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Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Uncle Tom's Cabin

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