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Uncle Tom's Cabin
Or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 2

Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4

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CHAPTER XII

Select Incident of Lawful Trade


"In Ramah there was a voice heard,--weeping, and lamentation, and great
mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted."*

* Jer. 31:15.

Mr. Haley and Tom jogged onward in their wagon, each, for a time,
absorbed in his own reflections. Now, the reflections of two men sitting
side by side are a curious thing,--seated on the same seat, having the
same eyes, ears, hands and organs of all sorts, and having pass before
their eyes the same objects,--it is wonderful what a variety we shall
find in these same reflections!

As, for example, Mr. Haley: he thought first of Tom's length, and
breadth, and height, and what he would sell for, if he was kept fat and
in good case till he got him into market. He thought of how he should
make out his gang; he thought of the respective market value of certain
supposititious men and women and children who were to compose it, and
other kindred topics of the business; then he thought of himself, and
how humane he was, that whereas other men chained their "niggers" hand
and foot both, he only put fetters on the feet, and left Tom the use
of his hands, as long as he behaved well; and he sighed to think how
ungrateful human nature was, so that there was even room to doubt
whether Tom appreciated his mercies. He had been taken in so by
"niggers" whom he had favored; but still he was astonished to consider
how good-natured he yet remained!

As to Tom, he was thinking over some words of an unfashionable old book,
which kept running through his head, again and again, as follows: "We
have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come; wherefore God
himself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for
us a city." These words of an ancient volume, got up principally by
"ignorant and unlearned men," have, through all time, kept up, somehow,
a strange sort of power over the minds of poor, simple fellows, like
Tom. They stir up the soul from its depths, and rouse, as with trumpet
call, courage, energy, and enthusiasm, where before was only the
blackness of despair.

Mr. Haley pulled out of his pocket sundry newspapers, and began
looking over their advertisements, with absorbed interest. He was not a
remarkably fluent reader, and was in the habit of reading in a sort
of recitative half-aloud, by way of calling in his ears to verify the
deductions of his eyes. In this tone he slowly recited the following
paragraph:


"EXECUTOR'S SALE,--NEGROES!--Agreeably to order of court, will be sold,
on Tuesday, February 20, before the Court-house door, in the town of
Washington, Kentucky, the following negroes: Hagar, aged 60; John, aged
30; Ben, aged 21; Saul, aged 25; Albert, aged 14. Sold for the benefit
of the creditors and heirs of the estate of Jesse Blutchford,

"SAMUEL MORRIS, THOMAS FLINT, ‘Executors’."


"This yer I must look at," said he to Tom, for want of somebody else to
talk to.

"Ye see, I'm going to get up a prime gang to take down with ye, Tom;
it'll make it sociable and pleasant like,--good company will, ye know.
We must drive right to Washington first and foremost, and then I'll clap
you into jail, while I does the business."

Tom received this agreeable intelligence quite meekly; simply wondering,
in his own heart, how many of these doomed men had wives and children,
and whether they would feel as he did about leaving them. It is to be
confessed, too, that the naive, off-hand information that he was to be
thrown into jail by no means produced an agreeable impression on a poor
fellow who had always prided himself on a strictly honest and upright
course of life. Yes, Tom, we must confess it, was rather proud of his
honesty, poor fellow,--not having very much else to be proud of;--if he
had belonged to some of the higher walks of society, he, perhaps, would
never have been reduced to such straits. However, the day wore on,
and the evening saw Haley and Tom comfortably accommodated in
Washington,--the one in a tavern, and the other in a jail.

About eleven o'clock the next day, a mixed throng was gathered around
the court-house steps,--smoking, chewing, spitting, swearing, and
conversing, according to their respective tastes and turns,--waiting
for the auction to commence. The men and women to be sold sat in a
group apart, talking in a low tone to each other. The woman who had been
advertised by the name of Hagar was a regular African in feature and
figure. She might have been sixty, but was older than that by hard work
and disease, was partially blind, and somewhat crippled with rheumatism.
By her side stood her only remaining son, Albert, a bright-looking
little fellow of fourteen years. The boy was the only survivor of a
large family, who had been successively sold away from her to a southern
market. The mother held on to him with both her shaking hands, and eyed
with intense trepidation every one who walked up to examine him.

"Don't be feard, Aunt Hagar," said the oldest of the men, "I spoke to
Mas'r Thomas 'bout it, and he thought he might manage to sell you in a
lot both together."

"Dey needn't call me worn out yet," said she, lifting her shaking hands.
"I can cook yet, and scrub, and scour,--I'm wuth a buying, if I do come
cheap;--tell em dat ar,--you ‘tell’ em," she added, earnestly.

Haley here forced his way into the group, walked up to the old man,
pulled his mouth open and looked in, felt of his teeth, made him stand
and straighten himself, bend his back, and perform various evolutions
to show his muscles; and then passed on to the next, and put him
through the same trial. Walking up last to the boy, he felt of his arms,
straightened his hands, and looked at his fingers, and made him jump, to
show his agility.

"He an't gwine to be sold widout me!" said the old woman, with
passionate eagerness; "he and I goes in a lot together; I 's rail strong
yet, Mas'r and can do heaps o' work,--heaps on it, Mas'r."

"On plantation?" said Haley, with a contemptuous glance. "Likely story!"
and, as if satisfied with his examination, he walked out and looked, and
stood with his hands in his pocket, his cigar in his mouth, and his hat
cocked on one side, ready for action.

"What think of 'em?" said a man who had been following Haley's
examination, as if to make up his own mind from it.

"Wal," said Haley, spitting, "I shall put in, I think, for the youngerly
ones and the boy."

"They want to sell the boy and the old woman together," said the man.

"Find it a tight pull;--why, she's an old rack o' bones,--not worth her
salt."

"You wouldn't then?" said the man.

"Anybody 'd be a fool 't would. She's half blind, crooked with
rheumatis, and foolish to boot."

"Some buys up these yer old critturs, and ses there's a sight more wear
in 'em than a body 'd think," said the man, reflectively.

"No go, 't all," said Haley; "wouldn't take her for a
present,--fact,--I've ‘seen’, now."

"Wal, 't is kinder pity, now, not to buy her with her son,--her heart
seems so sot on him,--s'pose they fling her in cheap."

"Them that's got money to spend that ar way, it's all well enough.
I shall bid off on that ar boy for a plantation-hand;--wouldn't be
bothered with her, no way, not if they'd give her to me," said Haley.

"She'll take on desp't," said the man.

"Nat'lly, she will," said the trader, coolly.

The conversation was here interrupted by a busy hum in the audience;
and the auctioneer, a short, bustling, important fellow, elbowed his
way into the crowd. The old woman drew in her breath, and caught
instinctively at her son.

"Keep close to yer mammy, Albert,--close,--dey'll put us up togedder,"
she said.

"O, mammy, I'm feard they won't," said the boy.

"Dey must, child; I can't live, no ways, if they don't" said the old
creature, vehemently.

The stentorian tones of the auctioneer, calling out to clear the way,
now announced that the sale was about to commence. A place was cleared,
and the bidding began. The different men on the list were soon knocked
off at prices which showed a pretty brisk demand in the market; two of
them fell to Haley.

"Come, now, young un," said the auctioneer, giving the boy a touch with
his hammer, "be up and show your springs, now."

"Put us two up togedder, togedder,--do please, Mas'r," said the old
woman, holding fast to her boy.

"Be off," said the man, gruffly, pushing her hands away; "you come last.
Now, darkey, spring;" and, with the word, he pushed the boy toward the
block, while a deep, heavy groan rose behind him. The boy paused, and
looked back; but there was no time to stay, and, dashing the tears from
his large, bright eyes, he was up in a moment.

His fine figure, alert limbs, and bright face, raised an instant
competition, and half a dozen bids simultaneously met the ear of the
auctioneer. Anxious, half-frightened, he looked from side to side, as
he heard the clatter of contending bids,--now here, now there,--till the
hammer fell. Haley had got him. He was pushed from the block toward his
new master, but stopped one moment, and looked back, when his poor old
mother, trembling in every limb, held out her shaking hands toward him.

"Buy me too, Mas'r, for de dear Lord's sake!--buy me,--I shall die if
you don't!"

"You'll die if I do, that's the kink of it," said Haley,--"no!" And he
turned on his heel.

The bidding for the poor old creature was summary. The man who had
addressed Haley, and who seemed not destitute of compassion, bought her
for a trifle, and the spectators began to disperse.

The poor victims of the sale, who had been brought up in one place
together for years, gathered round the despairing old mother, whose
agony was pitiful to see.

"Couldn't dey leave me one? Mas'r allers said I should have one,--he
did," she repeated over and over, in heart-broken tones.

"Trust in the Lord, Aunt Hagar," said the oldest of the men,
sorrowfully.

"What good will it do?" said she, sobbing passionately.

"Mother, mother,--don't! don't!" said the boy. "They say you 's got a
good master."

"I don't care,--I don't care. O, Albert! oh, my boy! you 's my last
baby. Lord, how ken I?"

"Come, take her off, can't some of ye?" said Haley, dryly; "don't do no
good for her to go on that ar way."

The old men of the company, partly by persuasion and partly by force,
loosed the poor creature's last despairing hold, and, as they led her
off to her new master's wagon, strove to comfort her.

"Now!" said Haley, pushing his three purchases together, and producing
a bundle of handcuffs, which he proceeded to put on their wrists; and
fastening each handcuff to a long chain, he drove them before him to the
jail.

A few days saw Haley, with his possessions, safely deposited on one of
the Ohio boats. It was the commencement of his gang, to be augmented, as
the boat moved on, by various other merchandise of the same kind, which
he, or his agent, had stored for him in various points along shore.

The La Belle Riviere, as brave and beautiful a boat as ever walked the
waters of her namesake river, was floating gayly down the stream,
under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and
fluttering over head; the guards crowded with well-dressed ladies and
gentlemen walking and enjoying the delightful day. All was full of life,
buoyant and rejoicing;--all but Haley's gang, who were stored, with
other freight, on the lower deck, and who, somehow, did not seem to
appreciate their various privileges, as they sat in a knot, talking to
each other in low tones.

"Boys," said Haley, coming up, briskly, "I hope you keep up good heart,
and are cheerful. Now, no sulks, ye see; keep stiff upper lip, boys; do
well by me, and I'll do well by you."

The boys addressed responded the invariable "Yes, Mas'r," for ages
the watchword of poor Africa; but it's to be owned they did not look
particularly cheerful; they had their various little prejudices in favor
of wives, mothers, sisters, and children, seen for the last time,--and
though "they that wasted them required of them mirth," it was not
instantly forthcoming.

"I've got a wife," spoke out the article enumerated as "John, aged
thirty," and he laid his chained hand on Tom's knee,--"and she don't
know a word about this, poor girl!"

"Where does she live?" said Tom.

"In a tavern a piece down here," said John; "I wish, now, I ‘could’ see
her once more in this world," he added.

Poor John! It ‘was’ rather natural; and the tears that fell, as he
spoke, came as naturally as if he had been a white man. Tom drew a long
breath from a sore heart, and tried, in his poor way, to comfort him.

And over head, in the cabin, sat fathers and mothers, husbands and
wives; and merry, dancing children moved round among them, like so
many little butterflies, and everything was going on quite easy and
comfortable.

"O, mamma," said a boy, who had just come up from below, "there's a
negro trader on board, and he's brought four or five slaves down there."

"Poor creatures!" said the mother, in a tone between grief and
indignation.

"What's that?" said another lady.

"Some poor slaves below," said the mother.

"And they've got chains on," said the boy.

"What a shame to our country that such sights are to be seen!" said
another lady.

"O, there's a great deal to be said on both sides of the subject," said
a genteel woman, who sat at her state-room door sewing, while her little
girl and boy were playing round her. "I've been south, and I must say I
think the negroes are better off than they would be to be free."

"In some respects, some of them are well off, I grant," said the lady to
whose remark she had answered. "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my
mind, is its outrages on the feelings and affections,--the separating of
families, for example."

"That ‘is’ a bad thing, certainly," said the other lady, holding up
a baby's dress she had just completed, and looking intently on its
trimmings; "but then, I fancy, it don't occur often."

"O, it does," said the first lady, eagerly; "I've lived many years in
Kentucky and Virginia both, and I've seen enough to make any one's heart
sick. Suppose, ma'am, your two children, there, should be taken from
you, and sold?"

"We can't reason from our feelings to those of this class of persons,"
said the other lady, sorting out some worsteds on her lap.

"Indeed, ma'am, you can know nothing of them, if you say so," answered
the first lady, warmly. "I was born and brought up among them. I know
they ‘do’ feel, just as keenly,--even more so, perhaps,--as we do."

The lady said "Indeed!" yawned, and looked out the cabin window,
and finally repeated, for a finale, the remark with which she had
begun,--"After all, I think they are better off than they would be to be
free."

"It's undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race
should be servants,--kept in a low condition," said a grave-looking
gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. "'Cursed be
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be,' the scripture says."*

* Gen. 9:25. This is what Noah says when he wakes out of
drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father
of Canaan, has seen him naked.

"I say, stranger, is that ar what that text means?" said a tall man,
standing by.

"Undoubtedly. It pleased Providence, for some inscrutable reason, to
doom the race to bondage, ages ago; and we must not set up our opinion
against that."

"Well, then, we'll all go ahead and buy up niggers," said the man, "if
that's the way of Providence,--won't we, Squire?" said he, turning to
Haley, who had been standing, with his hands in his pockets, by the
stove and intently listening to the conversation.

"Yes," continued the tall man, "we must all be resigned to the decrees
of Providence. Niggers must be sold, and trucked round, and kept
under; it's what they's made for. 'Pears like this yer view 's quite
refreshing, an't it, stranger?" said he to Haley.

"I never thought on 't," said Haley, "I couldn't have said as much,
myself; I ha'nt no larning. I took up the trade just to make a living;
if 'tan't right, I calculated to 'pent on 't in time, ye know."

"And now you'll save yerself the trouble, won't ye?" said the tall man.
"See what 't is, now, to know scripture. If ye'd only studied yer Bible,
like this yer good man, ye might have know'd it before, and saved ye
a heap o' trouble. Ye could jist have said, 'Cussed be'--what's his
name?--'and 't would all have come right.'" And the stranger, who was
no other than the honest drover whom we introduced to our readers in the
Kentucky tavern, sat down, and began smoking, with a curious smile on
his long, dry face.

A tall, slender young man, with a face expressive of great feeling
and intelligence, here broke in, and repeated the words, "'All things
whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto
them.' I suppose," he added, "‘that’ is scripture, as much as 'Cursed be
Canaan.'"

"Wal, it seems quite ‘as’ plain a text, stranger," said John the drover,
"to poor fellows like us, now;" and John smoked on like a volcano.

The young man paused, looked as if he was going to say more, when
suddenly the boat stopped, and the company made the usual steamboat
rush, to see where they were landing.

"Both them ar chaps parsons?" said John to one of the men, as they were
going out.

The man nodded.

As the boat stopped, a black woman came running wildly up the plank,
darted into the crowd, flew up to where the slave gang sat, and
threw her arms round that unfortunate piece of merchandise before
enumerate--"John, aged thirty," and with sobs and tears bemoaned him as
her husband.

But what needs tell the story, told too oft,--every day told,--of
heart-strings rent and broken,--the weak broken and torn for the profit
and convenience of the strong! It needs not to be told;--every day is
telling it,--telling it, too, in the ear of One who is not deaf, though
he be long silent.

The young man who had spoken for the cause of humanity and God before
stood with folded arms, looking on this scene. He turned, and Haley
was standing at his side. "My friend," he said, speaking with thick
utterance, "how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look
at those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am
going home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal
to carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife
forever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this."

The trader turned away in silence.

"I say, now," said the drover, touching his elbow, "there's differences
in parsons, an't there? 'Cussed be Canaan' don't seem to go down with
this 'un, does it?"

Haley gave an uneasy growl.

"And that ar an't the worst on 't," said John; "mabbee it won't go down
with the Lord, neither, when ye come to settle with Him, one o' these
days, as all on us must, I reckon."

Haley walked reflectively to the other end of the boat.

"If I make pretty handsomely on one or two next gangs," he thought, "I
reckon I'll stop off this yer; it's really getting dangerous." And he
took out his pocket-book, and began adding over his accounts,--a process
which many gentlemen besides Mr. Haley have found a specific for an
uneasy conscience.

The boat swept proudly away from the shore, and all went on merrily, as
before. Men talked, and loafed, and read, and smoked. Women sewed, and
children played, and the boat passed on her way.

One day, when she lay to for a while at a small town in Kentucky, Haley
went up into the place on a little matter of business.

Tom, whose fetters did not prevent his taking a moderate circuit, had
drawn near the side of the boat, and stood listlessly gazing over the
railing. After a time, he saw the trader returning, with an alert step,
in company with a colored woman, bearing in her arms a young child. She
was dressed quite respectably, and a colored man followed her, bringing
along a small trunk. The woman came cheerfully onward, talking, as she
came, with the man who bore her trunk, and so passed up the plank into
the boat. The bell rung, the steamer whizzed, the engine groaned and
coughed, and away swept the boat down the river.

The woman walked forward among the boxes and bales of the lower deck,
and, sitting down, busied herself with chirruping to her baby.

Haley made a turn or two about the boat, and then, coming up, seated
himself near her, and began saying something to her in an indifferent
undertone.

Tom soon noticed a heavy cloud passing over the woman's brow; and that
she answered rapidly, and with great vehemence.

"I don't believe it,--I won't believe it!" he heard her say. "You're
jist a foolin with me."

"If you won't believe it, look here!" said the man, drawing out a paper;
"this yer's the bill of sale, and there's your master's name to it; and
I paid down good solid cash for it, too, I can tell you,--so, now!"

"I don't believe Mas'r would cheat me so; it can't be true!" said the
woman, with increasing agitation.

"You can ask any of these men here, that can read writing. Here!" he
said, to a man that was passing by, "jist read this yer, won't you! This
yer gal won't believe me, when I tell her what 't is."

"Why, it's a bill of sale, signed by John Fosdick," said the man,
"making over to you the girl Lucy and her child. It's all straight
enough, for aught I see."

The woman's passionate exclamations collected a crowd around her, and
the trader briefly explained to them the cause of the agitation.

"He told me that I was going down to Louisville, to hire out as cook to
the same tavern where my husband works,--that's what Mas'r told me, his
own self; and I can't believe he'd lie to me," said the woman.

"But he has sold you, my poor woman, there's no doubt about it," said
a good-natured looking man, who had been examining the papers; "he has
done it, and no mistake."

"Then it's no account talking," said the woman, suddenly growing quite
calm; and, clasping her child tighter in her arms, she sat down on her
box, turned her back round, and gazed listlessly into the river.

"Going to take it easy, after all!" said the trader. "Gal's got grit, I
see."

The woman looked calm, as the boat went on; and a beautiful soft summer
breeze passed like a compassionate spirit over her head,--the gentle
breeze, that never inquires whether the brow is dusky or fair that it
fans. And she saw sunshine sparkling on the water, in golden ripples,
and heard gay voices, full of ease and pleasure, talking around her
everywhere; but her heart lay as if a great stone had fallen on it.
Her baby raised himself up against her, and stroked her cheeks with his
little hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed
determined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in
her arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering,
unconscious face; and gradually she seemed, and little by little, to
grow calmer, and busied herself with tending and nursing him.

The child, a boy of ten months, was uncommonly large and strong of his
age, and very vigorous in his limbs. Never, for a moment, still, he kept
his mother constantly busy in holding him, and guarding his springing
activity.

"That's a fine chap!" said a man, suddenly stopping opposite to him,
with his hands in his pockets. "How old is he?"

"Ten months and a half," said the mother.

The man whistled to the boy, and offered him part of a stick of candy,
which he eagerly grabbed at, and very soon had it in a baby's general
depository, to wit, his mouth.

"Rum fellow!" said the man "Knows what's what!" and he whistled, and
walked on. When he had got to the other side of the boat, he came across
Haley, who was smoking on top of a pile of boxes.

The stranger produced a match, and lighted a cigar, saying, as he did
so,

"Decentish kind o' wench you've got round there, stranger."

"Why, I reckon she ‘is’ tol'able fair," said Haley, blowing the smoke
out of his mouth.

"Taking her down south?" said the man.

Haley nodded, and smoked on.

"Plantation hand?" said the man.

"Wal," said Haley, "I'm fillin' out an order for a plantation, and I
think I shall put her in. They telled me she was a good cook; and they
can use her for that, or set her at the cotton-picking. She's got the
right fingers for that; I looked at 'em. Sell well, either way;" and
Haley resumed his cigar.

"They won't want the young 'un on the plantation," said the man.

"I shall sell him, first chance I find," said Haley, lighting another
cigar.

"S'pose you'd be selling him tol'able cheap," said the stranger,
mounting the pile of boxes, and sitting down comfortably.

"Don't know 'bout that," said Haley; "he's a pretty smart young 'un,
straight, fat, strong; flesh as hard as a brick!"

"Very true, but then there's the bother and expense of raisin'."

"Nonsense!" said Haley; "they is raised as easy as any kind of critter
there is going; they an't a bit more trouble than pups. This yer chap
will be running all around, in a month."

"I've got a good place for raisin', and I thought of takin' in a little
more stock," said the man. "One cook lost a young 'un last week,--got
drownded in a washtub, while she was a hangin' out the clothes,--and I
reckon it would be well enough to set her to raisin' this yer."

Haley and the stranger smoked a while in silence, neither seeming
willing to broach the test question of the interview. At last the man
resumed:

"You wouldn't think of wantin' more than ten dollars for that ar chap,
seeing you ‘must’ get him off yer hand, any how?"

Haley shook his head, and spit impressively.

"That won't do, no ways," he said, and began his smoking again.

"Well, stranger, what will you take?"

"Well, now," said Haley, "I ‘could’ raise that ar chap myself, or get
him raised; he's oncommon likely and healthy, and he'd fetch a hundred
dollars, six months hence; and, in a year or two, he'd bring two
hundred, if I had him in the right spot; I shan't take a cent less nor
fifty for him now."

"O, stranger! that's rediculous, altogether," said the man.

"Fact!" said Haley, with a decisive nod of his head.

"I'll give thirty for him," said the stranger, "but not a cent more."

"Now, I'll tell ye what I will do," said Haley, spitting again, with
renewed decision. "I'll split the difference, and say forty-five; and
that's the most I will do."

"Well, agreed!" said the man, after an interval.

"Done!" said Haley. "Where do you land?"

"At Louisville," said the man.

"Louisville," said Haley. "Very fair, we get there about dusk. Chap will
be asleep,--all fair,--get him off quietly, and no screaming,--happens
beautiful,--I like to do everything quietly,--I hates all kind of
agitation and fluster." And so, after a transfer of certain bills had
passed from the man's pocket-book to the trader's, he resumed his cigar.

It was a bright, tranquil evening when the boat stopped at the wharf at
Louisville. The woman had been sitting with her baby in her arms, now
wrapped in a heavy sleep. When she heard the name of the place called
out, she hastily laid the child down in a little cradle formed by the
hollow among the boxes, first carefully spreading under it her cloak;
and then she sprung to the side of the boat, in hopes that, among the
various hotel-waiters who thronged the wharf, she might see her husband.
In this hope, she pressed forward to the front rails, and, stretching
far over them, strained her eyes intently on the moving heads on the
shore, and the crowd pressed in between her and the child.

"Now's your time," said Haley, taking the sleeping child up, and handing
him to the stranger. "Don't wake him up, and set him to crying, now;
it would make a devil of a fuss with the gal." The man took the bundle
carefully, and was soon lost in the crowd that went up the wharf.

When the boat, creaking, and groaning, and puffing, had loosed from
the wharf, and was beginning slowly to strain herself along, the woman
returned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there,--the child was
gone!

"Why, why,--where?" she began, in bewildered surprise.

"Lucy," said the trader, "your child's gone; you may as well know it
first as last. You see, I know'd you couldn't take him down south; and
I got a chance to sell him to a first-rate family, that'll raise him
better than you can."

The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political
perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians
of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane
weakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine
could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild look
of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have
disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that
same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my
friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole
northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union. So the
trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those
dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as
necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was
going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other
supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.

But the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and
direct through the heart, for cry or tear.

Dizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her
eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and
hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her
bewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry not
tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm.

The trader, who, considering his advantages, was almost as humane as
some of our politicians, seemed to feel called on to administer such
consolation as the case admitted of.

"I know this yer comes kinder hard, at first, Lucy," said he; "but such
a smart, sensible gal as you are, won't give way to it. You see it's
‘necessary’, and can't be helped!"

"O! don't, Mas'r, don't!" said the woman, with a voice like one that is
smothering.

"You're a smart wench, Lucy," he persisted; "I mean to do well by
ye, and get ye a nice place down river; and you'll soon get another
husband,--such a likely gal as you--"

"O! Mas'r, if you ‘only’ won't talk to me now," said the woman, in a
voice of such quick and living anguish that the trader felt that there
was something at present in the case beyond his style of operation. He
got up, and the woman turned away, and buried her head in her cloak.

The trader walked up and down for a time, and occasionally stopped and
looked at her.

"Takes it hard, rather," he soliloquized, "but quiet, tho';--let her
sweat a while; she'll come right, by and by!"

Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a
perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something
unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he
had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had
only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have
thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful
trade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an
American divine* tells us has ‘"no evils but such as are inseparable
from any other relations in social and domestic life’." But Tom, as
we see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined
entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with
views like these. His very soul bled within him for what seemed to him
the ‘wrongs’ of the poor suffering thing that lay like a crushed reed
on the boxes; the feeling, living, bleeding, yet immortal ‘thing’,
which American state law coolly classes with the bundles, and bales, and
boxes, among which she is lying.

* Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]
Presbyterian clergyman (1799-1873), a friend of the Beecher
family. Mrs. Stowe attempted unsuccessfully to have this
identifying note removed from the stereotype-plate of the
first edition.

Tom drew near, and tried to say something; but she only groaned.
Honestly, and with tears running down his own cheeks, he spoke of a
heart of love in the skies, of a pitying Jesus, and an eternal home; but
the ear was deaf with anguish, and the palsied heart could not feel.

Night came on,--night calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with
her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent.
There was no speech nor language, no pitying voice or helping hand, from
that distant sky. One after another, the voices of business or pleasure
died away; all on the boat were sleeping, and the ripples at the prow
were plainly heard. Tom stretched himself out on a box, and there, as he
lay, he heard, ever and anon, a smothered sob or cry from the prostrate
creature,--"O! what shall I do? O Lord! O good Lord, do help me!" and
so, ever and anon, until the murmur died away in silence.

At midnight, Tom waked, with a sudden start. Something black passed
quickly by him to the side of the boat, and he heard a splash in the
water. No one else saw or heard anything. He raised his head,--the
woman's place was vacant! He got up, and sought about him in vain.
The poor bleeding heart was still, at last, and the river rippled and
dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it.

Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like
these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is
forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient,
generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him,
in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, "the year of his
redeemed ‘shall’ come."

The trader waked up bright and early, and came out to see to his live
stock. It was now his turn to look about in perplexity.

"Where alive is that gal?" he said to Tom.

Tom, who had learned the wisdom of keeping counsel, did not feel called
upon to state his observations and suspicions, but said he did not know.

"She surely couldn't have got off in the night at any of the landings,
for I was awake, and on the lookout, whenever the boat stopped. I never
trust these yer things to other folks."

This speech was addressed to Tom quite confidentially, as if it was
something that would be specially interesting to him. Tom made no
answer.

The trader searched the boat from stem to stern, among boxes, bales and
barrels, around the machinery, by the chimneys, in vain.

"Now, I say, Tom, be fair about this yer," he said, when, after a
fruitless search, he came where Tom was standing. "You know something
about it, now. Don't tell me,--I know you do. I saw the gal stretched
out here about ten o'clock, and ag'in at twelve, and ag'in between one
and two; and then at four she was gone, and you was a sleeping right
there all the time. Now, you know something,--you can't help it."

"Well, Mas'r," said Tom, "towards morning something brushed by me, and I
kinder half woke; and then I hearn a great splash, and then I clare woke
up, and the gal was gone. That's all I know on 't."

The trader was not shocked nor amazed; because, as we said before, he
was used to a great many things that you are not used to. Even the awful
presence of Death struck no solemn chill upon him. He had seen Death
many times,--met him in the way of trade, and got acquainted with
him,--and he only thought of him as a hard customer, that embarrassed
his property operations very unfairly; and so he only swore that the
gal was a baggage, and that he was devilish unlucky, and that, if things
went on in this way, he should not make a cent on the trip. In short, he
seemed to consider himself an ill-used man, decidedly; but there was no
help for it, as the woman had escaped into a state which ‘never will’
give up a fugitive,--not even at the demand of the whole glorious
Union. The trader, therefore, sat discontentedly down, with his little
account-book, and put down the missing body and soul under the head of
‘losses!’

"He's a shocking creature, isn't he,--this trader? so unfeeling! It's
dreadful, really!"

"O, but nobody thinks anything of these traders! They are universally
despised,--never received into any decent society."

But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened,
cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader
is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the
public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves
him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

Are you educated and he ignorant, you high and he low, you refined and
he coarse, you talented and he simple?

In the day of a future judgment, these very considerations may make it
more tolerable for him than for you.

In concluding these little incidents of lawful trade, we must beg the
world not to think that American legislators are entirely destitute of
humanity, as might, perhaps, be unfairly inferred from the great efforts
made in our national body to protect and perpetuate this species of
traffic.

Who does not know how our great men are outdoing themselves, in
declaiming against the ‘foreign’ slave-trade. There are a perfect host
of Clarksons and Wilberforces* risen up among us on that subject, most
edifying to hear and behold. Trading negroes from Africa, dear reader,
is so horrid! It is not to be thought of! But trading them from
Kentucky,--that's quite another thing!

* Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-
1833), English philanthropists and anti-slavery agitators
who helped to secure passage of the Emancipation Bill by
Parliament in 1833.



CHAPTER XIII

The Quaker Settlement


A quiet scene now rises before us. A large, roomy, neatly-painted
kitchen, its yellow floor glossy and smooth, and without a particle
of dust; a neat, well-blacked cooking-stove; rows of shining tin,
suggestive of unmentionable good things to the appetite; glossy green
wood chairs, old and firm; a small flag-bottomed rocking-chair, with
a patch-work cushion in it, neatly contrived out of small pieces of
different colored woollen goods, and a larger sized one, motherly and
old, whose wide arms breathed hospitable invitation, seconded by the
solicitation of its feather cushions,--a real comfortable, persuasive
old chair, and worth, in the way of honest, homely enjoyment, a dozen of
your plush or ‘brochetelle’ drawing-room gentry; and in the chair, gently
swaying back and forward, her eyes bent on some fine sewing, sat our
fine old friend Eliza. Yes, there she is, paler and thinner than in her
Kentucky home, with a world of quiet sorrow lying under the shadow of
her long eyelashes, and marking the outline of her gentle mouth! It
was plain to see how old and firm the girlish heart was grown under
the discipline of heavy sorrow; and when, anon, her large dark eye was
raised to follow the gambols of her little Harry, who was sporting, like
some tropical butterfly, hither and thither over the floor, she showed a
depth of firmness and steady resolve that was never there in her earlier
and happier days.

By her side sat a woman with a bright tin pan in her lap, into which
she was carefully sorting some dried peaches. She might be fifty-five or
sixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only
to brighten and adorn. The snowy lisse crape cap, made after the strait
Quaker pattern,--the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid
folds across her bosom,--the drab shawl and dress,--showed at once the
community to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with
a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair,
partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placid
forehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on
earth, good will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear,
honest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them,
to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever
throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful
young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women? If
any want to get up an inspiration under this head, we refer them to
our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little
rocking-chair. It had a turn for quacking and squeaking,--that chair
had,--either from having taken cold in early life, or from some
asthmatic affection, or perhaps from nervous derangement; but, as she
gently swung backward and forward, the chair kept up a kind of subdued
"creechy crawchy," that would have been intolerable in any other chair.
But old Simeon Halliday often declared it was as good as any music to
him, and the children all avowed that they wouldn't miss of hearing
mother's chair for anything in the world. For why? for twenty years
or more, nothing but loving words, and gentle moralities, and motherly
loving kindness, had come from that chair;--head-aches and heart-aches
innumerable had been cured there,--difficulties spiritual and temporal
solved there,--all by one good, loving woman, God bless her!

"And so thee still thinks of going to Canada, Eliza?" she said, as she
was quietly looking over her peaches.

"Yes, ma'am," said Eliza, firmly. "I must go onward. I dare not stop."

"And what'll thee do, when thee gets there? Thee must think about that,
my daughter."

"My daughter" came naturally from the lips of Rachel Halliday; for hers
was just the face and form that made "mother" seem the most natural word
in the world.

Eliza's hands trembled, and some tears fell on her fine work; but she
answered, firmly,

"I shall do--anything I can find. I hope I can find something."

"Thee knows thee can stay here, as long as thee pleases," said Rachel.

"O, thank you," said Eliza, "but"--she pointed to Harry--"I can't sleep
nights; I can't rest. Last night I dreamed I saw that man coming into
the yard," she said, shuddering.

"Poor child!" said Rachel, wiping her eyes; "but thee mustn't feel so.
The Lord hath ordered it so that never hath a fugitive been stolen from
our village. I trust thine will not be the first."

The door here opened, and a little short, round, pin-cushiony woman
stood at the door, with a cheery, blooming face, like a ripe apple. She
was dressed, like Rachel, in sober gray, with the muslin folded neatly
across her round, plump little chest.

"Ruth Stedman," said Rachel, coming joyfully forward; "how is thee,
Ruth? she said, heartily taking both her hands.

"Nicely," said Ruth, taking off her little drab bonnet, and dusting it
with her handkerchief, displaying, as she did so, a round little head,
on which the Quaker cap sat with a sort of jaunty air, despite all the
stroking and patting of the small fat hands, which were busily applied
to arranging it. Certain stray locks of decidedly curly hair, too, had
escaped here and there, and had to be coaxed and cajoled into
their place again; and then the new comer, who might have been
five-and-twenty, turned from the small looking-glass, before which she
had been making these arrangements, and looked well pleased,--as most
people who looked at her might have been,--for she was decidedly a
wholesome, whole-hearted, chirruping little woman, as ever gladdened
man's heart withal.

"Ruth, this friend is Eliza Harris; and this is the little boy I told
thee of."

"I am glad to see thee, Eliza,--very," said Ruth, shaking hands, as if
Eliza were an old friend she had long been expecting; "and this is thy
dear boy,--I brought a cake for him," she said, holding out a little
heart to the boy, who came up, gazing through his curls, and accepted it
shyly.

"Where's thy baby, Ruth?" said Rachel.

"O, he's coming; but thy Mary caught him as I came in, and ran off with
him to the barn, to show him to the children."

At this moment, the door opened, and Mary, an honest, rosy-looking girl,
with large brown eyes, like her mother's, came in with the baby.

"Ah! ha!" said Rachel, coming up, and taking the great, white, fat
fellow in her arms, "how good he looks, and how he does grow!"

"To be sure, he does," said little bustling Ruth, as she took the child,
and began taking off a little blue silk hood, and various layers and
wrappers of outer garments; and having given a twitch here, and a pull
there, and variously adjusted and arranged him, and kissed him heartily,
she set him on the floor to collect his thoughts. Baby seemed quite used
to this mode of proceeding, for he put his thumb in his mouth (as if
it were quite a thing of course), and seemed soon absorbed in his own
reflections, while the mother seated herself, and taking out a long
stocking of mixed blue and white yarn, began to knit with briskness.

"Mary, thee'd better fill the kettle, hadn't thee?" gently suggested the
mother.

Mary took the kettle to the well, and soon reappearing, placed it over
the stove, where it was soon purring and steaming, a sort of censer of
hospitality and good cheer. The peaches, moreover, in obedience to a few
gentle whispers from Rachel, were soon deposited, by the same hand, in a
stew-pan over the fire.

Rachel now took down a snowy moulding-board, and, tying on an
apron, proceeded quietly to making up some biscuits, first saying to
Mary,--"Mary, hadn't thee better tell John to get a chicken ready?" and
Mary disappeared accordingly.

"And how is Abigail Peters?" said Rachel, as she went on with her
biscuits.

"O, she's better," said Ruth; "I was in, this morning; made the bed,
tidied up the house. Leah Hills went in, this afternoon, and baked bread
and pies enough to last some days; and I engaged to go back to get her
up, this evening."

"I will go in tomorrow, and do any cleaning there may be, and look over
the mending," said Rachel.

"Ah! that is well," said Ruth. "I've heard," she added, "that Hannah
Stanwood is sick. John was up there, last night,--I must go there
tomorrow."

"John can come in here to his meals, if thee needs to stay all day,"
suggested Rachel.

"Thank thee, Rachel; will see, tomorrow; but, here comes Simeon."

Simeon Halliday, a tall, straight, muscular man, in drab coat and
pantaloons, and broad-brimmed hat, now entered.

"How is thee, Ruth?" he said, warmly, as he spread his broad open hand
for her little fat palm; "and how is John?"

"O! John is well, and all the rest of our folks," said Ruth, cheerily.

"Any news, father?" said Rachel, as she was putting her biscuits into
the oven.

"Peter Stebbins told me that they should be along tonight, with
‘friends’," said Simeon, significantly, as he was washing his hands at a
neat sink, in a little back porch.

"Indeed!" said Rachel, looking thoughtfully, and glancing at Eliza.

"Did thee say thy name was Harris?" said Simeon to Eliza, as he
reentered.

Rachel glanced quickly at her husband, as Eliza tremulously answered
"yes;" her fears, ever uppermost, suggesting that possibly there might
be advertisements out for her.

"Mother!" said Simeon, standing in the porch, and calling Rachel out.

"What does thee want, father?" said Rachel, rubbing her floury hands, as
she went into the porch.

"This child's husband is in the settlement, and will be here tonight,"
said Simeon.

"Now, thee doesn't say that, father?" said Rachel, all her face radiant
with joy.

"It's really true. Peter was down yesterday, with the wagon, to the
other stand, and there he found an old woman and two men; and one said
his name was George Harris; and from what he told of his history, I am
certain who he is. He is a bright, likely fellow, too."

"Shall we tell her now?" said Simeon.

"Let's tell Ruth," said Rachel. "Here, Ruth,--come here."

Ruth laid down her knitting-work, and was in the back porch in a moment.

"Ruth, what does thee think?" said Rachel. "Father says Eliza's husband
is in the last company, and will be here tonight."

A burst of joy from the little Quakeress interrupted the speech. She
gave such a bound from the floor, as she clapped her little hands, that
two stray curls fell from under her Quaker cap, and lay brightly on her
white neckerchief.

"Hush thee, dear!" said Rachel, gently; "hush, Ruth! Tell us, shall we
tell her now?"

"Now! to be sure,--this very minute. Why, now, suppose 't was my John,
how should I feel? Do tell her, right off."

"Thee uses thyself only to learn how to love thy neighbor, Ruth," said
Simeon, looking, with a beaming face, on Ruth.

"To be sure. Isn't it what we are made for? If I didn't love John and
the baby, I should not know how to feel for her. Come, now do tell
her,--do!" and she laid her hands persuasively on Rachel's arm. "Take
her into thy bed-room, there, and let me fry the chicken while thee does
it."

Rachel came out into the kitchen, where Eliza was sewing, and opening
the door of a small bed-room, said, gently, "Come in here with me, my
daughter; I have news to tell thee."

The blood flushed in Eliza's pale face; she rose, trembling with nervous
anxiety, and looked towards her boy.

"No, no," said little Ruth, darting up, and seizing her hands. "Never
thee fear; it's good news, Eliza,--go in, go in!" And she gently pushed
her to the door which closed after her; and then, turning round, she
caught little Harry in her arms, and began kissing him.

"Thee'll see thy father, little one. Does thee know it? Thy father is
coming," she said, over and over again, as the boy looked wonderingly at
her.

Meanwhile, within the door, another scene was going on. Rachel Halliday
drew Eliza toward her, and said, "The Lord hath had mercy on thee,
daughter; thy husband hath escaped from the house of bondage."

The blood flushed to Eliza's cheek in a sudden glow, and went back to
her heart with as sudden a rush. She sat down, pale and faint.

"Have courage, child," said Rachel, laying her hand on her head. "He is
among friends, who will bring him here tonight."

"Tonight!" Eliza repeated, "tonight!" The words lost all meaning to her;
her head was dreamy and confused; all was mist for a moment.


When she awoke, she found herself snugly tucked up on the bed, with a
blanket over her, and little Ruth rubbing her hands with camphor. She
opened her eyes in a state of dreamy, delicious languor, such as one
who has long been bearing a heavy load, and now feels it gone, and would
rest. The tension of the nerves, which had never ceased a moment since
the first hour of her flight, had given way, and a strange feeling of
security and rest came over her; and as she lay, with her large, dark
eyes open, she followed, as in a quiet dream, the motions of those about
her. She saw the door open into the other room; saw the supper-table,
with its snowy cloth; heard the dreamy murmur of the singing tea-kettle;
saw Ruth tripping backward and forward, with plates of cake and saucers
of preserves, and ever and anon stopping to put a cake into Harry's
hand, or pat his head, or twine his long curls round her snowy fingers.
She saw the ample, motherly form of Rachel, as she ever and anon came to
the bedside, and smoothed and arranged something about the bedclothes,
and gave a tuck here and there, by way of expressing her good-will;
and was conscious of a kind of sunshine beaming down upon her from her
large, clear, brown eyes. She saw Ruth's husband come in,--saw her fly
up to him, and commence whispering very earnestly, ever and anon, with
impressive gesture, pointing her little finger toward the room. She saw
her, with the baby in her arms, sitting down to tea; she saw them all
at table, and little Harry in a high chair, under the shadow of
Rachel's ample wing; there were low murmurs of talk, gentle tinkling of
tea-spoons, and musical clatter of cups and saucers, and all mingled
in a delightful dream of rest; and Eliza slept, as she had not slept
before, since the fearful midnight hour when she had taken her child and
fled through the frosty starlight.

She dreamed of a beautiful country,--a land, it seemed to her, of
rest,--green shores, pleasant islands, and beautifully glittering water;
and there, in a house which kind voices told her was a home, she saw her
boy playing, free and happy child. She heard her husband's footsteps;
she felt him coming nearer; his arms were around her, his tears falling
on her face, and she awoke! It was no dream. The daylight had long
faded; her child lay calmly sleeping by her side; a candle was burning
dimly on the stand, and her husband was sobbing by her pillow.


The next morning was a cheerful one at the Quaker house. "Mother" was up
betimes, and surrounded by busy girls and boys, whom we had scarce time
to introduce to our readers yesterday, and who all moved obediently to
Rachel's gentle "Thee had better," or more gentle "Hadn't thee better?"
in the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the luxurious
valleys of Indiana is a thing complicated and multiform, and, like
picking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, asking
other hands than those of the original mother. While, therefore, John
ran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted meal
for corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently, and quietly
about, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a sort of
sunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there was any
danger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of so many
young operators, her gentle "Come! come!" or "I wouldn't, now," was
quite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the
cestus of Venus, that turned the heads of all the world in successive
generations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel
Halliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on
harmoniously. We think it is more suited to our modern days, decidedly.

While all other preparations were going on, Simeon the elder stood in
his shirt-sleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged
in the anti-patriarchal operation of shaving. Everything went on so
sociably, so quietly, so harmoniously, in the great kitchen,--it seemed
so pleasant to every one to do just what they were doing, there was such
an atmosphere of mutual confidence and good fellowship everywhere,--even
the knives and forks had a social clatter as they went on to the table;
and the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous fizzle in the pan, as
if they rather enjoyed being cooked than otherwise;--and when George
and Eliza and little Harry came out, they met such a hearty, rejoicing
welcome, no wonder it seemed to them like a dream.

At last, they were all seated at breakfast, while Mary stood at the
stove, baking griddle-cakes, which, as they gained the true exact
golden-brown tint of perfection, were transferred quite handily to the
table.

Rachel never looked so truly and benignly happy as at the head of her
table. There was so much motherliness and full-heartedness even in
the way she passed a plate of cakes or poured a cup of coffee, that it
seemed to put a spirit into the food and drink she offered.

It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at
any white man's table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint
and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the
genial morning rays of this simple, overflowing kindness.

This, indeed, was a home,--’home’,--a word that George had never yet
known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in his providence,
began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and
confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining atheistic doubts, and fierce
despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in
living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good
will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple,
shall never lose their reward.

"Father, what if thee should get found out again?" said Simeon second,
as he buttered his cake.

"I should pay my fine," said Simeon, quietly.

"But what if they put thee in prison?"

"Couldn't thee and mother manage the farm?" said Simeon, smiling.

"Mother can do almost everything," said the boy. "But isn't it a shame
to make such laws?"

"Thee mustn't speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon," said his father,
gravely. "The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do
justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must
deliver it up.

"Well, I hate those old slaveholders!" said the boy, who felt as
unchristian as became any modern reformer.

"I am surprised at thee, son," said Simeon; "thy mother never taught
thee so. I would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave,
if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction."

Simeon second blushed scarlet; but his mother only smiled, and said,
"Simeon is my good boy; he will grow older, by and by, and then he will
be like his father."

"I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our
account," said George, anxiously.

"Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If
we would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our
name."

"But, for ‘me’," said George, "I could not bear it."

"Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and man,
we do it," said Simeon. "And now thou must lie by quietly this day, and
tonight, at ten o'clock, Phineas Fletcher will carry thee onward to the
next stand,--thee and the rest of they company. The pursuers are hard
after thee; we must not delay."

"If that is the case, why wait till evening?" said George.

"Thou art safe here by daylight, for every one in the settlement is
a Friend, and all are watching. It has been found safer to travel by
night."



CHAPTER XIV

Evangeline

"A young star! which shone
O'er life--too sweet an image, for such glass!
A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded;
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."

The Mississippi! How, as by an enchanted wand, have its scenes been
changed, since Chateaubriand wrote his prose-poetic description of it,*
as a river of mighty, unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed wonders
of vegetable and animal existence.

* ‘In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in
the Desert’ (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de
Chateaubriand (1768-1848).

But as in an hour, this river of dreams and wild romance has emerged to
a reality scarcely less visionary and splendid. What other river of the
world bears on its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise of
such another country?--a country whose products embrace all between the
tropics and the poles! Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming, tearing
along, an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business which is
poured along its wave by a race more vehement and energetic than any the
old world ever saw. Ah! would that they did not also bear along a more
fearful freight,--the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the helpless,
the bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown God--unknown,
unseen and silent, but who will yet "come out of his place to save all
the poor of the earth!"

The slanting light of the setting sun quivers on the sea-like expanse
of the river; the shivery canes, and the tall, dark cypress, hung
with wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray, as the
heavily-laden steamboat marches onward.

Piled with cotton-bales, from many a plantation, up over deck and sides,
till she seems in the distance a square, massive block of gray, she
moves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time among
its crowded decks before we shall find again our humble friend Tom. High
on the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere predominant
cotton-bales, at last we may find him.

Partly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, and
partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man,
Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a
man as Haley.

At first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed
him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and
apparent contentment of Tom's manner led him gradually to discontinue
these restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole
of honor, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on the
boat.

Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every
emergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the good
opinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with as
hearty a good will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm.

When there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he would climb to a nook
among the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studying
over his Bible,--and it is there we see him now.

For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is higher than
the surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume between
massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of the
steamer, as from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole country
for miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out full before
him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he was
approaching.

He saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages of
huts gleaming out in long rows on many a plantation, distant from the
stately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master;--and as the moving
picture passed on, his poor, foolish heart would be turning backward to
the Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches,--to the master's house,
with its wide, cool halls, and, near by, the little cabin overgrown with
the multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces of
comrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife,
bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry
laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his
knee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakes
and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and
groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that
phase of life had gone by forever.

In such a case, you write to your wife, and send messages to your
children; but Tom could not write,--the mail for him had no existence,
and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word or
signal.

Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as
he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading his
slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late
in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse
to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was
one which slow reading cannot injure,--nay, one whose words, like ingots
of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may
take in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing
to each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,

"Let--not--your--heart--be--troubled. In--my
--Father's--house--are--many--mansions.
I--go--to--prepare--a--place--for--you."

Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as
full of honest grief as poor Tom's,--perhaps no fuller, for both were
only men;--but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope,
and look to no such future reunion; and if he ‘had’ seen them, ten to
one he would not have believed,--he must fill his head first with a
thousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of
translation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so
evidently true and divine that the possibility of a question never
entered his simple head. It must be true; for, if not true, how could he
live?

As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin
from learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain
way-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him
more than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been
his custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children,
in particular by young Master George; and, as they read, he would
designate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the
passages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his
heart. His Bible was thus marked through, from one end to the other,
with a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment seize
upon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out what
lay between them;--and while it lay there before him, every passage
breathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment,
his Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the
promise of a future one.

Among the passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune and
family, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name of St. Clare. He had
with him a daughter between five and six years of age, together with a
lady who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the little
one especially under her charge.

Tom had often caught glimpses of this little girl,--for she was one of
those busy, tripping creatures, that can be no more contained in one
place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze,--nor was she one that, once
seen, could be easily forgotten.

Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual
chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating
and aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and
allegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty
of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression,
which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the
dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why.
The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarly
noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around
it, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy
fringes of golden brown,--all marked her out from other children, and
made every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither
on the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would have
called either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and
innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves
over her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always
in motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and
thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself
as she moved as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were
incessantly busy in pursuit of her,--but, when caught, she melted from
them again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof
ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own
way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like
a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain;
and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy
footsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deep
blue eyes, fleeted along.

The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found those
eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, and
fearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in some dreadful
danger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as the
picture-like head gleamed through the window of the round house, and
in a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessed
her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as she
passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough,
sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her
path.

Tom, who had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, ever
yearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creature
with daily increasing interest. To him she seemed something almost
divine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out upon
him from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or looked down upon him over
some ridge of packages, he half believed that he saw one of the angels
stepped out of his New Testament.

Often and often she walked mournfully round the place where Haley's gang
of men and women sat in their chains. She would glide in among them,
and look at them with an air of perplexed and sorrowful earnestness; and
sometimes she would lift their chains with her slender hands, and then
sigh wofully, as she glided away. Several times she appeared suddenly
among them, with her hands full of candy, nuts, and oranges, which she
would distribute joyfully to them, and then be gone again.

Tom watched the little lady a great deal, before he ventured on any
overtures towards acquaintanceship. He knew an abundance of simple acts
to propitiate and invite the approaches of the little people, and he
resolved to play his part right skilfully. He could cut cunning
little baskets out of cherry-stones, could make grotesque faces on
hickory-nuts, or odd-jumping figures out of elder-pith, and he was a
very Pan in the manufacture of whistles of all sizes and sorts. His
pockets were full of miscellaneous articles of attraction, which he
had hoarded in days of old for his master's children, and which he
now produced, with commendable prudence and economy, one by one, as
overtures for acquaintance and friendship.

The little one was shy, for all her busy interest in everything going
on, and it was not easy to tame her. For a while, she would perch like
a canary-bird on some box or package near Tom, while busy in the little
arts afore-named, and take from him, with a kind of grave bashfulness,
the little articles he offered. But at last they got on quite
confidential terms.

"What's little missy's name?" said Tom, at last, when he thought matters
were ripe to push such an inquiry.

"Evangeline St. Clare," said the little one, "though papa and everybody
else call me Eva. Now, what's your name?"

"My name's Tom; the little chil'en used to call me Uncle Tom, way back
thar in Kentuck."

"Then I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you," said
Eva. "So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?"

"I don't know, Miss Eva."

"Don't know?" said Eva.

"No, I am going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who."

"My papa can buy you," said Eva, quickly; "and if he buys you, you will
have good times. I mean to ask him, this very day."

"Thank you, my little lady," said Tom.

The boat here stopped at a small landing to take in wood, and Eva,
hearing her father's voice, bounded nimbly away. Tom rose up, and went
forward to offer his service in wooding, and soon was busy among the
hands.

Eva and her father were standing together by the railings to see the
boat start from the landing-place, the wheel had made two or three
revolutions in the water, when, by some sudden movement, the little one
suddenly lost her balance and fell sheer over the side of the boat into
the water. Her father, scarce knowing what he did, was plunging in after
her, but was held back by some behind him, who saw that more efficient
aid had followed his child.

Tom was standing just under her on the lower deck, as she fell. He
saw her strike the water, and sink, and was after her in a moment.
A broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keep
afloat in the water, till, in a moment or two the child rose to the
surface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to the
boat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds of
hands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretched
eagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore
her, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where, as is usual
in cases of the kind, there ensued a very well-meaning and kind-hearted
strife among the female occupants generally, as to who should do the
most things to make a disturbance, and to hinder her recovery in every
way possible.


It was a sultry, close day, the next day, as the steamer drew near to
New Orleans. A general bustle of expectation and preparation was spread
through the boat; in the cabin, one and another were gathering their
things together, and arranging them, preparatory to going ashore. The
steward and chambermaid, and all, were busily engaged in cleaning,
furbishing, and arranging the splendid boat, preparatory to a grand
entree.

On the lower deck sat our friend Tom, with his arms folded, and
anxiously, from time to time, turning his eyes towards a group on the
other side of the boat.

There stood the fair Evangeline, a little paler than the day before, but
otherwise exhibiting no traces of the accident which had befallen her.
A graceful, elegantly-formed young man stood by her, carelessly leaning
one elbow on a bale of cotton while a large pocket-book lay open before
him. It was quite evident, at a glance, that the gentleman was Eva's
father. There was the same noble cast of head, the same large blue eyes,
the same golden-brown hair; yet the expression was wholly different. In
the large, clear blue eyes, though in form and color exactly similar,
there was wanting that misty, dreamy depth of expression; all was clear,
bold, and bright, but with a light wholly of this world: the beautifully
cut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression, while an air
of free-and-easy superiority sat not ungracefully in every turn and
movement of his fine form. He was listening, with a good-humored,
negligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was very
volubly expatiating on the quality of the article for which they were
bargaining.

"All the moral and Christian virtues bound in black Morocco, complete!"
he said, when Haley had finished. "Well, now, my good fellow, what's
the damage, as they say in Kentucky; in short, what's to be paid out for
this business? How much are you going to cheat me, now? Out with it!"

"Wal," said Haley, "if I should say thirteen hundred dollars for that ar
fellow, I shouldn't but just save myself; I shouldn't, now, re'ly."

"Poor fellow!" said the young man, fixing his keen, mocking blue eye on
him; "but I suppose you'd let me have him for that, out of a particular
regard for me."

"Well, the young lady here seems to be sot on him, and nat'lly enough."

"O! certainly, there's a call on your benevolence, my friend. Now, as a
matter of Christian charity, how cheap could you afford to let him go,
to oblige a young lady that's particular sot on him?"

"Wal, now, just think on 't," said the trader; "just look at them
limbs,--broad-chested, strong as a horse. Look at his head; them high
forrads allays shows calculatin niggers, that'll do any kind o' thing.
I've, marked that ar. Now, a nigger of that ar heft and build is worth
considerable, just as you may say, for his body, supposin he's stupid;
but come to put in his calculatin faculties, and them which I can show
he has oncommon, why, of course, it makes him come higher. Why, that ar
fellow managed his master's whole farm. He has a strornary talent for
business."

"Bad, bad, very bad; knows altogether too much!" said the young man,
with the same mocking smile playing about his mouth. "Never will do, in
the world. Your smart fellows are always running off, stealing horses,
and raising the devil generally. I think you'll have to take off a
couple of hundred for his smartness."

"Wal, there might be something in that ar, if it warnt for his
character; but I can show recommends from his master and others, to
prove he is one of your real pious,--the most humble, prayin, pious
crittur ye ever did see. Why, he's been called a preacher in them parts
he came from."

"And I might use him for a family chaplain, possibly," added the young
man, dryly. "That's quite an idea. Religion is a remarkably scarce
article at our house."

"You're joking, now."

"How do you know I am? Didn't you just warrant him for a preacher? Has
he been examined by any synod or council? Come, hand over your papers."

If the trader had not been sure, by a certain good-humored twinkle in
the large eye, that all this banter was sure, in the long run, to turn
out a cash concern, he might have been somewhat out of patience; as it
was, he laid down a greasy pocket-book on the cotton-bales, and began
anxiously studying over certain papers in it, the young man standing by,
the while, looking down on him with an air of careless, easy drollery.

"Papa, do buy him! it's no matter what you pay," whispered Eva, softly,
getting up on a package, and putting her arm around her father's neck.
"You have money enough, I know. I want him."

"What for, pussy? Are you going to use him for a rattle-box, or a
rocking-horse, or what?

"I want to make him happy."

"An original reason, certainly."

Here the trader handed up a certificate, signed by Mr. Shelby, which
the young man took with the tips of his long fingers, and glanced over
carelessly.

"A gentlemanly hand," he said, "and well spelt, too. Well, now, but
I'm not sure, after all, about this religion," said he, the old wicked
expression returning to his eye; "the country is almost ruined with
pious white people; such pious politicians as we have just before
elections,--such pious goings on in all departments of church and state,
that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next. I don't know, either,
about religion's being up in the market, just now. I have not looked in
the papers lately, to see how it sells. How many hundred dollars, now,
do you put on for this religion?"

"You like to be jokin, now," said the trader; "but, then, there's
‘sense’ under all that ar. I know there's differences in religion. Some
kinds is mis'rable: there's your meetin pious; there's your singin,
roarin pious; them ar an't no account, in black or white;--but these
rayly is; and I've seen it in niggers as often as any, your rail softly,
quiet, stiddy, honest, pious, that the hull world couldn't tempt 'em
to do nothing that they thinks is wrong; and ye see in this letter what
Tom's old master says about him."

"Now," said the young man, stooping gravely over his book of bills, "if
you can assure me that I really can buy ‘this’ kind of pious, and that
it will be set down to my account in the book up above, as something
belonging to me, I wouldn't care if I did go a little extra for it. How
d'ye say?"

"Wal, raily, I can't do that," said the trader. "I'm a thinkin that
every man'll have to hang on his own hook, in them ar quarters."

"Rather hard on a fellow that pays extra on religion, and can't trade
with it in the state where he wants it most, an't it, now?" said
the young man, who had been making out a roll of bills while he was
speaking. "There, count your money, old boy!" he added, as he handed the
roll to the trader.

"All right," said Haley, his face beaming with delight; and pulling out
an old inkhorn, he proceeded to fill out a bill of sale, which, in a few
moments, he handed to the young man.

"I wonder, now, if I was divided up and inventoried," said the latter
as he ran over the paper, "how much I might bring. Say so much for the
shape of my head, so much for a high forehead, so much for arms, and
hands, and legs, and then so much for education, learning, talent,
honesty, religion! Bless me! there would be small charge on that last,
I'm thinking. But come, Eva," he said; and taking the hand of his
daughter, he stepped across the boat, and carelessly putting the tip of
his finger under Tom's chin, said, good-humoredly, "Look-up, Tom, and
see how you like your new master."

Tom looked up. It was not in nature to look into that gay, young,
handsome face, without a feeling of pleasure; and Tom felt the tears
start in his eyes as he said, heartily, "God bless you, Mas'r!"

"Well, I hope he will. What's your name? Tom? Quite as likely to do it
for your asking as mine, from all accounts. Can you drive horses, Tom?"

"I've been allays used to horses," said Tom. "Mas'r Shelby raised heaps
of 'em."

"Well, I think I shall put you in coachy, on condition that you won't be
drunk more than once a week, unless in cases of emergency, Tom."

Tom looked surprised, and rather hurt, and said, "I never drink, Mas'r."

"I've heard that story before, Tom; but then we'll see. It will be a
special accommodation to all concerned, if you don't. Never mind, my
boy," he added, good-humoredly, seeing Tom still looked grave; "I don't
doubt you mean to do well."

"I sartin do, Mas'r," said Tom.

"And you shall have good times," said Eva. "Papa is very good to
everybody, only he always will laugh at them."

"Papa is much obliged to you for his recommendation," said St. Clare,
laughing, as he turned on his heel and walked away.



CHAPTER XV

Of Tom's New Master, and Various Other Matters


Since the thread of our humble hero's life has now become interwoven
with that of higher ones, it is necessary to give some brief
introduction to them.

Augustine St. Clare was the son of a wealthy planter of Louisiana.
The family had its origin in Canada. Of two brothers, very similar in
temperament and character, one had settled on a flourishing farm in
Vermont, and the other became an opulent planter in Louisiana. The
mother of Augustine was a Huguenot French lady, whose family had
emigrated to Louisiana during the days of its early settlement.
Augustine and another brother were the only children of their parents.
Having inherited from his mother an exceeding delicacy of constitution,
he was, at the instance of physicians, during many years of his boyhood,
sent to the care of his uncle in Vermont, in order that his constitution
might, be strengthened by the cold of a more bracing climate.

In childhood, he was remarkable for an extreme and marked sensitiveness
of character, more akin to the softness of woman than the ordinary
hardness of his own sex. Time, however, overgrew this softness with the
rough bark of manhood, and but few knew how living and fresh it still
lay at the core. His talents were of the very first order, although his
mind showed a preference always for the ideal and the aesthetic, and
there was about him that repugnance to the actual business of life which
is the common result of this balance of the faculties. Soon after the
completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into
one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His
hour came,--the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the
horizon,--that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered
only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the
figure,--he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman,
in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned
south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly,
his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her
guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the
wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has
done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort.
Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once
into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time
of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the
season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband
of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand
dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.

The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining
a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake
Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in ‘that’
well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide
of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company.
He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his
composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at
the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after,
was missed from the circle. In his room, alone, he opened and read the
letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her,
giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by
her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and
she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how
she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how
her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had
discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The
letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions
of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy
young man. He wrote to her immediately:

"I have received yours,--but too late. I believed all I heard. I was
desperate. ‘I am married’, and all is over. Only forget,--it is all that
remains for either of us."

And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St.
Clare. But the ‘real’ remained,--the ‘real’, like the flat, bare, oozy
tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding
boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has
gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,--exceedingly real.

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is
the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life
we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a
most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking,
visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up
what is commonly called ‘living’, yet to be gone through; and this yet
remained to Augustine. Had his wife been a whole woman, she might yet
have done something--as woman can--to mend the broken threads of life,
and weave again into a tissue of brightness. But Marie St. Clare could
not even see that they had been broken. As before stated, she consisted
of a fine figure, a pair of splendid eyes, and a hundred thousand
dollars; and none of these items were precisely the ones to minister to
a mind diseased.

When Augustine, pale as death, was found lying on the sofa, and pleaded
sudden sick-headache as the cause of his distress, she recommended to
him to smell of hartshorn; and when the paleness and headache came on
week after week, she only said that she never thought Mr. St. Clare was
sickly; but it seems he was very liable to sick-headaches, and that it
was a very unfortunate thing for her, because he didn't enjoy going into
company with her, and it seemed odd to go so much alone, when they were
just married. Augustine was glad in his heart that he had married so
undiscerning a woman; but as the glosses and civilities of the honeymoon
wore away, he discovered that a beautiful young woman, who has lived all
her life to be caressed and waited on, might prove quite a hard
mistress in domestic life. Marie never had possessed much capability of
affection, or much sensibility, and the little that she had, had been
merged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness; a selfishness
the more hopeless, from its quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of
any claims but her own. From her infancy, she had been surrounded with
servants, who lived only to study her caprices; the idea that they had
either feelings or rights had never dawned upon her, even in distant
perspective. Her father, whose only child she had been, had never denied
her anything that lay within the compass of human possibility; and when
she entered life, beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress, she had, of
course, all the eligibles and non-eligibles of the other sex sighing at
her feet, and she had no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man
in having obtained her. It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman
with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection.
There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than
a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more
jealously and scrupulously she exacts love, to the uttermost farthing.
When, therefore, St. Clare began to drop off those gallantries and small
attentions which flowed at first through the habitude of courtship, he
found his sultana no way ready to resign her slave; there were abundance
of tears, poutings, and small tempests, there were discontents, pinings,
upbraidings. St. Clare was good-natured and self-indulgent, and sought
to buy off with presents and flatteries; and when Marie became mother to
a beautiful daughter, he really felt awakened, for a time, to something
like tenderness.

St. Clare's mother had been a woman of uncommon elevation and purity of
character, and he gave to his child his mother's name, fondly fancying
that she would prove a reproduction of her image. The thing had been
remarked with petulant jealousy by his wife, and she regarded her
husband's absorbing devotion to the child with suspicion and dislike;
all that was given to her seemed so much taken from herself. From the
time of the birth of this child, her health gradually sunk. A life of
constant inaction, bodily and mental,--the friction of ceaseless ennui
and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the
period of maternity,--in course of a few years changed the blooming
young belle into a yellow faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided
among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself, in
every sense, the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.

There was no end of her various complaints; but her principal forte
appeared to lie in sick-headache, which sometimes would confine her to
her room three days out of six. As, of course, all family arrangements
fell into the hands of servants, St. Clare found his menage anything but
comfortable. His only daughter was exceedingly delicate, and he feared
that, with no one to look after her and attend to her, her health and
life might yet fall a sacrifice to her mother's inefficiency. He had
taken her with him on a tour to Vermont, and had persuaded his cousin,
Miss Ophelia St. Clare, to return with him to his southern residence;
and they are now returning on this boat, where we have introduced them
to our readers.

And now, while the distant domes and spires of New Orleans rise to our
view, there is yet time for an introduction to Miss Ophelia.

Whoever has travelled in the New England States will remember, in some
cool village, the large farmhouse, with its clean-swept grassy yard,
shaded by the dense and massive foliage of the sugar maple; and remember
the air of order and stillness, of perpetuity and unchanging repose,
that seemed to breathe over the whole place. Nothing lost, or out of
order; not a picket loose in the fence, not a particle of litter in
the turfy yard, with its clumps of lilac bushes growing up under the
windows. Within, he will remember wide, clean rooms, where nothing ever
seems to be doing or going to be done, where everything is once and
forever rigidly in place, and where all household arrangements move with
the punctual exactness of the old clock in the corner. In the family
"keeping-room," as it is termed, he will remember the staid, respectable
old book-case, with its glass doors, where Rollin's History,* Milton's
Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Scott's Family Bible,**
stand side by side in decorous order, with multitudes of other books,
equally solemn and respectable. There are no servants in the house, but
the lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every
afternoon among her daughters, as if nothing ever had been done, or were
to be done,--she and her girls, in some long-forgotten fore part of the
day, "‘did up the work’," and for the rest of the time, probably, at all
hours when you would see them, it is "‘done up’." The old kitchen floor
never seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various
cooking utensils, never seem deranged or disordered; though three and
sometimes four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and
ironing is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are
in some silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.

* ‘The Ancient History’, ten volumes (1730-1738), by the
French historian Charles Rollin (1661-1741).

** ‘Scott's Family Bible’ (1788-1792), edited with notes by
the English Biblical commentator, Thomas Scott (1747-1821).

On such a farm, in such a house and family, Miss Ophelia had spent a
quiet existence of some forty-five years, when her cousin invited her to
visit his southern mansion. The eldest of a large family, she was still
considered by her father and mother as one of "the children," and the
proposal that she should go to ‘Orleans’ was a most momentous one to the
family circle. The old gray-headed father took down Morse's Atlas* out
of the book-case, and looked out the exact latitude and longitude; and
read Flint's Travels in the South and West,** to make up his own mind as
to the nature of the country.

* ‘The Cerographic Atlas of the United States’ (1842-1845),
by Sidney Edwards Morse (1794-1871), son of the geographer,
Jedidiah Morse, and brother of the painter-inventor, Samuel
F. B. Morse.

** ‘Recollections of the Last Ten Years’ (1826) by Timothy
Flint (1780-1840), missionary of Presbyterianism to the
trans-Allegheny West.

The good mother inquired, anxiously, "if Orleans wasn't an awful wicked
place," saying, "that it seemed to her most equal to going to the
Sandwich Islands, or anywhere among the heathen."

It was known at the minister's and at the doctor's, and at Miss
Peabody's milliner shop, that Ophelia St. Clare was "talking about"
going away down to Orleans with her cousin; and of course the whole
village could do no less than help this very important process of
‘taking about’ the matter. The minister, who inclined strongly to
abolitionist views, was quite doubtful whether such a step might not
tend somewhat to encourage the southerners in holding on to their
slaves; while the doctor, who was a stanch colonizationist, inclined to
the opinion that Miss Ophelia ought to go, to show the Orleans people
that we don't think hardly of them, after all. He was of opinion, in
fact, that southern people needed encouraging. When however, the fact
that she had resolved to go was fully before the public mind, she was
solemnly invited out to tea by all her friends and neighbors for the
space of a fortnight, and her prospects and plans duly canvassed and
inquired into. Miss Moseley, who came into the house to help to do
the dress-making, acquired daily accessions of importance from the
developments with regard to Miss Ophelia's wardrobe which she had been
enabled to make. It was credibly ascertained that Squire Sinclare, as
his name was commonly contracted in the neighborhood, had counted out
fifty dollars, and given them to Miss Ophelia, and told her to buy any
clothes she thought best; and that two new silk dresses, and a bonnet,
had been sent for from Boston. As to the propriety of this extraordinary
outlay, the public mind was divided,--some affirming that it was well
enough, all things considered, for once in one's life, and others
stoutly affirming that the money had better have been sent to the
missionaries; but all parties agreed that there had been no such parasol
seen in those parts as had been sent on from New York, and that she had
one silk dress that might fairly be trusted to stand alone, whatever
might be said of its mistress. There were credible rumors, also, of a
hemstitched pocket-handkerchief; and report even went so far as to
state that Miss Ophelia had one pocket-handkerchief with lace all around
it,--it was even added that it was worked in the corners; but this
latter point was never satisfactorily ascertained, and remains, in fact,
unsettled to this day.

Miss Ophelia, as you now behold her, stands before you, in a very
shining brown linen travelling-dress, tall, square-formed, and
angular. Her face was thin, and rather sharp in its outlines; the lips
compressed, like those of a person who is in the habit of making up
her mind definitely on all subjects; while the keen, dark eyes had a
peculiarly searching, advised movement, and travelled over everything,
as if they were looking for something to take care of.

All her movements were sharp, decided, and energetic; and, though she
was never much of a talker, her words were remarkably direct, and to the
purpose, when she did speak.

In her habits, she was a living impersonation of order, method, and
exactness. In punctuality, she was as inevitable as a clock, and as
inexorable as a railroad engine; and she held in most decided contempt
and abomination anything of a contrary character.

The great sin of sins, in her eyes,--the sum of all evils,--was
expressed by one very common and important word in her
vocabulary--"shiftlessness." Her finale and ultimatum of contempt
consisted in a very emphatic pronunciation of the word "shiftless;" and
by this she characterized all modes of procedure which had not a
direct and inevitable relation to accomplishment of some purpose then
definitely had in mind. People who did nothing, or who did not know
exactly what they were going to do, or who did not take the most direct
way to accomplish what they set their hands to, were objects of her
entire contempt,--a contempt shown less frequently by anything she said,
than by a kind of stony grimness, as if she scorned to say anything
about the matter.

As to mental cultivation,--she had a clear, strong, active mind, was
well and thoroughly read in history and the older English classics,
and thought with great strength within certain narrow limits. Her
theological tenets were all made up, labelled in most positive and
distinct forms, and put by, like the bundles in her patch trunk; there
were just so many of them, and there were never to be any more.
So, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical
life,--such as housekeeping in all its branches, and the various
political relations of her native village. And, underlying all, deeper
than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle
of her being--conscientiousness. Nowhere is conscience so dominant and
all-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation,
which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest
mountains.

Miss Ophelia was the absolute bond-slave of the "‘ought’." Once make her
certain that the "path of duty," as she commonly phrased it, lay in
any given direction, and fire and water could not keep her from it. She
would walk straight down into a well, or up to a loaded cannon's mouth,
if she were only quite sure that there the path lay. Her standard
of right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few
concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardor
to reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with
a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency;--this gave a severe
and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.

But, how in the world can Miss Ophelia get along with Augustine
St. Clare,--gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, sceptical,--in
short,--walking with impudent and nonchalant freedom over every one of
her most cherished habits and opinions?

To tell the truth, then, Miss Ophelia loved him. When a boy, it had been
hers to teach him his catechism, mend his clothes, comb his hair, and
bring him up generally in the way he should go; and her heart having
a warm side to it, Augustine had, as he usually did with most people,
monopolized a large share of it for himself, and therefore it was that
he succeeded very easily in persuading her that the "path of duty" lay
in the direction of New Orleans, and that she must go with him to take
care of Eva, and keep everything from going to wreck and ruin during the
frequent illnesses of his wife. The idea of a house without anybody
to take care of it went to her heart; then she loved the lovely little
girl, as few could help doing; and though she regarded Augustine as very
much of a heathen, yet she loved him, laughed at his jokes, and forbore
with his failings, to an extent which those who knew him thought
perfectly incredible. But what more or other is to be known of Miss
Ophelia our reader must discover by a personal acquaintance.

There she is, sitting now in her state-room, surrounded by a mixed
multitude of little and big carpet-bags, boxes, baskets, each containing
some separate responsibility which she is tying, binding up, packing, or
fastening, with a face of great earnestness.

"Now, Eva, have you kept count of your things? Of course you
haven't,--children never do: there's the spotted carpet-bag and the
little blue band-box with your best bonnet,--that's two; then the India
rubber satchel is three; and my tape and needle box is four; and my
band-box, five; and my collar-box; and that little hair trunk, seven.
What have you done with your sunshade? Give it to me, and let me put a
paper round it, and tie it to my umbrella with my shade;--there, now."

"Why, aunty, we are only going up home;--what is the use?"

"To keep it nice, child; people must take care of their things, if they
ever mean to have anything; and now, Eva, is your thimble put up?"

"Really, aunty, I don't know."

"Well, never mind; I'll look your box over,--thimble, wax, two spools,
scissors, knife, tape-needle; all right,--put it in here. What did you
ever do, child, when you were coming on with only your papa. I should
have thought you'd a lost everything you had."

"Well, aunty, I did lose a great many; and then, when we stopped
anywhere, papa would buy some more of whatever it was."

"Mercy on us, child,--what a way!"

"It was a very easy way, aunty," said Eva.

"It's a dreadful shiftless one," said aunty.

"Why, aunty, what'll you do now?" said Eva; "that trunk is too full to
be shut down."

"It ‘must’ shut down," said aunty, with the air of a general, as she
squeezed the things in, and sprung upon the lid;--still a little gap
remained about the mouth of the trunk.

"Get up here, Eva!" said Miss Ophelia, courageously; "what has been done
can be done again. This trunk has ‘got to be’ shut and locked--there are
no two ways about it."

And the trunk, intimidated, doubtless, by this resolute statement, gave
in. The hasp snapped sharply in its hole, and Miss Ophelia turned the
key, and pocketed it in triumph.

"Now we're ready. Where's your papa? I think it time this baggage was
set out. Do look out, Eva, and see if you see your papa."

"O, yes, he's down the other end of the gentlemen's cabin, eating an
orange."

"He can't know how near we are coming," said aunty; "hadn't you better
run and speak to him?"

"Papa never is in a hurry about anything," said Eva, "and we haven't
come to the landing. Do step on the guards, aunty. Look! there's our
house, up that street!"

The boat now began, with heavy groans, like some vast, tired monster,
to prepare to push up among the multiplied steamers at the levee. Eva
joyously pointed out the various spires, domes, and way-marks, by which
she recognized her native city.

"Yes, yes, dear; very fine," said Miss Ophelia. "But mercy on us! the
boat has stopped! where is your father?"

And now ensued the usual turmoil of landing--waiters running twenty ways
at once--men tugging trunks, carpet-bags, boxes--women anxiously calling
to their children, and everybody crowding in a dense mass to the plank
towards the landing.

Miss Ophelia seated herself resolutely on the lately vanquished trunk,
and marshalling all her goods and chattels in fine military order,
seemed resolved to defend them to the last.

"Shall I take your trunk, ma'am?" "Shall I take your baggage?" "Let me
'tend to your baggage, Missis?" "Shan't I carry out these yer, Missis?"
rained down upon her unheeded. She sat with grim determination, upright
as a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding on her bundle of umbrella
and parasols, and replying with a determination that was enough to
strike dismay even into a hackman, wondering to Eva, in each interval,
"what upon earth her papa could be thinking of; he couldn't have fallen
over, now,--but something must have happened;"--and just as she had
begun to work herself into a real distress, he came up, with his usually
careless motion, and giving Eva a quarter of the orange he was eating,
said,

"Well, Cousin Vermont, I suppose you are all ready."

"I've been ready, waiting, nearly an hour," said Miss Ophelia; "I began
to be really concerned about you.

"That's a clever fellow, now," said he. "Well, the carriage is waiting,
and the crowd are now off, so that one can walk out in a decent and
Christian manner, and not be pushed and shoved. Here," he added to a
driver who stood behind him, "take these things."

"I'll go and see to his putting them in," said Miss Ophelia.

"O, pshaw, cousin, what's the use?" said St. Clare.

"Well, at any rate, I'll carry this, and this, and this," said Miss
Ophelia, singling out three boxes and a small carpet-bag.

"My dear Miss Vermont, positively you mustn't come the Green Mountains
over us that way. You must adopt at least a piece of a southern
principle, and not walk out under all that load. They'll take you for a
waiting-maid; give them to this fellow; he'll put them down as if they
were eggs, now."

Miss Ophelia looked despairingly as her cousin took all her treasures
from her, and rejoiced to find herself once more in the carriage with
them, in a state of preservation.

"Where's Tom?" said Eva.

"O, he's on the outside, Pussy. I'm going to take Tom up to mother for
a peace-offering, to make up for that drunken fellow that upset the
carriage."

"O, Tom will make a splendid driver, I know," said Eva; "he'll never get
drunk."

The carriage stopped in front of an ancient mansion, built in that odd
mixture of Spanish and French style, of which there are specimens in
some parts of New Orleans. It was built in the Moorish fashion,--a
square building enclosing a court-yard, into which the carriage drove
through an arched gateway. The court, in the inside, had evidently
been arranged to gratify a picturesque and voluptuous ideality. Wide
galleries ran all around the four sides, whose Moorish arches, slender
pillars, and arabesque ornaments, carried the mind back, as in a dream,
to the reign of oriental romance in Spain. In the middle of the court, a
fountain threw high its silvery water, falling in a never-ceasing spray
into a marble basin, fringed with a deep border of fragrant violets. The
water in the fountain, pellucid as crystal, was alive with myriads of
gold and silver fishes, twinkling and darting through it like so many
living jewels. Around the fountain ran a walk, paved with a mosaic
of pebbles, laid in various fanciful patterns; and this, again, was
surrounded by turf, smooth as green velvet, while a carriage-drive
enclosed the whole. Two large orange-trees, now fragrant with blossoms,
threw a delicious shade; and, ranged in a circle round upon the turf,
were marble vases of arabesque sculpture, containing the choicest
flowering plants of the tropics. Huge pomegranate trees, with their
glossy leaves and flame-colored flowers, dark-leaved Arabian jessamines,
with their silvery stars, geraniums, luxuriant roses bending beneath
their heavy abundance of flowers, golden jessamines, lemon-scented
verbenum, all united their bloom and fragrance, while here and there a
mystic old aloe, with its strange, massive leaves, sat looking like some
old enchanter, sitting in weird grandeur among the more perishable bloom
and fragrance around it.

The galleries that surrounded the court were festooned with a curtain
of some kind of Moorish stuff, and could be drawn down at pleasure, to
exclude the beams of the sun. On the whole, the appearance of the place
was luxurious and romantic.

As the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from a
cage, with the wild eagerness of her delight.

"O, isn't it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!" she said to
Miss Ophelia. "Isn't it beautiful?"

"'T is a pretty place," said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; "though it
looks rather old and heathenish to me."

Tom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm,
still enjoyment. The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the
most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his
heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion
which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule
of the colder and more correct white race.

St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss
Ophelia made her remark on his premises, and, turning to Tom, who was
standing looking round, his beaming black face perfectly radiant with
admiration, he said,

"Tom, my boy, this seems to suit you."

"Yes, Mas'r, it looks about the right thing," said Tom.

All this passed in a moment, while trunks were being hustled off,
hackman paid, and while a crowd, of all ages and sizes,--men, women, and
children,--came running through the galleries, both above and below
to see Mas'r come in. Foremost among them was a highly-dressed young
mulatto man, evidently a very ‘distingue’ personage, attired in the
ultra extreme of the mode, and gracefully waving a scented cambric
handkerchief in his hand.

This personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in
driving all the flock of domestics to the other end of the verandah.

"Back! all of you. I am ashamed of you," he said, in a tone of
authority. "Would you intrude on Master's domestic relations, in the
first hour of his return?"

All looked abashed at this elegant speech, delivered with quite an air,
and stood huddled together at a respectful distance, except two stout
porters, who came up and began conveying away the baggage.

Owing to Mr. Adolph's systematic arrangements, when St. Clare turned
round from paying the hackman, there was nobody in view but Mr. Adolph
himself, conspicuous in satin vest, gold guard-chain, and white pants,
and bowing with inexpressible grace and suavity.

"Ah, Adolph, is it you?" said his master, offering his hand to him;
"how are you, boy?" while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an
extemporary speech, which he had been preparing, with great care, for a
fortnight before.

"Well, well," said St. Clare, passing on, with his usual air of
negligent drollery, "that's very well got up, Adolph. See that the
baggage is well bestowed. I'll come to the people in a minute;" and,
so saying, he led Miss Ophelia to a large parlor that opened on the
verandah.

While this had been passing, Eva had flown like a bird, through the
porch and parlor, to a little boudoir opening likewise on the verandah.

A tall, dark-eyed, sallow woman, half rose from a couch on which she was
reclining.

"Mamma!" said Eva, in a sort of a rapture, throwing herself on her neck,
and embracing her over and over again.

"That'll do,--take care, child,--don't, you make my head ache," said the
mother, after she had languidly kissed her.

St. Clare came in, embraced his wife in true, orthodox, husbandly
fashion, and then presented to her his cousin. Marie lifted her large
eyes on her cousin with an air of some curiosity, and received her with
languid politeness. A crowd of servants now pressed to the entry
door, and among them a middle-aged mulatto woman, of very respectable
appearance, stood foremost, in a tremor of expectation and joy, at the
door.

"O, there's Mammy!" said Eva, as she flew across the room; and, throwing
herself into her arms, she kissed her repeatedly.

This woman did not tell her that she made her head ache, but, on the
contrary, she hugged her, and laughed, and cried, till her sanity was a
thing to be doubted of; and when released from her, Eva flew from one
to another, shaking hands and kissing, in a way that Miss Ophelia
afterwards declared fairly turned her stomach.

"Well!" said Miss Ophelia, "you southern children can do something that
‘I’ couldn't."

"What, now, pray?" said St. Clare.

"Well, I want to be kind to everybody, and I wouldn't have anything
hurt; but as to kissing--"

"Niggers," said St. Clare, "that you're not up to,--hey?"

"Yes, that's it. How can she?"

St. Clare laughed, as he went into the passage. "Halloa, here, what's
to pay out here? Here, you all--Mammy, Jimmy, Polly, Sukey--glad to see
Mas'r?" he said, as he went shaking hands from one to another. "Look out
for the babies!" he added, as he stumbled over a sooty little urchin,
who was crawling upon all fours. "If I step upon anybody, let 'em
mention it."

There was an abundance of laughing and blessing Mas'r, as St. Clare
distributed small pieces of change among them.

"Come, now, take yourselves off, like good boys and girls," he said; and
the whole assemblage, dark and light, disappeared through a door into a
large verandah, followed by Eva, who carried a large satchel, which she
had been filling with apples, nuts, candy, ribbons, laces, and toys of
every description, during her whole homeward journey.

As St. Clare turned to go back his eye fell upon Tom, who was standing
uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other, while Adolph stood
negligently leaning against the banisters, examining Tom through an
opera-glass, with an air that would have done credit to any dandy
living.

"Puh! you puppy," said his master, striking down the opera glass; "is
that the way you treat your company? Seems to me, Dolph," he added,
laying his finger on the elegant figured satin vest that Adolph was
sporting, "seems to me that's ‘my’ vest."

"O! Master, this vest all stained with wine; of course, a gentleman in
Master's standing never wears a vest like this. I understood I was to
take it. It does for a poor nigger-fellow, like me."

And Adolph tossed his head, and passed his fingers through his scented
hair, with a grace.

"So, that's it, is it?" said St. Clare, carelessly. "Well, here, I'm
going to show this Tom to his mistress, and then you take him to the
kitchen; and mind you don't put on any of your airs to him. He's worth
two such puppies as you."

"Master always will have his joke," said Adolph, laughing. "I'm
delighted to see Master in such spirits."

"Here, Tom," said St. Clare, beckoning.

Tom entered the room. He looked wistfully on the velvet carpets, and the
before unimagined splendors of mirrors, pictures, statues, and curtains,
and, like the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, there was no more spirit in
him. He looked afraid even to set his feet down.

"See here, Marie," said St. Clare to his wife, "I've bought you a
coachman, at last, to order. I tell you, he's a regular hearse for
blackness and sobriety, and will drive you like a funeral, if you want.
Open your eyes, now, and look at him. Now, don't say I never think about
you when I'm gone."

Marie opened her eyes, and fixed them on Tom, without rising.

"I know he'll get drunk," she said.

"No, he's warranted a pious and sober article."

"Well, I hope he may turn out well," said the lady; "it's more than I
expect, though."

"Dolph," said St. Clare, "show Tom down stairs; and, mind yourself," he
added; "remember what I told you."

Adolph tripped gracefully forward, and Tom, with lumbering tread, went
after.

"He's a perfect behemoth!" said Marie.

"Come, now, Marie," said St. Clare, seating himself on a stool beside
her sofa, "be gracious, and say something pretty to a fellow."

"You've been gone a fortnight beyond the time," said the lady, pouting.

"Well, you know I wrote you the reason."

"Such a short, cold letter!" said the lady.

"Dear me! the mail was just going, and it had to be that or nothing."

"That's just the way, always," said the lady; "always something to make
your journeys long, and letters short."

"See here, now," he added, drawing an elegant velvet case out of his
pocket, and opening it, "here's a present I got for you in New York."

It was a daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva
and her father sitting hand in hand.

Marie looked at it with a dissatisfied air.

"What made you sit in such an awkward position?" she said.

"Well, the position may be a matter of opinion; but what do you think of
the likeness?"

"If you don't think anything of my opinion in one case, I suppose you
wouldn't in another," said the lady, shutting the daguerreotype.

"Hang the woman!" said St. Clare, mentally; but aloud he added, "Come,
now, Marie, what do you think of the likeness? Don't be nonsensical,
now."

"It's very inconsiderate of you, St. Clare," said the lady, "to insist
on my talking and looking at things. You know I've been lying all day
with the sick-headache; and there's been such a tumult made ever since
you came, I'm half dead."

"You're subject to the sick-headache, ma'am!" said Miss Ophelia,
suddenly rising from the depths of the large arm-chair, where she had
sat quietly, taking an inventory of the furniture, and calculating its
expense.

"Yes, I'm a perfect martyr to it," said the lady.

"Juniper-berry tea is good for sick-headache," said Miss Ophelia; "at
least, Auguste, Deacon Abraham Perry's wife, used to say so; and she was
a great nurse."

"I'll have the first juniper-berries that get ripe in our garden by
the lake brought in for that special purpose," said St. Clare, gravely
pulling the bell as he did so; "meanwhile, cousin, you must be wanting
to retire to your apartment, and refresh yourself a little, after your
journey. Dolph," he added, "tell Mammy to come here." The decent mulatto
woman whom Eva had caressed so rapturously soon entered; she was dressed
neatly, with a high red and yellow turban on her head, the recent gift
of Eva, and which the child had been arranging on her head. "Mammy,"
said St. Clare, "I put this lady under your care; she is tired,
and wants rest; take her to her chamber, and be sure she is made
comfortable," and Miss Ophelia disappeared in the rear of Mammy.



CHAPTER XVI

Tom's Mistress and Her Opinions

"And now, Marie," said St. Clare, "your golden days are dawning. Here is
our practical, business-like New England cousin, who will take the
whole budget of cares off your shoulders, and give you time to refresh
yourself, and grow young and handsome. The ceremony of delivering the
keys had better come off forthwith."

This remark was made at the breakfast-table, a few mornings after Miss
Ophelia had arrived.

"I'm sure she's welcome," said Marie, leaning her head languidly on her
hand. "I think she'll find one thing, if she does, and that is, that
it's we mistresses that are the slaves, down here."

"O, certainly, she will discover that, and a world of wholesome truths
besides, no doubt," said St. Clare.

"Talk about our keeping slaves, as if we did it for our ‘convenience’,"
said Marie. "I'm sure, if we consulted ‘that’, we might let them all go
at once."

Evangeline fixed her large, serious eyes on her mother's face, with an
earnest and perplexed expression, and said, simply, "What do you keep
them for, mamma?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, except for a plague; they are the plague of my
life. I believe that more of my ill health is caused by them than by any
one thing; and ours, I know, are the very worst that ever anybody was
plagued with."

"O, come, Marie, you've got the blues, this morning," said St. Clare.
"You know 't isn't so. There's Mammy, the best creature living,--what
could you do without her?"

"Mammy is the best I ever knew," said Marie; "and yet Mammy, now, is
selfish--dreadfully selfish; it's the fault of the whole race."

"Selfishness ‘is’ a dreadful fault," said St. Clare, gravely.

"Well, now, there's Mammy," said Marie, "I think it's selfish of her to
sleep so sound nights; she knows I need little attentions almost every
hour, when my worst turns are on, and yet she's so hard to wake. I
absolutely am worse, this very morning, for the efforts I had to make to
wake her last night."

"Hasn't she sat up with you a good many nights, lately, mamma?" said
Eva.

"How should you know that?" said Marie, sharply; "she's been
complaining, I suppose."

"She didn't complain; she only told me what bad nights you'd had,--so
many in succession."

"Why don't you let Jane or Rosa take her place, a night or two," said
St. Clare, "and let her rest?"

"How can you propose it?" said Marie. "St. Clare, you really are
inconsiderate. So nervous as I am, the least breath disturbs me; and a
strange hand about me would drive me absolutely frantic. If Mammy felt
the interest in me she ought to, she'd wake easier,--of course, she
would. I've heard of people who had such devoted servants, but it never
was ‘my’ luck;" and Marie sighed.

Miss Ophelia had listened to this conversation with an air of shrewd,
observant gravity; and she still kept her lips tightly compressed, as
if determined fully to ascertain her longitude and position, before she
committed herself.

"Now, Mammy has a ‘sort’ of goodness," said Marie; "she's smooth and
respectful, but she's selfish at heart. Now, she never will be done
fidgeting and worrying about that husband of hers. You see, when I was
married and came to live here, of course, I had to bring her with me,
and her husband my father couldn't spare. He was a blacksmith, and, of
course, very necessary; and I thought and said, at the time, that
Mammy and he had better give each other up, as it wasn't likely to
be convenient for them ever to live together again. I wish, now, I'd
insisted on it, and married Mammy to somebody else; but I was foolish
and indulgent, and didn't want to insist. I told Mammy, at the time,
that she mustn't ever expect to see him more than once or twice in her
life again, for the air of father's place doesn't agree with my health,
and I can't go there; and I advised her to take up with somebody else;
but no--she wouldn't. Mammy has a kind of obstinacy about her, in spots,
that everybody don't see as I do."

"Has she children?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Yes; she has two."

"I suppose she feels the separation from them?"

"Well, of course, I couldn't bring them. They were little dirty
things--I couldn't have them about; and, besides, they took up too
much of her time; but I believe that Mammy has always kept up a sort of
sulkiness about this. She won't marry anybody else; and I do believe,
now, though she knows how necessary she is to me, and how feeble my
health is, she would go back to her husband tomorrow, if she only could.
I ‘do’, indeed," said Marie; "they are just so selfish, now, the best of
them."

"It's distressing to reflect upon," said St. Clare, dryly.

Miss Ophelia looked keenly at him, and saw the flush of mortification
and repressed vexation, and the sarcastic curl of the lip, as he spoke.

"Now, Mammy has always been a pet with me," said Marie. "I wish some of
your northern servants could look at her closets of dresses,--silks and
muslins, and one real linen cambric, she has hanging there. I've worked
sometimes whole afternoons, trimming her caps, and getting her ready
to go to a party. As to abuse, she don't know what it is. She never was
whipped more than once or twice in her whole life. She has her strong
coffee or her tea every day, with white sugar in it. It's abominable, to
be sure; but St. Clare will have high life below-stairs, and they every
one of them live just as they please. The fact is, our servants are
over-indulged. I suppose it is partly our fault that they are selfish,
and act like spoiled children; but I've talked to St. Clare till I am
tired."

"And I, too," said St. Clare, taking up the morning paper.

Eva, the beautiful Eva, had stood listening to her mother, with that
expression of deep and mystic earnestness which was peculiar to her. She
walked softly round to her mother's chair, and put her arms round her
neck.

"Well, Eva, what now?" said Marie.

"Mamma, couldn't I take care of you one night--just one? I know I
shouldn't make you nervous, and I shouldn't sleep. I often lie awake
nights, thinking--"

"O, nonsense, child--nonsense!" said Marie; "you are such a strange
child!"

"But may I, mamma? I think," she said, timidly, "that Mammy isn't well.
She told me her head ached all the time, lately."

"O, that's just one of Mammy's fidgets! Mammy is just like all the rest
of them--makes such a fuss about every little headache or finger-ache;
it'll never do to encourage it--never! I'm principled about this
matter," said she, turning to Miss Ophelia; "you'll find the necessity
of it. If you encourage servants in giving way to every little
disagreeable feeling, and complaining of every little ailment, you'll
have your hands full. I never complain myself--nobody knows what I
endure. I feel it a duty to bear it quietly, and I do."

Miss Ophelia's round eyes expressed an undisguised amazement at this
peroration, which struck St. Clare as so supremely ludicrous, that he
burst into a loud laugh.

"St. Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to my ill
health," said Marie, with the voice of a suffering martyr. "I only
hope the day won't come when he'll remember it!" and Marie put her
handkerchief to her eyes.

Of course, there was rather a foolish silence. Finally, St. Clare got
up, looked at his watch, and said he had an engagement down street. Eva
tripped away after him, and Miss Ophelia and Marie remained at the table
alone.

"Now, that's just like St. Clare!" said the latter, withdrawing her
handkerchief with somewhat of a spirited flourish when the criminal to
be affected by it was no longer in sight. "He never realizes, never
can, never will, what I suffer, and have, for years. If I was one of the
complaining sort, or ever made any fuss about my ailments, there would
be some reason for it. Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining
wife. But I've kept things to myself, and borne, and borne, till St.
Clare has got in the way of thinking I can bear anything."

Miss Ophelia did not exactly know what she was expected to answer to
this.

While she was thinking what to say, Marie gradually wiped away her
tears, and smoothed her plumage in a general sort of way, as a dove
might be supposed to make toilet after a shower, and began a housewifely
chat with Miss Ophelia, concerning cupboards, closets, linen-presses,
store-rooms, and other matters, of which the latter was, by common
understanding, to assume the direction,--giving her so many cautious
directions and charges, that a head less systematic and business-like
than Miss Ophelia's would have been utterly dizzied and confounded.

"And now," said Marie, "I believe I've told you everything; so that,
when my next sick turn comes on, you'll be able to go forward entirely,
without consulting me;--only about Eva,--she requires watching."

"She seems to be a good child, very," said Miss Ophelia; "I never saw a
better child."

"Eva's peculiar," said her mother, "very. There are things about her so
singular; she isn't like me, now, a particle;" and Marie sighed, as if
this was a truly melancholy consideration.

Miss Ophelia in her own heart said, "I hope she isn't," but had prudence
enough to keep it down.

"Eva always was disposed to be with servants; and I think that well
enough with some children. Now, I always played with father's little
negroes--it never did me any harm. But Eva somehow always seems to put
herself on an equality with every creature that comes near her. It's a
strange thing about the child. I never have been able to break her of
it. St. Clare, I believe, encourages her in it. The fact is, St. Clare
indulges every creature under this roof but his own wife."

Again Miss Ophelia sat in blank silence.

"Now, there's no way with servants," said Marie, "but to ‘put them
down’, and keep them down. It was always natural to me, from a child.
Eva is enough to spoil a whole house-full. What she will do when she
comes to keep house herself, I'm sure I don't know. I hold to being
‘kind’ to servants--I always am; but you must make 'em ‘know their
place’. Eva never does; there's no getting into the child's head the
first beginning of an idea what a servant's place is! You heard her
offering to take care of me nights, to let Mammy sleep! That's just a
specimen of the way the child would be doing all the time, if she was
left to herself."

"Why," said Miss Ophelia, bluntly, "I suppose you think your servants
are human creatures, and ought to have some rest when they are tired."

"Certainly, of course. I'm very particular in letting them have
everything that comes convenient,--anything that doesn't put one at
all out of the way, you know. Mammy can make up her sleep, some time
or other; there's no difficulty about that. She's the sleepiest concern
that ever I saw; sewing, standing, or sitting, that creature will go to
sleep, and sleep anywhere and everywhere. No danger but Mammy gets sleep
enough. But this treating servants as if they were exotic flowers, or
china vases, is really ridiculous," said Marie, as she plunged languidly
into the depths of a voluminous and pillowy lounge, and drew towards her
an elegant cut-glass vinaigrette.

"You see," she continued, in a faint and lady-like voice, like the last
dying breath of an Arabian jessamine, or something equally ethereal,
"you see, Cousin Ophelia, I don't often speak of myself. It isn't my
‘habit’; 't isn't agreeable to me. In fact, I haven't strength to do
it. But there are points where St. Clare and I differ. St. Clare never
understood me, never appreciated me. I think it lies at the root of all
my ill health. St. Clare means well, I am bound to believe; but men are
constitutionally selfish and inconsiderate to woman. That, at least, is
my impression."

Miss Ophelia, who had not a small share of the genuine New England
caution, and a very particular horror of being drawn into family
difficulties, now began to foresee something of this kind impending; so,
composing her face into a grim neutrality, and drawing out of her pocket
about a yard and a quarter of stocking, which she kept as a specific
against what Dr. Watts asserts to be a personal habit of Satan when
people have idle hands, she proceeded to knit most energetically,
shutting her lips together in a way that said, as plain as words could,
"You needn't try to make me speak. I don't want anything to do with your
affairs,"--in fact, she looked about as sympathizing as a stone lion.
But Marie didn't care for that. She had got somebody to talk to, and she
felt it her duty to talk, and that was enough; and reinforcing herself
by smelling again at her vinaigrette, she went on.

"You see, I brought my own property and servants into the connection,
when I married St. Clare, and I am legally entitled to manage them my
own way. St. Clare had his fortune and his servants, and I'm well
enough content he should manage them his way; but St. Clare will be
interfering. He has wild, extravagant notions about things, particularly
about the treatment of servants. He really does act as if he set his
servants before me, and before himself, too; for he lets them make him
all sorts of trouble, and never lifts a finger. Now, about some things,
St. Clare is really frightful--he frightens me--good-natured as he
looks, in general. Now, he has set down his foot that, come what will,
there shall not be a blow struck in this house, except what he or I
strike; and he does it in a way that I really dare not cross him. Well,
you may see what that leads to; for St. Clare wouldn't raise his hand,
if every one of them walked over him, and I--you see how cruel it would
be to require me to make the exertion. Now, you know these servants are
nothing but grown-up children."

"I don't know anything about it, and I thank the Lord that I don't!"
said Miss Ophelia, shortly.

"Well, but you will have to know something, and know it to your cost,
if you stay here. You don't know what a provoking, stupid, careless,
unreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are."

Marie seemed wonderfully supported, always, when she got upon this
topic; and she now opened her eyes, and seemed quite to forget her
languor.

"You don't know, and you can't, the daily, hourly trials that beset
a housekeeper from them, everywhere and every way. But it's no use to
complain to St. Clare. He talks the strangest stuff. He says we have
made them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their
faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault
and punish it too. He says we shouldn't do any better, in their place;
just as if one could reason from them to us, you know."

"Don't you believe that the Lord made them of one blood with us?" said
Miss Ophelia, shortly.

"No, indeed not I! A pretty story, truly! They are a degraded race."

"Don't you think they've got immortal souls?" said Miss Ophelia, with
increasing indignation.

"O, well," said Marie, yawning, "that, of course--nobody doubts that.
But as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if
we could be compared, why, it's impossible! Now, St. Clare really has
talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me
from mine. There's no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn't have the
feelings that I should. It's a different thing altogether,--of course,
it is,--and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy
could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once
really and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my
weak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody
else in her place. That was a little too much even for ‘me’ to bear. I
don't often show my feelings, I make it a principle to endure everything
in silence; it's a wife's hard lot, and I bear it. But I did break out,
that time; so that he has never alluded to the subject since. But I know
by his looks, and little things that he says, that he thinks so as much
as ever; and it's so trying, so provoking!"

Miss Ophelia looked very much as if she was afraid she should say
something; but she rattled away with her needles in a way that had
volumes of meaning in it, if Marie could only have understood it.

"So, you just see," she continued, "what you've got to manage. A
household without any rule; where servants have it all their own way, do
what they please, and have what they please, except so far as I, with
my feeble health, have kept up government. I keep my cowhide about, and
sometimes I do lay it on; but the exertion is always too much for me. If
St. Clare would only have this thing done as others do--"

"And how's that?"

"Why, send them to the calaboose, or some of the other places to be
flogged. That's the only way. If I wasn't such a poor, feeble piece, I
believe I should manage with twice the energy that St. Clare does."

"And how does St. Clare contrive to manage?" said Miss Ophelia. "You say
he never strikes a blow."

"Well, men have a more commanding way, you know; it is easier for
them; besides, if you ever looked full in his eye, it's peculiar,--that
eye,--and if he speaks decidedly, there's a kind of flash. I'm afraid of
it, myself; and the servants know they must mind. I couldn't do as much
by a regular storm and scolding as St. Clare can by one turn of his eye,
if once he is in earnest. O, there's no trouble about St. Clare; that's
the reason he's no more feeling for me. But you'll find, when you come
to manage, that there's no getting along without severity,--they are so
bad, so deceitful, so lazy".

"The old tune," said St. Clare, sauntering in. "What an awful account
these wicked creatures will have to settle, at last, especially for
being lazy! You see, cousin," said he, as he stretched himself at full
length on a lounge opposite to Marie, "it's wholly inexcusable in them,
in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,--this laziness."

"Come, now, St. Clare, you are too bad!" said Marie.

"Am I, now? Why, I thought I was talking good, quite remarkably for me.
I try to enforce your remarks, Marie, always."

"You know you meant no such thing, St. Clare," said Marie.

"O, I must have been mistaken, then. Thank you, my dear, for setting me
right."

"You do really try to be provoking," said Marie.

"O, come, Marie, the day is growing warm, and I have just had a long
quarrel with Dolph, which has fatigued me excessively; so, pray be
agreeable, now, and let a fellow repose in the light of your smile."

"What's the matter about Dolph?" said Marie. "That fellow's impudence
has been growing to a point that is perfectly intolerable to me. I
only wish I had the undisputed management of him a while. I'd bring him
down!"

"What you say, my dear, is marked with your usual acuteness and good
sense," said St. Clare. "As to Dolph, the case is this: that he has so
long been engaged in imitating my graces and perfections, that he has,
at last, really mistaken himself for his master; and I have been obliged
to give him a little insight into his mistake."

"How?" said Marie.

"Why, I was obliged to let him understand explicitly that I preferred to
keep ‘some’ of my clothes for my own personal wearing; also, I put his
magnificence upon an allowance of cologne-water, and actually was so
cruel as to restrict him to one dozen of my cambric handkerchiefs. Dolph
was particularly huffy about it, and I had to talk to him like a father,
to bring him round."

"O! St. Clare, when will you learn how to treat your servants? It's
abominable, the way you indulge them!" said Marie.

"Why, after all, what's the harm of the poor dog's wanting to be like
his master; and if I haven't brought him up any better than to find his
chief good in cologne and cambric handkerchiefs, why shouldn't I give
them to him?"

"And why haven't you brought him up better?" said Miss Ophelia, with
blunt determination.

"Too much trouble,--laziness, cousin, laziness,--which ruins more souls
than you can shake a stick at. If it weren't for laziness, I should have
been a perfect angel, myself. I'm inclined to think that laziness is
what your old Dr. Botherem, up in Vermont, used to call the 'essence of
moral evil.' It's an awful consideration, certainly."

"I think you slaveholders have an awful responsibility upon you," said
Miss Ophelia. "I wouldn't have it, for a thousand worlds. You ought to
educate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures,--like
immortal creatures, that you've got to stand before the bar of God with.
That's my mind," said the good lady, breaking suddenly out with a tide
of zeal that had been gaining strength in her mind all the morning.

"O! come, come," said St. Clare, getting up quickly; "what do you know
about us?" And he sat down to the piano, and rattled a lively piece of
music. St. Clare had a decided genius for music. His touch was brilliant
and firm, and his fingers flew over the keys with a rapid and bird-like
motion, airy, and yet decided. He played piece after piece, like a man
who is trying to play himself into a good humor. After pushing the music
aside, he rose up, and said, gayly, "Well, now, cousin, you've given us
a good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I think the better of you
for it. I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth
at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn't
exactly appreciated, at first."

"For my part, I don't see any use in such sort of talk," said Marie.
"I'm sure, if anybody does more for servants than we do, I'd like to
know who; and it don't do 'em a bit good,--not a particle,--they get
worse and worse. As to talking to them, or anything like that, I'm sure
I have talked till I was tired and hoarse, telling them their duty, and
all that; and I'm sure they can go to church when they like, though they
don't understand a word of the sermon, more than so many pigs,--so it
isn't of any great use for them to go, as I see; but they do go, and so
they have every chance; but, as I said before, they are a degraded race,
and always will be, and there isn't any help for them; you can't make
anything of them, if you try. You see, Cousin Ophelia, I've tried, and
you haven't; I was born and bred among them, and I know."

Miss Ophelia thought she had said enough, and therefore sat silent. St.
Clare whistled a tune.

"St. Clare, I wish you wouldn't whistle," said Marie; "it makes my head
worse."

"I won't," said St. Clare. "Is there anything else you wouldn't wish me
to do?"

"I wish you ‘would’ have some kind of sympathy for my trials; you never
have any feeling for me."

"My dear accusing angel!" said St. Clare.

"It's provoking to be talked to in that way."

"Then, how will you be talked to? I'll talk to order,--any way you'll
mention,--only to give satisfaction."

A gay laugh from the court rang through the silken curtains of the
verandah. St. Clare stepped out, and lifting up the curtain, laughed
too.

"What is it?" said Miss Ophelia, coming to the railing.

There sat Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his
button-holes stuck full of cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing, was
hanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on his
knee, like a chip-sparrow, still laughing.

"O, Tom, you look so funny!"

Tom had a sober, benevolent smile, and seemed, in his quiet way, to be
enjoying the fun quite as much as his little mistress. He lifted his
eyes, when he saw his master, with a half-deprecating, apologetic air.

"How can you let her?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Why not?" said St. Clare.

"Why, I don't know, it seems so dreadful!"

"You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he
was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is
immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among
some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of
virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity
ought to do,--obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have
often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you
than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you
are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you
don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send
them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary
or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.
Isn't that it?"

"Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some
truth in this."

"What would the poor and lowly do, without children?" said St. Clare,
leaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading
Tom with her. "Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now
is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs and
Methodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and little bits
of trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most wonderful Tom
that ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses of Eden that the
Lord has dropped down expressly for the poor and lowly, who get few
enough of any other kind."

"It's strange, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, "one might almost think you
were a ‘professor’, to hear you talk."

"A professor?" said St. Clare.

"Yes; a professor of religion."

"Not at all; not a professor, as your town-folks have it; and, what is
worse, I'm afraid, not a ‘practiser’, either."

"What makes you talk so, then?"

"Nothing is easier than talking," said St. Clare. "I believe Shakespeare
makes somebody say, 'I could sooner show twenty what were good to be
done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own showing.'* Nothing like
division of labor. My forte lies in talking, and yours, cousin, lies in
doing."

* ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Act 1, scene 2, lines 17-18.


In Tom's external situation, at this time, there was, as the world
says, nothing to complain of Little Eva's fancy for him--the instinctive
gratitude and loveliness of a noble nature--had led her to petition her
father that he might be her especial attendant, whenever she needed the
escort of a servant, in her walks or rides; and Tom had general orders
to let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted
him,--orders which our readers may fancy were far from disagreeable to
him. He was kept well dressed, for St. Clare was fastidiously particular
on this point. His stable services were merely a sinecure, and consisted
simply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an under-servant
in his duties; for Marie St. Clare declared that she could not have any
smell of the horses about him when he came near her, and that he must
positively not be put to any service that would make him unpleasant to
her, as her nervous system was entirely inadequate to any trial of
that nature; one snuff of anything disagreeable being, according to her
account, quite sufficient to close the scene, and put an end to all her
earthly trials at once. Tom, therefore, in his well-brushed broadcloth
suit, smooth beaver, glossy boots, faultless wristbands and collar, with
his grave, good-natured black face, looked respectable enough to be a
Bishop of Carthage, as men of his color were, in other ages.

Then, too, he was in a beautiful place, a consideration to which his
sensitive race was never indifferent; and he did enjoy with a quiet joy
the birds, the flowers, the fountains, the perfume, and light and
beauty of the court, the silken hangings, and pictures, and lustres,
and statuettes, and gilding, that made the parlors within a kind of
Aladdin's palace to him.

If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,--and come
it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human
improvement.--life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of
which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. In that far-off
mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and
wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of
art, new styles of splendor; and the negro race, no longer despised
and trodden down, will, perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most
magnificent revelations of human life. Certainly they will, in their
gentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on a
superior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simplicity of
affection, and facility of forgiveness. In all these they will exhibit
the highest form of the peculiarly ‘Christian life’, and, perhaps, as
God chasteneth whom he loveth, he hath chosen poor Africa in the furnace
of affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in that kingdom which
he will set up, when every other kingdom has been tried, and failed; for
the first shall be last, and the last first.

Was this what Marie St. Clare was thinking of, as she stood, gorgeously
dressed, on the verandah, on Sunday morning, clasping a diamond bracelet
on her slender wrist? Most likely it was. Or, if it wasn't that, it was
something else; for Marie patronized good things, and she was going now,
in full force,--diamonds, silk, and lace, and jewels, and all,--to a
fashionable church, to be very religious. Marie always made a point to
be very pious on Sundays. There she stood, so slender, so elegant, so
airy and undulating in all her motions, her lace scarf enveloping her
like a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she felt very good and
very elegant indeed. Miss Ophelia stood at her side, a perfect contrast.
It was not that she had not as handsome a silk dress and shawl, and
as fine a pocket-handkerchief; but stiffness and squareness, and
bolt-uprightness, enveloped her with as indefinite yet appreciable
a presence as did grace her elegant neighbor; not the grace of God,
however,--that is quite another thing!

"Where's Eva?" said Marie.

"The child stopped on the stairs, to say something to Mammy."

And what was Eva saying to Mammy on the stairs? Listen, reader, and you
will hear, though Marie does not.

"Dear Mammy, I know your head is aching dreadfully."

"Lord bless you, Miss Eva! my head allers aches lately. You don't need
to worry."

"Well, I'm glad you're going out; and here,"--and the little girl threw
her arms around her,--"Mammy, you shall take my vinaigrette."

"What! your beautiful gold thing, thar, with them diamonds! Lor, Miss,
't wouldn't be proper, no ways."

"Why not? You need it, and I don't. Mamma always uses it for headache,
and it'll make you feel better. No, you shall take it, to please me,
now."

"Do hear the darlin talk!" said Mammy, as Eva thrust it into her bosom,
and kissing her, ran down stairs to her mother.

"What were you stopping for?"

"I was just stopping to give Mammy my vinaigrette, to take to church
with her."

"Eva" said Marie, stamping impatiently,--"your gold vinaigrette to
‘Mammy!’ When will you learn what's ‘proper’? Go right and take it back
this moment!"

Eva looked downcast and aggrieved, and turned slowly.

"I say, Marie, let the child alone; she shall do as she pleases," said
St. Clare.

"St. Clare, how will she ever get along in the world?" said Marie.

"The Lord knows," said St. Clare, "but she'll get along in heaven better
than you or I."

"O, papa, don't," said Eva, softly touching his elbow; "it troubles
mother."

"Well, cousin, are you ready to go to meeting?" said Miss Ophelia,
turning square about on St. Clare.

"I'm not going, thank you."

"I do wish St. Clare ever would go to church," said Marie; "but he
hasn't a particle of religion about him. It really isn't respectable."

"I know it," said St. Clare. "You ladies go to church to learn how to
get along in the world, I suppose, and your piety sheds respectability
on us. If I did go at all, I would go where Mammy goes; there's
something to keep a fellow awake there, at least."

"What! those shouting Methodists? Horrible!" said Marie.

"Anything but the dead sea of your respectable churches, Marie.
Positively, it's too much to ask of a man. Eva, do you like to go? Come,
stay at home and play with me."

"Thank you, papa; but I'd rather go to church."

"Isn't it dreadful tiresome?" said St. Clare.

"I think it is tiresome, some," said Eva, "and I am sleepy, too, but I
try to keep awake."

"What do you go for, then?"

"Why, you know, papa," she said, in a whisper, "cousin told me that God
wants to have us; and he gives us everything, you know; and it isn't
much to do it, if he wants us to. It isn't so very tiresome after all."

"You sweet, little obliging soul!" said St. Clare, kissing her; "go
along, that's a good girl, and pray for me."

"Certainly, I always do," said the child, as she sprang after her mother
into the carriage.

St. Clare stood on the steps and kissed his hand to her, as the carriage
drove away; large tears were in his eyes.

"O, Evangeline! rightly named," he said; "hath not God made thee an
evangel to me?"

So he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune,
and forgot his little gospel. Was he much unlike other folks?

"You see, Evangeline," said her mother, "it's always right and proper
to be kind to servants, but it isn't proper to treat them ‘just’ as we
would our relations, or people in our own class of life. Now, if Mammy
was sick, you wouldn't want to put her in your own bed."

"I should feel just like it, mamma," said Eva, "because then it would
be handier to take care of her, and because, you know, my bed is better
than hers."

Marie was in utter despair at the entire want of moral perception
evinced in this reply.

"What can I do to make this child understand me?" she said.

"Nothing," said Miss Ophelia, significantly.

Eva looked sorry and disconcerted for a moment; but children, luckily,
do not keep to one impression long, and in a few moments she was merrily
laughing at various things which she saw from the coach-windows, as it
rattled along.

*****

"Well, ladies," said St. Clare, as they were comfortably seated at the
dinner-table, "and what was the bill of fare at church today?"

"O, Dr. G---- preached a splendid sermon," said Marie. "It was just such
a sermon as you ought to hear; it expressed all my views exactly."

"It must have been very improving," said St. Clare. "The subject must
have been an extensive one."

"Well, I mean all my views about society, and such things," said Marie.
"The text was, 'He hath made everything beautiful in its season;' and he
showed how all the orders and distinctions in society came from God; and
that it was so appropriate, you know, and beautiful, that some should
be high and some low, and that some were born to rule and some to serve,
and all that, you know; and he applied it so well to all this ridiculous
fuss that is made about slavery, and he proved distinctly that the Bible
was on our side, and supported all our institutions so convincingly. I
only wish you'd heard him."

"O, I didn't need it," said St. Clare. "I can learn what does me as much
good as that from the Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar besides;
which I can't do, you know, in a church."

"Why," said Miss Ophelia, "don't you believe in these views?"

"Who,--I? You know I'm such a graceless dog that these religious aspects
of such subjects don't edify me much. If I was to say anything on this
slavery matter, I would say out, fair and square, 'We're in for it;
we've got 'em, and mean to keep 'em,--it's for our convenience and our
interest;' for that's the long and short of it,--that's just the whole
of what all this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think
that it will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere."

"I do think, Augustine, you are so irreverent!" said Marie. "I think
it's shocking to hear you talk."

"Shocking! it's the truth. This religious talk on such matters,--why
don't they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its
season, of a fellow's taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too
late over his cards, and various providential arrangements of that sort,
which are pretty frequent among us young men;--we'd like to hear that
those are right and godly, too."

"Well," said Miss Ophelia, "do you think slavery right or wrong?"

"I'm not going to have any of your horrid New England directness,
cousin," said St. Clare, gayly. "If I answer that question, I know
you'll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last;
and I'm not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that
lives by throwing stones at other people's glass houses, but I never
mean to put up one for them to stone."

"That's just the way he's always talking," said Marie; "you can't get
any satisfaction out of him. I believe it's just because he don't like
religion, that he's always running out in this way he's been doing."

"Religion!" said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him.
"Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can bend
and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish,
worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous,
less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own
ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must
look for something above me, and not something beneath."

"Then you don't believe that the Bible justifies slavery," said Miss
Ophelia.

"The Bible was my ‘mother's’ book," said St. Clare. "By it she lived and
died, and I would be very sorry to think it did. I'd as soon desire
to have it proved that my mother could drink brandy, chew tobacco, and
swear, by way of satisfying me that I did right in doing the same. It
wouldn't make me at all more satisfied with these things in myself, and
it would take from me the comfort of respecting her; and it really is a
comfort, in this world, to have anything one can respect. In short,
you see," said he, suddenly resuming his gay tone, "all I want is that
different things be kept in different boxes. The whole frame-work of
society, both in Europe and America, is made up of various things which
will not stand the scrutiny of any very ideal standard of morality. It's
pretty generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute
right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world. Now, when
any one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary to us, we
can't get along without it, we should be beggared if we give it up,
and, of course, we mean to hold on to it,--this is strong, clear,
well-defined language; it has the respectability of truth to it; and, if
we may judge by their practice, the majority of the world will bear us
out in it. But when he begins to put on a long face, and snuffle, and
quote Scripture, I incline to think he isn't much better than he should
be."

"You are very uncharitable," said Marie.

"Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something should bring down the
price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a
drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version
of the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the
church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that
everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!"

"Well, at any rate," said Marie, as she reclined herself on a lounge,
"I'm thankful I'm born where slavery exists; and I believe it's
right,--indeed, I feel it must be; and, at any rate, I'm sure I couldn't
get along without it."

"I say, what do you think, Pussy?" said her father to Eva, who came in
at this moment, with a flower in her hand.

"What about, papa?"

"Why, which do you like the best,--to live as they do at your uncle's,
up in Vermont, or to have a house-full of servants, as we do?"

"O, of course, our way is the pleasantest," said Eva.

"Why so?" said St. Clare, stroking her head.

"Why, it makes so many more round you to love, you know," said Eva,
looking up earnestly.

"Now, that's just like Eva," said Marie; "just one of her odd speeches."

"Is it an odd speech, papa?" said Eva, whisperingly, as she got upon his
knee.

"Rather, as this world goes, Pussy," said St. Clare. "But where has my
little Eva been, all dinner-time?"

"O, I've been up in Tom's room, hearing him sing, and Aunt Dinah gave me
my dinner."

"Hearing Tom sing, hey?"

"O, yes! he sings such beautiful things about the New Jerusalem, and
bright angels, and the land of Canaan."

"I dare say; it's better than the opera, isn't it?"

"Yes, and he's going to teach them to me."

"Singing lessons, hey?--you ‘are’ coming on."

"Yes, he sings for me, and I read to him in my Bible; and he explains
what it means, you know."

"On my word," said Marie, laughing, "that is the latest joke of the
season."

"Tom isn't a bad hand, now, at explaining Scripture, I'll dare swear,"
said St. Clare. "Tom has a natural genius for religion. I wanted the
horses out early, this morning, and I stole up to Tom's cubiculum there,
over the stables, and there I heard him holding a meeting by himself;
and, in fact, I haven't heard anything quite so savory as Tom's prayer,
this some time. He put in for me, with a zeal that was quite apostolic."

"Perhaps he guessed you were listening. I've heard of that trick
before."

"If he did, he wasn't very polite; for he gave the Lord his opinion
of me, pretty freely. Tom seemed to think there was decidedly room for
improvement in me, and seemed very earnest that I should be converted."

"I hope you'll lay it to heart," said Miss Ophelia.

"I suppose you are much of the same opinion," said St. Clare. "Well, we
shall see,--shan't we, Eva?"



CHAPTER XVII

The Freeman's Defence


There was a gentle bustle at the Quaker house, as the afternoon drew to
a close. Rachel Halliday moved quietly to and fro, collecting from her
household stores such needments as could be arranged in the smallest
compass, for the wanderers who were to go forth that night. The
afternoon shadows stretched eastward, and the round red sun stood
thoughtfully on the horizon, and his beams shone yellow and calm into
the little bed-room where George and his wife were sitting. He was
sitting with his child on his knee, and his wife's hand in his. Both
looked thoughtful and serious and traces of tears were on their cheeks.

"Yes, Eliza," said George, "I know all you say is true. You are a good
child,--a great deal better than I am; and I will try to do as you say.
I'll try to act worthy of a free man. I'll try to feel like a Christian.
God Almighty knows that I've meant to do well,--tried hard to do
well,--when everything has been against me; and now I'll forget all the
past, and put away every hard and bitter feeling, and read my Bible, and
learn to be a good man."

"And when we get to Canada," said Eliza, "I can help you. I can do
dress-making very well; and I understand fine washing and ironing; and
between us we can find something to live on."

"Yes, Eliza, so long as we have each other and our boy. O! Eliza, if
these people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that
his wife and child belong to ‘him’! I've often wondered to see men that
could call their wives and children ‘their own’ fretting and worrying
about anything else. Why, I feel rich and strong, though we have nothing
but our bare hands. I feel as if I could scarcely ask God for any more.
Yes, though I've worked hard every day, till I am twenty-five years old,
and have not a cent of money, nor a roof to cover me, nor a spot of
land to call my own, yet, if they will only let me alone now, I will be
satisfied,--thankful; I will work, and send back the money for you and
my boy. As to my old master, he has been paid five times over for all he
ever spent for me. I don't owe him anything."

"But yet we are not quite out of danger," said Eliza; "we are not yet in
Canada."

"True," said George, "but it seems as if I smelt the free air, and it
makes me strong."

At this moment, voices were heard in the outer apartment, in earnest
conversation, and very soon a rap was heard on the door. Eliza started
and opened it.

Simeon Halliday was there, and with him a Quaker brother, whom he
introduced as Phineas Fletcher. Phineas was tall and lathy, red-haired,
with an expression of great acuteness and shrewdness in his face. He
had not the placid, quiet, unworldly air of Simeon Halliday; on the
contrary, a particularly wide-awake and ‘au fait’ appearance, like a
man who rather prides himself on knowing what he is about, and keeping
a bright lookout ahead; peculiarities which sorted rather oddly with his
broad brim and formal phraseology.

"Our friend Phineas hath discovered something of importance to the
interests of thee and thy party, George," said Simeon; "it were well for
thee to hear it."

"That I have," said Phineas, "and it shows the use of a man's always
sleeping with one ear open, in certain places, as I've always said.
Last night I stopped at a little lone tavern, back on the road. Thee
remembers the place, Simeon, where we sold some apples, last year, to
that fat woman, with the great ear-rings. Well, I was tired with hard
driving; and, after my supper I stretched myself down on a pile of bags
in the corner, and pulled a buffalo over me, to wait till my bed was
ready; and what does I do, but get fast asleep."

"With one ear open, Phineas?" said Simeon, quietly.

"No; I slept, ears and all, for an hour or two, for I was pretty well
tired; but when I came to myself a little, I found that there were some
men in the room, sitting round a table, drinking and talking; and I
thought, before I made much muster, I'd just see what they were up to,
especially as I heard them say something about the Quakers. 'So,' says
one, 'they are up in the Quaker settlement, no doubt,' says he. Then I
listened with both ears, and I found that they were talking about this
very party. So I lay and heard them lay off all their plans. This young
man, they said, was to be sent back to Kentucky, to his master, who was
going to make an example of him, to keep all niggers from running away;
and his wife two of them were going to run down to New Orleans to sell,
on their own account, and they calculated to get sixteen or eighteen
hundred dollars for her; and the child, they said, was going to a
trader, who had bought him; and then there was the boy, Jim, and his
mother, they were to go back to their masters in Kentucky. They said
that there were two constables, in a town a little piece ahead, who
would go in with 'em to get 'em taken up, and the young woman was to
be taken before a judge; and one of the fellows, who is small and
smooth-spoken, was to swear to her for his property, and get her
delivered over to him to take south. They've got a right notion of the
track we are going tonight; and they'll be down after us, six or eight
strong. So now, what's to be done?"

The group that stood in various attitudes, after this communication,
were worthy of a painter. Rachel Halliday, who had taken her hands out
of a batch of biscuit, to hear the news, stood with them upraised and
floury, and with a face of the deepest concern. Simeon looked profoundly
thoughtful; Eliza had thrown her arms around her husband, and was
looking up to him. George stood with clenched hands and glowing eyes,
and looking as any other man might look, whose wife was to be sold at
auction, and son sent to a trader, all under the shelter of a Christian
nation's laws.

"What ‘shall’ we do, George?" said Eliza faintly.

"I know what ‘I’ shall do," said George, as he stepped into the little
room, and began examining pistols.

"Ay, ay," said Phineas, nodding his head to Simeon; "thou seest, Simeon,
how it will work."

"I see," said Simeon, sighing; "I pray it come not to that."

"I don't want to involve any one with or for me," said George. "If you
will lend me your vehicle and direct me, I will drive alone to the next
stand. Jim is a giant in strength, and brave as death and despair, and
so am I."

"Ah, well, friend," said Phineas, "but thee'll need a driver, for all
that. Thee's quite welcome to do all the fighting, thee knows; but I
know a thing or two about the road, that thee doesn't."

"But I don't want to involve you," said George.

"Involve," said Phineas, with a curious and keen expression of face,
"When thee does involve me, please to let me know."

"Phineas is a wise and skilful man," said Simeon. "Thee does well,
George, to abide by his judgment; and," he added, laying his hand kindly
on George's shoulder, and pointing to the pistols, "be not over hasty
with these,--young blood is hot."

"I will attack no man," said George. "All I ask of this country is to be
let alone, and I will go out peaceably; but,"--he paused, and his brow
darkened and his face worked,--"I've had a sister sold in that New
Orleans market. I know what they are sold for; and am I going to stand
by and see them take my wife and sell her, when God has given me a pair
of strong arms to defend her? No; God help me! I'll fight to the last
breath, before they shall take my wife and son. Can you blame me?"

"Mortal man cannot blame thee, George. Flesh and blood could not do
otherwise," said Simeon. "Woe unto the world because of offences, but
woe unto them through whom the offence cometh."

"Would not even you, sir, do the same, in my place?"

"I pray that I be not tried," said Simeon; "the flesh is weak."

"I think my flesh would be pretty tolerable strong, in such a case,"
said Phineas, stretching out a pair of arms like the sails of a
windmill. "I an't sure, friend George, that I shouldn't hold a fellow
for thee, if thee had any accounts to settle with him."

"If man should ‘ever’ resist evil," said Simeon, "then George should
feel free to do it now: but the leaders of our people taught a more
excellent way; for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of
God; but it goes sorely against the corrupt will of man, and none can
receive it save they to whom it is given. Let us pray the Lord that we
be not tempted."

"And so ‘I’ do," said Phineas; "but if we are tempted too much--why, let
them look out, that's all."

"It's quite plain thee wasn't born a Friend," said Simeon, smiling. "The
old nature hath its way in thee pretty strong as yet."

To tell the truth, Phineas had been a hearty, two-fisted backwoodsman,
a vigorous hunter, and a dead shot at a buck; but, having wooed a pretty
Quakeress, had been moved by the power of her charms to join the society
in his neighborhood; and though he was an honest, sober, and efficient
member, and nothing particular could be alleged against him, yet the
more spiritual among them could not but discern an exceeding lack of
savor in his developments.

"Friend Phineas will ever have ways of his own," said Rachel Halliday,
smiling; "but we all think that his heart is in the right place, after
all."

"Well," said George, "isn't it best that we hasten our flight?"

"I got up at four o'clock, and came on with all speed, full two or three
hours ahead of them, if they start at the time they planned. It isn't
safe to start till dark, at any rate; for there are some evil persons
in the villages ahead, that might be disposed to meddle with us, if they
saw our wagon, and that would delay us more than the waiting; but in
two hours I think we may venture. I will go over to Michael Cross, and
engage him to come behind on his swift nag, and keep a bright lookout
on the road, and warn us if any company of men come on. Michael keeps a
horse that can soon get ahead of most other horses; and he could shoot
ahead and let us know, if there were any danger. I am going out now
to warn Jim and the old woman to be in readiness, and to see about the
horse. We have a pretty fair start, and stand a good chance to get to
the stand before they can come up with us. So, have good courage, friend
George; this isn't the first ugly scrape that I've been in with thy
people," said Phineas, as he closed the door.

"Phineas is pretty shrewd," said Simeon. "He will do the best that can
be done for thee, George."

"All I am sorry for," said George, "is the risk to you."

"Thee'll much oblige us, friend George, to say no more about that. What
we do we are conscience bound to do; we can do no other way. And now,
mother," said he, turning to Rachel, "hurry thy preparations for these
friends, for we must not send them away fasting."

And while Rachel and her children were busy making corn-cake, and
cooking ham and chicken, and hurrying on the ‘et ceteras’ of the evening
meal, George and his wife sat in their little room, with their arms
folded about each other, in such talk as husband and wife have when they
know that a few hours may part them forever.

"Eliza," said George, "people that have friends, and houses, and lands,
and money, and all those things ‘can't’ love as we do, who have nothing
but each other. Till I knew you, Eliza, no creature had loved me, but my
poor, heart-broken mother and sister. I saw poor Emily that morning the
trader carried her off. She came to the corner where I was lying asleep,
and said, 'Poor George, your last friend is going. What will become of
you, poor boy?' And I got up and threw my arms round her, and cried and
sobbed, and she cried too; and those were the last kind words I got for
ten long years; and my heart all withered up, and felt as dry as ashes,
till I met you. And your loving me,--why, it was almost like raising one
from the dead! I've been a new man ever since! And now, Eliza, I'll give
my last drop of blood, but they ‘shall not’ take you from me. Whoever
gets you must walk over my dead body."

"O, Lord, have mercy!" said Eliza, sobbing. "If he will only let us get
out of this country together, that is all we ask."

"Is God on their side?" said George, speaking less to his wife than
pouring out his own bitter thoughts. "Does he see all they do? Why does
he let such things happen? And they tell us that the Bible is on their
side; certainly all the power is. They are rich, and healthy, and happy;
they are members of churches, expecting to go to heaven; and they get
along so easy in the world, and have it all their own way; and poor,
honest, faithful Christians,--Christians as good or better than
they,--are lying in the very dust under their feet. They buy 'em
and sell 'em, and make trade of their heart's blood, and groans and
tears,--and God ‘lets’ them."

"Friend George," said Simeon, from the kitchen, "listen to this Psalm;
it may do thee good."

George drew his seat near the door, and Eliza, wiping her tears, came
forward also to listen, while Simeon read as follows:

"But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well-nigh
slipped. For I was envious of the foolish, when I saw the prosperity
of the wicked. They are not in trouble like other men, neither are they
plagued like other men. Therefore, pride compasseth them as a chain;
violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness;
they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak
wickedly concerning oppression; they speak loftily. Therefore his people
return, and the waters of a full cup are wrung out to them, and they
say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?"

"Is not that the way thee feels, George?"

"It is so indeed," said George,--"as well as I could have written it
myself."

"Then, hear," said Simeon: "When I thought to know this, it was too
painful for me until I went unto the sanctuary of God. Then understood I
their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst
them down to destruction. As a dream when one awaketh, so, oh Lord,
when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Nevertheless I am
continually with thee; thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt
guide me by thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. It is good
for me to draw near unto God. I have put my trust in the Lord God."*

* Ps. 73, "The End of the Wicked contrasted with that of the
Righteous."

The words of holy trust, breathed by the friendly old man, stole like
sacred music over the harassed and chafed spirit of George; and after
he ceased, he sat with a gentle and subdued expression on his fine
features.

"If this world were all, George," said Simeon, "thee might, indeed, ask
where is the Lord? But it is often those who have least of all in this
life whom he chooseth for the kingdom. Put thy trust in him and, no
matter what befalls thee here, he will make all right hereafter."

If these words had been spoken by some easy, self-indulgent exhorter,
from whose mouth they might have come merely as pious and rhetorical
flourish, proper to be used to people in distress, perhaps they might
not have had much effect; but coming from one who daily and calmly
risked fine and imprisonment for the cause of God and man, they had a
weight that could not but be felt, and both the poor, desolate fugitives
found calmness and strength breathing into them from it.

And now Rachel took Eliza's hand kindly, and led the way to the
supper-table. As they were sitting down, a light tap sounded at the
door, and Ruth entered.

"I just ran in," she said, "with these little stockings for the
boy,--three pair, nice, warm woollen ones. It will be so cold, thee
knows, in Canada. Does thee keep up good courage, Eliza?" she added,
tripping round to Eliza's side of the table, and shaking her warmly
by the hand, and slipping a seed-cake into Harry's hand. "I brought a
little parcel of these for him," she said, tugging at her pocket to get
out the package. "Children, thee knows, will always be eating."

"O, thank you; you are too kind," said Eliza.

"Come, Ruth, sit down to supper," said Rachel.

"I couldn't, any way. I left John with the baby, and some biscuits in
the oven; and I can't stay a moment, else John will burn up all the
biscuits, and give the baby all the sugar in the bowl. That's the way
he does," said the little Quakeress, laughing. "So, good-by, Eliza;
good-by, George; the Lord grant thee a safe journey;" and, with a few
tripping steps, Ruth was out of the apartment.

A little while after supper, a large covered-wagon drew up before the
door; the night was clear starlight; and Phineas jumped briskly down
from his seat to arrange his passengers. George walked out of the door,
with his child on one arm and his wife on the other. His step was firm,
his face settled and resolute. Rachel and Simeon came out after them.

"You get out, a moment," said Phineas to those inside, "and let me fix
the back of the wagon, there, for the women-folks and the boy."

"Here are the two buffaloes," said Rachel. "Make the seats as
comfortable as may be; it's hard riding all night."

Jim came out first, and carefully assisted out his old mother, who clung
to his arm, and looked anxiously about, as if she expected the pursuer
every moment.

"Jim, are your pistols all in order?" said George, in a low, firm voice.

"Yes, indeed," said Jim.

"And you've no doubt what you shall do, if they come?"

"I rather think I haven't," said Jim, throwing open his broad chest, and
taking a deep breath. "Do you think I'll let them get mother again?"

During this brief colloquy, Eliza had been taking her leave of her
kind friend, Rachel, and was handed into the carriage by Simeon,
and, creeping into the back part with her boy, sat down among the
buffalo-skins. The old woman was next handed in and seated and George
and Jim placed on a rough board seat front of them, and Phineas mounted
in front.

"Farewell, my friends," said Simeon, from without.

"God bless you!" answered all from within.

And the wagon drove off, rattling and jolting over the frozen road.

There was no opportunity for conversation, on account of the roughness
of the way and the noise of the wheels. The vehicle, therefore,
rumbled on, through long, dark stretches of woodland,--over wide dreary
plains,--up hills, and down valleys,--and on, on, on they jogged, hour
after hour. The child soon fell asleep, and lay heavily in his mother's
lap. The poor, frightened old woman at last forgot her fears; and, even
Eliza, as the night waned, found all her anxieties insufficient to keep
her eyes from closing. Phineas seemed, on the whole, the briskest of
the company, and beguiled his long drive with whistling certain very
unquaker-like songs, as he went on.

But about three o'clock George's ear caught the hasty and decided click
of a horse's hoof coming behind them at some distance and jogged Phineas
by the elbow. Phineas pulled up his horses, and listened.

"That must be Michael," he said; "I think I know the sound of his
gallop;" and he rose up and stretched his head anxiously back over the
road.

A man riding in hot haste was now dimly descried at the top of a distant
hill.

"There he is, I do believe!" said Phineas. George and Jim both sprang
out of the wagon before they knew what they were doing. All stood
intensely silent, with their faces turned towards the expected
messenger. On he came. Now he went down into a valley, where they could
not see him; but they heard the sharp, hasty tramp, rising nearer and
nearer; at last they saw him emerge on the top of an eminence, within
hail.

"Yes, that's Michael!" said Phineas; and, raising his voice, "Halloa,
there, Michael!"

"Phineas! is that thee?"

"Yes; what news--they coming?"

"Right on behind, eight or ten of them, hot with brandy, swearing and
foaming like so many wolves."

And, just as he spoke, a breeze brought the faint sound of galloping
horsemen towards them.

"In with you,--quick, boys, ‘in!’" said Phineas. "If you must fight,
wait till I get you a piece ahead." And, with the word, both jumped
in, and Phineas lashed the horses to a run, the horseman keeping close
beside them. The wagon rattled, jumped, almost flew, over the frozen
ground; but plainer, and still plainer, came the noise of pursuing
horsemen behind. The women heard it, and, looking anxiously out, saw,
far in the rear, on the brow of a distant hill, a party of men looming
up against the red-streaked sky of early dawn. Another hill, and
their pursuers had evidently caught sight of their wagon, whose white
cloth-covered top made it conspicuous at some distance, and a loud yell
of brutal triumph came forward on the wind. Eliza sickened, and strained
her child closer to her bosom; the old woman prayed and groaned, and
George and Jim clenched their pistols with the grasp of despair. The
pursuers gained on them fast; the carriage made a sudden turn, and
brought them near a ledge of a steep overhanging rock, that rose in an
isolated ridge or clump in a large lot, which was, all around it, quite
clear and smooth. This isolated pile, or range of rocks, rose up black
and heavy against the brightening sky, and seemed to promise shelter and
concealment. It was a place well known to Phineas, who had been familiar
with the spot in his hunting days; and it was to gain this point he had
been racing his horses.

"Now for it!" said he, suddenly checking his horses, and springing from
his seat to the ground. "Out with you, in a twinkling, every one, and up
into these rocks with me. Michael, thee tie thy horse to the wagon, and
drive ahead to Amariah's and get him and his boys to come back and talk
to these fellows."

In a twinkling they were all out of the carriage.

"There," said Phineas, catching up Harry, "you, each of you, see to the
women; and run, ‘now’ if you ever ‘did’ run!"

They needed no exhortation. Quicker than we can say it, the whole party
were over the fence, making with all speed for the rocks, while Michael,
throwing himself from his horse, and fastening the bridle to the wagon,
began driving it rapidly away.

"Come ahead," said Phineas, as they reached the rocks, and saw in the
mingled starlight and dawn, the traces of a rude but plainly marked
foot-path leading up among them; "this is one of our old hunting-dens.
Come up!"

Phineas went before, springing up the rocks like a goat, with the boy
in his arms. Jim came second, bearing his trembling old mother over
his shoulder, and George and Eliza brought up the rear. The party of
horsemen came up to the fence, and, with mingled shouts and oaths,
were dismounting, to prepare to follow them. A few moments' scrambling
brought them to the top of the ledge; the path then passed between a
narrow defile, where only one could walk at a time, till suddenly they
came to a rift or chasm more than a yard in breadth, and beyond which
lay a pile of rocks, separate from the rest of the ledge, standing full
thirty feet high, with its sides steep and perpendicular as those of
a castle. Phineas easily leaped the chasm, and sat down the boy on a
smooth, flat platform of crisp white moss, that covered the top of the
rock.

"Over with you!" he called; "spring, now, once, for your lives!" said
he, as one after another sprang across. Several fragments of loose stone
formed a kind of breast-work, which sheltered their position from the
observation of those below.

"Well, here we all are," said Phineas, peeping over the stone
breast-work to watch the assailants, who were coming tumultuously up
under the rocks. "Let 'em get us, if they can. Whoever comes here has to
walk single file between those two rocks, in fair range of your pistols,
boys, d'ye see?"

"I do see," said George! "and now, as this matter is ours, let us take
all the risk, and do all the fighting."

"Thee's quite welcome to do the fighting, George," said Phineas, chewing
some checkerberry-leaves as he spoke; "but I may have the fun of looking
on, I suppose. But see, these fellows are kinder debating down there,
and looking up, like hens when they are going to fly up on to the roost.
Hadn't thee better give 'em a word of advice, before they come up, just
to tell 'em handsomely they'll be shot if they do?"

The party beneath, now more apparent in the light of the dawn, consisted
of our old acquaintances, Tom Loker and Marks, with two constables,
and a posse consisting of such rowdies at the last tavern as could be
engaged by a little brandy to go and help the fun of trapping a set of
niggers.

"Well, Tom, yer coons are farly treed," said one.

"Yes, I see 'em go up right here," said Tom; "and here's a path. I'm for
going right up. They can't jump down in a hurry, and it won't take long
to ferret 'em out."

"But, Tom, they might fire at us from behind the rocks," said Marks.
"That would be ugly, you know."

"Ugh!" said Tom, with a sneer. "Always for saving your skin, Marks! No
danger! niggers are too plaguy scared!"

"I don't know why I ‘shouldn't’ save my skin," said Marks. "It's the
best I've got; and niggers ‘do’ fight like the devil, sometimes."

At this moment, George appeared on the top of a rock above them, and,
speaking in a calm, clear voice, said,

"Gentlemen, who are you, down there, and what do you want?"

"We want a party of runaway niggers," said Tom Loker. "One George
Harris, and Eliza Harris, and their son, and Jim Selden, and an old
woman. We've got the officers, here, and a warrant to take 'em; and
we're going to have 'em, too. D'ye hear? An't you George Harris, that
belongs to Mr. Harris, of Shelby county, Kentucky?"

"I am George Harris. A Mr. Harris, of Kentucky, did call me his
property. But now I'm a free man, standing on God's free soil; and my
wife and my child I claim as mine. Jim and his mother are here. We have
arms to defend ourselves, and we mean to do it. You can come up, if
you like; but the first one of you that comes within the range of our
bullets is a dead man, and the next, and the next; and so on till the
last."

"O, come! come!" said a short, puffy man, stepping forward, and blowing
his nose as he did so. "Young man, this an't no kind of talk at all for
you. You see, we're officers of justice. We've got the law on our side,
and the power, and so forth; so you'd better give up peaceably, you see;
for you'll certainly have to give up, at last."

"I know very well that you've got the law on your side, and the power,"
said George, bitterly. "You mean to take my wife to sell in New Orleans,
and put my boy like a calf in a trader's pen, and send Jim's old mother
to the brute that whipped and abused her before, because he couldn't
abuse her son. You want to send Jim and me back to be whipped and
tortured, and ground down under the heels of them that you call masters;
and your laws ‘will’ bear you out in it,--more shame for you and them!
But you haven't got us. We don't own your laws; we don't own your
country; we stand here as free, under God's sky, as you are; and, by the
great God that made us, we'll fight for our liberty till we die."

George stood out in fair sight, on the top of the rock, as he made
his declaration of independence; the glow of dawn gave a flush to his
swarthy cheek, and bitter indignation and despair gave fire to his dark
eye; and, as if appealing from man to the justice of God, he raised his
hand to heaven as he spoke.

If it had been only a Hungarian youth, now bravely defending in some
mountain fastness the retreat of fugitives escaping from Austria into
America, this would have been sublime heroism; but as it was a youth of
African descent, defending the retreat of fugitives through America into
Canada, of course we are too well instructed and patriotic to see any
heroism in it; and if any of our readers do, they must do it on their
own private responsibility. When despairing Hungarian fugitives make
their way, against all the search-warrants and authorities of their
lawful government, to America, press and political cabinet ring with
applause and welcome. When despairing African fugitives do the same
thing,--it is--what ‘is’ it?

Be it as it may, it is certain that the attitude, eye, voice, manner,
of the speaker for a moment struck the party below to silence. There is
something in boldness and determination that for a time hushes even the
rudest nature. Marks was the only one who remained wholly untouched. He
was deliberately cocking his pistol, and, in the momentary silence that
followed George's speech, he fired at him.

"Ye see ye get jist as much for him dead as alive in Kentucky," he said
coolly, as he wiped his pistol on his coat-sleeve.

George sprang backward,--Eliza uttered a shriek,--the ball had passed
close to his hair, had nearly grazed the cheek of his wife, and struck
in the tree above.

"It's nothing, Eliza," said George, quickly.

"Thee'd better keep out of sight, with thy speechifying," said Phineas;
"they're mean scamps."

"Now, Jim," said George, "look that your pistols are all right, and
watch that pass with me. The first man that shows himself I fire at; you
take the second, and so on. It won't do, you know, to waste two shots on
one."

"But what if you don't hit?"

"I ‘shall’ hit," said George, coolly.

"Good! now, there's stuff in that fellow," muttered Phineas, between his
teeth.

The party below, after Marks had fired, stood, for a moment, rather
undecided.

"I think you must have hit some on 'em," said one of the men. "I heard a
squeal!"

"I'm going right up for one," said Tom. "I never was afraid of niggers,
and I an't going to be now. Who goes after?" he said, springing up the
rocks.

George heard the words distinctly. He drew up his pistol, examined it,
pointed it towards that point in the defile where the first man would
appear.

One of the most courageous of the party followed Tom, and, the way being
thus made, the whole party began pushing up the rock,--the hindermost
pushing the front ones faster than they would have gone of themselves.
On they came, and in a moment the burly form of Tom appeared in sight,
almost at the verge of the chasm.

George fired,--the shot entered his side,--but, though wounded, he would
not retreat, but, with a yell like that of a mad bull, he was leaping
right across the chasm into the party.

"Friend," said Phineas, suddenly stepping to the front, and meeting him
with a push from his long arms, "thee isn't wanted here."

Down he fell into the chasm, crackling down among trees, bushes, logs,
loose stones, till he lay bruised and groaning thirty feet below. The
fall might have killed him, had it not been broken and moderated by his
clothes catching in the branches of a large tree; but he came down with
some force, however,--more than was at all agreeable or convenient.

"Lord help us, they are perfect devils!" said Marks, heading the retreat
down the rocks with much more of a will than he had joined the ascent,
while all the party came tumbling precipitately after him,--the fat
constable, in particular, blowing and puffing in a very energetic
manner.

"I say, fellers," said Marks, "you jist go round and pick up Tom, there,
while I run and get on to my horse to go back for help,--that's you;"
and, without minding the hootings and jeers of his company, Marks was as
good as his word, and was soon seen galloping away.

"Was ever such a sneaking varmint?" said one of the men; "to come on his
business, and he clear out and leave us this yer way!"

"Well, we must pick up that feller," said another. "Cuss me if I much
care whether he is dead or alive."

The men, led by the groans of Tom, scrambled and crackled through
stumps, logs and bushes, to where that hero lay groaning and swearing
with alternate vehemence.

"Ye keep it agoing pretty loud, Tom," said one. "Ye much hurt?"

"Don't know. Get me up, can't ye? Blast that infernal Quaker! If it
hadn't been for him, I'd a pitched some on 'em down here, to see how
they liked it."

With much labor and groaning, the fallen hero was assisted to rise; and,
with one holding him up under each shoulder, they got him as far as the
horses.

"If you could only get me a mile back to that ar tavern. Give me a
handkerchief or something, to stuff into this place, and stop this
infernal bleeding."

George looked over the rocks, and saw them trying to lift the burly
form of Tom into the saddle. After two or three ineffectual attempts, he
reeled, and fell heavily to the ground.

"O, I hope he isn't killed!" said Eliza, who, with all the party, stood
watching the proceeding.

"Why not?" said Phineas; "serves him right."

"Because after death comes the judgment," said Eliza.

"Yes," said the old woman, who had been groaning and praying, in her
Methodist fashion, during all the encounter, "it's an awful case for the
poor crittur's soul."

"On my word, they're leaving him, I do believe," said Phineas.

It was true; for after some appearance of irresolution and consultation,
the whole party got on their horses and rode away. When they were quite
out of sight, Phineas began to bestir himself.

"Well, we must go down and walk a piece," he said. "I told Michael to
go forward and bring help, and be along back here with the wagon; but we
shall have to walk a piece along the road, I reckon, to meet them. The
Lord grant he be along soon! It's early in the day; there won't be much
travel afoot yet a while; we an't much more than two miles from our
stopping-place. If the road hadn't been so rough last night, we could
have outrun 'em entirely."

As the party neared the fence, they discovered in the distance, along
the road, their own wagon coming back, accompanied by some men on
horseback.

"Well, now, there's Michael, and Stephen and Amariah," exclaimed
Phineas, joyfully. "Now we ‘are’ made--as safe as if we'd got there."

"Well, do stop, then," said Eliza, "and do something for that poor man;
he's groaning dreadfully."

"It would be no more than Christian," said George; "let's take him up
and carry him on."

"And doctor him up among the Quakers!" said Phineas; "pretty well,
that! Well, I don't care if we do. Here, let's have a look at him;"
and Phineas, who in the course of his hunting and backwoods life had
acquired some rude experience of surgery, kneeled down by the wounded
man, and began a careful examination of his condition.

"Marks," said Tom, feebly, "is that you, Marks?"

"No; I reckon 'tan't friend," said Phineas. "Much Marks cares for thee,
if his own skin's safe. He's off, long ago."

"I believe I'm done for," said Tom. "The cussed sneaking dog, to leave
me to die alone! My poor old mother always told me 't would be so."

"La sakes! jist hear the poor crittur. He's got a mammy, now," said the
old negress. "I can't help kinder pityin' on him."

"Softly, softly; don't thee snap and snarl, friend," said Phineas, as
Tom winced and pushed his hand away. "Thee has no chance, unless I stop
the bleeding." And Phineas busied himself with making some off-hand
surgical arrangements with his own pocket-handkerchief, and such as
could be mustered in the company.

"You pushed me down there," said Tom, faintly.

"Well if I hadn't thee would have pushed us down, thee sees," said
Phineas, as he stooped to apply his bandage. "There, there,--let me fix
this bandage. We mean well to thee; we bear no malice. Thee shall be
taken to a house where they'll nurse thee first rate, well as thy own
mother could."

Tom groaned, and shut his eyes. In men of his class, vigor and
resolution are entirely a physical matter, and ooze out with the flowing
of the blood; and the gigantic fellow really looked piteous in his
helplessness.

The other party now came up. The seats were taken out of the wagon. The
buffalo-skins, doubled in fours, were spread all along one side, and
four men, with great difficulty, lifted the heavy form of Tom into it.
Before he was gotten in, he fainted entirely. The old negress, in the
abundance of her compassion, sat down on the bottom, and took his head
in her lap. Eliza, George and Jim, bestowed themselves, as well as they
could, in the remaining space and the whole party set forward.

"What do you think of him?" said George, who sat by Phineas in front.

"Well it's only a pretty deep flesh-wound; but, then, tumbling and
scratching down that place didn't help him much. It has bled pretty
freely,--pretty much drained him out, courage and all,--but he'll get
over it, and may be learn a thing or two by it."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," said George. "It would always be a heavy
thought to me, if I'd caused his death, even in a just cause."

"Yes," said Phineas, "killing is an ugly operation, any way they'll fix
it,--man or beast. I've seen a buck that was shot down and a dying, look
that way on a feller with his eye, that it reely most made a feller
feel wicked for killing on him; and human creatures is a more serious
consideration yet, bein', as thy wife says, that the judgment comes
to 'em after death. So I don't know as our people's notions on these
matters is too strict; and, considerin' how I was raised, I fell in with
them pretty considerably."

"What shall you do with this poor fellow?" said George.

"O, carry him along to Amariah's. There's old Grandmam Stephens
there,--Dorcas, they call her,--she's most an amazin' nurse. She takes
to nursing real natural, and an't never better suited than when she
gets a sick body to tend. We may reckon on turning him over to her for a
fortnight or so."

A ride of about an hour more brought the party to a neat farmhouse,
where the weary travellers were received to an abundant breakfast. Tom
Loker was soon carefully deposited in a much cleaner and softer bed than
he had, ever been in the habit of occupying. His wound was carefully
dressed and bandaged, and he lay languidly opening and shutting his
eyes on the white window-curtains and gently-gliding figures of his sick
room, like a weary child. And here, for the present, we shall take our
leave of one party.



CHAPTER XVIII

Miss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions


Our friend Tom, in his own simple musings, often compared his more
fortunate lot, in the bondage into which he was cast, with that of
Joseph in Egypt; and, in fact, as time went on, and he developed more
and more under the eye of his master, the strength of the parallel
increased.

St. Clare was indolent and careless of money. Hitherto the providing and
marketing had been principally done by Adolph, who was, to the full, as
careless and extravagant as his master; and, between them both, they had
carried on the dispersing process with great alacrity. Accustomed, for
many years, to regard his master's property as his own care, Tom saw,
with an uneasiness he could scarcely repress, the wasteful expenditure
of the establishment; and, in the quiet, indirect way which his class
often acquire, would sometimes make his own suggestions.

St. Clare at first employed him occasionally; but, struck with his
soundness of mind and good business capacity, he confided in him more
and more, till gradually all the marketing and providing for the family
were intrusted to him.

"No, no, Adolph," he said, one day, as Adolph was deprecating the
passing of power out of his hands; "let Tom alone. You only understand
what you want; Tom understands cost and come to; and there may be some
end to money, bye and bye if we don't let somebody do that."

Trusted to an unlimited extent by a careless master, who handed him a
bill without looking at it, and pocketed the change without counting it,
Tom had every facility and temptation to dishonesty; and nothing but an
impregnable simplicity of nature, strengthened by Christian faith, could
have kept him from it. But, to that nature, the very unbounded trust
reposed in him was bond and seal for the most scrupulous accuracy.

With Adolph the case had been different. Thoughtless and self-indulgent,
and unrestrained by a master who found it easier to indulge than to
regulate, he had fallen into an absolute confusion as to ‘meum tuum’
with regard to himself and his master, which sometimes troubled even
St. Clare. His own good sense taught him that such a training of his
servants was unjust and dangerous. A sort of chronic remorse went with
him everywhere, although not strong enough to make any decided change
in his course; and this very remorse reacted again into indulgence. He
passed lightly over the most serious faults, because he told himself
that, if he had done his part, his dependents had not fallen into them.

Tom regarded his gay, airy, handsome young master with an odd mixture
of fealty, reverence, and fatherly solicitude. That he never read the
Bible; never went to church; that he jested and made free with any and
every thing that came in the way of his wit; that he spent his Sunday
evenings at the opera or theatre; that he went to wine parties, and
clubs, and suppers, oftener than was at all expedient,--were all things
that Tom could see as plainly as anybody, and on which he based a
conviction that "Mas'r wasn't a Christian;"--a conviction, however,
which he would have been very slow to express to any one else, but on
which he founded many prayers, in his own simple fashion, when he was
by himself in his little dormitory. Not that Tom had not his own way
of speaking his mind occasionally, with something of the tact often
observable in his class; as, for example, the very day after the Sabbath
we have described, St. Clare was invited out to a convivial party of
choice spirits, and was helped home, between one and two o'clock at
night, in a condition when the physical had decidedly attained the upper
hand of the intellectual. Tom and Adolph assisted to get him composed
for the night, the latter in high spirits, evidently regarding the
matter as a good joke, and laughing heartily at the rusticity of Tom's
horror, who really was simple enough to lie awake most of the rest of
the night, praying for his young master.

"Well, Tom, what are you waiting for?" said St. Clare, the next day, as
he sat in his library, in dressing-gown and slippers. St. Clare had just
been entrusting Tom with some money, and various commissions. "Isn't all
right there, Tom?" he added, as Tom still stood waiting.

"I'm 'fraid not, Mas'r," said Tom, with a grave face.

St. Clare laid down his paper, and set down his coffee-cup, and looked
at Tom.

"Why Tom, what's the case? You look as solemn as a coffin."

"I feel very bad, Mas'r. I allays have thought that Mas'r would be good
to everybody."

"Well, Tom, haven't I been? Come, now, what do you want? There's
something you haven't got, I suppose, and this is the preface."

"Mas'r allays been good to me. I haven't nothing to complain of on that
head. But there is one that Mas'r isn't good to."

"Why, Tom, what's got into you? Speak out; what do you mean?"

"Last night, between one and two, I thought so. I studied upon the
matter then. Mas'r isn't good to ‘himself’."

Tom said this with his back to his master, and his hand on the
door-knob. St. Clare felt his face flush crimson, but he laughed.

"O, that's all, is it?" he said, gayly.

"All!" said Tom, turning suddenly round and falling on his knees. "O,
my dear young Mas'r; I'm 'fraid it will be ‘loss of all--all’--body and
soul. The good Book says, 'it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an
adder!' my dear Mas'r!"

Tom's voice choked, and the tears ran down his cheeks.

"You poor, silly fool!" said St. Clare, with tears in his own eyes. "Get
up, Tom. I'm not worth crying over."

But Tom wouldn't rise, and looked imploring.

"Well, I won't go to any more of their cursed nonsense, Tom," said St.
Clare; "on my honor, I won't. I don't know why I haven't stopped long
ago. I've always despised ‘it’, and myself for it,--so now, Tom, wipe
up your eyes, and go about your errands. Come, come," he added, "no
blessings. I'm not so wonderfully good, now," he said, as he gently
pushed Tom to the door. "There, I'll pledge my honor to you, Tom, you
don't see me so again," he said; and Tom went off, wiping his eyes, with
great satisfaction.

"I'll keep my faith with him, too," said St. Clare, as he closed the
door.

And St. Clare did so,--for gross sensualism, in any form, was not the
peculiar temptation of his nature.

But, all this time, who shall detail the tribulations manifold of our
friend Miss Ophelia, who had begun the labors of a Southern housekeeper?

There is all the difference in the world in the servants of Southern
establishments, according to the character and capacity of the
mistresses who have brought them up.

South as well as north, there are women who have an extraordinary talent
for command, and tact in educating. Such are enabled, with apparent
ease, and without severity, to subject to their will, and bring into
harmonious and systematic order, the various members of their small
estate,--to regulate their peculiarities, and so balance and compensate
the deficiencies of one by the excess of another, as to produce a
harmonious and orderly system.

Such a housekeeper was Mrs. Shelby, whom we have already described; and
such our readers may remember to have met with. If they are not common
at the South, it is because they are not common in the world. They are
to be found there as often as anywhere; and, when existing, find in
that peculiar state of society a brilliant opportunity to exhibit their
domestic talent.

Such a housekeeper Marie St. Clare was not, nor her mother before her.
Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be
expected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise;
and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion
she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it to the
proper cause.

The first morning of her regency, Miss Ophelia was up at four o'clock;
and having attended to all the adjustments of her own chamber, as
she had done ever since she came there, to the great amazement of the
chambermaid, she prepared for a vigorous onslaught on the cupboards and
closets of the establishment of which she had the keys.

The store-room, the linen-presses, the china-closet, the kitchen and
cellar, that day, all went under an awful review. Hidden things of
darkness were brought to light to an extent that alarmed all the
principalities and powers of kitchen and chamber, and caused many
wonderings and murmurings about "dese yer northern ladies" from the
domestic cabinet.

Old Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in
the kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered
an invasion of privilege. No feudal baron in ‘Magna Charta’ times could
have more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown.

Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would be injustice to her
memory not to give the reader a little idea of her. She was a native
and essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe,--cooking being an indigenous
talent of the African race; but Chloe was a trained and methodical one,
who moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a self-taught
genius, and, like geniuses in general, was positive, opinionated and
erratic, to the last degree.

Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned
logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive
certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of
talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe
that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had
pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified. This had
been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and "Miss
Marie," as Dinah always called her young mistress, even after her
marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled
supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that
diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the
utmost inflexibility as to measure.

Dinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in all
its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no
wrong; and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and
shoulders on which to lay off every sin and frailty, so as to maintain
her own immaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner was a failure,
there were fifty indisputably good reasons for it; and it was the fault
undeniably of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing
zeal.

But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last
results. Though her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering
and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and
place,--though her kitchen generally looked as if it had been arranged
by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about as many places for
each cooking utensil as there were days in the year,--yet, if one would
have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in
perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could
find no fault.

It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who
required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of
ease in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a
short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she
always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of
an inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking the
domestic Muses.

Seated around her were various members of that rising race with which a
Southern household abounds, engaged in shelling peas, peeling
potatoes, picking pin-feathers out of fowls, and other preparatory
arrangements,--Dinah every once in a while interrupting her meditations
to give a poke, or a rap on the head, to some of the young operators,
with the pudding-stick that lay by her side. In fact, Dinah ruled over
the woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed
to consider them born for no earthly purpose but to "save her steps,"
as she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had
grown up, and she carried it out to its full extent.

Miss Ophelia, after passing on her reformatory tour through all the
other parts of the establishment, now entered the kitchen. Dinah had
heard, from various sources, what was going on, and resolved to stand
on defensive and conservative ground,--mentally determined to oppose and
ignore every new measure, without any actual observable contest.

The kitchen was a large brick-floored apartment, with a great
old-fashioned fireplace stretching along one side of it,--an arrangement
which St. Clare had vainly tried to persuade Dinah to exchange for
the convenience of a modern cook-stove. Not she. No Puseyite,* or
conservative of any school, was ever more inflexibly attached to
time-honored inconveniences than Dinah.

* Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the
orthodoxy of revealed religion, defender of the Oxford
movement, and Regius professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ
Church, Oxford.

When St. Clare had first returned from the north, impressed with the
system and order of his uncle's kitchen arrangements, he had largely
provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various
apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine
illusion that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her
arrangements. He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a
magpie. The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes
could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old
shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of
‘vertu’, wherein her soul delighted.

When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen Dinah did not rise, but smoked on
in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the
corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around
her.

Miss Ophelia commenced opening a set of drawers.

"What is this drawer for, Dinah?" she said.

"It's handy for most anything, Missis," said Dinah. So it appeared to
be. From the variety it contained, Miss Ophelia pulled out first a fine
damask table-cloth stained with blood, having evidently been used to
envelop some raw meat.

"What's this, Dinah? You don't wrap up meat in your mistress' best
table-cloths?"

"O Lor, Missis, no; the towels was all a missin'--so I jest did it. I
laid out to wash that a,--that's why I put it thar."

"Shif'less!" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over
the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a
Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn
and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or
two gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old
shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white
onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some
twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry
sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.

"Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?" said Miss Ophelia, with the air
of one who prayed for patience.

"Most anywhar, Missis; there's some in that cracked tea-cup, up there,
and there's some over in that ar cupboard."

"Here are some in the grater," said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.

"Laws, yes, I put 'em there this morning,--I likes to keep my things
handy," said Dinah. "You, Jake! what are you stopping for! You'll
cotch it! Be still, thar!" she added, with a dive of her stick at the
criminal.

"What's this?" said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.

"Laws, it's my har ‘grease’;--I put it thar to have it handy."

"Do you use your mistress' best saucers for that?"

"Law! it was cause I was driv, and in sich a hurry;--I was gwine to
change it this very day."

"Here are two damask table-napkins."

"Them table-napkins I put thar, to get 'em washed out, some day."

"Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?"

"Well, Mas'r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes
to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it an't
handy a liftin' up the lid."

"Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?"

"Law, Missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another,
der an't no room, noway--"

"But you should ‘wash’ your dishes, and clear them away."

"Wash my dishes!" said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise
over her habitual respect of manner; "what does ladies know 'bout work,
I want to know? When 'd Mas'r ever get his dinner, if I vas to spend all
my time a washin' and a puttin' up dishes? Miss Marie never telled me
so, nohow."

"Well, here are these onions."

"Laws, yes!" said Dinah; "thar ‘is’ whar I put 'em, now. I couldn't
'member. Them 's particular onions I was a savin' for dis yer very stew.
I'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel."

Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs.

"I wish Missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I
knows whar to go to 'em," said Dinah, rather decidedly.

"But you don't want these holes in the papers."

"Them 's handy for siftin' on 't out," said Dinah.

"But you see it spills all over the drawer."

"Laws, yes! if Missis will go a tumblin' things all up so, it will.
Missis has spilt lots dat ar way," said Dinah, coming uneasily to the
drawers. "If Missis only will go up stars till my clarin' up time comes,
I'll have everything right; but I can't do nothin' when ladies is round,
a henderin'. You, Sam, don't you gib the baby dat ar sugar-bowl! I'll
crack ye over, if ye don't mind!"

"I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order,
‘once’, Dinah; and then I'll expect you to ‘keep’ it so."

"Lor, now! Miss Phelia; dat ar an't no way for ladies to do. I never did
see ladies doin' no sich; my old Missis nor Miss Marie never did, and
I don't see no kinder need on 't;" and Dinah stalked indignantly about,
while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of scattering
bowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins, table-cloths, and
towels, for washing; washing, wiping, and arranging with her own hands,
and with a speed and alacrity which perfectly amazed Dinah.

"Lor now! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey an't ladies,
nohow," she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe hearing
distance. "I has things as straight as anybody, when my clarin' up times
comes; but I don't want ladies round, a henderin', and getting my things
all where I can't find 'em."

To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of
reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when
she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong
side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion
seven-fold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe, and leisurely
go over her arrangements, looking things over, and discoursing upon
them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things,
and keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of confusion,
which she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers, by the
remark that she was a "clarin' up." "She couldn't hev things a gwine on
so as they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep
better order;" for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that
she, herself, was the soul of order, and it was only the ‘young uns’,
and the everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything
that fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were
scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could
offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress
herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras
turban, and tell all marauding "young uns" to keep out of the kitchen,
for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic
seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household; for Dinah
would contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin, as
to insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible
purpose,--at least, till the ardor of the "clarin' up" period abated.

Miss Ophelia, in a few days, thoroughly reformed every department of the
house to a systematic pattern; but her labors in all departments that
depended on the cooperation of servants were like those of Sisyphus or
the Danaides. In despair, she one day appealed to St. Clare.

"There is no such thing as getting anything like a system in this
family!"

"To be sure, there isn't," said St. Clare.

"Such shiftless management, such waste, such confusion, I never saw!"

"I dare say you didn't."

"You would not take it so coolly, if you were housekeeper."

"My dear cousin, you may as well understand, once for all, that we
masters are divided into two classes, oppressors and oppressed. We who
are good-natured and hate severity make up our minds to a good deal of
inconvenience. If we ‘will keep’ a shambling, loose, untaught set in the
community, for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence. Some
rare cases I have seen, of persons, who, by a peculiar tact, can produce
order and system without severity; but I'm not one of them,--and so I
made up my mind, long ago, to let things go just as they do. I will not
have the poor devils thrashed and cut to pieces, and they know it,--and,
of course, they know the staff is in their own hands."

"But to have no time, no place, no order,--all going on in this
shiftless way!"

"My dear Vermont, you natives up by the North Pole set an extravagant
value on time! What on earth is the use of time to a fellow who has
twice as much of it as he knows what to do with? As to order and system,
where there is nothing to be done but to lounge on the sofa and read, an
hour sooner or later in breakfast or dinner isn't of much account. Now,
there's Dinah gets you a capital dinner,--soup, ragout, roast fowl,
dessert, ice-creams and all,--and she creates it all out of chaos and
old night down there, in that kitchen. I think it really sublime, the
way she manages. But, Heaven bless us! if we are to go down there, and
view all the smoking and squatting about, and hurryscurryation of the
preparatory process, we should never eat more! My good cousin, absolve
yourself from that! It's more than a Catholic penance, and does no more
good. You'll only lose your own temper, and utterly confound Dinah. Let
her go her own way."

"But, Augustine, you don't know how I found things."

"Don't I? Don't I know that the rolling-pin is under her bed, and the
nutmeg-grater in her pocket with her tobacco,--that there are sixty-five
different sugar-bowls, one in every hole in the house,--that she washes
dishes with a dinner-napkin one day, and with a fragment of an old
petticoat the next? But the upshot is, she gets up glorious dinners,
makes superb coffee; and you must judge her as warriors and statesmen
are judged, ‘by her success’."

"But the waste,--the expense!"

"O, well! Lock everything you can, and keep the key. Give out by
driblets, and never inquire for odds and ends,--it isn't best."

"That troubles me, Augustine. I can't help feeling as if these servants
were not ‘strictly honest’. Are you sure they can be relied on?"

Augustine laughed immoderately at the grave and anxious face with which
Miss Ophelia propounded the question.

"O, cousin, that's too good,--’honest!’--as if that's a thing to be
expected! Honest!--why, of course, they arn't. Why should they be? What
upon earth is to make them so?"

"Why don't you instruct?"

"Instruct! O, fiddlestick! What instructing do you think I should do?
I look like it! As to Marie, she has spirit enough, to be sure, to kill
off a whole plantation, if I'd let her manage; but she wouldn't get the
cheatery out of them."

"Are there no honest ones?"

"Well, now and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple,
truthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can't destroy
it. But, you see, from the mother's breast the colored child feels and
sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along
no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie
play-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable
habits. It isn't fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to
be punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependent,
semi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of
property, or feel that his master's goods are not his own, if he can get
them. For my part, I don't see how they ‘can’ be honest. Such a fellow
as Tom, here, is,--is a moral miracle!"

"And what becomes of their souls?" said Miss Ophelia.

"That isn't my affair, as I know of," said St. Clare; "I am only dealing
in facts of the present life. The fact is, that the whole race are
pretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our
benefit, in this world, however it may turn out in another!"

"This is perfectly horrible!" said Miss Ophelia; "you ought to be ashamed
of yourselves!"

"I don't know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for all that,"
said St. Clare, "as people in the broad road generally are. Look at
the high and the low, all the world over, and it's the same story,--the
lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper.
It is so in England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom stands
aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the thing in a little
different shape from what they do it."

"It isn't so in Vermont."

"Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better
of us, I grant. But there's the bell; so, Cousin, let us for a while lay
aside our sectional prejudices, and come out to dinner."

As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the afternoon,
some of the sable children called out, "La, sakes! thar's Prue a coming,
grunting along like she allers does."

A tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen, bearing on her head
a basket of rusks and hot rolls.

"Ho, Prue! you've come," said Dinah.

Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen,
grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted herself down, and
resting her elbows on her knees said,

"O Lord! I wish't I 's dead!"

"Why do you wish you were dead?" said Miss Ophelia.

"I'd be out o' my misery," said the woman, gruffly, without taking her
eyes from the floor.

"What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?" said a spruce
quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.

The woman looked at her with a sour surly glance.

"Maybe you'll come to it, one of these yer days. I'd be glad to see you,
I would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your misery."

"Come, Prue," said Dinah, "let's look at your rusks. Here's Missis will
pay for them."

Miss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen.

"Thar's some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the top shelf," said
Dinah. "You, Jake, climb up and get it down."

"Tickets,--what are they for?" said Miss Ophelia.

"We buy tickets of her Mas'r, and she gives us bread for 'em."

"And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I 's
got the change; and if I han't, they half kills me."

"And serves you right," said Jane, the pert chambermaid, "if you will
take their money to get drunk on. That's what she does, Missis."

"And that's what I ‘will’ do,--I can't live no other ways,--drink and
forget my misery."

"You are very wicked and very foolish," said Miss Ophelia, "to steal
your master's money to make yourself a brute with."

"It's mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it,--yes, I will. O Lord!
I wish I 's dead, I do,--I wish I 's dead, and out of my misery!" and
slowly and stiffly the old creature rose, and got her basket on her head
again; but before she went out, she looked at the quadroon girt, who
still stood playing with her ear-drops.

"Ye think ye're mighty fine with them ar, a frolickin' and a tossin'
your head, and a lookin' down on everybody. Well, never mind,--you may
live to be a poor, old, cut-up crittur, like me. Hope to the Lord ye
will, I do; then see if ye won't drink,--drink,--drink,--yerself into
torment; and sarve ye right, too--ugh!" and, with a malignant howl, the
woman left the room.

"Disgusting old beast!" said Adolph, who was getting his master's
shaving-water. "If I was her master, I'd cut her up worse than she is."

"Ye couldn't do that ar, no ways," said Dinah. "Her back's a far sight
now,--she can't never get a dress together over it."

"I think such low creatures ought not to be allowed to go round to
genteel families," said Miss Jane. "What do you think, Mr. St. Clare?"
she said, coquettishly tossing her head at Adolph.

It must be observed that, among other appropriations from his master's
stock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his name and address; and
that the style under which he moved, among the colored circles of New
Orleans, was that of ‘Mr. St. Clare’.

"I'm certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir," said Adolph.

Benoir was the name of Marie St. Clare's family, and Jane was one of her
servants.

"Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those drops are for the
ball, tomorrow night? They are certainly bewitching!"

"I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of you men will come
to!" said Jane, tossing her pretty head 'til the ear-drops twinkled
again. "I shan't dance with you for a whole evening, if you go to asking
me any more questions."

"O, you couldn't be so cruel, now! I was just dying to know whether you
would appear in your pink tarletane," said Adolph.

"What is it?" said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon who came
skipping down stairs at this moment.

"Why, Mr. St. Clare's so impudent!"

"On my honor," said Adolph, "I'll leave it to Miss Rosa now."

"I know he's always a saucy creature," said Rosa, poising herself on
one of her little feet, and looking maliciously at Adolph. "He's always
getting me so angry with him."

"O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart, between you,"
said Adolph. "I shall be found dead in my bed, some morning, and you'll
have it to answer for."

"Do hear the horrid creature talk!" said both ladies, laughing
immoderately.

"Come,--clar out, you! I can't have you cluttering up the kitchen," said
Dinah; "in my way, foolin' round here."

"Aunt Dinah's glum, because she can't go to the ball," said Rosa.

"Don't want none o' your light-colored balls," said Dinah; "cuttin'
round, makin' b'lieve you's white folks. Arter all, you's niggers, much
as I am."

"Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it lie straight,"
said Jane.

"And it will be wool, after all," said Rosa, maliciously shaking down
her long, silky curls.

"Well, in the Lord's sight, an't wool as good as bar, any time?" said
Dinah. "I'd like to have Missis say which is worth the most,--a couple
such as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,--I won't have
ye round!"

Here the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner. St. Clare's
voice was heard at the head of the stairs, asking Adolph if he meant to
stay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of
the dining-room, said,

"Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and
attend to your muslins."

Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation with
the old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw her go
on, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she set
her basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded shawl
which covered her shoulders.

"I'll carry your basket a piece," said Tom, compassionately.

"Why should ye?" said the woman. "I don't want no help."

"You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin'," said Tom.

"I an't sick," said the woman, shortly.

"I wish," said Tom, looking at her earnestly,--"I wish I could persuade
you to leave off drinking. Don't you know it will be the ruin of ye,
body and soul?"

"I knows I'm gwine to torment," said the woman, sullenly. "Ye don't
need to tell me that ar. I 's ugly, I 's wicked,--I 's gwine straight to
torment. O, Lord! I wish I 's thar!"

Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen,
impassioned earnestness.

"O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han't ye never heard of Jesus
Christ?"

"Jesus Christ,--who's he?"

"Why, he's ‘the Lord’," said Tom.

"I think I've hearn tell o' the Lord, and the judgment and torment. I've
heard o' that."

"But didn't anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor
sinners, and died for us?"

"Don't know nothin' 'bout that," said the woman; "nobody han't never
loved me, since my old man died."

"Where was you raised?" said Tom.

"Up in Kentuck. A man kept me to breed chil'en for market, and sold 'em
as fast as they got big enough; last of all, he sold me to a speculator,
and my Mas'r got me o' him."

"What set you into this bad way of drinkin'?"

"To get shet o' my misery. I had one child after I come here; and I
thought then I'd have one to raise, cause Mas'r wasn't a speculator. It
was de peartest little thing! and Missis she seemed to think a heap on
't, at first; it never cried,--it was likely and fat. But Missis tuck
sick, and I tended her; and I tuck the fever, and my milk all left me,
and the child it pined to skin and bone, and Missis wouldn't buy milk
for it. She wouldn't hear to me, when I telled her I hadn't milk. She
said she knowed I could feed it on what other folks eat; and the child
kinder pined, and cried, and cried, and cried, day and night, and got
all gone to skin and bones, and Missis got sot agin it and she said 't
wan't nothin' but crossness. She wished it was dead, she said; and she
wouldn't let me have it o' nights, cause, she said, it kept me awake,
and made me good for nothing. She made me sleep in her room; and I had
to put it away off in a little kind o' garret, and thar it cried itself
to death, one night. It did; and I tuck to drinkin', to keep its crying
out of my ears! I did,--and I will drink! I will, if I do go to torment
for it! Mas'r says I shall go to torment, and I tell him I've got thar
now!"

"O, ye poor crittur!" said Tom, "han't nobody never telled ye how the
Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han't they telled ye that he'll
help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?"

"I looks like gwine to heaven," said the woman; "an't thar where white
folks is gwine? S'pose they'd have me thar? I'd rather go to torment,
and get away from Mas'r and Missis. I had ‘so’," she said, as with her
usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.

Tom turned, and walked sorrowfully back to the house. In the court he
met little Eva,--a crown of tuberoses on her head, and her eyes radiant
with delight.

"O, Tom! here you are. I'm glad I've found you. Papa says you may
get out the ponies, and take me in my little new carriage," she said,
catching his hand. "But what's the matter Tom?--you look sober."

"I feel bad, Miss Eva," said Tom, sorrowfully. "But I'll get the horses
for you."

"But do tell me, Tom, what is the matter. I saw you talking to cross old
Prue."

Tom, in simple, earnest phrase, told Eva the woman's history. She did
not exclaim or wonder, or weep, as other children do. Her cheeks grew
pale, and a deep, earnest shadow passed over her eyes. She laid both
hands on her bosom, and sighed heavily.




VOLUME II



CHAPTER XIX

Miss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions Continued


"Tom, you needn't get me the horses. I don't want to go," she said.

"Why not, Miss Eva?"

"These things sink into my heart, Tom," said Eva,--"they sink into my
heart," she repeated, earnestly. "I don't want to go;" and she turned
from Tom, and went into the house.

A few days after, another woman came, in old Prue's place, to bring the
rusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.

"Lor!" said Dinah, "what's got Prue?"

"Prue isn't coming any more," said the woman, mysteriously.

"Why not?" said Dinah, "she an't dead, is she?"

"We doesn't exactly know. She's down cellar," said the woman, glancing
at Miss Ophelia.

After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the
door.

"What ‘has’ got Prue, any how?" she said.

The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in
low, mysterious tone.

"Well, you mustn't tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,--and they
had her down cellar,--and thar they left her all day,--and I hearn 'em
saying that the ‘flies had got to her’,--and ‘she's dead’!"

Dinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the
spirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with
horror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.

"Lor bless us! Miss Eva's gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let
her har such talk? Her pa'll be rail mad."

"I shan't faint, Dinah," said the child, firmly; "and why shouldn't I
hear it? It an't so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer
it."

"‘Lor sakes’! it isn't for sweet, delicate young ladies, like
you,--these yer stories isn't; it's enough to kill 'em!"

Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.

Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman's story. Dinah gave a very
garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he had
drawn from her that morning.

"An abominable business,--perfectly horrible!" she exclaimed, as she
entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.

"Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?" said he.

"What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!" said Miss
Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and
enlarging on its most shocking particulars.

"I thought it would come to that, some time," said St. Clare, going on
with his paper.

"Thought so!--an't you going to ‘do’ anything about it?" said Miss
Ophelia. "Haven't you got any ‘selectmen’, or anybody, to interfere and
look after such matters?"

"It's commonly supposed that the ‘property’ interest is a sufficient
guard in these cases. If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I
don't know what's to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief and
a drunkard; and so there won't be much hope to get up sympathy for her."

"It is perfectly outrageous,--it is horrid, Augustine! It will certainly
bring down vengeance upon you."

"My dear cousin, I didn't do it, and I can't help it; I would, if I
could. If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I
to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots. There
would be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to anything
practically, for such a case. The best we can do is to shut our eyes and
ears, and let it alone. It's the only resource left us."

"How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things
alone?"

"My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,--debased,
uneducated, indolent, provoking,--put, without any sort of terms or
conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in
our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control,
who haven't even an enlightened regard to their own interest,--for
that's the case with the largest half of mankind. Of course, in a
community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings
do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can't buy
every poor wretch I see. I can't turn knight-errant, and undertake to
redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most
I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it."

St. Clare's fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,

"Come, cousin, don't stand there looking like one of the Fates; you've
only seen a peep through the curtain,--a specimen of what is going
on, the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying
and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to
anything. 'T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah's
kitchen;" and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with
his paper.

Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there
grim with indignation. She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire
burned; at last she broke out--"I tell you, Augustine, I can't get over
things so, if you can. It's a perfect abomination for you to defend such
a system,--that's ‘my’ mind!"

"What now?" said St. Clare, looking up. "At it again, hey?"

"I say it's perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!" said
Miss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.

"‘I’ defend it, my dear lady? Who ever said I did defend it?" said St.
Clare.

"Of course, you defend it,--you all do,--all you Southerners. What do
you have slaves for, if you don't?"

"Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever
does what they don't think is right? Don't you, or didn't you ever, do
anything that you did not think quite right?"

"If I do, I repent of it, I hope," said Miss Ophelia, rattling her
needles with energy.

"So do I," said St. Clare, peeling his orange; "I'm repenting of it all
the time."

"What do you keep on doing it for?"

"Didn't you ever keep on doing wrong, after you'd repented, my good
cousin?"

"Well, only when I've been very much tempted," said Miss Ophelia.

"Well, I'm very much tempted," said St. Clare; "that's just my
difficulty."

"But I always resolve I won't and I try to break off."

"Well, I have been resolving I won't, off and on, these ten years," said
St. Clare; "but I haven't, some how, got clear. Have you got clear of
all your sins, cousin?"

"Cousin Augustine," said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down
her knitting-work, "I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my
short-comings. I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels
them more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some
difference between me and you. It seems to me I would cut off my right
hand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was
wrong. But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I
don't wonder you reprove me."

"O, now, cousin," said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying
his head back in her lap, "don't take on so awfully serious! You know
what a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was. I love to poke you
up,--that's all,--just to see you get earnest. I do think you are
desperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it."

"But this is a serious subject, my boy, Auguste," said Miss Ophelia,
laying her hand on his forehead.

"Dismally so," said he; "and I--well, I never want to talk seriously in
hot weather. What with mosquitos and all, a fellow can't get himself
up to any very sublime moral flights; and I believe," said St. Clare,
suddenly rousing himself up, "there's a theory, now! I understand now
why northern nations are always more virtuous than southern ones,--I see
into that whole subject."

"O, Augustine, you are a sad rattle-brain!"

"Am I? Well, so I am, I suppose; but for once I will be serious, now;
but you must hand me that basket of oranges;--you see, you'll have to
'stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples,' if I'm going to make
this effort. Now," said Augustine, drawing the basket up, "I'll begin:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a fellow
to hold two or three dozen of his fellow-worms in captivity, a decent
regard to the opinions of society requires--"

"I don't see that you are growing more serious," said Miss Ophelia.

"Wait,--I'm coming on,--you'll hear. The short of the matter is,
cousin," said he, his handsome face suddenly settling into an earnest
and serious expression, "on this abstract question of slavery there
can, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by
it,--clergymen, who have planters to please,--politicians, who want
to rule by it,--may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that
shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and
the Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service; but, after all,
neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more. It comes
from the devil, that's the short of it;--and, to my mind, it's a pretty
respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line."

Miss Ophelia stopped her knitting, and looked surprised, and St. Clare,
apparently enjoying her astonishment, went on.

"You seem to wonder; but if you will get me fairly at it, I'll make a
clean breast of it. This cursed business, accursed of God and man, what
is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus
of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant
and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,--because I know how, and
‘can’ do it,--therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give
him only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, too
dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I
don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy
shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it.
Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod.
Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal
life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find
convenient. This I take to be about what slavery ‘is’. I defy anybody
on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make
anything else of it. Talk of the ‘abuses’ of slavery! Humbug! The ‘thing
itself’ is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why the land
don't sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is ‘used’ in
a way infinitely better than it is. For pity's sake, for shame's sake,
because we are men born of women, and not savage beasts, many of us do
not, and dare not,--we would ‘scorn’ to use the full power which our
savage laws put into our hands. And he who goes the furthest, and does
the worst, only uses within limits the power that the law gives him."

St. Clare had started up, and, as his manner was when excited, was
walking, with hurried steps, up and down the floor. His fine face,
classic as that of a Greek statue, seemed actually to burn with the
fervor of his feelings. His large blue eyes flashed, and he gestured
with an unconscious eagerness. Miss Ophelia had never seen him in this
mood before, and she sat perfectly silent.

"I declare to you," said he, suddenly stopping before his cousin "(It's
no sort of use to talk or to feel on this subject), but I declare to
you, there have been times when I have thought, if the whole country
would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I
would willingly sink with it. When I have been travelling up and down
on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every
brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our
laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as
he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,--when I have seen
such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and
women,--I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!"

"Augustine! Augustine!" said Miss Ophelia, "I'm sure you've said enough.
I never, in my life, heard anything like this, even at the North."

"At the North!" said St. Clare, with a sudden change of expression, and
resuming something of his habitual careless tone. "Pooh! your northern
folks are cold-blooded; you are cool in everything! You can't begin to
curse up hill and down as we can, when we get fairly at it."

"Well, but the question is," said Miss Ophelia.

"O, yes, to be sure, the ‘question is’,--and a deuce of a question it
is! How came ‘you’ in this state of sin and misery? Well, I shall
answer in the good old words you used to teach me, Sundays. I came so by
ordinary generation. My servants were my father's, and, what is more,
my mother's; and now they are mine, they and their increase, which bids
fair to be a pretty considerable item. My father, you know, came first
from New England; and he was just such another man as your father,--a
regular old Roman,--upright, energetic, noble-minded, with an iron will.
Your father settled down in New England, to rule over rocks and stones,
and to force an existence out of Nature; and mine settled in Louisiana,
to rule over men and women, and force existence out of them. My mother,"
said St. Clare, getting up and walking to a picture at the end of the
room, and gazing upward with a face fervent with veneration, "‘she was
divine!’ Don't look at me so!--you know what I mean! She probably was of
mortal birth; but, as far as ever I could observe, there was no trace
of any human weakness or error about her; and everybody that lives to
remember her, whether bond or free, servant, acquaintance, relation,
all say the same. Why, cousin, that mother has been all that has stood
between me and utter unbelief for years. She was a direct embodiment and
personification of the New Testament,--a living fact, to be accounted
for, and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth. O,
mother! mother!" said St. Clare, clasping his hands, in a sort of
transport; and then suddenly checking himself, he came back, and seating
himself on an ottoman, he went on:

"My brother and I were twins; and they say, you know, that twins ought
to resemble each other; but we were in all points a contrast. He had
black, fiery eyes, coal-black hair, a strong, fine Roman profile, and
a rich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden hair, a Greek outline,
and fair complexion. He was active and observing, I dreamy and inactive.
He was generous to his friends and equals, but proud, dominant,
overbearing, to inferiors, and utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself
up against him. Truthful we both were; he from pride and courage, I from
a sort of abstract ideality. We loved each other about as boys generally
do,--off and on, and in general;--he was my father's pet, and I my
mother's.

"There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on
all possible subjects, of which he and my father had no kind of
understanding, and with which they could have no possible sympathy. But
mother did; and so, when I had quarreled with Alfred, and father looked
sternly on me, I used to go off to mother's room, and sit by her. I
remember just how she used to look, with her pale cheeks, her deep,
soft, serious eyes, her white dress,--she always wore white; and I used
to think of her whenever I read in Revelations about the saints that
were arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. She had a great deal of
genius of one sort and another, particularly in music; and she used
to sit at her organ, playing fine old majestic music of the Catholic
church, and singing with a voice more like an angel than a mortal
woman; and I would lay my head down on her lap, and cry, and dream, and
feel,--oh, immeasurably!--things that I had no language to say!

"In those days, this matter of slavery had never been canvassed as it
has now; nobody dreamed of any harm in it.

"My father was a born aristocrat. I think, in some preexistent state, he
must have been in the higher circles of spirits, and brought all his old
court pride along with him; for it was ingrain, bred in the bone, though
he was originally of poor and not in any way of noble family. My brother
was begotten in his image.

"Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies,
beyond a certain line in society. In England the line is in one place,
in Burmah in another, and in America in another; but the aristocrat
of all these countries never goes over it. What would be hardship and
distress and injustice in his own class, is a cool matter of course in
another one. My father's dividing line was that of color. ‘Among his
equals’, never was a man more just and generous; but he considered the
negro, through all possible gradations of color, as an intermediate
link between man and animals, and graded all his ideas of justice or
generosity on this hypothesis. I suppose, to be sure, if anybody had
asked him, plump and fair, whether they had human immortal souls, he
might have hemmed and hawed, and said yes. But my father was not a man
much troubled with spiritualism; religious sentiment he had none, beyond
a veneration for God, as decidedly the head of the upper classes.

"Well, my father worked some five hundred negroes; he was an inflexible,
driving, punctilious business man; everything was to move by system,--to
be sustained with unfailing accuracy and precision. Now, if you take
into account that all this was to be worked out by a set of lazy,
twaddling, shiftless laborers, who had grown up, all their lives, in
the absence of every possible motive to learn how to do anything
but 'shirk,' as you Vermonters say, and you'll see that there might
naturally be, on his plantation, a great many things that looked
horrible and distressing to a sensitive child, like me.

"Besides all, he had an overseer,--great, tall, slab-sided, two-fisted
renegade son of Vermont--(begging your pardon),--who had gone through a
regular apprenticeship in hardness and brutality and taken his degree to
be admitted to practice. My mother never could endure him, nor I; but
he obtained an entire ascendency over my father; and this man was the
absolute despot of the estate.

"I was a little fellow then, but I had the same love that I have now for
all kinds of human things,--a kind of passion for the study of humanity,
come in what shape it would. I was found in the cabins and among the
field-hands a great deal, and, of course, was a great favorite; and all
sorts of complaints and grievances were breathed in my ear; and I told
them to mother, and we, between us, formed a sort of committee for
a redress of grievances. We hindered and repressed a great deal of
cruelty, and congratulated ourselves on doing a vast deal of good, till,
as often happens, my zeal overacted. Stubbs complained to my father that
he couldn't manage the hands, and must resign his position. Father was
a fond, indulgent husband, but a man that never flinched from anything
that he thought necessary; and so he put down his foot, like a rock,
between us and the field-hands. He told my mother, in language
perfectly respectful and deferential, but quite explicit, that over
the house-servants she should be entire mistress, but that with the
field-hands he could allow no interference. He revered and respected her
above all living beings; but he would have said it all the same to the
virgin Mary herself, if she had come in the way of his system.

"I used sometimes to hear my mother reasoning cases with
him,--endeavoring to excite his sympathies. He would listen to the most
pathetic appeals with the most discouraging politeness and equanimity.
'It all resolves itself into this,' he would say; 'must I part with
Stubbs, or keep him? Stubbs is the soul of punctuality, honesty, and
efficiency,--a thorough business hand, and as humane as the general
run. We can't have perfection; and if I keep him, I must sustain his
administration as a ‘whole’, even if there are, now and then, things
that are exceptionable. All government includes some necessary hardness.
General rules will bear hard on particular cases.' This last maxim my
father seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of cruelty.
After he had said ‘that’, he commonly drew up his feet on the sofa, like
a man that has disposed of a business, and betook himself to a nap, or
the newspaper, as the case might be.

"The fact is my father showed the exact sort of talent for a statesman.
He could have divided Poland as easily as an orange, or trod on Ireland
as quietly and systematically as any man living. At last my mother gave
up, in despair. It never will be known, till the last account, what
noble and sensitive natures like hers have felt, cast, utterly helpless,
into what seems to them an abyss of injustice and cruelty, and which
seems so to nobody about them. It has been an age of long sorrow of such
natures, in such a hell-begotten sort of world as ours. What remained
for her, but to train her children in her own views and sentiments?
Well, after all you say about training, children will grow up
substantially what they ‘are’ by nature, and only that. From the cradle,
Alfred was an aristocrat; and as he grew up, instinctively, all his
sympathies and all his reasonings were in that line, and all mother's
exhortations went to the winds. As to me, they sunk deep into me. She
never contradicted, in form, anything my father said, or seemed directly
to differ from him; but she impressed, burnt into my very soul, with all
the force of her deep, earnest nature, an idea of the dignity and worth
of the meanest human soul. I have looked in her face with solemn awe,
when she would point up to the stars in the evening, and say to me, 'See
there, Auguste! the poorest, meanest soul on our place will be living,
when all these stars are gone forever,--will live as long as God lives!'

"She had some fine old paintings; one, in particular, of Jesus healing
a blind man. They were very fine, and used to impress me strongly. 'See
there, Auguste,' she would say; 'the blind man was a beggar, poor and
loathsome; therefore, he would not heal him ‘afar off!’ He called him to
him, and put ‘his hands on him!’ Remember this, my boy.' If I had lived
to grow up under her care, she might have stimulated me to I know not
what of enthusiasm. I might have been a saint, reformer, martyr,--but,
alas! alas! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw
her again!"

St. Clare rested his head on his hands, and did not speak for some
minutes. After a while, he looked up, and went on:

"What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere
matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical
position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing
but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town
where all are, in fact, free and equal; becomes a regular church member
and deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and thinks
us all little better than heathens. Yet he is, for all the world, in
constitution and habit, a duplicate of my father. I can see it leaking
out in fifty different ways,--just the same strong, overbearing,
dominant spirit. You know very well how impossible it is to persuade
some of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair does not feel
above them. The fact is, though he has fallen on democratic times, and
embraced a democratic theory, he is to the heart an aristocrat, as much
as my father, who ruled over five or six hundred slaves."

Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was
laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.

"Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they ‘were’
alike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted against
the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and
so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and
the other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned plantations in
Louisiana, they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the
same mould."

"What an undutiful boy you are!" said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't mean them any disrespect," said St. Clare. "You know reverence
is not my forte. But, to go back to my history:

"When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be
divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God's earth a
nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns
his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question,
without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the
plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities
had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a
wonderfully successful one.

"But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that
matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know
personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven,
housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military
precision,--the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments
would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring
problem,--the necessity of drivers and overseers,--the ever-necessary
whip, first, last, and only argument,--the whole thing was insufferably
disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother's
estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!

"It's all nonsense to talk to me about slaves ‘enjoying’ all this! To
this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of
your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize
for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to
work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a
master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition,
on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs
of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter
to keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human beings can,
as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other,
I wish he might try it. I'd buy the dog, and work him, with a clear
conscience!"

"I always have supposed," said Miss Ophelia, "that you, all of you,
approved of these things, and thought them ‘right’--according to
Scripture."

"Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as
determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of
defence;--no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable
ground, ‘the right of the strongest’; and he says, and I think quite
sensibly, that the American planter is 'only doing, in another form,
what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower
classes;' that is, I take it, ‘appropriating’ them, body and bone, soul
and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both,--and I think,
at least, ‘consistently’. He says that there can be no high civilization
without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must,
he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an
animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for
a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing
soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an
aristocrat;--so I don't believe, because I was born a democrat."

"How in the world can the two things be compared?" said Miss Ophelia.
"The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family,
whipped."

"He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.
The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,--the capitalist
can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which
is the worst,--to have one's children sold, or see them starve to death
at home."

"But it's no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn't worse
than some other bad thing."

"I didn't give it for one,--nay, I'll say, besides, that ours is the
more bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a
man up, like a horse,--looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and
trying his paces and then paying down for him,--having speculators,
breeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls,--sets the
thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form,
though the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is,
appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of
another without any regard to their own."

"I never thought of the matter in this light," said Miss Ophelia.

"Well, I've travelled in England some, and I've looked over a good many
documents as to the state of their lower classes; and I really think
there is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off
than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not
infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard
master; for he isn't. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination;
he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot
a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in
having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.

"When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their
instruction; and, to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have
them catechized Sunday, though, I believe, in his heart, that he thought
it would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs and
horses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every
bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every
week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours
on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing
population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could
perhaps testify to the same result, ‘there and here’. Yet some striking
exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is naturally
more impressible to religious sentiment than the white."

"Well," said Miss Ophelia, "how came you to give up your plantation
life?"

"Well, we jogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that
I was no planter. He thought it absurd, after he had reformed, and
altered, and improved everywhere, to suit my notions, that I still
remained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that
I hated--the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this
ignorance, brutality and vice,--just to make money for me!

"Besides, I was always interfering in the details. Being myself one of
the laziest of mortals, I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for the
lazy; and when poor, shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their
cotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks with
dirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I should do
if I were they, I couldn't and wouldn't have them flogged for it. Well,
of course, there was an end of plantation discipline; and Alf and I
came to about the same point that I and my respected father did, years
before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would
never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock and
the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him
manage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here."

"But why didn't you free your slaves?"

"Well, I wasn't up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I
could not;--have them to help spend money, you know, didn't look quite
so ugly to me. Some of them were old house-servants, to whom I was much
attached; and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well
satisfied to be as they were." He paused, and walked reflectively up and
down the room.

"There was," said St. Clare, "a time in my life when I had plans and
hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I
had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,--to free
my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such
fever-fits, I suppose, some time,--but then--"

"Why didn't you?" said Miss Ophelia;--"you ought not to put your hand to
the plough, and look back."

"O, well, things didn't go with me as I expected, and I got the despair
of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to
wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and
regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been
floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time
we meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,--for he really does
something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a
contemptible ‘non sequitur’."

"My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your
probation?"

"Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to come
back to this point,--we were on this liberation business. I don't think
my feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their
hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and, bad as
it is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master. It
takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident,
degraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as to themselves.
The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do,
because they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do. They
are in our homes; they are the associates of our children, and they form
their minds faster than we can; for they are a race that children always
will cling to and assimilate with. If Eva, now, was not more angel than
ordinary, she would be ruined. We might as well allow the small-pox to
run among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them
be uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be affected
by that. Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient
general educational system, and they do it wisely, too; for, just begin
and thoroughly educate one generation, and the whole thing would be
blown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it."

"And what do you think will be the end of this?" said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't know. One thing is certain,--that there is a mustering among
the masses, the world over; and there is a ‘dies irae’ coming on, sooner
or later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this
country. My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming,
when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she
taught me, when I was a boy, to pray, 'thy kingdom come.' Sometimes I
think all this sighing, and groaning, and stirring among the dry bones
foretells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the day
of His appearing?"

"Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom," said
Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her
cousin.

"Thank you for your good opinion, but it's up and down with me,--up to
heaven's gate in theory, down in earth's dust in practice. But there's
the teabell,--do let's go,--and don't say, now, I haven't had one
downright serious talk, for once in my life."

At table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. "I suppose you'll
think, cousin," she said, "that we are all barbarians."

"I think that's a barbarous thing," said Miss Ophelia, "but I don't
think you are all barbarians."

"Well, now," said Marie, "I know it's impossible to get along with some
of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don't feel
a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they'd only behave themselves,
it would not happen."

"But, mamma," said Eva, "the poor creature was unhappy; that's what made
her drink."

"O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I'm unhappy, very often. I
presume," she said, pensively, "that I've had greater trials than ever
she had. It's just because they are so bad. There's some of them that
you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a
man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie
round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That
man was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him any
good; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn't but just go,
and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father's
hands were always treated kindly."

"I broke a fellow in, once," said St. Clare, "that all the overseers and
masters had tried their hands on in vain."

"You!" said Marie; "well, I'd be glad to know when ‘you’ ever did
anything of the sort."

"Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow,--a native-born African; and
he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon
degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody
could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to
overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could
manage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly
off into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf's plantation, for it was
after we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated;
but I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I
could break the man; and finally it was agreed that, if I caught him, I
should have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some
six or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can
get up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only
customary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only put
in as a sort of mediator, in case he was caught.

"Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally
we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the
rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket
of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right
gallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and actually killed three
of them with only his naked fists, when a shot from a gun brought him
down, and he fell, wounded and bleeding, almost at my feet. The poor
fellow looked up at me with manhood and despair both in his eye. I kept
back the dogs and the party, as they came pressing up, and claimed him
as my prisoner. It was all I could do to keep them from shooting him, in
the flush of success; but I persisted in my bargain, and Alfred sold him
to me. Well, I took him in hand, and in one fortnight I had him tamed
down as submissive and tractable as heart could desire."

"What in the world did you do to him?" said Marie.

"Well, it was quite a simple process. I took him to my own room, had a
good bed made for him, dressed his wounds, and tended him myself, until
he got fairly on his feet again. And, in process of time, I had free
papers made out for him, and told him he might go where he liked."

"And did he go?" said Miss Ophelia.

"No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two, and absolutely refused
to leave me. I never had a braver, better fellow,--trusty and true as
steel. He embraced Christianity afterwards, and became as gentle as a
child. He used to oversee my place on the lake, and did it capitally,
too. I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life
for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic,
everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually
brought me back into life again. But, poor fellow! he was taken, right
after, and there was no saving him. I never felt anybody's loss more."

Eva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father, as he told the
story,--her small lips apart, her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing
interest.

As he finished, she suddenly threw her arms around his neck, burst into
tears, and sobbed convulsively.

"Eva, dear child! what is the matter?" said St. Clare, as the child's
small frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings. "This
child," he added, "ought not to hear any of this kind of thing,--she's
nervous."

"No, papa, I'm not nervous," said Eva, controlling herself, suddenly,
with a strength of resolution singular in such a child. "I'm not
nervous, but these things ‘sink into my heart’."

"What do you mean, Eva?"

"I can't tell you, papa, I think a great many thoughts. Perhaps some day
I shall tell you."

"Well, think away, dear,--only don't cry and worry your papa," said St.
Clare, "Look here,--see what a beautiful peach I have got for you."

Eva took it and smiled, though there was still a nervous twiching about
the corners of her mouth.

"Come, look at the gold-fish," said St. Clare, taking her hand and
stepping on to the verandah. A few moments, and merry laughs were heard
through the silken curtains, as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each
other with roses, and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.


There is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the
adventures of the higher born; but, if our readers will accompany us up
to a little loft over the stable, they may, perhaps, learn a little
of his affairs. It was a decent room, containing a bed, a chair, and a
small, rough stand, where lay Tom's Bible and hymn-book; and where he
sits, at present, with his slate before him, intent on something that
seems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.

The fact was, that Tom's home-yearnings had become so strong that he had
begged a sheet of writing-paper of Eva, and, mustering up all his small
stock of literary attainment acquired by Mas'r George's instructions, he
conceived the bold idea of writing a letter; and he was busy now, on his
slate, getting out his first draft. Tom was in a good deal of trouble,
for the forms of some of the letters he had forgotten entirely; and of
what he did remember, he did not know exactly which to use. And while he
was working, and breathing very hard, in his earnestness, Eva alighted,
like a bird, on the round of his chair behind him, and peeped over his
shoulder.

"O, Uncle Tom! what funny things you ‘are’ making, there!"

"I'm trying to write to my poor old woman, Miss Eva, and my little
chil'en," said Tom, drawing the back of his hand over his eyes; "but,
some how, I'm feard I shan't make it out."

"I wish I could help you, Tom! I've learnt to write some. Last year I
could make all the letters, but I'm afraid I've forgotten."

So Eva put her golden head close to his, and the two commenced a grave
and anxious discussion, each one equally earnest, and about equally
ignorant; and, with a deal of consulting and advising over every word,
the composition began, as they both felt very sanguine, to look quite
like writing.

"Yes, Uncle Tom, it really begins to look beautiful," said Eva, gazing
delightedly on it. "How pleased your wife'll be, and the poor little
children! O, it's a shame you ever had to go away from them! I mean to
ask papa to let you go back, some time."

"Missis said that she would send down money for me, as soon as they
could get it together," said Tom. "I'm 'spectin, she will. Young Mas'r
George, he said he'd come for me; and he gave me this yer dollar as a
sign;" and Tom drew from under his clothes the precious dollar.

"O, he'll certainly come, then!" said Eva. "I'm so glad!"

"And I wanted to send a letter, you know, to let 'em know whar I was,
and tell poor Chloe that I was well off,--cause she felt so drefful,
poor soul!"

"I say Tom!" said St. Clare's voice, coming in the door at this moment.

Tom and Eva both started.

"What's here?" said St. Clare, coming up and looking at the slate.

"O, it's Tom's letter. I'm helping him to write it," said Eva; "isn't it
nice?"

"I wouldn't discourage either of you," said St. Clare, "but I rather
think, Tom, you'd better get me to write your letter for you. I'll do
it, when I come home from my ride."

"It's very important he should write," said Eva, "because his mistress
is going to send down money to redeem him, you know, papa; he told me
they told him so."

St. Clare thought, in his heart, that this was probably only one
of those things which good-natured owners say to their servants,
to alleviate their horror of being sold, without any intention of
fulfilling the expectation thus excited. But he did not make any audible
comment upon it,--only ordered Tom to get the horses out for a ride.

Tom's letter was written in due form for him that evening, and safely
lodged in the post-office.

Miss Ophelia still persevered in her labors in the housekeeping line. It
was universally agreed, among all the household, from Dinah down to the
youngest urchin, that Miss Ophelia was decidedly "curis,"--a term by
which a southern servant implies that his or her betters don't exactly
suit them.

The higher circle in the family--to wit, Adolph, Jane and Rosa--agreed
that she was no lady; ladies never keep working about as she did,--that
she had no ‘air’ at all; and they were surprised that she should be any
relation of the St. Clares. Even Marie declared that it was absolutely
fatiguing to see Cousin Ophelia always so busy. And, in fact, Miss
Ophelia's industry was so incessant as to lay some foundation for the
complaint. She sewed and stitched away, from daylight till dark, with
the energy of one who is pressed on by some immediate urgency; and then,
when the light faded, and the work was folded away, with one turn out
came the ever-ready knitting-work, and there she was again, going on as
briskly as ever. It really was a labor to see her.

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