this blessed day, to see Mas'r a\nChristian.\"\n\n\"Poor, foolish boy!\" said St. Clare, half-raising himself. \"I'm not\nworth the love of one good, honest heart, like yours.\"\n\n\"O, Mas'r, dere's more than me loves you,--the blessed Lord Jesus loves\nyou.\"\n\n\"How do you know that Tom?\" said St. Clare.\n\n\"Feels it in my soul. O, Mas'r! 'the love of Christ, that passeth\nknowledge.'\"\n\n\"Singular!\" said St. Clare, turning away, \"that the story of a man that\nlived and died eighteen hundred years ago can affect people so yet.\nBut he was no man,\" he added, suddenly. \"No man ever had such long and\nliving power! O, that I could believe what my mother taught me, and pray\nas I did when I was a boy!\"\n\n\"If Mas'r pleases,\" said Tom, \"Miss Eva used to read this so\nbeautifully. I wish Mas'r'd be so good as read it. Don't get no readin',\nhardly, now Miss Eva's gone.\"\n\nThe chapter was the eleventh of John,--the touching account of the\nraising of Lazarus, St. Clare read it aloud, often pausing to wrestle\ndown feelings which were roused by the pathos of the story. Tom knelt\nbefore him, with clasped hands, and with an absorbed expression of love,\ntrust, adoration, on his quiet face.\n\n\"Tom,\" said his Master, \"this is all _real_ to you!\"\n\n\"I can jest fairly _see_ it Mas'r,\" said Tom.\n\n\"I wish I had your eyes, Tom.\"\n\n\"I wish, to the dear Lord, Mas'r had!\"\n\n\"But, Tom, you know that I have a great deal more knowledge than you;\nwhat if I should tell you that I don't believe this Bible?\"\n\n\"O, Mas'r!\" said Tom, holding up his hands, with a deprecating gesture.\n\n\"Wouldn't it shake your faith some, Tom?\"\n\n\"Not a grain,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Why, Tom, you must know I know the most.\"\n\n\"O, Mas'r, haven't you jest read how he hides from the wise and prudent,\nand reveals unto babes? But Mas'r wasn't in earnest, for sartin, now?\"\nsaid Tom, anxiously.\n\n\"No, Tom, I was not. I don't disbelieve, and I think there is reason to\nbelieve; and still I don't. It's a troublesome bad habit I've got, Tom.\"\n\n\"If Mas'r would only pray!\"\n\n\"How do you know I don't, Tom?\"\n\n\"Does Mas'r?\"\n\n\"I would, Tom, if there was anybody there when I pray; but it's all\nspeaking unto nothing, when I do. But come, Tom, you pray now, and show\nme how.\"\n\nTom's heart was full; he poured it out in prayer, like waters that have\nbeen long suppressed. One thing was plain enough; Tom thought there was\nsomebody to hear, whether there were or not. In fact, St. Clare felt\nhimself borne, on the tide of his faith and feeling, almost to the gates\nof that heaven he seemed so vividly to conceive. It seemed to bring him\nnearer to Eva.\n\n\"Thank you, my boy,\" said St. Clare, when Tom rose. \"I like to hear you,\nTom; but go, now, and leave me alone; some other time, I'll talk more.\"\n\nTom silently left the room.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\n\nReunion\n\n\nWeek after week glided away in the St. Clare mansion, and the waves of\nlife settled back to their usual flow, where that little bark had\ngone down. For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's\nfeeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities\nmove on! Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,--still\nbargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,--pursue, in short,\na thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold\nmechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has\nfled.\n\nAll the interests and hopes of St. Clare's life had unconsciously wound\nthemselves around this child. It was for Eva that he had managed his\nproperty; it was for Eva that he had planned the disposal of his time;\nand, to do this and that for Eva,--to buy, improve, alter, and arrange,\nor dispose something for her,--had been so long his habit, that now she\nwas gone, there seemed nothing to be thought of, and nothing to be done.\n\nTrue, there was another life,--a life which, once believed in, stands as\na solemn, significant figure before the otherwise unmeaning ciphers of\ntime, changing them to orders of mysterious, untold value. St. Clare\nknew this well; and often, in many a weary hour, he heard that slender,\nchildish voice calling him to the skies, and saw that little hand\npointing to him the way of life; but a heavy lethargy of sorrow lay on\nhim,--he could not arise. He had one of those natures which could better\nand more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions\nand instincts, than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. The\ngift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations\nof moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life\nshows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often\nspeak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment,\nthan another man, whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds,\ndisregard of religion is a more fearful treason,--a more deadly sin.\n\nSt. Clare had never pretended to govern himself by any religious\nobligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an\ninstinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that\nhe shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions\nof his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For,\nso inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to\nundertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.\n\nStill St. Clare was, in many respects, another man. He read his\nlittle Eva's Bible seriously and honestly; he thought more soberly\nand practically of his relations to his servants,--enough to make him\nextremely dissatisfied with both his past and present course; and one\nthing he did, soon after his return to New Orleans, and that was to\ncommence the legal steps necessary to Tom's emancipation, which was to\nbe perfected as soon as he could get through the necessary formalities.\nMeantime, he attached himself to Tom more and more, every day. In all\nthe wide world, there was nothing that seemed to remind him so much\nof Eva; and he would insist on keeping him constantly about him, and,\nfastidious and unapproachable as he was with regard to his deeper\nfeelings, he almost thought aloud to Tom. Nor would any one have\nwondered at it, who had seen the expression of affection and devotion\nwith which Tom continually followed his young master.\n\n\"Well, Tom,\" said St. Clare, the day after he had commenced the legal\nformalities for his enfranchisement, \"I'm going to make a free man of\nyou;--so have your trunk packed, and get ready to set out for Kentuck.\"\n\nThe sudden light of joy that shone in Tom's face as he raised his hands\nto heaven, his emphatic \"Bless the Lord!\" rather discomposed St. Clare;\nhe did not like it that Tom should be so ready to leave him.\n\n\"You haven't had such very bad times here, that you need be in such a\nrapture, Tom,\" he said drily.\n\n\"No, no, Mas'r! 'tan't that,--it's bein' a _freeman!_ that's what I'm\njoyin' for.\"\n\n\"Why, Tom, don't you think, for your own part, you've been better off\nthan to be free?\"\n\n\"_No, indeed_, Mas'r St. Clare,\" said Tom, with a flash of energy. \"No,\nindeed!\"\n\n\"Why, Tom, you couldn't possibly have earned, by your work, such clothes\nand such living as I have given you.\"\n\n\"Knows all that, Mas'r St. Clare; Mas'r's been too good; but, Mas'r,\nI'd rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have 'em\n_mine_, than have the best, and have 'em any man's else,--I had _so_,\nMas'r; I think it's natur, Mas'r.\"\n\n\"I suppose so, Tom, and you'll be going off and leaving me, in a month\nor so,\" he added, rather discontentedly. \"Though why you shouldn't, no\nmortal knows,\" he said, in a gayer tone; and, getting up, he began to\nwalk the floor.\n\n\"Not while Mas'r is in trouble,\" said Tom. \"I'll stay with Mas'r as long\nas he wants me,--so as I can be any use.\"\n\n\"Not while I'm in trouble, Tom?\" said St. Clare, looking sadly out of\nthe window. . . . \"And when will _my_ trouble be over?\"\n\n\"When Mas'r St. Clare's a Christian,\" said Tom.\n\n\"And you really mean to stay by till that day comes?\" said St. Clare,\nhalf smiling, as he turned from the window, and laid his hand on Tom's\nshoulder. \"Ah, Tom, you soft, silly boy! I won't keep you till that day.\nGo home to your wife and children, and give my love to all.\"\n\n\"I 's faith to believe that day will come,\" said Tom, earnestly, and\nwith tears in his eyes; \"the Lord has a work for Mas'r.\"\n\n\"A work, hey?\" said St. Clare, \"well, now, Tom, give me your views on\nwhat sort of a work it is;--let's hear.\"\n\n\"Why, even a poor fellow like me has a work from the Lord; and Mas'r St.\nClare, that has larnin, and riches, and friends,--how much he might do\nfor the Lord!\"\n\n\"Tom, you seem to think the Lord needs a great deal done for him,\" said\nSt. Clare, smiling.\n\n\"We does for the Lord when we does for his critturs,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Good theology, Tom; better than Dr. B. preaches, I dare swear,\" said\nSt. Clare.\n\nThe conversation was here interrupted by the announcement of some\nvisitors.\n\nMarie St. Clare felt the loss of Eva as deeply as she could feel\nanything; and, as she was a woman that had a great faculty of making\neverybody unhappy when she was, her immediate attendants had still\nstronger reason to regret the loss of their young mistress, whose\nwinning ways and gentle intercessions had so often been a shield to them\nfrom the tyrannical and selfish exactions of her mother. Poor old Mammy,\nin particular, whose heart, severed from all natural domestic ties, had\nconsoled itself with this one beautiful being, was almost heart-broken.\nShe cried day and night, and was, from excess of sorrow, less skilful\nand alert in her ministrations of her mistress than usual, which drew\ndown a constant storm of invectives on her defenceless head.\n\nMiss Ophelia felt the loss; but, in her good and honest heart, it bore\nfruit unto everlasting life. She was more softened, more gentle; and,\nthough equally assiduous in every duty, it was with a chastened and\nquiet air, as one who communed with her own heart not in vain. She was\nmore diligent in teaching Topsy,--taught her mainly from the Bible,--did\nnot any longer shrink from her touch, or manifest an ill-repressed\ndisgust, because she felt none. She viewed her now through the softened\nmedium that Eva's hand had first held before her eyes, and saw in her\nonly an immortal creature, whom God had sent to be led by her to glory\nand virtue. Topsy did not become at once a saint; but the life and death\nof Eva did work a marked change in her. The callous indifference was\ngone; there was now sensibility, hope, desire, and the striving for\ngood,--a strife irregular, interrupted, suspended oft, but yet renewed\nagain.\n\nOne day, when Topsy had been sent for by Miss Ophelia, she came, hastily\nthrusting something into her bosom.\n\n\"What are you doing there, you limb? You've been stealing something,\nI'll be bound,\" said the imperious little Rosa, who had been sent to\ncall her, seizing her, at the same time, roughly by the arm.\n\n\"You go 'long, Miss Rosa!\" said Topsy, pulling from her; \"'tan't none o'\nyour business!\"\n\n\"None o' your sa'ce!\" said Rosa, \"I saw you hiding something,--I know\nyer tricks,\" and Rosa seized her arm, and tried to force her hand into\nher bosom, while Topsy, enraged, kicked and fought valiantly for what\nshe considered her rights. The clamor and confusion of the battle drew\nMiss Ophelia and St. Clare both to the spot.\n\n\"She's been stealing!\" said Rosa.\n\n\"I han't, neither!\" vociferated Topsy, sobbing with passion.\n\n\"Give me that, whatever it is!\" said Miss Ophelia, firmly.\n\nTopsy hesitated; but, on a second order, pulled out of her bosom a\nlittle parcel done up in the foot of one of her own old stockings.\n\nMiss Ophelia turned it out. There was a small book, which had been given\nto Topsy by Eva, containing a single verse of Scripture, arranged for\nevery day in the year, and in a paper the curl of hair that she had\ngiven her on that memorable day when she had taken her last farewell.\n\nSt. Clare was a good deal affected at the sight of it; the little book\nhad been rolled in a long strip of black crape, torn from the funeral\nweeds.\n\n\"What did you wrap _this_ round the book for?\" said St. Clare, holding\nup the crape.\n\n\"Cause,--cause,--cause 't was Miss Eva. O, don't take 'em away, please!\"\nshe said; and, sitting flat down on the floor, and putting her apron\nover her head, she began to sob vehemently.\n\nIt was a curious mixture of the pathetic and the ludicrous,--the little\nold stockings,--black crape,--text-book,--fair, soft curl,--and Topsy's\nutter distress.\n\nSt. Clare smiled; but there were tears in his eyes, as he said,\n\n\"Come, come,--don't cry; you shall have them!\" and, putting them\ntogether, he threw them into her lap, and drew Miss Ophelia with him\ninto the parlor.\n\n\"I really think you can make something of that concern,\" he said,\npointing with his thumb backward over his shoulder. \"Any mind that\nis capable of a _real sorrow_ is capable of good. You must try and do\nsomething with her.\"\n\n\"The child has improved greatly,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"I have great hopes\nof her; but, Augustine,\" she said, laying her hand on his arm, \"one\nthing I want to ask; whose is this child to be?--yours or mine?\"\n\n\"Why, I gave her to you,\" said Augustine.\n\n\"But not legally;--I want her to be mine legally,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Whew! cousin,\" said Augustine. \"What will the Abolition Society think?\nThey'll have a day of fasting appointed for this backsliding, if you\nbecome a slaveholder!\"\n\n\"O, nonsense! I want her mine, that I may have a right to take her to\nthe free States, and give her her liberty, that all I am trying to do be\nnot undone.\"\n\n\"O, cousin, what an awful 'doing evil that good may come'! I can't\nencourage it.\"\n\n\"I don't want you to joke, but to reason,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"There is\nno use in my trying to make this child a Christian child, unless I save\nher from all the chances and reverses of slavery; and, if you really are\nwilling I should have her, I want you to give me a deed of gift, or some\nlegal paper.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said St. Clare, \"I will;\" and he sat down, and unfolded a\nnewspaper to read.\n\n\"But I want it done now,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"What's your hurry?\"\n\n\"Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in,\" said Miss\nOphelia. \"Come, now, here's paper, pen, and ink; just write a paper.\"\n\nSt. Clare, like most men of his class of mind, cordially hated the\npresent tense of action, generally; and, therefore, he was considerably\nannoyed by Miss Ophelia's downrightness.\n\n\"Why, what's the matter?\" said he. \"Can't you take my word? One would\nthink you had taken lessons of the Jews, coming at a fellow so!\"\n\n\"I want to make sure of it,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"You may die, or fail,\nand then Topsy be hustled off to auction, spite of all I can do.\"\n\n\"Really, you are quite provident. Well, seeing I'm in the hands of a\nYankee, there is nothing for it but to concede;\" and St. Clare rapidly\nwrote off a deed of gift, which, as he was well versed in the forms\nof law, he could easily do, and signed his name to it in sprawling\ncapitals, concluding by a tremendous flourish.\n\n\"There, isn't that black and white, now, Miss Vermont?\" he said, as he\nhanded it to her.\n\n\"Good boy,\" said Miss Ophelia, smiling. \"But must it not be witnessed?\"\n\n\"O, bother!--yes. Here,\" he said, opening the door into Marie's\napartment, \"Marie, Cousin wants your autograph; just put your name down\nhere.\"\n\n\"What's this?\" said Marie, as she ran over the paper. \"Ridiculous! I\nthought Cousin was too pious for such horrid things,\" she added, as she\ncarelessly wrote her name; \"but, if she has a fancy for that article, I\nam sure she's welcome.\"\n\n\"There, now, she's yours, body and soul,\" said St. Clare, handing the\npaper.\n\n\"No more mine now than she was before,\" Miss Ophelia. \"Nobody but God\nhas a right to give her to me; but I can protect her now.\"\n\n\"Well, she's yours by a fiction of law, then,\" said St. Clare, as he\nturned back into the parlor, and sat down to his paper.\n\nMiss Ophelia, who seldom sat much in Marie's company, followed him into\nthe parlor, having first carefully laid away the paper.\n\n\"Augustine,\" she said, suddenly, as she sat knitting, \"have you ever\nmade any provision for your servants, in case of your death?\"\n\n\"No,\" said St. Clare, as he read on.\n\n\"Then all your indulgence to them may prove a great cruelty, by and by.\"\n\nSt. Clare had often thought the same thing himself; but he answered,\nnegligently.\n\n\"Well, I mean to make a provision, by and by.\"\n\n\"When?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"O, one of these days.\"\n\n\"What if you should die first?\"\n\n\"Cousin, what's the matter?\" said St. Clare, laying down his paper\nand looking at her. \"Do you think I show symptoms of yellow fever or\ncholera, that you are making post mortem arrangements with such zeal?\"\n\n\"'In the midst of life we are in death,'\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\nSt. Clare rose up, and laying the paper down, carelessly, walked to the\ndoor that stood open on the verandah, to put an end to a conversation\nthat was not agreeable to him. Mechanically, he repeated the last word\nagain,--_\"Death!\"_--and, as he leaned against the railings, and watched\nthe sparkling water as it rose and fell in the fountain; and, as in a\ndim and dizzy haze, saw flowers and trees and vases of the courts, he\nrepeated, again the mystic word so common in every mouth, yet of such\nfearful power,--\"DEATH!\" \"Strange that there should be such a word,\"\nhe said, \"and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be\nliving, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day,\nand the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!\"\n\nIt was a warm, golden evening; and, as he walked to the other end of the\nverandah, he saw Tom busily intent on his Bible, pointing, as he did so,\nwith his finger to each successive word, and whispering them to himself\nwith an earnest air.\n\n\"Want me to read to you, Tom?\" said St. Clare, seating himself\ncarelessly by him.\n\n\"If Mas'r pleases,\" said Tom, gratefully, \"Mas'r makes it so much\nplainer.\"\n\nSt. Clare took the book and glanced at the place, and began reading one\nof the passages which Tom had designated by the heavy marks around it.\nIt ran as follows:\n\n\"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all his holy angels\nwith him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before\nhim shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from\nanother, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.\" St. Clare\nread on in an animated voice, till he came to the last of the verses.\n\n\"Then shall the king say unto him on his left hand, Depart from me, ye\ncursed, into everlasting fire: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no\nmeat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye\ntook me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: I was sick, and in prison,\nand ye visited me not. Then shall they answer unto Him, Lord when saw\nwe thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or\nin prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he say unto them,\nInasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye\ndid it not to me.\"\n\nSt. Clare seemed struck with this last passage, for he read it\ntwice,--the second time slowly, and as if he were revolving the words in\nhis mind.\n\n\"Tom,\" he said, \"these folks that get such hard measure seem to have\nbeen doing just what I have,--living good, easy, respectable lives;\nand not troubling themselves to inquire how many of their brethren were\nhungry or athirst, or sick, or in prison.\"\n\nTom did not answer.\n\nSt. Clare rose up and walked thoughtfully up and down the verandah,\nseeming to forget everything in his own thoughts; so absorbed was he,\nthat Tom had to remind him twice that the teabell had rung, before he\ncould get his attention.\n\nSt. Clare was absent and thoughtful, all tea-time. After tea, he and\nMarie and Miss Ophelia took possession of the parlor almost in silence.\n\nMarie disposed herself on a lounge, under a silken mosquito curtain,\nand was soon sound asleep. Miss Ophelia silently busied herself with her\nknitting. St. Clare sat down to the piano, and began playing a soft and\nmelancholy movement with the Æolian accompaniment. He seemed in a deep\nreverie, and to be soliloquizing to himself by music. After a little, he\nopened one of the drawers, took out an old music-book whose leaves were\nyellow with age, and began turning it over.\n\n\"There,\" he said to Miss Ophelia, \"this was one of my mother's\nbooks,--and here is her handwriting,--come and look at it. She copied\nand arranged this from Mozart's Requiem.\" Miss Ophelia came accordingly.\n\n\"It was something she used to sing often,\" said St. Clare. \"I think I\ncan hear her now.\"\n\nHe struck a few majestic chords, and began singing that grand old Latin\npiece, the \"Dies Iræ.\"\n\nTom, who was listening in the outer verandah, was drawn by the sound\nto the very door, where he stood earnestly. He did not understand the\nwords, of course; but the music and manner of singing appeared to affect\nhim strongly, especially when St. Clare sang the more pathetic parts.\nTom would have sympathized more heartily, if he had known the meaning of\nthe beautiful words:--\n\n    \"Recordare Jesu pie\n     Quod sum causa tuær viæ\n     Ne me perdas, illa die\n     Quærens me sedisti lassus\n     Redemisti crucem passus\n     Tantus labor non sit cassus.\"*\n\n\n     * These lines have been thus rather inadequately translated:\n\n    \"Think, O Jesus, for what reason\n     Thou endured'st earth's spite and treason,\n     Nor me lose, in that dread season;\n     Seeking me, thy worn feet hasted,\n     On the cross thy soul death tasted,\n     Let not all these toils be wasted.\"\n     [Mrs. Stowe's note.]\n\nSt. Clare threw a deep and pathetic expression into the words; for\nthe shadowy veil of years seemed drawn away, and he seemed to hear his\nmother's voice leading his. Voice and instrument seemed both living, and\nthrew out with vivid sympathy those strains which the ethereal Mozart\nfirst conceived as his own dying requiem.\n\nWhen St. Clare had done singing, he sat leaning his head upon his hand a\nfew moments, and then began walking up and down the floor.\n\n\"What a sublime conception is that of a last judgment!\" said he,--\"a\nrighting of all the wrongs of ages!--a solving of all moral problems, by\nan unanswerable wisdom! It is, indeed, a wonderful image.\"\n\n\"It is a fearful one to us,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"It ought to be to me, I suppose,\" said St. Clare stopping,\nthoughtfully. \"I was reading to Tom, this afternoon, that chapter in\nMatthew that gives an account of it, and I have been quite struck with\nit. One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those\nwho are excluded from Heaven, as the reason; but no,--they are condemned\nfor _not_ doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"it is impossible for a person who does no\ngood not to do harm.\"\n\n\"And what,\" said St. Clare, speaking abstractedly, but with deep\nfeeling, \"what shall be said of one whose own heart, whose education,\nand the wants of society, have called in vain to some noble purpose; who\nhas floated on, a dreamy, neutral spectator of the struggles, agonies,\nand wrongs of man, when he should have been a worker?\"\n\n\"I should say,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"that he ought to repent, and begin\nnow.\"\n\n\"Always practical and to the point!\" said St. Clare, his face breaking\nout into a smile. \"You never leave me any time for general reflections,\nCousin; you always bring me short up against the actual present; you\nhave a kind of eternal _now_, always in your mind.\"\n\n\"_Now_ is all the time I have anything to do with,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"Dear little Eva,--poor child!\" said St. Clare, \"she had set her little\nsimple soul on a good work for me.\"\n\nIt was the first time since Eva's death that he had ever said as many\nwords as these to her, and he spoke now evidently repressing very strong\nfeeling.\n\n\"My view of Christianity is such,\" he added, \"that I think no man can\nconsistently profess it without throwing the whole weight of his being\nagainst this monstrous system of injustice that lies at the foundation\nof all our society; and, if need be, sacrificing himself in the battle.\nThat is, I mean that _I_ could not be a Christian otherwise, though\nI have certainly had intercourse with a great many enlightened and\nChristian people who did no such thing; and I confess that the apathy\nof religious people on this subject, their want of perception of wrongs\nthat filled me with horror, have engendered in me more scepticism than\nany other thing.\"\n\n\"If you knew all this,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"why didn't you do it?\"\n\n\"O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in\nlying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs\nand confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to\nbe martyrs.\"\n\n\"Well, are you going to do differently now?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"God only knows the future,\" said St. Clare. \"I am braver than I was,\nbecause I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all\nrisks.\"\n\n\"And what are you going to do?\"\n\n\"My duty, I hope, to the poor and lowly, as fast as I find it out,\" said\nSt. Clare, \"beginning with my own servants, for whom I have yet done\nnothing; and, perhaps, at some future day, it may appear that I can\ndo something for a whole class; something to save my country from the\ndisgrace of that false position in which she now stands before all\ncivilized nations.\"\n\n\"Do you suppose it possible that a nation ever will voluntarily\nemancipate?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said St. Clare. \"This is a day of great deeds. Heroism\nand disinterestedness are rising up, here and there, in the earth. The\nHungarian nobles set free millions of serfs, at an immense pecuniary\nloss; and, perhaps, among us may be found generous spirits, who do not\nestimate honor and justice by dollars and cents.\"\n\n\"I hardly think so,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"But, suppose we should rise up tomorrow and emancipate, who would\neducate these millions, and teach them how to use their freedom? They\nnever would rise to do much among us. The fact is, we are too lazy\nand unpractical, ourselves, ever to give them much of an idea of that\nindustry and energy which is necessary to form them into men. They will\nhave to go north, where labor is the fashion,--the universal custom;\nand tell me, now, is there enough Christian philanthropy, among your\nnorthern states, to bear with the process of their education and\nelevation? You send thousands of dollars to foreign missions; but could\nyou endure to have the heathen sent into your towns and villages, and\ngive your time, and thoughts, and money, to raise them to the Christian\nstandard? That's what I want to know. If we emancipate, are you willing\nto educate? How many families, in your town, would take a negro man and\nwoman, teach them, bear with them, and seek to make them Christians? How\nmany merchants would take Adolph, if I wanted to make him a clerk; or\nmechanics, if I wanted him taught a trade? If I wanted to put Jane and\nRosa to a school, how many schools are there in the northern states that\nwould take them in? how many families that would board them? and yet\nthey are as white as many a woman, north or south. You see, Cousin,\nI want justice done us. We are in a bad position. We are the more\n_obvious_ oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the\nnorth is an oppressor almost equally severe.\"\n\n\"Well, Cousin, I know it is so,\" said Miss Ophelia,--\"I know it was so\nwith me, till I saw that it was my duty to overcome it; but, I trust I\nhave overcome it; and I know there are many good people at the north,\nwho in this matter need only to be _taught_ what their duty is, to do\nit. It would certainly be a greater self-denial to receive heathen among\nus, than to send missionaries to them; but I think we would do it.\"\n\n\"_You_ would, I know,\" said St. Clare. \"I'd like to see anything you\nwouldn't do, if you thought it your duty!\"\n\n\"Well, I'm not uncommonly good,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"Others would,\nif they saw things as I do. I intend to take Topsy home, when I go.\nI suppose our folks will wonder, at first; but I think they will be\nbrought to see as I do. Besides, I know there are many people at the\nnorth who do exactly what you said.\"\n\n\"Yes, but they are a minority; and, if we should begin to emancipate to\nany extent, we should soon hear from you.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia did not reply. There was a pause of some moments; and St.\nClare's countenance was overcast by a sad, dreamy expression.\n\n\"I don't know what makes me think of my mother so much, tonight,\" he\nsaid. \"I have a strange kind of feeling, as if she were near me. I keep\nthinking of things she used to say. Strange, what brings these past\nthings so vividly back to us, sometimes!\"\n\nSt. Clare walked up and down the room for some minutes more, and then\nsaid,\n\n\"I believe I'll go down street, a few moments, and hear the news,\ntonight.\"\n\nHe took his hat, and passed out.\n\nTom followed him to the passage, out of the court, and asked if he\nshould attend him.\n\n\"No, my boy,\" said St. Clare. \"I shall be back in an hour.\"\n\nTom sat down in the verandah. It was a beautiful moonlight evening,\nand he sat watching the rising and falling spray of the fountain, and\nlistening to its murmur. Tom thought of his home, and that he should\nsoon be a free man, and able to return to it at will. He thought how he\nshould work to buy his wife and boys. He felt the muscles of his\nbrawny arms with a sort of joy, as he thought they would soon belong\nto himself, and how much they could do to work out the freedom of his\nfamily. Then he thought of his noble young master, and, ever second to\nthat, came the habitual prayer that he had always offered for him; and\nthen his thoughts passed on to the beautiful Eva, whom he now thought of\namong the angels; and he thought till he almost fancied that that bright\nface and golden hair were looking upon him, out of the spray of the\nfountain. And, so musing, he fell asleep, and dreamed he saw her\ncoming bounding towards him, just as she used to come, with a wreath\nof jessamine in her hair, her cheeks bright, and her eyes radiant with\ndelight; but, as he looked, she seemed to rise from the ground; her\ncheeks wore a paler hue,--her eyes had a deep, divine radiance, a golden\nhalo seemed around her head,--and she vanished from his sight; and Tom\nwas awakened by a loud knocking, and a sound of many voices at the gate.\n\nHe hastened to undo it; and, with smothered voices and heavy tread,\ncame several men, bringing a body, wrapped in a cloak, and lying on a\nshutter. The light of the lamp fell full on the face; and Tom gave a\nwild cry of amazement and despair, that rung through all the galleries,\nas the men advanced, with their burden, to the open parlor door, where\nMiss Ophelia still sat knitting.\n\nSt. Clare had turned into a cafe, to look over an evening paper. As he\nwas reading, an affray arose between two gentlemen in the room, who\nwere both partially intoxicated. St. Clare and one or two others made an\neffort to separate them, and St. Clare received a fatal stab in the side\nwith a bowie-knife, which he was attempting to wrest from one of them.\n\nThe house was full of cries and lamentations, shrieks and screams,\nservants frantically tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the\nground, or running distractedly about, lamenting. Tom and Miss Ophelia\nalone seemed to have any presence of mind; for Marie was in strong\nhysteric convulsions. At Miss Ophelia's direction, one of the lounges in\nthe parlor was hastily prepared, and the bleeding form laid upon it. St.\nClare had fainted, through pain and loss of blood; but, as Miss Ophelia\napplied restoratives, he revived, opened his eyes, looked fixedly on\nthem, looked earnestly around the room, his eyes travelling wistfully\nover every object, and finally they rested on his mother's picture.\n\nThe physician now arrived, and made his examination. It was evident,\nfrom the expression of his face, that there was no hope; but he applied\nhimself to dressing the wound, and he and Miss Ophelia and Tom proceeded\ncomposedly with this work, amid the lamentations and sobs and cries of\nthe affrighted servants, who had clustered about the doors and windows\nof the verandah.\n\n\"Now,\" said the physician, \"we must turn all these creatures out; all\ndepends on his being kept quiet.\"\n\nSt. Clare opened his eyes, and looked fixedly on the distressed beings,\nwhom Miss Ophelia and the doctor were trying to urge from the apartment.\n\"Poor creatures!\" he said, and an expression of bitter self-reproach\npassed over his face. Adolph absolutely refused to go. Terror had\ndeprived him of all presence of mind; he threw himself along the\nfloor, and nothing could persuade him to rise. The rest yielded to Miss\nOphelia's urgent representations, that their master's safety depended on\ntheir stillness and obedience.\n\nSt. Clare could say but little; he lay with his eyes shut, but it was\nevident that he wrestled with bitter thoughts. After a while, he laid\nhis hand on Tom's, who was kneeling beside him, and said, \"Tom! poor\nfellow!\"\n\n\"What, Mas'r?\" said Tom, earnestly.\n\n\"I am dying!\" said St. Clare, pressing his hand; \"pray!\"\n\n\"If you would like a clergyman--\" said the physician.\n\nSt. Clare hastily shook his head, and said again to Tom, more earnestly,\n\"Pray!\"\n\nAnd Tom did pray, with all his mind and strength, for the soul that was\npassing,--the soul that seemed looking so steadily and mournfully from\nthose large, melancholy blue eyes. It was literally prayer offered with\nstrong crying and tears.\n\nWhen Tom ceased to speak, St. Clare reached out and took his hand,\nlooking earnestly at him, but saying nothing. He closed his eyes, but\nstill retained his hold; for, in the gates of eternity, the black hand\nand the white hold each other with an equal clasp. He murmured softly to\nhimself, at broken intervals,\n\n     \"Recordare Jesu pie--\n     *  *  *  *\n     Ne me perdas--illa die\n     Quærens me--sedisti lassus.\"\n\nIt was evident that the words he had been singing that evening were\npassing through his mind,--words of entreaty addressed to Infinite Pity.\nHis lips moved at intervals, as parts of the hymn fell brokenly from\nthem.\n\n\"His mind is wandering,\" said the doctor.\n\n\"No! it is coming HOME, at last!\" said St. Clare, energetically; \"at\nlast! at last!\"\n\nThe effort of speaking exhausted him. The sinking paleness of death\nfell on him; but with it there fell, as if shed from the wings of some\npitying spirit, a beautiful expression of peace, like that of a wearied\nchild who sleeps.\n\nSo he lay for a few moments. They saw that the mighty hand was on him.\nJust before the spirit parted, he opened his eyes, with a sudden light,\nas of joy and recognition, and said _\"Mother!\"_ and then he was gone!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nThe Unprotected\n\n\nWe hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a\nkind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is\nleft more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these\ncircumstances.\n\nThe child who has lost a father has still the protection of friends,\nand of the law; he is something, and can do something,--has acknowledged\nrights and position; the slave has none. The law regards him, in every\nrespect, as devoid of rights as a bale of merchandise. The only possible\nacknowledgment of any of the longings and wants of a human and immortal\ncreature, which are given to him, comes to him through the sovereign and\nirresponsible will of his master; and when that master is stricken down,\nnothing remains.\n\nThe number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power\nhumanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave\nknows it best of all; so that he feels that there are ten chances of\nhis finding an abusive and tyrannical master, to one of his finding\na considerate and kind one. Therefore is it that the wail over a kind\nmaster is loud and long, as well it may be.\n\nWhen St. Clare breathed his last, terror and consternation took hold\nof all his household. He had been stricken down so in a moment, in the\nflower and strength of his youth! Every room and gallery of the house\nresounded with sobs and shrieks of despair.\n\nMarie, whose nervous system had been enervated by a constant course of\nself-indulgence, had nothing to support the terror of the shock, and,\nat the time her husband breathed his last, was passing from one fainting\nfit to another; and he to whom she had been joined in the mysterious tie\nof marriage passed from her forever, without the possibility of even a\nparting word.\n\nMiss Ophelia, with characteristic strength and self-control, had\nremained with her kinsman to the last,--all eye, all ear, all attention;\ndoing everything of the little that could be done, and joining with her\nwhole soul in the tender and impassioned prayers which the poor slave\nhad poured forth for the soul of his dying master.\n\nWhen they were arranging him for his last rest, they found upon his\nbosom a small, plain miniature case, opening with a spring. It was the\nminiature of a noble and beautiful female face; and on the reverse,\nunder a crystal, a lock of dark hair. They laid them back on the\nlifeless breast,--dust to dust,--poor mournful relics of early dreams,\nwhich once made that cold heart beat so warmly!\n\nTom's whole soul was filled with thoughts of eternity; and while he\nministered around the lifeless clay, he did not once think that the\nsudden stroke had left him in hopeless slavery. He felt at peace about\nhis master; for in that hour, when he had poured forth his prayer\ninto the bosom of his Father, he had found an answer of quietness\nand assurance springing up within himself. In the depths of his own\naffectionate nature, he felt able to perceive something of the fulness\nof Divine love; for an old oracle hath thus written,--\"He that dwelleth\nin love dwelleth in God, and God in him.\" Tom hoped and trusted, and was\nat peace.\n\nBut the funeral passed, with all its pageant of black crape, and\nprayers, and solemn faces; and back rolled the cool, muddy waves of\nevery-day life; and up came the everlasting hard inquiry of \"What is to\nbe done next?\"\n\nIt rose to the mind of Marie, as, dressed in loose morning-robes, and\nsurrounded by anxious servants, she sat up in a great easy-chair, and\ninspected samples of crape and bombazine. It rose to Miss Ophelia, who\nbegan to turn her thoughts towards her northern home. It rose, in silent\nterrors, to the minds of the servants, who well knew the unfeeling,\ntyrannical character of the mistress in whose hands they were left. All\nknew, very well, that the indulgences which had been accorded to them\nwere not from their mistress, but from their master; and that, now he\nwas gone, there would be no screen between them and every tyrannous\ninfliction which a temper soured by affliction might devise.\n\nIt was about a fortnight after the funeral, that Miss Ophelia, busied\none day in her apartment, heard a gentle tap at the door. She opened\nit, and there stood Rosa, the pretty young quadroon, whom we have before\noften noticed, her hair in disorder, and her eyes swelled with crying.\n\n\"O, Miss Feeley,\" she said, falling on her knees, and catching the skirt\nof her dress, \"_do, do go_ to Miss Marie for me! do plead for me! She's\ngoin' to send me out to be whipped--look there!\" And she handed to Miss\nOphelia a paper.\n\nIt was an order, written in Marie's delicate Italian hand, to the master\nof a whipping-establishment to give the bearer fifteen lashes.\n\n\"What have you been doing?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"You know, Miss Feely, I've got such a bad temper; it's very bad of me.\nI was trying on Miss Marie's dress, and she slapped my face; and I spoke\nout before I thought, and was saucy; and she said that she'd bring\nme down, and have me know, once for all, that I wasn't going to be so\ntopping as I had been; and she wrote this, and says I shall carry it.\nI'd rather she'd kill me, right out.\"\n\nMiss Ophelia stood considering, with the paper in her hand.\n\n\"You see, Miss Feely,\" said Rosa, \"I don't mind the whipping so much, if\nMiss Marie or you was to do it; but, to be sent to a _man!_ and such a\nhorrid man,--the shame of it, Miss Feely!\"\n\nMiss Ophelia well knew that it was the universal custom to send women\nand young girls to whipping-houses, to the hands of the lowest of\nmen,--men vile enough to make this their profession,--there to be\nsubjected to brutal exposure and shameful correction. She had _known_ it\nbefore; but hitherto she had never realized it, till she saw the slender\nform of Rosa almost convulsed with distress. All the honest blood of\nwomanhood, the strong New England blood of liberty, flushed to her\ncheeks, and throbbed bitterly in her indignant heart; but, with habitual\nprudence and self-control, she mastered herself, and, crushing the paper\nfirmly in her hand, she merely said to Rosa,\n\n\"Sit down, child, while I go to your mistress.\"\n\n\"Shameful! monstrous! outrageous!\" she said to herself, as she was\ncrossing the parlor.\n\nShe found Marie sitting up in her easy-chair, with Mammy standing\nby her, combing her hair; Jane sat on the ground before her, busy in\nchafing her feet.\n\n\"How do you find yourself, today?\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\nA deep sigh, and a closing of the eyes, was the only reply, for a\nmoment; and then Marie answered, \"O, I don't know, Cousin; I suppose\nI'm as well as I ever shall be!\" and Marie wiped her eyes with a cambric\nhandkerchief, bordered with an inch deep of black.\n\n\"I came,\" said Miss Ophelia, with a short, dry cough, such as commonly\nintroduces a difficult subject,--\"I came to speak with you about poor\nRosa.\"\n\nMarie's eyes were open wide enough now, and a flush rose to her sallow\ncheeks, as she answered, sharply,\n\n\"Well, what about her?\"\n\n\"She is very sorry for her fault.\"\n\n\"She is, is she? She'll be sorrier, before I've done with her! I've\nendured that child's impudence long enough; and now I'll bring her\ndown,--I'll make her lie in the dust!\"\n\n\"But could not you punish her some other way,--some way that would be\nless shameful?\"\n\n\"I mean to shame her; that's just what I want. She has all her life\npresumed on her delicacy, and her good looks, and her lady-like airs,\ntill she forgets who she is;--and I'll give her one lesson that will\nbring her down, I fancy!\"\n\n\"But, Cousin, consider that, if you destroy delicacy and a sense of\nshame in a young girl, you deprave her very fast.\"\n\n\"Delicacy!\" said Marie, with a scornful laugh,--\"a fine word for such\nas she! I'll teach her, with all her airs, that she's no better than the\nraggedest black wench that walks the streets! She'll take no more airs\nwith me!\"\n\n\"You will answer to God for such cruelty!\" said Miss Ophelia, with\nenergy.\n\n\"Cruelty,--I'd like to know what the cruelty is! I wrote orders for only\nfifteen lashes, and told him to put them on lightly. I'm sure there's no\ncruelty there!\"\n\n\"No cruelty!\" said Miss Ophelia. \"I'm sure any girl might rather be\nkilled outright!\"\n\n\"It might seem so to anybody with your feeling; but all these creatures\nget used to it; it's the only way they can be kept in order. Once let\nthem feel that they are to take any airs about delicacy, and all that,\nand they'll run all over you, just as my servants always have. I've\nbegun now to bring them under; and I'll have them all to know that\nI'll send one out to be whipped, as soon as another, if they don't mind\nthemselves!\" said Marie, looking around her decidedly.\n\nJane hung her head and cowered at this, for she felt as if it was\nparticularly directed to her. Miss Ophelia sat for a moment, as if she\nhad swallowed some explosive mixture, and were ready to burst. Then,\nrecollecting the utter uselessness of contention with such a nature,\nshe shut her lips resolutely, gathered herself up, and walked out of the\nroom.\n\nIt was hard to go back and tell Rosa that she could do nothing for\nher; and, shortly after, one of the man-servants came to say that her\nmistress had ordered him to take Rosa with him to the whipping-house,\nwhither she was hurried, in spite of her tears and entreaties.\n\nA few days after, Tom was standing musing by the balconies, when he was\njoined by Adolph, who, since the death of his master, had been entirely\ncrest-fallen and disconsolate. Adolph knew that he had always been an\nobject of dislike to Marie; but while his master lived he had paid but\nlittle attention to it. Now that he was gone, he had moved about in\ndaily dread and trembling, not knowing what might befall him next. Marie\nhad held several consultations with her lawyer; after communicating with\nSt. Clare's brother, it was determined to sell the place, and all the\nservants, except her own personal property, and these she intended to\ntake with her, and go back to her father's plantation.\n\n\"Do ye know, Tom, that we've all got to be sold?\" said Adolph.\n\n\"How did you hear that?\" said Tom.\n\n\"I hid myself behind the curtains when Missis was talking with the\nlawyer. In a few days we shall be sent off to auction, Tom.\"\n\n\"The Lord's will be done!\" said Tom, folding his arms and sighing\nheavily.\n\n\"We'll never get another such a master,\" said Adolph, apprehensively;\n\"but I'd rather be sold than take my chance under Missis.\"\n\nTom turned away; his heart was full. The hope of liberty, the thought\nof distant wife and children, rose up before his patient soul, as to the\nmariner shipwrecked almost in port rises the vision of the church-spire\nand loving roofs of his native village, seen over the top of some black\nwave only for one last farewell. He drew his arms tightly over his\nbosom, and choked back the bitter tears, and tried to pray. The poor old\nsoul had such a singular, unaccountable prejudice in favor of liberty,\nthat it was a hard wrench for him; and the more he said, \"Thy will be\ndone,\" the worse he felt.\n\nHe sought Miss Ophelia, who, ever since Eva's death, had treated him\nwith marked and respectful kindness.\n\n\"Miss Feely,\" he said, \"Mas'r St. Clare promised me my freedom. He told\nme that he had begun to take it out for me; and now, perhaps, if Miss\nFeely would be good enough to speak bout it to Missis, she would feel\nlike goin' on with it, was it as Mas'r St. Clare's wish.\"\n\n\"I'll speak for you, Tom, and do my best,\" said Miss Ophelia; \"but, if\nit depends on Mrs. St. Clare, I can't hope much for you;--nevertheless,\nI will try.\"\n\nThis incident occurred a few days after that of Rosa, while Miss Ophelia\nwas busied in preparations to return north.\n\nSeriously reflecting within herself, she considered that perhaps she had\nshown too hasty a warmth of language in her former interview with Marie;\nand she resolved that she would now endeavor to moderate her zeal, and\nto be as conciliatory as possible. So the good soul gathered herself\nup, and, taking her knitting, resolved to go into Marie's room, be as\nagreeable as possible, and negotiate Tom's case with all the diplomatic\nskill of which she was mistress.\n\nShe found Marie reclining at length upon a lounge, supporting herself\non one elbow by pillows, while Jane, who had been out shopping, was\ndisplaying before her certain samples of thin black stuffs.\n\n\"That will do,\" said Marie, selecting one; \"only I'm not sure about its\nbeing properly mourning.\"\n\n\"Laws, Missis,\" said Jane, volubly, \"Mrs. General Derbennon wore just\nthis very thing, after the General died, last summer; it makes up\nlovely!\"\n\n\"What do you think?\" said Marie to Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"It's a matter of custom, I suppose,\" said Miss Ophelia. \"You can judge\nabout it better than I.\"\n\n\"The fact is,\" said Marie, \"that I haven't a dress in the world that I\ncan wear; and, as I am going to break up the establishment, and go off,\nnext week, I must decide upon something.\"\n\n\"Are you going so soon?\"\n\n\"Yes. St. Clare's brother has written, and he and the lawyer think that\nthe servants and furniture had better be put up at auction, and the\nplace left with our lawyer.\"\n\n\"There's one thing I wanted to speak with you about,\" said Miss Ophelia.\n\"Augustine promised Tom his liberty, and began the legal forms necessary\nto it. I hope you will use your influence to have it perfected.\"\n\n\"Indeed, I shall do no such thing!\" said Marie, sharply. \"Tom is one of\nthe most valuable servants on the place,--it couldn't be afforded, any\nway. Besides, what does he want of liberty? He's a great deal better off\nas he is.\"\n\n\"But he does desire it, very earnestly, and his master promised it,\"\nsaid Miss Ophelia.\n\n\"I dare say he does want it,\" said Marie; \"they all want it, just\nbecause they are a discontented set,--always wanting what they haven't\ngot. Now, I'm principled against emancipating, in any case. Keep a negro\nunder the care of a master, and he does well enough, and is respectable;\nbut set them free, and they get lazy, and won't work, and take to\ndrinking, and go all down to be mean, worthless fellows, I've seen it\ntried, hundreds of times. It's no favor to set them free.\"\n\n\"But Tom is so steady, industrious, and pious.\"\n\n\"O, you needn't tell me! I've see a hundred like him. He'll do very\nwell, as long as he's taken care of,--that's all.\"\n\n\"But, then, consider,\" said Miss Ophelia, \"when you set him up for sale,\nthe chances of his getting a bad master.\"\n\n\"O, that's all humbug!\" said Marie; \"it isn't one time in a hundred that\na good fellow gets a bad master; most masters are good, for all the talk\nthat is made. I've lived and grown up here, in the South, and I\nnever yet was acquainted with a master that didn't treat his servants\nwell,--quite as well as is worth while. I don't feel any fears on that\nhead.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Ophelia, energetically, \"I know it was one of the last\nwishes of your husband that Tom should have his liberty; it was one of\nthe promises that he made to dear little Eva on her death-bed, and I\nshould not think you would feel at liberty to disregard it.\"\n\nMarie had her face covered with her handkerchief at this appeal, and\nbegan sobbing and using her smelling-bottle, with great vehemence.\n\n\"Everybody goes against me!\" she said. \"Everybody is so inconsiderate! I\nshouldn't have expected that _you_ would bring up all these remembrances\nof my troubles to me,--it's so inconsiderate! But nobody ever does\nconsider,--my trials are so peculiar! It's so hard, that when I had only\none daughter, she should have been taken!--and when I had a husband that\njust exactly suited me,--and I'm so hard to be suited!--he should be\ntaken! And you seem to have so little feeling for me, and keep bringing\nit up to me so carelessly,--when you know how it overcomes me! I suppose\nyou mean well; but it is very inconsiderate,--very!\" And Marie sobbed,\nand gasped for breath, and called Mammy to open the window, and to bring\nher the camphor-bottle, and to bathe her head, and unhook her dress.\nAnd, in the general confusion that ensued, Miss Ophelia made her escape\nto her apartment.\n\nShe saw, at once, that it would do no good to say anything more; for\nMarie had an indefinite capacity for hysteric fits; and, after this,\nwhenever her husband's or Eva's wishes with regard to the servants were\nalluded to, she always found it convenient to set one in operation.\nMiss Ophelia, therefore, did the next best thing she could for Tom,--she\nwrote a letter to Mrs. Shelby for him, stating his troubles, and urging\nthem to send to his relief.\n\nThe next day, Tom and Adolph, and some half a dozen other servants,\nwere marched down to a slave-warehouse, to await the convenience of the\ntrader, who was going to make up a lot for auction.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXX\n\nThe Slave Warehouse\n\nA slave warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible\nvisions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, some\nhorrible _Tartarus \"informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.\"_ But no,\ninnocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning\nexpertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of\nrespectable society. Human property is high in the market; and is,\ntherefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may\ncome to sale sleek, and strong, and shining. A slave-warehouse in New\nOrleans is a house externally not much unlike many others, kept with\nneatness; and where every day you may see arranged, under a sort of shed\nalong the outside, rows of men and women, who stand there as a sign of\nthe property sold within.\n\nThen you shall be courteously entreated to call and examine, and shall\nfind an abundance of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers,\nmothers, and young children, to be \"sold separately, or in lots to suit\nthe convenience of the purchaser;\" and that soul immortal, once bought\nwith blood and anguish by the Son of God, when the earth shook, and the\nrocks rent, and the graves were opened, can be sold, leased, mortgaged,\nexchanged for groceries or dry goods, to suit the phases of trade, or\nthe fancy of the purchaser.\n\nIt was a day or two after the conversation between Marie and Miss\nOphelia, that Tom, Adolph, and about half a dozen others of the St.\nClare estate, were turned over to the loving kindness of Mr. Skeggs, the\nkeeper of a depot on ---- street, to await the auction, next day.\n\nTom had with him quite a sizable trunk full of clothing, as had most\nothers of them. They were ushered, for the night, into a long room,\nwhere many other men, of all ages, sizes, and shades of complexion, were\nassembled, and from which roars of laughter and unthinking merriment\nwere proceeding.\n\n\"Ah, ha! that's right. Go it, boys,--go it!\" said Mr. Skeggs, the\nkeeper. \"My people are always so merry! Sambo, I see!\" he said,\nspeaking approvingly to a burly negro who was performing tricks of low\nbuffoonery, which occasioned the shouts which Tom had heard.\n\nAs might be imagined, Tom was in no humor to join these proceedings;\nand, therefore, setting his trunk as far as possible from the noisy\ngroup, he sat down on it, and leaned his face against the wall.\n\nThe dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts\nto promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection,\nand rendering them insensible to their condition. The whole object of\nthe training to which the negro is put, from the time he is sold in\nthe northern market till he arrives south, is systematically directed\ntowards making him callous, unthinking, and brutal. The slave-dealer\ncollects his gang in Virginia or Kentucky, and drives them to some\nconvenient, healthy place,--often a watering place,--to be fattened.\nHere they are fed full daily; and, because some incline to pine, a\nfiddle is kept commonly going among them, and they are made to dance\ndaily; and he who refuses to be merry--in whose soul thoughts of wife,\nor child, or home, are too strong for him to be gay--is marked as sullen\nand dangerous, and subjected to all the evils which the ill will of an\nutterly irresponsible and hardened man can inflict upon him. Briskness,\nalertness, and cheerfulness of appearance, especially before observers,\nare constantly enforced upon them, both by the hope of thereby getting a\ngood master, and the fear of all that the driver may bring upon them if\nthey prove unsalable.\n\n\"What dat ar nigger doin here?\" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, after Mr.\nSkeggs had left the room. Sambo was a full black, of great size, very\nlively, voluble, and full of trick and grimace.\n\n\"What you doin here?\" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, and poking him\nfacetiously in the side. \"Meditatin', eh?\"\n\n\"I am to be sold at the auction tomorrow!\" said Tom, quietly.\n\n\"Sold at auction,--haw! haw! boys, an't this yer fun? I wish't I was\ngwine that ar way!--tell ye, wouldn't I make em laugh? But how is\nit,--dis yer whole lot gwine tomorrow?\" said Sambo, laying his hand\nfreely on Adolph's shoulder.\n\n\"Please to let me alone!\" said Adolph, fiercely, straightening himself\nup, with extreme disgust.\n\n\"Law, now, boys! dis yer's one o' yer white niggers,--kind o' cream\ncolor, ye know, scented!\" said he, coming up to Adolph and snuffing. \"O\nLor! he'd do for a tobaccer-shop; they could keep him to scent snuff!\nLor, he'd keep a whole shope agwine,--he would!\"\n\n\"I say, keep off, can't you?\" said Adolph, enraged.\n\n\"Lor, now, how touchy we is,--we white niggers! Look at us now!\" and\nSambo gave a ludicrous imitation of Adolph's manner; \"here's de airs and\ngraces. We's been in a good family, I specs.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Adolph; \"I had a master that could have bought you all for\nold truck!\"\n\n\"Laws, now, only think,\" said Sambo, \"the gentlemens that we is!\"\n\n\"I belonged to the St. Clare family,\" said Adolph, proudly.\n\n\"Lor, you did! Be hanged if they ar'n't lucky to get shet of ye. Spects\nthey's gwine to trade ye off with a lot o' cracked tea-pots and sich\nlike!\" said Sambo, with a provoking grin.\n\nAdolph, enraged at this taunt, flew furiously at his adversary, swearing\nand striking on every side of him. The rest laughed and shouted, and the\nuproar brought the keeper to the door.\n\n\"What now, boys? Order,--order!\" he said, coming in and flourishing a\nlarge whip.\n\nAll fled in different directions, except Sambo, who, presuming on the\nfavor which the keeper had to him as a licensed wag, stood his ground,\nducking his head with a facetious grin, whenever the master made a dive\nat him.\n\n\"Lor, Mas'r, 'tan't us,--we 's reglar stiddy,--it's these yer new hands;\nthey 's real aggravatin',--kinder pickin' at us, all time!\"\n\nThe keeper, at this, turned upon Tom and Adolph, and distributing a few\nkicks and cuffs without much inquiry, and leaving general orders for all\nto be good boys and go to sleep, left the apartment.\n\nWhile this scene was going on in the men's sleeping-room, the reader may\nbe curious to take a peep at the corresponding apartment allotted to\nthe women. Stretched out in various attitudes over the floor, he may see\nnumberless sleeping forms of every shade of complexion, from the purest\nebony to white, and of all years, from childhood to old age, lying now\nasleep. Here is a fine bright girl, of ten years, whose mother was sold\nout yesterday, and who tonight cried herself to sleep when nobody was\nlooking at her. Here, a worn old negress, whose thin arms and callous\nfingers tell of hard toil, waiting to be sold tomorrow, as a cast-off\narticle, for what can be got for her; and some forty or fifty others,\nwith heads variously enveloped in blankets or articles of clothing, lie\nstretched around them. But, in a corner, sitting apart from the rest,\nare two females of a more interesting appearance than common. One of\nthese is a respectably-dressed mulatto woman between forty and fifty,\nwith soft eyes and a gentle and pleasing physiognomy. She has on her\nhead a high-raised turban, made of a gay red Madras handkerchief, of the\nfirst quality, her dress is neatly fitted, and of good material, showing\nthat she has been provided for with a careful hand. By her side, and\nnestling closely to her, is a young girl of fifteen,--her daughter. She\nis a quadroon, as may be seen from her fairer complexion, though her\nlikeness to her mother is quite discernible. She has the same soft, dark\neye, with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown.\nShe also is dressed with great neatness, and her white, delicate hands\nbetray very little acquaintance with servile toil. These two are to\nbe sold tomorrow, in the same lot with the St. Clare servants; and the\ngentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is\nto be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who\nwill receive the money, and go thereafter to the sacrament of his Lord\nand theirs, and think no more of it.\n\nThese two, whom we shall call Susan and Emmeline, had been the personal\nattendants of an amiable and pious lady of New Orleans, by whom they had\nbeen carefully and piously instructed and trained. They had been taught\nto read and write, diligently instructed in the truths of religion, and\ntheir lot had been as happy an one as in their condition it was possible\nto be. But the only son of their protectress had the management of her\nproperty; and, by carelessness and extravagance involved it to a\nlarge amount, and at last failed. One of the largest creditors was\nthe respectable firm of B. & Co., in New York. B. & Co. wrote to their\nlawyer in New Orleans, who attached the real estate (these two articles\nand a lot of plantation hands formed the most valuable part of it), and\nwrote word to that effect to New York. Brother B., being, as we have\nsaid, a Christian man, and a resident in a free State, felt some\nuneasiness on the subject. He didn't like trading in slaves and souls\nof men,--of course, he didn't; but, then, there were thirty thousand\ndollars in the case, and that was rather too much money to be lost for a\nprinciple; and so, after much considering, and asking advice from those\nthat he knew would advise to suit him, Brother B. wrote to his lawyer to\ndispose of the business in the way that seemed to him the most suitable,\nand remit the proceeds.\n\nThe day after the letter arrived in New Orleans, Susan and Emmeline\nwere attached, and sent to the depot to await a general auction on the\nfollowing morning; and as they glimmer faintly upon us in the moonlight\nwhich steals through the grated window, we may listen to their\nconversation. Both are weeping, but each quietly, that the other may not\nhear.\n\n\"Mother, just lay your head on my lap, and see if you can't sleep a\nlittle,\" says the girl, trying to appear calm.\n\n\"I haven't any heart to sleep, Em; I can't; it's the last night we may\nbe together!\"\n\n\"O, mother, don't say so! perhaps we shall get sold together,--who\nknows?\"\n\n\"If 't was anybody's else case, I should say so, too, Em,\" said the\nwoman; \"but I'm so feard of losin' you that I don't see anything but the\ndanger.\"\n\n\"Why, mother, the man said we were both likely, and would sell well.\"\n\nSusan remembered the man's looks and words. With a deadly sickness at\nher heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline's hands, and\nlifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan\nhad been trained as a Christian, brought up in the daily reading of the\nBible, and had the same horror of her child's being sold to a life\nof shame that any other Christian mother might have; but she had no\nhope,--no protection.\n\n\"Mother, I think we might do first rate, if you could get a place as\ncook, and I as chambermaid or seamstress, in some family. I dare say we\nshall. Let's both look as bright and lively as we can, and tell all we\ncan do, and perhaps we shall,\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"I want you to brush your hair all back straight, tomorrow,\" said Susan.\n\n\"What for, mother? I don't look near so well, that way.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you'll sell better so.\"\n\n\"I don't see why!\" said the child.\n\n\"Respectable families would be more apt to buy you, if they saw you\nlooked plain and decent, as if you wasn't trying to look handsome. I\nknow their ways better 'n you do,\" said Susan.\n\n\"Well, mother, then I will.\"\n\n\"And, Emmeline, if we shouldn't ever see each other again, after\ntomorrow,--if I'm sold way up on a plantation somewhere, and you\nsomewhere else,--always remember how you've been brought up, and all\nMissis has told you; take your Bible with you, and your hymn-book; and\nif you're faithful to the Lord, he'll be faithful to you.\"\n\nSo speaks the poor soul, in sore discouragement; for she knows\nthat tomorrow any man, however vile and brutal, however godless and\nmerciless, if he only has money to pay for her, may become owner of her\ndaughter, body and soul; and then, how is the child to be faithful? She\nthinks of all this, as she holds her daughter in her arms, and\nwishes that she were not handsome and attractive. It seems almost an\naggravation to her to remember how purely and piously, how much above\nthe ordinary lot, she has been brought up. But she has no resort but to\n_pray_; and many such prayers to God have gone up from those same trim,\nneatly-arranged, respectable slave-prisons,--prayers which God has not\nforgotten, as a coming day shall show; for it is written, \"Who causeth\none of these little ones to offend, it were better for him that a\nmillstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the\ndepths of the sea.\"\n\nThe soft, earnest, quiet moonbeam looks in fixedly, marking the bars\nof the grated windows on the prostrate, sleeping forms. The mother and\ndaughter are singing together a wild and melancholy dirge, common as a\nfuneral hymn among the slaves:\n\n     \"O, where is weeping Mary?\n     O, where is weeping Mary?\n     'Rived in the goodly land.\n     She is dead and gone to Heaven;\n     She is dead and gone to Heaven;\n     'Rived in the goodly land.\"\n\nThese words, sung by voices of a peculiar and melancholy sweetness, in\nan air which seemed like the sighing of earthy despair after heavenly\nhope, floated through the dark prison rooms with a pathetic cadence, as\nverse after verse was breathed out:\n\n     \"O, where are Paul and Silas?\n     O, where are Paul and Silas?\n     Gone to the goodly land.\n     They are dead and gone to Heaven;\n     They are dead and gone to Heaven;\n     'Rived in the goodly land.\"\n\nSing on poor souls! The night is short, and the morning will part you\nforever!\n\nBut now it is morning, and everybody is astir; and the worthy Mr. Skeggs\nis busy and bright, for a lot of goods is to be fitted out for auction.\nThere is a brisk lookout on the toilet; injunctions passed around\nto every one to put on their best face and be spry; and now all are\narranged in a circle for a last review, before they are marched up to\nthe Bourse.\n\nMr. Skeggs, with his palmetto on and his cigar in his mouth, walks\naround to put farewell touches on his wares.\n\n\"How's this?\" he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline. \"Where's\nyour curls, gal?\"\n\nThe girl looked timidly at her mother, who, with the smooth adroitness\ncommon among her class, answers,\n\n\"I was telling her, last night, to put up her hair smooth and neat, and\nnot havin' it flying about in curls; looks more respectable so.\"\n\n\"Bother!\" said the man, peremptorily, turning to the girl; \"you go right\nalong, and curl yourself real smart!\" He added, giving a crack to a\nrattan he held in his hand, \"And be back in quick time, too!\"\n\n\"You go and help her,\" he added, to the mother. \"Them curls may make a\nhundred dollars difference in the sale of her.\"\n\n\nBeneath a splendid dome were men of all nations, moving to and fro,\nover the marble pave. On every side of the circular area were little\ntribunes, or stations, for the use of speakers and auctioneers. Two of\nthese, on opposite sides of the area, were now occupied by brilliant and\ntalented gentlemen, enthusiastically forcing up, in English and French\ncommingled, the bids of connoisseurs in their various wares. A third\none, on the other side, still unoccupied, was surrounded by a group,\nwaiting the moment of sale to begin. And here we may recognize the St.\nClare servants,--Tom, Adolph, and others; and there, too, Susan and\nEmmeline, awaiting their turn with anxious and dejected faces. Various\nspectators, intending to purchase, or not intending, examining, and\ncommenting on their various points and faces with the same freedom that\na set of jockeys discuss the merits of a horse.\n\n\"Hulloa, Alf! what brings you here?\" said a young exquisite, slapping\nthe shoulder of a sprucely-dressed young man, who was examining Adolph\nthrough an eye-glass.\n\n\"Well! I was wanting a valet, and I heard that St. Clare's lot was\ngoing. I thought I'd just look at his--\"\n\n\"Catch me ever buying any of St. Clare's people! Spoilt niggers, every\none. Impudent as the devil!\" said the other.\n\n\"Never fear that!\" said the first. \"If I get 'em, I'll soon have their\nairs out of them; they'll soon find that they've another kind of master\nto deal with than Monsieur St. Clare. 'Pon my word, I'll buy that\nfellow. I like the shape of him.\"\n\n\"You'll find it'll take all you've got to keep him. He's deucedly\nextravagant!\"\n\n\"Yes, but my lord will find that he _can't_ be extravagant with _me_.\nJust let him be sent to the calaboose a few times, and thoroughly\ndressed down! I'll tell you if it don't bring him to a sense of his\nways! O, I'll reform him, up hill and down,--you'll see. I buy him,\nthat's flat!\"\n\nTom had been standing wistfully examining the multitude of faces\nthronging around him, for one whom he would wish to call master. And if\nyou should ever be under the necessity, sir, of selecting, out of two\nhundred men, one who was to become your absolute owner and disposer, you\nwould, perhaps, realize, just as Tom did, how few there were that you\nwould feel at all comfortable in being made over to. Tom saw abundance\nof men,--great, burly, gruff men; little, chirping, dried men;\nlong-favored, lank, hard men; and every variety of stubbed-looking,\ncommonplace men, who pick up their fellow-men as one picks up chips,\nputting them into the fire or a basket with equal unconcern, according\nto their convenience; but he saw no St. Clare.\n\nA little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man, in a\nchecked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the\nworse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd, like one who\nis going actively into a business; and, coming up to the group, began\nto examine them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him\napproaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that\nincreased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic\nstrength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their\nshaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather\nunprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth\nwas distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he\nejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands\nwere immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and\ngarnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded\nto a very free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the\njaw, and pulled open his mouth to inspect his teeth; made him strip\nup his sleeve, to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump and\nspring, to show his paces.\n\n\"Where was you raised?\" he added, briefly, to these investigations.\n\n\"In Kintuck, Mas'r,\" said Tom, looking about, as if for deliverance.\n\n\"What have you done?\"\n\n\"Had care of Mas'r's farm,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Likely story!\" said the other, shortly, as he passed on. He paused a\nmoment before Dolph; then spitting a discharge of tobacco-juice on his\nwell-blacked boots, and giving a contemptuous umph, he walked on. Again\nhe stopped before Susan and Emmeline. He put out his heavy, dirty hand,\nand drew the girl towards him; passed it over her neck and bust, felt\nher arms, looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her\nmother, whose patient face showed the suffering she had been going\nthrough at every motion of the hideous stranger.\n\nThe girl was frightened, and began to cry.\n\n\"Stop that, you minx!\" said the salesman; \"no whimpering here,--the sale\nis going to begin.\" And accordingly the sale begun.\n\nAdolph was knocked off, at a good sum, to the young gentlemen who had\npreviously stated his intention of buying him; and the other servants of\nthe St. Clare lot went to various bidders.\n\n\"Now, up with you, boy! d'ye hear?\" said the auctioneer to Tom.\n\nTom stepped upon the block, gave a few anxious looks round; all seemed\nmingled in a common, indistinct noise,--the clatter of the salesman\ncrying off his qualifications in French and English, the quick fire of\nFrench and English bids; and almost in a moment came the final thump\nof the hammer, and the clear ring on the last syllable of the word\n_\"dollars,\"_ as the auctioneer announced his price, and Tom was made\nover.--He had a master!\n\nHe was pushed from the block;--the short, bullet-headed man seizing\nhim roughly by the shoulder, pushed him to one side, saying, in a harsh\nvoice, \"Stand there, _you!_\"\n\nTom hardly realized anything; but still the bidding went on,--ratting,\nclattering, now French, now English. Down goes the hammer again,--Susan\nis sold! She goes down from the block, stops, looks wistfully back,--her\ndaughter stretches her hands towards her. She looks with agony in the\nface of the man who has bought her,--a respectable middle-aged man, of\nbenevolent countenance.\n\n\"O, Mas'r, please do buy my daughter!\"\n\n\"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't afford it!\" said the gentleman,\nlooking, with painful interest, as the young girl mounted the block, and\nlooked around her with a frightened and timid glance.\n\nThe blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colorless cheek, her eye\nhas a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see that she looks\nmore beautiful than she ever saw her before. The auctioneer sees his\nadvantage, and expatiates volubly in mingled French and English, and\nbids rise in rapid succession.\n\n\"I'll do anything in reason,\" said the benevolent-looking gentleman,\npressing in and joining with the bids. In a few moments they have run\nbeyond his purse. He is silent; the auctioneer grows warmer; but bids\ngradually drop off. It lies now between an aristocratic old citizen\nand our bullet-headed acquaintance. The citizen bids for a few turns,\ncontemptuously measuring his opponent; but the bullet-head has the\nadvantage over him, both in obstinacy and concealed length of purse, and\nthe controversy lasts but a moment; the hammer falls,--he has got the\ngirl, body and soul, unless God help her!\n\nHer master is Mr. Legree, who owns a cotton plantation on the Red River.\nShe is pushed along into the same lot with Tom and two other men, and\ngoes off, weeping as she goes.\n\nThe benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every\nday! One sees girls and mothers crying, at these sales, _always!_ it\ncan't be helped, &c.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in another\ndirection.\n\nTwo days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. & Co., New York,\nsend on their money to them. On the reverse of that draft, so obtained,\nlet them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall\nmake up their account in a future day: _\"When he maketh inquisition for\nblood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble!\"_\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\n\nThe Middle Passage\n\n\"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon\niniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously,\nand holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more\nrighteous than he?\"--HAB. 1: 13.\n\n\nOn the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red River, Tom\nsat,--chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight heavier\nthan chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his sky,--moon and\nstar; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks were now passing,\nto return no more. Kentucky home, with wife and children, and indulgent\nowners; St. Clare home, with all its refinements and splendors; the\ngolden head of Eva, with its saint-like eyes; the proud, gay, handsome,\nseemingly careless, yet ever-kind St. Clare; hours of ease and indulgent\nleisure,--all gone! and in place thereof, _what_ remains?\n\nIt is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that\nthe negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined\nfamily, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a\nplace, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest\nand most brutal,--just as a chair or table, which once decorated the\nsuperb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of\nsome filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great\ndifference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the _man_ can;\nfor even a legal enactment that he shall be \"taken, reputed, adjudged in\nlaw, to be a chattel personal,\" cannot blot out his soul, with its own\nprivate little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.\n\nMr. Simon Legree, Tom's master, had purchased slaves at one place\nand another, in New Orleans, to the number of eight, and driven them,\nhandcuffed, in couples of two and two, down to the good steamer Pirate,\nwhich lay at the levee, ready for a trip up the Red River.\n\nHaving got them fairly on board, and the boat being off, he came round,\nwith that air of efficiency which ever characterized him, to take a\nreview of them. Stopping opposite to Tom, who had been attired for sale\nin his best broadcloth suit, with well-starched linen and shining boots,\nhe briefly expressed himself as follows:\n\n\"Stand up.\"\n\nTom stood up.\n\n\"Take off that stock!\" and, as Tom, encumbered by his fetters, proceeded\nto do it, he assisted him, by pulling it, with no gentle hand, from his\nneck, and putting it in his pocket.\n\nLegree now turned to Tom's trunk, which, previous to this, he had been\nransacking, and, taking from it a pair of old pantaloons and dilapidated\ncoat, which Tom had been wont to put on about his stable-work, he said,\nliberating Tom's hands from the handcuffs, and pointing to a recess in\namong the boxes,\n\n\"You go there, and put these on.\"\n\nTom obeyed, and in a few moments returned.\n\n\"Take off your boots,\" said Mr. Legree.\n\nTom did so.\n\n\"There,\" said the former, throwing him a pair of coarse, stout shoes,\nsuch as were common among the slaves, \"put these on.\"\n\nIn Tom's hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his\ncherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree,\nhaving refitted Tom's handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to investigate\nthe contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk handkerchief, and put\nit into his own pocket. Several little trifles, which Tom had treasured,\nchiefly because they had amused Eva, he looked upon with a contemptuous\ngrunt, and tossed them over his shoulder into the river.\n\nTom's Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he now\nheld up and turned over.\n\nHumph! pious, to be sure. So, what's yer name,--you belong to the\nchurch, eh?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Tom, firmly.\n\n\"Well, I'll soon have _that_ out of you. I have none o' yer bawling,\npraying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself,\"\nhe said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at\nTom, \"_I'm_ your church now! You understand,--you've got to be as _I_\nsay.\"\n\nSomething within the silent black man answered _No!_ and, as if repeated\nby an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic scroll, as Eva\nhad often read them to him,--\"Fear not! for I have redeemed thee. I have\ncalled thee by name. Thou art MINE!\"\n\nBut Simon Legree heard no voice. That voice is one he never shall hear.\nHe only glared for a moment on the downcast face of Tom, and walked off.\nHe took Tom's trunk, which contained a very neat and abundant wardrobe,\nto the forecastle, where it was soon surrounded by various hands of\nthe boat. With much laughing, at the expense of niggers who tried to be\ngentlemen, the articles very readily were sold to one and another, and\nthe empty trunk finally put up at auction. It was a good joke, they all\nthought, especially to see how Tom looked after his things, as they were\ngoing this way and that; and then the auction of the trunk, that was\nfunnier than all, and occasioned abundant witticisms.\n\nThis little affair being over, Simon sauntered up again to his property.\n\n\"Now, Tom, I've relieved you of any extra baggage, you see. Take mighty\ngood care of them clothes. It'll be long enough 'fore you get more. I\ngo in for making niggers careful; one suit has to do for one year, on my\nplace.\"\n\nSimon next walked up to the place where Emmeline was sitting, chained to\nanother woman.\n\n\"Well, my dear,\" he said, chucking her under the chin, \"keep up your\nspirits.\"\n\nThe involuntary look of horror, fright and aversion, with which the girl\nregarded him, did not escape his eye. He frowned fiercely.\n\n\"None o' your shines, gal! you's got to keep a pleasant face, when I\nspeak to ye,--d'ye hear? And you, you old yellow poco moonshine!\" he\nsaid, giving a shove to the mulatto woman to whom Emmeline was chained,\n\"don't you carry that sort of face! You's got to look chipper, I tell\nye!\"\n\n\"I say, all on ye,\" he said retreating a pace or two back, \"look at\nme,--look at me,--look me right in the eye,--_straight_, now!\" said he,\nstamping his foot at every pause.\n\nAs by a fascination, every eye was now directed to the glaring\ngreenish-gray eye of Simon.\n\n\"Now,\" said he, doubling his great, heavy fist into something resembling\na blacksmith's hammer, \"d'ye see this fist? Heft it!\" he said, bringing\nit down on Tom's hand. \"Look at these yer bones! Well, I tell ye this\nyer fist has got as hard as iron _knocking down niggers_. I never\nsee the nigger, yet, I couldn't bring down with one crack,\" said he,\nbringing his fist down so near to the face of Tom that he winked and\ndrew back. \"I don't keep none o' yer cussed overseers; I does my own\noverseeing; and I tell you things _is_ seen to. You's every one on ye\ngot to toe the mark, I tell ye; quick,--straight,--the moment I speak.\nThat's the way to keep in with me. Ye won't find no soft spot in me,\nnowhere. So, now, mind yerselves; for I don't show no mercy!\"\n\nThe women involuntarily drew in their breath, and the whole gang sat\nwith downcast, dejected faces. Meanwhile, Simon turned on his heel, and\nmarched up to the bar of the boat for a dram.\n\n\"That's the way I begin with my niggers,\" he said, to a gentlemanly\nman, who had stood by him during his speech. \"It's my system to begin\nstrong,--just let 'em know what to expect.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" said the stranger, looking upon him with the curiosity of a\nnaturalist studying some out-of-the-way specimen.\n\n\"Yes, indeed. I'm none o' yer gentlemen planters, with lily fingers, to\nslop round and be cheated by some old cuss of an overseer! Just feel\nof my knuckles, now; look at my fist. Tell ye, sir, the flesh on 't has\ncome jest like a stone, practising on nigger--feel on it.\"\n\nThe stranger applied his fingers to the implement in question, and\nsimply said,\n\n\"'T is hard enough; and, I suppose,\" he added, \"practice has made your\nheart just like it.\"\n\n\"Why, yes, I may say so,\" said Simon, with a hearty laugh. \"I reckon\nthere's as little soft in me as in any one going. Tell you, nobody comes\nit over me! Niggers never gets round me, neither with squalling nor soft\nsoap,--that's a fact.\"\n\n\"You have a fine lot there.\"\n\n\"Real,\" said Simon. \"There's that Tom, they telled me he was suthin'\nuncommon. I paid a little high for him, tendin' him for a driver and a\nmanaging chap; only get the notions out that he's larnt by bein' treated\nas niggers never ought to be, he'll do prime! The yellow woman I got\ntook in on. I rayther think she's sickly, but I shall put her through\nfor what she's worth; she may last a year or two. I don't go for savin'\nniggers. Use up, and buy more, 's my way;-makes you less trouble, and\nI'm quite sure it comes cheaper in the end;\" and Simon sipped his glass.\n\n\"And how long do they generally last?\" said the stranger.\n\n\"Well, donno; 'cordin' as their constitution is. Stout fellers last six\nor seven years; trashy ones gets worked up in two or three. I used to,\nwhen I fust begun, have considerable trouble fussin' with 'em and trying\nto make 'em hold out,--doctorin' on 'em up when they's sick, and givin'\non 'em clothes and blankets, and what not, tryin' to keep 'em all sort\no' decent and comfortable. Law, 't wasn't no sort o' use; I lost money\non 'em, and 't was heaps o' trouble. Now, you see, I just put 'em\nstraight through, sick or well. When one nigger's dead, I buy another;\nand I find it comes cheaper and easier, every way.\"\n\nThe stranger turned away, and seated himself beside a gentleman, who had\nbeen listening to the conversation with repressed uneasiness.\n\n\"You must not take that fellow to be any specimen of Southern planters,\"\nsaid he.\n\n\"I should hope not,\" said the young gentleman, with emphasis.\n\n\"He is a mean, low, brutal fellow!\" said the other.\n\n\"And yet your laws allow him to hold any number of human beings subject\nto his absolute will, without even a shadow of protection; and, low as\nhe is, you cannot say that there are not many such.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the other, \"there are also many considerate and humane men\namong planters.\"\n\n\"Granted,\" said the young man; \"but, in my opinion, it is you\nconsiderate, humane men, that are responsible for all the brutality\nand outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it were not for your\nsanction and influence, the whole system could not keep foothold for\nan hour. If there were no planters except such as that one,\" said he,\npointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to\nthem, \"the whole thing would go down like a millstone. It is your\nrespectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.\"\n\n\"You certainly have a high opinion of my good nature,\" said the planter,\nsmiling, \"but I advise you not to talk quite so loud, as there are\npeople on board the boat who might not be quite so tolerant to opinion\nas I am. You had better wait till I get up to my plantation, and there\nyou may abuse us all, quite at your leisure.\"\n\nThe young gentleman colored and smiled, and the two were soon busy in a\ngame of backgammon. Meanwhile, another conversation was going on in the\nlower part of the boat, between Emmeline and the mulatto woman with whom\nshe was confined. As was natural, they were exchanging with each other\nsome particulars of their history.\n\n\"Who did you belong to?\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"Well, my Mas'r was Mr. Ellis,--lived on Levee-street. P'raps you've\nseen the house.\"\n\n\"Was he good to you?\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"Mostly, till he tuk sick. He's lain sick, off and on, more than six\nmonths, and been orful oneasy. 'Pears like he warnt willin' to have\nnobody rest, day or night; and got so curous, there couldn't nobody suit\nhim. 'Pears like he just grew crosser, every day; kep me up nights till\nI got farly beat out, and couldn't keep awake no longer; and cause I got\nto sleep, one night, Lors, he talk so orful to me, and he tell me he'd\nsell me to just the hardest master he could find; and he'd promised me\nmy freedom, too, when he died.\"\n\n\"Had you any friends?\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"Yes, my husband,--he's a blacksmith. Mas'r gen'ly hired him out. They\ntook me off so quick, I didn't even have time to see him; and I's got\nfour children. O, dear me!\" said the woman, covering her face with her\nhands.\n\nIt is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear a tale of\ndistress, to think of something to say by way of consolation. Emmeline\nwanted to say something, but she could not think of anything to say.\nWhat was there to be said? As by a common consent, they both avoided,\nwith fear and dread, all mention of the horrible man who was now their\nmaster.\n\nTrue, there is religious trust for even the darkest hour. The mulatto\nwoman was a member of the Methodist church, and had an unenlightened\nbut very sincere spirit of piety. Emmeline had been educated much more\nintelligently,--taught to read and write, and diligently instructed in\nthe Bible, by the care of a faithful and pious mistress; yet, would\nit not try the faith of the firmest Christian, to find themselves\nabandoned, apparently, of God, in the grasp of ruthless violence? How\nmuch more must it shake the faith of Christ's poor little ones, weak in\nknowledge and tender in years!\n\nThe boat moved on,--freighted with its weight of sorrow,--up the red,\nmuddy, turbid current, through the abrupt tortuous windings of the Red\nriver; and sad eyes gazed wearily on the steep red-clay banks, as they\nglided by in dreary sameness. At last the boat stopped at a small town,\nand Legree, with his party, disembarked.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\n\nDark Places\n\n\n\"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.\"*\n\n     * Ps. 74:20.\n\nTrailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder road, Tom and his\nassociates faced onward.\n\nIn the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women, still fettered\ntogether, were stowed away with some baggage in the back part of it,\nand the whole company were seeking Legree's plantation, which lay a good\ndistance off.\n\nIt was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine barrens,\nwhere the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log causeways, through\nlong cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising out of the slimy, spongy\nground, hung with long wreaths of funeral black moss, while ever and\nanon the loathsome form of the mocassin snake might be seen sliding\namong broken stumps and shattered branches that lay here and there,\nrotting in the water.\n\nIt is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who, with\nwell-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the lonely way on\nsome errand of business; but wilder, drearier, to the man enthralled,\nwhom every weary step bears further from all that man loves and prays\nfor.\n\nSo one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and dejected\nexpression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient weariness with\nwhich those sad eyes rested on object after object that passed them in\ntheir sad journey.\n\nSimon rode on, however, apparently well pleased, occasionally pulling\naway at a flask of spirit, which he kept in his pocket.\n\n\"I say, _you!_\" he said, as he turned back and caught a glance at the\ndispirited faces behind him. \"Strike up a song, boys,--come!\"\n\nThe men looked at each other, and the \"_come_\" was repeated, with a\nsmart crack of the whip which the driver carried in his hands. Tom began\na Methodist hymn.\n\n     \"Jerusalem, my happy home,\n     Name ever dear to me!\n     When shall my sorrows have an end,\n     Thy joys when shall--\"*\n\n     * \"_Jerusalem, my happy home_,\" anonymous hymn dating from\n     the latter part of the sixteenth century, sung to the tune\n     of \"St. Stephen.\"  Words derive from St. Augustine's\n     _Meditations_.\n\n\"Shut up, you black cuss!\" roared Legree; \"did ye think I wanted any\no' yer infernal old Methodism? I say, tune up, now, something real\nrowdy,--quick!\"\n\nOne of the other men struck up one of those unmeaning songs, common\namong the slaves.\n\n     \"Mas'r see'd me cotch a coon,\n     High boys, high!\n     He laughed to split,--d'ye see the moon,\n     Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!\n     Ho! yo! hi--e! _oh!\"_\n\nThe singer appeared to make up the song to his own pleasure, generally\nhitting on rhyme, without much attempt at reason; and the party took up\nthe chorus, at intervals,\n\n     \"Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!\n     High--e--oh! high--e--oh!\"\n\nIt was sung very boisterouly, and with a forced attempt at merriment;\nbut no wail of despair, no words of impassioned prayer, could have had\nsuch a depth of woe in them as the wild notes of the chorus. As if\nthe poor, dumb heart, threatened,--prisoned,--took refuge in that\ninarticulate sanctuary of music, and found there a language in which to\nbreathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer in it, which Simon could\nnot hear. He only heard the boys singing noisily, and was well pleased;\nhe was making them \"keep up their spirits.\"\n\n\"Well, my little dear,\" said he, turning to Emmeline, and laying his\nhand on her shoulder, \"we're almost home!\"\n\nWhen Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified; but when he\nlaid his hand on her, and spoke as he now did, she felt as if she had\nrather he would strike her. The expression of his eyes made her soul\nsick, and her flesh creep. Involuntarily she clung closer to the mulatto\nwoman by her side, as if she were her mother.\n\n\"You didn't ever wear ear-rings,\" he said, taking hold of her small ear\nwith his coarse fingers.\n\n\"No, Mas'r!\" said Emmeline, trembling and looking down.\n\n\"Well, I'll give you a pair, when we get home, if you're a good girl.\nYou needn't be so frightened; I don't mean to make you work very hard.\nYou'll have fine times with me, and live like a lady,--only be a good\ngirl.\"\n\nLegree had been drinking to that degree that he was inclining to be\nvery gracious; and it was about this time that the enclosures of the\nplantation rose to view. The estate had formerly belonged to a gentleman\nof opulence and taste, who had bestowed some considerable attention\nto the adornment of his grounds. Having died insolvent, it had been\npurchased, at a bargain, by Legree, who used it, as he did everything\nelse, merely as an implement for money-making. The place had that\nragged, forlorn appearance, which is always produced by the evidence\nthat the care of the former owner has been left to go to utter decay.\n\nWhat was once a smooth-shaven lawn before the house, dotted here and\nthere with ornamental shrubs, was now covered with frowsy tangled\ngrass, with horseposts set up, here and there, in it, where the turf was\nstamped away, and the ground littered with broken pails, cobs of corn,\nand other slovenly remains. Here and there, a mildewed jessamine or\nhoneysuckle hung raggedly from some ornamental support, which had been\npushed to one side by being used as a horse-post. What once was a large\ngarden was now all grown over with weeds, through which, here and\nthere, some solitary exotic reared its forsaken head. What had been a\nconservatory had now no window-shades, and on the mouldering shelves\nstood some dry, forsaken flower-pots, with sticks in them, whose dried\nleaves showed they had once been plants.\n\nThe wagon rolled up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble avenue of China\ntrees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing foliage seemed to be the\nonly things there that neglect could not daunt or alter,--like noble\nspirits, so deeply rooted in goodness, as to flourish and grow stronger\namid discouragement and decay.\n\nThe house had been large and handsome. It was built in a manner common\nat the South; a wide verandah of two stories running round every part\nof the house, into which every outer door opened, the lower tier being\nsupported by brick pillars.\n\nBut the place looked desolate and uncomfortable; some windows stopped up\nwith boards, some with shattered panes, and shutters hanging by a single\nhinge,--all telling of coarse neglect and discomfort.\n\nBits of board, straw, old decayed barrels and boxes, garnished the\nground in all directions; and three or four ferocious-looking dogs,\nroused by the sound of the wagon-wheels, came tearing out, and were with\ndifficulty restrained from laying hold of Tom and his companions, by the\neffort of the ragged servants who came after them.\n\n\"Ye see what ye'd get!\" said Legree, caressing the dogs with grim\nsatisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions. \"Ye see what ye'd\nget, if ye try to run off. These yer dogs has been raised to track\nniggers; and they'd jest as soon chaw one on ye up as eat their supper.\nSo, mind yerself! How now, Sambo!\" he said, to a ragged fellow, without\nany brim to his hat, who was officious in his attentions. \"How have\nthings been going?\"\n\n\"Fust rate, Mas'r.\"\n\n\"Quimbo,\" said Legree to another, who was making zealous demonstrations\nto attract his attention, \"ye minded what I telled ye?\"\n\n\"Guess I did, didn't I?\"\n\nThese two colored men were the two principal hands on the plantation.\nLegree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematically\nas he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty,\nbrought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. It is\na common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly against\nthe character of the race, that the negro overseer is always more\ntyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that the\nnegro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is no\nmore true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The\nslave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.\n\nLegree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed his\nplantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo cordially\nhated each other; the plantation hands, one and all, cordially hated\nthem; and, by playing off one against another, he was pretty sure,\nthrough one or the other of the three parties, to get informed of\nwhatever was on foot in the place.\n\nNobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and Legree\nencouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse familiarity with\nhim,--a familiarity, however, at any moment liable to get one or the\nother of them into trouble; for, on the slightest provocation, one of\nthem always stood ready, at a nod, to be a minister of his vengeance on\nthe other.\n\nAs they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt illustration of\nthe fact that brutal men are lower even than animals. Their coarse,\ndark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling enviously on each other;\ntheir barbarous, guttural, half-brute intonation; their dilapidated\ngarments fluttering in the wind,--were all in admirable keeping with the\nvile and unwholesome character of everything about the place.\n\n\"Here, you Sambo,\" said Legree, \"take these yer boys down to the\nquarters; and here's a gal I've got for _you_,\" said he, as he separated\nthe mulatto woman from Emmeline, and pushed her towards him;--\"I\npromised to bring you one, you know.\"\n\nThe woman gave a start, and drawing back, said, suddenly,\n\n\"O, Mas'r! I left my old man in New Orleans.\"\n\n\"What of that, you--; won't you want one here? None o' your words,--go\nlong!\" said Legree, raising his whip.\n\n\"Come, mistress,\" he said to Emmeline, \"you go in here with me.\"\n\nA dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to glance at the window of the\nhouse; and, as Legree opened the door, a female voice said something, in\na quick, imperative tone. Tom, who was looking, with anxious interest,\nafter Emmeline, as she went in, noticed this, and heard Legree answer,\nangrily, \"You may hold your tongue! I'll do as I please, for all you!\"\n\nTom heard no more; for he was soon following Sambo to the quarters. The\nquarters was a little sort of street of rude shanties, in a row, in\na part of the plantation, far off from the house. They had a forlorn,\nbrutal, forsaken air. Tom's heart sunk when he saw them. He had been\ncomforting himself with the thought of a cottage, rude, indeed, but one\nwhich he might make neat and quiet, and where he might have a shelf for\nhis Bible, and a place to be alone out of his laboring hours. He looked\ninto several; they were mere rude shells, destitute of any species of\nfurniture, except a heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedly\nover the floor, which was merely the bare ground, trodden hard by the\ntramping of innumerable feet.\n\n\"Which of these will be mine?\" said he, to Sambo, submissively.\n\n\"Dunno; ken turn in here, I spose,\" said Sambo; \"spects thar's room for\nanother thar; thar's a pretty smart heap o' niggers to each on 'em, now;\nsure, I dunno what I 's to do with more.\"\n\n\nIt was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the shanties came\nflocking home,--men and women, in soiled and tattered garments, surly\nand uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. The\nsmall village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices\ncontending at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn was yet to\nbe ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their\nonly supper. From the earliest dawn of the day, they had been in the\nfields, pressed to work under the driving lash of the overseers; for it\nwas now in the very heat and hurry of the season, and no means was left\nuntried to press every one up to the top of their capabilities. \"True,\"\nsays the negligent lounger; \"picking cotton isn't hard work.\" Isn't it?\nAnd it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fall\non your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is produced by\ndrop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, with\nmonotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself not\nhard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying,\nunrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of free-will to\ntake from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain among the gang, as they\npoured along, for companionable faces. He saw only sullen, scowling,\nimbruted men, and feeble, discouraged women, or women that were not\nwomen,--the strong pushing away the weak,--the gross, unrestricted\nanimal selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was expected\nand desired; and who, treated in every way like brutes, had sunk as\nnearly to their level as it was possible for human beings to do. To a\nlate hour in the night the sound of the grinding was protracted; for the\nmills were few in number compared with the grinders, and the weary and\nfeeble ones were driven back by the strong, and came on last in their\nturn.\n\n\"Ho yo!\" said Sambo, coming to the mulatto woman, and throwing down a\nbag of corn before her; \"what a cuss yo name?\"\n\n\"Lucy,\" said the woman.\n\n\"Wal, Lucy, yo my woman now. Yo grind dis yer corn, and get _my_ supper\nbaked, ye har?\"\n\n\"I an't your woman, and I won't be!\" said the woman, with the sharp,\nsudden courage of despair; \"you go 'long!\"\n\n\"I'll kick yo, then!\" said Sambo, raising his foot threateningly.\n\n\"Ye may kill me, if ye choose,--the sooner the better! Wish't I was\ndead!\" said she.\n\n\"I say, Sambo, you go to spilin' the hands, I'll tell Mas'r o' you,\"\nsaid Quimbo, who was busy at the mill, from which he had viciously\ndriven two or three tired women, who were waiting to grind their corn.\n\n\"And, I'll tell him ye won't let the women come to the mills, yo old\nnigger!\" said Sambo. \"Yo jes keep to yo own row.\"\n\nTom was hungry with his day's journey, and almost faint for want of\nfood.\n\n\"Thar, yo!\" said Quimbo, throwing down a coarse bag, which contained\na peck of corn; \"thar, nigger, grab, take car on 't,--yo won't get no\nmore, _dis_ yer week.\"\n\nTom waited till a late hour, to get a place at the mills; and then,\nmoved by the utter weariness of two women, whom he saw trying to grind\ntheir corn there, he ground for them, put together the decaying brands\nof the fire, where many had baked cakes before them, and then went about\ngetting his own supper. It was a new kind of work there,--a deed of\ncharity, small as it was; but it woke an answering touch in their\nhearts,--an expression of womanly kindness came over their hard faces;\nthey mixed his cake for him, and tended its baking; and Tom sat down\nby the light of the fire, and drew out his Bible,--for he had need for\ncomfort.\n\n\"What's that?\" said one of the woman.\n\n\"A Bible,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Good Lord! han't seen un since I was in Kentuck.\"\n\n\"Was you raised in Kentuck?\" said Tom, with interest.\n\n\"Yes, and well raised, too; never 'spected to come to dis yer!\" said the\nwoman, sighing.\n\n\"What's dat ar book, any way?\" said the other woman.\n\n\"Why, the Bible.\"\n\n\"Laws a me! what's dat?\" said the woman.\n\n\"Do tell! you never hearn on 't?\" said the other woman. \"I used to har\nMissis a readin' on 't, sometimes, in Kentuck; but, laws o' me! we don't\nhar nothin' here but crackin' and swarin'.\"\n\n\"Read a piece, anyways!\" said the first woman, curiously, seeing Tom\nattentively poring over it.\n\nTom read,--\"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I\nwill give you rest.\"\n\n\"Them's good words, enough,\" said the woman; \"who says 'em?\"\n\n\"The Lord,\" said Tom.\n\n\"I jest wish I know'd whar to find Him,\" said the woman. \"I would go;\n'pears like I never should get rested again. My flesh is fairly sore,\nand I tremble all over, every day, and Sambo's allers a jawin' at me,\n'cause I doesn't pick faster; and nights it's most midnight 'fore I can\nget my supper; and den 'pears like I don't turn over and shut my eyes,\n'fore I hear de horn blow to get up, and at it agin in de mornin'. If I\nknew whar de Lor was, I'd tell him.\"\n\n\"He's here, he's everywhere,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Lor, you an't gwine to make me believe dat ar! I know de Lord an't\nhere,\" said the woman; \"'tan't no use talking, though. I's jest gwine to\ncamp down, and sleep while I ken.\"\n\nThe women went off to their cabins, and Tom sat alone, by the\nsmouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.\n\nThe silver, fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and looked\ndown, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery and\noppression,--looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sat, with his\narms folded, and his Bible on his knee.\n\n\"Is God HERE?\" Ah, how is it possible for the untaught heart to keep its\nfaith, unswerving, in the face of dire misrule, and palpable, unrebuked\ninjustice? In that simple heart waged a fierce conflict; the crushing\nsense of wrong, the foreshadowing, of a whole life of future misery, the\nwreck of all past hopes, mournfully tossing in the soul's sight, like\ndead corpses of wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave,\nand surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner! Ah, was it easy\n_here_ to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian faith,\nthat \"God IS, and is the REWARDER of them that diligently seek Him\"?\n\nTom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that had been\nallotted to him. The floor was already strewn with weary sleepers, and\nthe foul air of the place almost repelled him; but the heavy night-dews\nwere chill, and his limbs weary, and, wrapping about him a tattered\nblanket, which formed his only bed-clothing, he stretched himself in the\nstraw and fell asleep.\n\nIn dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting on the mossy\nseat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and Eva, with her serious eyes\nbent downward, was reading to him from the Bible; and he heard her read.\n\n\"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and the\nrivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire,\nthou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee; for\nI am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.\"\n\nGradually the words seemed to melt and fade, as in a divine music; the\nchild raised her deep eyes, and fixed them lovingly on him, and rays\nof warmth and comfort seemed to go from them to his heart; and, as if\nwafted on the music, she seemed to rise on shining wings, from which\nflakes and spangles of gold fell off like stars, and she was gone.\n\nTom woke. Was it a dream? Let it pass for one. But who shall say that\nthat sweet young spirit, which in life so yearned to comfort and console\nthe distressed, was forbidden of God to assume this ministry after\ndeath?\n\n     It is a beautiful belief,\n     That ever round our head\n     Are hovering, on angel wings,\n     The spirits of the dead.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIII\n\nCassy\n\n\n\"And behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no\ncomforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they\nhad no comforter.\"--ECCL. 4:1\n\nIt took but a short time to familiarize Tom with all that was to be\nhoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and efficient\nworkman in whatever he undertook; and was, both from habit and\nprinciple, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in his disposition,\nhe hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from himself at least a\nportion of the evils of his condition. He saw enough of abuse and misery\nto make him sick and weary; but he determined to toil on, with religious\npatience, committing himself to Him that judgeth righteously, not\nwithout hope that some way of escape might yet be opened to him.\n\nLegree took a silent note of Tom's availability. He rated him as a\nfirst-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to him,--the native\nantipathy of bad to good. He saw, plainly, that when, as was often the\ncase, his violence and brutality fell on the helpless, Tom took notice\nof it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere of opinion, that it will make\nitself felt, without words; and the opinion even of a slave may annoy\na master. Tom in various ways manifested a tenderness of feeling, a\ncommiseration for his fellow-sufferers, strange and new to them, which\nwas watched with a jealous eye by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a\nview of eventually making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might,\nat times, intrust his affairs, in short absences; and, in his view,\nthe first, second, and third requisite for that place, was _hardness_.\nLegree made up his mind, that, as Tom was not hard to his hand, he\nwould harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom had been on the\nplace, he determined to commence the process.\n\nOne morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom noticed,\nwith surprise, a new comer among them, whose appearance excited his\nattention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably\ndelicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and respectable garments.\nBy the appearance of her face, she might have been between thirty-five\nand forty; and it was a face that, once seen, could never be\nforgotten,--one of those that, at a glance, seem to convey to us an idea\nof a wild, painful, and romantic history. Her forehead was high, and\nher eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness. Her straight, well-formed\nnose, her finely-cut mouth, and the graceful contour of her head and\nneck, showed that she must once have been beautiful; but her face was\ndeeply wrinkled with lines of pain, and of proud and bitter endurance.\nHer complexion was sallow and unhealthy, her cheeks thin, her features\nsharp, and her whole form emaciated. But her eye was the most remarkable\nfeature,--so large, so heavily black, overshadowed by long lashes of\nequal darkness, and so wildly, mournfully despairing. There was a fierce\npride and defiance in every line of her face, in every curve of the\nflexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her eye was a deep,\nsettled night of anguish,--an expression so hopeless and unchanging as\nto contrast fearfully with the scorn and pride expressed by her whole\ndemeanor.\n\nWhere she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did\nknow, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray\nof the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much\nlooking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation\namong the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by whom she was\nsurrounded.\n\n\"Got to come to it, at last,--glad of it!\" said one.\n\n\"He! he! he!\" said another; \"you'll know how good it is, Misse!\"\n\n\"We'll see her work!\"\n\n\"Wonder if she'll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!\"\n\n\"I'd be glad to see her down for a flogging, I'll bound!\" said another.\n\nThe woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same\nexpression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived\namong refined, and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her\nair and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she\ncould be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tell. The\nwomen neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the\nfield, she kept close at his side.\n\nTom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great\ndistance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her work. He saw,\nat a glance, that a native adroitness and handiness made the task to\nher an easier one than it proved to many. She picked very fast and very\nclean, and with an air of scorn, as if she despised both the work and\nthe disgrace and humiliation of the circumstances in which she was\nplaced.\n\nIn the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto woman who\nhad been bought in the same lot with himself. She was evidently in a\ncondition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she\nwavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall down. Tom silently as he\ncame near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own\nsack to hers.\n\n\"O, don't, don't!\" said the woman, looking surprised; \"it'll get you\ninto trouble.\"\n\nJust then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite against this\nwoman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal, guttural tones, \"What\ndis yer, Luce,--foolin' a'\" and, with the word, kicking the woman with\nhis heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom across the face with his whip.\n\nTom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point\nof exhaustion, fainted.\n\n\"I'll bring her to!\" said the driver, with a brutal grin. \"I'll give her\nsomething better than camphire!\" and, taking a pin from his coat-sleeve,\nhe buried it to the head in her flesh. The woman groaned, and half rose.\n\"Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I'll show yer a trick more!\"\n\nThe woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural\nstrength, and worked with desperate eagerness.\n\n\"See that you keep to dat ar,\" said the man, \"or yer'll wish yer's dead\ntonight, I reckin!\"\n\n\"That I do now!\" Tom heard her say; and again he heard her say, \"O,\nLord, how long! O, Lord, why don't you help us?\"\n\nAt the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and put\nall the cotton in his sack into the woman's.\n\n\"O, you mustn't! you donno what they'll do to ye!\" said the woman.\n\n\"I can bar it!\" said Tom, \"better 'n you;\" and he was at his place\nagain. It passed in a moment.\n\nSuddenly, the stranger woman whom we have described, and who had, in the\ncourse of her work, come near enough to hear Tom's last words, raised\nher heavy black eyes, and fixed them, for a second, on him; then, taking\na quantity of cotton from her basket, she placed it in his.\n\n\"You know nothing about this place,\" she said, \"or you wouldn't have\ndone that. When you've been here a month, you'll be done helping\nanybody; you'll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin!\"\n\n\"The Lord forbid, Missis!\" said Tom, using instinctively to his field\ncompanion the respectful form proper to the high bred with whom he had\nlived.\n\n\"The Lord never visits these parts,\" said the woman, bitterly, as she\nwent nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled\nher lips.\n\nBut the action of the woman had been seen by the driver, across the\nfield; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her.\n\n\"What! what!\" he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, \"You a\nfoolin'? Go along! yer under me now,--mind yourself, or yer'll cotch\nit!\"\n\nA glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes;\nand, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew\nherself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the\ndriver.\n\n\"Dog!\" she said, \"touch _me_, if you dare! I've power enough, yet, to\nhave you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches! I've only to say\nthe word!\"\n\n\"What de devil you here for, den?\" said the man, evidently cowed, and\nsullenly retreating a step or two. \"Didn't mean no harm, Misse Cassy!\"\n\n\"Keep your distance, then!\" said the woman. And, in truth, the man\nseemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the\nfield, and started off in quick time.\n\nThe woman suddenly turned to her work, and labored with a despatch that\nwas perfectly astonishing to Tom. She seemed to work by magic. Before\nthe day was through, her basket was filled, crowded down, and piled, and\nshe had several times put largely into Tom's. Long after dusk, the\nwhole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the\nbuilding appropriated to the storing and weighing the cotton. Legree was\nthere, busily conversing with the two drivers.\n\n\"Dat ar Tom's gwine to make a powerful deal o' trouble; kept a puttin'\ninto Lucy's basket.--One o' these yer dat will get all der niggers to\nfeelin' 'bused, if Masir don't watch him!\" said Sambo.\n\n\"Hey-dey! The black cuss!\" said Legree. \"He'll have to get a breakin'\nin, won't he, boys?\"\n\nBoth negroes grinned a horrid grin, at this intimation.\n\n\"Ay, ay! Let Mas'r Legree alone, for breakin' in! De debil heself\ncouldn't beat Mas'r at dat!\" said Quimbo.\n\n\"Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do, till he gets\nover his notions. Break him in!\"\n\n\"Lord, Mas'r'll have hard work to get dat out o' him!\"\n\n\"It'll have to come out of him, though!\" said Legree, as he rolled his\ntobacco in his mouth.\n\n\"Now, dar's Lucy,--de aggravatinest, ugliest wench on de place!\" pursued\nSambo.\n\n\"Take care, Sam; I shall begin to think what's the reason for your spite\nagin Lucy.\"\n\n\"Well, Mas'r knows she sot herself up agin Mas'r, and wouldn't have me,\nwhen he telled her to.\"\n\n\"I'd a flogged her into 't,\" said Legree, spitting, \"only there's such a\npress o' work, it don't seem wuth a while to upset her jist now. She's\nslender; but these yer slender gals will bear half killin' to get their\nown way!\"\n\n\"Wal, Lucy was real aggravatin' and lazy, sulkin' round; wouldn't do\nnothin,--and Tom he stuck up for her.\"\n\n\"He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of flogging her.\nIt'll be a good practice for him, and he won't put it on to the gal like\nyou devils, neither.\"\n\n\"Ho, ho! haw! haw! haw!\" laughed both the sooty wretches; and the\ndiabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt expression of the\nfiendish character which Legree gave them.\n\n\"Wal, but, Mas'r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among 'em, filled Lucy's\nbasket. I ruther guess der weight 's in it, Mas'r!\"\n\n\"_I do the weighing!_\" said Legree, emphatically.\n\nBoth the drivers again laughed their diabolical laugh.\n\n\"So!\" he added, \"Misse Cassy did her day's work.\"\n\n\"She picks like de debil and all his angels!\"\n\n\"She's got 'em all in her, I believe!\" said Legree; and, growling a\nbrutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing-room.\n\n\nSlowly the weary, dispirited creatures, wound their way into the room,\nand, with crouching reluctance, presented their baskets to be weighed.\n\nLegree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted a list of\nnames, the amount.\n\nTom's basket was weighed and approved; and he looked, with an anxious\nglance, for the success of the woman he had befriended.\n\nTottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered her basket. It\nwas of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, affecting anger, he\nsaid,\n\n\"What, you lazy beast! short again! stand aside, you'll catch it, pretty\nsoon!\"\n\nThe woman gave a groan of utter despair, and sat down on a board.\n\nThe person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward, and, with\na haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered it,\nLegree looked in her eyes with a sneering yet inquiring glance.\n\nShe fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly, and\nshe said something in French. What it was, no one knew; but Legree's\nface became perfectly demoniacal in its expression, as she spoke; he\nhalf raised his hand, as if to strike,--a gesture which she regarded\nwith fierce disdain, as she turned and walked away.\n\n\"And now,\" said Legree, \"come here, you Tom. You see, I telled ye I\ndidn't buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to promote ye, and make a\ndriver of ye; and tonight ye may jest as well begin to get yer hand in.\nNow, ye jest take this yer gal and flog her; ye've seen enough on't to\nknow how.\"\n\n\"I beg Mas'r's pardon,\" said Tom; \"hopes Mas'r won't set me at that. It's\nwhat I an't used to,--never did,--and can't do, no way possible.\"\n\n\"Ye'll larn a pretty smart chance of things ye never did know, before\nI've done with ye!\" said Legree, taking up a cowhide, and striking Tom a\nheavy blow cross the cheek, and following up the infliction by a shower\nof blows.\n\n\"There!\" he said, as he stopped to rest; \"now, will ye tell me ye can't\ndo it?\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Tom, putting up his hand, to wipe the blood, that\ntrickled down his face. \"I'm willin' to work, night and day, and work\nwhile there's life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can't feel it\nright to do;--and, Mas'r, I _never_ shall do it,--_never_!\"\n\nTom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful\nmanner, that had given Legree an idea that he would be cowardly, and\neasily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a thrill of amazement\nwent through every one; the poor woman clasped her hands, and said,\n\"O Lord!\" and every one involuntarily looked at each other and drew in\ntheir breath, as if to prepare for the storm that was about to burst.\n\nLegree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth,--\"What!\nye blasted black beast! tell _me_ ye don't think it _right_ to do what\nI tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking what's\nright? I'll put a stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye\nthink ye'r a gentleman master, Tom, to be a telling your master what's\nright, and what ain't! So you pretend it's wrong to flog the gal!\"\n\n\"I think so, Mas'r,\" said Tom; \"the poor crittur's sick and feeble; 't\nwould be downright cruel, and it's what I never will do, nor begin to.\nMas'r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand\nagin any one here, I never shall,--I'll die first!\"\n\nTom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be\nmistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely,\nand his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some\nferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he\nkept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and broke\nout into bitter raillery.\n\n\"Well, here's a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners!--a saint,\na gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful\nholy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so\npious,--didn't you never hear, out of yer Bible, 'Servants, obey yer\nmasters'? An't I yer master? Didn't I pay down twelve hundred dollars,\ncash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An't yer mine,\nnow, body and soul?\" he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy\nboot; \"tell me!\"\n\nIn the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression,\nthis question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom's soul. He\nsuddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while\nthe tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed,\n\n\"No! no! no! my soul an't yours, Mas'r! You haven't bought it,--ye\ncan't buy it! It's been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep\nit;--no matter, no matter, you can't harm me!\"\n\n\"I can't!\" said Legree, with a sneer; \"we'll see,--we'll see! Here,\nSambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he won't get over,\nthis month!\"\n\nThe two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish\nexultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personification of\npowers of darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension, and all\nrose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from\nthe place.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\n\nThe Quadroon's Story\n\n\nAnd behold the tears of such as are oppressed; and on the side of\ntheir oppressors there was power. Wherefore I praised the dead that are\nalready dead more than the living that are yet alive.--ECCL. 4:1.\n\nIt was late at night, and Tom lay groaning and bleeding alone, in an old\nforsaken room of the gin-house, among pieces of broken machinery, piles\nof damaged cotton, and other rubbish which had there accumulated.\n\nThe night was damp and close, and the thick air swarmed with myriads of\nmosquitos, which increased the restless torture of his wounds; whilst\na burning thirst--a torture beyond all others--filled up the uttermost\nmeasure of physical anguish.\n\n\"O, good Lord! _Do_ look down,--give me the victory!--give me the\nvictory over all!\" prayed poor Tom, in his anguish.\n\nA footstep entered the room, behind him, and the light of a lantern\nflashed on his eyes.\n\n\"Who's there? O, for the Lord's massy, please give me some water!\"\n\nThe woman Cassy--for it was she,--set down her lantern, and, pouring\nwater from a bottle, raised his head, and gave him drink. Another and\nanother cup were drained, with feverish eagerness.\n\n\"Drink all ye want,\" she said; \"I knew how it would be. It isn't the\nfirst time I've been out in the night, carrying water to such as you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Missis,\" said Tom, when he had done drinking.\n\n\"Don't call me Missis! I'm a miserable slave, like yourself,--a lower\none than you can ever be!\" said she, bitterly; \"but now,\" said she,\ngoing to the door, and dragging in a small pallaise, over which she had\nspread linen cloths wet with cold water, \"try, my poor fellow, to roll\nyourself on to this.\"\n\nStiff with wounds and bruises, Tom was a long time in accomplishing this\nmovement; but, when done, he felt a sensible relief from the cooling\napplication to his wounds.\n\nThe woman, whom long practice with the victims of brutality had made\nfamiliar with many healing arts, went on to make many applications to\nTom's wounds, by means of which he was soon somewhat relieved.\n\n\"Now,\" said the woman, when she had raised his head on a roll of damaged\ncotton, which served for a pillow, \"there's the best I can do for you.\"\n\nTom thanked her; and the woman, sitting down on the floor, drew up her\nknees, and embracing them with her arms, looked fixedly before her, with\na bitter and painful expression of countenance. Her bonnet fell back,\nand long wavy streams of black hair fell around her singular and\nmelancholy-face.\n\n\"It's no use, my poor fellow!\" she broke out, at last, \"it's of no use,\nthis you've been trying to do. You were a brave fellow,--you had the\nright on your side; but it's all in vain, and out of the question, for\nyou to struggle. You are in the devil's hands;--he is the strongest, and\nyou must give up!\"\n\nGive up! and, had not human weakness and physical agony whispered\nthat, before? Tom started; for the bitter woman, with her wild eyes and\nmelancholy voice, seemed to him an embodiment of the temptation with\nwhich he had been wrestling.\n\n\"O Lord! O Lord!\" he groaned, \"how can I give up?\"\n\n\"There's no use calling on the Lord,--he never hears,\" said the woman,\nsteadily; \"there isn't any God, I believe; or, if there is, he's taken\nsides against us. All goes against us, heaven and earth. Everything is\npushing us into hell. Why shouldn't we go?\"\n\nTom closed his eyes, and shuddered at the dark, atheistic words.\n\n\"You see,\" said the woman, \"_you_ don't know anything about it--I do.\nI've been on this place five years, body and soul, under this man's\nfoot; and I hate him as I do the devil! Here you are, on a lone\nplantation, ten miles from any other, in the swamps; not a white person\nhere, who could testify, if you were burned alive,--if you were scalded,\ncut into inch-pieces, set up for the dogs to tear, or hung up and\nwhipped to death. There's no law here, of God or man, that can do you,\nor any one of us, the least good; and, this man! there's no earthly\nthing that he's too good to do. I could make any one's hair rise, and\ntheir teeth chatter, if I should only tell what I've seen and been\nknowing to, here,--and it's no use resisting! Did I _want_ to live with\nhim? Wasn't I a woman delicately bred; and he,--God in heaven! what\nwas he, and is he? And yet, I've lived with him, these five years, and\ncursed every moment of my life,--night and day! And now, he's got a\nnew one,--a young thing, only fifteen, and she brought up, she says,\npiously. Her good mistress taught her to read the Bible; and she's\nbrought her Bible here--to hell with her!\"--and the woman laughed a\nwild and doleful laugh, that rung, with a strange, supernatural sound,\nthrough the old ruined shed.\n\nTom folded his hands; all was darkness and horror.\n\n\"O Jesus! Lord Jesus! have you quite forgot us poor critturs?\" burst\nforth, at last;--\"help, Lord, I perish!\"\n\nThe woman sternly continued:\n\n\"And what are these miserable low dogs you work with, that you should\nsuffer on their account? Every one of them would turn against you, the\nfirst time they got a chance. They are all of 'em as low and cruel to\neach other as they can be; there's no use in your suffering to keep from\nhurting them.\"\n\n\"Poor critturs!\" said Tom,--\"what made 'em cruel?--and, if I give out,\nI shall get used to 't, and grow, little by little, just like 'em! No,\nno, Missis! I've lost everything,--wife, and children, and home, and a\nkind Mas'r,--and he would have set me free, if he'd only lived a week\nlonger; I've lost everything in _this_ world, and it's clean gone,\nforever,--and now I _can't_ lose Heaven, too; no, I can't get to be\nwicked, besides all!\"\n\n\"But it can't be that the Lord will lay sin to our account,\" said the\nwoman; \"he won't charge it to us, when we're forced to it; he'll charge\nit to them that drove us to it.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Tom; \"but that won't keep us from growing wicked. If I get\nto be as hard-hearted as that ar' Sambo, and as wicked, it won't make\nmuch odds to me how I come so; it's the bein' so,--that ar's what I'm a\ndreadin'.\"\n\nThe woman fixed a wild and startled look on Tom, as if a new thought had\nstruck her; and then, heavily groaning, said,\n\n\"O God a' mercy! you speak the truth! O--O--O!\"--and, with groans, she\nfell on the floor, like one crushed and writhing under the extremity of\nmental anguish.\n\nThere was a silence, a while, in which the breathing of both parties\ncould be heard, when Tom faintly said, \"O, please, Missis!\"\n\nThe woman suddenly rose up, with her face composed to its usual stern,\nmelancholy expression.\n\n\"Please, Missis, I saw 'em throw my coat in that ar' corner, and in my\ncoat-pocket is my Bible;--if Missis would please get it for me.\"\n\nCassy went and got it. Tom opened, at once, to a heavily marked passage,\nmuch worn, of the last scenes in the life of Him by whose stripes we are\nhealed.\n\n\"If Missis would only be so good as read that ar',--it's better than\nwater.\"\n\nCassy took the book, with a dry, proud air, and looked over the passage.\nShe then read aloud, in a soft voice, and with a beauty of intonation\nthat was peculiar, that touching account of anguish and of glory. Often,\nas she read, her voice faltered, and sometimes failed her altogether,\nwhen she would stop, with an air of frigid composure, till she had\nmastered herself. When she came to the touching words, \"Father forgive\nthem, for they know not what they do,\" she threw down the book, and,\nburying her face in the heavy masses of her hair, she sobbed aloud, with\na convulsive violence.\n\nTom was weeping, also, and occasionally uttering a smothered\nejaculation.\n\n\"If we only could keep up to that ar'!\" said Tom;--\"it seemed to come so\nnatural to him, and we have to fight so hard for 't! O Lord, help us! O\nblessed Lord Jesus, do help us!\"\n\n\"Missis,\" said Tom, after a while, \"I can see that, some how, you're\nquite 'bove me in everything; but there's one thing Missis might learn\neven from poor Tom. Ye said the Lord took sides against us, because he\nlets us be 'bused and knocked round; but ye see what come on his own\nSon,--the blessed Lord of Glory,--wan't he allays poor? and have we,\nany on us, yet come so low as he come? The Lord han't forgot us,--I'm\nsartin' o' that ar'. If we suffer with him, we shall also reign,\nScripture says; but, if we deny Him, he also will deny us. Didn't they\nall suffer?--the Lord and all his? It tells how they was stoned and\nsawn asunder, and wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, and was\ndestitute, afflicted, tormented. Sufferin' an't no reason to make us\nthink the Lord's turned agin us; but jest the contrary, if only we hold\non to him, and doesn't give up to sin.\"\n\n\"But why does he put us where we can't help but sin?\" said the woman.\n\n\"I think we _can_ help it,\" said Tom.\n\n\"You'll see,\" said Cassy; \"what'll you do? Tomorrow they'll be at you\nagain. I know 'em; I've seen all their doings; I can't bear to think of\nall they'll bring you to;--and they'll make you give out, at last!\"\n\n\"Lord Jesus!\" said Tom, \"you _will_ take care of my soul? O Lord,\ndo!--don't let me give out!\"\n\n\"O dear!\" said Cassy; \"I've heard all this crying and praying before;\nand yet, they've been broken down, and brought under. There's Emmeline,\nshe's trying to hold on, and you're trying,--but what use? You must give\nup, or be killed by inches.\"\n\n\"Well, then, I _will_ die!\" said Tom. \"Spin it out as long as they can,\nthey can't help my dying, some time!--and, after that, they can't do\nno more. I'm clar, I'm set! I _know_ the Lord'll help me, and bring me\nthrough.\"\n\nThe woman did not answer; she sat with her black eyes intently fixed on\nthe floor.\n\n\"May be it's the way,\" she murmured to herself; \"but those that _have_\ngiven up, there's no hope for them!--none! We live in filth, and grow\nloathsome, till we loathe ourselves! And we long to die, and we\ndon't dare to kill ourselves!--No hope! no hope! no hope?--this girl\nnow,--just as old as I was!\n\n\"You see me now,\" she said, speaking to Tom very rapidly; \"see what I\nam! Well, I was brought up in luxury; the first I remember is, playing\nabout, when I was a child, in splendid parlors,--when I was kept dressed\nup like a doll, and company and visitors used to praise me. There was\na garden opening from the saloon windows; and there I used to play\nhide-and-go-seek, under the orange-trees, with my brothers and sisters.\nI went to a convent, and there I learned music, French and embroidery,\nand what not; and when I was fourteen, I came out to my father's\nfuneral. He died very suddenly, and when the property came to be\nsettled, they found that there was scarcely enough to cover the debts;\nand when the creditors took an inventory of the property, I was set down\nin it. My mother was a slave woman, and my father had always meant to\nset me free; but he had not done it, and so I was set down in the list.\nI'd always known who I was, but never thought much about it. Nobody ever\nexpects that a strong, healthy man is going to die. My father was a well\nman only four hours before he died;--it was one of the first cholera\ncases in New Orleans. The day after the funeral, my father's wife took\nher children, and went up to her father's plantation. I thought they\ntreated me strangely, but didn't know. There was a young lawyer who they\nleft to settle the business; and he came every day, and was about the\nhouse, and spoke very politely to me. He brought with him, one day, a\nyoung man, whom I thought the handsomest I had ever seen. I shall never\nforget that evening. I walked with him in the garden. I was lonesome and\nfull of sorrow, and he was so kind and gentle to me; and he told me that\nhe had seen me before I went to the convent, and that he had loved me\na great while, and that he would be my friend and protector;--in short,\nthough he didn't tell me, he had paid two thousand dollars for me, and I\nwas his property,--I became his willingly, for I loved him. Loved!\"\nsaid the woman, stopping. \"O, how I _did_ love that man! How I love him\nnow,--and always shall, while I breathe! He was so beautiful, so high,\nso noble! He put me into a beautiful house, with servants, horses, and\ncarriages, and furniture, and dresses. Everything that money could buy,\nhe gave me; but I didn't set any value on all that,--I only cared for\nhim. I loved him better than my God and my own soul, and, if I tried, I\ncouldn't do any other way from what he wanted me to.\n\n\"I wanted only one thing--I did want him to _marry_ me. I thought, if he\nloved me as he said he did, and if I was what he seemed to think I was,\nhe would be willing to marry me and set me free. But he convinced\nme that it would be impossible; and he told me that, if we were only\nfaithful to each other, it was marriage before God. If that is true,\nwasn't I that man's wife? Wasn't I faithful? For seven years, didn't I\nstudy every look and motion, and only live and breathe to please him? He\nhad the yellow fever, and for twenty days and nights I watched with him.\nI alone,--and gave him all his medicine, and did everything for him; and\nthen he called me his good angel, and said I'd saved his life. We had\ntwo beautiful children. The first was a boy, and we called him Henry.\nHe was the image of his father,--he had such beautiful eyes, such a\nforehead, and his hair hung all in curls around it; and he had all his\nfather's spirit, and his talent, too. Little Elise, he said, looked like\nme. He used to tell me that I was the most beautiful woman in Louisiana,\nhe was so proud of me and the children. He used to love to have me dress\nthem up, and take them and me about in an open carriage, and hear\nthe remarks that people would make on us; and he used to fill my ears\nconstantly with the fine things that were said in praise of me and the\nchildren. O, those were happy days! I thought I was as happy as any one\ncould be; but then there came evil times. He had a cousin come to New\nOrleans, who was his particular friend,--he thought all the world of\nhim;--but, from the first time I saw him, I couldn't tell why, I dreaded\nhim; for I felt sure he was going to bring misery on us. He got Henry to\ngoing out with him, and often he would not come home nights till two\nor three o'clock. I did not dare say a word; for Henry was so high\nspirited, I was afraid to. He got him to the gaming-houses; and he\nwas one of the sort that, when he once got a going there, there was no\nholding back. And then he introduced him to another lady, and I saw soon\nthat his heart was gone from me. He never told me, but I saw it,--I\nknew it, day after day,--I felt my heart breaking, but I could not say\na word! At this, the wretch offered to buy me and the children of Henry,\nto clear off his gambling debts, which stood in the way of his marrying\nas he wished;--and _he sold us_. He told me, one day, that he had\nbusiness in the country, and should be gone two or three weeks. He spoke\nkinder than usual, and said he should come back; but it didn't deceive\nme. I knew that the time had come; I was just like one turned into\nstone; I couldn't speak, nor shed a tear. He kissed me and kissed the\nchildren, a good many times, and went out. I saw him get on his horse,\nand I watched him till he was quite out of sight; and then I fell down,\nand fainted.\n\n\"Then _he_ came, the cursed wretch! he came to take possession. He told\nme that he had bought me and my children; and showed me the papers. I\ncursed him before God, and told him I'd die sooner than live with him.\"\n\n\"'Just as you please,' said he; 'but, if you don't behave reasonably,\nI'll sell both the children, where you shall never see them again.' He\ntold me that he always had meant to have me, from the first time he saw\nme; and that he had drawn Henry on, and got him in debt, on purpose to\nmake him willing to sell me. That he got him in love with another woman;\nand that I might know, after all that, that he should not give up for a\nfew airs and tears, and things of that sort.\n\n\"I gave up, for my hands were tied. He had my children;--whenever I\nresisted his will anywhere, he would talk about selling them, and he\nmade me as submissive as he desired. O, what a life it was! to live with\nmy heart breaking, every day,--to keep on, on, on, loving, when it was\nonly misery; and to be bound, body and soul, to one I hated. I used to\nlove to read to Henry, to play to him, to waltz with him, and sing to\nhim; but everything I did for this one was a perfect drag,--yet I was\nafraid to refuse anything. He was very imperious, and harsh to the\nchildren. Elise was a timid little thing; but Henry was bold and\nhigh-spirited, like his father, and he had never been brought under, in\nthe least, by any one. He was always finding fault, and quarrelling with\nhim; and I used to live in daily fear and dread. I tried to make the\nchild respectful;--I tried to keep them apart, for I held on to those\nchildren like death; but it did no good. _He sold both those children_.\nHe took me to ride, one day, and when I came home, they were nowhere to\nbe found! He told me he had sold them; he showed me the money, the price\nof their blood. Then it seemed as if all good forsook me. I raved and\ncursed,--cursed God and man; and, for a while, I believe, he really was\nafraid of me. But he didn't give up so. He told me that my children were\nsold, but whether I ever saw their faces again, depended on him; and\nthat, if I wasn't quiet, they should smart for it. Well, you can do\nanything with a woman, when you've got her children. He made me submit;\nhe made me be peaceable; he flattered me with hopes that, perhaps, he\nwould buy them back; and so things went on, a week or two. One day, I\nwas out walking, and passed by the calaboose; I saw a crowd about the\ngate, and heard a child's voice,--and suddenly my Henry broke away from\ntwo or three men who were holding him, and ran, screaming, and caught\nmy dress. They came up to him, swearing dreadfully; and one man, whose\nface I shall never forget, told him that he wouldn't get away so; that\nhe was going with him into the calaboose, and he'd get a lesson there\nhe'd never forget. I tried to beg and plead,--they only laughed; the\npoor boy screamed and looked into my face, and held on to me, until, in\ntearing him off, they tore the skirt of my dress half away; and they\ncarried him in, screaming 'Mother! mother! mother!' There was one man\nstood there seemed to pity me. I offered him all the money I had, if\nhe'd only interfere. He shook his head, and said that the boy had been\nimpudent and disobedient, ever since he bought him; that he was going\nto break him in, once for all. I turned and ran; and every step of the\nway, I thought that I heard him scream. I got into the house; ran, all\nout of breath, to the parlor, where I found Butler. I told him, and\nbegged him to go and interfere. He only laughed, and told me the boy\nhad got his deserts. He'd got to be broken in,--the sooner the better;\n'what did I expect?' he asked.\n\n\"It seemed to me something in my head snapped, at that moment. I felt\ndizzy and furious. I remember seeing a great sharp bowie-knife on the\ntable; I remember something about catching it, and flying upon him; and\nthen all grew dark, and I didn't know any more,--not for days and days.\n\n\"When I came to myself, I was in a nice room,--but not mine. An old\nblack woman tended me; and a doctor came to see me, and there was a\ngreat deal of care taken of me. After a while, I found that he had gone\naway, and left me at this house to be sold; and that's why they took\nsuch pains with me.\n\n\"I didn't mean to get well, and hoped I shouldn't; but, in spite of me\nthe fever went off and I grew healthy, and finally got up. Then, they\nmade me dress up, every day; and gentlemen used to come in and stand\nand smoke their cigars, and look at me, and ask questions, and debate\nmy price. I was so gloomy and silent, that none of them wanted me. They\nthreatened to whip me, if I wasn't gayer, and didn't take some pains\nto make myself agreeable. At length, one day, came a gentleman named\nStuart. He seemed to have some feeling for me; he saw that something\ndreadful was on my heart, and he came to see me alone, a great many\ntimes, and finally persuaded me to tell him. He bought me, at last, and\npromised to do all he could to find and buy back my children. He went\nto the hotel where my Henry was; they told him he had been sold to a\nplanter up on Pearl River; that was the last that I ever heard. Then he\nfound where my daughter was; an old woman was keeping her. He offered an\nimmense sum for her, but they would not sell her. Butler found out that\nit was for me he wanted her; and he sent me word that I should never\nhave her. Captain Stuart was very kind to me; he had a splendid\nplantation, and took me to it. In the course of a year, I had a son\nborn. O, that child!--how I loved it! How just like my poor Henry the\nlittle thing looked! But I had made up my mind,--yes, I had. I would\nnever again let a child live to grow up! I took the little fellow in my\narms, when he was two weeks old, and kissed him, and cried over him; and\nthen I gave him laudanum, and held him close to my bosom, while he slept\nto death. How I mourned and cried over it! and who ever dreamed that it\nwas anything but a mistake, that had made me give it the laudanum? but\nit's one of the few things that I'm glad of, now. I am not sorry, to\nthis day; he, at least, is out of pain. What better than death could\nI give him, poor child! After a while, the cholera came, and Captain\nStuart died; everybody died that wanted to live,--and I,--I, though I\nwent down to death's door,--_I lived!_ Then I was sold, and passed from\nhand to hand, till I grew faded and wrinkled, and I had a fever; and\nthen this wretch bought me, and brought me here,--and here I am!\"\n\nThe woman stopped. She had hurried on through her story, with a wild,\npassionate utterance; sometimes seeming to address it to Tom, and\nsometimes speaking as in a soliloquy. So vehement and overpowering was\nthe force with which she spoke, that, for a season, Tom was beguiled\neven from the pain of his wounds, and, raising himself on one elbow,\nwatched her as she paced restlessly up and down, her long black hair\nswaying heavily about her, as she moved.\n\n\"You tell me,\" she said, after a pause, \"that there is a God,--a God\nthat looks down and sees all these things. May be it's so. The sisters\nin the convent used to tell me of a day of judgment, when everything is\ncoming to light;--won't there be vengeance, then!\n\n\"They think it's nothing, what we suffer,--nothing, what our children\nsuffer! It's all a small matter; yet I've walked the streets when it\nseemed as if I had misery enough in my one heart to sink the city. I've\nwished the houses would fall on me, or the stones sink under me. Yes!\nand, in the judgment day, I will stand up before God, a witness against\nthose that have ruined me and my children, body and soul!\n\n\"When I was a girl, I thought I was religious; I used to love God and\nprayer. Now, I'm a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day\nand night; they keep pushing me on and on--and I'll do it, too, some of\nthese days!\" she said, clenching her hand, while an insane light glanced\nin her heavy black eyes. \"I'll send him where he belongs,--a short way,\ntoo,--one of these nights, if they burn me alive for it!\" A wild, long\nlaugh rang through the deserted room, and ended in a hysteric sob; she\nthrew herself on the floor, in convulsive sobbing and struggles.\n\nIn a few moments, the frenzy fit seemed to pass off; she rose slowly,\nand seemed to collect herself.\n\n\"Can I do anything more for you, my poor fellow?\" she said, approaching\nwhere Tom lay; \"shall I give you some more water?\"\n\nThere was a graceful and compassionate sweetness in her voice and\nmanner, as she said this, that formed a strange contrast with the former\nwildness.\n\nTom drank the water, and looked earnestly and pitifully into her face.\n\n\"O, Missis, I wish you'd go to him that can give you living waters!\"\n\n\"Go to him! Where is he? Who is he?\" said Cassy.\n\n\"Him that you read of to me,--the Lord.\"\n\n\"I used to see the picture of him, over the altar, when I was a girl,\"\nsaid Cassy, her dark eyes fixing themselves in an expression of mournful\nreverie; \"but, _he isn't here!_ there's nothing here, but sin and long,\nlong, long despair! O!\" She laid her hand on her breast and drew in her\nbreath, as if to lift a heavy weight.\n\nTom looked as if he would speak again; but she cut him short, with a\ndecided gesture.\n\n\"Don't talk, my poor fellow. Try to sleep, if you can.\" And, placing\nwater in his reach, and making whatever little arrangements for his\ncomforts she could, Cassy left the shed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXV\n\nThe Tokens\n\n     \"And slight, withal, may be the things that bring\n     Back on the heart the weight which it would fling\n     Aside forever; it may be a sound,\n     A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,--\n     Striking the electric chain wherewith we're darkly bound.\"\n     CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CAN. 4.\n\nThe sitting-room of Legree's establishment was a large, long room,\nwith a wide, ample fireplace. It had once been hung with a showy and\nexpensive paper, which now hung mouldering, torn and discolored, from\nthe damp walls. The place had that peculiar sickening, unwholesome\nsmell, compounded of mingled damp, dirt and decay, which one often\nnotices in close old houses. The wall-paper was defaced, in spots, by\nslops of beer and wine; or garnished with chalk memorandums, and long\nsums footed up, as if somebody had been practising arithmetic there. In\nthe fireplace stood a brazier full of burning charcoal; for, though the\nweather was not cold, the evenings always seemed damp and chilly in that\ngreat room; and Legree, moreover, wanted a place to light his cigars,\nand heat his water for punch. The ruddy glare of the charcoal displayed\nthe confused and unpromising aspect of the room,--saddles, bridles,\nseveral sorts of harness, riding-whips, overcoats, and various articles\nof clothing, scattered up and down the room in confused variety; and the\ndogs, of whom we have before spoken, had encamped themselves among them,\nto suit their own taste and convenience.\n\nLegree was just mixing himself a tumbler of punch, pouring his hot water\nfrom a cracked and broken-nosed pitcher, grumbling, as he did so,\n\n\"Plague on that Sambo, to kick up this yer row between me and the new\nhands! The fellow won't be fit to work for a week, now,--right in the\npress of the season!\"\n\n\"Yes, just like you,\" said a voice, behind his chair. It was the woman\nCassy, who had stolen upon his soliloquy.\n\n\"Hah! you she-devil! you've come back, have you?\"\n\n\"Yes, I have,\" she said, coolly; \"come to have my own way, too!\"\n\n\"You lie, you jade! I'll be up to my word. Either behave yourself, or\nstay down to the quarters, and fare and work with the rest.\"\n\n\"I'd rather, ten thousand times,\" said the woman, \"live in the dirtiest\nhole at the quarters, than be under your hoof!\"\n\n\"But you _are_ under my hoof, for all that,\" said he, turning upon her,\nwith a savage grin; \"that's one comfort. So, sit down here on my knee,\nmy dear, and hear to reason,\" said he, laying hold on her wrist.\n\n\"Simon Legree, take care!\" said the woman, with a sharp flash of her\neye, a glance so wild and insane in its light as to be almost appalling.\n\"You're afraid of me, Simon,\" she said, deliberately; \"and you've reason\nto be! But be careful, for I've got the devil in me!\"\n\nThe last words she whispered in a hissing tone, close to his ear.\n\n\"Get out! I believe, to my soul, you have!\" said Legree, pushing her\nfrom him, and looking uncomfortably at her. \"After all, Cassy,\" he said,\n\"why can't you be friends with me, as you used to?\"\n\n\"Used to!\" said she, bitterly. She stopped short,--a word of choking\nfeelings, rising in her heart, kept her silent.\n\nCassy had always kept over Legree the kind of influence that a strong,\nimpassioned woman can ever keep over the most brutal man; but, of late,\nshe had grown more and more irritable and restless, under the hideous\nyoke of her servitude, and her irritability, at times, broke out into\nraving insanity; and this liability made her a sort of object of dread\nto Legree, who had that superstitious horror of insane persons which is\ncommon to coarse and uninstructed minds. When Legree brought Emmeline to\nthe house, all the smouldering embers of womanly feeling flashed up in\nthe worn heart of Cassy, and she took part with the girl; and a fierce\nquarrel ensued between her and Legree. Legree, in a fury, swore she\nshould be put to field service, if she would not be peaceable. Cassy,\nwith proud scorn, declared she _would_ go to the field. And she worked\nthere one day, as we have described, to show how perfectly she scorned\nthe threat.\n\nLegree was secretly uneasy, all day; for Cassy had an influence over him\nfrom which he could not free himself. When she presented her basket at\nthe scales, he had hoped for some concession, and addressed her in a\nsort of half conciliatory, half scornful tone; and she had answered with\nthe bitterest contempt.\n\nThe outrageous treatment of poor Tom had roused her still more; and she\nhad followed Legree to the house, with no particular intention, but to\nupbraid him for his brutality.\n\n\"I wish, Cassy,\" said Legree, \"you'd behave yourself decently.\"\n\n\"_You_ talk about behaving decently! And what have you been doing?--you,\nwho haven't even sense enough to keep from spoiling one of your best\nhands, right in the most pressing season, just for your devilish\ntemper!\"\n\n\"I was a fool, it's a fact, to let any such brangle come up,\" said\nLegree; \"but, when the boy set up his will, he had to be broke in.\"\n\n\"I reckon you won't break _him_ in!\"\n\n\"Won't I?\" said Legree, rising, passionately. \"I'd like to know if I\nwon't? He'll be the first nigger that ever came it round me! I'll break\nevery bone in his body, but he _shall_ give up!\"\n\nJust then the door opened, and Sambo entered. He came forward, bowing,\nand holding out something in a paper.\n\n\"What's that, you dog?\" said Legree.\n\n\"It's a witch thing, Mas'r!\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"Something that niggers gets from witches. Keeps 'em from feelin' when\nthey 's flogged. He had it tied round his neck, with a black string.\"\n\nLegree, like most godless and cruel men, was superstitious. He took the\npaper, and opened it uneasily.\n\nThere dropped out of it a silver dollar, and a long, shining curl\nof fair hair,--hair which, like a living thing, twined itself round\nLegree's fingers.\n\n\"Damnation!\" he screamed, in sudden passion, stamping on the floor, and\npulling furiously at the hair, as if it burned him. \"Where did this come\nfrom? Take it off!--burn it up!--burn it up!\" he screamed, tearing it\noff, and throwing it into the charcoal. \"What did you bring it to me\nfor?\"\n\nSambo stood, with his heavy mouth wide open, and aghast with wonder; and\nCassy, who was preparing to leave the apartment, stopped, and looked at\nhim in perfect amazement.\n\n\"Don't you bring me any more of your devilish things!\" said he, shaking\nhis fist at Sambo, who retreated hastily towards the door; and, picking\nup the silver dollar, he sent it smashing through the window-pane, out\ninto the darkness.\n\nSambo was glad to make his escape. When he was gone, Legree seemed a\nlittle ashamed of his fit of alarm. He sat doggedly down in his chair,\nand began sullenly sipping his tumbler of punch.\n\nCassy prepared herself for going out, unobserved by him; and slipped\naway to minister to poor Tom, as we have already related.\n\nAnd what was the matter with Legree? and what was there in a simple\ncurl of fair hair to appall that brutal man, familiar with every form\nof cruelty? To answer this, we must carry the reader backward in his\nhistory. Hard and reprobate as the godless man seemed now, there had\nbeen a time when he had been rocked on the bosom of a mother,--cradled\nwith prayers and pious hymns,--his now seared brow bedewed with the\nwaters of holy baptism. In early childhood, a fair-haired woman had led\nhim, at the sound of Sabbath bell, to worship and to pray. Far in New\nEngland that mother had trained her only son, with long, unwearied love,\nand patient prayers. Born of a hard-tempered sire, on whom that gentle\nwoman had wasted a world of unvalued love, Legree had followed in the\nsteps of his father. Boisterous, unruly, and tyrannical, he despised all\nher counsel, and would none of her reproof; and, at an early age, broke\nfrom her, to seek his fortunes at sea. He never came home but once,\nafter; and then, his mother, with the yearning of a heart that must love\nsomething, and has nothing else to love, clung to him, and sought, with\npassionate prayers and entreaties, to win him from a life of sin, to his\nsoul's eternal good.\n\nThat was Legree's day of grace; then good angels called him; then he\nwas almost persuaded, and mercy held him by the hand. His heart inly\nrelented,--there was a conflict,--but sin got the victory, and he\nset all the force of his rough nature against the conviction of his\nconscience. He drank and swore,--was wilder and more brutal than ever.\nAnd, one night, when his mother, in the last agony of her despair, knelt\nat his feet, he spurned her from him,--threw her senseless on the floor,\nand, with brutal curses, fled to his ship. The next Legree heard of\nhis mother was, when, one night, as he was carousing among drunken\ncompanions, a letter was put into his hand. He opened it, and a lock\nof long, curling hair fell from it, and twined about his fingers. The\nletter told him his mother was dead, and that, dying, she blest and\nforgave him.\n\nThere is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns things\nsweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and affright. That pale,\nloving mother,--her dying prayers, her forgiving love,--wrought in that\ndemoniac heart of sin only as a damning sentence, bringing with it a\nfearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Legree burned the\nhair, and burned the letter; and when he saw them hissing and crackling\nin the flame, inly shuddered as he thought of everlasting fires. He\ntried to drink, and revel, and swear away the memory; but often, in\nthe deep night, whose solemn stillness arraigns the bad soul in forced\ncommunion with herself, he had seen that pale mother rising by his\nbedside, and felt the soft twining of that hair around his fingers, till\nthe cold sweat would roll down his face, and he would spring from his\nbed in horror. Ye who have wondered to hear, in the same evangel, that\nGod is love, and that God is a consuming fire, see ye not how, to the\nsoul resolved in evil, perfect love is the most fearful torture, the\nseal and sentence of the direst despair?\n\n\"Blast it!\" said Legree to himself, as he sipped his liquor; \"where did\nhe get that? If it didn't look just like--whoo! I thought I'd forgot\nthat. Curse me, if I think there's any such thing as forgetting\nanything, any how,--hang it! I'm lonesome! I mean to call Em. She hates\nme--the monkey! I don't care,--I'll _make_ her come!\"\n\nLegree stepped out into a large entry, which went up stairs, by what had\nformerly been a superb winding staircase; but the passage-way was dirty\nand dreary, encumbered with boxes and unsightly litter. The stairs,\nuncarpeted, seemed winding up, in the gloom, to nobody knew where! The\npale moonlight streamed through a shattered fanlight over the door; the\nair was unwholesome and chilly, like that of a vault.\n\nLegree stopped at the foot of the stairs, and heard a voice singing. It\nseemed strange and ghostlike in that dreary old house, perhaps because\nof the already tremulous state of his nerves. Hark! what is it?\n\nA wild, pathetic voice, chants a hymn common among the slaves:\n\n     \"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning,\n     O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!\"\n\n\"Blast the girl!\" said Legree. \"I'll choke her.--Em! Em!\" he called,\nharshly; but only a mocking echo from the walls answered him. The sweet\nvoice still sung on:\n\n     \"Parents and children there shall part!\n     Parents and children there shall part!\n     Shall part to meet no more!\"\n\nAnd clear and loud swelled through the empty halls the refrain,\n\n     \"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning,\n     O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!\"\n\nLegree stopped. He would have been ashamed to tell of it, but large\ndrops of sweat stood on his forehead, his heart beat heavy and thick\nwith fear; he even thought he saw something white rising and glimmering\nin the gloom before him, and shuddered to think what if the form of his\ndead mother should suddenly appear to him.\n\n\"I know one thing,\" he said to himself, as he stumbled back in the\nsitting-room, and sat down; \"I'll let that fellow alone, after this!\nWhat did I want of his cussed paper? I b'lieve I am bewitched, sure\nenough! I've been shivering and sweating, ever since! Where did he get\nthat hair? It couldn't have been _that!_ I burnt _that_ up, I know I\ndid! It would be a joke, if hair could rise from the dead!\"\n\nAh, Legree! that golden tress _was_ charmed; each hair had in it a spell\nof terror and remorse for thee, and was used by a mightier power to bind\nthy cruel hands from inflicting uttermost evil on the helpless!\n\n\"I say,\" said Legree, stamping and whistling to the dogs, \"wake up, some\nof you, and keep me company!\" but the dogs only opened one eye at him,\nsleepily, and closed it again.\n\n\"I'll have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one of their hell\ndances, and keep off these horrid notions,\" said Legree; and, putting\non his hat, he went on to the verandah, and blew a horn, with which he\ncommonly summoned his two sable drivers.\n\nLegree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get these two\nworthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up with whiskey,\namuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing or fighting, as the\nhumor took him.\n\nIt was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was returning\nfrom her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the sound of wild\nshrieking, whooping, halloing, and singing, from the sitting-room,\nmingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms of general uproar.\n\nShe came up on the verandah steps, and looked in. Legree and both the\ndrivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were singing, whooping,\nupsetting chairs, and making all manner of ludicrous and horrid grimaces\nat each other.\n\nShe rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and looked\nfixedly at them;--there was a world of anguish, scorn, and fierce\nbitterness, in her black eyes, as she did so. \"Would it be a sin to rid\nthe world of such a wretch?\" she said to herself.\n\nShe turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back door, glided up\nstairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVI\n\nEmmeline and Cassy\n\n\nCassy entered the room, and found Emmeline sitting, pale with fear,\nin the furthest corner of it. As she came in, the girl started up\nnervously; but, on seeing who it was, rushed forward, and catching her\narm, said, \"O Cassy, is it you? I'm so glad you've come! I was afraid\nit was--. O, you don't know what a horrid noise there has been, down\nstairs, all this evening!\"\n\n\"I ought to know,\" said Cassy, dryly. \"I've heard it often enough.\"\n\n\"O Cassy! do tell me,--couldn't we get away from this place? I don't\ncare where,--into the swamp among the snakes,--anywhere! _Couldn't_ we\nget _somewhere_ away from here?\"\n\n\"Nowhere, but into our graves,\" said Cassy.\n\n\"Did you ever try?\"\n\n\"I've seen enough of trying and what comes of it,\" said Cassy.\n\n\"I'd be willing to live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark from trees.\nI an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me than him,\" said\nEmmeline, eagerly.\n\n\"There have been a good many here of your opinion,\" said Cassy; \"but you\ncouldn't stay in the swamps,--you'd be tracked by the dogs, and brought\nback, and then--then--\"\n\n\"What would he do?\" said the girl, looking, with breathless interest,\ninto her face.\n\n\"What _wouldn't_ he do, you'd better ask,\" said Cassy. \"He's learned\nhis trade well, among the pirates in the West Indies. You wouldn't sleep\nmuch, if I should tell you things I've seen,--things that he tells of,\nsometimes, for good jokes. I've heard screams here that I haven't been\nable to get out of my head for weeks and weeks. There's a place way out\ndown by the quarters, where you can see a black, blasted tree, and the\nground all covered with black ashes. Ask anyone what was done there, and\nsee if they will dare to tell you.\"\n\n\"O! what do you mean?\"\n\n\"I won't tell you. I hate to think of it. And I tell you, the Lord only\nknows what we may see tomorrow, if that poor fellow holds out as he's\nbegun.\"\n\n\"Horrid!\" said Emmeline, every drop of blood receding from her cheeks.\n\"O, Cassy, do tell me what I shall do!\"\n\n\"What I've done. Do the best you can,--do what you must,--and make it up\nin hating and cursing.\"\n\n\"He wanted to make me drink some of his hateful brandy,\" said Emmeline;\n\"and I hate it so--\"\n\n\"You'd better drink,\" said Cassy. \"I hated it, too; and now I can't live\nwithout it. One must have something;--things don't look so dreadful,\nwhen you take that.\"\n\n\"Mother used to tell me never to touch any such thing,\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"_Mother_ told you!\" said Cassy, with a thrilling and bitter emphasis\non the word mother. \"What use is it for mothers to say anything? You\nare all to be bought and paid for, and your souls belong to whoever gets\nyou. That's the way it goes. I say, _drink_ brandy; drink all you can,\nand it'll make things come easier.\"\n\n\"O, Cassy! do pity me!\"\n\n\"Pity you!--don't I? Haven't I a daughter,--Lord knows where she is,\nand whose she is, now,--going the way her mother went, before her, I\nsuppose, and that her children must go, after her! There's no end to the\ncurse--forever!\"\n\n\"I wish I'd never been born!\" said Emmeline, wringing her hands.\n\n\"That's an old wish with me,\" said Cassy. \"I've got used to wishing\nthat. I'd die, if I dared to,\" she said, looking out into the darkness,\nwith that still, fixed despair which was the habitual expression of her\nface when at rest.\n\n\"It would be wicked to kill one's self,\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"I don't know why,--no wickeder than things we live and do, day after\nday. But the sisters told me things, when I was in the convent, that\nmake me afraid to die. If it would only be the end of us, why, then--\"\n\nEmmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands.\n\nWhile this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree, overcome\nwith his carouse, had sunk to sleep in the room below. Legree was not an\nhabitual drunkard. His coarse, strong nature craved, and could endure,\na continual stimulation, that would have utterly wrecked and crazed a\nfiner one. But a deep, underlying spirit of cautiousness prevented his\noften yielding to appetite in such measure as to lose control of himself.\n\nThis night, however, in his feverish efforts to banish from his mind\nthose fearful elements of woe and remorse which woke within him, he had\nindulged more than common; so that, when he had discharged his sable\nattendants, he fell heavily on a settle in the room, and was sound\nasleep.\n\nO! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of sleep?--that\nland whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the mystic scene of\nretribution! Legree dreamed. In his heavy and feverish sleep, a veiled\nform stood beside him, and laid a cold, soft hand upon him. He thought\nhe knew who it was; and shuddered, with creeping horror, though the\nface was veiled. Then he thought he felt _that hair_ twining round his\nfingers; and then, that it slid smoothly round his neck, and tightened\nand tightened, and he could not draw his breath; and then he thought\nvoices _whispered_ to him,--whispers that chilled him with horror. Then\nit seemed to him he was on the edge of a frightful abyss, holding on\nand struggling in mortal fear, while dark hands stretched up, and were\npulling him over; and Cassy came behind him laughing, and pushed him.\nAnd then rose up that solemn veiled figure, and drew aside the veil. It\nwas his mother; and she turned away from him, and he fell down, down,\ndown, amid a confused noise of shrieks, and groans, and shouts of demon\nlaughter,--and Legree awoke.\n\nCalmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealing into the room. The morning star\nstood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking down on the man\nof sin, from out the brightening sky. O, with what freshness, what\nsolemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate\nman, \"Behold! thou hast one more chance! _Strive_ for immortal glory!\"\nThere is no speech nor language where this voice is not heard; but the\nbold, bad man heard it not. He woke with an oath and a curse. What to\nhim was the gold and purple, the daily miracle of morning! What to him\nthe sanctity of the star which the Son of God has hallowed as his own\nemblem? Brute-like, he saw without perceiving; and, stumbling forward,\npoured out a tumbler of brandy, and drank half of it.\n\n\"I've had a h--l of a night!\" he said to Cassy, who just then entered\nfrom an opposite door.\n\n\"You'll get plenty of the same sort, by and by,\" said she, dryly.\n\n\"What do you mean, you minx?\"\n\n\"You'll find out, one of these days,\" returned Cassy, in the same tone.\n\"Now Simon, I've one piece of advice to give you.\"\n\n\"The devil, you have!\"\n\n\"My advice is,\" said Cassy, steadily, as she began adjusting some things\nabout the room, \"that you let Tom alone.\"\n\n\"What business is 't of yours?\"\n\n\"What? To be sure, I don't know what it should be. If you want to pay\ntwelve hundred for a fellow, and use him right up in the press of the\nseason, just to serve your own spite, it's no business of mine, I've\ndone what I could for him.\"\n\n\"You have? What business have you meddling in my matters?\"\n\n\"None, to be sure. I've saved you some thousands of dollars, at\ndifferent times, by taking care of your hands,--that's all the thanks\nI get. If your crop comes shorter into market than any of theirs, you\nwon't lose your bet, I suppose? Tompkins won't lord it over you, I\nsuppose,--and you'll pay down your money like a lady, won't you? I think\nI see you doing it!\"\n\nLegree, like many other planters, had but one form of ambition,--to have\nin the heaviest crop of the season,--and he had several bets on this\nvery present season pending in the next town. Cassy, therefore, with\nwoman's tact, touched the only string that could be made to vibrate.\n\n\"Well, I'll let him off at what he's got,\" said Legree; \"but he shall\nbeg my pardon, and promise better fashions.\"\n\n\"That he won't do,\" said Cassy.\n\n\"Won't,--eh?\"\n\n\"No, he won't,\" said Cassy.\n\n\"I'd like to know _why_, Mistress,\" said Legree, in the extreme of\nscorn.\n\n\"Because he's done right, and he knows it, and won't say he's done\nwrong.\"\n\n\"Who a cuss cares what he knows? The nigger shall say what I please,\nor--\"\n\n\"Or, you'll lose your bet on the cotton crop, by keeping him out of the\nfield, just at this very press.\"\n\n\"But he _will_ give up,--course, he will; don't I know what niggers is?\nHe'll beg like a dog, this morning.\"\n\n\"He won't, Simon; you don't know this kind. You may kill him by\ninches,--you won't get the first word of confession out of him.\"\n\n\"We'll see,--where is he?\" said Legree, going out.\n\n\"In the waste-room of the gin-house,\" said Cassy.\n\nLegree, though he talked so stoutly to Cassy, still sallied forth from\nthe house with a degree of misgiving which was not common with him. His\ndreams of the past night, mingled with Cassy's prudential suggestions,\nconsiderably affected his mind. He resolved that nobody should be\nwitness of his encounter with Tom; and determined, if he could not\nsubdue him by bullying, to defer his vengeance, to be wreaked in a more\nconvenient season.\n\nThe solemn light of dawn--the angelic glory of the morning-star--had\nlooked in through the rude window of the shed where Tom was lying; and,\nas if descending on that star-beam, came the solemn words, \"I am the\nroot and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.\" The\nmysterious warnings and intimations of Cassy, so far from discouraging\nhis soul, in the end had roused it as with a heavenly call. He did not\nknow but that the day of his death was dawning in the sky; and his heart\nthrobbed with solemn throes of joy and desire, as he thought that the\nwondrous _all_, of which he had often pondered,--the great white throne,\nwith its ever radiant rainbow; the white-robed multitude, with voices as\nmany waters; the crowns, the palms, the harps,--might all break upon\nhis vision before that sun should set again. And, therefore, without\nshuddering or trembling, he heard the voice of his persecutor, as he\ndrew near.\n\n\"Well, my boy,\" said Legree, with a contemptuous kick, \"how do you find\nyourself? Didn't I tell yer I could larn yer a thing or two? How do yer\nlike it--eh? How did yer whaling agree with yer, Tom? An't quite so\ncrank as ye was last night. Ye couldn't treat a poor sinner, now, to a\nbit of sermon, could ye,--eh?\"\n\nTom answered nothing.\n\n\"Get up, you beast!\" said Legree, kicking him again.\n\nThis was a difficult matter for one so bruised and faint; and, as Tom\nmade efforts to do so, Legree laughed brutally.\n\n\"What makes ye so spry, this morning, Tom? Cotched cold, may be, last\nnight.\"\n\nTom by this time had gained his feet, and was confronting his master\nwith a steady, unmoved front.\n\n\"The devil, you can!\" said Legree, looking him over. \"I believe you\nhaven't got enough yet. Now, Tom, get right down on yer knees and beg my\npardon, for yer shines last night.\"\n\nTom did not move.\n\n\"Down, you dog!\" said Legree, striking him with his riding-whip.\n\n\"Mas'r Legree,\" said Tom, \"I can't do it. I did only what I thought was\nright. I shall do just so again, if ever the time comes. I never will do\na cruel thing, come what may.\"\n\n\"Yes, but ye don't know what may come, Master Tom. Ye think what you've\ngot is something. I tell you 'tan't anything,--nothing 't all. How\nwould ye like to be tied to a tree, and have a slow fire lit up around\nye;--wouldn't that be pleasant,--eh, Tom?\"\n\n\"Mas'r,\" said Tom, \"I know ye can do dreadful things; but,\"--he\nstretched himself upward and clasped his hands,--\"but, after ye've\nkilled the body, there an't no more ye can do. And O, there's all\nETERNITY to come, after that!\"\n\nETERNITY,--the word thrilled through the black man's soul with light and\npower, as he spoke; it thrilled through the sinner's soul, too, like the\nbite of a scorpion. Legree gnashed on him with his teeth, but rage kept\nhim silent; and Tom, like a man disenthralled, spoke, in a clear and\ncheerful voice,\n\n\"Mas'r Legree, as ye bought me, I'll be a true and faithful servant to\nye. I'll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time, all my strength;\nbut my soul I won't give up to mortal man. I will hold on to the Lord,\nand put his commands before all,--die or live; you may be sure on 't.\nMas'r Legree, I ain't a grain afeard to die. I'd as soon die as not. Ye\nmay whip me, starve me, burn me,--it'll only send me sooner where I want\nto go.\"\n\n\"I'll make ye give out, though, 'fore I've done!\" said Legree, in a\nrage.\n\n\"I shall have _help_,\" said Tom; \"you'll never do it.\"\n\n\"Who the devil's going to help you?\" said Legree, scornfully.\n\n\"The Lord Almighty,\" said Tom.\n\n\"D--n you!\" said Legree, as with one blow of his fist he felled Tom to\nthe earth.\n\nA cold soft hand fell on Legree's at this moment. He turned,--it was\nCassy's; but the cold soft touch recalled his dream of the night before,\nand, flashing through the chambers of his brain, came all the fearful\nimages of the night-watches, with a portion of the horror that\naccompanied them.\n\n\"Will you be a fool?\" said Cassy, in French. \"Let him go! Let me alone\nto get him fit to be in the field again. Isn't it just as I told you?\"\n\nThey say the alligator, the rhinoceros, though enclosed in bullet-proof\nmail, have each a spot where they are vulnerable; and fierce, reckless,\nunbelieving reprobates, have commonly this point in superstitious dread.\n\nLegree turned away, determined to let the point go for the time.\n\n\"Well, have it your own way,\" he said, doggedly, to Cassy.\n\n\"Hark, ye!\" he said to Tom; \"I won't deal with ye now, because the\nbusiness is pressing, and I want all my hands; but I _never_ forget.\nI'll score it against ye, and sometime I'll have my pay out o' yer old\nblack hide,--mind ye!\"\n\nLegree turned, and went out.\n\n\"There you go,\" said Cassy, looking darkly after him; \"your reckoning's\nto come, yet!--My poor fellow, how are you?\"\n\n\"The Lord God hath sent his angel, and shut the lion's mouth, for this\ntime,\" said Tom.\n\n\"For this time, to be sure,\" said Cassy; \"but now you've got his ill\nwill upon you, to follow you day in, day out, hanging like a dog on your\nthroat,--sucking your blood, bleeding away your life, drop by drop. I\nknow the man.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVII\n\nLiberty\n\n\n\"No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar\nof slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the\naltar and the God sink together in the dust, and he stands redeemed,\nregenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal\nemancipation.\" CURRAN.*\n\n     * John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Irish orator and judge\n     who worked for Catholic emancipation.\n\nA while we must leave Tom in the hands of his persecutors, while we turn\nto pursue the fortunes of George and his wife, whom we left in friendly\nhands, in a farmhouse on the road-side.\n\nTom Loker we left groaning and touzling in a most immaculately clean\nQuaker bed, under the motherly supervision of Aunt Dorcas, who found him\nto the full as tractable a patient as a sick bison.\n\nImagine a tall, dignified, spiritual woman, whose clear muslin cap\nshades waves of silvery hair, parted on a broad, clear forehead, which\noverarches thoughtful gray eyes. A snowy handkerchief of lisse crape\nis folded neatly across her bosom; her glossy brown silk dress rustles\npeacefully, as she glides up and down the chamber.\n\n\"The devil!\" says Tom Loker, giving a great throw to the bedclothes.\n\n\"I must request thee, Thomas, not to use such language,\" says Aunt\nDorcas, as she quietly rearranged the bed.\n\n\"Well, I won't, granny, if I can help it,\" says Tom; \"but it is enough\nto make a fellow swear,--so cursedly hot!\"\n\nDorcas removed a comforter from the bed, straightened the clothes\nagain, and tucked them in till Tom looked something like a chrysalis;\nremarking, as she did so,\n\n\"I wish, friend, thee would leave off cursing and swearing, and think\nupon thy ways.\"\n\n\"What the devil,\" said Tom, \"should I think of _them_ for? Last\nthing ever _I_ want to think of--hang it all!\" And Tom flounced over,\nuntucking and disarranging everything, in a manner frightful to behold.\n\n\"That fellow and gal are here, I s'pose,\" said he, sullenly, after a\npause.\n\n\"They are so,\" said Dorcas.\n\n\"They'd better be off up to the lake,\" said Tom; \"the quicker the\nbetter.\"\n\n\"Probably they will do so,\" said Aunt Dorcas, knitting peacefully.\n\n\"And hark ye,\" said Tom; \"we've got correspondents in Sandusky, that\nwatch the boats for us. I don't care if I tell, now. I hope they _will_\nget away, just to spite Marks,--the cursed puppy!--d--n him!\"\n\n\"Thomas!\" said Dorcas.\n\n\"I tell you, granny, if you bottle a fellow up too tight, I shall\nsplit,\" said Tom. \"But about the gal,--tell 'em to dress her up some\nway, so's to alter her. Her description's out in Sandusky.\"\n\n\"We will attend to that matter,\" said Dorcas, with characteristic\ncomposure.\n\nAs we at this place take leave of Tom Loker, we may as well say, that,\nhaving lain three weeks at the Quaker dwelling, sick with a rheumatic\nfever, which set in, in company with his other afflictions, Tom\narose from his bed a somewhat sadder and wiser man; and, in place of\nslave-catching, betook himself to life in one of the new settlements,\nwhere his talents developed themselves more happily in trapping bears,\nwolves, and other inhabitants of the forest, in which he made himself\nquite a name in the land. Tom always spoke reverently of the Quakers.\n\"Nice people,\" he would say; \"wanted to convert me, but couldn't come\nit, exactly. But, tell ye what, stranger, they do fix up a sick fellow\nfirst rate,--no mistake. Make jist the tallest kind o' broth and\nknicknacks.\"\n\nAs Tom had informed them that their party would be looked for in\nSandusky, it was thought prudent to divide them. Jim, with his old\nmother, was forwarded separately; and a night or two after, George and\nEliza, with their child, were driven privately into Sandusky, and lodged\nbeneath a hospital roof, preparatory to taking their last passage on the\nlake.\n\nTheir night was now far spent, and the morning star of liberty rose fair\nbefore them!--electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it\nthan a name--a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does\nyour heart's blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and\nyour braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best should die?\n\nIs there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also\nglorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom\nto the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man, who sits\nthere, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African\nblood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eyes,--what is freedom to\nGeorge Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be\na nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute;\nthe right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from\nlawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right\nto have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his\nown, unsubject to the will of another. All these thoughts were rolling\nand seething in George's breast, as he was pensively leaning his head\non his hand, watching his wife, as she was adapting to her slender and\npretty form the articles of man's attire, in which it was deemed safest\nshe should make her escape.\n\n\"Now for it,\" said she, as she stood before the glass, and shook down\nher silky abundance of black curly hair. \"I say, George, it's almost a\npity, isn't it,\" she said, as she held up some of it, playfully,--\"pity\nit's all got to come off?\"\n\nGeorge smiled sadly, and made no answer.\n\nEliza turned to the glass, and the scissors glittered as one long lock\nafter another was detached from her head.\n\n\"There, now, that'll do,\" she said, taking up a hair-brush; \"now for a\nfew fancy touches.\"\n\n\"There, an't I a pretty young fellow?\" she said, turning around to her\nhusband, laughing and blushing at the same time.\n\n\"You always will be pretty, do what you will,\" said George.\n\n\"What does make you so sober?\" said Eliza, kneeling on one knee, and\nlaying her hand on his. \"We are only within twenty-four hours of Canada,\nthey say. Only a day and a night on the lake, and then--oh, then!--\"\n\n\"O, Eliza!\" said George, drawing her towards him; \"that is it! Now my\nfate is all narrowing down to a point. To come so near, to be almost in\nsight, and then lose all. I should never live under it, Eliza.\"\n\n\"Don't fear,\" said his wife, hopefully. \"The good Lord would not have\nbrought us so far, if he didn't mean to carry us through. I seem to feel\nhim with us, George.\"\n\n\"You are a blessed woman, Eliza!\" said George, clasping her with a\nconvulsive grasp. \"But,--oh, tell me! can this great mercy be for us?\nWill these years and years of misery come to an end?--shall we be free?\n\n\"I am sure of it, George,\" said Eliza, looking upward, while tears of\nhope and enthusiasm shone on her long, dark lashes. \"I feel it in me,\nthat God is going to bring us out of bondage, this very day.\"\n\n\"I will believe you, Eliza,\" said George, rising suddenly up, \"I will\nbelieve,--come let's be off. Well, indeed,\" said he, holding her off at\narm's length, and looking admiringly at her, \"you _are_ a pretty little\nfellow. That crop of little, short curls, is quite becoming. Put on your\ncap. So--a little to one side. I never saw you look quite so pretty.\nBut, it's almost time for the carriage;--I wonder if Mrs. Smyth has got\nHarry rigged?\"\n\nThe door opened, and a respectable, middle-aged woman entered, leading\nlittle Harry, dressed in girl's clothes.\n\n\"What a pretty girl he makes,\" said Eliza, turning him round. \"We call\nhim Harriet, you see;--don't the name come nicely?\"\n\nThe child stood gravely regarding his mother in her new and strange\nattire, observing a profound silence, and occasionally drawing deep\nsighs, and peeping at her from under his dark curls.\n\n\"Does Harry know mamma?\" said Eliza, stretching her hands toward him.\n\nThe child clung shyly to the woman.\n\n\"Come Eliza, why do you try to coax him, when you know that he has got\nto be kept away from you?\"\n\n\"I know it's foolish,\" said Eliza; \"yet, I can't bear to have him turn\naway from me. But come,--where's my cloak? Here,--how is it men put on\ncloaks, George?\"\n\n\"You must wear it so,\" said her husband, throwing it over his shoulders.\n\n\"So, then,\" said Eliza, imitating the motion,--\"and I must stamp, and\ntake long steps, and try to look saucy.\"\n\n\"Don't exert yourself,\" said George. \"There is, now and then, a\nmodest young man; and I think it would be easier for you to act that\ncharacter.\"\n\n\"And these gloves! mercy upon us!\" said Eliza; \"why, my hands are lost\nin them.\"\n\n\"I advise you to keep them on pretty strictly,\" said George. \"Your\nslender paw might bring us all out. Now, Mrs. Smyth, you are to go under\nour charge, and be our aunty,--you mind.\"\n\n\"I've heard,\" said Mrs. Smyth, \"that there have been men down, warning\nall the packet captains against a man and woman, with a little boy.\"\n\n\"They have!\" said George. \"Well, if we see any such people, we can tell\nthem.\"\n\nA hack now drove to the door, and the friendly family who had received\nthe fugitives crowded around them with farewell greetings.\n\nThe disguises the party had assumed were in accordance with the hints\nof Tom Loker. Mrs. Smyth, a respectable woman from the settlement in\nCanada, whither they were fleeing, being fortunately about crossing the\nlake to return thither, had consented to appear as the aunt of little\nHarry; and, in order to attach him to her, he had been allowed to\nremain, the two last days, under her sole charge; and an extra amount\nof petting, jointed to an indefinite amount of seed-cakes and candy, had\ncemented a very close attachment on the part of the young gentleman.\n\nThe hack drove to the wharf. The two young men, as they appeared, walked\nup the plank into the boat, Eliza gallantly giving her arm to Mrs.\nSmyth, and George attending to their baggage.\n\nGeorge was standing at the captain's office, settling for his party,\nwhen he overheard two men talking by his side.\n\n\"I've watched every one that came on board,\" said one, \"and I know\nthey're not on this boat.\"\n\nThe voice was that of the clerk of the boat. The speaker whom he\naddressed was our sometime friend Marks, who, with that valuable\nperseverance which characterized him, had come on to Sandusky, seeking\nwhom he might devour.\n\n\"You would scarcely know the woman from a white one,\" said Marks. \"The\nman is a very light mulatto; he has a brand in one of his hands.\"\n\nThe hand with which George was taking the tickets and change trembled a\nlittle; but he turned coolly around, fixed an unconcerned glance on the\nface of the speaker, and walked leisurely toward another part of the\nboat, where Eliza stood waiting for him.\n\nMrs. Smyth, with little Harry, sought the seclusion of the ladies'\ncabin, where the dark beauty of the supposed little girl drew many\nflattering comments from the passengers.\n\nGeorge had the satisfaction, as the bell rang out its farewell peal,\nto see Marks walk down the plank to the shore; and drew a long sigh of\nrelief, when the boat had put a returnless distance between them.\n\nIt was a superb day. The blue waves of Lake Erie danced, rippling and\nsparkling, in the sun-light. A fresh breeze blew from the shore, and the\nlordly boat ploughed her way right gallantly onward.\n\nO, what an untold world there is in one human heart! Who thought, as\nGeorge walked calmly up and down the deck of the steamer, with his shy\ncompanion at his side, of all that was burning in his bosom? The mighty\ngood that seemed approaching seemed too good, too fair, even to be a\nreality; and he felt a jealous dread, every moment of the day, that\nsomething would rise to snatch it from him.\n\nBut the boat swept on. Hours fleeted, and, at last, clear and full rose\nthe blessed English shores; shores charmed by a mighty spell,--with\none touch to dissolve every incantation of slavery, no matter in what\nlanguage pronounced, or by what national power confirmed.\n\nGeorge and his wife stood arm in arm, as the boat neared the small\ntown of Amherstberg, in Canada. His breath grew thick and short; a mist\ngathered before his eyes; he silently pressed the little hand that lay\ntrembling on his arm. The bell rang; the boat stopped. Scarcely seeing\nwhat he did, he looked out his baggage, and gathered his little party.\nThe little company were landed on the shore. They stood still till the\nboat had cleared; and then, with tears and embracings, the husband and\nwife, with their wondering child in their arms, knelt down and lifted up\ntheir hearts to God!\n\n     \"'T was something like the burst from death to life;\n     From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven;\n     From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife,\n     To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven;\n     Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven,\n     And mortal puts on immortality,\n     When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key,\n     And Mercy's voice hath said, _Rejoice, thy soul is free.\"_\n\nThe little party were soon guided, by Mrs. Smyth, to the hospitable\nabode of a good missionary, whom Christian charity has placed here as\na shepherd to the outcast and wandering, who are constantly finding an\nasylum on this shore.\n\nWho can speak the blessedness of that first day of freedom? Is not the\n_sense_ of liberty a higher and a finer one than any of the five? To\nmove, speak and breathe,--go out and come in unwatched, and free from\ndanger! Who can speak the blessings of that rest which comes down on the\nfree man's pillow, under laws which insure to him the rights that God\nhas given to man? How fair and precious to that mother was that\nsleeping child's face, endeared by the memory of a thousand dangers!\nHow impossible was it to sleep, in the exuberant possession of such\nblessedness! And yet, these two had not one acre of ground,--not a roof\nthat they could call their own,--they had spent their all, to the last\ndollar. They had nothing more than the birds of the air, or the flowers\nof the field,--yet they could not sleep for joy. \"O, ye who take freedom\nfrom man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVIII\n\nThe Victory\n\n\n\"Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory.\"*\n\n     * I Cor. 15:57.\n\nHave not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how\nfar easier it were to die than to live?\n\nThe martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror,\nfinds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There\nis a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any\ncrisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.\n\nBut to live,--to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing\nservitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling\ngradually smothered,--this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this\nslow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after\nhour,--this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or\nwoman.\n\nWhen Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his threats,\nand thought in his very soul that his hour was come, his heart swelled\nbravely in him, and he thought he could bear torture and fire, bear\nanything, with the vision of Jesus and heaven but just a step beyond;\nbut, when he was gone, and the present excitement passed off, came back\nthe pain of his bruised and weary limbs,--came back the sense of his\nutterly degraded, hopeless, forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily\nenough.\n\nLong before his wounds were healed, Legree insisted that he should be\nput to the regular field-work; and then came day after day of pain and\nweariness, aggravated by every kind of injustice and indignity that the\nill-will of a mean and malicious mind could devise. Whoever, in _our_\ncircumstances, has made trial of pain, even with all the alleviations\nwhich, for us, usually attend it, must know the irritation that comes\nwith it. Tom no longer wondered at the habitual surliness of his\nassociates; nay, he found the placid, sunny temper, which had been the\nhabitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads\nof the same thing. He had flattered himself on leisure to read his\nBible; but there was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of\nthe season, Legree did not hesitate to press all his hands through,\nSundays and week-days alike. Why shouldn't he?--he made more cotton by\nit, and gained his wager; and if it wore out a few more hands, he could\nbuy better ones. At first, Tom used to read a verse or two of his Bible,\nby the flicker of the fire, after he had returned from his daily toil;\nbut, after the cruel treatment he received, he used to come home so\nexhausted, that his head swam and his eyes failed when he tried to\nread; and he was fain to stretch himself down, with the others, in utter\nexhaustion.\n\nIs it strange that the religious peace and trust, which had upborne him\nhitherto, should give way to tossings of soul and despondent darkness?\nThe gloomiest problem of this mysterious life was constantly before his\neyes,--souls crushed and ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent. It\nwas weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and\nsorrow. He thought of Miss Ophelia's letter to his Kentucky friends, and\nwould pray earnestly that God would send him deliverance. And then he\nwould watch, day after day, in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent\nto redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush back to his soul\nbitter thoughts,--that it was vain to serve God, that God had forgotten\nhim. He sometimes saw Cassy; and sometimes, when summoned to the house,\ncaught a glimpse of the dejected form of Emmeline, but held very little\ncommunion with either; in fact, there was no time for him to commune\nwith anybody.\n\nOne evening, he was sitting, in utter dejection and prostration, by a\nfew decaying brands, where his coarse supper was baking. He put a few\nbits of brushwood on the fire, and strove to raise the light, and then\ndrew his worn Bible from his pocket. There were all the marked passages,\nwhich had thrilled his soul so often,--words of patriarchs and seers,\npoets and sages, who from early time had spoken courage to man,--voices\nfrom the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround us in the race of\nlife. Had the word lost its power, or could the failing eye and weary\nsense no longer answer to the touch of that mighty inspiration? Heavily\nsighing, he put it in his pocket. A coarse laugh roused him; he looked\nup,--Legree was standing opposite to him.\n\n\"Well, old boy,\" he said, \"you find your religion don't work, it seems!\nI thought I should get that through your wool, at last!\"\n\nThe cruel taunt was more than hunger and cold and nakedness. Tom was\nsilent.\n\n\"You were a fool,\" said Legree; \"for I meant to do well by you, when I\nbought you. You might have been better off than Sambo, or Quimbo either,\nand had easy times; and, instead of getting cut up and thrashed, every\nday or two, ye might have had liberty to lord it round, and cut up the\nother niggers; and ye might have had, now and then, a good warming\nof whiskey punch. Come, Tom, don't you think you'd better be\nreasonable?--heave that ar old pack of trash in the fire, and join my\nchurch!\"\n\n\"The Lord forbid!\" said Tom, fervently.\n\n\"You see the Lord an't going to help you; if he had been, he wouldn't\nhave let _me_ get you! This yer religion is all a mess of lying\ntrumpery, Tom. I know all about it. Ye'd better hold to me; I'm\nsomebody, and can do something!\"\n\n\"No, Mas'r,\" said Tom; \"I'll hold on. The Lord may help me, or not help;\nbut I'll hold to him, and believe him to the last!\"\n\n\"The more fool you!\" said Legree, spitting scornfully at him, and\nspurning him with his foot. \"Never mind; I'll chase you down, yet, and\nbring you under,--you'll see!\" and Legree turned away.\n\nWhen a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which\nendurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every\nphysical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest\nanguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it\nnow with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel master sunk his before\ndejected soul to the lowest ebb; and, though the hand of faith still\nheld to the eternal rock, it was a numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like\none stunned, at the fire. Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade,\nand a vision rose before him of one crowned with thorns, buffeted and\nbleeding. Tom gazed, in awe and wonder, at the majestic patience of the\nface; the deep, pathetic eyes thrilled him to his inmost heart; his soul\nwoke, as, with floods of emotion, he stretched out his hands and fell\nupon his knees,--when, gradually, the vision changed: the sharp thorns\nbecame rays of glory; and, in splendor inconceivable, he saw that same\nface bending compassionately towards him, and a voice said, \"He that\novercometh shall sit down with me on my throne, even as I also overcome,\nand am set down with my Father on his throne.\"\n\nHow long Tom lay there, he knew not. When he came to himself, the fire\nwas gone out, his clothes were wet with the chill and drenching dews;\nbut the dread soul-crisis was past, and, in the joy that filled him, he\nno longer felt hunger, cold, degradation, disappointment, wretchedness.\nFrom his deepest soul, he that hour loosed and parted from every hope in\nlife that now is, and offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to\nthe Infinite. Tom looked up to the silent, ever-living stars,--types\nof the angelic hosts who ever look down on man; and the solitude of the\nnight rung with the triumphant words of a hymn, which he had sung often\nin happier days, but never with such feeling as now:\n\n    \"The earth shall be dissolved like snow,\n     The sun shall cease to shine;\n     But God, who called me here below,\n     Shall be forever mine.\n\n    \"And when this mortal life shall fail,\n     And flesh and sense shall cease,\n     I shall possess within the veil\n     A life of joy and peace.\n\n    \"When we've been there ten thousand years,\n     Bright shining like the sun,\n     We've no less days to sing God's praise\n     Than when we first begun.\"\n\nThose who have been familiar with the religious histories of the slave\npopulation know that relations like what we have narrated are very\ncommon among them. We have heard some from their own lips, of a very\ntouching and affecting character. The psychologist tells us of a state,\nin which the affections and images of the mind become so dominant and\noverpowering, that they press into their service the outward imagining.\nWho shall measure what an all-pervading Spirit may do with these\ncapabilities of our mortality, or the ways in which He may encourage the\ndesponding souls of the desolate? If the poor forgotten slave believes\nthat Jesus hath appeared and spoken to him, who shall contradict him?\nDid He not say that his mission, in all ages, was to bind up the\nbroken-hearted, and set at liberty them that are bruised?\n\nWhen the dim gray of dawn woke the slumberers to go forth to the field,\nthere was among those tattered and shivering wretches one who walked\nwith an exultant tread; for firmer than the ground he trod on was his\nstrong faith in Almighty, eternal love. Ah, Legree, try all your forces\nnow! Utmost agony, woe, degradation, want, and loss of all things, shall\nonly hasten on the process by which he shall be made a king and a priest\nunto God!\n\nFrom this time, an inviolable sphere of peace encompassed the lowly\nheart of the oppressed one,--an ever-present Saviour hallowed it as a\ntemple. Past now the bleeding of earthly regrets; past its fluctuations\nof hope, and fear, and desire; the human will, bent, and bleeding, and\nstruggling long, was now entirely merged in the Divine. So short now\nseemed the remaining voyage of life,--so near, so vivid, seemed eternal\nblessedness,--that life's uttermost woes fell from him unharming.\n\nAll noticed the change in his appearance. Cheerfulness and alertness\nseemed to return to him, and a quietness which no insult or injury could\nruffle seemed to possess him.\n\n\"What the devil's got into Tom?\" Legree said to Sambo. \"A while ago he\nwas all down in the mouth, and now he's peart as a cricket.\"\n\n\"Dunno, Mas'r; gwine to run off, mebbe.\"\n\n\"Like to see him try that,\" said Legree, with a savage grin, \"wouldn't\nwe, Sambo?\"\n\n\"Guess we would! Haw! haw! ho!\" said the sooty gnome, laughing\nobsequiously. \"Lord, de fun! To see him stickin' in de mud,--chasin' and\ntarin' through de bushes, dogs a holdin' on to him! Lord, I laughed fit\nto split, dat ar time we cotched Molly. I thought they'd a had her all\nstripped up afore I could get 'em off. She car's de marks o' dat ar\nspree yet.\"\n\n\"I reckon she will, to her grave,\" said Legree. \"But now, Sambo, you\nlook sharp. If the nigger's got anything of this sort going, trip him\nup.\"\n\n\"Mas'r, let me lone for dat,\" said Sambo, \"I'll tree de coon. Ho, ho,\nho!\"\n\nThis was spoken as Legree was getting on his horse, to go to the\nneighboring town. That night, as he was returning, he thought he would\nturn his horse and ride round the quarters, and see if all was safe.\n\nIt was a superb moonlight night, and the shadows of the graceful China\ntrees lay minutely pencilled on the turf below, and there was that\ntransparent stillness in the air which it seems almost unholy to\ndisturb. Legree was a little distance from the quarters, when he heard\nthe voice of some one singing. It was not a usual sound there, and he\npaused to listen. A musical tenor voice sang,\n\n     \"When I can read my title clear\n     To mansions in the skies,\n     I'll bid farewell to every fear,\n     And wipe my weeping eyes\n\n     \"Should earth against my soul engage,\n     And hellish darts be hurled,\n     Then I can smile at Satan's rage,\n     And face a frowning world.\n\n     \"Let cares like a wild deluge come,\n     And storms of sorrow fall,\n     May I but safely reach my home,\n     My God, my Heaven, my All.\"*\n\n\n     * \"On My Journey Home,\" hymn by Isaac Watts, found in many\n     of the southern country songbooks of the ante bellum period.\n\n\"So ho!\" said Legree to himself, \"he thinks so, does he? How I hate\nthese cursed Methodist hymns! Here, you nigger,\" said he, coming\nsuddenly out upon Tom, and raising his riding-whip, \"how dare you be\ngettin' up this yer row, when you ought to be in bed? Shut yer old black\ngash, and get along in with you!\"\n\n\"Yes, Mas'r,\" said Tom, with ready cheerfulness, as he rose to go in.\n\nLegree was provoked beyond measure by Tom's evident happiness; and\nriding up to him, belabored him over his head and shoulders.\n\n\"There, you dog,\" he said, \"see if you'll feel so comfortable, after\nthat!\"\n\nBut the blows fell now only on the outer man, and not, as before, on\nthe heart. Tom stood perfectly submissive; and yet Legree could not hide\nfrom himself that his power over his bond thrall was somehow gone.\nAnd, as Tom disappeared in his cabin, and he wheeled his horse suddenly\nround, there passed through his mind one of those vivid flashes that\noften send the lightning of conscience across the dark and wicked soul.\nHe understood full well that it was GOD who was standing between him and\nhis victim, and he blasphemed him. That submissive and silent man, whom\ntaunts, nor threats, nor stripes, nor cruelties, could disturb, roused a\nvoice within him, such as of old his Master roused in the demoniac soul,\nsaying, \"What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth?--art thou\ncome to torment us before the time?\"\n\nTom's whole soul overflowed with compassion and sympathy for the\npoor wretches by whom he was surrounded. To him it seemed as if his\nlife-sorrows were now over, and as if, out of that strange treasury of\npeace and joy, with which he had been endowed from above, he longed\nto pour out something for the relief of their woes. It is true,\nopportunities were scanty; but, on the way to the fields, and back\nagain, and during the hours of labor, chances fell in his way of\nextending a helping-hand to the weary, the disheartened and discouraged.\nThe poor, worn-down, brutalized creatures, at first, could scarce\ncomprehend this; but, when it was continued week after week, and month\nafter month, it began to awaken long-silent chords in their benumbed\nhearts. Gradually and imperceptibly the strange, silent, patient\nman, who was ready to bear every one's burden, and sought help from\nnone,--who stood aside for all, and came last, and took least, yet was\nforemost to share his little all with any who needed,--the man who, in\ncold nights, would give up his tattered blanket to add to the comfort of\nsome woman who shivered with sickness, and who filled the baskets of the\nweaker ones in the field, at the terrible risk of coming short in his\nown measure,--and who, though pursued with unrelenting cruelty by\ntheir common tyrant, never joined in uttering a word of reviling or\ncursing,--this man, at last, began to have a strange power over them;\nand, when the more pressing season was past, and they were allowed again\ntheir Sundays for their own use, many would gather together to hear from\nhim of Jesus. They would gladly have met to hear, and pray, and sing, in\nsome place, together; but Legree would not permit it, and more than once\nbroke up such attempts, with oaths and brutal execrations,--so that the\nblessed news had to circulate from individual to individual. Yet who\ncan speak the simple joy with which some of those poor outcasts, to whom\nlife was a joyless journey to a dark unknown, heard of a compassionate\nRedeemer and a heavenly home? It is the statement of missionaries, that,\nof all races of the earth, none have received the Gospel with such eager\ndocility as the African. The principle of reliance and unquestioning\nfaith, which is its foundation, is more a native element in this race\nthan any other; and it has often been found among them, that a stray\nseed of truth, borne on some breeze of accident into hearts the most\nignorant, has sprung up into fruit, whose abundance has shamed that of\nhigher and more skilful culture.\n\nThe poor mulatto woman, whose simple faith had been well-nigh crushed\nand overwhelmed, by the avalanche of cruelty and wrong which had fallen\nupon her, felt her soul raised up by the hymns and passages of Holy\nWrit, which this lowly missionary breathed into her ear in intervals, as\nthey were going to and returning from work; and even the half-crazed\nand wandering mind of Cassy was soothed and calmed by his simple and\nunobtrusive influences.\n\nStung to madness and despair by the crushing agonies of a life, Cassy\nhad often resolved in her soul an hour of retribution, when her hand\nshould avenge on her oppressor all the injustice and cruelty to which\nshe had been witness, or which _she_ had in her own person suffered.\n\nOne night, after all in Tom's cabin were sunk in sleep, he was suddenly\naroused by seeing her face at the hole between the logs, that served for\na window. She made a silent gesture for him to come out.\n\nTom came out the door. It was between one and two o'clock at\nnight,--broad, calm, still moonlight. Tom remarked, as the light of\nthe moon fell upon Cassy's large, black eyes, that there was a wild and\npeculiar glare in them, unlike their wonted fixed despair.\n\n\"Come here, Father Tom,\" she said, laying her small hand on his wrist,\nand drawing him forward with a force as if the hand were of steel; \"come\nhere,--I've news for you.\"\n\n\"What, Misse Cassy?\" said Tom, anxiously.\n\n\"Tom, wouldn't you like your liberty?\"\n\n\"I shall have it, Misse, in God's time,\" said Tom. \"Ay, but you may have\nit tonight,\" said Cassy, with a flash of sudden energy. \"Come on.\"\n\nTom hesitated.\n\n\"Come!\" said she, in a whisper, fixing her black eyes on him. \"Come\nalong! He's asleep--sound. I put enough into his brandy to keep him so.\nI wish I'd had more,--I shouldn't have wanted you. But come, the back\ndoor is unlocked; there's an axe there, I put it there,--his room door\nis open; I'll show you the way. I'd a done it myself, only my arms are\nso weak. Come along!\"\n\n\"Not for ten thousand worlds, Misse!\" said Tom, firmly, stopping and\nholding her back, as she was pressing forward.\n\n\"But think of all these poor creatures,\" said Cassy. \"We might set them\nall free, and go somewhere in the swamps, and find an island, and live\nby ourselves; I've heard of its being done. Any life is better than\nthis.\"\n\n\"No!\" said Tom, firmly. \"No! good never comes of wickedness. I'd sooner\nchop my right hand off!\"\n\n\"Then _I_ shall do it,\" said Cassy, turning.\n\n\"O, Misse Cassy!\" said Tom, throwing himself before her, \"for the dear\nLord's sake that died for ye, don't sell your precious soul to the\ndevil, that way! Nothing but evil will come of it. The Lord hasn't\ncalled us to wrath. We must suffer, and wait his time.\"\n\n\"Wait!\" said Cassy. \"Haven't I waited?--waited till my head is dizzy and\nmy heart sick? What has he made me suffer? What has he made hundreds of\npoor creatures suffer? Isn't he wringing the life-blood out of you?\nI'm called on; they call me! His time's come, and I'll have his heart's\nblood!\"\n\n\"No, no, no!\" said Tom, holding her small hands, which were clenched\nwith spasmodic violence. \"No, ye poor, lost soul, that ye mustn't do.\nThe dear, blessed Lord never shed no blood but his own, and that he\npoured out for us when we was enemies. Lord, help us to follow his\nsteps, and love our enemies.\"\n\n\"Love!\" said Cassy, with a fierce glare; \"love _such_ enemies! It isn't\nin flesh and blood.\"\n\n\"No, Misse, it isn't,\" said Tom, looking up; \"but _He_ gives it to us,\nand that's the victory. When we can love and pray over all and through\nall, the battle's past, and the victory's come,--glory be to God!\"\nAnd, with streaming eyes and choking voice, the black man looked up to\nheaven.\n\nAnd this, oh Africa! latest called of nations,--called to the crown of\nthorns, the scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of agony,--this is to\nbe _thy_ victory; by this shalt thou reign with Christ when his kingdom\nshall come on earth.\n\nThe deep fervor of Tom's feelings, the softness of his voice, his\ntears, fell like dew on the wild, unsettled spirit of the poor woman. A\nsoftness gathered over the lurid fires of her eye; she looked down, and\nTom could feel the relaxing muscles of her hands, as she said,\n\n\"Didn't I tell you that evil spirits followed me? O! Father Tom, I can't\npray,--I wish I could. I never have prayed since my children were sold!\nWhat you say must be right, I know it must; but when I try to pray, I\ncan only hate and curse. I can't pray!\"\n\n\"Poor soul!\" said Tom, compassionately. \"Satan desires to have ye, and\nsift ye as wheat. I pray the Lord for ye. O! Misse Cassy, turn to the\ndear Lord Jesus. He came to bind up the broken-hearted, and comfort all\nthat mourn.\"\n\nCassy stood silent, while large, heavy tears dropped from her downcast\neyes.\n\n\"Misse Cassy,\" said Tom, in a hesitating tone, after surveying her\nin silence, \"if ye only could get away from here,--if the thing was\npossible,--I'd 'vise ye and Emmeline to do it; that is, if ye could go\nwithout blood-guiltiness,--not otherwise.\"\n\n\"Would you try it with us, Father Tom?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Tom; \"time was when I would; but the Lord's given me a work\namong these yer poor souls, and I'll stay with 'em and bear my cross\nwith 'em till the end. It's different with you; it's a snare to\nyou,--it's more'n you can stand,--and you'd better go, if you can.\"\n\n\"I know no way but through the grave,\" said Cassy. \"There's no beast or\nbird but can find a home some where; even the snakes and the alligators\nhave their places to lie down and be quiet; but there's no place for us.\nDown in the darkest swamps, their dogs will hunt us out, and find\nus. Everybody and everything is against us; even the very beasts side\nagainst us,--and where shall we go?\"\n\nTom stood silent; at length he said,\n\n\"Him that saved Daniel in the den of lions,--that saved the children in\nthe fiery furnace,--Him that walked on the sea, and bade the winds be\nstill,--He's alive yet; and I've faith to believe he can deliver you.\nTry it, and I'll pray, with all my might, for you.\"\n\nBy what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and\ntrodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new\nlight, as a discovered diamond?\n\nCassy had often revolved, for hours, all possible or probable schemes\nof escape, and dismissed them all, as hopeless and impracticable; but\nat this moment there flashed through her mind a plan, so simple and\nfeasible in all its details, as to awaken an instant hope.\n\n\"Father Tom, I'll try it!\" she said, suddenly.\n\n\"Amen!\" said Tom; \"the Lord help ye!\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIX\n\nThe Stratagem\n\n\"The way of the wicked is as darkness; he knoweth not at what he\nstumbleth.\"*\n\n     * Prov. 4:19.\n\nThe garret of the house that Legree occupied, like most other garrets,\nwas a great, desolate space, dusty, hung with cobwebs, and littered with\ncast-off lumber. The opulent family that had inhabited the house in the\ndays of its splendor had imported a great deal of splendid furniture,\nsome of which they had taken away with them, while some remained\nstanding desolate in mouldering, unoccupied rooms, or stored away in\nthis place. One or two immense packing-boxes, in which this furniture\nwas brought, stood against the sides of the garret. There was a small\nwindow there, which let in, through its dingy, dusty panes, a scanty,\nuncertain light on the tall, high-backed chairs and dusty tables, that\nhad once seen better days. Altogether, it was a weird and ghostly place;\nbut, ghostly as it was, it wanted not in legends among the superstitious\nnegroes, to increase its terrors. Some few years before, a negro woman,\nwho had incurred Legree's displeasure, was confined there for several\nweeks. What passed there, we do not say; the negroes used to whisper\ndarkly to each other; but it was known that the body of the unfortunate\ncreature was one day taken down from there, and buried; and, after that,\nit was said that oaths and cursings, and the sound of violent blows,\nused to ring through that old garret, and mingled with wailings and\ngroans of despair. Once, when Legree chanced to overhear something of\nthis kind, he flew into a violent passion, and swore that the next\none that told stories about that garret should have an opportunity of\nknowing what was there, for he would chain them up there for a week.\nThis hint was enough to repress talking, though, of course, it did not\ndisturb the credit of the story in the least.\n\nGradually, the staircase that led to the garret, and even the\npassage-way to the staircase, were avoided by every one in the house,\nfrom every one fearing to speak of it, and the legend was gradually\nfalling into desuetude. It had suddenly occurred to Cassy to make use\nof the superstitious excitability, which was so great in Legree, for the\npurpose of her liberation, and that of her fellow-sufferer.\n\nThe sleeping-room of Cassy was directly under the garret. One day,\nwithout consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her, with some\nconsiderable ostentation, to change all the furniture and appurtenances\nof the room to one at some considerable distance. The under-servants,\nwho were called on to effect this movement, were running and bustling\nabout with great zeal and confusion, when Legree returned from a ride.\n\n\"Hallo! you Cass!\" said Legree, \"what's in the wind now?\"\n\n\"Nothing; only I choose to have another room,\" said Cassy, doggedly.\n\n\"And what for, pray?\" said Legree.\n\n\"I choose to,\" said Cassy.\n\n\"The devil you do! and what for?\"\n\n\"I'd like to get some sleep, now and then.\"\n\n\"Sleep! well, what hinders your sleeping?\"\n\n\"I could tell, I suppose, if you want to hear,\" said Cassy, dryly.\n\n\"Speak out, you minx!\" said Legree.\n\n\"O! nothing. I suppose it wouldn't disturb _you!_ Only groans, and\npeople scuffing, and rolling round on the garret floor, half the night,\nfrom twelve to morning!\"\n\n\"People up garret!\" said Legree, uneasily, but forcing a laugh; \"who are\nthey, Cassy?\"\n\nCassy raised her sharp, black eyes, and looked in the face of Legree,\nwith an expression that went through his bones, as she said, \"To be\nsure, Simon, who are they? I'd like to have _you_ tell me. You don't\nknow, I suppose!\"\n\nWith an oath, Legree struck at her with his riding-whip; but she glided\nto one side, and passed through the door, and looking back, said, \"If\nyou'll sleep in that room, you'll know all about it. Perhaps you'd\nbetter try it!\" and then immediately she shut and locked the door.\n\nLegree blustered and swore, and threatened to break down the door;\nbut apparently thought better of it, and walked uneasily into the\nsitting-room. Cassy perceived that her shaft had struck home; and, from\nthat hour, with the most exquisite address, she never ceased to continue\nthe train of influences she had begun.\n\nIn a knot-hole of the garret, that had opened, she had inserted the neck\nof an old bottle, in such a manner that when there was the least wind,\nmost doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds proceeded from it, which,\nin a high wind, increased to a perfect shriek, such as to credulous and\nsuperstitious ears might easily seem to be that of horror and despair.\n\nThese sounds were, from time to time, heard by the servants, and revived\nin full force the memory of the old ghost legend. A superstitious\ncreeping horror seemed to fill the house; and though no one dared to\nbreathe it to Legree, he found himself encompassed by it, as by an\natmosphere.\n\nNo one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian\nis composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence\nfills the void unknown with light and order; but to the man who has\ndethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew\npoet, \"a land of darkness and the shadow of death,\" without any order,\nwhere the light is as darkness. Life and death to him are haunted\ngrounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.\n\nLegree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his\nencounters with Tom,--roused, only to be resisted by the determinate\nforce of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion of the dark,\ninner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or hymn, that reacted in\nsuperstitious dread.\n\nThe influence of Cassy over him was of a strange and singular kind. He\nwas her owner, her tyrant and tormentor. She was, as he knew, wholly,\nand without any possibility of help or redress, in his hands; and yet so\nit is, that the most brutal man cannot live in constant association with\na strong female influence, and not be greatly controlled by it. When\nhe first bought her, she was, as she said, a woman delicately bred; and\nthen he crushed her, without scruple, beneath the foot of his brutality.\nBut, as time, and debasing influences, and despair, hardened womanhood\nwithin her, and waked the fires of fiercer passions, she had become in\na measure his mistress, and he alternately tyrannized over and dreaded\nher.\n\nThis influence had become more harassing and decided, since partial\ninsanity had given a strange, weird, unsettled cast to all her words and\nlanguage.\n\nA night or two after this, Legree was sitting in the old sitting-room,\nby the side of a flickering wood fire, that threw uncertain glances\nround the room. It was a stormy, windy night, such as raises whole\nsquadrons of nondescript noises in rickety old houses. Windows were\nrattling, shutters flapping, and wind carousing, rumbling, and tumbling\ndown the chimney, and, every once in a while, puffing out smoke and\nashes, as if a legion of spirits were coming after them. Legree had been\ncasting up accounts and reading newspapers for some hours, while Cassy\nsat in the corner; sullenly looking into the fire. Legree laid down his\npaper, and seeing an old book lying on the table, which he had noticed\nCassy reading, the first part of the evening, took it up, and began\nto turn it over. It was one of those collections of stories of bloody\nmurders, ghostly legends, and supernatural visitations, which, coarsely\ngot up and illustrated, have a strange fascination for one who once\nbegins to read them.\n\nLegree poohed and pished, but read, turning page after page, till,\nfinally, after reading some way, he threw down the book, with an oath.\n\n\"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Cass?\" said he, taking the tongs\nand settling the fire. \"I thought you'd more sense than to let noises\nscare _you_.\"\n\n\"No matter what I believe,\" said Cassy, sullenly.\n\n\"Fellows used to try to frighten me with their yarns at sea,\" said\nLegree. \"Never come it round me that way. I'm too tough for any such\ntrash, tell ye.\"\n\nCassy sat looking intensely at him in the shadow of the corner. There\nwas that strange light in her eyes that always impressed Legree with\nuneasiness.\n\n\"Them noises was nothing but rats and the wind,\" said Legree. \"Rats will\nmake a devil of a noise. I used to hear 'em sometimes down in the hold\nof the ship; and wind,--Lord's sake! ye can make anything out o' wind.\"\n\nCassy knew Legree was uneasy under her eyes, and, therefore, she made\nno answer, but sat fixing them on him, with that strange, unearthly\nexpression, as before.\n\n\"Come, speak out, woman,--don't you think so?\" said Legree.\n\n\"Can rats walk down stairs, and come walking through the entry, and open\na door when you've locked it and set a chair against it?\" said Cassy;\n\"and come walk, walk, walking right up to your bed, and put out their\nhand, so?\"\n\nCassy kept her glittering eyes fixed on Legree, as she spoke, and he\nstared at her like a man in the nightmare, till, when she finished by\nlaying her hand, icy cold, on his, he sprung back, with an oath.\n\n\"Woman! what do you mean? Nobody did?\"\n\n\"O, no,--of course not,--did I say they did?\" said Cassy, with a smile\nof chilling derision.\n\n\"But--did--have you really seen?--Come, Cass, what is it, now,--speak\nout!\"\n\n\"You may sleep there, yourself,\" said Cassy, \"if you want to know.\"\n\n\"Did it come from the garret, Cassy?\"\n\n\"_It_,--what?\" said Cassy.\n\n\"Why, what you told of--\"\n\n\"I didn't tell you anything,\" said Cassy, with dogged sullenness.\n\nLegree walked up and down the room, uneasily.\n\n\"I'll have this yer thing examined. I'll look into it, this very night.\nI'll take my pistols--\"\n\n\"Do,\" said Cassy; \"sleep in that room. I'd like to see you doing it.\nFire your pistols,--do!\"\n\nLegree stamped his foot, and swore violently.\n\n\"Don't swear,\" said Cassy; \"nobody knows who may be hearing you. Hark!\nWhat was that?\"\n\n\"What?\" said Legree, starting.\n\nA heavy old Dutch clock, that stood in the corner of the room, began,\nand slowly struck twelve.\n\nFor some reason or other, Legree neither spoke nor moved; a vague horror\nfell on him; while Cassy, with a keen, sneering glitter in her eyes,\nstood looking at him, counting the strokes.\n\n\"Twelve o'clock; well _now_ we'll see,\" said she, turning, and opening\nthe door into the passage-way, and standing as if listening.\n\n\"Hark! What's that?\" said she, raising her finger.\n\n\"It's only the wind,\" said Legree. \"Don't you hear how cursedly it\nblows?\"\n\n\"Simon, come here,\" said Cassy, in a whisper, laying her hand on his,\nand leading him to the foot of the stairs: \"do you know what _that_ is?\nHark!\"\n\nA wild shriek came pealing down the stairway. It came from the garret.\nLegree's knees knocked together; his face grew white with fear.\n\n\"Hadn't you better get your pistols?\" said Cassy, with a sneer that\nfroze Legree's blood. \"It's time this thing was looked into, you know.\nI'd like to have you go up now; _they're at it_.\"\n\n\"I won't go!\" said Legree, with an oath.\n\n\"Why not? There an't any such thing as ghosts, you know! Come!\" and\nCassy flitted up the winding stairway, laughing, and looking back after\nhim. \"Come on.\"\n\n\"I believe you _are_ the devil!\" said Legree. \"Come back you hag,--come\nback, Cass! You shan't go!\"\n\nBut Cassy laughed wildly, and fled on. He heard her open the entry doors\nthat led to the garret. A wild gust of wind swept down, extinguishing\nthe candle he held in his hand, and with it the fearful, unearthly\nscreams; they seemed to be shrieked in his very ear.\n\nLegree fled frantically into the parlor, whither, in a few moments, he\nwas followed by Cassy, pale, calm, cold as an avenging spirit, and with\nthat same fearful light in her eye.\n\n\"I hope you are satisfied,\" said she.\n\n\"Blast you, Cass!\" said Legree.\n\n\"What for?\" said Cassy. \"I only went up and shut the doors. _What's the\nmatter with that garret_, Simon, do you suppose?\" said she.\n\n\"None of your business!\" said Legree.\n\n\"O, it an't? Well,\" said Cassy, \"at any rate, I'm glad _I_ don't sleep\nunder it.\"\n\nAnticipating the rising of the wind, that very evening, Cassy had been\nup and opened the garret window. Of course, the moment the doors were\nopened, the wind had drafted down, and extinguished the light.\n\nThis may serve as a specimen of the game that Cassy played with Legree,\nuntil he would sooner have put his head into a lion's mouth than to have\nexplored that garret. Meanwhile, in the night, when everybody else\nwas asleep, Cassy slowly and carefully accumulated there a stock\nof provisions sufficient to afford subsistence for some time; she\ntransferred, article by article, a greater part of her own and\nEmmeline's wardrobe. All things being arranged, they only waited a\nfitting opportunity to put their plan in execution.\n\nBy cajoling Legree, and taking advantage of a good-natured interval,\nCassy had got him to take her with him to the neighboring town, which\nwas situated directly on the Red River. With a memory sharpened to\nalmost preternatural clearness, she remarked every turn in the road, and\nformed a mental estimate of the time to be occupied in traversing it.\n\nAt the time when all was matured for action, our readers may, perhaps,\nlike to look behind the scenes, and see the final _coup d'etat_.\n\nIt was now near evening, Legree had been absent, on a ride to a\nneighboring farm. For many days Cassy had been unusually gracious and\naccommodating in her humors; and Legree and she had been, apparently,\non the best of terms. At present, we may behold her and Emmeline in the\nroom of the latter, busy in sorting and arranging two small bundles.\n\n\"There, these will be large enough,\" said Cassy. \"Now put on your bonnet,\nand let's start; it's just about the right time.\"\n\n\"Why, they can see us yet,\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"I mean they shall,\" said Cassy, coolly. \"Don't you know that they must\nhave their chase after us, at any rate? The way of the thing is to be\njust this:--We will steal out of the back door, and run down by the\nquarters. Sambo or Quimbo will be sure to see us. They will give chase,\nand we will get into the swamp; then, they can't follow us any further\ntill they go up and give the alarm, and turn out the dogs, and so on;\nand, while they are blundering round, and tumbling over each other, as\nthey always do, you and I will slip along to the creek, that runs back\nof the house, and wade along in it, till we get opposite the back door.\nThat will put the dogs all at fault; for scent won't lie in the water.\nEvery one will run out of the house to look after us, and then we'll\nwhip in at the back door, and up into the garret, where I've got a nice\nbed made up in one of the great boxes. We must stay in that garret a\ngood while, for, I tell you, he will raise heaven and earth after us.\nHe'll muster some of those old overseers on the other plantations, and\nhave a great hunt; and they'll go over every inch of ground in that\nswamp. He makes it his boast that nobody ever got away from him. So let\nhim hunt at his leisure.\"\n\n\"Cassy, how well you have planned it!\" said Emmeline. \"Who ever would\nhave thought of it, but you?\"\n\nThere was neither pleasure nor exultation in Cassy's eyes,--only a\ndespairing firmness.\n\n\"Come,\" she said, reaching her hand to Emmeline.\n\nThe two fugitives glided noiselessly from the house, and flitted,\nthrough the gathering shadows of evening, along by the quarters. The\ncrescent moon, set like a silver signet in the western sky, delayed a\nlittle the approach of night. As Cassy expected, when quite near the\nverge of the swamps that encircled the plantation, they heard a voice\ncalling to them to stop. It was not Sambo, however, but Legree, who was\npursuing them with violent execrations. At the sound, the feebler spirit\nof Emmeline gave way; and, laying hold of Cassy's arm, she said, \"O,\nCassy, I'm going to faint!\"\n\n\"If you do, I'll kill you!\" said Cassy, drawing a small, glittering\nstiletto, and flashing it before the eyes of the girl.\n\nThe diversion accomplished the purpose. Emmeline did not faint, and\nsucceeded in plunging, with Cassy, into a part of the labyrinth of\nswamp, so deep and dark that it was perfectly hopeless for Legree to\nthink of following them, without assistance.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, chuckling brutally; \"at any rate, they've got\nthemselves into a trap now--the baggage! They're safe enough. They shall\nsweat for it!\"\n\n\"Hulloa, there! Sambo! Quimbo! All hands!\" called Legree, coming to the\nquarters, when the men and women were just returning from work. \"There's\ntwo runaways in the swamps. I'll give five dollars to any nigger as\ncatches 'em. Turn out the dogs! Turn out Tiger, and Fury, and the rest!\"\n\nThe sensation produced by this news was immediate. Many of the men\nsprang forward, officiously, to offer their services, either from the\nhope of the reward, or from that cringing subserviency which is one of\nthe most baleful effects of slavery. Some ran one way, and some another.\nSome were for getting flambeaux of pine-knots. Some were uncoupling the\ndogs, whose hoarse, savage bay added not a little to the animation of\nthe scene.\n\n\"Mas'r, shall we shoot 'em, if can't cotch 'em?\" said Sambo, to whom his\nmaster brought out a rifle.\n\n\"You may fire on Cass, if you like; it's time she was gone to the devil,\nwhere she belongs; but the gal, not,\" said Legree. \"And now, boys,\nbe spry and smart. Five dollars for him that gets 'em; and a glass of\nspirits to every one of you, anyhow.\"\n\nThe whole band, with the glare of blazing torches, and whoop, and\nshout, and savage yell, of man and beast, proceeded down to the\nswamp, followed, at some distance, by every servant in the house. The\nestablishment was, of a consequence, wholly deserted, when Cassy and\nEmmeline glided into it the back way. The whooping and shouts of their\npursuers were still filling the air; and, looking from the sitting-room\nwindows, Cassy and Emmeline could see the troop, with their flambeaux,\njust dispersing themselves along the edge of the swamp.\n\n\"See there!\" said Emmeline, pointing to Cassy; \"the hunt is begun! Look\nhow those lights dance about! Hark! the dogs! Don't you hear? If we were\nonly _there_, our chances wouldn't be worth a picayune. O, for pity's\nsake, do let's hide ourselves. Quick!\"\n\n\"There's no occasion for hurry,\" said Cassy, coolly; \"they are all\nout after the hunt,--that's the amusement of the evening! We'll go up\nstairs, by and by. Meanwhile,\" said she, deliberately taking a key\nfrom the pocket of a coat that Legree had thrown down in his hurry,\n\"meanwhile I shall take something to pay our passage.\"\n\nShe unlocked the desk, took from it a roll of bills, which she counted\nover rapidly.\n\n\"O, don't let's do that!\" said Emmeline.\n\n\"Don't!\" said Cassy; \"why not? Would you have us starve in the swamps,\nor have that that will pay our way to the free states. Money will do\nanything, girl.\" And, as she spoke, she put the money in her bosom.\n\n\"It would be stealing,\" said Emmeline, in a distressed whisper.\n\n\"Stealing!\" said Cassy, with a scornful laugh. \"They who steal body and\nsoul needn't talk to us. Every one of these bills is stolen,--stolen\nfrom poor, starving, sweating creatures, who must go to the devil at\nlast, for his profit. Let _him_ talk about stealing! But come, we may as\nwell go up garret; I've got a stock of candles there, and some books to\npass away the time. You may be pretty sure they won't come _there_ to\ninquire after us. If they do, I'll play ghost for them.\"\n\nWhen Emmeline reached the garret, she found an immense box, in which\nsome heavy pieces of furniture had once been brought, turned on its\nside, so that the opening faced the wall, or rather the eaves. Cassy\nlit a small lamp, and creeping round under the eaves, they established\nthemselves in it. It was spread with a couple of small mattresses\nand some pillows; a box near by was plentifully stored with candles,\nprovisions, and all the clothing necessary to their journey, which Cassy\nhad arranged into bundles of an astonishingly small compass.\n\n\"There,\" said Cassy, as she fixed the lamp into a small hook, which she\nhad driven into the side of the box for that purpose; \"this is to be our\nhome for the present. How do you like it?\"\n\n\"Are you sure they won't come and search the garret?\"\n\n\"I'd like to see Simon Legree doing that,\" said Cassy. \"No, indeed; he\nwill be too glad to keep away. As to the servants, they would any of\nthem stand and be shot, sooner than show their faces here.\"\n\nSomewhat reassured, Emmeline settled herself back on her pillow.\n\n\"What did you mean, Cassy, by saying you would kill me?\" she said,\nsimply.\n\n\"I meant to stop your fainting,\" said Cassy, \"and I did do it. And now I\ntell you, Emmeline, you must make up your mind _not_ to faint, let what\nwill come; there's no sort of need of it. If I had not stopped you, that\nwretch might have had his hands on you now.\"\n\nEmmeline shuddered.\n\nThe two remained some time in silence. Cassy busied herself with a\nFrench book; Emmeline, overcome with the exhaustion, fell into a doze,\nand slept some time. She was awakened by loud shouts and outcries, the\ntramp of horses' feet, and the baying of dogs. She started up, with a\nfaint shriek.\n\n\"Only the hunt coming back,\" said Cassy, coolly; \"never fear. Look out\nof this knot-hole. Don't you see 'em all down there? Simon has to give\nup, for this night. Look, how muddy his horse is, flouncing about in the\nswamp; the dogs, too, look rather crestfallen. Ah, my good sir, you'll\nhave to try the race again and again,--the game isn't there.\"\n\n\"O, don't speak a word!\" said Emmeline; \"what if they should hear you?\"\n\n\"If they do hear anything, it will make them very particular to keep\naway,\" said Cassy. \"No danger; we may make any noise we please, and it\nwill only add to the effect.\"\n\nAt length the stillness of midnight settled down over the house. Legree,\ncursing his ill luck, and vowing dire vengeance on the morrow, went to\nbed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XL\n\nThe Martyr\n\n     \"Deem not the just by Heaven forgot!\n     Though life its common gifts deny,--\n     Though, with a crushed and bleeding heart,\n     And spurned of man, he goes to die!\n     For God hath marked each sorrowing day,\n     And numbered every bitter tear,\n     And heaven's long years of bliss shall pay\n     For all his children suffer here.\"\n     BRYANT.*\n\n\n     * This poem does not appear in the collected works of\n     William Cullen Bryant, nor in the collected poems of his\n     brother, John Howard Bryant.  It was probably copied from a\n     newspaper or magazine.\n\nThe longest way must have its close,--the gloomiest night will wear on\nto a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying\nthe day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to\nan eternal day. We have walked with our humble friend thus far in the\nvalley of slavery; first through flowery fields of ease and indulgence,\nthen through heart-breaking separations from all that man holds dear.\nAgain, we have waited with him in a sunny island, where generous hands\nconcealed his chains with flowers; and, lastly, we have followed him\nwhen the last ray of earthly hope went out in night, and seen how,\nin the blackness of earthly darkness, the firmament of the unseen has\nblazed with stars of new and significant lustre.\n\nThe morning-star now stands over the tops of the mountains, and gales\nand breezes, not of earth, show that the gates of day are unclosing.\n\nThe escape of Cassy and Emmeline irritated the before surly temper of\nLegree to the last degree; and his fury, as was to be expected, fell\nupon the defenceless head of Tom. When he hurriedly announced the\ntidings among his hands, there was a sudden light in Tom's eye, a sudden\nupraising of his hands, that did not escape him. He saw that he did not\njoin the muster of the pursuers. He thought of forcing him to do it;\nbut, having had, of old, experience of his inflexibility when commanded\nto take part in any deed of inhumanity, he would not, in his hurry, stop\nto enter into any conflict with him.\n\nTom, therefore, remained behind, with a few who had learned of him to\npray, and offered up prayers for the escape of the fugitives.\n\nWhen Legree returned, baffled and disappointed, all the long-working\nhatred of his soul towards his slave began to gather in a deadly and\ndesperate form. Had not this man braved him,--steadily, powerfully,\nresistlessly,--ever since he bought him? Was there not a spirit in him\nwhich, silent as it was, burned on him like the fires of perdition?\n\n\"I _hate_ him!\" said Legree, that night, as he sat up in his bed; \"I\n_hate_ him! And isn't he MINE? Can't I do what I like with him? Who's to\nhinder, I wonder?\" And Legree clenched his fist, and shook it, as if he\nhad something in his hands that he could rend in pieces.\n\nBut, then, Tom was a faithful, valuable servant; and, although Legree\nhated him the more for that, yet the consideration was still somewhat of\na restraint to him.\n\nThe next morning, he determined to say nothing, as yet; to assemble\na party, from some neighboring plantations, with dogs and guns;\nto surround the swamp, and go about the hunt systematically. If it\nsucceeded, well and good; if not, he would summon Tom before him,\nand--his teeth clenched and his blood boiled--_then_ he would break\nthe fellow down, or--there was a dire inward whisper, to which his soul\nassented.\n\nYe say that the _interest_ of the master is a sufficient safeguard for\nthe slave. In the fury of man's mad will, he will wittingly, and with\nopen eye, sell his own soul to the devil to gain his ends; and will he\nbe more careful of his neighbor's body?\n\n\"Well,\" said Cassy, the next day, from the garret, as she reconnoitred\nthrough the knot-hole, \"the hunt's going to begin again, today!\"\n\nThree or four mounted horsemen were curvetting about, on the space\nin front of the house; and one or two leashes of strange dogs were\nstruggling with the negroes who held them, baying and barking at each\nother.\n\nThe men are, two of them, overseers of plantations in the vicinity;\nand others were some of Legree's associates at the tavern-bar of a\nneighboring city, who had come for the interest of the sport. A more\nhard-favored set, perhaps, could not be imagined. Legree was serving\nbrandy, profusely, round among them, as also among the negroes, who had\nbeen detailed from the various plantations for this service; for it was\nan object to make every service of this kind, among the negroes, as much\nof a holiday as possible.\n\nCassy placed her ear at the knot-hole; and, as the morning air blew\ndirectly towards the house, she could overhear a good deal of the\nconversation. A grave sneer overcast the dark, severe gravity of her\nface, as she listened, and heard them divide out the ground, discuss the\nrival merits of the dogs, give orders about firing, and the treatment of\neach, in case of capture.\n\nCassy drew back; and, clasping her hands, looked upward, and said, \"O,\ngreat Almighty God! we are _all_ sinners; but what have _we_ done, more\nthan all the rest of the world, that we should be treated so?\"\n\nThere was a terrible earnestness in her face and voice, as she spoke.\n\n\"If it wasn't for _you_, child,\" she said, looking at Emmeline, \"I'd\n_go_ out to them; and I'd thank any one of them that _would_ shoot\nme down; for what use will freedom be to me? Can it give me back my\nchildren, or make me what I used to be?\"\n\nEmmeline, in her child-like simplicity, was half afraid of the dark\nmoods of Cassy. She looked perplexed, but made no answer. She only took\nher hand, with a gentle, caressing movement.\n\n\"Don't!\" said Cassy, trying to draw it away; \"you'll get me to loving\nyou; and I never mean to love anything, again!\"\n\n\"Poor Cassy!\" said Emmeline, \"don't feel so! If the Lord gives us\nliberty, perhaps he'll give you back your daughter; at any rate, I'll be\nlike a daughter to you. I know I'll never see my poor old mother again!\nI shall love you, Cassy, whether you love me or not!\"\n\nThe gentle, child-like spirit conquered. Cassy sat down by her, put\nher arm round her neck, stroked her soft, brown hair; and Emmeline then\nwondered at the beauty of her magnificent eyes, now soft with tears.\n\n\"O, Em!\" said Cassy, \"I've hungered for my children, and thirsted for\nthem, and my eyes fail with longing for them! Here! here!\" she said,\nstriking her breast, \"it's all desolate, all empty! If God would give me\nback my children, then I could pray.\"\n\n\"You must trust him, Cassy,\" said Emmeline; \"he is our Father!\"\n\n\"His wrath is upon us,\" said Cassy; \"he has turned away in anger.\"\n\n\"No, Cassy! He will be good to us! Let us hope in Him,\" said\nEmmeline,--\"I always have had hope.\"\n\n\nThe hunt was long, animated, and thorough, but unsuccessful; and, with\ngrave, ironic exultation, Cassy looked down on Legree, as, weary and\ndispirited, he alighted from his horse.\n\n\"Now, Quimbo,\" said Legree, as he stretched himself down in the\nsitting-room, \"you jest go and walk that Tom up here, right away! The\nold cuss is at the bottom of this yer whole matter; and I'll have it out\nof his old black hide, or I'll know the reason why!\"\n\nSambo and Quimbo, both, though hating each other, were joined in one\nmind by a no less cordial hatred of Tom. Legree had told them, at first,\nthat he had bought him for a general overseer, in his absence; and this\nhad begun an ill will, on their part, which had increased, in their\ndebased and servile natures, as they saw him becoming obnoxious to\ntheir master's displeasure. Quimbo, therefore, departed, with a will, to\nexecute his orders.\n\nTom heard the message with a forewarning heart; for he knew all the\nplan of the fugitives' escape, and the place of their present\nconcealment;--he knew the deadly character of the man he had to deal\nwith, and his despotic power. But he felt strong in God to meet death,\nrather than betray the helpless.\n\nHe sat his basket down by the row, and, looking up, said, \"Into thy\nhands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, oh Lord God of truth!\"\nand then quietly yielded himself to the rough, brutal grasp with which\nQuimbo seized him.\n\n\"Ay, ay!\" said the giant, as he dragged him along; \"ye'll cotch it, now!\nI'll boun' Mas'r's back 's up _high!_ No sneaking out, now! Tell ye,\nye'll get it, and no mistake! See how ye'll look, now, helpin' Mas'r's\nniggers to run away! See what ye'll get!\"\n\nThe savage words none of them reached that ear!--a higher voice there\nwas saying, \"Fear not them that kill the body, and, after that, have no\nmore that they can do.\" Nerve and bone of that poor man's body vibrated\nto those words, as if touched by the finger of God; and he felt the\nstrength of a thousand souls in one. As he passed along, the trees and\nbushes, the huts of his servitude, the whole scene of his degradation,\nseemed to whirl by him as the landscape by the rushing ear. His soul\nthrobbed,--his home was in sight,--and the hour of release seemed at\nhand.\n\n\"Well, Tom!\" said Legree, walking up, and seizing him grimly by the\ncollar of his coat, and speaking through his teeth, in a paroxysm of\ndetermined rage, \"do you know I've made up my mind to KILL YOU?\"\n\n\"It's very likely, Mas'r,\" said Tom, calmly.\n\n\"I _have_,\" said Legree, with a grim, terrible calmness,\n\"_done--just--that--thing_, Tom, unless you'll tell me what you know\nabout these yer gals!\"\n\nTom stood silent.\n\n\"D'ye hear?\" said Legree, stamping, with a roar like that of an incensed\nlion. \"Speak!\"\n\n\"_I han't got nothing to tell, Mas'r_,\" said Tom, with a slow, firm,\ndeliberate utterance.\n\n\"Do you dare to tell me, ye old black Christian, ye don't _know_?\" said\nLegree.\n\nTom was silent.\n\n\"Speak!\" thundered Legree, striking him furiously. \"Do you know\nanything?\"\n\n\"I know, Mas'r; but I can't tell anything. _I can die!_\"\n\nLegree drew in a long breath; and, suppressing his rage, took Tom by the\narm, and, approaching his face almost to his, said, in a terrible voice,\n\"Hark 'e, Tom!--ye think, 'cause I've let you off before, I don't mean\nwhat I say; but, this time, _I've made up my mind_, and counted the\ncost. You've always stood it out again' me: now, _I'll conquer ye, or\nkill ye!_--one or t' other. I'll count every drop of blood there is in\nyou, and take 'em, one by one, till ye give up!\"\n\nTom looked up to his master, and answered, \"Mas'r, if you was sick,\nor in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd _give_ ye my heart's\nblood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would\nsave your precious soul, I'd give 'em freely, as the Lord gave his for\nme. O, Mas'r! don't bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you\nmore than 't will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles'll be over soon;\nbut, if ye don't repent, yours won't _never_ end!\"\n\nLike a strange snatch of heavenly music, heard in the lull of a tempest,\nthis burst of feeling made a moment's blank pause. Legree stood aghast,\nand looked at Tom; and there was such a silence, that the tick of the\nold clock could be heard, measuring, with silent touch, the last moments\nof mercy and probation to that hardened heart.\n\nIt was but a moment. There was one hesitating pause,--one irresolute,\nrelenting thrill,--and the spirit of evil came back, with seven-fold\nvehemence; and Legree, foaming with rage, smote his victim to the\nground.\n\n\nScenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What\nman has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. What brother-man and\nbrother-Christian must suffer, cannot be told us, even in our secret\nchamber, it so harrows the soul! And yet, oh my country! these things\nare done under the shadow of thy laws! O, Christ! thy church sees them,\nalmost in silence!\n\nBut, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of\ntorture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and\nimmortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor\nblood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than\nglorious.\n\nWas he alone, that long night, whose brave, loving spirit was bearing\nup, in that old shed, against buffeting and brutal stripes?\n\nNay! There stood by him ONE,--seen by him alone,--\"like unto the Son of\nGod.\"\n\nThe tempter stood by him, too,--blinded by furious, despotic\nwill,--every moment pressing him to shun that agony by the betrayal of\nthe innocent. But the brave, true heart was firm on the Eternal Rock.\nLike his Master, he knew that, if he saved others, himself he could not\nsave; nor could utmost extremity wring from him words, save of prayers\nand holy trust.\n\n\"He's most gone, Mas'r,\" said Sambo, touched, in spite of himself, by\nthe patience of his victim.\n\n\"Pay away, till he gives up! Give it to him!--give it to him!\" shouted\nLegree. \"I'll take every drop of blood he has, unless he confesses!\"\n\nTom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. \"Ye poor miserable\ncritter!\" he said, \"there ain't no more ye can do! I forgive ye, with\nall my soul!\" and he fainted entirely away.\n\n\"I b'lieve, my soul, he's done for, finally,\" said Legree, stepping\nforward, to look at him. \"Yes, he is! Well, his mouth's shut up, at\nlast,--that's one comfort!\"\n\nYes, Legree; but who shall shut up that voice in thy soul? that soul,\npast repentance, past prayer, past hope, in whom the fire that never\nshall be quenched is already burning!\n\nYet Tom was not quite gone. His wondrous words and pious prayers\nhad struck upon the hearts of the imbruted blacks, who had been the\ninstruments of cruelty upon him; and, the instant Legree withdrew,\nthey took him down, and, in their ignorance, sought to call him back to\nlife,--as if _that_ were any favor to him.\n\n\"Sartin, we 's been doin' a drefful wicked thing!\" said Sambo; \"hopes\nMas'r'll have to 'count for it, and not we.\"\n\nThey washed his wounds,--they provided a rude bed, of some refuse\ncotton, for him to lie down on; and one of them, stealing up to the\nhouse, begged a drink of brandy of Legree, pretending that he was tired,\nand wanted it for himself. He brought it back, and poured it down Tom's\nthroat.\n\n\"O, Tom!\" said Quimbo, \"we's been awful wicked to ye!\"\n\n\"I forgive ye, with all my heart!\" said Tom, faintly.\n\n\"O, Tom! do tell us who is _Jesus_, anyhow?\" said Sambo;--\"Jesus, that's\nbeen a standin' by you so, all this night!--Who is he?\"\n\nThe word roused the failing, fainting spirit. He poured forth a few\nenergetic sentences of that wondrous One,--his life, his death, his\neverlasting presence, and power to save.\n\nThey wept,--both the two savage men.\n\n\"Why didn't I never hear this before?\" said Sambo; \"but I do believe!--I\ncan't help it! Lord Jesus, have mercy on us!\"\n\n\"Poor critters!\" said Tom, \"I'd be willing to bar all I have, if it'll\nonly bring ye to Christ! O, Lord! give me these two more souls, I pray!\"\n\nThat prayer was answered!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLI\n\nThe Young Master\n\n\nTwo days after, a young man drove a light wagon up through the avenue of\nChina trees, and, throwing the reins hastily on the horse's neck, sprang\nout and inquired for the owner of the place.\n\nIt was George Shelby; and, to show how he came to be there, we must go\nback in our story.\n\nThe letter of Miss Ophelia to Mrs. Shelby had, by some unfortunate\naccident, been detained, for a month or two, at some remote post-office,\nbefore it reached its destination; and, of course, before it was\nreceived, Tom was already lost to view among the distant swamps of the\nRed River.\n\nMrs. Shelby read the intelligence with the deepest concern; but\nany immediate action upon it was an impossibility. She was then in\nattendance on the sick-bed of her husband, who lay delirious in the\ncrisis of a fever. Master George Shelby, who, in the interval, had\nchanged from a boy to a tall young man, was her constant and faithful\nassistant, and her only reliance in superintending his father's affairs.\nMiss Ophelia had taken the precaution to send them the name of the\nlawyer who did business for the St. Clares; and the most that, in the\nemergency, could be done, was to address a letter of inquiry to him.\nThe sudden death of Mr. Shelby, a few days after, brought, of course, an\nabsorbing pressure of other interests, for a season.\n\nMr. Shelby showed his confidence in his wife's ability, by appointing\nher sole executrix upon his estates; and thus immediately a large and\ncomplicated amount of business was brought upon her hands.\n\nMrs. Shelby, with characteristic energy, applied herself to the work of\nstraightening the entangled web of affairs; and she and George were\nfor some time occupied with collecting and examining accounts, selling\nproperty and settling debts; for Mrs. Shelby was determined that\neverything should be brought into tangible and recognizable shape, let\nthe consequences to her prove what they might. In the mean time, they\nreceived a letter from the lawyer to whom Miss Ophelia had referred\nthem, saying that he knew nothing of the matter; that the man was sold\nat a public auction, and that, beyond receiving the money, he knew\nnothing of the affair.\n\nNeither George nor Mrs. Shelby could be easy at this result; and,\naccordingly, some six months after, the latter, having business for his\nmother, down the river, resolved to visit New Orleans, in person, and\npush his inquiries, in hopes of discovering Tom's whereabouts, and\nrestoring him.\n\nAfter some months of unsuccessful search, by the merest accident, George\nfell in with a man, in New Orleans, who happened to be possessed of the\ndesired information; and with his money in his pocket, our hero took\nsteamboat for Red River, resolving to find out and re-purchase his old\nfriend.\n\nHe was soon introduced into the house, where he found Legree in the\nsitting-room.\n\nLegree received the stranger with a kind of surly hospitality,\n\n\"I understand,\" said the young man, \"that you bought, in New Orleans, a\nboy, named Tom. He used to be on my father's place, and I came to see if\nI couldn't buy him back.\"\n\nLegree's brow grew dark, and he broke out, passionately: \"Yes, I did\nbuy such a fellow,--and a h--l of a bargain I had of it, too! The most\nrebellious, saucy, impudent dog! Set up my niggers to run away; got off\ntwo gals, worth eight hundred or a thousand apiece. He owned to that,\nand, when I bid him tell me where they was, he up and said he knew,\nbut he wouldn't tell; and stood to it, though I gave him the cussedest\nflogging I ever gave nigger yet. I b'lieve he's trying to die; but I\ndon't know as he'll make it out.\"\n\n\"Where is he?\" said George, impetuously. \"Let me see him.\" The cheeks of\nthe young man were crimson, and his eyes flashed fire; but he prudently\nsaid nothing, as yet.\n\n\"He's in dat ar shed,\" said a little fellow, who stood holding George's\nhorse.\n\nLegree kicked the boy, and swore at him; but George, without saying\nanother word, turned and strode to the spot.\n\nTom had been lying two days since the fatal night, not suffering, for\nevery nerve of suffering was blunted and destroyed. He lay, for the most\npart, in a quiet stupor; for the laws of a powerful and well-knit frame\nwould not at once release the imprisoned spirit. By stealth, there had\nbeen there, in the darkness of the night, poor desolated creatures, who\nstole from their scanty hours' rest, that they might repay to him some\nof those ministrations of love in which he had always been so abundant.\nTruly, those poor disciples had little to give,--only the cup of cold\nwater; but it was given with full hearts.\n\nTears had fallen on that honest, insensible face,--tears of late\nrepentance in the poor, ignorant heathen, whom his dying love and\npatience had awakened to repentance, and bitter prayers, breathed over\nhim to a late-found Saviour, of whom they scarce knew more than the\nname, but whom the yearning ignorant heart of man never implores in\nvain.\n\nCassy, who had glided out of her place of concealment, and, by\noverhearing, learned the sacrifice that had been made for her and\nEmmeline, had been there, the night before, defying the danger of\ndetection; and, moved by the last few words which the affectionate soul\nhad yet strength to breathe, the long winter of despair, the ice of\nyears, had given way, and the dark, despairing woman had wept and\nprayed.\n\nWhen George entered the shed, he felt his head giddy and his heart sick.\n\n\"Is it possible,--is it possible?\" said he, kneeling down by him.\n\"Uncle Tom, my poor, poor old friend!\"\n\nSomething in the voice penetrated to the ear of the dying. He moved his\nhead gently, smiled, and said,\n\n     \"Jesus can make a dying-bed\n     Feel soft as down pillows are.\"\n\nTears which did honor to his manly heart fell from the young man's eyes,\nas he bent over his poor friend.\n\n\"O, dear Uncle Tom! do wake,--do speak once more! Look up! Here's Mas'r\nGeorge,--your own little Mas'r George. Don't you know me?\"\n\n\"Mas'r George!\" said Tom, opening his eyes, and speaking in a feeble\nvoice; \"Mas'r George!\" He looked bewildered.\n\nSlowly the idea seemed to fill his soul; and the vacant eye became fixed\nand brightened, the whole face lighted up, the hard hands clasped, and\ntears ran down the cheeks.\n\n\"Bless the Lord! it is,--it is,--it's all I wanted! They haven't forgot\nme. It warms my soul; it does my heart good! Now I shall die content!\nBless the Lord, on my soul!\"\n\n\"You shan't die! you _mustn't_ die, nor think of it! I've come to buy\nyou, and take you home,\" said George, with impetuous vehemence.\n\n\"O, Mas'r George, ye're too late. The Lord's bought me, and is going to\ntake me home,--and I long to go. Heaven is better than Kintuck.\"\n\n\"O, don't die! It'll kill me!--it'll break my heart to think what you've\nsuffered,--and lying in this old shed, here! Poor, poor fellow!\"\n\n\"Don't call me poor fellow!\" said Tom, solemnly, \"I _have_ been poor\nfellow; but that's all past and gone, now. I'm right in the door,\ngoing into glory! O, Mas'r George! _Heaven has come!_ I've got the\nvictory!--the Lord Jesus has given it to me! Glory be to His name!\"\n\nGeorge was awe-struck at the force, the vehemence, the power, with which\nthese broken sentences were uttered. He sat gazing in silence.\n\nTom grasped his hand, and continued,--\"Ye mustn't, now, tell Chloe, poor\nsoul! how ye found me;--'t would be so drefful to her. Only tell her ye\nfound me going into glory; and that I couldn't stay for no one. And tell\nher the Lord's stood by me everywhere and al'ays, and made everything\nlight and easy. And oh, the poor chil'en, and the baby;--my old\nheart's been most broke for 'em, time and agin! Tell 'em all to\nfollow me--follow me! Give my love to Mas'r, and dear good Missis, and\neverybody in the place! Ye don't know! 'Pears like I loves 'em all!\nI loves every creature everywhar!--it's nothing _but_ love! O, Mas'r\nGeorge! what a thing 't is to be a Christian!\"\n\nAt this moment, Legree sauntered up to the door of the shed, looked in,\nwith a dogged air of affected carelessness, and turned away.\n\n\"The old Satan!\" said George, in his indignation. \"It's a comfort to\nthink the devil will pay _him_ for this, some of these days!\"\n\n\"O, don't!--oh, ye mustn't!\" said Tom, grasping his hand; \"he's a\npoor mis'able critter! it's awful to think on 't! Oh, if he only could\nrepent, the Lord would forgive him now; but I'm 'feared he never will!\"\n\n\"I hope he won't!\" said George; \"I never want to see _him_ in heaven!\"\n\n\"Hush, Mas'r George!--it worries me! Don't feel so! He an't done me no\nreal harm,--only opened the gate of the kingdom for me; that's all!\"\n\nAt this moment, the sudden flush of strength which the joy of meeting\nhis young master had infused into the dying man gave way. A sudden\nsinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that mysterious and\nsublime change passed over his face, that told the approach of other\nworlds.\n\nHe began to draw his breath with long, deep inspirations; and his broad\nchest rose and fell, heavily. The expression of his face was that of a\nconqueror.\n\n\"Who,--who,--who shall separate us from the love of Christ?\" he said, in\na voice that contended with mortal weakness; and, with a smile, he fell\nasleep.\n\nGeorge sat fixed with solemn awe. It seemed to him that the place was\nholy; and, as he closed the lifeless eyes, and rose up from the dead,\nonly one thought possessed him,--that expressed by his simple old\nfriend,--\"What a thing it is to be a Christian!\"\n\nHe turned: Legree was standing, sullenly, behind him.\n\nSomething in that dying scene had checked the natural fierceness of\nyouthful passion. The presence of the man was simply loathsome to\nGeorge; and he felt only an impulse to get away from him, with as few\nwords as possible.\n\nFixing his keen dark eyes on Legree, he simply said, pointing to the\ndead, \"You have got all you ever can of him. What shall I pay you for\nthe body? I will take it away, and bury it decently.\"\n\n\"I don't sell dead niggers,\" said Legree, doggedly. \"You are welcome to\nbury him where and when you like.\"\n\n\"Boys,\" said George, in an authoritative tone, to two or three negroes,\nwho were looking at the body, \"help me lift him up, and carry him to my\nwagon; and get me a spade.\"\n\nOne of them ran for a spade; the other two assisted George to carry the\nbody to the wagon.\n\nGeorge neither spoke to nor looked at Legree, who did not countermand\nhis orders, but stood, whistling, with an air of forced unconcern. He\nsulkily followed them to where the wagon stood at the door.\n\nGeorge spread his cloak in the wagon, and had the body carefully\ndisposed of in it,--moving the seat, so as to give it room. Then he\nturned, fixed his eyes on Legree, and said, with forced composure,\n\n\"I have not, as yet, said to you what I think of this most atrocious\naffair;--this is not the time and place. But, sir, this innocent blood\nshall have justice. I will proclaim this murder. I will go to the very\nfirst magistrate, and expose you.\"\n\n\"Do!\" said Legree, snapping his fingers, scornfully. \"I'd like to see\nyou doing it. Where you going to get witnesses?--how you going to prove\nit?--Come, now!\"\n\nGeorge saw, at once, the force of this defiance. There was not a white\nperson on the place; and, in all southern courts, the testimony of\ncolored blood is nothing. He felt, at that moment, as if he could have\nrent the heavens with his heart's indignant cry for justice; but in\nvain.\n\n\"After all, what a fuss, for a dead nigger!\" said Legree.\n\nThe word was as a spark to a powder magazine. Prudence was never a\ncardinal virtue of the Kentucky boy. George turned, and, with one\nindignant blow, knocked Legree flat upon his face; and, as he stood\nover him, blazing with wrath and defiance, he would have formed no bad\npersonification of his great namesake triumphing over the dragon.\n\nSome men, however, are decidedly bettered by being knocked down. If a\nman lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem immediately to\nconceive a respect for him; and Legree was one of this sort. As he\nrose, therefore, and brushed the dust from his clothes, he eyed the\nslowly-retreating wagon with some evident consideration; nor did he open\nhis mouth till it was out of sight.\n\nBeyond the boundaries of the plantation, George had noticed a dry, sandy\nknoll, shaded by a few trees; there they made the grave.\n\n\"Shall we take off the cloak, Mas'r?\" said the negroes, when the grave\nwas ready.\n\n\"No, no,--bury it with him! It's all I can give you, now, poor Tom, and\nyou shall have it.\"\n\nThey laid him in; and the men shovelled away, silently. They banked it\nup, and laid green turf over it.\n\n\"You may go, boys,\" said George, slipping a quarter into the hand of\neach. They lingered about, however.\n\n\"If young Mas'r would please buy us--\" said one.\n\n\"We'd serve him so faithful!\" said the other.\n\n\"Hard times here, Mas'r!\" said the first. \"Do, Mas'r, buy us, please!\"\n\n\"I can't!--I can't!\" said George, with difficulty, motioning them off;\n\"it's impossible!\"\n\nThe poor fellows looked dejected, and walked off in silence.\n\n\"Witness, eternal God!\" said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor\nfriend; \"oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do _what one man can_\nto drive out this curse of slavery from my land!\"\n\nThere is no monument to mark the last resting-place of our friend.\nHe needs none! His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up,\nimmortal, to appear with him when he shall appear in his glory.\n\nPity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches\nof omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying, suffering\nlove! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship with him,\nbearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is written,\n\"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLII\n\nAn Authentic Ghost Story\n\n\nFor some remarkable reason, ghostly legends were uncommonly rife, about\nthis time, among the servants on Legree's place.\n\nIt was whisperingly asserted that footsteps, in the dead of night, had\nbeen heard descending the garret stairs, and patrolling the house. In\nvain the doors of the upper entry had been locked; the ghost either\ncarried a duplicate key in its pocket, or availed itself of a ghost's\nimmemorial privilege of coming through the keyhole, and promenaded as\nbefore, with a freedom that was alarming.\n\nAuthorities were somewhat divided, as to the outward form of the spirit,\nowing to a custom quite prevalent among negroes,--and, for aught we\nknow, among whites, too,--of invariably shutting the eyes, and covering\nup heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever else might come in use\nfor a shelter, on these occasions. Of course, as everybody knows,\nwhen the bodily eyes are thus out of the lists, the spiritual eyes\nare uncommonly vivacious and perspicuous; and, therefore, there were\nabundance of full-length portraits of the ghost, abundantly sworn and\ntestified to, which, as is often the case with portraits, agreed with\neach other in no particular, except the common family peculiarity of the\nghost tribe,--the wearing of a _white sheet_. The poor souls were\nnot versed in ancient history, and did not know that Shakspeare had\nauthenticated this costume, by telling how\n\n     \"The sheeted dead\n     Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome.\"*\n\n\n     * _Hamlet_, Act I, scene 1, lines 115-116\n\nAnd, therefore, their all hitting upon this is a striking fact in\npneumatology, which we recommend to the attention of spiritual media\ngenerally.\n\nBe it as it may, we have private reasons for knowing that a tall figure\nin a white sheet did walk, at the most approved ghostly hours,\naround the Legree premises,--pass out the doors, glide about the\nhouse,--disappear at intervals, and, reappearing, pass up the silent\nstairway, into that fatal garret; and that, in the morning, the entry\ndoors were all found shut and locked as firm as ever.\n\nLegree could not help overhearing this whispering; and it was all the\nmore exciting to him, from the pains that were taken to conceal it from\nhim. He drank more brandy than usual; held up his head briskly, and\nswore louder than ever in the daytime; but he had bad dreams, and the\nvisions of his head on his bed were anything but agreeable. The night\nafter Tom's body had been carried away, he rode to the next town for a\ncarouse, and had a high one. Got home late and tired; locked his door,\ntook out the key, and went to bed.\n\nAfter all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human\nsoul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have.\nWho knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful\nperhapses,--those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live\ndown than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks\nhis door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares\nnot meet alone,--whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with\nmountains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom!\n\nBut Legree locked his door and set a chair against it; he set a\nnight-lamp at the head of his bed; and put his pistols there. He\nexamined the catches and fastenings of the windows, and then swore he\n\"didn't care for the devil and all his angels,\" and went to sleep.\n\nWell, he slept, for he was tired,--slept soundly. But, finally, there\ncame over his sleep a shadow, a horror, an apprehension of something\ndreadful hanging over him. It was his mother's shroud, he thought; but\nCassy had it, holding it up, and showing it to him. He heard a confused\nnoise of screams and groanings; and, with it all, he knew he was\nasleep, and he struggled to wake himself. He was half awake. He was sure\nsomething was coming into his room. He knew the door was opening, but he\ncould not stir hand or foot. At last he turned, with a start; the door\n_was_ open, and he saw a hand putting out his light.\n\nIt was a cloudy, misty moonlight, and there he saw it!--something white,\ngliding in! He heard the still rustle of its ghostly garments. It stood\nstill by his bed;--a cold hand touched his; a voice said, three times,\nin a low, fearful whisper, \"Come! come! come!\" And, while he lay\nsweating with terror, he knew not when or how, the thing was gone. He\nsprang out of bed, and pulled at the door. It was shut and locked, and\nthe man fell down in a swoon.\n\nAfter this, Legree became a harder drinker than ever before. He no\nlonger drank cautiously, prudently, but imprudently and recklessly.\n\nThere were reports around the country, soon after that he was sick and\ndying. Excess had brought on that frightful disease that seems to throw\nthe lurid shadows of a coming retribution back into the present life.\nNone could bear the horrors of that sick room, when he raved and\nscreamed, and spoke of sights which almost stopped the blood of those\nwho heard him; and, at his dying bed, stood a stern, white, inexorable\nfigure, saying, \"Come! come! come!\"\n\nBy a singular coincidence, on the very night that this vision appeared\nto Legree, the house-door was found open in the morning, and some of the\nnegroes had seen two white figures gliding down the avenue towards the\nhigh-road.\n\nIt was near sunrise when Cassy and Emmeline paused, for a moment, in a\nlittle knot of trees near the town.\n\nCassy was dressed after the manner of the Creole Spanish ladies,--wholly\nin black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick\nwith embroidery, concealed her face. It had been agreed that, in\ntheir escape, she was to personate the character of a Creole lady, and\nEmmeline that of her servant.\n\nBrought up, from early life, in connection with the highest society, the\nlanguage, movements and air of Cassy, were all in agreement with this\nidea; and she had still enough remaining with her, of a once splendid\nwardrobe, and sets of jewels, to enable her to personate the thing to\nadvantage.\n\nShe stopped in the outskirts of the town, where she had noticed trunks\nfor sale, and purchased a handsome one. This she requested the man to\nsend along with her. And, accordingly, thus escorted by a boy wheeling\nher trunk, and Emmeline behind her, carrying her carpet-bag and sundry\nbundles, she made her appearance at the small tavern, like a lady of\nconsideration.\n\nThe first person that struck her, after her arrival, was George Shelby,\nwho was staying there, awaiting the next boat.\n\nCassy had remarked the young man from her loophole in the garret, and\nseen him bear away the body of Tom, and observed with secret exultation,\nhis rencontre with Legree. Subsequently she had gathered, from the\nconversations she had overheard among the negroes, as she glided about\nin her ghostly disguise, after nightfall, who he was, and in what\nrelation he stood to Tom. She, therefore, felt an immediate accession of\nconfidence, when she found that he was, like herself, awaiting the next\nboat.\n\nCassy's air and manner, address, and evident command of money, prevented\nany rising disposition to suspicion in the hotel. People never inquire\ntoo closely into those who are fair on the main point, of paying\nwell,--a thing which Cassy had foreseen when she provided herself with\nmoney.\n\nIn the edge of the evening, a boat was heard coming along, and George\nShelby handed Cassy aboard, with the politeness which comes naturally\nto every Kentuckian, and exerted himself to provide her with a good\nstate-room.\n\nCassy kept her room and bed, on pretext of illness, during the whole\ntime they were on Red River; and was waited on, with obsequious\ndevotion, by her attendant.\n\nWhen they arrived at the Mississippi river, George, having learned that\nthe course of the strange lady was upward, like his own, proposed to\ntake a state-room for her on the same boat with himself,--good-naturedly\ncompassionating her feeble health, and desirous to do what he could to\nassist her.\n\nBehold, therefore, the whole party safely transferred to the good\nsteamer Cincinnati, and sweeping up the river under a powerful head of\nsteam.\n\nCassy's health was much better. She sat upon the guards, came to the\ntable, and was remarked upon in the boat as a lady that must have been\nvery handsome.\n\nFrom the moment that George got the first glimpse of her face, he was\ntroubled with one of those fleeting and indefinite likenesses, which\nalmost every body can remember, and has been, at times, perplexed\nwith. He could not keep himself from looking at her, and watching her\nperpetually. At table, or sitting at her state-room door, still\nshe would encounter the young man's eyes fixed on her, and politely\nwithdrawn, when she showed, by her countenance, that she was sensible to\nthe observation.\n\nCassy became uneasy. She began to think that he suspected something;\nand finally resolved to throw herself entirely on his generosity, and\nintrusted him with her whole history.\n\nGeorge was heartily disposed to sympathize with any one who had escaped\nfrom Legree's plantation,--a place that he could not remember or speak\nof with patience,--and, with the courageous disregard of consequences\nwhich is characteristic of his age and state, he assured her that he\nwould do all in his power to protect and bring them through.\n\nThe next state-room to Cassy's was occupied by a French lady, named De\nThoux, who was accompanied by a fine little daughter, a child of some\ntwelve summers.\n\nThis lady, having gathered, from George's conversation, that he was from\nKentucky, seemed evidently disposed to cultivate his acquaintance; in\nwhich design she was seconded by the graces of her little girl, who\nwas about as pretty a plaything as ever diverted the weariness of a\nfortnight's trip on a steamboat.\n\nGeorge's chair was often placed at her state-room door; and Cassy, as\nshe sat upon the guards, could hear their conversation.\n\nMadame de Thoux was very minute in her inquiries as to Kentucky,\nwhere she said she had resided in a former period of her life. George\ndiscovered, to his surprise, that her former residence must have been\nin his own vicinity; and her inquiries showed a knowledge of people and\nthings in his vicinity, that was perfectly surprising to him.\n\n\"Do you know,\" said Madame de Thoux to him, one day, \"of any man, in\nyour neighborhood, of the name of Harris?\"\n\n\"There is an old fellow, of that name, lives not far from my father's\nplace,\" said George. \"We never have had much intercourse with him,\nthough.\"\n\n\"He is a large slave-owner, I believe,\" said Madame de Thoux, with a\nmanner which seemed to betray more interest than she was exactly willing\nto show.\n\n\"He is,\" said George, looking rather surprised at her manner.\n\n\"Did you ever know of his having--perhaps, you may have heard of his\nhaving a mulatto boy, named George?\"\n\n\"O, certainly,--George Harris,--I know him well; he married a servant of\nmy mother's, but has escaped, now, to Canada.\"\n\n\"He has?\" said Madame de Thoux, quickly. \"Thank God!\"\n\nGeorge looked a surprised inquiry, but said nothing.\n\nMadame de Thoux leaned her head on her hand, and burst into tears.\n\n\"He is my brother,\" she said.\n\n\"Madame!\" said George, with a strong accent of surprise.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Madame de Thoux, lifting her head, proudly, and wiping her\ntears, \"Mr. Shelby, George Harris is my brother!\"\n\n\"I am perfectly astonished,\" said George, pushing back his chair a pace\nor two, and looking at Madame de Thoux.\n\n\"I was sold to the South when he was a boy,\" said she. \"I was bought by\na good and generous man. He took me with him to the West Indies, set me\nfree, and married me. It is but lately that he died; and I was going up\nto Kentucky, to see if I could find and redeem my brother.\"\n\n\"I heard him speak of a sister Emily, that was sold South,\" said George.\n\n\"Yes, indeed! I am the one,\" said Madame de Thoux;--\"tell me what sort\nof a--\"\n\n\"A very fine young man,\" said George, \"notwithstanding the curse of\nslavery that lay on him. He sustained a first rate character, both\nfor intelligence and principle. I know, you see,\" he said; \"because he\nmarried in our family.\"\n\n\"What sort of a girl?\" said Madame de Thoux, eagerly.\n\n\"A treasure,\" said George; \"a beautiful, intelligent, amiable girl.\nVery pious. My mother had brought her up, and trained her as carefully,\nalmost, as a daughter. She could read and write, embroider and sew,\nbeautifully; and was a beautiful singer.\"\n\n\"Was she born in your house?\" said Madame de Thoux.\n\n\"No. Father bought her once, in one of his trips to New Orleans, and\nbrought her up as a present to mother. She was about eight or nine years\nold, then. Father would never tell mother what he gave for her; but, the\nother day, in looking over his old papers, we came across the bill of\nsale. He paid an extravagant sum for her, to be sure. I suppose, on\naccount of her extraordinary beauty.\"\n\nGeorge sat with his back to Cassy, and did not see the absorbed\nexpression of her countenance, as he was giving these details.\n\nAt this point in the story, she touched his arm, and, with a face\nperfectly white with interest, said, \"Do you know the names of the\npeople he bought her of?\"\n\n\"A man of the name of Simmons, I think, was the principal in the\ntransaction. At least, I think that was the name on the bill of sale.\"\n\n\"O, my God!\" said Cassy, and fell insensible on the floor of the cabin.\n\nGeorge was wide awake now, and so was Madame de Thoux. Though neither of\nthem could conjecture what was the cause of Cassy's fainting, still they\nmade all the tumult which is proper in such cases;--George upsetting a\nwash-pitcher, and breaking two tumblers, in the warmth of his humanity;\nand various ladies in the cabin, hearing that somebody had fainted,\ncrowded the state-room door, and kept out all the air they possibly\ncould, so that, on the whole, everything was done that could be\nexpected.\n\nPoor Cassy! when she recovered, turned her face to the wall, and wept\nand sobbed like a child,--perhaps, mother, you can tell what she was\nthinking of! Perhaps you cannot,--but she felt as sure, in that hour,\nthat God had had mercy on her, and that she should see her daughter,--as\nshe did, months afterwards,--when--but we anticipate.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIII\n\nResults\n\n\nThe rest of our story is soon told. George Shelby, interested, as any\nother young man might be, by the romance of the incident, no less than\nby feelings of humanity, was at the pains to send to Cassy the bill\nof sale of Eliza; whose date and name all corresponded with her own\nknowledge of facts, and felt no doubt upon her mind as to the identity\nof her child. It remained now only for her to trace out the path of the\nfugitives.\n\nMadame de Thoux and she, thus drawn together by the singular coincidence\nof their fortunes, proceeded immediately to Canada, and began a tour of\ninquiry among the stations, where the numerous fugitives from slavery\nare located. At Amherstberg they found the missionary with whom George\nand Eliza had taken shelter, on their first arrival in Canada; and\nthrough him were enabled to trace the family to Montreal.\n\nGeorge and Eliza had now been five years free. George had found constant\noccupation in the shop of a worthy machinist, where he had been earning\na competent support for his family, which, in the mean time, had been\nincreased by the addition of another daughter.\n\nLittle Harry--a fine bright boy--had been put to a good school, and was\nmaking rapid proficiency in knowledge.\n\nThe worthy pastor of the station, in Amherstberg, where George had first\nlanded, was so much interested in the statements of Madame de Thoux and\nCassy, that he yielded to the solicitations of the former, to accompany\nthem to Montreal, in their search,--she bearing all the expense of the\nexpedition.\n\nThe scene now changes to a small, neat tenement, in the outskirts of\nMontreal; the time, evening. A cheerful fire blazes on the hearth; a\ntea-table, covered with a snowy cloth, stands prepared for the evening\nmeal. In one corner of the room was a table covered with a green cloth,\nwhere was an open writing-desk, pens, paper, and over it a shelf of\nwell-selected books.\n\nThis was George's study. The same zeal for self-improvement, which led\nhim to steal the much coveted arts of reading and writing, amid all the\ntoil and discouragements of his early life, still led him to devote all\nhis leisure time to self-cultivation.\n\nAt this present time, he is seated at the table, making notes from a\nvolume of the family library he has been reading.\n\n\"Come, George,\" says Eliza, \"you've been gone all day. Do put down that\nbook, and let's talk, while I'm getting tea,--do.\"\n\nAnd little Eliza seconds the effort, by toddling up to her father, and\ntrying to pull the book out of his hand, and install herself on his knee\nas a substitute.\n\n\"O, you little witch!\" says George, yielding, as, in such circumstances,\nman always must.\n\n\"That's right,\" says Eliza, as she begins to cut a loaf of bread. A\nlittle older she looks; her form a little fuller; her air more matronly\nthan of yore; but evidently contented and happy as woman need be.\n\n\"Harry, my boy, how did you come on in that sum, today?\" says George, as\nhe laid his hand on his son's head.\n\nHarry has lost his long curls; but he can never lose those eyes and\neyelashes, and that fine, bold brow, that flushes with triumph, as he\nanswers, \"I did it, every bit of it, _myself_, father; and _nobody_\nhelped me!\"\n\n\"That's right,\" says his father; \"depend on yourself, my son. You have a\nbetter chance than ever your poor father had.\"\n\nAt this moment, there is a rap at the door; and Eliza goes and opens\nit. The delighted--\"Why! this you?\"--calls up her husband; and the good\npastor of Amherstberg is welcomed. There are two more women with him,\nand Eliza asks them to sit down.\n\nNow, if the truth must be told, the honest pastor had arranged a little\nprogramme, according to which this affair was to develop itself; and,\non the way up, all had very cautiously and prudently exhorted each other\nnot to let things out, except according to previous arrangement.\n\nWhat was the good man's consternation, therefore, just as he\nhad motioned to the ladies to be seated, and was taking out his\npocket-handkerchief to wipe his mouth, so as to proceed to his\nintroductory speech in good order, when Madame de Thoux upset the whole\nplan, by throwing her arms around George's neck, and letting all out at\nonce, by saying, \"O, George! don't you know me? I'm your sister Emily.\"\n\nCassy had seated herself more composedly, and would have carried on her\npart very well, had not little Eliza suddenly appeared before her in\nexact shape and form, every outline and curl, just as her daughter was\nwhen she saw her last. The little thing peered up in her face; and Cassy\ncaught her up in her arms, pressed her to her bosom, saying, what, at\nthe moment she really believed, \"Darling, I'm your mother!\"\n\nIn fact, it was a troublesome matter to do up exactly in proper order;\nbut the good pastor, at last, succeeded in getting everybody quiet, and\ndelivering the speech with which he had intended to open the exercises;\nand in which, at last, he succeeded so well, that his whole audience\nwere sobbing about him in a manner that ought to satisfy any orator,\nancient or modern.\n\nThey knelt together, and the good man prayed,--for there are some\nfeelings so agitated and tumultuous, that they can find rest only by\nbeing poured into the bosom of Almighty love,--and then, rising up, the\nnew-found family embraced each other, with a holy trust in Him, who\nfrom such peril and dangers, and by such unknown ways, had brought them\ntogether.\n\nThe note-book of a missionary, among the Canadian fugitives, contains\ntruth stranger than fiction. How can it be otherwise, when a system\nprevails which whirls families and scatters their members, as the wind\nwhirls and scatters the leaves of autumn? These shores of refuge, like\nthe eternal shore, often unite again, in glad communion, hearts that\nfor long years have mourned each other as lost. And affecting beyond\nexpression is the earnestness with which every new arrival among them\nis met, if, perchance, it may bring tidings of mother, sister, child or\nwife, still lost to view in the shadows of slavery.\n\nDeeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance, when\ndefying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive voluntarily\nthreads his way back to the terrors and perils of that dark land, that\nhe may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife.\n\nOne young man, of whom a missionary has told us, twice re-captured, and\nsuffering shameful stripes for his heroism, had escaped again; and, in\na letter which we heard read, tells his friends that he is going back a\nthird time, that he may, at last, bring away his sister. My good sir,\nis this man a hero, or a criminal? Would not you do as much for your\nsister? And can you blame him?\n\nBut, to return to our friends, whom we left wiping their eyes, and\nrecovering themselves from too great and sudden a joy. They are now\nseated around the social board, and are getting decidedly companionable;\nonly that Cassy, who keeps little Eliza on her lap, occasionally\nsqueezes the little thing, in a manner that rather astonishes her, and\nobstinately refuses to have her mouth stuffed with cake to the extent\nthe little one desires,--alleging, what the child rather wonders at,\nthat she has got something better than cake, and doesn't want it.\n\nAnd, indeed, in two or three days, such a change has passed over Cassy,\nthat our readers would scarcely know her. The despairing, haggard\nexpression of her face had given way to one of gentle trust. She seemed\nto sink, at once, into the bosom of the family, and take the little ones\ninto her heart, as something for which it long had waited. Indeed, her\nlove seemed to flow more naturally to the little Eliza than to her own\ndaughter; for she was the exact image and body of the child whom she\nhad lost. The little one was a flowery bond between mother and daughter,\nthrough whom grew up acquaintanceship and affection. Eliza's steady,\nconsistent piety, regulated by the constant reading of the sacred\nword, made her a proper guide for the shattered and wearied mind of her\nmother. Cassy yielded at once, and with her whole soul, to every good\ninfluence, and became a devout and tender Christian.\n\nAfter a day or two, Madame de Thoux told her brother more particularly\nof her affairs. The death of her husband had left her an ample fortune,\nwhich she generously offered to share with the family. When she asked\nGeorge what way she could best apply it for him, he answered, \"Give me\nan education, Emily; that has always been my heart's desire. Then, I can\ndo all the rest.\"\n\nOn mature deliberation, it was decided that the whole family should go,\nfor some years, to France; whither they sailed, carrying Emmeline with\nthem.\n\nThe good looks of the latter won the affection of the first mate of the\nvessel; and, shortly after entering the port, she became his wife.\n\nGeorge remained four years at a French university, and, applying himself\nwith an unintermitted zeal, obtained a very thorough education.\n\nPolitical troubles in France, at last, led the family again to seek an\nasylum in this country.\n\nGeorge's feelings and views, as an educated man, may be best expressed\nin a letter to one of his friends.\n\n\"I feel somewhat at a loss, as to my future course. True, as you\nhave said to me, I might mingle in the circles of the whites, in this\ncountry, my shade of color is so slight, and that of my wife and family\nscarce perceptible. Well, perhaps, on sufferance, I might. But, to tell\nyou the truth, I have no wish to.\n\n\"My sympathies are not for my father's race, but for my mother's. To him\nI was no more than a fine dog or horse: to my poor heart-broken mother\nI was a _child_; and, though I never saw her, after the cruel sale that\nseparated us, till she died, yet I _know_ she always loved me dearly.\nI know it by my own heart. When I think of all she suffered, of my own\nearly sufferings, of the distresses and struggles of my heroic wife, of\nmy sister, sold in the New Orleans slave-market,--though I hope to have\nno unchristian sentiments, yet I may be excused for saying, I have no\nwish to pass for an American, or to identify myself with them.\n\n\"It is with the oppressed, enslaved African race that I cast in my lot;\nand, if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather\nthan one lighter.\n\n\"The desire and yearning of my soul is for an African _nationality_. I\nwant a people that shall have a tangible, separate existence of its\nown; and where am I to look for it? Not in Hayti; for in Hayti they had\nnothing to start with. A stream cannot rise above its fountain. The race\nthat formed the character of the Haytiens was a worn-out, effeminate\none; and, of course, the subject race will be centuries in rising to\nanything.\n\n\"Where, then, shall I look? On the shores of Africa I see a republic,--a\nrepublic formed of picked men, who, by energy and self-educating force,\nhave, in many cases, individually, raised themselves above a condition\nof slavery. Having gone through a preparatory stage of feebleness, this\nrepublic has, at last, become an acknowledged nation on the face of the\nearth,--acknowledged by both France and England. There it is my wish to\ngo, and find myself a people.\n\n\"I am aware, now, that I shall have you all against me; but, before\nyou strike, hear me. During my stay in France, I have followed up, with\nintense interest, the history of my people in America. I have noted the\nstruggle between abolitionist and colonizationist, and have received\nsome impressions, as a distant spectator, which could never have\noccurred to me as a participator.\n\n\"I grant that this Liberia may have subserved all sorts of purposes, by\nbeing played off, in the hands of our oppressors, against us. Doubtless\nthe scheme may have been used, in unjustifiable ways, as a means of\nretarding our emancipation. But the question to me is, Is there not a\nGod above all man's schemes? May He not have over-ruled their designs,\nand founded for us a nation by them?\n\n\"In these days, a nation is born in a day. A nation starts, now, with\nall the great problems of republican life and civilization wrought out\nto its hand;--it has not to discover, but only to apply. Let us, then,\nall take hold together, with all our might, and see what we can do with\nthis new enterprise, and the whole splendid continent of Africa\nopens before us and our children. _Our nation_ shall roll the tide of\ncivilization and Christianity along its shores, and plant there mighty\nrepublics, that, growing with the rapidity of tropical vegetation, shall\nbe for all coming ages.\n\n\"Do you say that I am deserting my enslaved brethren? I think not. If I\nforget them one hour, one moment of my life, so may God forget me! But,\nwhat can I do for them, here? Can I break their chains? No, not as an\nindividual; but, let me go and form part of a nation, which shall have a\nvoice in the councils of nations, and then we can speak. A nation has\na right to argue, remonstrate, implore, and present the cause of its\nrace,--which an individual has not.\n\n\"If Europe ever becomes a grand council of free nations,--as I trust in\nGod it will,--if, there, serfdom, and all unjust and oppressive social\ninequalities, are done away; and if they, as France and England have\ndone, acknowledge our position,--then, in the great congress of nations,\nwe will make our appeal, and present the cause of our enslaved and\nsuffering race; and it cannot be that free, enlightened America will\nnot then desire to wipe from her escutcheon that bar sinister which\ndisgraces her among nations, and is as truly a curse to her as to the\nenslaved.\n\n\"But, you will tell me, our race have equal rights to mingle in the\nAmerican republic as the Irishman, the German, the Swede. Granted,\nthey have. We _ought_ to be free to meet and mingle,--to rise by our\nindividual worth, without any consideration of caste or color; and they\nwho deny us this right are false to their own professed principles of\nhuman equality. We ought, in particular, to be allowed _here_. We have\n_more_ than the rights of common men;--we have the claim of an injured\nrace for reparation. But, then, _I do not want it_; I want a country, a\nnation, of my own. I think that the African race has peculiarities, yet\nto be unfolded in the light of civilization and Christianity, which, if\nnot the same with those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be, morally, of\neven a higher type.\n\n\"To the Anglo-Saxon race has been intrusted the destinies of the world,\nduring its pioneer period of struggle and conflict. To that mission\nits stern, inflexible, energetic elements, were well adapted; but, as\na Christian, I look for another era to arise. On its borders I trust we\nstand; and the throes that now convulse the nations are, to my hope, but\nthe birth-pangs of an hour of universal peace and brotherhood.\n\n\"I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian\none. If not a dominant and commanding race, they are, at least, an\naffectionate, magnanimous, and forgiving one. Having been called in the\nfurnace of injustice and oppression, they have need to bind closer to\ntheir hearts that sublime doctrine of love and forgiveness, through\nwhich alone they are to conquer, which it is to be their mission to\nspread over the continent of Africa.\n\n\"In myself, I confess, I am feeble for this,--full half the blood in my\nveins is the hot and hasty Saxon; but I have an eloquent preacher of\nthe Gospel ever by my side, in the person of my beautiful wife. When I\nwander, her gentler spirit ever restores me, and keeps before my eyes\nthe Christian calling and mission of our race. As a Christian patriot,\nas a teacher of Christianity, I go to _my country_,--my chosen, my\nglorious Africa!--and to her, in my heart, I sometimes apply those\nsplendid words of prophecy: 'Whereas thou hast been forsaken and\nhated, so that no man went through thee; _I_ will make thee an eternal\nexcellence, a joy of many generations!'\n\n\"You will call me an enthusiast: you will tell me that I have not well\nconsidered what I am undertaking. But I have considered, and counted\nthe cost. I go to _Liberia_, not as an Elysium of romance, but as to _a\nfield of work_. I expect to work with both hands,--to work _hard_; to\nwork against all sorts of difficulties and discouragements; and to work\ntill I die. This is what I go for; and in this I am quite sure I shall\nnot be disappointed.\n\n\"Whatever you may think of my determination, do not divorce me from your\nconfidence; and think that, in whatever I do, I act with a heart wholly\ngiven to my people.\n\n\"GEORGE HARRIS.\"\n\n\nGeorge, with his wife, children, sister and mother, embarked for Africa,\nsome few weeks after. If we are not mistaken, the world will yet hear\nfrom him there.\n\nOf our other characters we have nothing very particular to write, except\na word relating to Miss Ophelia and Topsy, and a farewell chapter, which\nwe shall dedicate to George Shelby.\n\nMiss Ophelia took Topsy home to Vermont with her, much to the surprise\nof the grave deliberative body whom a New Englander recognizes under\nthe term \"_Our folks_.\" \"Our folks,\" at first, thought it an odd and\nunnecessary addition to their well-trained domestic establishment; but,\nso thoroughly efficient was Miss Ophelia in her conscientious endeavor\nto do her duty by her _élève_, that the child rapidly grew in grace and\nin favor with the family and neighborhood. At the age of womanhood, she\nwas, by her own request, baptized, and became a member of the Christian\nchurch in the place; and showed so much intelligence, activity and zeal,\nand desire to do good in the world, that she was at last recommended,\nand approved as a missionary to one of the stations in Africa; and we\nhave heard that the same activity and ingenuity which, when a child,\nmade her so multiform and restless in her developments, is now employed,\nin a safer and wholesomer manner, in teaching the children of her own\ncountry.\n\nP.S.--It will be a satisfaction to some mother, also, to state, that\nsome inquiries, which were set on foot by Madame de Thoux, have resulted\nrecently in the discovery of Cassy's son. Being a young man of energy,\nhe had escaped, some years before his mother, and been received and\neducated by friends of the oppressed in the north. He will soon follow\nhis family to Africa.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIV\n\nThe Liberator\n\n\nGeorge Shelby had written to his mother merely a line, stating the day\nthat she might expect him home. Of the death scene of his old friend\nhe had not the heart to write. He had tried several times, and only\nsucceeded in half choking himself; and invariably finished by tearing up\nthe paper, wiping his eyes, and rushing somewhere to get quiet.\n\nThere was a pleased bustle all though the Shelby mansion, that day, in\nexpectation of the arrival of young Mas'r George.\n\nMrs. Shelby was seated in her comfortable parlor, where a cheerful\nhickory fire was dispelling the chill of the late autumn evening. A\nsupper-table, glittering with plate and cut glass, was set out, on whose\narrangements our former friend, old Chloe, was presiding.\n\nArrayed in a new calico dress, with clean, white apron, and high,\nwell-starched turban, her black polished face glowing with satisfaction,\nshe lingered, with needless punctiliousness, around the arrangements of\nthe table, merely as an excuse for talking a little to her mistress.\n\n\"Laws, now! won't it look natural to him?\" she said. \"Thar,--I set his\nplate just whar he likes it round by the fire. Mas'r George allers\nwants de warm seat. O, go way!--why didn't Sally get out de _best_\ntea-pot,--de little new one, Mas'r George got for Missis, Christmas?\nI'll have it out! And Missis has heard from Mas'r George?\" she said,\ninquiringly.\n\n\"Yes, Chloe; but only a line, just to say he would be home tonight, if\nhe could,--that's all.\"\n\n\"Didn't say nothin' 'bout my old man, s'pose?\" said Chloe, still\nfidgeting with the tea-cups.\n\n\"No, he didn't. He did not speak of anything, Chloe. He said he would\ntell all, when he got home.\"\n\n\"Jes like Mas'r George,--he's allers so ferce for tellin' everything\nhisself. I allers minded dat ar in Mas'r George. Don't see, for my part,\nhow white people gen'lly can bar to hev to write things much as they do,\nwritin' 's such slow, oneasy kind o' work.\"\n\nMrs. Shelby smiled.\n\n\"I'm a thinkin' my old man won't know de boys and de baby. Lor'! she's\nde biggest gal, now,--good she is, too, and peart, Polly is. She's out\nto the house, now, watchin' de hoe-cake. I 's got jist de very pattern\nmy old man liked so much, a bakin'. Jist sich as I gin him the mornin'\nhe was took off. Lord bless us! how I felt, dat ar morning!\"\n\nMrs. Shelby sighed, and felt a heavy weight on her heart, at this\nallusion. She had felt uneasy, ever since she received her son's letter,\nlest something should prove to be hidden behind the veil of silence\nwhich he had drawn.\n\n\"Missis has got dem bills?\" said Chloe, anxiously.\n\n\"Yes, Chloe.\"\n\n\"'Cause I wants to show my old man dem very bills de _perfectioner_\ngave me. 'And,' say he, 'Chloe, I wish you'd stay longer.' 'Thank\nyou, Mas'r,' says I, 'I would, only my old man's coming home, and\nMissis,--she can't do without me no longer.' There's jist what I telled\nhim. Berry nice man, dat Mas'r Jones was.\"\n\nChloe had pertinaciously insisted that the very bills in which her wages\nhad been paid should be preserved, to show her husband, in memorial of\nher capability. And Mrs. Shelby had readily consented to humor her in\nthe request.\n\n\"He won't know Polly,--my old man won't. Laws, it's five year since they\ntuck him! She was a baby den,--couldn't but jist stand. Remember how\ntickled he used to be, cause she would keep a fallin' over, when she sot\nout to walk. Laws a me!\"\n\nThe rattling of wheels now was heard.\n\n\"Mas'r George!\" said Aunt Chloe, starting to the window.\n\nMrs. Shelby ran to the entry door, and was folded in the arms of\nher son. Aunt Chloe stood anxiously straining her eyes out into the\ndarkness.\n\n\"O, _poor_ Aunt Chloe!\" said George, stopping compassionately, and\ntaking her hard, black hand between both his; \"I'd have given all my\nfortune to have brought him with me, but he's gone to a better country.\"\n\nThere was a passionate exclamation from Mrs. Shelby, but Aunt Chloe said\nnothing.\n\nThe party entered the supper-room. The money, of which Chloe was so\nproud, was still lying on the table.\n\n\"Thar,\" said she, gathering it up, and holding it, with a trembling\nhand, to her mistress, \"don't never want to see nor hear on 't\nagain. Jist as I knew 't would be,--sold, and murdered on dem ar' old\nplantations!\"\n\nChloe turned, and was walking proudly out of the room. Mrs. Shelby\nfollowed her softly, and took one of her hands, drew her down into a\nchair, and sat down by her.\n\n\"My poor, good Chloe!\" said she.\n\nChloe leaned her head on her mistress' shoulder, and sobbed out, \"O\nMissis! 'scuse me, my heart's broke,--dat's all!\"\n\n\"I know it is,\" said Mrs. Shelby, as her tears fell fast; \"and _I_\ncannot heal it, but Jesus can. He healeth the broken hearted, and\nbindeth up their wounds.\"\n\nThere was a silence for some time, and all wept together. At last,\nGeorge, sitting down beside the mourner, took her hand, and, with simple\npathos, repeated the triumphant scene of her husband's death, and his\nlast messages of love.\n\nAbout a month after this, one morning, all the servants of the Shelby\nestate were convened together in the great hall that ran through the\nhouse, to hear a few words from their young master.\n\nTo the surprise of all, he appeared among them with a bundle of papers\nin his hand, containing a certificate of freedom to every one on the\nplace, which he read successively, and presented, amid the sobs and\ntears and shouts of all present.\n\nMany, however, pressed around him, earnestly begging him not to send\nthem away; and, with anxious faces, tendering back their free papers.\n\n\"We don't want to be no freer than we are. We's allers had all we\nwanted. We don't want to leave de ole place, and Mas'r and Missis, and\nde rest!\"\n\n\"My good friends,\" said George, as soon as he could get a silence,\n\"there'll be no need for you to leave me. The place wants as many hands\nto work it as it did before. We need the same about the house that we\ndid before. But, you are now free men and free women. I shall pay you\nwages for your work, such as we shall agree on. The advantage is, that\nin case of my getting in debt, or dying,--things that might happen,--you\ncannot now be taken up and sold. I expect to carry on the estate, and\nto teach you what, perhaps, it will take you some time to learn,--how\nto use the rights I give you as free men and women. I expect you to be\ngood, and willing to learn; and I trust in God that I shall be faithful,\nand willing to teach. And now, my friends, look up, and thank God for\nthe blessing of freedom.\"\n\nAn aged, partriarchal negro, who had grown gray and blind on the estate,\nnow rose, and, lifting his trembling hand said, \"Let us give thanks unto\nthe Lord!\" As all kneeled by one consent, a more touching and hearty _Te\nDeum_ never ascended to heaven, though borne on the peal of organ, bell\nand cannon, than came from that honest old heart.\n\nOn rising, another struck up a Methodist hymn, of which the burden was,\n\n     \"The year of Jubilee is come,--\n     Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.\"\n\n\"One thing more,\" said George, as he stopped the congratulations of the\nthrong; \"you all remember our good old Uncle Tom?\"\n\nGeorge here gave a short narration of the scene of his death, and of his\nloving farewell to all on the place, and added,\n\n\"It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I\nwould never own another slave, while it was possible to free him; that\nnobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home\nand friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you\nrejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul,\nand pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your\nfreedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; and let it be a memorial\nto put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be honest and\nfaithful and Christian as he was.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLV\n\nConcluding Remarks\n\n\nThe writer has often been inquired of, by correspondents from different\nparts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to these\ninquiries she will give one general answer.\n\nThe separate incidents that compose the narrative are, to a very\ngreat extent, authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own\nobservation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends\nhave observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here\nintroduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself,\nor reported to her.\n\nThe personal appearance of Eliza, the character ascribed to her, are\nsketches drawn from life. The incorruptible fidelity, piety and honesty,\nof Uncle Tom, had more than one development, to her personal knowledge.\nSome of the most deeply tragic and romantic, some of the most terrible\nincidents, have also their parallels in reality. The incident of the\nmother's crossing the Ohio river on the ice is a well-known fact. The\nstory of \"old Prue,\" in the second volume, was an incident that\nfell under the personal observation of a brother of the writer, then\ncollecting-clerk to a large mercantile house, in New Orleans. From the\nsame source was derived the character of the planter Legree. Of him her\nbrother thus wrote, speaking of visiting his plantation, on a\ncollecting tour; \"He actually made me feel of his fist, which was like\na blacksmith's hammer, or a nodule of iron, telling me that it was\n'calloused with knocking down niggers.' When I left the plantation, I\ndrew a long breath, and felt as if I had escaped from an ogre's den.\"\n\nThat the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had its\nparallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land, to testify.\nLet it be remembered that in all southern states it is a principle of\njurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit\nagainst a white, and it will be easy to see that such a case may occur,\nwherever there is a man whose passions outweigh his interests, and a\nslave who has manhood or principle enough to resist his will. There is,\nactually, nothing to protect the slave's life, but the _character_ of\nthe master. Facts too shocking to be contemplated occasionally force\ntheir way to the public ear, and the comment that one often hears made\non them is more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, \"Very likely\nsuch cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of general\npractice.\" If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master\ncould _now and then_ torture an apprentice to death, would it be\nreceived with equal composure? Would it be said, \"These cases are rare,\nand no samples of general practice\"? This injustice is an _inherent_ one\nin the slave system,--it cannot exist without it.\n\nThe public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls\nhas acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the capture of\nthe Pearl. We extract the following from the speech of Hon. Horace Mann,\none of the legal counsel for the defendants in that case. He says: \"In\nthat company of seventy-six persons, who attempted, in 1848, to escape\nfrom the District of Columbia in the schooner Pearl, and whose officers\nI assisted in defending, there were several young and healthy girls, who\nhad those peculiar attractions of form and feature which connoisseurs\nprize so highly. Elizabeth Russel was one of them. She immediately\nfell into the slave-trader's fangs, and was doomed for the New Orleans\nmarket. The hearts of those that saw her were touched with pity for\nher fate. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem her; and some\nthere were who offered to give, that would not have much left after the\ngift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable. She was despatched\nto New Orleans; but, when about half way there, God had mercy on her,\nand smote her with death. There were two girls named Edmundson in the\nsame company. When about to be sent to the same market, an older sister\nwent to the shambles, to plead with the wretch who owned them, for the\nlove of God, to spare his victims. He bantered her, telling what fine\ndresses and fine furniture they would have. 'Yes,' she said, 'that may\ndo very well in this life, but what will become of them in the next?'\nThey too were sent to New Orleans; but were afterwards redeemed, at an\nenormous ransom, and brought back.\" Is it not plain, from this, that the\nhistories of Emmeline and Cassy may have many counterparts?\n\nJustice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness of mind and\ngenerosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as\nthe following anecdote will show. A few years since, a young southern\ngentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his\npersonal attendant from a boy. The young man took advantage of this\nopportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection of\na Quaker, who was quite noted in affairs of this kind. The owner\nwas exceedingly indignant. He had always treated the slave with such\nindulgence, and his confidence in his affection was such, that he\nbelieved he must have been practised upon to induce him to revolt from\nhim. He visited the Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of\nuncommon candor and fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and\nrepresentations. It was a side of the subject which he never had\nheard,--never had thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that,\nif his slave would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be\nfree, he would liberate him. An interview was forthwith procured, and\nNathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any reason\nto complain of his treatment, in any respect.\n\n\"No, Mas'r,\" said Nathan; \"you've always been good to me.\"\n\n\"Well, then, why do you want to leave me?\"\n\n\"Mas'r may die, and then who get me?--I'd rather be a free man.\"\n\nAfter some deliberation, the young master replied, \"Nathan, in your\nplace, I think I should feel very much so, myself. You are free.\"\n\nHe immediately made him out free papers; deposited a sum of money in the\nhands of the Quaker, to be judiciously used in assisting him to start\nin life, and left a very sensible and kind letter of advice to the young\nman. That letter was for some time in the writer's hands.\n\nThe author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and\nhumanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the South.\nSuch instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks any\nperson, who knows the world, are such characters _common_, anywhere?\n\nFor many years of her life, the author avoided all reading upon or\nallusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too painful to\nbe inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would\ncertainly live down. But, since the legislative act of 1850, when she\nheard, with perfect surprise and consternation, Christian and humane\npeople actually recommending the remanding escaped fugitives into\nslavery, as a duty binding on good citizens,--when she heard, on all\nhands, from kind, compassionate and estimable people, in the free states\nof the North, deliberations and discussions as to what Christian duty\ncould be on this head,--she could only think, These men and Christians\ncannot know what slavery is; if they did, such a question could never\nbe open for discussion. And from this arose a desire to exhibit it in a\n_living dramatic reality_. She has endeavored to show it fairly, in its\nbest and its worst phases. In its _best_ aspect, she has, perhaps,\nbeen successful; but, oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that\nvalley and shadow of death, that lies the other side?\n\nTo you, generous, noble-minded men and women, of the South,--you, whose\nvirtue, and magnanimity and purity of character, are the greater for the\nseverer trial it has encountered,--to you is her appeal. Have you not,\nin your own secret souls, in your own private conversings, felt that\nthere are woes and evils, in this accursed system, far beyond what are\nhere shadowed, or can be shadowed? Can it be otherwise? Is _man_ ever a\ncreature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does not the\nslave system, by denying the slave all legal right of testimony, make\nevery individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can anybody fail to\nmake the inference what the practical result will be? If there is, as we\nadmit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor, justice and humanity,\nis there not also another kind of public sentiment among the ruffian,\nthe brutal and debased? And cannot the ruffian, the brutal, the debased,\nby slave law, own just as many slaves as the best and purest? Are the\nhonorable, the just, the high-minded and compassionate, the majority\nanywhere in this world?\n\nThe slave-trade is now, by American law, considered as piracy. But\na slave-trade, as systematic as ever was carried on on the coast of\nAfrica, is an inevitable attendant and result of American slavery. And\nits heart-break and its horrors, can they be told?\n\nThe writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish\nand despair that are, at this very moment, riving thousands of hearts,\nshattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive\nrace to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers\nwhom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children;\nand themselves seeking in death a shelter from woes more dreaded\nthan death. Nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be\nconceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly\nacting on our shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the shadow\nof the cross of Christ.\n\nAnd now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be trifled with,\napologized for, and passed over in silence? Farmers of Massachusetts,\nof New Hampshire, of Vermont, of Connecticut, who read this book by the\nblaze of your winter-evening fire,--strong-hearted, generous sailors\nand ship-owners of Maine,--is this a thing for you to countenance and\nencourage? Brave and generous men of New York, farmers of rich and\njoyous Ohio, and ye of the wide prairie states,--answer, is this a thing\nfor you to protect and countenance? And you, mothers of America,--you\nwho have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel\nfor all mankind,--by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy\nin his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness\nwith which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his\neducation; by the prayers you breathe for his soul's eternal good;--I\nbeseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one\nlegal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom! By\nthe sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never\nforget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could\nneither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty cradle, that\nsilent nursery,--I beseech you, pity those mothers that are constantly\nmade childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of America,\nis this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in\nsilence?\n\nDo you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it,\nand can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The\npeople of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated;\nand are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they\nhave not the apology of education or custom.\n\nIf the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times\npast, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and,\nproverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states\nwould not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our national\nbody; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade the\nsouls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their mercantile\ndealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold\nagain, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or\nobloquy of slavery fall only on the South?\n\nNorthern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more\nto do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to\nthe evil among themselves.\n\nBut, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge.\nThere is one thing that every individual can do,--they can see to it\nthat _they feel right_. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles\nevery human being; and the man or woman who _feels_ strongly, healthily\nand justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor\nto the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are\nthey in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and\nperverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?\n\nChristian men and women of the North! still further,--you have another\npower; you can _pray!_ Do you believe in prayer? or has it become an\nindistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad; pray\nalso for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians\nwhose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and\nsale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many\ncases, an impossibility, unless they have given them, from above, the\ncourage and grace of martyrdom.\n\nBut, still more. On the shores of our free states are emerging the poor,\nshattered, broken remnants of families,--men and women, escaped, by\nmiraculous providences from the surges of slavery,--feeble in knowledge,\nand, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a system which\nconfounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and morality.\nThey come to seek a refuge among you; they come to seek education,\nknowledge, Christianity.\n\nWhat do you owe to these poor unfortunates, oh Christians? Does\nnot every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at\nreparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon\nthem? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses be shut upon them?\nShall states arise and shake them out? Shall the church of Christ hear\nin silence the taunt that is thrown at them, and shrink away from the\nhelpless hand that they stretch out; and, by her silence, encourage the\ncruelty that would chase them from our borders? If it must be so, it\nwill be a mournful spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have\nreason to tremble, when it remembers that the fate of nations is in the\nhands of One who is very pitiful, and of tender compassion.\n\nDo you say, \"We don't want them here; let them go to Africa\"?\n\nThat the providence of God has provided a refuge in Africa, is, indeed,\na great and noticeable fact; but that is no reason why the church of\nChrist should throw off that responsibility to this outcast race which\nher profession demands of her.\n\nTo fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized\nrace, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to\nprolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends the\ninception of new enterprises. Let the church of the north receive these\npoor sufferers in the spirit of Christ; receive them to the educating\nadvantages of Christian republican society and schools, until they have\nattained to somewhat of a moral and intellectual maturity, and then\nassist them in their passage to those shores, where they may put in\npractice the lessons they have learned in America.\n\nThere is a body of men at the north, comparatively small, who have been\ndoing this; and, as the result, this country has already seen examples\nof men, formerly slaves, who have rapidly acquired property, reputation,\nand education. Talent has been developed, which, considering the\ncircumstances, is certainly remarkable; and, for moral traits of\nhonesty, kindness, tenderness of feeling,--for heroic efforts and\nself-denials, endured for the ransom of brethren and friends yet in\nslavery,--they have been remarkable to a degree that, considering the\ninfluence under which they were born, is surprising.\n\nThe writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line of slave\nstates, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who\nformerly were slaves. They have been in her family as servants; and, in\ndefault of any other school to receive them, she has, in many cases, had\nthem instructed in a family school, with her own children. She has\nalso the testimony of missionaries, among the fugitives in Canada, in\ncoincidence with her own experience; and her deductions, with regard to\nthe capabilities of the race, are encouraging in the highest degree.\n\nThe first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is for\n_education_. There is nothing that they are not willing to give or do to\nhave their children instructed, and, so far as the writer has observed\nherself, or taken the testimony of teachers among them, they are\nremarkably intelligent and quick to learn. The results of schools,\nfounded for them by benevolent individuals in Cincinnati, fully\nestablish this.\n\nThe author gives the following statement of facts, on the authority\nof Professor C. E. Stowe, then of Lane Seminary, Ohio, with regard\nto emancipated slaves, now resident in Cincinnati; given to show the\ncapability of the race, even without any very particular assistance or\nencouragement.\n\nThe initial letters alone are given. They are all residents of\nCincinnati.\n\n\"B----. Furniture maker; twenty years in the city; worth ten thousand\ndollars, all his own earnings; a Baptist.\n\n\"C----. Full black; stolen from Africa; sold in New Orleans; been free\nfifteen years; paid for himself six hundred dollars; a farmer; owns\nseveral farms in Indiana; Presbyterian; probably worth fifteen or twenty\nthousand dollars, all earned by himself.\n\n\"K----. Full black; dealer in real estate; worth thirty thousand\ndollars; about forty years old; free six years; paid eighteen hundred\ndollars for his family; member of the Baptist church; received a legacy\nfrom his master, which he has taken good care of, and increased.\n\n\"G----. Full black; coal dealer; about thirty years old; worth eighteen\nthousand dollars; paid for himself twice, being once defrauded to\nthe amount of sixteen hundred dollars; made all his money by his own\nefforts--much of it while a slave, hiring his time of his master, and\ndoing business for himself; a fine, gentlemanly fellow.\n\n\"W----. Three-fourths black; barber and waiter; from Kentucky; nineteen\nyears free; paid for self and family over three thousand dollars; deacon\nin the Baptist church.\n\n\"G. D----. Three-fourths black; white-washer; from Kentucky; nine years\nfree; paid fifteen hundred dollars for self and family; recently died,\naged sixty; worth six thousand dollars.\"\n\nProfessor Stowe says, \"With all these, except G----, I have been, for\nsome years, personally acquainted, and make my statements from my own\nknowledge.\"\n\nThe writer well remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a\nwasherwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a\nslave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her\nindustry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine\nhundred dollars for her husband's freedom, which she paid, as she raised\nit, into the hands of his master. She yet wanted a hundred dollars of\nthe price, when he died. She never recovered any of the money.\n\nThese are but few facts, among multitudes which might be adduced, to\nshow the self-denial, energy, patience, and honesty, which the slave has\nexhibited in a state of freedom.\n\nAnd let it be remembered that these individuals have thus bravely\nsucceeded in conquering for themselves comparative wealth and social\nposition, in the face of every disadvantage and discouragement. The\ncolored man, by the law of Ohio, cannot be a voter, and, till within a\nfew years, was even denied the right of testimony in legal suits with\nthe white. Nor are these instances confined to the State of Ohio. In all\nstates of the Union we see men, but yesterday burst from the shackles\nof slavery, who, by a self-educating force, which cannot be too\nmuch admired, have risen to highly respectable stations in society.\nPennington, among clergymen, Douglas and Ward, among editors, are well\nknown instances.\n\nIf this persecuted race, with every discouragement and disadvantage,\nhave done thus much, how much more they might do if the Christian church\nwould act towards them in the spirit of her Lord!\n\nThis is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed.\nA mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world, as with an\nearthquake. And is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom\ngreat and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last\nconvulsion.\n\nFor what is this mighty influence thus rousing in all nations and\nlanguages those groanings that cannot be uttered, for man's freedom and\nequality?\n\nO, Church of Christ, read the signs of the times! Is not this power the\nspirit of Him whose kingdom is yet to come, and whose will to be done on\nearth as it is in heaven?\n\nBut who may abide the day of his appearing? \"for that day shall burn\nas an oven: and he shall appear as a swift witness against those that\noppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and\nthat _turn aside the stranger in his right_: and he shall break in\npieces the oppressor.\"\n\nAre not these dread words for a nation bearing in her bosom so mighty\nan injustice? Christians! every time that you pray that the kingdom\nof Christ may come, can you forget that prophecy associates, in dread\nfellowship, the _day of vengeance_ with the year of his redeemed?\n\nA day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been\nguilty before God; and the _Christian church_ has a heavy account to\nanswer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty,\nand making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,--but\nby repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by\nwhich the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which\ninjustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!"