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Uncle Tom's Cabin



Uncle Tom's Cabin
Or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4







VOLUME I


CHAPTER I

In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity


Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were
sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in
the town of P----, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the
gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some
subject with great earnestness.

For convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two ‘gentlemen’. One of
the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly
speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man,
with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension
which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the
world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue
neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a
flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His
hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he
wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous
size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,--which, in the
ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling
with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy
defiance of Murray's Grammar,* and was garnished at convenient intervals
with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be
graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe.

* English Grammar (1795), by Lindley Murray (1745-1826), the
most authoritative American grammarian of his day.

His companion, Mr. Shelby, had the appearance of a gentleman; and the
arrrangements of the house, and the general air of the housekeeping,
indicated easy, and even opulent circumstances. As we before stated, the
two were in the midst of an earnest conversation.

"That is the way I should arrange the matter," said Mr. Shelby.

"I can't make trade that way--I positively can't, Mr. Shelby," said the
other, holding up a glass of wine between his eye and the light.

"Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly
worth that sum anywhere,--steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm
like a clock."

"You mean honest, as niggers go," said Haley, helping himself to a glass
of brandy.

"No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He
got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he
really ‘did’ get it. I've trusted him, since then, with everything I
have,--money, house, horses,--and let him come and go round the country;
and I always found him true and square in everything."

"Some folks don't believe there is pious niggers Shelby," said Haley,
with a candid flourish of his hand, "but ‘I do’. I had a fellow, now,
in this yer last lot I took to Orleans--'t was as good as a meetin, now,
really, to hear that critter pray; and he was quite gentle and quiet
like. He fetched me a good sum, too, for I bought him cheap of a man
that was 'bliged to sell out; so I realized six hundred on him. Yes, I
consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it's the genuine
article, and no mistake."

"Well, Tom's got the real article, if ever a fellow had," rejoined the
other. "Why, last fall, I let him go to Cincinnati alone, to do business
for me, and bring home five hundred dollars. 'Tom,' says I to him,
'I trust you, because I think you're a Christian--I know you wouldn't
cheat.' Tom comes back, sure enough; I knew he would. Some low fellows,
they say, said to him--Tom, why don't you make tracks for Canada?' 'Ah,
master trusted me, and I couldn't,'--they told me about it. I am sorry
to part with Tom, I must say. You ought to let him cover the whole
balance of the debt; and you would, Haley, if you had any conscience."

"Well, I've got just as much conscience as any man in business can
afford to keep,--just a little, you know, to swear by, as 't were," said
the trader, jocularly; "and, then, I'm ready to do anything in reason
to 'blige friends; but this yer, you see, is a leetle too hard on a
fellow--a leetle too hard." The trader sighed contemplatively, and
poured out some more brandy.

"Well, then, Haley, how will you trade?" said Mr. Shelby, after an
uneasy interval of silence.

"Well, haven't you a boy or gal that you could throw in with Tom?"

"Hum!--none that I could well spare; to tell the truth, it's only hard
necessity makes me willing to sell at all. I don't like parting with any
of my hands, that's a fact."

Here the door opened, and a small quadroon boy, between four and five
years of age, entered the room. There was something in his appearance
remarkably beautiful and engaging. His black hair, fine as floss silk,
hung in glossy curls about his round, dimpled face, while a pair of
large dark eyes, full of fire and softness, looked out from beneath the
rich, long lashes, as he peered curiously into the apartment. A gay robe
of scarlet and yellow plaid, carefully made and neatly fitted, set off
to advantage the dark and rich style of his beauty; and a certain comic
air of assurance, blended with bashfulness, showed that he had been not
unused to being petted and noticed by his master.

"Hulloa, Jim Crow!" said Mr. Shelby, whistling, and snapping a bunch of
raisins towards him, "pick that up, now!"

The child scampered, with all his little strength, after the prize,
while his master laughed.

"Come here, Jim Crow," said he. The child came up, and the master patted
the curly head, and chucked him under the chin.

"Now, Jim, show this gentleman how you can dance and sing." The boy
commenced one of those wild, grotesque songs common among the negroes,
in a rich, clear voice, accompanying his singing with many comic
evolutions of the hands, feet, and whole body, all in perfect time to
the music.

"Bravo!" said Haley, throwing him a quarter of an orange.

"Now, Jim, walk like old Uncle Cudjoe, when he has the rheumatism," said
his master.

Instantly the flexible limbs of the child assumed the appearance of
deformity and distortion, as, with his back humped up, and his master's
stick in his hand, he hobbled about the room, his childish face drawn
into a doleful pucker, and spitting from right to left, in imitation of
an old man.

Both gentlemen laughed uproariously.

"Now, Jim," said his master, "show us how old Elder Robbins leads the
psalm." The boy drew his chubby face down to a formidable length, and
commenced toning a psalm tune through his nose, with imperturbable
gravity.

"Hurrah! bravo! what a young 'un!" said Haley; "that chap's a case,
I'll promise. Tell you what," said he, suddenly clapping his hand on Mr.
Shelby's shoulder, "fling in that chap, and I'll settle the business--I
will. Come, now, if that ain't doing the thing up about the rightest!"

At this moment, the door was pushed gently open, and a young quadroon
woman, apparently about twenty-five, entered the room.

There needed only a glance from the child to her, to identify her as its
mother. There was the same rich, full, dark eye, with its long lashes;
the same ripples of silky black hair. The brown of her complexion gave
way on the cheek to a perceptible flush, which deepened as she saw
the gaze of the strange man fixed upon her in bold and undisguised
admiration. Her dress was of the neatest possible fit, and set off to
advantage her finely moulded shape;--a delicately formed hand and a trim
foot and ankle were items of appearance that did not escape the quick
eye of the trader, well used to run up at a glance the points of a fine
female article.

"Well, Eliza?" said her master, as she stopped and looked hesitatingly
at him.

"I was looking for Harry, please, sir;" and the boy bounded toward her,
showing his spoils, which he had gathered in the skirt of his robe.

"Well, take him away then," said Mr. Shelby; and hastily she withdrew,
carrying the child on her arm.

"By Jupiter," said the trader, turning to him in admiration, "there's an
article, now! You might make your fortune on that ar gal in Orleans, any
day. I've seen over a thousand, in my day, paid down for gals not a bit
handsomer."

"I don't want to make my fortune on her," said Mr. Shelby, dryly; and,
seeking to turn the conversation, he uncorked a bottle of fresh wine,
and asked his companion's opinion of it.

"Capital, sir,--first chop!" said the trader; then turning, and slapping
his hand familiarly on Shelby's shoulder, he added--

"Come, how will you trade about the gal?--what shall I say for
her--what'll you take?"

"Mr. Haley, she is not to be sold," said Shelby. "My wife would not part
with her for her weight in gold."

"Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they ha'nt no sort of
calculation. Just show 'em how many watches, feathers, and trinkets,
one's weight in gold would buy, and that alters the case, ‘I’ reckon."

"I tell you, Haley, this must not be spoken of; I say no, and I mean
no," said Shelby, decidedly.

"Well, you'll let me have the boy, though," said the trader; "you must
own I've come down pretty handsomely for him."

"What on earth can you want with the child?" said Shelby.

"Why, I've got a friend that's going into this yer branch of the
business--wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market. Fancy
articles entirely--sell for waiters, and so on, to rich 'uns, that
can pay for handsome 'uns. It sets off one of yer great places--a real
handsome boy to open door, wait, and tend. They fetch a good sum; and
this little devil is such a comical, musical concern, he's just the
article!'

"I would rather not sell him," said Mr. Shelby, thoughtfully; "the fact
is, sir, I'm a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother,
sir."

"O, you do?--La! yes--something of that ar natur. I understand,
perfectly. It is mighty onpleasant getting on with women, sometimes, I
al'ays hates these yer screechin,' screamin' times. They are ‘mighty’
onpleasant; but, as I manages business, I generally avoids 'em, sir.
Now, what if you get the girl off for a day, or a week, or so; then the
thing's done quietly,--all over before she comes home. Your wife might
get her some ear-rings, or a new gown, or some such truck, to make up
with her."

"I'm afraid not."

"Lor bless ye, yes! These critters ain't like white folks, you know;
they gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say," said Haley,
assuming a candid and confidential air, "that this kind o' trade is
hardening to the feelings; but I never found it so. Fact is, I never
could do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I've seen
'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up
to sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time;--very bad
policy--damages the article--makes 'em quite unfit for service
sometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once, in Orleans, as was entirely
ruined by this sort o' handling. The fellow that was trading for her
didn't want her baby; and she was one of your real high sort, when her
blood was up. I tell you, she squeezed up her child in her arms, and
talked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to
think of 't; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up,
she jest went ravin' mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a
thousand dollars, just for want of management,--there's where 't
is. It's always best to do the humane thing, sir; that's been ‘my’
experience." And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his
arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a
second Wilberforce.

The subject appeared to interest the gentleman deeply; for while Mr.
Shelby was thoughtfully peeling an orange, Haley broke out afresh, with
becoming diffidence, but as if actually driven by the force of truth to
say a few words more.

"It don't look well, now, for a feller to be praisin' himself; but I say
it jest because it's the truth. I believe I'm reckoned to bring in about
the finest droves of niggers that is brought in,--at least, I've been
told so; if I have once, I reckon I have a hundred times,--all in good
case,--fat and likely, and I lose as few as any man in the business. And
I lays it all to my management, sir; and humanity, sir, I may say, is
the great pillar of ‘my’ management."

Mr. Shelby did not know what to say, and so he said, "Indeed!"

"Now, I've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I've been talked to.
They an't pop'lar, and they an't common; but I stuck to 'em, sir; I've
stuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em; yes, sir, they have paid their
passage, I may say," and the trader laughed at his joke.

There was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of
humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company. Perhaps
you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety
of strange forms now-a-days, and there is no end to the odd things that
humane people will say and do.

Mr. Shelby's laugh encouraged the trader to proceed.

"It's strange, now, but I never could beat this into people's heads.
Now, there was Tom Loker, my old partner, down in Natchez; he was a
clever fellow, Tom was, only the very devil with niggers,--on principle
't was, you see, for a better hearted feller never broke bread; 't was
his ‘system’, sir. I used to talk to Tom. 'Why, Tom,' I used to say,
'when your gals takes on and cry, what's the use o' crackin on' em over
the head, and knockin' on 'em round? It's ridiculous,' says I, 'and
don't do no sort o' good. Why, I don't see no harm in their cryin','
says I; 'it's natur,' says I, 'and if natur can't blow off one way, it
will another. Besides, Tom,' says I, 'it jest spiles your gals; they get
sickly, and down in the mouth; and sometimes they gets ugly,--particular
yallow gals do,--and it's the devil and all gettin' on 'em broke in.
Now,' says I, 'why can't you kinder coax 'em up, and speak 'em fair?
Depend on it, Tom, a little humanity, thrown in along, goes a heap
further than all your jawin' and crackin'; and it pays better,' says I,
'depend on 't.' But Tom couldn't get the hang on 't; and he spiled
so many for me, that I had to break off with him, though he was a
good-hearted fellow, and as fair a business hand as is goin'."

"And do you find your ways of managing do the business better than
Tom's?" said Mr. Shelby.

"Why, yes, sir, I may say so. You see, when I any ways can, I takes
a leetle care about the onpleasant parts, like selling young uns and
that,--get the gals out of the way--out of sight, out of mind, you
know,--and when it's clean done, and can't be helped, they naturally
gets used to it. 'Tan't, you know, as if it was white folks, that's
brought up in the way of 'spectin' to keep their children and wives, and
all that. Niggers, you know, that's fetched up properly, ha'n't no kind
of 'spectations of no kind; so all these things comes easier."

"I'm afraid mine are not properly brought up, then," said Mr. Shelby.

"S'pose not; you Kentucky folks spile your niggers. You mean well by
'em, but 'tan't no real kindness, arter all. Now, a nigger, you see,
what's got to be hacked and tumbled round the world, and sold to Tom,
and Dick, and the Lord knows who, 'tan't no kindness to be givin' on him
notions and expectations, and bringin' on him up too well, for the rough
and tumble comes all the harder on him arter. Now, I venture to say,
your niggers would be quite chop-fallen in a place where some of your
plantation niggers would be singing and whooping like all possessed.
Every man, you know, Mr. Shelby, naturally thinks well of his own ways;
and I think I treat niggers just about as well as it's ever worth while
to treat 'em."

"It's a happy thing to be satisfied," said Mr. Shelby, with a slight
shrug, and some perceptible feelings of a disagreeable nature.

"Well," said Haley, after they had both silently picked their nuts for a
season, "what do you say?"

"I'll think the matter over, and talk with my wife," said Mr. Shelby.
"Meantime, Haley, if you want the matter carried on in the quiet way
you speak of, you'd best not let your business in this neighborhood be
known. It will get out among my boys, and it will not be a particularly
quiet business getting away any of my fellows, if they know it, I'll
promise you."

"O! certainly, by all means, mum! of course. But I'll tell you. I'm in
a devil of a hurry, and shall want to know, as soon as possible, what I
may depend on," said he, rising and putting on his overcoat.

"Well, call up this evening, between six and seven, and you shall have
my answer," said Mr. Shelby, and the trader bowed himself out of the
apartment.

"I'd like to have been able to kick the fellow down the steps," said
he to himself, as he saw the door fairly closed, "with his impudent
assurance; but he knows how much he has me at advantage. If anybody
had ever said to me that I should sell Tom down south to one of those
rascally traders, I should have said, 'Is thy servant a dog, that
he should do this thing?' And now it must come, for aught I see. And
Eliza's child, too! I know that I shall have some fuss with wife
about that; and, for that matter, about Tom, too. So much for being in
debt,--heigho! The fellow sees his advantage, and means to push it."

Perhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the
State of Kentucky. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a
quiet and gradual nature, not requiring those periodic seasons of
hurry and pressure that are called for in the business of more southern
districts, makes the task of the negro a more healthful and reasonable
one; while the master, content with a more gradual style of acquisition,
has not those temptations to hardheartedness which always overcome frail
human nature when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain is weighed in
the balance, with no heavier counterpoise than the interests of the
helpless and unprotected.

Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored
indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty
of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend
of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene
there broods a portentous shadow--the shadow of ‘law’. So long as the
law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living
affections, only as so many ‘things’ belonging to a master,--so long
as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest
owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection
and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil,--so long it is
impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated
administration of slavery.

Mr. Shelby was a fair average kind of man, good-natured and kindly, and
disposed to easy indulgence of those around him, and there had never
been a lack of anything which might contribute to the physical comfort
of the negroes on his estate. He had, however, speculated largely and
quite loosely; had involved himself deeply, and his notes to a large
amount had come into the hands of Haley; and this small piece of
information is the key to the preceding conversation.

Now, it had so happened that, in approaching the door, Eliza had caught
enough of the conversation to know that a trader was making offers to
her master for somebody.

She would gladly have stopped at the door to listen, as she came out;
but her mistress just then calling, she was obliged to hasten away.

Still she thought she heard the trader make an offer for her boy;--could
she be mistaken? Her heart swelled and throbbed, and she involuntarily
strained him so tight that the little fellow looked up into her face in
astonishment.

"Eliza, girl, what ails you today?" said her mistress, when Eliza had
upset the wash-pitcher, knocked down the workstand, and finally was
abstractedly offering her mistress a long nightgown in place of the silk
dress she had ordered her to bring from the wardrobe.

Eliza started. "O, missis!" she said, raising her eyes; then, bursting
into tears, she sat down in a chair, and began sobbing.

"Why, Eliza child, what ails you?" said her mistress.

"O! missis, missis," said Eliza, "there's been a trader talking with
master in the parlor! I heard him."

"Well, silly child, suppose there has."

"O, missis, ‘do’ you suppose mas'r would sell my Harry?" And the poor
creature threw herself into a chair, and sobbed convulsively.

"Sell him! No, you foolish girl! You know your master never deals with
those southern traders, and never means to sell any of his servants, as
long as they behave well. Why, you silly child, who do you think would
want to buy your Harry? Do you think all the world are set on him as you
are, you goosie? Come, cheer up, and hook my dress. There now, put my
back hair up in that pretty braid you learnt the other day, and don't go
listening at doors any more."

"Well, but, missis, ‘you’ never would give your consent--to--to--"

"Nonsense, child! to be sure, I shouldn't. What do you talk so for? I
would as soon have one of my own children sold. But really, Eliza, you
are getting altogether too proud of that little fellow. A man can't put
his nose into the door, but you think he must be coming to buy him."

Reassured by her mistress' confident tone, Eliza proceeded nimbly and
adroitly with her toilet, laughing at her own fears, as she proceeded.

Mrs. Shelby was a woman of high class, both intellectually and morally.
To that natural magnanimity and generosity of mind which one often marks
as characteristic of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral and
religious sensibility and principle, carried out with great energy and
ability into practical results. Her husband, who made no professions
to any particular religious character, nevertheless reverenced and
respected the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a little in awe
of her opinion. Certain it was that he gave her unlimited scope in all
her benevolent efforts for the comfort, instruction, and improvement of
her servants, though he never took any decided part in them himself. In
fact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the efficiency of the
extra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other to fancy
that his wife had piety and benevolence enough for two--to indulge a
shadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her superabundance of
qualities to which he made no particular pretension.

The heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation with the trader,
lay in the foreseen necessity of breaking to his wife the arrangement
contemplated,--meeting the importunities and opposition which he knew he
should have reason to encounter.

Mrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband's embarrassments,
and knowing only the general kindliness of his temper, had been quite
sincere in the entire incredulity with which she had met Eliza's
suspicions. In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without a
second thought; and being occupied in preparations for an evening visit,
it passed out of her thoughts entirely.



CHAPTER II

The Mother


Eliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted
and indulged favorite.

The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of
refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases
to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural
graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling
kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing
and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy
sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her, years ago, in
Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had
reached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so fatal
an inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and talented
young mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighboring estate, and bore the
name of George Harris.

This young man had been hired out by his master to work in a bagging
factory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered
the first hand in the place. He had invented a machine for the cleaning
of the hemp, which, considering the education and circumstances of
the inventor, displayed quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney's
cotton-gin.*

* A machine of this description was really the invention of
a young colored man in Kentucky. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]

He was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a
general favorite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was
in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior
qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded,
tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of
George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what
this intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great
enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so
valuable a slave.

He was waited upon over the factory, shown the machinery by George, who,
in high spirits, talked so fluently, held himself so erect, looked
so handsome and manly, that his master began to feel an uneasy
consciousness of inferiority. What business had his slave to be marching
round the country, inventing machines, and holding up his head among
gentlemen? He'd soon put a stop to it. He'd take him back, and put
him to hoeing and digging, and "see if he'd step about so smart."
Accordingly, the manufacturer and all hands concerned were astounded
when he suddenly demanded George's wages, and announced his intention of
taking him home.

"But, Mr. Harris," remonstrated the manufacturer, "isn't this rather
sudden?"

"What if it is?--isn't the man ‘mine’?"

"We would be willing, sir, to increase the rate of compensation."

"No object at all, sir. I don't need to hire any of my hands out, unless
I've a mind to."

"But, sir, he seems peculiarly adapted to this business."

"Dare say he may be; never was much adapted to anything that I set him
about, I'll be bound."

"But only think of his inventing this machine," interposed one of the
workmen, rather unluckily.

"O yes! a machine for saving work, is it? He'd invent that, I'll be
bound; let a nigger alone for that, any time. They are all labor-saving
machines themselves, every one of 'em. No, he shall tramp!"

George had stood like one transfixed, at hearing his doom thus suddenly
pronounced by a power that he knew was irresistible. He folded his arms,
tightly pressed in his lips, but a whole volcano of bitter feelings
burned in his bosom, and sent streams of fire through his veins. He
breathed short, and his large dark eyes flashed like live coals; and he
might have broken out into some dangerous ebullition, had not the kindly
manufacturer touched him on the arm, and said, in a low tone,

"Give way, George; go with him for the present. We'll try to help you,
yet."

The tyrant observed the whisper, and conjectured its import, though he
could not hear what was said; and he inwardly strengthened himself in
his determination to keep the power he possessed over his victim.

George was taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He
had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye,
the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could
not be repressed,--indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the
man could not become a thing.

It was during the happy period of his employment in the factory that
George had seen and married his wife. During that period,--being much
trusted and favored by his employer,--he had free liberty to come and go
at discretion. The marriage was highly approved of by Mrs. Shelby, who,
with a little womanly complacency in match-making, felt pleased to unite
her handsome favorite with one of her own class who seemed in every way
suited to her; and so they were married in her mistress' great parlor,
and her mistress herself adorned the bride's beautiful hair with
orange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which certainly
could scarce have rested on a fairer head; and there was no lack of
white gloves, and cake and wine,--of admiring guests to praise the
bride's beauty, and her mistress' indulgence and liberality. For a
year or two Eliza saw her husband frequently, and there was nothing to
interrupt their happiness, except the loss of two infant children, to
whom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief
so intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who
sought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally passionate
feelings within the bounds of reason and religion.

After the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become
tranquillized and settled; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve,
once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and
healthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband
was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway
of his legal owner.

The manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr. Harris a week or two
after George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the
occasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead
him to restore him to his former employment.

"You needn't trouble yourself to talk any longer," said he, doggedly; "I
know my own business, sir."

"I did not presume to interfere with it, sir. I only thought that you
might think it for your interest to let your man to us on the terms
proposed."

"O, I understand the matter well enough. I saw your winking and
whispering, the day I took him out of the factory; but you don't come it
over me that way. It's a free country, sir; the man's ‘mine’, and I do
what I please with him,--that's it!"

And so fell George's last hope;--nothing before him but a life of toil
and drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation and
indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.

A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is
to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is
WORSE!



CHAPTER III

The Husband and Father


Mrs. Shelby had gone on her visit, and Eliza stood in the verandah,
rather dejectedly looking after the retreating carriage, when a hand was
laid on her shoulder. She turned, and a bright smile lighted up her fine
eyes.

"George, is it you? How you frightened me! Well; I am so glad you 's
come! Missis is gone to spend the afternoon; so come into my little
room, and we'll have the time all to ourselves."

Saying this, she drew him into a neat little apartment opening on the
verandah, where she generally sat at her sewing, within call of her
mistress.

"How glad I am!--why don't you smile?--and look at Harry--how he grows."
The boy stood shyly regarding his father through his curls, holding
close to the skirts of his mother's dress. "Isn't he beautiful?" said
Eliza, lifting his long curls and kissing him.

"I wish he'd never been born!" said George, bitterly. "I wish I'd never
been born myself!"

Surprised and frightened, Eliza sat down, leaned her head on her
husband's shoulder, and burst into tears.

"There now, Eliza, it's too bad for me to make you feel so, poor girl!"
said he, fondly; "it's too bad: O, how I wish you never had seen me--you
might have been happy!"

"George! George! how can you talk so? What dreadful thing has happened,
or is going to happen? I'm sure we've been very happy, till lately."

"So we have, dear," said George. Then drawing his child on his knee, he
gazed intently on his glorious dark eyes, and passed his hands through
his long curls.

"Just like you, Eliza; and you are the handsomest woman I ever saw, and
the best one I ever wish to see; but, oh, I wish I'd never seen you, nor
you me!"

"O, George, how can you!"

"Yes, Eliza, it's all misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as
wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I'm a poor, miserable,
forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that's all. What's
the use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to
be anything? What's the use of living? I wish I was dead!"

"O, now, dear George, that is really wicked! I know how you feel about
losing your place in the factory, and you have a hard master; but pray
be patient, and perhaps something--"

"Patient!" said he, interrupting her; "haven't I been patient? Did I say
a word when he came and took me away, for no earthly reason, from the
place where everybody was kind to me? I'd paid him truly every cent of
my earnings,--and they all say I worked well."

"Well, it ‘is’ dreadful," said Eliza; "but, after all, he is your
master, you know."

"My master! and who made him my master? That's what I think of--what
right has he to me? I'm a man as much as he is. I'm a better man than he
is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than
he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand,--and
I've learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,--I've learned it in
spite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?--to
take me from things I can do, and do better than he can, and put me to
work that any horse can do? He tries to do it; he says he'll bring me
down and humble me, and he puts me to just the hardest, meanest and
dirtiest work, on purpose!"

"O, George! George! you frighten me! Why, I never heard you talk so; I'm
afraid you'll do something dreadful. I don't wonder at your feelings, at
all; but oh, do be careful--do, do--for my sake--for Harry's!"

"I have been careful, and I have been patient, but it's growing worse
and worse; flesh and blood can't bear it any longer;--every chance he
can get to insult and torment me, he takes. I thought I could do my work
well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of
work hours; but the more he see I can do, the more he loads on. He says
that though I don't say anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and
he means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come out in a
way that he won't like, or I'm mistaken!"

"O dear! what shall we do?" said Eliza, mournfully.

"It was only yesterday," said George, "as I was busy loading stones into
a cart, that young Mas'r Tom stood there, slashing his whip so near the
horse that the creature was frightened. I asked him to stop, as pleasant
as I could,--he just kept right on. I begged him again, and then he
turned on me, and began striking me. I held his hand, and then he
screamed and kicked and ran to his father, and told him that I was
fighting him. He came in a rage, and said he'd teach me who was my
master; and he tied me to a tree, and cut switches for young master, and
told him that he might whip me till he was tired;--and he did do it! If
I don't make him remember it, some time!" and the brow of the young man
grew dark, and his eyes burned with an expression that made his young
wife tremble. "Who made this man my master? That's what I want to know!"
he said.

"Well," said Eliza, mournfully, "I always thought that I must obey my
master and mistress, or I couldn't be a Christian."

"There is some sense in it, in your case; they have brought you up like
a child, fed you, clothed you, indulged you, and taught you, so that you
have a good education; that is some reason why they should claim you.
But I have been kicked and cuffed and sworn at, and at the best only let
alone; and what do I owe? I've paid for all my keeping a hundred times
over. I ‘won't’ bear it. No, I ‘won't’!" he said, clenching his hand
with a fierce frown.

Eliza trembled, and was silent. She had never seen her husband in this
mood before; and her gentle system of ethics seemed to bend like a reed
in the surges of such passions.

"You know poor little Carlo, that you gave me," added George; "the
creature has been about all the comfort that I've had. He has slept with
me nights, and followed me around days, and kind o' looked at me as if
he understood how I felt. Well, the other day I was just feeding him
with a few old scraps I picked up by the kitchen door, and Mas'r
came along, and said I was feeding him up at his expense, and that he
couldn't afford to have every nigger keeping his dog, and ordered me to
tie a stone to his neck and throw him in the pond."

"O, George, you didn't do it!"

"Do it? not I!--but he did. Mas'r and Tom pelted the poor drowning
creature with stones. Poor thing! he looked at me so mournful, as if
he wondered why I didn't save him. I had to take a flogging because I
wouldn't do it myself. I don't care. Mas'r will find out that I'm one
that whipping won't tame. My day will come yet, if he don't look out."

"What are you going to do? O, George, don't do anything wicked; if you
only trust in God, and try to do right, he'll deliver you."

"I an't a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart's full of bitterness; I
can't trust in God. Why does he let things be so?"

"O, George, we must have faith. Mistress says that when all things go
wrong to us, we must believe that God is doing the very best."

"That's easy to say for people that are sitting on their sofas and
riding in their carriages; but let 'em be where I am, I guess it would
come some harder. I wish I could be good; but my heart burns, and can't
be reconciled, anyhow. You couldn't in my place,--you can't now, if I
tell you all I've got to say. You don't know the whole yet."

"What can be coming now?"

"Well, lately Mas'r has been saying that he was a fool to let me marry
off the place; that he hates Mr. Shelby and all his tribe, because they
are proud, and hold their heads up above him, and that I've got proud
notions from you; and he says he won't let me come here any more, and
that I shall take a wife and settle down on his place. At first he
only scolded and grumbled these things; but yesterday he told me that I
should take Mina for a wife, and settle down in a cabin with her, or he
would sell me down river."

"Why--but you were married to ‘me’, by the minister, as much as if you'd
been a white man!" said Eliza, simply.

"Don't you know a slave can't be married? There is no law in this
country for that; I can't hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part
us. That's why I wish I'd never seen you,--why I wish I'd never been
born; it would have been better for us both,--it would have been better
for this poor child if he had never been born. All this may happen to
him yet!"

"O, but master is so kind!"

"Yes, but who knows?--he may die--and then he may be sold to nobody
knows who. What pleasure is it that he is handsome, and smart, and
bright? I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul
for every good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him
worth too much for you to keep."

The words smote heavily on Eliza's heart; the vision of the trader came
before her eyes, and, as if some one had struck her a deadly blow,
she turned pale and gasped for breath. She looked nervously out on the
verandah, where the boy, tired of the grave conversation, had retired,
and where he was riding triumphantly up and down on Mr. Shelby's
walking-stick. She would have spoken to tell her husband her fears, but
checked herself.

"No, no,--he has enough to bear, poor fellow!" she thought. "No, I won't
tell him; besides, it an't true; Missis never deceives us."

"So, Eliza, my girl," said the husband, mournfully, "bear up, now; and
good-by, for I'm going."

"Going, George! Going where?"

"To Canada," said he, straightening himself up; "and when I'm there, I'll
buy you; that's all the hope that's left us. You have a kind master,
that won't refuse to sell you. I'll buy you and the boy;--God helping
me, I will!"

"O, dreadful! if you should be taken?"

"I won't be taken, Eliza; I'll ‘die’ first! I'll be free, or I'll die!"

"You won't kill yourself!"

"No need of that. They will kill me, fast enough; they never will get me
down the river alive!"

"O, George, for my sake, do be careful! Don't do anything wicked; don't
lay hands on yourself, or anybody else! You are tempted too much--too
much; but don't--go you must--but go carefully, prudently; pray God to
help you."

"Well, then, Eliza, hear my plan. Mas'r took it into his head to send
me right by here, with a note to Mr. Symmes, that lives a mile past. I
believe he expected I should come here to tell you what I have. It would
please him, if he thought it would aggravate 'Shelby's folks,' as he
calls 'em. I'm going home quite resigned, you understand, as if all was
over. I've got some preparations made,--and there are those that will
help me; and, in the course of a week or so, I shall be among the
missing, some day. Pray for me, Eliza; perhaps the good Lord will hear
‘you’."

"O, pray yourself, George, and go trusting in him; then you won't do
anything wicked."

"Well, now, ‘good-by’," said George, holding Eliza's hands, and gazing
into her eyes, without moving. They stood silent; then there were last
words, and sobs, and bitter weeping,--such parting as those may make
whose hope to meet again is as the spider's web,--and the husband and
wife were parted.



CHAPTER IV

An Evening in Uncle Tom's Cabin


The cabin of Uncle Tom was a small log building, close adjoining to "the
house," as the negro ‘par excellence’ designates his master's dwelling.
In front it had a neat garden-patch, where, every summer, strawberries,
raspberries, and a variety of fruits and vegetables, flourished under
careful tending. The whole front of it was covered by a large
scarlet bignonia and a native multiflora rose, which, entwisting and
interlacing, left scarce a vestige of the rough logs to be seen. Here,
also, in summer, various brilliant annuals, such as marigolds, petunias,
four-o'clocks, found an indulgent corner in which to unfold their
splendors, and were the delight and pride of Aunt Chloe's heart.

Let us enter the dwelling. The evening meal at the house is over, and
Aunt Chloe, who presided over its preparation as head cook, has left
to inferior officers in the kitchen the business of clearing away and
washing dishes, and come out into her own snug territories, to "get her
ole man's supper"; therefore, doubt not that it is her you see by the
fire, presiding with anxious interest over certain frizzling items in
a stew-pan, and anon with grave consideration lifting the cover of
a bake-kettle, from whence steam forth indubitable intimations of
"something good." A round, black, shining face is hers, so glossy as
to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with white of
eggs, like one of her own tea rusks. Her whole plump countenance beams
with satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched checked
turban, bearing on it, however, if we must confess it, a little of
that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the
neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be.

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not
a chicken or turkey or duck in the barn-yard but looked grave when they
saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their
latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on
trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to
inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. Her corn-cake, in all its
varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous
to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders; and
she would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as she
would narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her compeers
had made to attain to her elevation.

The arrival of company at the house, the arranging of dinners and
suppers "in style," awoke all the energies of her soul; and no sight
was more welcome to her than a pile of travelling trunks launched on the
verandah, for then she foresaw fresh efforts and fresh triumphs.

Just at present, however, Aunt Chloe is looking into the bake-pan; in
which congenial operation we shall leave her till we finish our picture
of the cottage.

In one corner of it stood a bed, covered neatly with a snowy spread; and
by the side of it was a piece of carpeting, of some considerable size.
On this piece of carpeting Aunt Chloe took her stand, as being decidedly
in the upper walks of life; and it and the bed by which it lay, and the
whole corner, in fact, were treated with distinguished consideration,
and made, so far as possible, sacred from the marauding inroads
and desecrations of little folks. In fact, that corner was the
‘drawing-room’ of the establishment. In the other corner was a bed of
much humbler pretensions, and evidently designed for ‘use’. The wall
over the fireplace was adorned with some very brilliant scriptural
prints, and a portrait of General Washington, drawn and colored in
a manner which would certainly have astonished that hero, if ever he
happened to meet with its like.

On a rough bench in the corner, a couple of woolly-headed boys,
with glistening black eyes and fat shining cheeks, were busy in
superintending the first walking operations of the baby, which, as
is usually the case, consisted in getting up on its feet, balancing a
moment, and then tumbling down,--each successive failure being violently
cheered, as something decidedly clever.

A table, somewhat rheumatic in its limbs, was drawn out in front of
the fire, and covered with a cloth, displaying cups and saucers of a
decidedly brilliant pattern, with other symptoms of an approaching meal.
At this table was seated Uncle Tom, Mr. Shelby's best hand, who, as he
is to be the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype for our readers.
He was a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man, of a full glossy
black, and a face whose truly African features were characterized by an
expression of grave and steady good sense, united with much kindliness
and benevolence. There was something about his whole air self-respecting
and dignified, yet united with a confiding and humble simplicity.

He was very busily intent at this moment on a slate lying before him,
on which he was carefully and slowly endeavoring to accomplish a copy
of some letters, in which operation he was overlooked by young Mas'r
George, a smart, bright boy of thirteen, who appeared fully to realize
the dignity of his position as instructor.

"Not that way, Uncle Tom,--not that way," said he, briskly, as Uncle
Tom laboriously brought up the tail of his ‘g’ the wrong side out; "that
makes a ‘q’, you see."

"La sakes, now, does it?" said Uncle Tom, looking with a respectful,
admiring air, as his young teacher flourishingly scrawled ‘q’'s and
‘g’'s innumerable for his edification; and then, taking the pencil in
his big, heavy fingers, he patiently recommenced.

"How easy white folks al'us does things!" said Aunt Chloe, pausing
while she was greasing a griddle with a scrap of bacon on her fork, and
regarding young Master George with pride. "The way he can write, now!
and read, too! and then to come out here evenings and read his lessons
to us,--it's mighty interestin'!"

"But, Aunt Chloe, I'm getting mighty hungry," said George. "Isn't that
cake in the skillet almost done?"

"Mose done, Mas'r George," said Aunt Chloe, lifting the lid and peeping
in,--"browning beautiful--a real lovely brown. Ah! let me alone for dat.
Missis let Sally try to make some cake, t' other day, jes to ‘larn’ her,
she said. 'O, go way, Missis,' said I; 'it really hurts my feelin's,
now, to see good vittles spilt dat ar way! Cake ris all to one side--no
shape at all; no more than my shoe; go way!"

And with this final expression of contempt for Sally's greenness, Aunt
Chloe whipped the cover off the bake-kettle, and disclosed to view a
neatly-baked pound-cake, of which no city confectioner need to have been
ashamed. This being evidently the central point of the entertainment,
Aunt Chloe began now to bustle about earnestly in the supper department.

"Here you, Mose and Pete! get out de way, you niggers! Get away,
Mericky, honey,--mammy'll give her baby some fin, by and by. Now, Mas'r
George, you jest take off dem books, and set down now with my old man,
and I'll take up de sausages, and have de first griddle full of cakes on
your plates in less dan no time."

"They wanted me to come to supper in the house," said George; "but I
knew what was what too well for that, Aunt Chloe."

"So you did--so you did, honey," said Aunt Chloe, heaping the smoking
batter-cakes on his plate; "you know'd your old aunty'd keep the best
for you. O, let you alone for dat! Go way!" And, with that, aunty gave
George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and
turned again to her griddle with great briskness.

"Now for the cake," said Mas'r George, when the activity of the
griddle department had somewhat subsided; and, with that, the youngster
flourished a large knife over the article in question.

"La bless you, Mas'r George!" said Aunt Chloe, with earnestness,
catching his arm, "you wouldn't be for cuttin' it wid dat ar great heavy
knife! Smash all down--spile all de pretty rise of it. Here, I've got a
thin old knife, I keeps sharp a purpose. Dar now, see! comes apart light
as a feather! Now eat away--you won't get anything to beat dat ar."

"Tom Lincon says," said George, speaking with his mouth full, "that
their Jinny is a better cook than you."

"Dem Lincons an't much count, no way!" said Aunt Chloe, contemptuously;
"I mean, set along side ‘our’ folks. They 's 'spectable folks enough in
a kinder plain way; but, as to gettin' up anything in style, they don't
begin to have a notion on 't. Set Mas'r Lincon, now, alongside Mas'r
Shelby! Good Lor! and Missis Lincon,--can she kinder sweep it into a
room like my missis,--so kinder splendid, yer know! O, go way! don't
tell me nothin' of dem Lincons!"--and Aunt Chloe tossed her head as one
who hoped she did know something of the world.

"Well, though, I've heard you say," said George, "that Jinny was a
pretty fair cook."

"So I did," said Aunt Chloe,--"I may say dat. Good, plain, common
cookin', Jinny'll do;--make a good pone o' bread,--bile her taters
‘far’,--her corn cakes isn't extra, not extra now, Jinny's corn cakes
isn't, but then they's far,--but, Lor, come to de higher branches, and
what ‘can’ she do? Why, she makes pies--sartin she does; but what kinder
crust? Can she make your real flecky paste, as melts in your mouth, and
lies all up like a puff? Now, I went over thar when Miss Mary was gwine
to be married, and Jinny she jest showed me de weddin' pies. Jinny and
I is good friends, ye know. I never said nothin'; but go 'long, Mas'r
George! Why, I shouldn't sleep a wink for a week, if I had a batch of
pies like dem ar. Why, dey wan't no 'count 't all."

"I suppose Jinny thought they were ever so nice," said George.

"Thought so!--didn't she? Thar she was, showing em, as innocent--ye see,
it's jest here, Jinny ‘don't know’. Lor, the family an't nothing! She
can't be spected to know! 'Ta'nt no fault o' hem. Ah, Mas'r George, you
doesn't know half 'your privileges in yer family and bringin' up!" Here
Aunt Chloe sighed, and rolled up her eyes with emotion.

"I'm sure, Aunt Chloe, I understand I my pie and pudding privileges,"
said George. "Ask Tom Lincon if I don't crow over him, every time I meet
him."

Aunt Chloe sat back in her chair, and indulged in a hearty guffaw of
laughter, at this witticism of young Mas'r's, laughing till the tears
rolled down her black, shining cheeks, and varying the exercise with
playfully slapping and poking Mas'r Georgey, and telling him to go way,
and that he was a case--that he was fit to kill her, and that he sartin
would kill her, one of these days; and, between each of these sanguinary
predictions, going off into a laugh, each longer and stronger than the
other, till George really began to think that he was a very dangerously
witty fellow, and that it became him to be careful how he talked "as
funny as he could."

"And so ye telled Tom, did ye? O, Lor! what young uns will be up ter!
Ye crowed over Tom? O, Lor! Mas'r George, if ye wouldn't make a hornbug
laugh!"

"Yes," said George, "I says to him, 'Tom, you ought to see some of Aunt
Chloe's pies; they're the right sort,' says I."

"Pity, now, Tom couldn't," said Aunt Chloe, on whose benevolent
heart the idea of Tom's benighted condition seemed to make a strong
impression. "Ye oughter just ask him here to dinner, some o' these
times, Mas'r George," she added; "it would look quite pretty of ye.
Ye know, Mas'r George, ye oughtenter feel 'bove nobody, on 'count yer
privileges, 'cause all our privileges is gi'n to us; we ought al'ays to
'member that," said Aunt Chloe, looking quite serious.

"Well, I mean to ask Tom here, some day next week," said George; "and
you do your prettiest, Aunt Chloe, and we'll make him stare. Won't we
make him eat so he won't get over it for a fortnight?"

"Yes, yes--sartin," said Aunt Chloe, delighted "you'll see. Lor! to
think of some of our dinners! Yer mind dat ar great chicken pie I made
when we guv de dinner to General Knox? I and Missis, we come pretty near
quarrelling about dat ar crust. What does get into ladies sometimes,
I don't know; but, sometimes, when a body has de heaviest kind o'
'sponsibility on 'em, as ye may say, and is all kinder ‘'seris'‘
and taken up, dey takes dat ar time to be hangin' round and kinder
interferin'! Now, Missis, she wanted me to do dis way, and she wanted
me to do dat way; and, finally, I got kinder sarcy, and, says I, 'Now,
Missis, do jist look at dem beautiful white hands o' yourn with long
fingers, and all a sparkling with rings, like my white lilies when de
dew 's on 'em; and look at my great black stumpin hands. Now, don't ye
think dat de Lord must have meant ‘me’ to make de pie-crust, and you to
stay in de parlor? Dar! I was jist so sarcy, Mas'r George."

"And what did mother say?" said George.

"Say?--why, she kinder larfed in her eyes--dem great handsome eyes o'
hern; and, says she, 'Well, Aunt Chloe, I think you are about in the
right on 't,' says she; and she went off in de parlor. She oughter
cracked me over de head for bein' so sarcy; but dar's whar 't is--I
can't do nothin' with ladies in de kitchen!"

"Well, you made out well with that dinner,--I remember everybody said
so," said George.

"Didn't I? And wan't I behind de dinin'-room door dat bery day? and
didn't I see de General pass his plate three times for some more dat
bery pie?--and, says he, 'You must have an uncommon cook, Mrs. Shelby.'
Lor! I was fit to split myself.

"And de Gineral, he knows what cookin' is," said Aunt Chloe, drawing
herself up with an air. "Bery nice man, de Gineral! He comes of one of
de bery ‘fustest’ families in Old Virginny! He knows what's what, now,
as well as I do--de Gineral. Ye see, there's ‘pints’ in all pies, Mas'r
George; but tan't everybody knows what they is, or as orter be. But the
Gineral, he knows; I knew by his 'marks he made. Yes, he knows what de
pints is!"

By this time, Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a
boy can come (under uncommon circumstances, when he really could not eat
another morsel), and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the pile of
woolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their operations
hungrily from the opposite corner.

"Here, you Mose, Pete," he said, breaking off liberal bits, and throwing
it at them; "you want some, don't you? Come, Aunt Chloe, bake them some
cakes."

And George and Tom moved to a comfortable seat in the chimney-corner,
while Aunte Chloe, after baking a goodly pile of cakes, took her baby
on her lap, and began alternately filling its mouth and her own, and
distributing to Mose and Pete, who seemed rather to prefer eating theirs
as they rolled about on the floor under the table, tickling each other,
and occasionally pulling the baby's toes.

"O! go long, will ye?" said the mother, giving now and then a kick, in
a kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too
obstreperous. "Can't ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye?
Stop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I'll take ye down a
button-hole lower, when Mas'r George is gone!"

What meaning was couched under this terrible threat, it is difficult to
say; but certain it is that its awful indistinctness seemed to produce
very little impression on the young sinners addressed.

"La, now!" said Uncle Tom, "they are so full of tickle all the while,
they can't behave theirselves."

Here the boys emerged from under the table, and, with hands and faces
well plastered with molasses, began a vigorous kissing of the baby.

"Get along wid ye!" said the mother, pushing away their woolly heads.
"Ye'll all stick together, and never get clar, if ye do dat fashion.
Go long to de spring and wash yerselves!" she said, seconding her
exhortations by a slap, which resounded very formidably, but which
seemed only to knock out so much more laugh from the young ones, as they
tumbled precipitately over each other out of doors, where they fairly
screamed with merriment.

"Did ye ever see such aggravating young uns?" said Aunt Chloe, rather
complacently, as, producing an old towel, kept for such emergencies,
she poured a little water out of the cracked tea-pot on it, and began
rubbing off the molasses from the baby's face and hands; and, having
polished her till she shone, she set her down in Tom's lap, while she
busied herself in clearing away supper. The baby employed the intervals
in pulling Tom's nose, scratching his face, and burying her fat hands
in his woolly hair, which last operation seemed to afford her special
content.

"Aint she a peart young un?" said Tom, holding her from him to take a
full-length view; then, getting up, he set her on his broad shoulder,
and began capering and dancing with her, while Mas'r George snapped at
her with his pocket-handkerchief, and Mose and Pete, now returned again,
roared after her like bears, till Aunt Chloe declared that they "fairly
took her head off" with their noise. As, according to her own statement,
this surgical operation was a matter of daily occurrence in the cabin,
the declaration no whit abated the merriment, till every one had roared
and tumbled and danced themselves down to a state of composure.

"Well, now, I hopes you're done," said Aunt Chloe, who had been busy
in pulling out a rude box of a trundle-bed; "and now, you Mose and you
Pete, get into thar; for we's goin' to have the meetin'."

"O mother, we don't wanter. We wants to sit up to meetin',--meetin's is
so curis. We likes 'em."

"La, Aunt Chloe, shove it under, and let 'em sit up," said Mas'r George,
decisively, giving a push to the rude machine.

Aunt Chloe, having thus saved appearances, seemed highly delighted to
push the thing under, saying, as she did so, "Well, mebbe 't will do 'em
some good."

The house now resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to consider
the accommodations and arrangements for the meeting.

"What we's to do for cheers, now, ‘I’ declar I don't know," said Aunt
Chloe. As the meeting had been held at Uncle Tom's weekly, for an
indefinite length of time, without any more "cheers," there seemed some
encouragement to hope that a way would be discovered at present.

"Old Uncle Peter sung both de legs out of dat oldest cheer, last week,"
suggested Mose.

"You go long! I'll boun' you pulled 'em out; some o' your shines," said
Aunt Chloe.

"Well, it'll stand, if it only keeps jam up agin de wall!" said Mose.

"Den Uncle Peter mus'n't sit in it, cause he al'ays hitches when he gets
a singing. He hitched pretty nigh across de room, t' other night," said
Pete.

"Good Lor! get him in it, then," said Mose, "and den he'd begin, 'Come
saints--and sinners, hear me tell,' and den down he'd go,"--and Mose
imitated precisely the nasal tones of the old man, tumbling on the
floor, to illustrate the supposed catastrophe.

"Come now, be decent, can't ye?" said Aunt Chloe; "an't yer shamed?"

Mas'r George, however, joined the offender in the laugh, and declared
decidedly that Mose was a "buster." So the maternal admonition seemed
rather to fail of effect.

"Well, ole man," said Aunt Chloe, "you'll have to tote in them ar
bar'ls."

"Mother's bar'ls is like dat ar widder's, Mas'r George was reading
'bout, in de good book,--dey never fails," said Mose, aside to Peter.

"I'm sure one on 'em caved in last week," said Pete, "and let 'em all
down in de middle of de singin'; dat ar was failin', warnt it?"

During this aside between Mose and Pete, two empty casks had been rolled
into the cabin, and being secured from rolling, by stones on each side,
boards were laid across them, which arrangement, together with the
turning down of certain tubs and pails, and the disposing of the rickety
chairs, at last completed the preparation.

"Mas'r George is such a beautiful reader, now, I know he'll stay to
read for us," said Aunt Chloe; "'pears like 't will be so much more
interestin'."

George very readily consented, for your boy is always ready for anything
that makes him of importance.

The room was soon filled with a motley assemblage, from the old
gray-headed patriarch of eighty, to the young girl and lad of fifteen. A
little harmless gossip ensued on various themes, such as where old Aunt
Sally got her new red headkerchief, and how "Missis was a going to give
Lizzy that spotted muslin gown, when she'd got her new berage made up;"
and how Mas'r Shelby was thinking of buying a new sorrel colt, that was
going to prove an addition to the glories of the place. A few of the
worshippers belonged to families hard by, who had got permission to
attend, and who brought in various choice scraps of information, about
the sayings and doings at the house and on the place, which circulated
as freely as the same sort of small change does in higher circles.

After a while the singing commenced, to the evident delight of all
present. Not even all the disadvantage of nasal intonation could prevent
the effect of the naturally fine voices, in airs at once wild and
spirited. The words were sometimes the well-known and common hymns
sung in the churches about, and sometimes of a wilder, more indefinite
character, picked up at camp-meetings.

The chorus of one of them, which ran as follows, was sung with great
energy and unction:

‘"Die on the field of battle,
Die on the field of battle,
Glory in my soul."‘

Another special favorite had oft repeated the words--

‘"O, I'm going to glory,--won't you come along with me?
Don't you see the angels beck'ning, and a calling me away?
Don't you see the golden city and the everlasting day?"‘

There were others, which made incessant mention of "Jordan's banks,"
and "Canaan's fields," and the "New Jerusalem;" for the negro mind,
impassioned and imaginative, always attaches itself to hymns and
expressions of a vivid and pictorial nature; and, as they sung,
some laughed, and some cried, and some clapped hands, or shook hands
rejoicingly with each other, as if they had fairly gained the other side
of the river.

Various exhortations, or relations of experience, followed, and
intermingled with the singing. One old gray-headed woman, long past
work, but much revered as a sort of chronicle of the past, rose, and
leaning on her staff, said--"Well, chil'en! Well, I'm mighty glad to
hear ye all and see ye all once more, 'cause I don't know when I'll be
gone to glory; but I've done got ready, chil'en; 'pears like I'd got
my little bundle all tied up, and my bonnet on, jest a waitin' for the
stage to come along and take me home; sometimes, in the night, I think
I hear the wheels a rattlin', and I'm lookin' out all the time; now, you
jest be ready too, for I tell ye all, chil'en," she said striking her
staff hard on the floor, "dat ar ‘glory’ is a mighty thing! It's a
mighty thing, chil'en,--you don'no nothing about it,--it's ‘wonderful’."
And the old creature sat down, with streaming tears, as wholly overcome,
while the whole circle struck up--

‘"O Canaan, bright Canaan
I'm bound for the land of Canaan."‘

Mas'r George, by request, read the last chapters of Revelation, often
interrupted by such exclamations as "The ‘sakes’ now!" "Only hear that!"
"Jest think on 't!" "Is all that a comin' sure enough?"

George, who was a bright boy, and well trained in religious things by
his mother, finding himself an object of general admiration, threw
in expositions of his own, from time to time, with a commendable
seriousness and gravity, for which he was admired by the young and
blessed by the old; and it was agreed, on all hands, that "a minister
couldn't lay it off better than he did; that 't was reely 'mazin'!"

Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters, in the
neighborhood. Having, naturally, an organization in which the
‘morale’ was strongly predominant, together with a greater breadth and
cultivation of mind than obtained among his companions, he was looked up
to with great respect, as a sort of minister among them; and the simple,
hearty, sincere style of his exhortations might have edified even better
educated persons. But it was in prayer that he especially excelled.
Nothing could exceed the touching simplicity, the childlike earnestness,
of his prayer, enriched with the language of Scripture, which seemed so
entirely to have wrought itself into his being, as to have become a part
of himself, and to drop from his lips unconsciously; in the language
of a pious old negro, he "prayed right up." And so much did his prayer
always work on the devotional feelings of his audiences, that there
seemed often a danger that it would be lost altogether in the abundance
of the responses which broke out everywhere around him.


While this scene was passing in the cabin of the man, one quite
otherwise passed in the halls of the master.

The trader and Mr. Shelby were seated together in the dining room
afore-named, at a table covered with papers and writing utensils.

Mr. Shelby was busy in counting some bundles of bills, which, as they
were counted, he pushed over to the trader, who counted them likewise.

"All fair," said the trader; "and now for signing these yer."

Mr. Shelby hastily drew the bills of sale towards him, and signed them,
like a man that hurries over some disagreeable business, and then pushed
them over with the money. Haley produced, from a well-worn valise,
a parchment, which, after looking over it a moment, he handed to Mr.
Shelby, who took it with a gesture of suppressed eagerness.

"Wal, now, the thing's ‘done’!" said the trader, getting up.

"It's ‘done’!" said Mr. Shelby, in a musing tone; and, fetching a long
breath, he repeated, ‘"It's done!"‘

"Yer don't seem to feel much pleased with it, 'pears to me," said the
trader.

"Haley," said Mr. Shelby, "I hope you'll remember that you promised, on
your honor, you wouldn't sell Tom, without knowing what sort of hands
he's going into."

"Why, you've just done it sir," said the trader.

"Circumstances, you well know, ‘obliged’ me," said Shelby, haughtily.

"Wal, you know, they may 'blige ‘me’, too," said the trader.
"Howsomever, I'll do the very best I can in gettin' Tom a good berth;
as to my treatin' on him bad, you needn't be a grain afeard. If there's
anything that I thank the Lord for, it is that I'm never noways cruel."

After the expositions which the trader had previously given of his
humane principles, Mr. Shelby did not feel particularly reassured by
these declarations; but, as they were the best comfort the case admitted
of, he allowed the trader to depart in silence, and betook himself to a
solitary cigar.



CHAPTER V

Showing the Feelings of Living Property on Changing Owners


Mr. and Mrs. Shelby had retired to their apartment for the night. He was
lounging in a large easy-chair, looking over some letters that had come
in the afternoon mail, and she was standing before her mirror, brushing
out the complicated braids and curls in which Eliza had arranged her
hair; for, noticing her pale cheeks and haggard eyes, she had excused
her attendance that night, and ordered her to bed. The employment,
naturally enough, suggested her conversation with the girl in the
morning; and turning to her husband, she said, carelessly,

"By the by, Arthur, who was that low-bred fellow that you lugged in to
our dinner-table today?"

"Haley is his name," said Shelby, turning himself rather uneasily in his
chair, and continuing with his eyes fixed on a letter.

"Haley! Who is he, and what may be his business here, pray?"

"Well, he's a man that I transacted some business with, last time I was
at Natchez," said Mr. Shelby.

"And he presumed on it to make himself quite at home, and call and dine
here, ay?"

"Why, I invited him; I had some accounts with him," said Shelby.

"Is he a negro-trader?" said Mrs. Shelby, noticing a certain
embarrassment in her husband's manner.

"Why, my dear, what put that into your head?" said Shelby, looking up.

"Nothing,--only Eliza came in here, after dinner, in a great worry,
crying and taking on, and said you were talking with a trader, and that
she heard him make an offer for her boy--the ridiculous little goose!"

"She did, hey?" said Mr. Shelby, returning to his paper, which he seemed
for a few moments quite intent upon, not perceiving that he was holding
it bottom upwards.

"It will have to come out," said he, mentally; "as well now as ever."

"I told Eliza," said Mrs. Shelby, as she continued brushing her hair,
"that she was a little fool for her pains, and that you never had
anything to do with that sort of persons. Of course, I knew you never
meant to sell any of our people,--least of all, to such a fellow."

"Well, Emily," said her husband, "so I have always felt and said; but
the fact is that my business lies so that I cannot get on without. I
shall have to sell some of my hands."

"To that creature? Impossible! Mr. Shelby, you cannot be serious."

"I'm sorry to say that I am," said Mr. Shelby. "I've agreed to sell
Tom."

"What! our Tom?--that good, faithful creature!--been your faithful
servant from a boy! O, Mr. Shelby!--and you have promised him his
freedom, too,--you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it. Well,
I can believe anything now,--I can believe ‘now’ that you could sell
little Harry, poor Eliza's only child!" said Mrs. Shelby, in a tone
between grief and indignation.

"Well, since you must know all, it is so. I have agreed to sell Tom
and Harry both; and I don't know why I am to be rated, as if I were a
monster, for doing what every one does every day."

"But why, of all others, choose these?" said Mrs. Shelby. "Why sell
them, of all on the place, if you must sell at all?"

"Because they will bring the highest sum of any,--that's why. I could
choose another, if you say so. The fellow made me a high bid on Eliza,
if that would suit you any better," said Mr. Shelby.

"The wretch!" said Mrs. Shelby, vehemently.

"Well, I didn't listen to it, a moment,--out of regard to your feelings,
I wouldn't;--so give me some credit."

"My dear," said Mrs. Shelby, recollecting herself, "forgive me. I have
been hasty. I was surprised, and entirely unprepared for this;--but
surely you will allow me to intercede for these poor creatures. Tom is
a noble-hearted, faithful fellow, if he is black. I do believe, Mr.
Shelby, that if he were put to it, he would lay down his life for you."

"I know it,--I dare say;--but what's the use of all this?--I can't help
myself."

"Why not make a pecuniary sacrifice? I'm willing to bear my part of the
inconvenience. O, Mr. Shelby, I have tried--tried most faithfully, as a
Christian woman should--to do my duty to these poor, simple, dependent
creatures. I have cared for them, instructed them, watched over them,
and know all their little cares and joys, for years; and how can I ever
hold up my head again among them, if, for the sake of a little paltry
gain, we sell such a faithful, excellent, confiding creature as poor
Tom, and tear from him in a moment all we have taught him to love and
value? I have taught them the duties of the family, of parent and
child, and husband and wife; and how can I bear to have this open
acknowledgment that we care for no tie, no duty, no relation, however
sacred, compared with money? I have talked with Eliza about her boy--her
duty to him as a Christian mother, to watch over him, pray for him, and
bring him up in a Christian way; and now what can I say, if you tear him
away, and sell him, soul and body, to a profane, unprincipled man, just
to save a little money? I have told her that one soul is worth more than
all the money in the world; and how will she believe me when she sees
us turn round and sell her child?--sell him, perhaps, to certain ruin of
body and soul!"

"I'm sorry you feel so about it,--indeed I am," said Mr. Shelby; "and
I respect your feelings, too, though I don't pretend to share them to
their full extent; but I tell you now, solemnly, it's of no use--I can't
help myself. I didn't mean to tell you this Emily; but, in plain words,
there is no choice between selling these two and selling everything.
Either they must go, or ‘all’ must. Haley has come into possession of
a mortgage, which, if I don't clear off with him directly, will take
everything before it. I've raked, and scraped, and borrowed, and all but
begged,--and the price of these two was needed to make up the balance,
and I had to give them up. Haley fancied the child; he agreed to settle
the matter that way, and no other. I was in his power, and ‘had’ to do
it. If you feel so to have them sold, would it be any better to have
‘all’ sold?"

Mrs. Shelby stood like one stricken. Finally, turning to her toilet, she
rested her face in her hands, and gave a sort of groan.

"This is God's curse on slavery!--a bitter, bitter, most accursed
thing!--a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to
think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil. It is a sin
to hold a slave under laws like ours,--I always felt it was,--I always
thought so when I was a girl,--I thought so still more after I joined
the church; but I thought I could gild it over,--I thought, by kindness,
and care, and instruction, I could make the condition of mine better
than freedom--fool that I was!"

"Why, wife, you are getting to be an abolitionist, quite."

"Abolitionist! if they knew all I know about slavery, they ‘might’ talk!
We don't need them to tell us; you know I never thought that slavery was
right--never felt willing to own slaves."

"Well, therein you differ from many wise and pious men," said Mr.
Shelby. "You remember Mr. B.'s sermon, the other Sunday?"

"I don't want to hear such sermons; I never wish to hear Mr. B. in our
church again. Ministers can't help the evil, perhaps,--can't cure it,
any more than we can,--but defend it!--it always went against my common
sense. And I think you didn't think much of that sermon, either."

"Well," said Shelby, "I must say these ministers sometimes carry matters
further than we poor sinners would exactly dare to do. We men of the
world must wink pretty hard at various things, and get used to a deal
that isn't the exact thing. But we don't quite fancy, when women and
ministers come out broad and square, and go beyond us in matters of
either modesty or morals, that's a fact. But now, my dear, I trust you
see the necessity of the thing, and you see that I have done the very
best that circumstances would allow."

"O yes, yes!" said Mrs. Shelby, hurriedly and abstractedly fingering
her gold watch,--"I haven't any jewelry of any amount," she added,
thoughtfully; "but would not this watch do something?--it was an
expensive one, when it was bought. If I could only at least save Eliza's
child, I would sacrifice anything I have."

"I'm sorry, very sorry, Emily," said Mr. Shelby, "I'm sorry this takes
hold of you so; but it will do no good. The fact is, Emily, the thing's
done; the bills of sale are already signed, and in Haley's hands; and
you must be thankful it is no worse. That man has had it in his power
to ruin us all,--and now he is fairly off. If you knew the man as I do,
you'd think that we had had a narrow escape."

"Is he so hard, then?"

"Why, not a cruel man, exactly, but a man of leather,--a man alive to
nothing but trade and profit,--cool, and unhesitating, and unrelenting,
as death and the grave. He'd sell his own mother at a good
percentage--not wishing the old woman any harm, either."

"And this wretch owns that good, faithful Tom, and Eliza's child!"

"Well, my dear, the fact is that this goes rather hard with me; it's
a thing I hate to think of. Haley wants to drive matters, and take
possession tomorrow. I'm going to get out my horse bright and early,
and be off. I can't see Tom, that's a fact; and you had better arrange a
drive somewhere, and carry Eliza off. Let the thing be done when she is
out of sight."

"No, no," said Mrs. Shelby; "I'll be in no sense accomplice or help in
this cruel business. I'll go and see poor old Tom, God help him, in his
distress! They shall see, at any rate, that their mistress can feel for
and with them. As to Eliza, I dare not think about it. The Lord forgive
us! What have we done, that this cruel necessity should come on us?"

There was one listener to this conversation whom Mr. and Mrs. Shelby
little suspected.

Communicating with their apartment was a large closet, opening by a door
into the outer passage. When Mrs. Shelby had dismissed Eliza for the
night, her feverish and excited mind had suggested the idea of this
closet; and she had hidden herself there, and, with her ear pressed
close against the crack of the door, had lost not a word of the
conversation.

When the voices died into silence, she rose and crept stealthily away.
Pale, shivering, with rigid features and compressed lips, she looked
an entirely altered being from the soft and timid creature she had been
hitherto. She moved cautiously along the entry, paused one moment at her
mistress' door, and raised her hands in mute appeal to Heaven, and then
turned and glided into her own room. It was a quiet, neat apartment,
on the same floor with her mistress. There was a pleasant sunny window,
where she had often sat singing at her sewing; there a little case of
books, and various little fancy articles, ranged by them, the gifts of
Christmas holidays; there was her simple wardrobe in the closet and in
the drawers:--here was, in short, her home; and, on the whole, a happy
one it had been to her. But there, on the bed, lay her slumbering boy,
his long curls falling negligently around his unconscious face, his rosy
mouth half open, his little fat hands thrown out over the bedclothes,
and a smile spread like a sunbeam over his whole face.

"Poor boy! poor fellow!" said Eliza; "they have sold you! but your
mother will save you yet!"

No tear dropped over that pillow; in such straits as these, the heart
has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in
silence. She took a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote, hastily,

"O, Missis! dear Missis! don't think me ungrateful,--don't think hard of
me, any way,--I heard all you and master said tonight. I am going to try
to save my boy--you will not blame me! God bless and reward you for all
your kindness!"

Hastily folding and directing this, she went to a drawer and made up
a little package of clothing for her boy, which she tied with a
handkerchief firmly round her waist; and, so fond is a mother's
remembrance, that, even in the terrors of that hour, she did not forget
to put in the little package one or two of his favorite toys, reserving
a gayly painted parrot to amuse him, when she should be called on to
awaken him. It was some trouble to arouse the little sleeper; but, after
some effort, he sat up, and was playing with his bird, while his mother
was putting on her bonnet and shawl.

"Where are you going, mother?" said he, as she drew near the bed, with
his little coat and cap.

His mother drew near, and looked so earnestly into his eyes, that he at
once divined that something unusual was the matter.

"Hush, Harry," she said; "mustn't speak loud, or they will hear us. A
wicked man was coming to take little Harry away from his mother, and
carry him 'way off in the dark; but mother won't let him--she's going to
put on her little boy's cap and coat, and run off with him, so the ugly
man can't catch him."

Saying these words, she had tied and buttoned on the child's simple
outfit, and, taking him in her arms, she whispered to him to be
very still; and, opening a door in her room which led into the outer
verandah, she glided noiselessly out.

It was a sparkling, frosty, starlight night, and the mother wrapped the
shawl close round her child, as, perfectly quiet with vague terror, he
clung round her neck.

Old Bruno, a great Newfoundland, who slept at the end of the porch,
rose, with a low growl, as she came near. She gently spoke his name,
and the animal, an old pet and playmate of hers, instantly, wagging his
tail, prepared to follow her, though apparently revolving much, in this
simple dog's head, what such an indiscreet midnight promenade might
mean. Some dim ideas of imprudence or impropriety in the measure seemed
to embarrass him considerably; for he often stopped, as Eliza glided
forward, and looked wistfully, first at her and then at the house, and
then, as if reassured by reflection, he pattered along after her again.
A few minutes brought them to the window of Uncle Tom's cottage, and
Eliza stopping, tapped lightly on the window-pane.

The prayer-meeting at Uncle Tom's had, in the order of hymn-singing,
been protracted to a very late hour; and, as Uncle Tom had indulged
himself in a few lengthy solos afterwards, the consequence was, that,
although it was now between twelve and one o'clock, he and his worthy
helpmeet were not yet asleep.

"Good Lord! what's that?" said Aunt Chloe, starting up and hastily
drawing the curtain. "My sakes alive, if it an't Lizy! Get on your
clothes, old man, quick!--there's old Bruno, too, a pawin round; what on
airth! I'm gwine to open the door."

And suiting the action to the word, the door flew open, and the light
of the tallow candle, which Tom had hastily lighted, fell on the haggard
face and dark, wild eyes of the fugitive.

"Lord bless you!--I'm skeered to look at ye, Lizy! Are ye tuck sick, or
what's come over ye?"

"I'm running away--Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe--carrying off my
child--Master sold him!"

"Sold him?" echoed both, lifting up their hands in dismay.

"Yes, sold him!" said Eliza, firmly; "I crept into the closet by
Mistress' door tonight, and I heard Master tell Missis that he had sold
my Harry, and you, Uncle Tom, both, to a trader; and that he was going
off this morning on his horse, and that the man was to take possession
today."

Tom had stood, during this speech, with his hands raised, and his eyes
dilated, like a man in a dream. Slowly and gradually, as its meaning
came over him, he collapsed, rather than seated himself, on his old
chair, and sunk his head down upon his knees.

"The good Lord have pity on us!" said Aunt Chloe. "O! it don't seem as
if it was true! What has he done, that Mas'r should sell ‘him’?"

"He hasn't done anything,--it isn't for that. Master don't want to sell,
and Missis she's always good. I heard her plead and beg for us; but he
told her 't was no use; that he was in this man's debt, and that this
man had got the power over him; and that if he didn't pay him off clear,
it would end in his having to sell the place and all the people, and
move off. Yes, I heard him say there was no choice between selling these
two and selling all, the man was driving him so hard. Master said he was
sorry; but oh, Missis--you ought to have heard her talk! If she an't a
Christian and an angel, there never was one. I'm a wicked girl to leave
her so; but, then, I can't help it. She said, herself, one soul was
worth more than the world; and this boy has a soul, and if I let him be
carried off, who knows what'll become of it? It must be right: but, if
it an't right, the Lord forgive me, for I can't help doing it!"

"Well, old man!" said Aunt Chloe, "why don't you go, too? Will you
wait to be toted down river, where they kill niggers with hard work and
starving? I'd a heap rather die than go there, any day! There's time for
ye,--be off with Lizy,--you've got a pass to come and go any time. Come,
bustle up, and I'll get your things together."

Tom slowly raised his head, and looked sorrowfully but quietly around,
and said,

"No, no--I an't going. Let Eliza go--it's her right! I wouldn't be the
one to say no--'tan't in ‘natur’ for her to stay; but you heard what she
said! If I must be sold, or all the people on the place, and everything
go to rack, why, let me be sold. I s'pose I can bar it as well as
any on 'em," he added, while something like a sob and a sigh shook his
broad, rough chest convulsively. "Mas'r always found me on the spot--he
always will. I never have broke trust, nor used my pass no ways contrary
to my word, and I never will. It's better for me alone to go, than to
break up the place and sell all. Mas'r an't to blame, Chloe, and he'll
take care of you and the poor--"

Here he turned to the rough trundle bed full of little woolly heads, and
broke fairly down. He leaned over the back of the chair, and covered
his face with his large hands. Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the
chair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor; just such
tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born
son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your
dying babe. For, sir, he was a man,--and you are but another man. And,
woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in
life's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

"And now," said Eliza, as she stood in the door, "I saw my husband
only this afternoon, and I little knew then what was to come. They have
pushed him to the very last standing place, and he told me, today, that
he was going to run away. Do try, if you can, to get word to him. Tell
him how I went, and why I went; and tell him I'm going to try and find
Canada. You must give my love to him, and tell him, if I never see him
again," she turned away, and stood with her back to them for a moment,
and then added, in a husky voice, "tell him to be as good as he can, and
try and meet me in the kingdom of heaven."

"Call Bruno in there," she added. "Shut the door on him, poor beast! He
mustn't go with me!"

A few last words and tears, a few simple adieus and blessings, and
clasping her wondering and affrighted child in her arms, she glided
noiselessly away.



CHAPTER VI

Discovery


Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, after their protracted discussion of the night
before, did not readily sink to repose, and, in consequence, slept
somewhat later than usual, the ensuing morning.

"I wonder what keeps Eliza," said Mrs. Shelby, after giving her bell
repeated pulls, to no purpose.

Mr. Shelby was standing before his dressing-glass, sharpening his razor;
and just then the door opened, and a colored boy entered, with his
shaving-water.

"Andy," said his mistress, "step to Eliza's door, and tell her I have
rung for her three times. Poor thing!" she added, to herself, with a
sigh.

Andy soon returned, with eyes very wide in astonishment.

"Lor, Missis! Lizy's drawers is all open, and her things all lying every
which way; and I believe she's just done clared out!"

The truth flashed upon Mr. Shelby and his wife at the same moment. He
exclaimed,

"Then she suspected it, and she's off!"

"The Lord be thanked!" said Mrs. Shelby. "I trust she is."

"Wife, you talk like a fool! Really, it will be something pretty awkward
for me, if she is. Haley saw that I hesitated about selling this child,
and he'll think I connived at it, to get him out of the way. It touches
my honor!" And Mr. Shelby left the room hastily.

There was great running and ejaculating, and opening and shutting of
doors, and appearance of faces in all shades of color in different
places, for about a quarter of an hour. One person only, who might have
shed some light on the matter, was entirely silent, and that was the
head cook, Aunt Chloe. Silently, and with a heavy cloud settled down
over her once joyous face, she proceeded making out her breakfast
biscuits, as if she heard and saw nothing of the excitement around her.

Very soon, about a dozen young imps were roosting, like so many crows,
on the verandah railings, each one determined to be the first one to
apprize the strange Mas'r of his ill luck.

"He'll be rael mad, I'll be bound," said Andy.

"‘Won't’ he swar!" said little black Jake.

"Yes, for he ‘does’ swar," said woolly-headed Mandy. "I hearn him
yesterday, at dinner. I hearn all about it then, 'cause I got into the
closet where Missis keeps the great jugs, and I hearn every word." And
Mandy, who had never in her life thought of the meaning of a word she
had heard, more than a black cat, now took airs of superior wisdom,
and strutted about, forgetting to state that, though actually coiled up
among the jugs at the time specified, she had been fast asleep all the
time.

When, at last, Haley appeared, booted and spurred, he was saluted with
the bad tidings on every hand. The young imps on the verandah were not
disappointed in their hope of hearing him "swar," which he did with a
fluency and fervency which delighted them all amazingly, as they
ducked and dodged hither and thither, to be out of the reach of his
riding-whip; and, all whooping off together, they tumbled, in a pile of
immeasurable giggle, on the withered turf under the verandah, where they
kicked up their heels and shouted to their full satisfaction.

"If I had the little devils!" muttered Haley, between his teeth.

"But you ha'nt got 'em, though!" said Andy, with a triumphant flourish,
and making a string of indescribable mouths at the unfortunate trader's
back, when he was fairly beyond hearing.

"I say now, Shelby, this yer 's a most extro'rnary business!" said
Haley, as he abruptly entered the parlor. "It seems that gal 's off,
with her young un."

"Mr. Haley, Mrs. Shelby is present," said Mr. Shelby.

"I beg pardon, ma'am," said Haley, bowing slightly, with a still
lowering brow; "but still I say, as I said before, this yer's a sing'lar
report. Is it true, sir?"

"Sir," said Mr. Shelby, "if you wish to communicate with me, you must
observe something of the decorum of a gentleman. Andy, take Mr. Haley's
hat and riding-whip. Take a seat, sir. Yes, sir; I regret to say that
the young woman, excited by overhearing, or having reported to her,
something of this business, has taken her child in the night, and made
off."

"I did expect fair dealing in this matter, I confess," said Haley.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Shelby, turning sharply round upon him, "what am
I to understand by that remark? If any man calls my honor in question, I
have but one answer for him."

The trader cowered at this, and in a somewhat lower tone said that "it
was plaguy hard on a fellow, that had made a fair bargain, to be gulled
that way."

"Mr. Haley," said Mr. Shelby, "if I did not think you had some cause
for disappointment, I should not have borne from you the rude and
unceremonious style of your entrance into my parlor this morning. I say
thus much, however, since appearances call for it, that I shall allow
of no insinuations cast upon me, as if I were at all partner to any
unfairness in this matter. Moreover, I shall feel bound to give you
every assistance, in the use of horses, servants, &c., in the recovery
of your property. So, in short, Haley," said he, suddenly dropping from
the tone of dignified coolness to his ordinary one of easy frankness,
"the best way for you is to keep good-natured and eat some breakfast,
and we will then see what is to be done."

Mrs. Shelby now rose, and said her engagements would prevent her being
at the breakfast-table that morning; and, deputing a very respectable
mulatto woman to attend to the gentlemen's coffee at the side-board, she
left the room.

"Old lady don't like your humble servant, over and above," said Haley,
with an uneasy effort to be very familiar.

"I am not accustomed to hear my wife spoken of with such freedom," said
Mr. Shelby, dryly.

"Beg pardon; of course, only a joke, you know," said Haley, forcing a
laugh.

"Some jokes are less agreeable than others," rejoined Shelby.

"Devilish free, now I've signed those papers, cuss him!" muttered Haley
to himself; "quite grand, since yesterday!"

Never did fall of any prime minister at court occasion wider surges of
sensation than the report of Tom's fate among his compeers on the place.
It was the topic in every mouth, everywhere; and nothing was done in
the house or in the field, but to discuss its probable results. Eliza's
flight--an unprecedented event on the place--was also a great accessory
in stimulating the general excitement.

Black Sam, as he was commonly called, from his being about three shades
blacker than any other son of ebony on the place, was revolving
the matter profoundly in all its phases and bearings, with a
comprehensiveness of vision and a strict lookout to his own personal
well-being, that would have done credit to any white patriot in
Washington.

"It's an ill wind dat blow nowhar,--dat ar a fact," said Sam,
sententiously, giving an additional hoist to his pantaloons,
and adroitly substituting a long nail in place of a missing
suspender-button, with which effort of mechanical genius he seemed
highly delighted.

"Yes, it's an ill wind blows nowhar," he repeated. "Now, dar, Tom's
down--wal, course der's room for some nigger to be up--and why not
dis nigger?--dat's de idee. Tom, a ridin' round de country--boots
blacked--pass in his pocket--all grand as Cuffee--but who he? Now, why
shouldn't Sam?--dat's what I want to know."

"Halloo, Sam--O Sam! Mas'r wants you to cotch Bill and Jerry," said
Andy, cutting short Sam's soliloquy.

"High! what's afoot now, young un?"

"Why, you don't know, I s'pose, that Lizy's cut stick, and clared out,
with her young un?"

"You teach your granny!" said Sam, with infinite contempt; "knowed it a
heap sight sooner than you did; this nigger an't so green, now!"

"Well, anyhow, Mas'r wants Bill and Jerry geared right up; and you and I
's to go with Mas'r Haley, to look arter her."

"Good, now! dat's de time o' day!" said Sam. "It's Sam dat's called
for in dese yer times. He's de nigger. See if I don't cotch her, now;
Mas'r'll see what Sam can do!"

"Ah! but, Sam," said Andy, "you'd better think twice; for Missis don't
want her cotched, and she'll be in yer wool."

"High!" said Sam, opening his eyes. "How you know dat?"

"Heard her say so, my own self, dis blessed mornin', when I bring in
Mas'r's shaving-water. She sent me to see why Lizy didn't come to dress
her; and when I telled her she was off, she jest ris up, and ses she,
'The Lord be praised;' and Mas'r, he seemed rael mad, and ses he, 'Wife,
you talk like a fool.' But Lor! she'll bring him to! I knows well enough
how that'll be,--it's allers best to stand Missis' side the fence, now I
tell yer."

Black Sam, upon this, scratched his woolly pate, which, if it did
not contain very profound wisdom, still contained a great deal of a
particular species much in demand among politicians of all complexions
and countries, and vulgarly denominated "knowing which side the bread is
buttered;" so, stopping with grave consideration, he again gave a hitch
to his pantaloons, which was his regularly organized method of assisting
his mental perplexities.

"Der an't no saying'--never--'bout no kind o' thing in ‘dis’ yer world,"
he said, at last. Sam spoke like a philosopher, emphasizing ‘this’--as
if he had had a large experience in different sorts of worlds, and
therefore had come to his conclusions advisedly.

"Now, sartin I'd a said that Missis would a scoured the varsal world
after Lizy," added Sam, thoughtfully.

"So she would," said Andy; "but can't ye see through a ladder, ye black
nigger? Missis don't want dis yer Mas'r Haley to get Lizy's boy; dat's
de go!"

"High!" said Sam, with an indescribable intonation, known only to those
who have heard it among the negroes.

"And I'll tell yer more 'n all," said Andy; "I specs you'd better be
making tracks for dem hosses,--mighty sudden, too,---for I hearn Missis
'quirin' arter yer,--so you've stood foolin' long enough."

Sam, upon this, began to bestir himself in real earnest, and after a
while appeared, bearing down gloriously towards the house, with Bill and
Jerry in a full canter, and adroitly throwing himself off before they
had any idea of stopping, he brought them up alongside of the horse-post
like a tornado. Haley's horse, which was a skittish young colt, winced,
and bounced, and pulled hard at his halter.

"Ho, ho!" said Sam, "skeery, ar ye?" and his black visage lighted up
with a curious, mischievous gleam. "I'll fix ye now!" said he.

There was a large beech-tree overshadowing the place, and the small,
sharp, triangular beech-nuts lay scattered thickly on the ground.
With one of these in his fingers, Sam approached the colt, stroked
and patted, and seemed apparently busy in soothing his agitation. On
pretence of adjusting the saddle, he adroitly slipped under it the sharp
little nut, in such a manner that the least weight brought upon the
saddle would annoy the nervous sensibilities of the animal, without
leaving any perceptible graze or wound.

"Dar!" he said, rolling his eyes with an approving grin; "me fix 'em!"

At this moment Mrs. Shelby appeared on the balcony, beckoning to him.
Sam approached with as good a determination to pay court as did ever
suitor after a vacant place at St. James' or Washington.

"Why have you been loitering so, Sam? I sent Andy to tell you to hurry."

"Lord bless you, Missis!" said Sam, "horses won't be cotched all in a
minit; they'd done clared out way down to the south pasture, and the
Lord knows whar!"

"Sam, how often must I tell you not to say 'Lord bless you, and the Lord
knows,' and such things? It's wicked."

"O, Lord bless my soul! I done forgot, Missis! I won't say nothing of de
sort no more."

"Why, Sam, you just ‘have’ said it again."

"Did I? O, Lord! I mean--I didn't go fur to say it."

"You must be ‘careful’, Sam."

"Just let me get my breath, Missis, and I'll start fair. I'll be bery
careful."

"Well, Sam, you are to go with Mr. Haley, to show him the road, and help
him. Be careful of the horses, Sam; you know Jerry was a little lame
last week; ‘don't ride them too fast’."

Mrs. Shelby spoke the last words with a low voice, and strong emphasis.

"Let dis child alone for dat!" said Sam, rolling up his eyes with a
volume of meaning. "Lord knows! High! Didn't say dat!" said he, suddenly
catching his breath, with a ludicrous flourish of apprehension, which
made his mistress laugh, spite of herself. "Yes, Missis, I'll look out
for de hosses!"

"Now, Andy," said Sam, returning to his stand under the beech-trees,
"you see I wouldn't be 't all surprised if dat ar gen'lman's crittur
should gib a fling, by and by, when he comes to be a gettin' up. You
know, Andy, critturs ‘will’ do such things;" and therewith Sam poked
Andy in the side, in a highly suggestive manner.

"High!" said Andy, with an air of instant appreciation.

"Yes, you see, Andy, Missis wants to make time,--dat ar's clar to der
most or'nary 'bserver. I jis make a little for her. Now, you see, get
all dese yer hosses loose, caperin' permiscus round dis yer lot and down
to de wood dar, and I spec Mas'r won't be off in a hurry."

Andy grinned.

"Yer see," said Sam, "yer see, Andy, if any such thing should happen as
that Mas'r Haley's horse ‘should’ begin to act contrary, and cut up, you
and I jist lets go of our'n to help him, and ‘we'll help him’--oh yes!"
And Sam and Andy laid their heads back on their shoulders, and broke
into a low, immoderate laugh, snapping their fingers and flourishing
their heels with exquisite delight.

At this instant, Haley appeared on the verandah. Somewhat mollified by
certain cups of very good coffee, he came out smiling and talking, in
tolerably restored humor. Sam and Andy, clawing for certain fragmentary
palm-leaves, which they were in the habit of considering as hats, flew
to the horseposts, to be ready to "help Mas'r."

Sam's palm-leaf had been ingeniously disentangled from all pretensions
to braid, as respects its brim; and the slivers starting apart, and
standing upright, gave it a blazing air of freedom and defiance, quite
equal to that of any Fejee chief; while the whole brim of Andy's being
departed bodily, he rapped the crown on his head with a dexterous thump,
and looked about well pleased, as if to say, "Who says I haven't got a
hat?"

"Well, boys," said Haley, "look alive now; we must lose no time."

"Not a bit of him, Mas'r!" said Sam, putting Haley's rein in his hand,
and holding his stirrup, while Andy was untying the other two horses.

The instant Haley touched the saddle, the mettlesome creature bounded
from the earth with a sudden spring, that threw his master sprawling,
some feet off, on the soft, dry turf. Sam, with frantic ejaculations,
made a dive at the reins, but only succeeded in brushing the blazing
palm-leaf afore-named into the horse's eyes, which by no means tended
to allay the confusion of his nerves. So, with great vehemence, he
overturned Sam, and, giving two or three contemptuous snorts, flourished
his heels vigorously in the air, and was soon prancing away towards the
lower end of the lawn, followed by Bill and Jerry, whom Andy had not
failed to let loose, according to contract, speeding them off with
various direful ejaculations. And now ensued a miscellaneous scene
of confusion. Sam and Andy ran and shouted,--dogs barked here and
there,--and Mike, Mose, Mandy, Fanny, and all the smaller specimens
on the place, both male and female, raced, clapped hands, whooped, and
shouted, with outrageous officiousness and untiring zeal.

Haley's horse, which was a white one, and very fleet and spirited,
appeared to enter into the spirit of the scene with great gusto; and
having for his coursing ground a lawn of nearly half a mile in extent,
gently sloping down on every side into indefinite woodland, he appeared
to take infinite delight in seeing how near he could allow his pursuers
to approach him, and then, when within a hand's breadth, whisk off with
a start and a snort, like a mischievous beast as he was and career far
down into some alley of the wood-lot. Nothing was further from Sam's
mind than to have any one of the troop taken until such season as
should seem to him most befitting,--and the exertions that he made were
certainly most heroic. Like the sword of Coeur De Lion, which always
blazed in the front and thickest of the battle, Sam's palm-leaf was to
be seen everywhere when there was the least danger that a horse could be
caught; there he would bear down full tilt, shouting, "Now for it! cotch
him! cotch him!" in a way that would set everything to indiscriminate
rout in a moment.

Haley ran up and down, and cursed and swore and stamped miscellaneously.
Mr. Shelby in vain tried to shout directions from the balcony, and Mrs.
Shelby from her chamber window alternately laughed and wondered,--not
without some inkling of what lay at the bottom of all this confusion.

At last, about twelve o'clock, Sam appeared triumphant, mounted on
Jerry, with Haley's horse by his side, reeking with sweat, but with
flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, showing that the spirit of freedom
had not yet entirely subsided.

"He's cotched!" he exclaimed, triumphantly. "If 't hadn't been for me,
they might a bust themselves, all on 'em; but I cotched him!"

"You!" growled Haley, in no amiable mood. "If it hadn't been for you,
this never would have happened."

"Lord bless us, Mas'r," said Sam, in a tone of the deepest concern, "and
me that has been racin' and chasin' till the sweat jest pours off me!"

"Well, well!" said Haley, "you've lost me near three hours, with your
cursed nonsense. Now let's be off, and have no more fooling."

"Why, Mas'r," said Sam, in a deprecating tone, "I believe you mean to
kill us all clar, horses and all. Here we are all just ready to drop
down, and the critters all in a reek of sweat. Why, Mas'r won't think of
startin' on now till arter dinner. Mas'rs' hoss wants rubben down; see
how he splashed hisself; and Jerry limps too; don't think Missis would
be willin' to have us start dis yer way, no how. Lord bless you, Mas'r,
we can ketch up, if we do stop. Lizy never was no great of a walker."

Mrs. Shelby, who, greatly to her amusement, had overheard this
conversation from the verandah, now resolved to do her part. She came
forward, and, courteously expressing her concern for Haley's accident,
pressed him to stay to dinner, saying that the cook should bring it on
the table immediately.

Thus, all things considered, Haley, with rather an equivocal grace,
proceeded to the parlor, while Sam, rolling his eyes after him
with unutterable meaning, proceeded gravely with the horses to the
stable-yard.

"Did yer see him, Andy? ‘did’ yer see him?" said Sam, when he had got
fairly beyond the shelter of the barn, and fastened the horse to a post.
"O, Lor, if it warn't as good as a meetin', now, to see him a dancin'
and kickin' and swarin' at us. Didn't I hear him? Swar away, ole fellow
(says I to myself ); will yer have yer hoss now, or wait till you cotch
him? (says I). Lor, Andy, I think I can see him now." And Sam and Andy
leaned up against the barn and laughed to their hearts' content.

"Yer oughter seen how mad he looked, when I brought the hoss up.
Lord, he'd a killed me, if he durs' to; and there I was a standin' as
innercent and as humble."

"Lor, I seed you," said Andy; "an't you an old hoss, Sam?"

"Rather specks I am," said Sam; "did yer see Missis up stars at the
winder? I seed her laughin'."

"I'm sure, I was racin' so, I didn't see nothing," said Andy.

"Well, yer see," said Sam, proceeding gravely to wash down Haley's pony,
"I 'se 'quired what yer may call a habit ‘o' bobservation’, Andy. It's a
very 'portant habit, Andy; and I 'commend yer to be cultivatin' it,
now yer young. Hist up that hind foot, Andy. Yer see, Andy, it's
‘bobservation’ makes all de difference in niggers. Didn't I see which
way the wind blew dis yer mornin'? Didn't I see what Missis wanted,
though she never let on? Dat ar's bobservation, Andy. I 'spects it's
what you may call a faculty. Faculties is different in different
peoples, but cultivation of 'em goes a great way."

"I guess if I hadn't helped your bobservation dis mornin', yer wouldn't
have seen your way so smart," said Andy.

"Andy," said Sam, "you's a promisin' child, der an't no manner o' doubt.
I thinks lots of yer, Andy; and I don't feel no ways ashamed to take
idees from you. We oughtenter overlook nobody, Andy, cause the smartest
on us gets tripped up sometimes. And so, Andy, let's go up to the house
now. I'll be boun' Missis'll give us an uncommon good bite, dis yer
time."



CHAPTER VII

The Mother's Struggle


It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate
and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's
cabin.

Her husband's suffering and dangers, and the danger of her child, all
blended in her mind, with a confused and stunning sense of the risk she
was running, in leaving the only home she had ever known, and cutting
loose from the protection of a friend whom she loved and revered. Then
there was the parting from every familiar object,--the place where she
had grown up, the trees under which she had played, the groves where
she had walked many an evening in happier days, by the side of her young
husband,--everything, as it lay in the clear, frosty starlight, seemed
to speak reproachfully to her, and ask her whither could she go from a
home like that?

But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of
frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger. Her boy was old enough
to have walked by her side, and, in an indifferent case, she would only
have led him by the hand; but now the bare thought of putting him out
of her arms made her shudder, and she strained him to her bosom with a
convulsive grasp, as she went rapidly forward.

The frosty ground creaked beneath her feet, and she trembled at the
sound; every quaking leaf and fluttering shadow sent the blood backward
to her heart, and quickened her footsteps. She wondered within herself
at the strength that seemed to be come upon her; for she felt the weight
of her boy as if it had been a feather, and every flutter of fear seemed
to increase the supernatural power that bore her on, while from her
pale lips burst forth, in frequent ejaculations, the prayer to a Friend
above--"Lord, help! Lord, save me!"

If it were ‘your’ Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be
torn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning,--if you had seen the
man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had
only from twelve o'clock till morning to make good your escape,--how
fast could ‘you’ walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief
hours, with the darling at your bosom,--the little sleepy head on your
shoulder,--the small, soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck?

For the child slept. At first, the novelty and alarm kept him waking;
but his mother so hurriedly repressed every breath or sound, and so
assured him that if he were only still she would certainly save him,
that he clung quietly round her neck, only asking, as he found himself
sinking to sleep,

"Mother, I don't need to keep awake, do I?"

"No, my darling; sleep, if you want to."

"But, mother, if I do get asleep, you won't let him get me?"

"No! so may God help me!" said his mother, with a paler cheek, and a
brighter light in her large dark eyes.

"You're ‘sure’, an't you, mother?"

"Yes, ‘sure’!" said the mother, in a voice that startled herself; for it
seemed to her to come from a spirit within, that was no part of her;
and the boy dropped his little weary head on her shoulder, and was soon
asleep. How the touch of those warm arms, the gentle breathings that
came in her neck, seemed to add fire and spirit to her movements! It
seemed to her as if strength poured into her in electric streams,
from every gentle touch and movement of the sleeping, confiding child.
Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can
make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so
that the weak become so mighty.

The boundaries of the farm, the grove, the wood-lot, passed by her
dizzily, as she walked on; and still she went, leaving one familiar
object after another, slacking not, pausing not, till reddening daylight
found her many a long mile from all traces of any familiar objects upon
the open highway.

She had often been, with her mistress, to visit some connections, in the
little village of T----, not far from the Ohio river, and knew the road
well. To go thither, to escape across the Ohio river, were the first
hurried outlines of her plan of escape; beyond that, she could only hope
in God.

When horses and vehicles began to move along the highway, with that
alert perception peculiar to a state of excitement, and which seems to
be a sort of inspiration, she became aware that her headlong pace and
distracted air might bring on her remark and suspicion. She therefore
put the boy on the ground, and, adjusting her dress and bonnet,
she walked on at as rapid a pace as she thought consistent with the
preservation of appearances. In her little bundle she had provided a
store of cakes and apples, which she used as expedients for quickening
the speed of the child, rolling the apple some yards before them, when
the boy would run with all his might after it; and this ruse, often
repeated, carried them over many a half-mile.

After a while, they came to a thick patch of woodland, through which
murmured a clear brook. As the child complained of hunger and thirst,
she climbed over the fence with him; and, sitting down behind a large
rock which concealed them from the road, she gave him a breakfast out of
her little package. The boy wondered and grieved that she could not eat;
and when, putting his arms round her neck, he tried to wedge some of
his cake into her mouth, it seemed to her that the rising in her throat
would choke her.

"No, no, Harry darling! mother can't eat till you are safe! We must go
on--on--till we come to the river!" And she hurried again into the road,
and again constrained herself to walk regularly and composedly forward.

She was many miles past any neighborhood where she was personally known.
If she should chance to meet any who knew her, she reflected that
the well-known kindness of the family would be of itself a blind to
suspicion, as making it an unlikely supposition that she could be a
fugitive. As she was also so white as not to be known as of colored
lineage, without a critical survey, and her child was white also, it was
much easier for her to pass on unsuspected.

On this presumption, she stopped at noon at a neat farmhouse, to rest
herself, and buy some dinner for her child and self; for, as the danger
decreased with the distance, the supernatural tension of the nervous
system lessened, and she found herself both weary and hungry.

The good woman, kindly and gossipping, seemed rather pleased than
otherwise with having somebody come in to talk with; and accepted,
without examination, Eliza's statement, that she "was going on a little
piece, to spend a week with her friends,"--all which she hoped in her
heart might prove strictly true.

An hour before sunset, she entered the village of T----, by the Ohio
river, weary and foot-sore, but still strong in heart. Her first glance
was at the river, which lay, like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of
liberty on the other side.

It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great
cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid
waters. Owing to the peculiar form of the shore on the Kentucky side,
the land bending far out into the water, the ice had been lodged and
detained in great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round
the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming
a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a
great, undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost
to the Kentucky shore.

Eliza stood, for a moment, contemplating this unfavorable aspect of
things, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from
running, and then turned into a small public house on the bank, to make
a few inquiries.

The hostess, who was busy in various fizzing and stewing operations over
the fire, preparatory to the evening meal, stopped, with a fork in her
hand, as Eliza's sweet and plaintive voice arrested her.

"What is it?" she said.

"Isn't there any ferry or boat, that takes people over to B----, now?"
she said.

"No, indeed!" said the woman; "the boats has stopped running."

Eliza's look of dismay and disappointment struck the woman, and she
said, inquiringly,

"May be you're wanting to get over?--anybody sick? Ye seem mighty
anxious?"

"I've got a child that's very dangerous," said Eliza. "I never heard of
it till last night, and I've walked quite a piece today, in hopes to get
to the ferry."

"Well, now, that's onlucky," said the woman, whose motherly sympathies
were much aroused; "I'm re'lly consarned for ye. Solomon!" she called,
from the window, towards a small back building. A man, in leather apron
and very dirty hands, appeared at the door.

"I say, Sol," said the woman, "is that ar man going to tote them bar'ls
over tonight?"

"He said he should try, if 't was any way prudent," said the man.

"There's a man a piece down here, that's going over with some truck this
evening, if he durs' to; he'll be in here to supper tonight, so you'd
better set down and wait. That's a sweet little fellow," added the
woman, offering him a cake.

But the child, wholly exhausted, cried with weariness.

"Poor fellow! he isn't used to walking, and I've hurried him on so,"
said Eliza.

"Well, take him into this room," said the woman, opening into a small
bed-room, where stood a comfortable bed. Eliza laid the weary boy upon
it, and held his hands in hers till he was fast asleep. For her there
was no rest. As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged
her on; and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters
that lay between her and liberty.

Here we must take our leave of her for the present, to follow the course
of her pursuers.


Though Mrs. Shelby had promised that the dinner should be hurried on
table, yet it was soon seen, as the thing has often been seen before,
that it required more than one to make a bargain. So, although the order
was fairly given out in Haley's hearing, and carried to Aunt Chloe by at
least half a dozen juvenile messengers, that dignitary only gave certain
very gruff snorts, and tosses of her head, and went on with every
operation in an unusually leisurely and circumstantial manner.

For some singular reason, an impression seemed to reign among the
servants generally that Missis would not be particularly disobliged by
delay; and it was wonderful what a number of counter accidents occurred
constantly, to retard the course of things. One luckless wight contrived
to upset the gravy; and then gravy had to be got up ‘de novo’, with
due care and formality, Aunt Chloe watching and stirring with dogged
precision, answering shortly, to all suggestions of haste, that she
"warn't a going to have raw gravy on the table, to help nobody's
catchings." One tumbled down with the water, and had to go to the spring
for more; and another precipitated the butter into the path of events;
and there was from time to time giggling news brought into the kitchen
that "Mas'r Haley was mighty oneasy, and that he couldn't sit in his
cheer no ways, but was a walkin' and stalkin' to the winders and through
the porch."

"Sarves him right!" said Aunt Chloe, indignantly. "He'll get wus nor
oneasy, one of these days, if he don't mend his ways. ‘His’ master'll be
sending for him, and then see how he'll look!"

"He'll go to torment, and no mistake," said little Jake.

"He desarves it!" said Aunt Chloe, grimly; "he's broke a many, many,
many hearts,--I tell ye all!" she said, stopping, with a fork uplifted
in her hands; "it's like what Mas'r George reads in Ravelations,--souls
a callin' under the altar! and a callin' on the Lord for vengeance on
sich!--and by and by the Lord he'll hear 'em--so he will!"

Aunt Chloe, who was much revered in the kitchen, was listened to with
open mouth; and, the dinner being now fairly sent in, the whole kitchen
was at leisure to gossip with her, and to listen to her remarks.

"Sich'll be burnt up forever, and no mistake; won't ther?" said Andy.

"I'd be glad to see it, I'll be boun'," said little Jake.

"Chil'en!" said a voice, that made them all start. It was Uncle Tom, who
had come in, and stood listening to the conversation at the door.

"Chil'en!" he said, "I'm afeard you don't know what ye're sayin'.
Forever is a ‘dre'ful’ word, chil'en; it's awful to think on 't. You
oughtenter wish that ar to any human crittur."

"We wouldn't to anybody but the soul-drivers," said Andy; "nobody can
help wishing it to them, they 's so awful wicked."

"Don't natur herself kinder cry out on 'em?" said Aunt Chloe. "Don't dey
tear der suckin' baby right off his mother's breast, and sell him, and
der little children as is crying and holding on by her clothes,--don't
dey pull 'em off and sells 'em? Don't dey tear wife and husband apart?"
said Aunt Chloe, beginning to cry, "when it's jest takin' the very life
on 'em?--and all the while does they feel one bit, don't dey drink and
smoke, and take it oncommon easy? Lor, if the devil don't get them,
what's he good for?" And Aunt Chloe covered her face with her checked
apron, and began to sob in good earnest.

"Pray for them that 'spitefully use you, the good book says," says Tom.

"Pray for 'em!" said Aunt Chloe; "Lor, it's too tough! I can't pray for
'em."

"It's natur, Chloe, and natur 's strong," said Tom, "but the Lord's
grace is stronger; besides, you oughter think what an awful state a poor
crittur's soul 's in that'll do them ar things,--you oughter thank
God that you an't ‘like’ him, Chloe. I'm sure I'd rather be sold, ten
thousand times over, than to have all that ar poor crittur's got to
answer for."

"So 'd I, a heap," said Jake. "Lor, ‘shouldn't’ we cotch it, Andy?"

Andy shrugged his shoulders, and gave an acquiescent whistle.

"I'm glad Mas'r didn't go off this morning, as he looked to," said Tom;
"that ar hurt me more than sellin', it did. Mebbe it might have been
natural for him, but 't would have come desp't hard on me, as has known
him from a baby; but I've seen Mas'r, and I begin ter feel sort o'
reconciled to the Lord's will now. Mas'r couldn't help hisself; he did
right, but I'm feared things will be kinder goin' to rack, when I'm gone
Mas'r can't be spected to be a pryin' round everywhar, as I've done, a
keepin' up all the ends. The boys all means well, but they 's powerful
car'less. That ar troubles me."

The bell here rang, and Tom was summoned to the parlor.

"Tom," said his master, kindly, "I want you to notice that I give this
gentleman bonds to forfeit a thousand dollars if you are not on the spot
when he wants you; he's going today to look after his other business,
and you can have the day to yourself. Go anywhere you like, boy."

"Thank you, Mas'r," said Tom.

"And mind yourself," said the trader, "and don't come it over your
master with any o' yer nigger tricks; for I'll take every cent out of
him, if you an't thar. If he'd hear to me, he wouldn't trust any on
ye--slippery as eels!"

"Mas'r," said Tom,--and he stood very straight,--"I was jist eight years
old when ole Missis put you into my arms, and you wasn't a year old.
'Thar,' says she, 'Tom, that's to be ‘your’ young Mas'r; take good care
on him,' says she. And now I jist ask you, Mas'r, have I ever broke word
to you, or gone contrary to you, 'specially since I was a Christian?"

Mr. Shelby was fairly overcome, and the tears rose to his eyes.

"My good boy," said he, "the Lord knows you say but the truth; and if I
was able to help it, all the world shouldn't buy you."

"And sure as I am a Christian woman," said Mrs. Shelby, "you shall be
redeemed as soon as I can any bring together means. Sir," she said to
Haley, "take good account of who you sell him to, and let me know."

"Lor, yes, for that matter," said the trader, "I may bring him up in a
year, not much the wuss for wear, and trade him back."

"I'll trade with you then, and make it for your advantage," said Mrs.
Shelby.

"Of course," said the trader, "all 's equal with me; li'ves trade 'em
up as down, so I does a good business. All I want is a livin', you know,
ma'am; that's all any on us wants, I, s'pose."

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby both felt annoyed and degraded by the familiar
impudence of the trader, and yet both saw the absolute necessity of
putting a constraint on their feelings. The more hopelessly sordid and
insensible he appeared, the greater became Mrs. Shelby's dread of his
succeeding in recapturing Eliza and her child, and of course the greater
her motive for detaining him by every female artifice. She therefore
graciously smiled, assented, chatted familiarly, and did all she could
to make time pass imperceptibly.

At two o'clock Sam and Andy brought the horses up to the posts,
apparently greatly refreshed and invigorated by the scamper of the
morning.

Sam was there new oiled from dinner, with an abundance of zealous
and ready officiousness. As Haley approached, he was boasting, in
flourishing style, to Andy, of the evident and eminent success of the
operation, now that he had "farly come to it."

"Your master, I s'pose, don't keep no dogs," said Haley, thoughtfully,
as he prepared to mount.

"Heaps on 'em," said Sam, triumphantly; "thar's Bruno--he's a roarer!
and, besides that, 'bout every nigger of us keeps a pup of some natur or
uther."

"Poh!" said Haley,--and he said something else, too, with regard to the
said dogs, at which Sam muttered,

"I don't see no use cussin' on 'em, no way."

"But your master don't keep no dogs (I pretty much know he don't) for
trackin' out niggers."

Sam knew exactly what he meant, but he kept on a look of earnest and
desperate simplicity.

"Our dogs all smells round considable sharp. I spect they's the kind,
though they han't never had no practice. They 's ‘far’ dogs, though,
at most anything, if you'd get 'em started. Here, Bruno," he called,
whistling to the lumbering Newfoundland, who came pitching tumultuously
toward them.

"You go hang!" said Haley, getting up. "Come, tumble up now."

Sam tumbled up accordingly, dexterously contriving to tickle Andy as
he did so, which occasioned Andy to split out into a laugh, greatly to
Haley's indignation, who made a cut at him with his riding-whip.

"I 's 'stonished at yer, Andy," said Sam, with awful gravity. "This
yer's a seris bisness, Andy. Yer mustn't be a makin' game. This yer an't
no way to help Mas'r."

"I shall take the straight road to the river," said Haley, decidedly,
after they had come to the boundaries of the estate. "I know the way of
all of 'em,--they makes tracks for the underground."

"Sartin," said Sam, "dat's de idee. Mas'r Haley hits de thing right
in de middle. Now, der's two roads to de river,--de dirt road and der
pike,--which Mas'r mean to take?"

Andy looked up innocently at Sam, surprised at hearing this new
geographical fact, but instantly confirmed what he said, by a vehement
reiteration.

"Cause," said Sam, "I'd rather be 'clined to 'magine that Lizy 'd take
de dirt road, bein' it's the least travelled."

Haley, notwithstanding that he was a very old bird, and naturally
inclined to be suspicious of chaff, was rather brought up by this view
of the case.

"If yer warn't both on yer such cussed liars, now!" he said,
contemplatively as he pondered a moment.

The pensive, reflective tone in which this was spoken appeared to
amuse Andy prodigiously, and he drew a little behind, and shook so as
apparently to run a great risk of failing off his horse, while Sam's
face was immovably composed into the most doleful gravity.

"Course," said Sam, "Mas'r can do as he'd ruther, go de straight road,
if Mas'r thinks best,--it's all one to us. Now, when I study 'pon it, I
think de straight road de best, ‘deridedly’."

"She would naturally go a lonesome way," said Haley, thinking aloud, and
not minding Sam's remark.

"Dar an't no sayin'," said Sam; "gals is pecular; they never does
nothin' ye thinks they will; mose gen'lly the contrary. Gals is nat'lly
made contrary; and so, if you thinks they've gone one road, it is sartin
you'd better go t' other, and then you'll be sure to find 'em. Now, my
private 'pinion is, Lizy took der road; so I think we'd better take de
straight one."

This profound generic view of the female sex did not seem to dispose
Haley particularly to the straight road, and he announced decidedly that
he should go the other, and asked Sam when they should come to it.

"A little piece ahead," said Sam, giving a wink to Andy with the eye
which was on Andy's side of the head; and he added, gravely, "but I've
studded on de matter, and I'm quite clar we ought not to go dat ar way.
I nebber been over it no way. It's despit lonesome, and we might lose
our way,--whar we'd come to, de Lord only knows."

"Nevertheless," said Haley, "I shall go that way."

"Now I think on 't, I think I hearn 'em tell that dat ar road was all
fenced up and down by der creek, and thar, an't it, Andy?"

Andy wasn't certain; he'd only "hearn tell" about that road, but never
been over it. In short, he was strictly noncommittal.

Haley, accustomed to strike the balance of probabilities between lies
of greater or lesser magnitude, thought that it lay in favor of the dirt
road aforesaid. The mention of the thing he thought he perceived
was involuntary on Sam's part at first, and his confused attempts to
dissuade him he set down to a desperate lying on second thoughts, as
being unwilling to implicate Liza.

When, therefore, Sam indicated the road, Haley plunged briskly into it,
followed by Sam and Andy.

Now, the road, in fact, was an old one, that had formerly been a
thoroughfare to the river, but abandoned for many years after the laying
of the new pike. It was open for about an hour's ride, and after that it
was cut across by various farms and fences. Sam knew this fact perfectly
well,--indeed, the road had been so long closed up, that Andy had never
heard of it. He therefore rode along with an air of dutiful submission,
only groaning and vociferating occasionally that 't was "desp't rough,
and bad for Jerry's foot."

"Now, I jest give yer warning," said Haley, "I know yer; yer won't get
me to turn off this road, with all yer fussin'--so you shet up!"

"Mas'r will go his own way!" said Sam, with rueful submission, at the
same time winking most Portentously to Andy, whose delight was now very
near the explosive point.

Sam was in wonderful spirits,--professed to keep a very brisk
lookout,--at one time exclaiming that he saw "a gal's bonnet" on the top
of some distant eminence, or calling to Andy "if that thar wasn't 'Lizy'
down in the hollow;" always making these exclamations in some rough
or craggy part of the road, where the sudden quickening of speed was a
special inconvenience to all parties concerned, and thus keeping Haley
in a state of constant commotion.

After riding about an hour in this way, the whole party made a
precipitate and tumultuous descent into a barn-yard belonging to a large
farming establishment. Not a soul was in sight, all the hands being
employed in the fields; but, as the barn stood conspicuously and plainly
square across the road, it was evident that their journey in that
direction had reached a decided finale.

"Wan't dat ar what I telled Mas'r?" said Sam, with an air of injured
innocence. "How does strange gentleman spect to know more about a
country dan de natives born and raised?"

"You rascal!" said Haley, "you knew all about this."

"Didn't I tell yer I ‘knowd’, and yer wouldn't believe me? I telled
Mas'r 't was all shet up, and fenced up, and I didn't spect we could get
through,--Andy heard me."

It was all too true to be disputed, and the unlucky man had to pocket
his wrath with the best grace he was able, and all three faced to the
right about, and took up their line of march for the highway.

In consequence of all the various delays, it was about three-quarters
of an hour after Eliza had laid her child to sleep in the village tavern
that the party came riding into the same place. Eliza was standing
by the window, looking out in another direction, when Sam's quick eye
caught a glimpse of her. Haley and Andy were two yards behind. At this
crisis, Sam contrived to have his hat blown off, and uttered a loud
and characteristic ejaculation, which startled her at once; she drew
suddenly back; the whole train swept by the window, round to the front
door.

A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza.
Her room opened by a side door to the river. She caught her child, and
sprang down the steps towards it. The trader caught a full glimpse of
her just as she was disappearing down the bank; and throwing himself
from his horse, and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her
like a hound after a deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce
seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water's
edge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God
gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap, she
vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of
ice beyond. It was a desperate leap--impossible to anything but madness
and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy, instinctively cried out, and
lifted up their hands, as she did it.

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked
as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild
cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;
stumbling--leaping--slipping--springing upwards again! Her shoes are
gone--her stockings cut from her feet--while blood marked every step;
but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw
the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.

"Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!" said the man, with an oath.

Eliza recognized the voice and face for a man who owned a farm not far
from her old home.

"O, Mr. Symmes!--save me--do save me--do hide me!" said Elia.

"Why, what's this?" said the man. "Why, if 'tan't Shelby's gal!"

"My child!--this boy!--he'd sold him! There is his Mas'r," said she,
pointing to the Kentucky shore. "O, Mr. Symmes, you've got a little
boy!"

"So I have," said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the
steep bank. "Besides, you're a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I
see it."

When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.

"I'd be glad to do something for ye," said he; "but then there's nowhar
I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go ‘thar’," said
he, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main
street of the village. "Go thar; they're kind folks. Thar's no kind o'
danger but they'll help you,--they're up to all that sort o' thing."

"The Lord bless you!" said Eliza, earnestly.

"No 'casion, no 'casion in the world," said the man. "What I've done's
of no 'count."

"And, oh, surely, sir, you won't tell any one!"

"Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? In course not," said
the man. "Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you are.
You've arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all me."

The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly
away. The man stood and looked after her.

"Shelby, now, mebbe won't think this yer the most neighborly thing in
the world; but what's a feller to do? If he catches one of my gals in
the same fix, he's welcome to pay back. Somehow I never could see no
kind o' critter a strivin' and pantin', and trying to clar theirselves,
with the dogs arter 'em and go agin 'em. Besides, I don't see no kind of
'casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither."

So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed
in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into
acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better
situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.

Haley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza
had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on
Sam and Andy.

"That ar was a tolable fair stroke of business," said Sam.

"The gal 's got seven devils in her, I believe!" said Haley. "How like a
wildcat she jumped!"

"Wal, now," said Sam, scratching his head, "I hope Mas'r'll 'scuse us
trying dat ar road. Don't think I feel spry enough for dat ar, no way!"
and Sam gave a hoarse chuckle.

"‘You’ laugh!" said the trader, with a growl.

"Lord bless you, Mas'r, I couldn't help it now," said Sam, giving way to
the long pent-up delight of his soul. "She looked so curi's, a leapin'
and springin'--ice a crackin'--and only to hear her,--plump! ker chunk!
ker splash! Spring! Lord! how she goes it!" and Sam and Andy laughed
till the tears rolled down their cheeks.

"I'll make ye laugh t' other side yer mouths!" said the trader, laying
about their heads with his riding-whip.

Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their horses
before he was up.

"Good-evening, Mas'r!" said Sam, with much gravity. "I berry much spect
Missis be anxious 'bout Jerry. Mas'r Haley won't want us no longer.
Missis wouldn't hear of our ridin' the critters over Lizy's bridge
tonight;" and, with a facetious poke into Andy's ribs, he started off,
followed by the latter, at full speed,--their shouts of laughter coming
faintly on the wind.



CHAPTER VIII

Eliza's Escape


Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk
of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river,
enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current
and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her
and her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned
to the little tavern, to ponder further what was to be done. The woman
opened to him the door of a little parlor, covered with a rag carpet,
where stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank,
high-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colors
on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood
settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley sat
him down to meditate on the instability of human hopes and happiness in
general.

"What did I want with the little cuss, now," he said to himself, "that
I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?" and
Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of
imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible
reason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter of taste, omit.

He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man who was
apparently dismounting at the door. He hurried to the window.

"By the land! if this yer an't the nearest, now, to what I've heard
folks call Providence," said Haley. "I do b'lieve that ar's Tom Loker."

Haley hastened out. Standing by the bar, in the corner of the room,
was a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and broad in
proportion. He was dressed in a coat of buffalo-skin, made with the hair
outward, which gave him a shaggy and fierce appearance, perfectly in
keeping with the whole air of his physiognomy. In the head and face
every organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating violence
was in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed, could our
readers fancy a bull-dog come unto man's estate, and walking about in
a hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general style and
effect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling companion,
in many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short and slender,
lithe and catlike in his motions, and had a peering, mousing expression
about his keen black eyes, with which every feature of his face seemed
sharpened into sympathy; his thin, long nose, ran out as if it was eager
to bore into the nature of things in general; his sleek, thin, black
hair was stuck eagerly forward, and all his motions and evolutions
expressed a dry, cautious acuteness. The great man poured out a big
tumbler half full of raw spirits, and gulped it down without a word. The
little man stood tiptoe, and putting his head first to one side and then
the other, and snuffing considerately in the directions of the various
bottles, ordered at last a mint julep, in a thin and quivering voice,
and with an air of great circumspection. When poured out, he took it and
looked at it with a sharp, complacent air, like a man who thinks he has
done about the right thing, and hit the nail on the head, and proceeded
to dispose of it in short and well-advised sips.

"Wal, now, who'd a thought this yer luck 'ad come to me? Why, Loker, how
are ye?" said Haley, coming forward, and extending his hand to the big
man.

"The devil!" was the civil reply. "What brought you here, Haley?"

The mousing man, who bore the name of Marks, instantly stopped his
sipping, and, poking his head forward, looked shrewdly on the new
acquaintance, as a cat sometimes looks at a moving dry leaf, or some
other possible object of pursuit.

"I say, Tom, this yer's the luckiest thing in the world. I'm in a devil
of a hobble, and you must help me out."

"Ugh? aw! like enough!" grunted his complacent acquaintance. "A body may
be pretty sure of that, when ‘you're’ glad to see 'em; something to be
made off of 'em. What's the blow now?"

"You've got a friend here?" said Haley, looking doubtfully at Marks;
"partner, perhaps?"

"Yes, I have. Here, Marks! here's that ar feller that I was in with in
Natchez."

"Shall be pleased with his acquaintance," said Marks, thrusting out a
long, thin hand, like a raven's claw. "Mr. Haley, I believe?"

"The same, sir," said Haley. "And now, gentlemen, seein' as we've met so
happily, I think I'll stand up to a small matter of a treat in this here
parlor. So, now, old coon," said he to the man at the bar, "get us hot
water, and sugar, and cigars, and plenty of the ‘real stuff’ and we'll
have a blow-out."

Behold, then, the candles lighted, the fire stimulated to the burning
point in the grate, and our three worthies seated round a table, well
spread with all the accessories to good fellowship enumerated before.

Haley began a pathetic recital of his peculiar troubles. Loker shut up
his mouth, and listened to him with gruff and surly attention. Marks,
who was anxiously and with much fidgeting compounding a tumbler of punch
to his own peculiar taste, occasionally looked up from his employment,
and, poking his sharp nose and chin almost into Haley's face, gave the
most earnest heed to the whole narrative. The conclusion of it appeared
to amuse him extremely, for he shook his shoulders and sides in silence,
and perked up his thin lips with an air of great internal enjoyment.

"So, then, ye'r fairly sewed up, an't ye?" he said; "he! he! he! It's
neatly done, too."

"This yer young-un business makes lots of trouble in the trade," said
Haley, dolefully.

"If we could get a breed of gals that didn't care, now, for their young
uns," said Marks; "tell ye, I think 't would be 'bout the greatest
mod'rn improvement I knows on,"--and Marks patronized his joke by a
quiet introductory sniggle.

"Jes so," said Haley; "I never couldn't see into it; young uns is heaps
of trouble to 'em; one would think, now, they'd be glad to get clar on
'em; but they arn't. And the more trouble a young un is, and the more
good for nothing, as a gen'l thing, the tighter they sticks to 'em."

"Wal, Mr. Haley," said Marks, "'est pass the hot water. Yes, sir, you
say 'est what I feel and all'us have. Now, I bought a gal once, when
I was in the trade,--a tight, likely wench she was, too, and quite
considerable smart,--and she had a young un that was mis'able sickly; it
had a crooked back, or something or other; and I jest gin 't away to
a man that thought he'd take his chance raising on 't, being it didn't
cost nothin';--never thought, yer know, of the gal's taking' on about
it,--but, Lord, yer oughter seen how she went on. Why, re'lly, she did
seem to me to valley the child more 'cause ‘'t was’ sickly and cross,
and plagued her; and she warn't making b'lieve, neither,--cried about
it, she did, and lopped round, as if she'd lost every friend she had.
It re'lly was droll to think on 't. Lord, there ain't no end to women's
notions."

"Wal, jest so with me," said Haley. "Last summer, down on Red river, I
got a gal traded off on me, with a likely lookin' child enough, and his
eyes looked as bright as yourn; but, come to look, I found him stone
blind. Fact--he was stone blind. Wal, ye see, I thought there warn't no
harm in my jest passing him along, and not sayin' nothin'; and I'd got
him nicely swapped off for a keg o' whiskey; but come to get him away
from the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So 't was before we started,
and I hadn't got my gang chained up; so what should she do but ups on
a cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the deck hands,
and, I tell ye, she made all fly for a minit, till she saw 't wan't no
use; and she jest turns round, and pitches head first, young un and all,
into the river,--went down plump, and never ris."

"Bah!" said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with
ill-repressed disgust,--"shif'less, both on ye! ‘my’ gals don't cut up
no such shines, I tell ye!"

"Indeed! how do you help it?" said Marks, briskly.

"Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she's got a young un to be sold, I
jest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says, 'Look here, now,
if you give me one word out of your head, I'll smash yer face in. I
won't hear one word--not the beginning of a word.' I says to 'em, 'This
yer young un's mine, and not yourn, and you've no kind o' business with
it. I'm going to sell it, first chance; mind, you don't cut up none o'
yer shines about it, or I'll make ye wish ye'd never been born.' I tell
ye, they sees it an't no play, when I gets hold. I makes 'em as whist as
fishes; and if one on 'em begins and gives a yelp, why,--" and Mr. Loker
brought down his fist with a thump that fully explained the hiatus.

"That ar's what ye may call ‘emphasis’," said Marks, poking Haley in the
side, and going into another small giggle. "An't Tom peculiar? he! he! I
say, Tom, I s'pect you make 'em ‘understand’, for all niggers' heads is
woolly. They don't never have no doubt o' your meaning, Tom. If you an't
the devil, Tom, you 's his twin brother, I'll say that for ye!"

Tom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and began to look
as affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says, "with his doggish
nature."

Haley, who had been imbibing very freely of the staple of the evening,
began to feel a sensible elevation and enlargement of his moral
faculties,--a phenomenon not unusual with gentlemen of a serious and
reflective turn, under similar circumstances.

"Wal, now, Tom," he said, "ye re'lly is too bad, as I al'ays have told
ye; ye know, Tom, you and I used to talk over these yer matters down in
Natchez, and I used to prove to ye that we made full as much, and was as
well off for this yer world, by treatin' on 'em well, besides keepin'
a better chance for comin' in the kingdom at last, when wust comes to
wust, and thar an't nothing else left to get, ye know."

"Boh!" said Tom, "‘don't’ I know?--don't make me too sick with any yer
stuff,--my stomach is a leetle riled now;" and Tom drank half a glass of
raw brandy.

"I say," said Haley, and leaning back in his chair and gesturing
impressively, "I'll say this now, I al'ays meant to drive my trade so as
to make money on 't ‘fust and foremost’, as much as any man; but, then,
trade an't everything, and money an't everything, 'cause we 's all got
souls. I don't care, now, who hears me say it,--and I think a cussed
sight on it,--so I may as well come out with it. I b'lieve in religion,
and one of these days, when I've got matters tight and snug, I
calculates to tend to my soul and them ar matters; and so what's the use
of doin' any more wickedness than 's re'lly necessary?--it don't seem to
me it's 't all prudent."

"Tend to yer soul!" repeated Tom, contemptuously; "take a bright lookout
to find a soul in you,--save yourself any care on that score. If the
devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won't find one."

"Why, Tom, you're cross," said Haley; "why can't ye take it pleasant,
now, when a feller's talking for your good?"

"Stop that ar jaw o' yourn, there," said Tom, gruffly. "I can stand most
any talk o' yourn but your pious talk,--that kills me right up. After
all, what's the odds between me and you? 'Tan't that you care one bit
more, or have a bit more feelin'--it's clean, sheer, dog meanness,
wanting to cheat the devil and save your own skin; don't I see through
it? And your 'gettin' religion,' as you call it, arter all, is too
p'isin mean for any crittur;--run up a bill with the devil all your
life, and then sneak out when pay time comes! Bob!"

"Come, come, gentlemen, I say; this isn't business," said Marks.
"There's different ways, you know, of looking at all subjects. Mr. Haley
is a very nice man, no doubt, and has his own conscience; and, Tom, you
have your ways, and very good ones, too, Tom; but quarrelling, you know,
won't answer no kind of purpose. Let's go to business. Now, Mr. Haley,
what is it?--you want us to undertake to catch this yer gal?"

"The gal's no matter of mine,--she's Shelby's; it's only the boy. I was
a fool for buying the monkey!"

"You're generally a fool!" said Tom, gruffly.

"Come, now, Loker, none of your huffs," said Marks, licking his lips;
"you see, Mr. Haley 's a puttin' us in a way of a good job, I reckon;
just hold still--these yer arrangements is my forte. This yer gal, Mr.
Haley, how is she? what is she?"

"Wal! white and handsome--well brought up. I'd a gin Shelby eight
hundred or a thousand, and then made well on her."

"White and handsome--well brought up!" said Marks, his sharp eyes,
nose and mouth, all alive with enterprise. "Look here, now, Loker, a
beautiful opening. We'll do a business here on our own account;--we does
the catchin'; the boy, of course, goes to Mr. Haley,--we takes the gal
to Orleans to speculate on. An't it beautiful?"

Tom, whose great heavy mouth had stood ajar during this communication,
now suddenly snapped it together, as a big dog closes on a piece of
meat, and seemed to be digesting the idea at his leisure.

"Ye see," said Marks to Haley, stirring his punch as he did so, "ye see,
we has justices convenient at all p'ints along shore, that does up any
little jobs in our line quite reasonable. Tom, he does the knockin' down
and that ar; and I come in all dressed up--shining boots--everything
first chop, when the swearin' 's to be done. You oughter see, now," said
Marks, in a glow of professional pride, "how I can tone it off. One day,
I'm Mr. Twickem, from New Orleans; 'nother day, I'm just come from my
plantation on Pearl river, where I works seven hundred niggers; then,
again, I come out a distant relation of Henry Clay, or some old cock in
Kentuck. Talents is different, you know. Now, Tom's roarer when there's
any thumping or fighting to be done; but at lying he an't good, Tom
an't,--ye see it don't come natural to him; but, Lord, if thar's a
feller in the country that can swear to anything and everything, and put
in all the circumstances and flourishes with a long face, and carry 't
through better 'n I can, why, I'd like to see him, that's all! I b'lieve
my heart, I could get along and snake through, even if justices were
more particular than they is. Sometimes I rather wish they was more
particular; 't would be a heap more relishin' if they was,--more fun,
yer know."

Tom Loker, who, as we have made it appear, was a man of slow thoughts
and movements, here interrupted Marks by bringing his heavy fist down on
the table, so as to make all ring again, ‘"It'll do!"‘ he said.

"Lord bless ye, Tom, ye needn't break all the glasses!" said Marks;
"save your fist for time o' need."

"But, gentlemen, an't I to come in for a share of the profits?" said
Haley.

"An't it enough we catch the boy for ye?" said Loker. "What do ye want?"

"Wal," said Haley, "if I gives you the job, it's worth something,--say
ten per cent. on the profits, expenses paid."

"Now," said Loker, with a tremendous oath, and striking the table with
his heavy fist, "don't I know ‘you’, Dan Haley? Don't you think to come
it over me! Suppose Marks and I have taken up the catchin' trade, jest
to 'commodate gentlemen like you, and get nothin' for ourselves?--Not by
a long chalk! we'll have the gal out and out, and you keep quiet, or, ye
see, we'll have both,--what's to hinder? Han't you show'd us the game?
It's as free to us as you, I hope. If you or Shelby wants to chase us,
look where the partridges was last year; if you find them or us, you're
quite welcome."

"O, wal, certainly, jest let it go at that," said Haley, alarmed; "you
catch the boy for the job;--you allers did trade ‘far’ with me, Tom, and
was up to yer word."

"Ye know that," said Tom; "I don't pretend none of your snivelling ways,
but I won't lie in my 'counts with the devil himself. What I ses I'll
do, I will do,--you know ‘that’, Dan Haley."

"Jes so, jes so,--I said so, Tom," said Haley; "and if you'd only
promise to have the boy for me in a week, at any point you'll name,
that's all I want."

"But it an't all I want, by a long jump," said Tom. "Ye don't think I
did business with you, down in Natchez, for nothing, Haley; I've learned
to hold an eel, when I catch him. You've got to fork over fifty dollars,
flat down, or this child don't start a peg. I know yer."

"Why, when you have a job in hand that may bring a clean profit
of somewhere about a thousand or sixteen hundred, why, Tom, you're
onreasonable," said Haley.

"Yes, and hasn't we business booked for five weeks to come,--all we can
do? And suppose we leaves all, and goes to bush-whacking round arter yer
young uns, and finally doesn't catch the gal,--and gals allers is the
devil ‘to’ catch,--what's then? would you pay us a cent--would you? I
think I see you a doin' it--ugh! No, no; flap down your fifty. If we
get the job, and it pays, I'll hand it back; if we don't, it's for our
trouble,--that's ‘far’, an't it, Marks?"

"Certainly, certainly," said Marks, with a conciliatory tone; "it's only
a retaining fee, you see,--he! he! he!--we lawyers, you know. Wal, we
must all keep good-natured,--keep easy, yer know. Tom'll have the boy
for yer, anywhere ye'll name; won't ye, Tom?"

"If I find the young un, I'll bring him on to Cincinnati, and leave him
at Granny Belcher's, on the landing," said Loker.

Marks had got from his pocket a greasy pocket-book, and taking a long
paper from thence, he sat down, and fixing his keen black eyes on it,
began mumbling over its contents: "Barnes--Shelby County--boy Jim, three
hundred dollars for him, dead or alive.

"Edwards--Dick and Lucy--man and wife, six hundred dollars; wench Polly
and two children--six hundred for her or her head.

"I'm jest a runnin' over our business, to see if we can take up this yer
handily. Loker," he said, after a pause, "we must set Adams and Springer
on the track of these yer; they've been booked some time."

"They'll charge too much," said Tom.

"I'll manage that ar; they 's young in the business, and must spect to
work cheap," said Marks, as he continued to read. "Ther's three on 'em
easy cases, 'cause all you've got to do is to shoot 'em, or swear they
is shot; they couldn't, of course, charge much for that. Them other
cases," he said, folding the paper, "will bear puttin' off a spell. So
now let's come to the particulars. Now, Mr. Haley, you saw this yer gal
when she landed?"

"To be sure,--plain as I see you."

"And a man helpin' on her up the bank?" said Loker.

"To be sure, I did."

"Most likely," said Marks, "she's took in somewhere; but where, 's a
question. Tom, what do you say?"

"We must cross the river tonight, no mistake," said Tom.

"But there's no boat about," said Marks. "The ice is running awfully,
Tom; an't it dangerous?"

"Don'no nothing 'bout that,--only it's got to be done," said Tom,
decidedly.

"Dear me," said Marks, fidgeting, "it'll be--I say," he said, walking to
the window, "it's dark as a wolf's mouth, and, Tom--"

"The long and short is, you're scared, Marks; but I can't help
that,--you've got to go. Suppose you want to lie by a day or two, till
the gal 's been carried on the underground line up to Sandusky or so,
before you start."

"O, no; I an't a grain afraid," said Marks, "only--"

"Only what?" said Tom.

"Well, about the boat. Yer see there an't any boat."

"I heard the woman say there was one coming along this evening, and that
a man was going to cross over in it. Neck or nothing, we must go with
him," said Tom.

"I s'pose you've got good dogs," said Haley.

"First rate," said Marks. "But what's the use? you han't got nothin' o'
hers to smell on."

"Yes, I have," said Haley, triumphantly. "Here's her shawl she left on
the bed in her hurry; she left her bonnet, too."

"That ar's lucky," said Loker; "fork over."

"Though the dogs might damage the gal, if they come on her unawars,"
said Haley.

"That ar's a consideration," said Marks. "Our dogs tore a feller half to
pieces, once, down in Mobile, 'fore we could get 'em off."

"Well, ye see, for this sort that's to be sold for their looks, that ar
won't answer, ye see," said Haley.

"I do see," said Marks. "Besides, if she's got took in, 'tan't no go,
neither. Dogs is no 'count in these yer up states where these critters
gets carried; of course, ye can't get on their track. They only does
down in plantations, where niggers, when they runs, has to do their own
running, and don't get no help."

"Well," said Loker, who had just stepped out to the bar to make some
inquiries, "they say the man's come with the boat; so, Marks--"

That worthy cast a rueful look at the comfortable quarters he was
leaving, but slowly rose to obey. After exchanging a few words of
further arrangement, Haley, with visible reluctance, handed over the
fifty dollars to Tom, and the worthy trio separated for the night.

If any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into
which this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer
their prejudices in time. The catching business, we beg to remind them,
is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all
the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great
market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive
tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be
among our aristocracy.


While this scene was going on at the tavern, Sam and Andy, in a state of
high felicitation, pursued their way home.

Sam was in the highest possible feather, and expressed his exultation by
all sorts of supernatural howls and ejaculations, by divers odd motions
and contortions of his whole system. Sometimes he would sit backward,
with his face to the horse's tail and sides, and then, with a whoop and
a somerset, come right side up in his place again, and, drawing on a
grave face, begin to lecture Andy in high-sounding tones for laughing
and playing the fool. Anon, slapping his sides with his arms, he would
burst forth in peals of laughter, that made the old woods ring as they
passed. With all these evolutions, he contrived to keep the horses up
to the top of their speed, until, between ten and eleven, their heels
resounded on the gravel at the end of the balcony. Mrs. Shelby flew to
the railings.

"Is that you, Sam? Where are they?"

"Mas'r Haley 's a-restin' at the tavern; he's drefful fatigued, Missis."

"And Eliza, Sam?"

"Wal, she's clar 'cross Jordan. As a body may say, in the land o'
Canaan."

"Why, Sam, what ‘do’ you mean?" said Mrs. Shelby, breathless, and almost
faint, as the possible meaning of these words came over her.

"Wal, Missis, de Lord he persarves his own. Lizy's done gone over the
river into 'Hio, as 'markably as if de Lord took her over in a charrit
of fire and two hosses."

Sam's vein of piety was always uncommonly fervent in his mistress'
presence; and he made great capital of scriptural figures and images.

"Come up here, Sam," said Mr. Shelby, who had followed on to the
verandah, "and tell your mistress what she wants. Come, come, Emily,"
said he, passing his arm round her, "you are cold and all in a shiver;
you allow yourself to feel too much."

"Feel too much! Am not I a woman,--a mother? Are we not both responsible
to God for this poor girl? My God! lay not this sin to our charge."

"What sin, Emily? You see yourself that we have only done what we were
obliged to."

"There's an awful feeling of guilt about it, though," said Mrs. Shelby.
"I can't reason it away."

"Here, Andy, you nigger, be alive!" called Sam, under the verandah;
"take these yer hosses to der barn; don't ye hear Mas'r a callin'?" and
Sam soon appeared, palm-leaf in hand, at the parlor door.

"Now, Sam, tell us distinctly how the matter was," said Mr. Shelby.
"Where is Eliza, if you know?"

"Wal, Mas'r, I saw her, with my own eyes, a crossin' on the floatin'
ice. She crossed most 'markably; it wasn't no less nor a miracle; and I
saw a man help her up the 'Hio side, and then she was lost in the dusk."

"Sam, I think this rather apocryphal,--this miracle. Crossing on
floating ice isn't so easily done," said Mr. Shelby.

"Easy! couldn't nobody a done it, without de Lord. Why, now," said Sam,
"'t was jist dis yer way. Mas'r Haley, and me, and Andy, we comes up
to de little tavern by the river, and I rides a leetle ahead,--(I's so
zealous to be a cotchin' Lizy, that I couldn't hold in, no way),--and
when I comes by the tavern winder, sure enough there she was, right in
plain sight, and dey diggin' on behind. Wal, I loses off my hat, and
sings out nuff to raise the dead. Course Lizy she hars, and she dodges
back, when Mas'r Haley he goes past the door; and then, I tell ye, she
clared out de side door; she went down de river bank;--Mas'r Haley he
seed her, and yelled out, and him, and me, and Andy, we took arter. Down
she come to the river, and thar was the current running ten feet wide
by the shore, and over t' other side ice a sawin' and a jiggling up and
down, kinder as 't were a great island. We come right behind her, and I
thought my soul he'd got her sure enough,--when she gin sich a screech
as I never hearn, and thar she was, clar over t' other side of
the current, on the ice, and then on she went, a screeching and a
jumpin',--the ice went crack! c'wallop! cracking! chunk! and she a
boundin' like a buck! Lord, the spring that ar gal's got in her an't
common, I'm o' 'pinion."

Mrs. Shelby sat perfectly silent, pale with excitement, while Sam told
his story.

"God be praised, she isn't dead!" she said; "but where is the poor child
now?"

"De Lord will pervide," said Sam, rolling up his eyes piously. "As I've
been a sayin', dis yer 's a providence and no mistake, as Missis has
allers been a instructin' on us. Thar's allers instruments ris up to do
de Lord's will. Now, if 't hadn't been for me today, she'd a been took
a dozen times. Warn't it I started off de hosses, dis yer morning' and
kept 'em chasin' till nigh dinner time? And didn't I car Mas'r Haley
night five miles out of de road, dis evening, or else he'd a come up
with Lizy as easy as a dog arter a coon. These yer 's all providences."

"They are a kind of providences that you'll have to be pretty sparing
of, Master Sam. I allow no such practices with gentlemen on my place,"
said Mr. Shelby, with as much sternness as he could command, under the
circumstances.

Now, there is no more use in making believe be angry with a negro than
with a child; both instinctively see the true state of the case, through
all attempts to affect the contrary; and Sam was in no wise disheartened
by this rebuke, though he assumed an air of doleful gravity, and stood
with the corners of his mouth lowered in most penitential style.

"Mas'r quite right,--quite; it was ugly on me,--there's no disputin'
that ar; and of course Mas'r and Missis wouldn't encourage no such
works. I'm sensible of dat ar; but a poor nigger like me 's 'mazin'
tempted to act ugly sometimes, when fellers will cut up such shines as
dat ar Mas'r Haley; he an't no gen'l'man no way; anybody's been raised
as I've been can't help a seein' dat ar."

"Well, Sam," said Mrs. Shelby, "as you appear to have a proper sense of
your errors, you may go now and tell Aunt Chloe she may get you some
of that cold ham that was left of dinner today. You and Andy must be
hungry."

"Missis is a heap too good for us," said Sam, making his bow with
alacrity, and departing.

It will be perceived, as has been before intimated, that Master Sam had
a native talent that might, undoubtedly, have raised him to eminence
in political life,--a talent of making capital out of everything that
turned up, to be invested for his own especial praise and glory;
and having done up his piety and humility, as he trusted, to the
satisfaction of the parlor, he clapped his palm-leaf on his head, with
a sort of rakish, free-and-easy air, and proceeded to the dominions of
Aunt Chloe, with the intention of flourishing largely in the kitchen.

"I'll speechify these yer niggers," said Sam to himself, "now I've got a
chance. Lord, I'll reel it off to make 'em stare!"

It must be observed that one of Sam's especial delights had been to ride
in attendance on his master to all kinds of political gatherings, where,
roosted on some rail fence, or perched aloft in some tree, he would
sit watching the orators, with the greatest apparent gusto, and then,
descending among the various brethren of his own color, assembled on
the same errand, he would edify and delight them with the most ludicrous
burlesques and imitations, all delivered with the most imperturbable
earnestness and solemnity; and though the auditors immediately about him
were generally of his own color, it not infrequently happened that
they were fringed pretty deeply with those of a fairer complexion, who
listened, laughing and winking, to Sam's great self-congratulation.
In fact, Sam considered oratory as his vocation, and never let slip an
opportunity of magnifying his office.

Now, between Sam and Aunt Chloe there had existed, from ancient times,
a sort of chronic feud, or rather a decided coolness; but, as Sam was
meditating something in the provision department, as the necessary and
obvious foundation of his operations, he determined, on the present
occasion, to be eminently conciliatory; for he well knew that although
"Missis' orders" would undoubtedly be followed to the letter, yet
he should gain a considerable deal by enlisting the spirit also. He
therefore appeared before Aunt Chloe with a touchingly subdued, resigned
expression, like one who has suffered immeasurable hardships in behalf
of a persecuted fellow-creature,--enlarged upon the fact that Missis had
directed him to come to Aunt Chloe for whatever might be wanting to
make up the balance in his solids and fluids,--and thus unequivocally
acknowledged her right and supremacy in the cooking department, and all
thereto pertaining.

The thing took accordingly. No poor, simple, virtuous body was ever
cajoled by the attentions of an electioneering politician with more ease
than Aunt Chloe was won over by Master Sam's suavities; and if he had
been the prodigal son himself, he could not have been overwhelmed with
more maternal bountifulness; and he soon found himself seated, happy and
glorious, over a large tin pan, containing a sort of ‘olla podrida’ of
all that had appeared on the table for two or three days past. Savory
morsels of ham, golden blocks of corn-cake, fragments of pie of
every conceivable mathematical figure, chicken wings, gizzards, and
drumsticks, all appeared in picturesque confusion; and Sam, as monarch
of all he surveyed, sat with his palm-leaf cocked rejoicingly to one
side, and patronizing Andy at his right hand.

The kitchen was full of all his compeers, who had hurried and crowded
in, from the various cabins, to hear the termination of the day's
exploits. Now was Sam's hour of glory. The story of the day was
rehearsed, with all kinds of ornament and varnishing which might be
necessary to heighten its effect; for Sam, like some of our fashionable
dilettanti, never allowed a story to lose any of its gilding by passing
through his hands. Roars of laughter attended the narration, and were
taken up and prolonged by all the smaller fry, who were lying, in any
quantity, about on the floor, or perched in every corner. In the
height of the uproar and laughter, Sam, however, preserved an immovable
gravity, only from time to time rolling his eyes up, and giving his
auditors divers inexpressibly droll glances, without departing from the
sententious elevation of his oratory.

"Yer see, fellow-countrymen," said Sam, elevating a turkey's leg, with
energy, "yer see, now what dis yer chile 's up ter, for fendin' yer
all,--yes, all on yer. For him as tries to get one o' our people is as
good as tryin' to get all; yer see the principle 's de same,--dat ar's
clar. And any one o' these yer drivers that comes smelling round arter
any our people, why, he's got ‘me’ in his way; ‘I'm’ the feller he's got
to set in with,--I'm the feller for yer all to come to, bredren,--I'll
stand up for yer rights,--I'll fend 'em to the last breath!"

"Why, but Sam, yer telled me, only this mornin', that you'd help this
yer Mas'r to cotch Lizy; seems to me yer talk don't hang together," said
Andy.

"I tell you now, Andy," said Sam, with awful superiority, "don't yer
be a talkin' 'bout what yer don't know nothin' on; boys like you,
Andy, means well, but they can't be spected to collusitate the great
principles of action."

Andy looked rebuked, particularly by the hard word collusitate, which
most of the youngerly members of the company seemed to consider as a
settler in the case, while Sam proceeded.

"Dat ar was ‘conscience’, Andy; when I thought of gwine arter Lizy, I
railly spected Mas'r was sot dat way. When I found Missis was sot the
contrar, dat ar was conscience ‘more yet’,--cause fellers allers gets
more by stickin' to Missis' side,--so yer see I 's persistent either
way, and sticks up to conscience, and holds on to principles. Yes,
‘principles’," said Sam, giving an enthusiastic toss to a chicken's
neck,--"what's principles good for, if we isn't persistent, I wanter
know? Thar, Andy, you may have dat ar bone,--tan't picked quite clean."

Sam's audience hanging on his words with open mouth, he could not but
proceed.

"Dis yer matter 'bout persistence, feller-niggers," said Sam, with the
air of one entering into an abstruse subject, "dis yer 'sistency 's a
thing what an't seed into very clar, by most anybody. Now, yer see, when
a feller stands up for a thing one day and night, de contrar de next,
folks ses (and nat'rally enough dey ses), why he an't persistent,--hand
me dat ar bit o' corn-cake, Andy. But let's look inter it. I hope
the gen'lmen and der fair sex will scuse my usin' an or'nary sort o'
'parison. Here! I'm a trying to get top o' der hay. Wal, I puts up my
larder dis yer side; 'tan't no go;--den, cause I don't try dere no
more, but puts my larder right de contrar side, an't I persistent? I'm
persistent in wantin' to get up which ary side my larder is; don't you
see, all on yer?"

"It's the only thing ye ever was persistent in, Lord knows!" muttered
Aunt Chloe, who was getting rather restive; the merriment of the evening
being to her somewhat after the Scripture comparison,--like "vinegar
upon nitre."

"Yes, indeed!" said Sam, rising, full of supper and glory, for a closing
effort. "Yes, my feller-citizens and ladies of de other sex in general,
I has principles,--I'm proud to 'oon 'em,--they 's perquisite to dese
yer times, and ter ‘all’ times. I has principles, and I sticks to 'em
like forty,--jest anything that I thinks is principle, I goes in to
't;--I wouldn't mind if dey burnt me 'live,--I'd walk right up to de
stake, I would, and say, here I comes to shed my last blood fur my
principles, fur my country, fur de gen'l interests of society."

"Well," said Aunt Chloe, "one o' yer principles will have to be to
get to bed some time tonight, and not be a keepin' everybody up till
mornin'; now, every one of you young uns that don't want to be cracked,
had better be scase, mighty sudden."

"Niggers! all on yer," said Sam, waving his palm-leaf with benignity, "I
give yer my blessin'; go to bed now, and be good boys."

And, with this pathetic benediction, the assembly dispersed.



CHAPTER IX

In Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man


The light of the cheerful fire shone on the rug and carpet of a cosey
parlor, and glittered on the sides of the tea-cups and well-brightened
tea-pot, as Senator Bird was drawing off his boots, preparatory to
inserting his feet in a pair of new handsome slippers, which his wife
had been working for him while away on his senatorial tour. Mrs. Bird,
looking the very picture of delight, was superintending the arrangements
of the table, ever and anon mingling admonitory remarks to a number of
frolicsome juveniles, who were effervescing in all those modes of untold
gambol and mischief that have astonished mothers ever since the flood.

"Tom, let the door-knob alone,--there's a man! Mary! Mary! don't pull
the cat's tail,--poor pussy! Jim, you mustn't climb on that table,--no,
no!--You don't know, my dear, what a surprise it is to us all, to see
you here tonight!" said she, at last, when she found a space to say
something to her husband.

"Yes, yes, I thought I'd just make a run down, spend the night, and have
a little comfort at home. I'm tired to death, and my head aches!"

Mrs. Bird cast a glance at a camphor-bottle, which stood in the
half-open closet, and appeared to meditate an approach to it, but her
husband interposed.

"No, no, Mary, no doctoring! a cup of your good hot tea, and some of
our good home living, is what I want. It's a tiresome business, this
legislating!"

And the senator smiled, as if he rather liked the idea of considering
himself a sacrifice to his country.

"Well," said his wife, after the business of the tea-table was getting
rather slack, "and what have they been doing in the Senate?"

Now, it was a very unusual thing for gentle little Mrs. Bird ever to
trouble her head with what was going on in the house of the state, very
wisely considering that she had enough to do to mind her own. Mr. Bird,
therefore, opened his eyes in surprise, and said,

"Not very much of importance."

"Well; but is it true that they have been passing a law forbidding
people to give meat and drink to those poor colored folks that come
along? I heard they were talking of some such law, but I didn't think
any Christian legislature would pass it!"

"Why, Mary, you are getting to be a politician, all at once."

"No, nonsense! I wouldn't give a fip for all your politics, generally,
but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope,
my dear, no such law has been passed."

"There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves
that come over from Kentucky, my dear; so much of that thing has been
done by these reckless Abolitionists, that our brethren in Kentucky
are very strongly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than
Christian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet
the excitement."

"And what is the law? It don't forbid us to shelter those poor creatures
a night, does it, and to give 'em something comfortable to eat, and a
few old clothes, and send them quietly about their business?"

"Why, yes, my dear; that would be aiding and abetting, you know."

Mrs. Bird was a timid, blushing little woman, of about four feet in
height, and with mild blue eyes, and a peach-blow complexion, and the
gentlest, sweetest voice in the world;--as for courage, a moderate-sized
cock-turkey had been known to put her to rout at the very first gobble,
and a stout house-dog, of moderate capacity, would bring her into
subjection merely by a show of his teeth. Her husband and children were
her entire world, and in these she ruled more by entreaty and persuasion
than by command or argument. There was only one thing that was capable
of arousing her, and that provocation came in on the side of her
unusually gentle and sympathetic nature;--anything in the shape of
cruelty would throw her into a passion, which was the more alarming
and inexplicable in proportion to the general softness of her nature.
Generally the most indulgent and easy to be entreated of all mothers,
still her boys had a very reverent remembrance of a most vehement
chastisement she once bestowed on them, because she found them leagued
with several graceless boys of the neighborhood, stoning a defenceless
kitten.

"I'll tell you what," Master Bill used to say, "I was scared that time.
Mother came at me so that I thought she was crazy, and I was whipped
and tumbled off to bed, without any supper, before I could get over
wondering what had come about; and, after that, I heard mother crying
outside the door, which made me feel worse than all the rest. I'll tell
you what," he'd say, "we boys never stoned another kitten!"

On the present occasion, Mrs. Bird rose quickly, with very red cheeks,
which quite improved her general appearance, and walked up to her
husband, with quite a resolute air, and said, in a determined tone,

"Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and
Christian?"

"You won't shoot me, now, Mary, if I say I do!"

"I never could have thought it of you, John; you didn't vote for it?"

"Even so, my fair politician."

"You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures!
It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one,
the first time I get a chance; and I hope I ‘shall’ have a chance, I do!
Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper
and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and
have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!"

"But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear,
and interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn't
suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you must consider
it's a matter of private feeling,--there are great public interests
involved,--there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we
must put aside our private feelings."

"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my
Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow."

"But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil--"

"Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can't. It's always
safest, all round, to ‘do as He’ bids us.

"Now, listen to me, Mary, and I can state to you a very clear argument,
to show--"

"O, nonsense, John! you can talk all night, but you wouldn't do it.
I put it to you, John,--would ‘you’ now turn away a poor, shivering,
hungry creature from your door, because he was a runaway? ‘Would’ you,
now?"

Now, if the truth must be told, our senator had the misfortune to be
a man who had a particularly humane and accessible nature, and turning
away anybody that was in trouble never had been his forte; and what was
worse for him in this particular pinch of the argument was, that
his wife knew it, and, of course was making an assault on rather an
indefensible point. So he had recourse to the usual means of gaining
time for such cases made and provided; he said "ahem," and coughed
several times, took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began to wipe his
glasses. Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenceless condition of the enemy's
territory, had no more conscience than to push her advantage.

"I should like to see you doing that, John--I really should! Turning a
woman out of doors in a snowstorm, for instance; or may be you'd take
her up and put her in jail, wouldn't you? You would make a great hand at
that!"

"Of course, it would be a very painful duty," began Mr. Bird, in a
moderate tone.

"Duty, John! don't use that word! You know it isn't a duty--it can't be
a duty! If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let 'em
treat 'em well,--that's my doctrine. If I had slaves (as I hope I never
shall have), I'd risk their wanting to run away from me, or you either,
John. I tell you folks don't run away when they are happy; and when
they do run, poor creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and
fear, without everybody's turning against them; and, law or no law, I
never will, so help me God!"

"Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you."

"I hate reasoning, John,--especially reasoning on such subjects. There's
a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain
right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to
practice. I know ‘you’ well enough, John. You don't believe it's right
any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I."

At this critical juncture, old Cudjoe, the black man-of-all-work,
put his head in at the door, and wished "Missis would come into the
kitchen;" and our senator, tolerably relieved, looked after his little
wife with a whimsical mixture of amusement and vexation, and, seating
himself in the arm-chair, began to read the papers.

After a moment, his wife's voice was heard at the door, in a quick,
earnest tone,--"John! John! I do wish you'd come here, a moment."

He laid down his paper, and went into the kitchen, and started, quite
amazed at the sight that presented itself:--A young and slender woman,
with garments torn and frozen, with one shoe gone, and the stocking torn
away from the cut and bleeding foot, was laid back in a deadly swoon
upon two chairs. There was the impress of the despised race on her face,
yet none could help feeling its mournful and pathetic beauty, while its
stony sharpness, its cold, fixed, deathly aspect, struck a solemn chill
over him. He drew his breath short, and stood in silence. His wife,
and their only colored domestic, old Aunt Dinah, were busily engaged in
restorative measures; while old Cudjoe had got the boy on his knee, and
was busy pulling off his shoes and stockings, and chafing his little
cold feet.

"Sure, now, if she an't a sight to behold!" said old Dinah,
compassionately; "'pears like 't was the heat that made her faint.
She was tol'able peart when she cum in, and asked if she couldn't warm
herself here a spell; and I was just a-askin' her where she cum from,
and she fainted right down. Never done much hard work, guess, by the
looks of her hands."

"Poor creature!" said Mrs. Bird, compassionately, as the woman slowly
unclosed her large, dark eyes, and looked vacantly at her. Suddenly an
expression of agony crossed her face, and she sprang up, saying, "O, my
Harry! Have they got him?"

The boy, at this, jumped from Cudjoe's knee, and running to her side put
up his arms. "O, he's here! he's here!" she exclaimed.

"O, ma'am!" said she, wildly, to Mrs. Bird, "do protect us! don't let
them get him!"

"Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman," said Mrs. Bird, encouragingly.
"You are safe; don't be afraid."

"God bless you!" said the woman, covering her face and sobbing; while
the little boy, seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap.

With many gentle and womanly offices, which none knew better how to
render than Mrs. Bird, the poor woman was, in time, rendered more calm.
A temporary bed was provided for her on the settle, near the fire; and,
after a short time, she fell into a heavy slumber, with the child,
who seemed no less weary, soundly sleeping on her arm; for the mother
resisted, with nervous anxiety, the kindest attempts to take him from
her; and, even in sleep, her arm encircled him with an unrelaxing clasp,
as if she could not even then be beguiled of her vigilant hold.

Mr. and Mrs. Bird had gone back to the parlor, where, strange as it
may appear, no reference was made, on either side, to the preceding
conversation; but Mrs. Bird busied herself with her knitting-work, and
Mr. Bird pretended to be reading the paper.

"I wonder who and what she is!" said Mr. Bird, at last, as he laid it
down.

"When she wakes up and feels a little rested, we will see," said Mrs.
Bird.

"I say, wife!" said Mr. Bird after musing in silence over his newspaper.

"Well, dear!"

"She couldn't wear one of your gowns, could she, by any letting down, or
such matter? She seems to be rather larger than you are."

A quite perceptible smile glimmered on Mrs. Bird's face, as she
answered, "We'll see."

Another pause, and Mr. Bird again broke out,

"I say, wife!"

"Well! What now?"

"Why, there's that old bombazin cloak, that you keep on purpose to
put over me when I take my afternoon's nap; you might as well give her
that,--she needs clothes."

At this instant, Dinah looked in to say that the woman was awake, and
wanted to see Missis.

Mr. and Mrs. Bird went into the kitchen, followed by the two eldest
boys, the smaller fry having, by this time, been safely disposed of in
bed.

The woman was now sitting up on the settle, by the fire. She was looking
steadily into the blaze, with a calm, heart-broken expression, very
different from her former agitated wildness.

"Did you want me?" said Mrs. Bird, in gentle tones. "I hope you feel
better now, poor woman!"

A long-drawn, shivering sigh was the only answer; but she lifted her
dark eyes, and fixed them on her with such a forlorn and imploring
expression, that the tears came into the little woman's eyes.

"You needn't be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman!
Tell me where you came from, and what you want," said she.

"I came from Kentucky," said the woman.

"When?" said Mr. Bird, taking up the interogatory.

"Tonight."

"How did you come?"

"I crossed on the ice."

"Crossed on the ice!" said every one present.

"Yes," said the woman, slowly, "I did. God helping me, I crossed on the
ice; for they were behind me--right behind--and there was no other way!"

"Law, Missis," said Cudjoe, "the ice is all in broken-up blocks, a
swinging and a tetering up and down in the water!"

"I know it was--I know it!" said she, wildly; "but I did it! I wouldn't
have thought I could,--I didn't think I should get over, but I didn't
care! I could but die, if I didn't. The Lord helped me; nobody knows
how much the Lord can help 'em, till they try," said the woman, with a
flashing eye.

"Were you a slave?" said Mr. Bird.

"Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky."

"Was he unkind to you?"

"No, sir; he was a good master."

"And was your mistress unkind to you?"

"No, sir--no! my mistress was always good to me."

"What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go
through such dangers?"

The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird, with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and
it did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.

"Ma'am," she said, suddenly, "have you ever lost a child?"

The question was unexpected, and it was thrust on a new wound; for it
was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid in
the grave.

Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst
into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said,

"Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one."

"Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another,--left
'em buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left. I
never slept a night without him; he was all I had. He was my comfort and
pride, day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him away from
me,--to ‘sell’ him,--sell him down south, ma'am, to go all alone,--a
baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I couldn't
stand it, ma'am. I knew I never should be good for anything, if they
did; and when I knew the papers the papers were signed, and he was sold,
I took him and came off in the night; and they chased me,--the man that
bought him, and some of Mas'r's folks,--and they were coming down right
behind me, and I heard 'em. I jumped right on to the ice; and how I got
across, I don't know,--but, first I knew, a man was helping me up the
bank."

The woman did not sob nor weep. She had gone to a place where tears
are dry; but every one around her was, in some way characteristic of
themselves, showing signs of hearty sympathy.

The two little boys, after a desperate rummaging in their pockets, in
search of those pocket-handkerchiefs which mothers know are never to
be found there, had thrown themselves disconsolately into the skirts of
their mother's gown, where they were sobbing, and wiping their eyes and
noses, to their hearts' content;--Mrs. Bird had her face fairly hidden
in her pocket-handkerchief; and old Dinah, with tears streaming down her
black, honest face, was ejaculating, "Lord have mercy on us!" with all
the fervor of a camp-meeting;--while old Cudjoe, rubbing his eyes very
hard with his cuffs, and making a most uncommon variety of wry faces,
occasionally responded in the same key, with great fervor. Our senator
was a statesman, and of course could not be expected to cry, like other
mortals; and so he turned his back to the company, and looked out of the
window, and seemed particularly busy in clearing his throat and wiping
his spectacle-glasses, occasionally blowing his nose in a manner that
was calculated to excite suspicion, had any one been in a state to
observe critically.

"How came you to tell me you had a kind master?" he suddenly exclaimed,
gulping down very resolutely some kind of rising in his throat, and
turning suddenly round upon the woman.

"Because he ‘was’ a kind master; I'll say that of him, any way;--and my
mistress was kind; but they couldn't help themselves. They were owing
money; and there was some way, I can't tell how, that a man had a hold
on them, and they were obliged to give him his will. I listened, and
heard him telling mistress that, and she begging and pleading for
me,--and he told her he couldn't help himself, and that the papers were
all drawn;--and then it was I took him and left my home, and came away.
I knew 't was no use of my trying to live, if they did it; for 't 'pears
like this child is all I have."

"Have you no husband?"

"Yes, but he belongs to another man. His master is real hard to him,
and won't let him come to see me, hardly ever; and he's grown harder and
harder upon us, and he threatens to sell him down south;--it's like I'll
never see ‘him’ again!"

The quiet tone in which the woman pronounced these words might have led
a superficial observer to think that she was entirely apathetic; but
there was a calm, settled depth of anguish in her large, dark eye, that
spoke of something far otherwise.

"And where do you mean to go, my poor woman?" said Mrs. Bird.

"To Canada, if I only knew where that was. Is it very far off, is
Canada?" said she, looking up, with a simple, confiding air, to Mrs.
Bird's face.

"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Bird, involuntarily.

"Is 't a very great way off, think?" said the woman, earnestly.

"Much further than you think, poor child!" said Mrs. Bird; "but we will
try to think what can be done for you. Here, Dinah, make her up a bed in
your own room, close by the kitchen, and I'll think what to do for her
in the morning. Meanwhile, never fear, poor woman; put your trust in
God; he will protect you."

Mrs. Bird and her husband reentered the parlor. She sat down in her
little rocking-chair before the fire, swaying thoughtfully to and fro.
Mr. Bird strode up and down the room, grumbling to himself, "Pish!
pshaw! confounded awkward business!" At length, striding up to his wife,
he said,

"I say, wife, she'll have to get away from here, this very night. That
fellow will be down on the scent bright and early tomorrow morning: if
't was only the woman, she could lie quiet till it was over; but that
little chap can't be kept still by a troop of horse and foot, I'll
warrant me; he'll bring it all out, popping his head out of some window
or door. A pretty kettle of fish it would be for me, too, to be caught
with them both here, just now! No; they'll have to be got off tonight."

"Tonight! How is it possible?--where to?"

"Well, I know pretty well where to," said the senator, beginning to put
on his boots, with a reflective air; and, stopping when his leg was half
in, he embraced his knee with both hands, and seemed to go off in deep
meditation.

"It's a confounded awkward, ugly business," said he, at last, beginning
to tug at his boot-straps again, "and that's a fact!" After one boot
was fairly on, the senator sat with the other in his hand, profoundly
studying the figure of the carpet. "It will have to be done, though, for
aught I see,--hang it all!" and he drew the other boot anxiously on, and
looked out of the window.

Now, little Mrs. Bird was a discreet woman,--a woman who never in her
life said, "I told you so!" and, on the present occasion, though pretty
well aware of the shape her husband's meditations were taking, she very
prudently forbore to meddle with them, only sat very quietly in her
chair, and looked quite ready to hear her liege lord's intentions, when
he should think proper to utter them.

"You see," he said, "there's my old client, Van Trompe, has come over
from Kentucky, and set all his slaves free; and he has bought a place
seven miles up the creek, here, back in the woods, where nobody goes,
unless they go on purpose; and it's a place that isn't found in a hurry.
There she'd be safe enough; but the plague of the thing is, nobody could
drive a carriage there tonight, but ‘me’."

"Why not? Cudjoe is an excellent driver."

"Ay, ay, but here it is. The creek has to be crossed twice; and the
second crossing is quite dangerous, unless one knows it as I do. I have
crossed it a hundred times on horseback, and know exactly the turns to
take. And so, you see, there's no help for it. Cudjoe must put in the
horses, as quietly as may be, about twelve o'clock, and I'll take her
over; and then, to give color to the matter, he must carry me on to the
next tavern to take the stage for Columbus, that comes by about three or
four, and so it will look as if I had had the carriage only for that.
I shall get into business bright and early in the morning. But I'm
thinking I shall feel rather cheap there, after all that's been said and
done; but, hang it, I can't help it!"

"Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John," said the
wife, laying her little white hand on his. "Could I ever have loved you,
had I not known you better than you know yourself?" And the little
woman looked so handsome, with the tears sparkling in her eyes, that
the senator thought he must be a decidedly clever fellow, to get such a
pretty creature into such a passionate admiration of him; and so, what
could he do but walk off soberly, to see about the carriage. At the
door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he said, with
some hesitation.

"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer
full of things--of--of--poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned
quickly on his heel, and shut the door after him.

His wife opened the little bed-room door adjoining her room and, taking
the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small
recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer,
and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy like, had followed
close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at
their mother. And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in
your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you
like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are,
if it has not been so.

Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a
form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even
a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping
from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a
ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She
sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it, wept
till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly
raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest
and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle.

"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "you going to
give away ‘those’ things?"

"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear, loving
little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do
this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common
person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more
heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his
blessings with them!"

There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into
joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears,
are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate
and the distressed. Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by
the lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her
own lost one for the outcast wanderer.

After a while, Mrs. Bird opened a wardrobe, and, taking from thence a
plain, serviceable dress or two, she sat down busily to her work-table,
and, with needle, scissors, and thimble, at hand, quietly commenced the
"letting down" process which her husband had recommended, and continued
busily at it till the old clock in the corner struck twelve, and she
heard the low rattling of wheels at the door.

"Mary," said her husband, coming in, with his overcoat in his hand, "you
must wake her up now; we must be off."

Mrs. Bird hastily deposited the various articles she had collected in a
small plain trunk, and locking it, desired her husband to see it in
the carriage, and then proceeded to call the woman. Soon, arrayed in
a cloak, bonnet, and shawl, that had belonged to her benefactress, she
appeared at the door with her child in her arms. Mr. Bird hurried her
into the carriage, and Mrs. Bird pressed on after her to the carriage
steps. Eliza leaned out of the carriage, and put out her hand,--a hand
as soft and beautiful as was given in return. She fixed her large, dark
eyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird's face, and seemed going
to speak. Her lips moved,--she tried once or twice, but there was no
sound,--and pointing upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she
fell back in the seat, and covered her face. The door was shut, and the
carriage drove on.

What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the
week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more
stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and
abettors!

Our good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of his
brethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them
immortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets,
and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare
of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests!

He was as bold as a lion about it, and "mightily convinced" not only
himself, but everybody that heard him;--but then his idea of a fugitive
was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,--or at the most,
the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle
with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it. The magic of the real
presence of distress,--the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling
human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had never
tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother,
a defenceless child,--like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's
little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or
steel,--as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,--he
was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. And you
need not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we
have some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances,
would not do much better. We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in
Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to whom never was tale of
suffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect
of us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you
to render, were you in our place?

Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in
a fair way to expiate it by his night's penance. There had been a long
continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as
every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud--and the
road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.

"And pray, what sort of a road may that be?" says some eastern
traveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad,
but those of smoothness or speed.

Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the
west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made
of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over
in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to
hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway
essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time, the rains wash off
all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither, in
picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with divers chasms and
ruts of black mud intervening.

Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making
moral reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be
expected,--the carriage proceeding along much as follows,--bump! bump!
bump! slush! down in the mud!--the senator, woman and child, reversing
their positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate
adjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks
fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among
the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as
the senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights
itself with a bounce,--two front wheels go down into another abyss,
and senator, woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the
front seat,--senator's hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite
unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished;--child
cries, and Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the
horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining under repeated
cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up, with another bounce,--down go
the hind wheels,--senator, woman, and child, fly over on to the back
seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed
into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the
"slough" is passed, and the horses stop, panting;--the senator finds
his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her child, and they
brace themselves for what is yet to come.

For a while only the continuous bump! bump! intermingled, just by way of
variety, with divers side plunges and compound shakes; and they begin to
flatter themselves that they are not so badly off, after all. At last,
with a square plunge, which puts all on to their feet and then down into
their seats with incredible quickness, the carriage stops,--and, after
much outside commotion, Cudjoe appears at the door.

"Please, sir, it's powerful bad spot, this' yer. I don't know how we's
to get clar out. I'm a thinkin' we'll have to be a gettin' rails."

The senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm
foothold; down goes one foot an immeasurable depth,--he tries to pull it
up, loses his balance, and tumbles over into the mud, and is fished out,
in a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.

But we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers' bones. Western
travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting
process of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud
holes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate
hero. We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.

It was full late in the night when the carriage emerged, dripping
and bespattered, out of the creek, and stood at the door of a large
farmhouse.

It took no inconsiderable perseverance to arouse the inmates; but at
last the respectable proprietor appeared, and undid the door. He was a
great, tall, bristling Orson of a fellow, full six feet and some inches
in his stockings, and arrayed in a red flannel hunting-shirt. A very
heavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard
of some days' growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the
least, not particularly prepossessing. He stood for a few minutes
holding the candle aloft, and blinking on our travellers with a dismal
and mystified expression that was truly ludicrous. It cost some effort
of our senator to induce him to comprehend the case fully; and while he
is doing his best at that, we shall give him a little introduction to
our readers.

Honest old John Van Trompe was once quite a considerable land-owner and
slave-owner in the State of Kentucky. Having "nothing of the bear about
him but the skin," and being gifted by nature with a great, honest, just
heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some years
witnessing with repressed uneasiness the workings of a system equally
bad for oppressor and oppressed. At last, one day, John's great heart
had swelled altogether too big to wear his bonds any longer; so he
just took his pocket-book out of his desk, and went over into Ohio, and
bought a quarter of a township of good, rich land, made out free papers
for all his people,--men, women, and children,--packed them up in
wagons, and sent them off to settle down; and then honest John turned
his face up the creek, and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to
enjoy his conscience and his reflections.

"Are you the man that will shelter a poor woman and child from
slave-catchers?" said the senator, explicitly.

"I rather think I am," said honest John, with some considerable
emphasis.

"I thought so,"' said the senator.

"If there's anybody comes," said the good man, stretching his tall,
muscular form upward, "why here I'm ready for him: and I've got seven
sons, each six foot high, and they'll be ready for 'em. Give our
respects to 'em," said John; "tell 'em it's no matter how soon they
call,--make no kinder difference to us," said John, running his fingers
through the shock of hair that thatched his head, and bursting out into
a great laugh.

Weary, jaded, and spiritless, Eliza dragged herself up to the door,
with her child lying in a heavy sleep on her arm. The rough man held the
candle to her face, and uttering a kind of compassionate grunt, opened
the door of a small bed-room adjoining to the large kitchen where they
were standing, and motioned her to go in. He took down a candle, and
lighting it, set it upon the table, and then addressed himself to Eliza.

"Now, I say, gal, you needn't be a bit afeard, let who will come here.
I'm up to all that sort o' thing," said he, pointing to two or three
goodly rifles over the mantel-piece; "and most people that know me know
that 't wouldn't be healthy to try to get anybody out o' my house when
I'm agin it. So ‘now’ you jist go to sleep now, as quiet as if yer
mother was a rockin' ye," said he, as he shut the door.

"Why, this is an uncommon handsome un," he said to the senator. "Ah,
well; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they has
any kind o' feelin, such as decent women should. I know all about that."

The senator, in a few words, briefly explained Eliza's history.

"O! ou! aw! now, I want to know?" said the good man, pitifully;
"sho! now sho! That's natur now, poor crittur! hunted down now like a
deer,--hunted down, jest for havin' natural feelin's, and doin' what no
kind o' mother could help a doin'! I tell ye what, these yer things make
me come the nighest to swearin', now, o' most anything," said honest
John, as he wiped his eyes with the back of a great, freckled, yellow
hand. "I tell yer what, stranger, it was years and years before I'd jine
the church, 'cause the ministers round in our parts used to preach that
the Bible went in for these ere cuttings up,--and I couldn't be up to
'em with their Greek and Hebrew, and so I took up agin 'em, Bible and
all. I never jined the church till I found a minister that was up to 'em
all in Greek and all that, and he said right the contrary; and then I
took right hold, and jined the church,--I did now, fact," said John, who
had been all this time uncorking some very frisky bottled cider, which
at this juncture he presented.

"Ye'd better jest put up here, now, till daylight," said he, heartily,
"and I'll call up the old woman, and have a bed got ready for you in no
time."

"Thank you, my good friend," said the senator, "I must be along, to take
the night stage for Columbus."

"Ah! well, then, if you must, I'll go a piece with you, and show you a
cross road that will take you there better than the road you came on.
That road's mighty bad."

John equipped himself, and, with a lantern in hand, was soon seen
guiding the senator's carriage towards a road that ran down in a hollow,
back of his dwelling. When they parted, the senator put into his hand a
ten-dollar bill.

"It's for her," he said, briefly.

"Ay, ay," said John, with equal conciseness.

They shook hands, and parted.



CHAPTER X

The Property Is Carried Off


The February morning looked gray and drizzling through the window of
Uncle Tom's cabin. It looked on downcast faces, the images of mournful
hearts. The little table stood out before the fire, covered with an
ironing-cloth; a coarse but clean shirt or two, fresh from the iron,
hung on the back of a chair by the fire, and Aunt Chloe had another
spread out before her on the table. Carefully she rubbed and ironed
every fold and every hem, with the most scrupulous exactness, every now
and then raising her hand to her face to wipe off the tears that were
coursing down her cheeks.

Tom sat by, with his Testament open on his knee, and his head leaning
upon his hand;--but neither spoke. It was yet early, and the children
lay all asleep together in their little rude trundle-bed.

Tom, who had, to the full, the gentle, domestic heart, which woe for
them! has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy race, got up and
walked silently to look at his children.

"It's the last time," he said.

Aunt Chloe did not answer, only rubbed away over and over on the coarse
shirt, already as smooth as hands could make it; and finally setting her
iron suddenly down with a despairing plunge, she sat down to the table,
and "lifted up her voice and wept."

"S'pose we must be resigned; but oh Lord! how ken I? If I know'd
anything whar you 's goin', or how they'd sarve you! Missis says she'll
try and 'deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that
goes down thar! They kills 'em! I've hearn 'em tell how dey works 'em up
on dem ar plantations."

"There'll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here."

"Well," said Aunt Chloe, "s'pose dere will; but de Lord lets drefful
things happen, sometimes. I don't seem to get no comfort dat way."

"I'm in the Lord's hands," said Tom; "nothin' can go no furder than he
lets it;--and thar's ‘one’ thing I can thank him for. It's ‘me’
that's sold and going down, and not you nur the chil'en. Here you're
safe;--what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he'll help me,--I
know he will."

Ah, brave, manly heart,--smothering thine own sorrow, to comfort thy
beloved ones! Tom spoke with a thick utterance, and with a bitter
choking in his throat,--but he spoke brave and strong.

"Let's think on our marcies!" he added, tremulously, as if he was quite
sure he needed to think on them very hard indeed.

"Marcies!" said Aunt Chloe; "don't see no marcy in 't! 'tan't right!
tan't right it should be so! Mas'r never ought ter left it so that ye
‘could’ be took for his debts. Ye've arnt him all he gets for ye, twice
over. He owed ye yer freedom, and ought ter gin 't to yer years ago.
Mebbe he can't help himself now, but I feel it's wrong. Nothing can't
beat that ar out o' me. Sich a faithful crittur as ye've been,--and
allers sot his business 'fore yer own every way,--and reckoned on him
more than yer own wife and chil'en! Them as sells heart's love and
heart's blood, to get out thar scrapes, de Lord'll be up to 'em!"

"Chloe! now, if ye love me, ye won't talk so, when perhaps jest the last
time we'll ever have together! And I'll tell ye, Chloe, it goes agin me
to hear one word agin Mas'r. Wan't he put in my arms a baby?--it's natur
I should think a heap of him. And he couldn't be spected to think so
much of poor Tom. Mas'rs is used to havin' all these yer things done for
'em, and nat'lly they don't think so much on 't. They can't be spected
to, no way. Set him 'longside of other Mas'rs--who's had the treatment
and livin' I've had? And he never would have let this yer come on me, if
he could have seed it aforehand. I know he wouldn't."

"Wal, any way, thar's wrong about it ‘somewhar’," said Aunt Chloe, in
whom a stubborn sense of justice was a predominant trait; "I can't jest
make out whar 't is, but thar's wrong somewhar, I'm ‘clar’ o' that."

"Yer ought ter look up to the Lord above--he's above all--thar don't a
sparrow fall without him."

"It don't seem to comfort me, but I spect it orter," said Aunt Chloe.
"But dar's no use talkin'; I'll jes wet up de corn-cake, and get ye one
good breakfast, 'cause nobody knows when you'll get another."

In order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it
must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are
peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are
not naturally daring and enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate.
Add to this all the terrors with which ignorance invests the unknown,
and add to this, again, that selling to the south is set before the
negro from childhood as the last severity of punishment. The threat that
terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind is the threat of
being sent down river. We have ourselves heard this feeling expressed by
them, and seen the unaffected horror with which they will sit in their
gossipping hours, and tell frightful stories of that "down river," which
to them is

‘"That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns."‘*


* A slightly inaccurate quotation from ‘Hamlet’, Act III,
scene I, lines 369-370.

A missionary figure among the fugitives in Canada told us that many of
the fugitives confessed themselves to have escaped from comparatively
kind masters, and that they were induced to brave the perils of escape,
in almost every case, by the desperate horror with which they regarded
being sold south,--a doom which was hanging either over themselves
or their husbands, their wives or children. This nerves the African,
naturally patient, timid and unenterprising, with heroic courage, and
leads him to suffer hunger, cold, pain, the perils of the wilderness,
and the more dread penalties of recapture.

The simple morning meal now smoked on the table, for Mrs. Shelby had
excused Aunt Chloe's attendance at the great house that morning.
The poor soul had expended all her little energies on this farewell
feast,--had killed and dressed her choicest chicken, and prepared her
corn-cake with scrupulous exactness, just to her husband's taste, and
brought out certain mysterious jars on the mantel-piece, some preserves
that were never produced except on extreme occasions.

"Lor, Pete," said Mose, triumphantly, "han't we got a buster of a
breakfast!" at the same time catching at a fragment of the chicken.

Aunt Chloe gave him a sudden box on the ear. "Thar now! crowing over the
last breakfast yer poor daddy's gwine to have to home!"

"O, Chloe!" said Tom, gently.

"Wal, I can't help it," said Aunt Chloe, hiding her face in her apron;
"I 's so tossed about it, it makes me act ugly."

The boys stood quite still, looking first at their father and then
at their mother, while the baby, climbing up her clothes, began an
imperious, commanding cry.

"Thar!" said Aunt Chloe, wiping her eyes and taking up the baby; "now
I's done, I hope,--now do eat something. This yer's my nicest chicken.
Thar, boys, ye shall have some, poor critturs! Yer mammy's been cross to
yer."

The boys needed no second invitation, and went in with great zeal for
the eatables; and it was well they did so, as otherwise there would have
been very little performed to any purpose by the party.

"Now," said Aunt Chloe, bustling about after breakfast, "I must put
up yer clothes. Jest like as not, he'll take 'em all away. I know thar
ways--mean as dirt, they is! Wal, now, yer flannels for rhumatis is in
this corner; so be careful, 'cause there won't nobody make ye no more.
Then here's yer old shirts, and these yer is new ones. I toed off these
yer stockings last night, and put de ball in 'em to mend with. But Lor!
who'll ever mend for ye?" and Aunt Chloe, again overcome, laid her head
on the box side, and sobbed. "To think on 't! no crittur to do for ye,
sick or well! I don't railly think I ought ter be good now!"

The boys, having eaten everything there was on the breakfast-table,
began now to take some thought of the case; and, seeing their mother
crying, and their father looking very sad, began to whimper and put
their hands to their eyes. Uncle Tom had the baby on his knee, and was
letting her enjoy herself to the utmost extent, scratching his face
and pulling his hair, and occasionally breaking out into clamorous
explosions of delight, evidently arising out of her own internal
reflections.

"Ay, crow away, poor crittur!" said Aunt Chloe; "ye'll have to come to
it, too! ye'll live to see yer husband sold, or mebbe be sold yerself;
and these yer boys, they's to be sold, I s'pose, too, jest like as
not, when dey gets good for somethin'; an't no use in niggers havin'
nothin'!"

Here one of the boys called out, "Thar's Missis a-comin' in!"

"She can't do no good; what's she coming for?" said Aunt Chloe.

Mrs. Shelby entered. Aunt Chloe set a chair for her in a manner
decidedly gruff and crusty. She did not seem to notice either the action
or the manner. She looked pale and anxious.

"Tom," she said, "I come to--" and stopping suddenly, and regarding the
silent group, she sat down in the chair, and, covering her face with her
handkerchief, began to sob.

"Lor, now, Missis, don't--don't!" said Aunt Chloe, bursting out in her
turn; and for a few moments they all wept in company. And in those tears
they all shed together, the high and the lowly, melted away all
the heart-burnings and anger of the oppressed. O, ye who visit the
distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a
cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?

"My good fellow," said Mrs. Shelby, "I can't give you anything to do
you any good. If I give you money, it will only be taken from you. But
I tell you solemnly, and before God, that I will keep trace of you,
and bring you back as soon as I can command the money;--and, till then,
trust in God!"

Here the boys called out that Mas'r Haley was coming, and then an
unceremonious kick pushed open the door. Haley stood there in very
ill humor, having ridden hard the night before, and being not at all
pacified by his ill success in recapturing his prey.

"Come," said he, "ye nigger, ye'r ready? Servant, ma'am!" said he,
taking off his hat, as he saw Mrs. Shelby.

Aunt Chloe shut and corded the box, and, getting up, looked gruffly on
the trader, her tears seeming suddenly turned to sparks of fire.

Tom rose up meekly, to follow his new master, and raised up his heavy
box on his shoulder. His wife took the baby in her arms to go with him
to the wagon, and the children, still crying, trailed on behind.

Mrs. Shelby, walking up to the trader, detained him for a few moments,
talking with him in an earnest manner; and while she was thus talking,
the whole family party proceeded to a wagon, that stood ready harnessed
at the door. A crowd of all the old and young hands on the place stood
gathered around it, to bid farewell to their old associate. Tom had been
looked up to, both as a head servant and a Christian teacher, by all
the place, and there was much honest sympathy and grief about him,
particularly among the women.

"Why, Chloe, you bar it better 'n we do!" said one of the women, who had
been weeping freely, noticing the gloomy calmness with which Aunt Chloe
stood by the wagon.

"I's done ‘my’ tears!" she said, looking grimly at the trader, who was
coming up. "I does not feel to cry 'fore dat ar old limb, no how!"

"Get in!" said Haley to Tom, as he strode through the crowd of servants,
who looked at him with lowering brows.

Tom got in, and Haley, drawing out from under the wagon seat a heavy
pair of shackles, made them fast around each ankle.

A smothered groan of indignation ran through the whole circle, and
Mrs. Shelby spoke from the verandah,--"Mr. Haley, I assure you that
precaution is entirely unnecessary."

"Don' know, ma'am; I've lost one five hundred dollars from this yer
place, and I can't afford to run no more risks."

"What else could she spect on him?" said Aunt Chloe, indignantly,
while the two boys, who now seemed to comprehend at once their father's
destiny, clung to her gown, sobbing and groaning vehemently.

"I'm sorry," said Tom, "that Mas'r George happened to be away."

George had gone to spend two or three days with a companion on a
neighboring estate, and having departed early in the morning, before
Tom's misfortune had been made public, had left without hearing of it.

"Give my love to Mas'r George," he said, earnestly.

Haley whipped up the horse, and, with a steady, mournful look, fixed to
the last on the old place, Tom was whirled away.

Mr. Shelby at this time was not at home. He had sold Tom under the
spur of a driving necessity, to get out of the power of a man whom he
dreaded,--and his first feeling, after the consummation of the bargain,
had been that of relief. But his wife's expostulations awoke his
half-slumbering regrets; and Tom's manly disinterestedness increased the
unpleasantness of his feelings. It was in vain that he said to himself
that he had a ‘right’ to do it,--that everybody did it,--and that some
did it without even the excuse of necessity;--he could not satisfy his
own feelings; and that he might not witness the unpleasant scenes of
the consummation, he had gone on a short business tour up the country,
hoping that all would be over before he returned.

Tom and Haley rattled on along the dusty road, whirling past every old
familiar spot, until the bounds of the estate were fairly passed, and
they found themselves out on the open pike. After they had ridden about
a mile, Haley suddenly drew up at the door of a blacksmith's shop, when,
taking out with him a pair of handcuffs, he stepped into the shop, to
have a little alteration in them.

"These yer 's a little too small for his build," said Haley, showing the
fetters, and pointing out to Tom.

"Lor! now, if thar an't Shelby's Tom. He han't sold him, now?" said the
smith.

"Yes, he has," said Haley.

"Now, ye don't! well, reely," said the smith, "who'd a thought it! Why,
ye needn't go to fetterin' him up this yer way. He's the faithfullest,
best crittur--"

"Yes, yes," said Haley; "but your good fellers are just the critturs to
want ter run off. Them stupid ones, as doesn't care whar they go, and
shifless, drunken ones, as don't care for nothin', they'll stick by,
and like as not be rather pleased to be toted round; but these yer
prime fellers, they hates it like sin. No way but to fetter 'em; got
legs,--they'll use 'em,--no mistake."

"Well," said the smith, feeling among his tools, "them plantations down
thar, stranger, an't jest the place a Kentuck nigger wants to go to;
they dies thar tol'able fast, don't they?"

"Wal, yes, tol'able fast, ther dying is; what with the 'climating and
one thing and another, they dies so as to keep the market up pretty
brisk," said Haley.

"Wal, now, a feller can't help thinkin' it's a mighty pity to have a
nice, quiet, likely feller, as good un as Tom is, go down to be fairly
ground up on one of them ar sugar plantations."

"Wal, he's got a fa'r chance. I promised to do well by him. I'll get
him in house-servant in some good old family, and then, if he stands the
fever and 'climating, he'll have a berth good as any nigger ought ter
ask for."

"He leaves his wife and chil'en up here, s'pose?"

"Yes; but he'll get another thar. Lord, thar's women enough everywhar,"
said Haley.

Tom was sitting very mournfully on the outside of the shop while this
conversation was going on. Suddenly he heard the quick, short click of
a horse's hoof behind him; and, before he could fairly awake from his
surprise, young Master George sprang into the wagon, threw his arms
tumultuously round his neck, and was sobbing and scolding with energy.

"I declare, it's real mean! I don't care what they say, any of 'em! It's
a nasty, mean shame! If I was a man, they shouldn't do it,--they should
not, ‘so’!" said George, with a kind of subdued howl.

"O! Mas'r George! this does me good!" said Tom. "I couldn't bar to go
off without seein' ye! It does me real good, ye can't tell!" Here Tom
made some movement of his feet, and George's eye fell on the fetters.

"What a shame!" he exclaimed, lifting his hands. "I'll knock that old
fellow down--I will!"

"No you won't, Mas'r George; and you must not talk so loud. It won't
help me any, to anger him."

"Well, I won't, then, for your sake; but only to think of it--isn't it
a shame? They never sent for me, nor sent me any word, and, if it hadn't
been for Tom Lincon, I shouldn't have heard it. I tell you, I blew 'em
up well, all of 'em, at home!"

"That ar wasn't right, I'm 'feard, Mas'r George."

"Can't help it! I say it's a shame! Look here, Uncle Tom," said he,
turning his back to the shop, and speaking in a mysterious tone, ‘"I've
brought you my dollar!"‘

"O! I couldn't think o' takin' on 't, Mas'r George, no ways in the
world!" said Tom, quite moved.

"But you ‘shall’ take it!" said George; "look here--I told Aunt Chloe
I'd do it, and she advised me just to make a hole in it, and put a
string through, so you could hang it round your neck, and keep it out of
sight; else this mean scamp would take it away. I tell ye, Tom, I want
to blow him up! it would do me good!"

"No, don't Mas'r George, for it won't do ‘me’ any good."

"Well, I won't, for your sake," said George, busily tying his dollar
round Tom's neck; "but there, now, button your coat tight over it, and
keep it, and remember, every time you see it, that I'll come down after
you, and bring you back. Aunt Chloe and I have been talking about it. I
told her not to fear; I'll see to it, and I'll tease father's life out,
if he don't do it."

"O! Mas'r George, ye mustn't talk so 'bout yer father!"

"Lor, Uncle Tom, I don't mean anything bad."

"And now, Mas'r George," said Tom, "ye must be a good boy; 'member how
many hearts is sot on ye. Al'ays keep close to yer mother. Don't be
gettin' into any of them foolish ways boys has of gettin' too big to
mind their mothers. Tell ye what, Mas'r George, the Lord gives good many
things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never
see sich another woman, Mas'r George, if ye live to be a hundred years
old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her,
thar's my own good boy,--you will now, won't ye?"

"Yes, I will, Uncle Tom," said George seriously.

"And be careful of yer speaking, Mas'r George. Young boys, when they
comes to your age, is wilful, sometimes--it is natur they should be.
But real gentlemen, such as I hopes you'll be, never lets fall on words
that isn't 'spectful to thar parents. Ye an't 'fended, Mas'r George?"

"No, indeed, Uncle Tom; you always did give me good advice."

"I's older, ye know," said Tom, stroking the boy's fine, curly head with
his large, strong hand, but speaking in a voice as tender as a woman's,
"and I sees all that's bound up in you. O, Mas'r George, you has
everything,--l'arnin', privileges, readin', writin',--and you'll grow
up to be a great, learned, good man and all the people on the place and
your mother and father'll be so proud on ye! Be a good Mas'r, like yer
father; and be a Christian, like yer mother. 'Member yer Creator in the
days o' yer youth, Mas'r George."

"I'll be ‘real’ good, Uncle Tom, I tell you," said George. "I'm going to
be a ‘first-rater’; and don't you be discouraged. I'll have you back to
the place, yet. As I told Aunt Chloe this morning, I'll build our house
all over, and you shall have a room for a parlor with a carpet on it,
when I'm a man. O, you'll have good times yet!"

Haley now came to the door, with the handcuffs in his hands.

"Look here, now, Mister," said George, with an air of great superiority,
as he got out, "I shall let father and mother know how you treat Uncle
Tom!"

"You're welcome," said the trader.

"I should think you'd be ashamed to spend all your life buying men and
women, and chaining them, like cattle! I should think you'd feel mean!"
said George.

"So long as your grand folks wants to buy men and women, I'm as good
as they is," said Haley; "'tan't any meaner sellin' on 'em, that 't is
buyin'!"

"I'll never do either, when I'm a man," said George; "I'm ashamed, this
day, that I'm a Kentuckian. I always was proud of it before;" and George
sat very straight on his horse, and looked round with an air, as if he
expected the state would be impressed with his opinion.

"Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip," said George.

"Good-by, Mas'r George," said Tom, looking fondly and admiringly at him.
"God Almighty bless you! Ah! Kentucky han't got many like you!" he said,
in the fulness of his heart, as the frank, boyish face was lost to his
view. Away he went, and Tom looked, till the clatter of his horse's
heels died away, the last sound or sight of his home. But over his heart
there seemed to be a warm spot, where those young hands had placed that
precious dollar. Tom put up his hand, and held it close to his heart.

"Now, I tell ye what, Tom," said Haley, as he came up to the wagon, and
threw in the handcuffs, "I mean to start fa'r with ye, as I gen'ally do
with my niggers; and I'll tell ye now, to begin with, you treat me fa'r,
and I'll treat you fa'r; I an't never hard on my niggers. Calculates to
do the best for 'em I can. Now, ye see, you'd better jest settle down
comfortable, and not be tryin' no tricks; because nigger's tricks of all
sorts I'm up to, and it's no use. If niggers is quiet, and don't try to
get off, they has good times with me; and if they don't, why, it's thar
fault, and not mine."

Tom assured Haley that he had no present intentions of running off. In
fact, the exhortation seemed rather a superfluous one to a man with a
great pair of iron fetters on his feet. But Mr. Haley had got in
the habit of commencing his relations with his stock with little
exhortations of this nature, calculated, as he deemed, to inspire
cheerfulness and confidence, and prevent the necessity of any unpleasant
scenes.

And here, for the present, we take our leave of Tom, to pursue the
fortunes of other characters in our story.



CHAPTER XI

In Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind

It was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveler alighted at the door
of a small country hotel, in the village of N----, in Kentucky. In the
barroom he found assembled quite a miscellaneous company, whom stress of
weather had driven to harbor, and the place presented the usual scenery
of such reunions. Great, tall, raw-boned Kentuckians, attired in
hunting-shirts, and trailing their loose joints over a vast extent of
territory, with the easy lounge peculiar to the race,--rifles stacked
away in the corner, shot-pouches, game-bags, hunting-dogs, and little
negroes, all rolled together in the corners,--were the characteristic
features in the picture. At each end of the fireplace sat a long-legged
gentleman, with his chair tipped back, his hat on his head, and the
heels of his muddy boots reposing sublimely on the mantel-piece,--a
position, we will inform our readers, decidedly favorable to the turn
of reflection incident to western taverns, where travellers exhibit
a decided preference for this particular mode of elevating their
understandings.

Mine host, who stood behind the bar, like most of his country men, was
great of stature, good-natured and loose-jointed, with an enormous shock
of hair on his head, and a great tall hat on the top of that.

In fact, everybody in the room bore on his head this characteristic
emblem of man's sovereignty; whether it were felt hat, palm-leaf, greasy
beaver, or fine new chapeau, there it reposed with true republican
independence. In truth, it appeared to be the characteristic mark of
every individual. Some wore them tipped rakishly to one side--these
were your men of humor, jolly, free-and-easy dogs; some had them jammed
independently down over their noses--these were your hard characters,
thorough men, who, when they wore their hats, ‘wanted’ to wear them, and
to wear them just as they had a mind to; there were those who had them
set far over back--wide-awake men, who wanted a clear prospect; while
careless men, who did not know, or care, how their hats sat, had them
shaking about in all directions. The various hats, in fact, were quite a
Shakespearean study.

Divers negroes, in very free-and-easy pantaloons, and with no redundancy
in the shirt line, were scuttling about, hither and thither, without
bringing to pass any very particular results, except expressing a
generic willingness to turn over everything in creation generally
for the benefit of Mas'r and his guests. Add to this picture a
jolly, crackling, rollicking fire, going rejoicingly up a great wide
chimney,--the outer door and every window being set wide open, and the
calico window-curtain flopping and snapping in a good stiff breeze
of damp raw air,--and you have an idea of the jollities of a Kentucky
tavern.

Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the
doctrine of transmitted instincts and pecularities. His fathers were
mighty hunters,--men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free,
open heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant
to this day always acts as if the house were his camp,--wears his hat
at all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of
chairs or mantelpieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward,
and put his upon trees and logs,--keeps all the windows and doors
open, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great
lungs,--calls everybody "stranger," with nonchalant ‘bonhommie’, and
is altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living.

Into such an assembly of the free and easy our traveller entered. He was
a short, thick-set man, carefully dressed, with a round, good-natured
countenance, and something rather fussy and particular in his
appearance. He was very careful of his valise and umbrella, bringing
them in with his own hands, and resisting, pertinaciously, all offers
from the various servants to relieve him of them. He looked round the
barroom with rather an anxious air, and, retreating with his valuables
to the warmest corner, disposed them under his chair, sat down, and
looked rather apprehensively up at the worthy whose heels illustrated
the end of the mantel-piece, who was spitting from right to left, with
a courage and energy rather alarming to gentlemen of weak nerves and
particular habits.

"I say, stranger, how are ye?" said the aforesaid gentleman, firing an
honorary salute of tobacco-juice in the direction of the new arrival.

"Well, I reckon," was the reply of the other, as he dodged, with some
alarm, the threatening honor.

"Any news?" said the respondent, taking out a strip of tobacco and a
large hunting-knife from his pocket.

"Not that I know of," said the man.

"Chaw?" said the first speaker, handing the old gentleman a bit of his
tobacco, with a decidedly brotherly air.

"No, thank ye--it don't agree with me," said the little man, edging off.

"Don't, eh?" said the other, easily, and stowing away the morsel in
his own mouth, in order to keep up the supply of tobacco-juice, for the
general benefit of society.

The old gentleman uniformly gave a little start whenever his long-sided
brother fired in his direction; and this being observed by his
companion, he very good-naturedly turned his artillery to another
quarter, and proceeded to storm one of the fire-irons with a degree of
military talent fully sufficient to take a city.

"What's that?" said the old gentleman, observing some of the company
formed in a group around a large handbill.

"Nigger advertised!" said one of the company, briefly.

Mr. Wilson, for that was the old gentleman's name, rose up, and, after
carefully adjusting his valise and umbrella, proceeded deliberately to
take out his spectacles and fix them on his nose; and, this operation
being performed, read as follows:

"Ran away from the subscriber, my mulatto boy, George. Said
George six feet in height, a very light mulatto, brown curly
hair; is very intelligent, speaks handsomely, can read and
write, will probably try to pass for a white man, is deeply
scarred on his back and shoulders, has been branded in his
right hand with the letter H.

"I will give four hundred dollars for him alive, and the
same sum for satisfactory proof that he has been ‘killed."‘

The old gentleman read this advertisement from end to end in a low
voice, as if he were studying it.

The long-legged veteran, who had been besieging the fire-iron, as before
related, now took down his cumbrous length, and rearing aloft his tall
form, walked up to the advertisement and very deliberately spit a full
discharge of tobacco-juice on it.

"There's my mind upon that!" said he, briefly, and sat down again.

"Why, now, stranger, what's that for?" said mine host.

"I'd do it all the same to the writer of that ar paper, if he was
here," said the long man, coolly resuming his old employment of cutting
tobacco. "Any man that owns a boy like that, and can't find any better
way o' treating on him, ‘deserves’ to lose him. Such papers as these
is a shame to Kentucky; that's my mind right out, if anybody wants to
know!"

"Well, now, that's a fact," said mine host, as he made an entry in his
book.

"I've got a gang of boys, sir," said the long man, resuming his attack
on the fire-irons, "and I jest tells 'em--'Boys,' says I,--'‘run’ now!
dig! put! jest when ye want to! I never shall come to look after you!'
That's the way I keep mine. Let 'em know they are free to run any time,
and it jest breaks up their wanting to. More 'n all, I've got free
papers for 'em all recorded, in case I gets keeled up any o' these
times, and they know it; and I tell ye, stranger, there an't a fellow in
our parts gets more out of his niggers than I do. Why, my boys have been
to Cincinnati, with five hundred dollars' worth of colts, and brought
me back the money, all straight, time and agin. It stands to reason
they should. Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs'
actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works." And the
honest drover, in his warmth, endorsed this moral sentiment by firing a
perfect ‘feu de joi’ at the fireplace.

"I think you're altogether right, friend," said Mr. Wilson; "and this
boy described here ‘is’ a fine fellow--no mistake about that. He worked
for me some half-dozen years in my bagging factory, and he was my best
hand, sir. He is an ingenious fellow, too: he invented a machine for
the cleaning of hemp--a really valuable affair; it's gone into use in
several factories. His master holds the patent of it."

"I'll warrant ye," said the drover, "holds it and makes money out of it,
and then turns round and brands the boy in his right hand. If I had a
fair chance, I'd mark him, I reckon so that he'd carry it ‘one’ while."

"These yer knowin' boys is allers aggravatin' and sarcy," said a
coarse-looking fellow, from the other side of the room; "that's why they
gets cut up and marked so. If they behaved themselves, they wouldn't."

"That is to say, the Lord made 'em men, and it's a hard squeeze gettin
'em down into beasts," said the drover, dryly.

"Bright niggers isn't no kind of 'vantage to their masters," continued
the other, well entrenched, in a coarse, unconscious obtuseness, from
the contempt of his opponent; "what's the use o' talents and them
things, if you can't get the use on 'em yourself? Why, all the use they
make on 't is to get round you. I've had one or two of these fellers,
and I jest sold 'em down river. I knew I'd got to lose 'em, first or
last, if I didn't."

"Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out
their souls entirely," said the drover.

Here the conversation was interrupted by the approach of a small
one-horse buggy to the inn. It had a genteel appearance, and a
well-dressed, gentlemanly man sat on the seat, with a colored servant
driving.

The whole party examined the new comer with the interest with which a
set of loafers in a rainy day usually examine every newcomer. He was
very tall, with a dark, Spanish complexion, fine, expressive black eyes,
and close-curling hair, also of a glossy blackness. His well-formed
aquiline nose, straight thin lips, and the admirable contour of his
finely-formed limbs, impressed the whole company instantly with the idea
of something uncommon. He walked easily in among the company, and with
a nod indicated to his waiter where to place his trunk, bowed to the
company, and, with his hat in his hand, walked up leisurely to the bar,
and gave in his name as Henry Butter, Oaklands, Shelby County. Turning,
with an indifferent air, he sauntered up to the advertisement, and read
it over.

"Jim," he said to his man, "seems to me we met a boy something like
this, up at Beman's, didn't we?"

"Yes, Mas'r," said Jim, "only I an't sure about the hand."

"Well, I didn't look, of course," said the stranger with a careless
yawn. Then walking up to the landlord, he desired him to furnish him
with a private apartment, as he had some writing to do immediately.

The landlord was all obsequious, and a relay of about seven negroes, old
and young, male and female, little and big, were soon whizzing about,
like a covey of partridges, bustling, hurrying, treading on each other's
toes, and tumbling over each other, in their zeal to get Mas'r's room
ready, while he seated himself easily on a chair in the middle of the
room, and entered into conversation with the man who sat next to him.

The manufacturer, Mr. Wilson, from the time of the entrance of
the stranger, had regarded him with an air of disturbed and uneasy
curiosity. He seemed to himself to have met and been acquainted with him
somewhere, but he could not recollect. Every few moments, when the man
spoke, or moved, or smiled, he would start and fix his eyes on him, and
then suddenly withdraw them, as the bright, dark eyes met his with such
unconcerned coolness. At last, a sudden recollection seemed to flash
upon him, for he stared at the stranger with such an air of blank
amazement and alarm, that he walked up to him.

"Mr. Wilson, I think," said he, in a tone of recognition, and extending
his hand. "I beg your pardon, I didn't recollect you before. I see you
remember me,--Mr. Butler, of Oaklands, Shelby County."

"Ye--yes--yes, sir," said Mr. Wilson, like one speaking in a dream.

Just then a negro boy entered, and announced that Mas'r's room was
ready.

"Jim, see to the trunks," said the gentleman, negligently; then
addressing himself to Mr. Wilson, he added--"I should like to have a few
moments' conversation with you on business, in my room, if you please."

Mr. Wilson followed him, as one who walks in his sleep; and they
proceeded to a large upper chamber, where a new-made fire was crackling,
and various servants flying about, putting finishing touches to the
arrangements.

When all was done, and the servants departed, the young man deliberately
locked the door, and putting the key in his pocket, faced about, and
folding his arms on his bosom, looked Mr. Wilson full in the face.

"George!" said Mr. Wilson.

"Yes, George," said the young man.

"I couldn't have thought it!"

"I am pretty well disguised, I fancy," said the young man, with a smile.
"A little walnut bark has made my yellow skin a genteel brown, and I've
dyed my hair black; so you see I don't answer to the advertisement at
all."

"O, George! but this is a dangerous game you are playing. I could not
have advised you to it."

"I can do it on my own responsibility," said George, with the same proud
smile.

We remark, ‘en passant’, that George was, by his father's side, of white
descent. His mother was one of those unfortunates of her race, marked
out by personal beauty to be the slave of the passions of her possessor,
and the mother of children who may never know a father. From one of the
proudest families in Kentucky he had inherited a set of fine European
features, and a high, indomitable spirit. From his mother he had
received only a slight mulatto tinge, amply compensated by its
accompanying rich, dark eye. A slight change in the tint of the skin
and the color of his hair had metamorphosed him into the Spanish-looking
fellow he then appeared; and as gracefulness of movement and gentlemanly
manners had always been perfectly natural to him, he found no difficulty
in playing the bold part he had adopted--that of a gentleman travelling
with his domestic.

Mr. Wilson, a good-natured but extremely fidgety and cautious old
gentleman, ambled up and down the room, appearing, as John Bunyan hath
it, "much tumbled up and down in his mind," and divided between his wish
to help George, and a certain confused notion of maintaining law and
order: so, as he shambled about, he delivered himself as follows:

"Well, George, I s'pose you're running away--leaving your lawful
master, George--(I don't wonder at it)--at the same time, I'm sorry,
George,--yes, decidedly--I think I must say that, George--it's my duty
to tell you so."

"Why are you sorry, sir?" said George, calmly.

"Why, to see you, as it were, setting yourself in opposition to the laws
of your country."

"‘My’ country!" said George, with a strong and bitter emphasis; "what
country have I, but the grave,--and I wish to God that I was laid
there!"

"Why, George, no--no--it won't do; this way of talking is
wicked--unscriptural. George, you've got a hard master--in fact, he
is--well he conducts himself reprehensibly--I can't pretend to defend
him. But you know how the angel commanded Hagar to return to her
mistress, and submit herself under the hand;* and the apostle sent back
Onesimus to his master."**

* Gen. 16. The angel bade the pregnant Hagar return to her
mistress Sarai, even though Sarai had dealt harshly with
her.

** Phil. 1:10. Onesimus went back to his master to become
no longer a servant but a "brother beloved."

"Don't quote Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson," said George, with a
flashing eye, "don't! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be,
if ever I get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my
circumstances, is enough to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to
God Almighty;--I'm willing to go with the case to Him, and ask Him if I
do wrong to seek my freedom."

"These feelings are quite natural, George," said the good-natured
man, blowing his nose. "Yes, they're natural, but it is my duty not to
encourage 'em in you. Yes, my boy, I'm sorry for you, now; it's a
bad case--very bad; but the apostle says, 'Let everyone abide in the
condition in which he is called.' We must all submit to the indications
of Providence, George,--don't you see?"

George stood with his head drawn back, his arms folded tightly over his
broad breast, and a bitter smile curling his lips.

"I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a
prisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your
life hoeing corn for them, if you'd think it your duty to abide in the
condition in which you were called. I rather think that you'd think the
first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence--shouldn't
you?"

The little old gentleman stared with both eyes at this illustration of
the case; but, though not much of a reasoner, he had the sense in which
some logicians on this particular subject do not excel,--that of saying
nothing, where nothing could be said. So, as he stood carefully stroking
his umbrella, and folding and patting down all the creases in it, he
proceeded on with his exhortations in a general way.

"You see, George, you know, now, I always have stood your friend; and
whatever I've said, I've said for your good. Now, here, it seems to me,
you're running an awful risk. You can't hope to carry it out. If you're
taken, it will be worse with you than ever; they'll only abuse you, and
half kill you, and sell you down the river."

"Mr. Wilson, I know all this," said George. "I ‘do’ run a risk, but--"
he threw open his overcoat, and showed two pistols and a bowie-knife.
"There!" he said, "I'm ready for 'em! Down south I never ‘will’ go.
No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free
soil,--the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!"

"Why, George, this state of mind is awful; it's getting really desperate
George. I'm concerned. Going to break the laws of your country!"

"My country again! Mr. Wilson, ‘you’ have a country; but what country
have ‘I’, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there
for us? We don't make them,--we don't consent to them,--we have nothing
to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down.
Haven't I heard your Fourth-of-July speeches? Don't you tell us all,
once a year, that governments derive their just power from the consent
of the governed? Can't a fellow ‘think’, that hears such things? Can't
he put this and that together, and see what it comes to?"

Mr. Wilson's mind was one of those that may not unaptly be represented
by a bale of cotton,--downy, soft, benevolently fuzzy and confused.
He really pitied George with all his heart, and had a sort of dim and
cloudy perception of the style of feeling that agitated him; but
he deemed it his duty to go on talking ‘good’ to him, with infinite
pertinacity.

"George, this is bad. I must tell you, you know, as a friend, you'd
better not be meddling with such notions; they are bad, George, very
bad, for boys in your condition,--very;" and Mr. Wilson sat down to a
table, and began nervously chewing the handle of his umbrella.

"See here, now, Mr. Wilson," said George, coming up and sitting himself
determinately down in front of him; "look at me, now. Don't I sit before
you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,--look at
my hands,--look at my body," and the young man drew himself up proudly;
"why am I ‘not’ a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I
can tell you. I had a father--one of your Kentucky gentlemen--who didn't
think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses,
to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's
sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by
one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and
kneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that
she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with
his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans
and screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to
his place."

"Well, then?"

"My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister.
She was a pious, good girl,--a member of the Baptist church,--and as
handsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had
good manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend
near me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and
heard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked
heart, and I couldn't do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir,
for wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give
no slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a
trader's gang, to be sent to market in Orleans,--sent there for
nothing else but that,--and that's the last I know of her. Well, I
grew up,--long years and years,--no father, no mother, no sister, not
a living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping,
scolding, starving. Why, sir, I've been so hungry that I have been glad
to take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little
fellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it
wasn't the whipping, I cried for. No, sir, it was for ‘my mother’ and
‘my sisters’,--it was because I hadn't a friend to love me on earth. I
never knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to
me till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well;
you encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to
try to make something of myself; and God knows how grateful I am for it.
Then, sir, I found my wife; you've seen her,--you know how beautiful
she is. When I found she loved me, when I married her, I scarcely could
believe I was alive, I was so happy; and, sir, she is as good as she is
beautiful. But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away
from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into
the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says,
to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he
comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live
with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in
spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't ‘one’ of all
these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister,
and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to
do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws
of ‘my’ country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any
father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of ‘your’
country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I
get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, ‘that’ shall
be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop
me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to
the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right
for them, it is right for me!"

This speech, delivered partly while sitting at the table, and partly
walking up and down the room,--delivered with tears, and flashing eyes,
and despairing gestures,--was altogether too much for the good-natured
old body to whom it was addressed, who had pulled out a great yellow
silk pocket-handkerchief, and was mopping up his face with great energy.

"Blast 'em all!" he suddenly broke out. "Haven't I always said so--the
infernal old cusses! I hope I an't swearing, now. Well! go ahead,
George, go ahead; but be careful, my boy; don't shoot anybody, George,
unless--well--you'd ‘better’ not shoot, I reckon; at least, I wouldn't
‘hit’ anybody, you know. Where is your wife, George?" he added, as he
nervously rose, and began walking the room.

"Gone, sir gone, with her child in her arms, the Lord only knows
where;--gone after the north star; and when we ever meet, or whether we
meet at all in this world, no creature can tell."

"Is it possible! astonishing! from such a kind family?"

"Kind families get in debt, and the laws of ‘our’ country allow them
to sell the child out of its mother's bosom to pay its master's debts,"
said George, bitterly.

"Well, well," said the honest old man, fumbling in his pocket: "I
s'pose, perhaps, I an't following my judgment,--hang it, I ‘won't’
follow my judgment!" he added, suddenly; "so here, George," and, taking
out a roll of bills from his pocket-book, he offered them to George.

"No, my kind, good sir!" said George, "you've done a great deal for me,
and this might get you into trouble. I have money enough, I hope, to
take me as far as I need it."

"No; but you must, George. Money is a great help everywhere;--can't have
too much, if you get it honestly. Take it,--’do’ take it, ‘now’,--do, my
boy!"

"On condition, sir, that I may repay it at some future time, I will,"
said George, taking up the money.

"And now, George, how long are you going to travel in this way?--not
long or far, I hope. It's well carried on, but too bold. And this black
fellow,--who is he?"

"A true fellow, who went to Canada more than a year ago. He heard, after
he got there, that his master was so angry at him for going off that
he had whipped his poor old mother; and he has come all the way back to
comfort her, and get a chance to get her away."

"Has he got her?"

"Not yet; he has been hanging about the place, and found no chance yet.
Meanwhile, he is going with me as far as Ohio, to put me among friends
that helped him, and then he will come back after her.

"Dangerous, very dangerous!" said the old man.

George drew himself up, and smiled disdainfully.

The old gentleman eyed him from head to foot, with a sort of innocent
wonder.

"George, something has brought you out wonderfully. You hold up your
head, and speak and move like another man," said Mr. Wilson.

"Because I'm a ‘freeman’!" said George, proudly. "Yes, sir; I've said
Mas'r for the last time to any man. ‘I'm free!"‘

"Take care! You are not sure,--you may be taken."

"All men are free and equal ‘in the grave’, if it comes to that, Mr.
Wilson," said George.

"I'm perfectly dumb-founded with your boldness!" said Mr. Wilson,--"to
come right here to the nearest tavern!"

"Mr. Wilson, it is ‘so’ bold, and this tavern is so near, that they
will never think of it; they will look for me on ahead, and you yourself
wouldn't know me. Jim's master don't live in this county; he isn't known
in these parts. Besides, he is given up; nobody is looking after him,
and nobody will take me up from the advertisement, I think."

"But the mark in your hand?"

George drew off his glove, and showed a newly-healed scar in his hand.

"That is a parting proof of Mr. Harris' regard," he said, scornfully.
"A fortnight ago, he took it into his head to give it to me, because
he said he believed I should try to get away one of these days. Looks
interesting, doesn't it?" he said, drawing his glove on again.

"I declare, my very blood runs cold when I think of it,--your condition
and your risks!" said Mr. Wilson.

"Mine has run cold a good many years, Mr. Wilson; at present, it's about
up to the boiling point," said George.

"Well, my good sir," continued George, after a few moments' silence, "I
saw you knew me; I thought I'd just have this talk with you, lest your
surprised looks should bring me out. I leave early tomorrow morning,
before daylight; by tomorrow night I hope to sleep safe in Ohio. I shall
travel by daylight, stop at the best hotels, go to the dinner-tables
with the lords of the land. So, good-by, sir; if you hear that I'm
taken, you may know that I'm dead!"

George stood up like a rock, and put out his hand with the air of a
prince. The friendly little old man shook it heartily, and after a
little shower of caution, he took his umbrella, and fumbled his way out
of the room.

George stood thoughtfully looking at the door, as the old man closed it.
A thought seemed to flash across his mind. He hastily stepped to it, and
opening it, said,

"Mr. Wilson, one word more."

The old gentleman entered again, and George, as before, locked the door,
and then stood for a few moments looking on the floor, irresolutely. At
last, raising his head with a sudden effort--"Mr. Wilson, you have shown
yourself a Christian in your treatment of me,--I want to ask one last
deed of Christian kindness of you."

"Well, George."

"Well, sir,--what you said was true. I ‘am’ running a dreadful risk.
There isn't, on earth, a living soul to care if I die," he added,
drawing his breath hard, and speaking with a great effort,--"I shall
be kicked out and buried like a dog, and nobody'll think of it a day
after,--’only my poor wife!’ Poor soul! she'll mourn and grieve; and
if you'd only contrive, Mr. Wilson, to send this little pin to her. She
gave it to me for a Christmas present, poor child! Give it to her,
and tell her I loved her to the last. Will you? ‘Will’ you?" he added,
earnestly.

"Yes, certainly--poor fellow!" said the old gentleman, taking the pin,
with watery eyes, and a melancholy quiver in his voice.

"Tell her one thing," said George; "it's my last wish, if she ‘can’ get
to Canada, to go there. No matter how kind her mistress is,--no matter
how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back,--for slavery always
ends in misery. Tell her to bring up our boy a free man, and then he
won't suffer as I have. Tell her this, Mr. Wilson, will you?"

"Yes, George. I'll tell her; but I trust you won't die; take
heart,--you're a brave fellow. Trust in the Lord, George. I wish in my
heart you were safe through, though,--that's what I do."

"‘Is’ there a God to trust in?" said George, in such a tone of bitter
despair as arrested the old gentleman's words. "O, I've seen things all
my life that have made me feel that there can't be a God. You Christians
don't know how these things look to us. There's a God for you, but is
there any for us?"

"O, now, don't--don't, my boy!" said the old man, almost sobbing as
he spoke; "don't feel so! There is--there is; clouds and darkness are
around about him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of
his throne. There's a ‘God’, George,--believe it; trust in Him, and I'm
sure He'll help you. Everything will be set right,--if not in this life,
in another."

The real piety and benevolence of the simple old man invested him with
a temporary dignity and authority, as he spoke. George stopped his
distracted walk up and down the room, stood thoughtfully a moment, and
then said, quietly,

"Thank you for saying that, my good friend; I'll ‘think of that’."



Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4

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