VOLUME II

CHAPTER XIX

Miss Ophelia's Experiences and Opinions Continued

"Tom,

you needn't get me the horses.

I don't want to go,"

she said.

"Why not,

Miss Eva?"

"These things sink into my heart,

Tom,"

said Eva,

--"they sink into my heart,"

she repeated,

earnestly.

"I don't want to go;"

and she turned from Tom,

and went into the house.

A few days after,

another woman came,

in old Prue's place,

to bring the rusks;

Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.

"Lor!"

said Dinah,

"what's got Prue?"

"Prue isn't coming any more,"

said the woman,

mysteriously.

"Why not?"

said Dinah,

"she an't dead,

is she?"

"We doesn't exactly know.

She's down cellar,"

said the woman,

glancing at Miss Ophelia.

After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks,

Dinah followed the woman to the door.

"What -has- got Prue,

any how?"

she said.

The woman seemed desirous,

yet reluctant,

to speak,

and answered,

in low,

mysterious tone.

"Well,

you mustn't tell nobody,

Prue,

she got drunk agin,

--and they had her down cellar,

--and thar they left her all day,

--and I hearn

'em saying that the -flies had got to her-,

--and -she's dead-!"

Dinah held up her hands,

and,

turning,

saw close by her side the spirit-like form of Evangeline,

her large,

mystic eyes dilated with horror,

and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.

"Lor bless us!

Miss Eva's gwine to faint away!

What go us all,

to let her har such talk?

Her pa'll be rail mad."

"I shan't faint,

Dinah,"

said the child,

firmly;

"and why shouldn't I hear it?

It an't so much for me to hear it,

as for poor Prue to suffer it."

"-Lor sakes-!

it isn't for sweet,

delicate young ladies,

like you,

--these yer stories isn't;

it's enough to kill

'em!"

Eva sighed again,

and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.

Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman's story.

Dinah gave a very garrulous version of it,

to which Tom added the particulars which he had drawn from her that morning.

"An abominable business,

--perfectly horrible!"

she exclaimed,

as she entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.

"Pray,

what iniquity has turned up now?"

said he.

"What now?

why,

those folks have whipped Prue to death!"

said Miss Ophelia,

going on,

with great strength of detail,

into the story,

and enlarging on its most shocking particulars.

"I thought it would come to that,

some time,"

said St. Clare,

going on with his paper.

"Thought so!

--an't you going to -do- anything about it?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Haven't you got any -selectmen-,

or anybody,

to interfere and look after such matters?"

"It's commonly supposed that the -property- interest is a sufficient guard in these cases.

If people choose to ruin their own possessions,

I don't know what's to be done.

It seems the poor creature was a thief and a drunkard;

and so there won't be much hope to get up sympathy for her."

"It is perfectly outrageous,

--it is horrid,

Augustine!

It will certainly bring down vengeance upon you."

"My dear cousin,

I didn't do it,

and I can't help it;

I would,

if I could.

If low-minded,

brutal people will act like themselves,

what am I to do?

they have absolute control;

they are irresponsible despots.

There would be no use in interfering;

there is no law that amounts to anything practically,

for such a case.

The best we can do is to shut our eyes and ears,

and let it alone.

It's the only resource left us."

"How can you shut your eyes and ears?

How can you let such things alone?"

"My dear child,

what do you expect?

Here is a whole class,

--debased,

uneducated,

indolent,

provoking,

--put,

without any sort of terms or conditions,

entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are;

people who have neither consideration nor self-control,

who haven't even an enlightened regard to their own interest,

--for that's the case with the largest half of mankind.

Of course,

in a community so organized,

what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do,

but shut his eyes all he can,

and harden his heart?

I can't buy every poor wretch I see.

I can't turn knight-errant,

and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this.

The most I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it."

St. Clare's fine countenance was for a moment overcast;

he said,

"Come,

cousin,

don't stand there looking like one of the Fates;

you've only seen a peep through the curtain,

--a specimen of what is going on,

the world over,

in some shape or other.

If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life,

we should have no heart to anything.

'T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah's kitchen;"

and St. Clare lay back on the sofa,

and busied himself with his paper.

Miss Ophelia sat down,

and pulled out her knitting-work,

and sat there grim with indignation.

She knit and knit,

but while she mused the fire burned;

at last she broke out --"I tell you,

Augustine,

I can't get over things so,

if you can.

It's a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system,

--that's -my- mind!"

"What now?"

said St. Clare,

looking up.

"At it again,

hey?"

"I say it's perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!"

said Miss Ophelia,

with increasing warmth.

"-I- defend it,

my dear lady?

Who ever said I did defend it?"

said St. Clare.

"Of course,

you defend it,

--you all do,

--all you Southerners.

What do you have slaves for,

if you don't?"

"Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever does what they don't think is right?

Don't you,

or didn't you ever,

do anything that you did not think quite right?"

"If I do,

I repent of it,

I hope,"

said Miss Ophelia,

rattling her needles with energy.

"So do I,"

said St. Clare,

peeling his orange;

"I'm repenting of it all the time."

"What do you keep on doing it for?"

"Didn't you ever keep on doing wrong,

after you'd repented,

my good cousin?"

"Well,

only when I've been very much tempted,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Well,

I'm very much tempted,"

said St. Clare;

"that's just my difficulty."

"But I always resolve I won't and I try to break off."

"Well,

I have been resolving I won't,

off and on,

these ten years,"

said St. Clare;

"but I haven't,

some how,

got clear.

Have you got clear of all your sins,

cousin?"

"Cousin Augustine,"

said Miss Ophelia,

seriously,

and laying down her knitting-work,

"I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my short-comings.

I know all you say is true enough;

nobody else feels them more than I do;

but it does seem to me,

after all,

there is some difference between me and you.

It seems to me I would cut off my right hand sooner than keep on,

from day to day,

doing what I thought was wrong.

But,

then,

my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession,

I don't wonder you reprove me."

"O,

now,

cousin,"

said Augustine,

sitting down on the floor,

and laying his head back in her lap,

"don't take on so awfully serious!

You know what a good-for-nothing,

saucy boy I always was.

I love to poke you up,

--that's all,

--just to see you get earnest.

I do think you are desperately,

distressingly good;

it tires me to death to think of it."

"But this is a serious subject,

my boy,

Auguste,"

said Miss Ophelia,

laying her hand on his forehead.

"Dismally so,"

said he;

"and I --well,

I never want to talk seriously in hot weather.

What with mosquitos and all,

a fellow can't get himself up to any very sublime moral flights;

and I believe,"

said St. Clare,

suddenly rousing himself up,

"there's a theory,

now!

I understand now why northern nations are always more virtuous than southern ones,

--I see into that whole subject."

"O,

Augustine,

you are a sad rattle-brain!"

"Am I?

Well,

so I am,

I suppose;

but for once I will be serious,

now;

but you must hand me that basket of oranges;

--you see,

you'll have to

'stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples,'

if I'm going to make this effort.

Now,"

said Augustine,

drawing the basket up,

"I'll begin: When,

in the course of human events,

it becomes necessary for a fellow to hold two or three dozen of his fellow-worms in captivity,

a decent regard to the opinions of society requires --"

"I don't see that you are growing more serious,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Wait,

--I'm coming on,

--you'll hear.

The short of the matter is,

cousin,"

said he,

his handsome face suddenly settling into an earnest and serious expression,

"on this abstract question of slavery there can,

as I think,

be but one opinion.

Planters,

who have money to make by it,

--clergymen,

who have planters to please,

--politicians,

who want to rule by it,

--may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity;

they can press nature and the Bible,

and nobody knows what else,

into the service;

but,

after all,

neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more.

It comes from the devil,

that's the short of it;

--and,

to my mind,

it's a pretty respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line."

Miss Ophelia stopped her knitting,

and looked surprised,

and St. Clare,

apparently enjoying her astonishment,

went on.

"You seem to wonder;

but if you will get me fairly at it,

I'll make a clean breast of it.

This cursed business,

accursed of God and man,

what is it?

Strip it of all its ornament,

run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole,

and what is it?

Why,

because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak,

and I am intelligent and strong,

--because I know how,

and -can- do it,

--therefore,

I may steal all he has,

keep it,

and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy.

Whatever is too hard,

too dirty,

too disagreeable,

for me,

I may set Quashy to doing.

Because I don't like work,

Quashy shall work.

Because the sun burns me,

Quashy shall stay in the sun.

Quashy shall earn the money,

and I will spend it.

Quashy shall lie down in every puddle,

that I may walk over dry-shod.

Quashy shall do my will,

and not his,

all the days of his mortal life,

and have such chance of getting to heaven,

at last,

as I find convenient.

This I take to be about what slavery -is-.

I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code,

as it stands in our law-books,

and make anything else of it.

Talk of the -abuses- of slavery!

Humbug!

The -thing itself- is the essence of all abuse!

And the only reason why the land don't sink under it,

like Sodom and Gomorrah,

is because it is -used- in a way infinitely better than it is.

For pity's sake,

for shame's sake,

because we are men born of women,

and not savage beasts,

many of us do not,

and dare not,

--we would -scorn- to use the full power which our savage laws put into our hands.

And he who goes the furthest,

and does the worst,

only uses within limits the power that the law gives him."

St. Clare had started up,

and,

as his manner was when excited,

was walking,

with hurried steps,

up and down the floor.

His fine face,

classic as that of a Greek statue,

seemed actually to burn with the fervor of his feelings.

His large blue eyes flashed,

and he gestured with an unconscious eagerness.

Miss Ophelia had never seen him in this mood before,

and she sat perfectly silent.

"I declare to you,"

said he,

suddenly stopping before his cousin "(It's no sort of use to talk or to feel on this subject),

but I declare to you,

there have been times when I have thought,

if the whole country would sink,

and hide all this injustice and misery from the light,

I would willingly sink with it.

When I have been travelling up and down on our boats,

or about on my collecting tours,

and reflected that every brutal,

disgusting,

mean,

low-lived fellow I met,

was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men,

women and children,

as he could cheat,

steal,

or gamble money enough to buy,

--when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children,

of young girls and women,

--I have been ready to curse my country,

to curse the human race!"

"Augustine!

Augustine!"

said Miss Ophelia,

"I'm sure you've said enough.

I never,

in my life,

heard anything like this,

even at the North."

"At the North!"

said St. Clare,

with a sudden change of expression,

and resuming something of his habitual careless tone.

"Pooh!

your northern folks are cold-blooded;

you are cool in everything!

You can't begin to curse up hill and down as we can,

when we get fairly at it."

"Well,

but the question is,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"O,

yes,

to be sure,

the -question is-,

--and a deuce of a question it is!

How came -you- in this state of sin and misery?

Well,

I shall answer in the good old words you used to teach me,

Sundays.

I came so by ordinary generation.

My servants were my father's,

and,

what is more,

my mother's;

and now they are mine,

they and their increase,

which bids fair to be a pretty considerable item.

My father,

you know,

came first from New England;

and he was just such another man as your father,

--a regular old Roman,

--upright,

energetic,

noble-minded,

with an iron will.

Your father settled down in New England,

to rule over rocks and stones,

and to force an existence out of Nature;

and mine settled in Louisiana,

to rule over men and women,

and force existence out of them.

My mother,"

said St. Clare,

getting up and walking to a picture at the end of the room,

and gazing upward with a face fervent with veneration,

"-she was divine!- Don't look at me so!

--you know what I mean!

She probably was of mortal birth;

but,

as far as ever I could observe,

there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her;

and everybody that lives to remember her,

whether bond or free,

servant,

acquaintance,

relation,

all say the same.

Why,

cousin,

that mother has been all that has stood between me and utter unbelief for years.

She was a direct embodiment and personification of the New Testament,

--a living fact,

to be accounted for,

and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth.

O,

mother!

mother!"

said St. Clare,

clasping his hands,

in a sort of transport;

and then suddenly checking himself,

he came back,

and seating himself on an ottoman,

he went on:

"My brother and I were twins;

and they say,

you know,

that twins ought to resemble each other;

but we were in all points a contrast.

He had black,

fiery eyes,

coal-black hair,

a strong,

fine Roman profile,

and a rich brown complexion.

I had blue eyes,

golden hair,

a Greek outline,

and fair complexion.

He was active and observing,

I dreamy and inactive.

He was generous to his friends and equals,

but proud,

dominant,

overbearing,

to inferiors,

and utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself up against him.

Truthful we both were;

he from pride and courage,

I from a sort of abstract ideality.

We loved each other about as boys generally do,

--off and on,

and in general;

--he was my father's pet,

and I my mother's.

"There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on all possible subjects,

of which he and my father had no kind of understanding,

and with which they could have no possible sympathy.

But mother did;

and so,

when I had quarreled with Alfred,

and father looked sternly on me,

I used to go off to mother's room,

and sit by her.

I remember just how she used to look,

with her pale cheeks,

her deep,

soft,

serious eyes,

her white dress,

--she always wore white;

and I used to think of her whenever I read in Revelations about the saints that were arrayed in fine linen,

clean and white.

She had a great deal of genius of one sort and another,

particularly in music;

and she used to sit at her organ,

playing fine old majestic music of the Catholic church,

and singing with a voice more like an angel than a mortal woman;

and I would lay my head down on her lap,

and cry,

and dream,

and feel,

--oh,

immeasurably!

--things that I had no language to say!

"In those days,

this matter of slavery had never been canvassed as it has now;

nobody dreamed of any harm in it.

"My father was a born aristocrat.

I think,

in some preexistent state,

he must have been in the higher circles of spirits,

and brought all his old court pride along with him;

for it was ingrain,

bred in the bone,

though he was originally of poor and not in any way of noble family.

My brother was begotten in his image.

"Now,

an aristocrat,

you know,

the world over,

has no human sympathies,

beyond a certain line in society.

In England the line is in one place,

in Burmah in another,

and in America in another;

but the aristocrat of all these countries never goes over it.

What would be hardship and distress and injustice in his own class,

is a cool matter of course in another one.

My father's dividing line was that of color.

-Among his equals-,

never was a man more just and generous;

but he considered the negro,

through all possible gradations of color,

as an intermediate link between man and animals,

and graded all his ideas of justice or generosity on this hypothesis.

I suppose,

to be sure,

if anybody had asked him,

plump and fair,

whether they had human immortal souls,

he might have hemmed and hawed,

and said yes.

But my father was not a man much troubled with spiritualism;

religious sentiment he had none,

beyond a veneration for God,

as decidedly the head of the upper classes.

"Well,

my father worked some five hundred negroes;

he was an inflexible,

driving,

punctilious business man;

everything was to move by system,

--to be sustained with unfailing accuracy and precision.

Now,

if you take into account that all this was to be worked out by a set of lazy,

twaddling,

shiftless laborers,

who had grown up,

all their lives,

in the absence of every possible motive to learn how to do anything but

'shirk,'

as you Vermonters say,

and you'll see that there might naturally be,

on his plantation,

a great many things that looked horrible and distressing to a sensitive child,

like me.

"Besides all,

he had an overseer,

--great,

tall,

slab-sided,

two-fisted renegade son of Vermont --(begging your pardon),

--who had gone through a regular apprenticeship in hardness and brutality and taken his degree to be admitted to practice.

My mother never could endure him,

nor I;

but he obtained an entire ascendency over my father;

and this man was the absolute despot of the estate.

"I was a little fellow then,

but I had the same love that I have now for all kinds of human things,

--a kind of passion for the study of humanity,

come in what shape it would.

I was found in the cabins and among the field-hands a great deal,

and,

of course,

was a great favorite;

and all sorts of complaints and grievances were breathed in my ear;

and I told them to mother,

and we,

between us,

formed a sort of committee for a redress of grievances.

We hindered and repressed a great deal of cruelty,

and congratulated ourselves on doing a vast deal of good,

till,

as often happens,

my zeal overacted.

Stubbs complained to my father that he couldn't manage the hands,

and must resign his position.

Father was a fond,

indulgent husband,

but a man that never flinched from anything that he thought necessary;

and so he put down his foot,

like a rock,

between us and the field-hands.

He told my mother,

in language perfectly respectful and deferential,

but quite explicit,

that over the house-servants she should be entire mistress,

but that with the field-hands he could allow no interference.

He revered and respected her above all living beings;

but he would have said it all the same to the virgin Mary herself,

if she had come in the way of his system.

"I used sometimes to hear my mother reasoning cases with him,

--endeavoring to excite his sympathies.

He would listen to the most pathetic appeals with the most discouraging politeness and equanimity.

'It all resolves itself into this,'

he would say;

'must I part with Stubbs,

or keep him?

Stubbs is the soul of punctuality,

honesty,

and efficiency,

--a thorough business hand,

and as humane as the general run.

We can't have perfection;

and if I keep him,

I must sustain his administration as a -whole-,

even if there are,

now and then,

things that are exceptionable.

All government includes some necessary hardness.

General rules will bear hard on particular cases.'

This last maxim my father seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of cruelty.

After he had said -that-,

he commonly drew up his feet on the sofa,

like a man that has disposed of a business,

and betook himself to a nap,

or the newspaper,

as the case might be.

"The fact is my father showed the exact sort of talent for a statesman.

He could have divided Poland as easily as an orange,

or trod on Ireland as quietly and systematically as any man living.

At last my mother gave up,

in despair.

It never will be known,

till the last account,

what noble and sensitive natures like hers have felt,

cast,

utterly helpless,

into what seems to them an abyss of injustice and cruelty,

and which seems so to nobody about them.

It has been an age of long sorrow of such natures,

in such a hell-begotten sort of world as ours.

What remained for her,

but to train her children in her own views and sentiments?

Well,

after all you say about training,

children will grow up substantially what they -are- by nature,

and only that.

From the cradle,

Alfred was an aristocrat;

and as he grew up,

instinctively,

all his sympathies and all his reasonings were in that line,

and all mother's exhortations went to the winds.

As to me,

they sunk deep into me.

She never contradicted,

in form,

anything my father said,

or seemed directly to differ from him;

but she impressed,

burnt into my very soul,

with all the force of her deep,

earnest nature,

an idea of the dignity and worth of the meanest human soul.

I have looked in her face with solemn awe,

when she would point up to the stars in the evening,

and say to me,

'See there,

Auguste!

the poorest,

meanest soul on our place will be living,

when all these stars are gone forever,

--will live as long as God lives!'

"She had some fine old paintings;

one,

in particular,

of Jesus healing a blind man.

They were very fine,

and used to impress me strongly.

'See there,

Auguste,'

she would say;

'the blind man was a beggar,

poor and loathsome;

therefore,

he would not heal him -afar off!- He called him to him,

and put -his hands on him!- Remember this,

my boy.'

If I had lived to grow up under her care,

she might have stimulated me to I know not what of enthusiasm.

I might have been a saint,

reformer,

martyr,

--but,

alas!

alas!

I went from her when I was only thirteen,

and I never saw her again!"

St. Clare rested his head on his hands,

and did not speak for some minutes.

After a while,

he looked up,

and went on:

"What poor,

mean trash this whole business of human virtue is!

A mere matter,

for the most part,

of latitude and longitude,

and geographical position,

acting with natural temperament.

The greater part is nothing but an accident!

Your father,

for example,

settles in Vermont,

in a town where all are,

in fact,

free and equal;

becomes a regular church member and deacon,

and in due time joins an Abolition society,

and thinks us all little better than heathens.

Yet he is,

for all the world,

in constitution and habit,

a duplicate of my father.

I can see it leaking out in fifty different ways,

--just the same strong,

overbearing,

dominant spirit.

You know very well how impossible it is to persuade some of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair does not feel above them.

The fact is,

though he has fallen on democratic times,

and embraced a democratic theory,

he is to the heart an aristocrat,

as much as my father,

who ruled over five or six hundred slaves."

Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture,

and was laying down her knitting to begin,

but St. Clare stopped her.

"Now,

I know every word you are going to say.

I do not say they -were- alike,

in fact.

One fell into a condition where everything acted against the natural tendency,

and the other where everything acted for it;

and so one turned out a pretty wilful,

stout,

overbearing old democrat,

and the other a wilful,

stout old despot.

If both had owned plantations in Louisiana,

they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the same mould."

"What an undutiful boy you are!"

said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't mean them any disrespect,"

said St. Clare.

"You know reverence is not my forte.

But,

to go back to my history:

"When father died,

he left the whole property to us twin boys,

to be divided as we should agree.

There does not breathe on God's earth a nobler-souled,

more generous fellow,

than Alfred,

in all that concerns his equals;

and we got on admirably with this property question,

without a single unbrotherly word or feeling.

We undertook to work the plantation together;

and Alfred,

whose outward life and capabilities had double the strength of mine,

became an enthusiastic planter,

and a wonderfully successful one.

"But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter.

To have a great gang of seven hundred,

whom I could not know personally,

or feel any individual interest in,

bought and driven,

housed,

fed,

worked like so many horned cattle,

strained up to military precision,

--the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring problem,

--the necessity of drivers and overseers,

--the ever-necessary whip,

first,

last,

and only argument,

--the whole thing was insufferably disgusting and loathsome to me;

and when I thought of my mother's estimate of one poor human soul,

it became even frightful!

"It's all nonsense to talk to me about slaves -enjoying- all this!

To this day,

I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of your patronizing Northerners have made up,

as in their zeal to apologize for our sins.

We all know better.

Tell me that any man living wants to work all his days,

from day-dawn till dark,

under the constant eye of a master,

without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition,

on the same dreary,

monotonous,

unchanging toil,

and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year,

with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order!

Any man who thinks that human beings can,

as a general thing,

be made about as comfortable that way as any other,

I wish he might try it.

I'd buy the dog,

and work him,

with a clear conscience!"

"I always have supposed,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"that you,

all of you,

approved of these things,

and thought them -right ---according to Scripture."

"Humbug!

We are not quite reduced to that yet.

Alfred who is as determined a despot as ever walked,

does not pretend to this kind of defence;

--no,

he stands,

high and haughty,

on that good old respectable ground,

-the right of the strongest-;

and he says,

and I think quite sensibly,

that the American planter is

'only doing,

in another form,

what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes;'

that is,

I take it,

-appropriating- them,

body and bone,

soul and spirit,

to their use and convenience.

He defends both,

--and I think,

at least,

-consistently-.

He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses,

either nominal or real.

There must,

he says,

be a lower class,

given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature;

and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement,

and becomes the directing soul of the lower.

So he reasons,

because,

as I said,

he is born an aristocrat;

--so I don't believe,

because I was born a democrat."

"How in the world can the two things be compared?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"The English laborer is not sold,

traded,

parted from his family,

whipped."

"He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.

The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,

--the capitalist can starve him to death.

As to family security,

it is hard to say which is the worst,

--to have one's children sold,

or see them starve to death at home."

"But it's no kind of apology for slavery,

to prove that it isn't worse than some other bad thing."

"I didn't give it for one,

--nay,

I'll say,

besides,

that ours is the more bold and palpable infringement of human rights;

actually buying a man up,

like a horse,

--looking at his teeth,

cracking his joints,

and trying his paces and then paying down for him,

--having speculators,

breeders,

traders,

and brokers in human bodies and souls,

--sets the thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form,

though the thing done be,

after all,

in its nature,

the same;

that is,

appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of another without any regard to their own."

"I never thought of the matter in this light,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Well,

I've travelled in England some,

and I've looked over a good many documents as to the state of their lower classes;

and I really think there is no denying Alfred,

when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England.

You see,

you must not infer,

from what I have told you,

that Alfred is what is called a hard master;

for he isn't.

He is despotic,

and unmerciful to insubordination;

he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck,

if he opposed him.

But,

in general,

he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.

"When I was with him,

I insisted that he should do something for their instruction;

and,

to please me,

he did get a chaplain,

and used to have them catechized Sunday,

though,

I believe,

in his heart,

that he thought it would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses.

And the fact is,

that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth,

spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil,

cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday.

The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing population of England,

and among plantation-hands in our country,

could perhaps testify to the same result,

-there and here-.

Yet some striking exceptions there are among us,

from the fact that the negro is naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white."

"Well,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"how came you to give up your plantation life?"

"Well,

we jogged on together some time,

till Alfred saw plainly that I was no planter.

He thought it absurd,

after he had reformed,

and altered,

and improved everywhere,

to suit my notions,

that I still remained unsatisfied.

The fact was,

it was,

after all,

the THING that I hated --the using these men and women,

the perpetuation of all this ignorance,

brutality and vice,

--just to make money for me!

"Besides,

I was always interfering in the details.

Being myself one of the laziest of mortals,

I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for the lazy;

and when poor,

shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their cotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier,

or filled their sacks with dirt,

with cotton at the top,

it seemed so exactly like what I should do if I were they,

I couldn't and wouldn't have them flogged for it.

Well,

of course,

there was an end of plantation discipline;

and Alf and I came to about the same point that I and my respected father did,

years before.

So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist,

and would never do for business life;

and advised me to take the bank-stock and the New Orleans family mansion,

and go to writing poetry,

and let him manage the plantation.

So we parted,

and I came here."

"But why didn't you free your slaves?"

"Well,

I wasn't up to that.

To hold them as tools for money-making,

I could not;

--have them to help spend money,

you know,

didn't look quite so ugly to me.

Some of them were old house-servants,

to whom I was much attached;

and the younger ones were children to the old.

All were well satisfied to be as they were."

He paused,

and walked reflectively up and down the room.

"There was,"

said St. Clare,

"a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world,

more than to float and drift.

I had vague,

indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,

--to free my native land from this spot and stain.

All young men have had such fever-fits,

I suppose,

some time,

--but then --"

"Why didn't you?"

said Miss Ophelia;

--"you ought not to put your hand to the plough,

and look back."

"O,

well,

things didn't go with me as I expected,

and I got the despair of living that Solomon did.

I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both;

but,

some how or other,

instead of being actor and regenerator in society,

I became a piece of driftwood,

and have been floating and eddying about,

ever since.

Alfred scolds me,

every time we meet;

and he has the better of me,

I grant,

--for he really does something;

his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a contemptible -non sequitur-."

"My dear cousin,

can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your probation?"

"Satisfied!

Was I not just telling you I despised it?

But,

then,

to come back to this point,

--we were on this liberation business.

I don't think my feelings about slavery are peculiar.

I find many men who,

in their hearts,

think of it just as I do.

The land groans under it;

and,

bad as it is for the slave,

it is worse,

if anything,

for the master.

It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious,

improvident,

degraded people,

among us,

are an evil to us,

as well as to themselves.

The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do,

because they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do.

They are in our homes;

they are the associates of our children,

and they form their minds faster than we can;

for they are a race that children always will cling to and assimilate with.

If Eva,

now,

was not more angel than ordinary,

she would be ruined.

We might as well allow the small-pox to run among them,

and think our children would not take it,

as to let them be uninstructed and vicious,

and think our children will not be affected by that.

Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient general educational system,

and they do it wisely,

too;

for,

just begin and thoroughly educate one generation,

and the whole thing would be blown sky high.

If we did not give them liberty,

they would take it."

"And what do you think will be the end of this?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"I don't know.

One thing is certain,

--that there is a mustering among the masses,

the world over;

and there is a -dies iræ- coming on,

sooner or later.

The same thing is working in Europe,

in England,

and in this country.

My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming,

when Christ should reign,

and all men should be free and happy.

And she taught me,

when I was a boy,

to pray,

'thy kingdom come.'

Sometimes I think all this sighing,

and groaning,

and stirring among the dry bones foretells what she used to tell me was coming.

But who may abide the day of His appearing?"

"Augustine,

sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,"

said Miss Ophelia,

laying down her knitting,

and looking anxiously at her cousin.

"Thank you for your good opinion,

but it's up and down with me,

--up to heaven's gate in theory,

down in earth's dust in practice.

But there's the teabell,

--do let's go,

--and don't say,

now,

I haven't had one downright serious talk,

for once in my life."

At table,

Marie alluded to the incident of Prue.

"I suppose you'll think,

cousin,"

she said,

"that we are all barbarians."

"I think that's a barbarous thing,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"but I don't think you are all barbarians."

"Well,

now,"

said Marie,

"I know it's impossible to get along with some of these creatures.

They are so bad they ought not to live.

I don't feel a particle of sympathy for such cases.

If they'd only behave themselves,

it would not happen."

"But,

mamma,"

said Eva,

"the poor creature was unhappy;

that's what made her drink."

"O,

fiddlestick!

as if that were any excuse!

I'm unhappy,

very often.

I presume,"

she said,

pensively,

"that I've had greater trials than ever she had.

It's just because they are so bad.

There's some of them that you cannot break in by any kind of severity.

I remember father had a man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work,

and lie round in the swamps,

stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things.

That man was caught and whipped,

time and again,

and it never did him any good;

and the last time he crawled off,

though he couldn't but just go,

and died in the swamp.

There was no sort of reason for it,

for father's hands were always treated kindly."

"I broke a fellow in,

once,"

said St. Clare,

"that all the overseers and masters had tried their hands on in vain."

"You!"

said Marie;

"well,

I'd be glad to know when -you- ever did anything of the sort."

"Well,

he was a powerful,

gigantic fellow,

--a native-born African;

and he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon degree.

He was a regular African lion.

They called him Scipio.

Nobody could do anything with him;

and he was sold round from overseer to overseer,

till at last Alfred bought him,

because he thought he could manage him.

Well,

one day he knocked down the overseer,

and was fairly off into the swamps.

I was on a visit to Alf's plantation,

for it was after we had dissolved partnership.

Alfred was greatly exasperated;

but I told him that it was his own fault,

and laid him any wager that I could break the man;

and finally it was agreed that,

if I caught him,

I should have him to experiment on.

So they mustered out a party of some six or seven,

with guns and dogs,

for the hunt.

People,

you know,

can get up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer,

if it is only customary;

in fact,

I got a little excited myself,

though I had only put in as a sort of mediator,

in case he was caught.

"Well,

the dogs bayed and howled,

and we rode and scampered,

and finally we started him.

He ran and bounded like a buck,

and kept us well in the rear for some time;

but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket of cane;

then he turned to bay,

and I tell you he fought the dogs right gallantly.

He dashed them to right and left,

and actually killed three of them with only his naked fists,

when a shot from a gun brought him down,

and he fell,

wounded and bleeding,

almost at my feet.

The poor fellow looked up at me with manhood and despair both in his eye.

I kept back the dogs and the party,

as they came pressing up,

and claimed him as my prisoner.

It was all I could do to keep them from shooting him,

in the flush of success;

but I persisted in my bargain,

and Alfred sold him to me.

Well,

I took him in hand,

and in one fortnight I had him tamed down as submissive and tractable as heart could desire."

"What in the world did you do to him?"

said Marie.

"Well,

it was quite a simple process.

I took him to my own room,

had a good bed made for him,

dressed his wounds,

and tended him myself,

until he got fairly on his feet again.

And,

in process of time,

I had free papers made out for him,

and told him he might go where he liked."

"And did he go?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two,

and absolutely refused to leave me.

I never had a braver,

better fellow,

--trusty and true as steel.

He embraced Christianity afterwards,

and became as gentle as a child.

He used to oversee my place on the lake,

and did it capitally,

too.

I lost him the first cholera season.

In fact,

he laid down his life for me.

For I was sick,

almost to death;

and when,

through the panic,

everybody else fled,

Scipio worked for me like a giant,

and actually brought me back into life again.

But,

poor fellow!

he was taken,

right after,

and there was no saving him.

I never felt anybody's loss more."

Eva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father,

as he told the story,

--her small lips apart,

her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing interest.

As he finished,

she suddenly threw her arms around his neck,

burst into tears,

and sobbed convulsively.

"Eva,

dear child!

what is the matter?"

said St. Clare,

as the child's small frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings.

"This child,"

he added,

"ought not to hear any of this kind of thing,

--she's nervous."

"No,

papa,

I'm not nervous,"

said Eva,

controlling herself,

suddenly,

with a strength of resolution singular in such a child.

"I'm not nervous,

but these things -sink into my heart-."

"What do you mean,

Eva?"

"I can't tell you,

papa,

I think a great many thoughts.

Perhaps some day I shall tell you."

"Well,

think away,

dear,

--only don't cry and worry your papa,"

said St. Clare,

"Look here,

--see what a beautiful peach I have got for you."

Eva took it and smiled,

though there was still a nervous twiching about the corners of her mouth.

"Come,

look at the gold-fish,"

said St. Clare,

taking her hand and stepping on to the verandah.

A few moments,

and merry laughs were heard through the silken curtains,

as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each other with roses,

and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.

There is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the adventures of the higher born;

but,

if our readers will accompany us up to a little loft over the stable,

they may,

perhaps,

learn a little of his affairs.

It was a decent room,

containing a bed,

a chair,

and a small,

rough stand,

where lay Tom's Bible and hymn-book;

and where he sits,

at present,

with his slate before him,

intent on something that seems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.

The fact was,

that Tom's home-yearnings had become so strong that he had begged a sheet of writing-paper of Eva,

and,

mustering up all his small stock of literary attainment acquired by Mas'r George's instructions,

he conceived the bold idea of writing a letter;

and he was busy now,

on his slate,

getting out his first draft.

Tom was in a good deal of trouble,

for the forms of some of the letters he had forgotten entirely;

and of what he did remember,

he did not know exactly which to use.

And while he was working,

and breathing very hard,

in his earnestness,

Eva alighted,

like a bird,

on the round of his chair behind him,

and peeped over his shoulder.

"O,

Uncle Tom!

what funny things you -are- making,

there!"

"I'm trying to write to my poor old woman,

Miss Eva,

and my little chil'en,"

said Tom,

drawing the back of his hand over his eyes;

"but,

some how,

I'm feard I shan't make it out."

"I wish I could help you,

Tom!

I've learnt to write some.

Last year I could make all the letters,

but I'm afraid I've forgotten."

So Eva put her golden head close to his,

and the two commenced a grave and anxious discussion,

each one equally earnest,

and about equally ignorant;

and,

with a deal of consulting and advising over every word,

the composition began,

as they both felt very sanguine,

to look quite like writing.

"Yes,

Uncle Tom,

it really begins to look beautiful,"

said Eva,

gazing delightedly on it.

"How pleased your wife'll be,

and the poor little children!

O,

it's a shame you ever had to go away from them!

I mean to ask papa to let you go back,

some time."

"Missis said that she would send down money for me,

as soon as they could get it together,"

said Tom.

"I'm

'spectin,

she will.

Young Mas'r George,

he said he'd come for me;

and he gave me this yer dollar as a sign;"

and Tom drew from under his clothes the precious dollar.

"O,

he'll certainly come,

then!"

said Eva.

"I'm so glad!"

"And I wanted to send a letter,

you know,

to let

'em know whar I was,

and tell poor Chloe that I was well off,

--cause she felt so drefful,

poor soul!"

"I say Tom!"

said St. Clare's voice,

coming in the door at this moment.

Tom and Eva both started.

"What's here?"

said St. Clare,

coming up and looking at the slate.

"O,

it's Tom's letter.

I'm helping him to write it,"

said Eva;

"isn't it nice?"

"I wouldn't discourage either of you,"

said St. Clare,

"but I rather think,

Tom,

you'd better get me to write your letter for you.

I'll do it,

when I come home from my ride."

"It's very important he should write,"

said Eva,

"because his mistress is going to send down money to redeem him,

you know,

papa;

he told me they told him so."

St. Clare thought,

in his heart,

that this was probably only one of those things which good-natured owners say to their servants,

to alleviate their horror of being sold,

without any intention of fulfilling the expectation thus excited.

But he did not make any audible comment upon it,

--only ordered Tom to get the horses out for a ride.

Tom's letter was written in due form for him that evening,

and safely lodged in the post-office.

Miss Ophelia still persevered in her labors in the housekeeping line.

It was universally agreed,

among all the household,

from Dinah down to the youngest urchin,

that Miss Ophelia was decidedly "curis,"

--a term by which a southern servant implies that his or her betters don't exactly suit them.

The higher circle in the family --to wit,

Adolph,

Jane and Rosa --agreed that she was no lady;

ladies never keep working about as she did,

--that she had no -air- at all;

and they were surprised that she should be any relation of the St. Clares.

Even Marie declared that it was absolutely fatiguing to see Cousin Ophelia always so busy.

And,

in fact,

Miss Ophelia's industry was so incessant as to lay some foundation for the complaint.

She sewed and stitched away,

from daylight till dark,

with the energy of one who is pressed on by some immediate urgency;

and then,

when the light faded,

and the work was folded away,

with one turn out came the ever-ready knitting-work,

and there she was again,

going on as briskly as ever.

It really was a labor to see her.

CHAPTER XX

Topsy

One morning,

while Miss Ophelia was busy in some of her domestic cares,

St. Clare's voice was heard,

calling her at the foot of the stairs.

"Come down here,

Cousin,

I've something to show you."

"What is it?"

said Miss Ophelia,

coming down,

with her sewing in her hand.

"I've made a purchase for your department,

--see here,"

said St. Clare;

and,

with the word,

he pulled along a little negro girl,

about eight or nine years of age.

She was one of the blackest of her race;

and her round shining eyes,

glittering as glass beads,

moved with quick and restless glances over everything in the room.

Her mouth,

half open with astonishment at the wonders of the new Mas'r's parlor,

displayed a white and brilliant set of teeth.

Her woolly hair was braided in sundry little tails,

which stuck out in every direction.

The expression of her face was an odd mixture of shrewdness and cunning,

over which was oddly drawn,

like a kind of veil,

an expression of the most doleful gravity and solemnity.

She was dressed in a single filthy,

ragged garment,

made of bagging;

and stood with her hands demurely folded before her.

Altogether,

there was something odd and goblin-like about her appearance,

--something,

as Miss Ophelia afterwards said,

"so heathenish,"

as to inspire that good lady with utter dismay;

and turning to St. Clare,

she said,

"Augustine,

what in the world have you brought that thing here for?"

"For you to educate,

to be sure,

and train in the way she should go.

I thought she was rather a funny specimen in the Jim Crow line.

Here,

Topsy,"

he added,

giving a whistle,

as a man would to call the attention of a dog,

"give us a song,

now,

and show us some of your dancing."

The black,

glassy eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery,

and the thing struck up,

in a clear shrill voice,

an odd negro melody,

to which she kept time with her hands and feet,

spinning round,

clapping her hands,

knocking her knees together,

in a wild,

fantastic sort of time,

and producing in her throat all those odd guttural sounds which distinguish the native music of her race;

and finally,

turning a summerset or two,

and giving a prolonged closing note,

as odd and unearthly as that of a steam-whistle,

she came suddenly down on the carpet,

and stood with her hands folded,

and a most sanctimonious expression of meekness and solemnity over her face,

only broken by the cunning glances which she shot askance from the corners of her eyes.

Miss Ophelia stood silent,

perfectly paralyzed with amazement.

St. Clare,

like a mischievous fellow as he was,

appeared to enjoy her astonishment;

and,

addressing the child again,

said,

"Topsy,

this is your new mistress.

I'm going to give you up to her;

see now that you behave yourself."

"Yes,

Mas'r,"

said Topsy,

with sanctimonious gravity,

her wicked eyes twinkling as she spoke.

"You're going to be good,

Topsy,

you understand,"

said St. Clare.

"O yes,

Mas'r,"

said Topsy,

with another twinkle,

her hands still devoutly folded.

"Now,

Augustine,

what upon earth is this for?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Your house is so full of these little plagues,

now,

that a body can't set down their foot without treading on

'em.

I get up in the morning,

and find one asleep behind the door,

and see one black head poking out from under the table,

one lying on the door-mat,

--and they are mopping and mowing and grinning between all the railings,

and tumbling over the kitchen floor!

What on earth did you want to bring this one for?"

"For you to educate --didn't I tell you?

You're always preaching about educating.

I thought I would make you a present of a fresh-caught specimen,

and let you try your hand on her,

and bring her up in the way she should go."

"-I- don't want her,

I am sure;

--I have more to do with

'em now than I want to."

"That's you Christians,

all over!

--you'll get up a society,

and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen.

But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you,

and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves!

No;

when it comes to that,

they are dirty and disagreeable,

and it's too much care,

and so on."

"Augustine,

you know I didn't think of it in that light,"

said Miss Ophelia,

evidently softening.

"Well,

it might be a real missionary work,"

said she,

looking rather more favorably on the child.

St. Clare had touched the right string.

Miss Ophelia's conscientiousness was ever on the alert.

"But,"

she added,

"I really didn't see the need of buying this one;

--there are enough now,

in your house,

to take all my time and skill."

"Well,

then,

Cousin,"

said St. Clare,

drawing her aside,

"I ought to beg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches.

You are so good,

after all,

that there's no sense in them.

Why,

the fact is,

this concern belonged to a couple of drunken creatures that keep a low restaurant that I have to pass by every day,

and I was tired of hearing her screaming,

and them beating and swearing at her.

She looked bright and funny,

too,

as if something might be made of her;

--so I bought her,

and I'll give her to you.

Try,

now,

and give her a good orthodox New England bringing up,

and see what it'll make of her.

You know I haven't any gift that way;

but I'd like you to try."

"Well,

I'll do what I can,"

said Miss Ophelia;

and she approached her new subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black spider,

supposing them to have benevolent designs toward it.

"She's dreadfully dirty,

and half naked,"

she said.

"Well,

take her down stairs,

and make some of them clean and clothe her up."

Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.

"Don't see what Mas'r St. Clare wants of

'nother nigger!"

said Dinah,

surveying the new arrival with no friendly air.

"Won't have her around under -my- feet,

-I- know!"

"Pah!"

said Rosa and Jane,

with supreme disgust;

"let her keep out of our way!

What in the world Mas'r wanted another of these low niggers for,

I can't see!"

"You go long!

No more nigger dan you be,

Miss Rosa,"

said Dinah,

who felt this last remark a reflection on herself.

"You seem to tink yourself white folks.

You an't nerry one,

black -nor- white,

I'd like to be one or turrer."

Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that would undertake to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new arrival;

and so she was forced to do it herself,

with some very ungracious and reluctant assistance from Jane.

It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of a neglected,

abused child.

In fact,

in this world,

multitudes must live and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear described.

Miss Ophelia had a good,

strong,

practical deal of resolution;

and she went through all the disgusting details with heroic thoroughness,

though,

it must be confessed,

with no very gracious air,

--for endurance was the utmost to which her principles could bring her.

When she saw,

on the back and shoulders of the child,

great welts and calloused spots,

ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far,

her heart became pitiful within her.

"See there!"

said Jane,

pointing to the marks,

"don't that show she's a limb?

We'll have fine works with her,

I reckon.

I hate these nigger young uns!

so disgusting!

I wonder that Mas'r would buy her!"

The "young un" alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her,

only scanning,

with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes,

the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears.

When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole clothing,

her hair cropped short to her head,

Miss Ophelia,

with some satisfaction,

said she looked more Christian-like than she did,

and in her own mind began to mature some plans for her instruction.

Sitting down before her,

she began to question her.

"How old are you,

Topsy?"

"Dun no,

Missis,"

said the image,

with a grin that showed all her teeth.

"Don't know how old you are?

Didn't anybody ever tell you?

Who was your mother?"

"Never had none!"

said the child,

with another grin.

"Never had any mother?

What do you mean?

Where were you born?"

"Never was born!"

persisted Topsy,

with another grin,

that looked so goblin-like,

that,

if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous,

she might have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie;

but Miss Ophelia was not nervous,

but plain and business-like,

and she said,

with some sternness,

"You mustn't answer me in that way,

child;

I'm not playing with you.

Tell me where you were born,

and who your father and mother were."

"Never was born,"

reiterated the creature,

more emphatically;

"never had no father nor mother,

nor nothin'.

I was raised by a speculator,

with lots of others.

Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us."

The child was evidently sincere,

and Jane,

breaking into a short laugh,

said,

"Laws,

Missis,

there's heaps of

'em.

Speculators buys

'em up cheap,

when they's little,

and gets

'em raised for market."

"How long have you lived with your master and mistress?"

"Dun no,

Missis."

"Is it a year,

or more,

or less?"

"Dun no,

Missis."

"Laws,

Missis,

those low negroes,

--they can't tell;

they don't know anything about time,"

said Jane;

"they don't know what a year is;

they don't know their own ages.

"Have you ever heard anything about God,

Topsy?"

The child looked bewildered,

but grinned as usual.

"Do you know who made you?"

"Nobody,

as I knows on,"

said the child,

with a short laugh.

The idea appeared to amuse her considerably;

for her eyes twinkled,

and she added,

"I spect I grow'd.

Don't think nobody never made me."

"Do you know how to sew?"

said Miss Ophelia,

who thought she would turn her inquiries to something more tangible.

"No,

Missis."

"What can you do?

--what did you do for your master and mistress?"

"Fetch water,

and wash dishes,

and rub knives,

and wait on folks."

"Were they good to you?"

"Spect they was,"

said the child,

scanning Miss Ophelia cunningly.

Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy;

St. Clare was leaning over the back of her chair.

"You find virgin soil there,

Cousin;

put in your own ideas,

--you won't find many to pull up."

Miss Ophelia's ideas of education,

like all her other ideas,

were very set and definite;

and of the kind that prevailed in New England a century ago,

and which are still preserved in some very retired and unsophisticated parts,

where there are no railroads.

As nearly as could be expressed,

they could be comprised in very few words: to teach them to mind when they were spoken to;

to teach them the catechism,

sewing,

and reading;

and to whip them if they told lies.

And though,

of course,

in the flood of light that is now poured on education,

these are left far away in the rear,

yet it is an undisputed fact that our grandmothers raised some tolerably fair men and women under this regime,

as many of us can remember and testify.

At all events,

Miss Ophelia knew of nothing else to do;

and,

therefore,

applied her mind to her heathen with the best diligence she could command.

The child was announced and considered in the family as Miss Ophelia's girl;

and,

as she was looked upon with no gracious eye in the kitchen,

Miss Ophelia resolved to confine her sphere of operation and instruction chiefly to her own chamber.

With a self-sacrifice which some of our readers will appreciate,

she resolved,

instead of comfortably making her own bed,

sweeping and dusting her own chamber,

--which she had hitherto done,

in utter scorn of all offers of help from the chambermaid of the establishment,

--to condemn herself to the martyrdom of instructing Topsy to perform these operations,

--ah,

woe the day!

Did any of our readers ever do the same,

they will appreciate the amount of her self-sacrifice.

Miss Ophelia began with Topsy by taking her into her chamber,

the first morning,

and solemnly commencing a course of instruction in the art and mystery of bed-making.

Behold,

then,

Topsy,

washed and shorn of all the little braided tails wherein her heart had delighted,

arrayed in a clean gown,

with well-starched apron,

standing reverently before Miss Ophelia,

with an expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral.

"Now,

Topsy,

I'm going to show you just how my bed is to be made.

I am very particular about my bed.

You must learn exactly how to do it."

"Yes,

ma'am,"

says Topsy,

with a deep sigh,

and a face of woful earnestness.

"Now,

Topsy,

look here;

--this is the hem of the sheet,

--this is the right side of the sheet,

and this is the wrong;

--will you remember?"

"Yes,

ma'am,"

says Topsy,

with another sigh.

"Well,

now,

the under sheet you must bring over the bolster,

--so --and tuck it clear down under the mattress nice and smooth,

--so,

--do you see?"

"Yes,

ma'am,"

said Topsy,

with profound attention.

"But the upper sheet,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"must be brought down in this way,

and tucked under firm and smooth at the foot,

--so,

--the narrow hem at the foot."

"Yes,

ma'am,"

said Topsy,

as before;

--but we will add,

what Miss Ophelia did not see,

that,

during the time when the good lady's back was turned in the zeal of her manipulations,

the young disciple had contrived to snatch a pair of gloves and a ribbon,

which she had adroitly slipped into her sleeves,

and stood with her hands dutifully folded,

as before.

"Now,

Topsy,

let's see -you- do this,"

said Miss Ophelia,

pulling off the clothes,

and seating herself.

Topsy,

with great gravity and adroitness,

went through the exercise completely to Miss Ophelia's satisfaction;

smoothing the sheets,

patting out every wrinkle,

and exhibiting,

through the whole process,

a gravity and seriousness with which her instructress was greatly edified.

By an unlucky slip,

however,

a fluttering fragment of the ribbon hung out of one of her sleeves,

just as she was finishing,

and caught Miss Ophelia's attention.

Instantly,

she pounced upon it.

"What's this?

You naughty,

wicked child,

--you've been stealing this!"

The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve,

yet was she not in the least disconcerted;

she only looked at it with an air of the most surprised and unconscious innocence.

"Laws!

why,

that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon,

an't it?

How could it a got caught in my sleeve?

"Topsy,

you naughty girl,

don't you tell me a lie,

--you stole that ribbon!"

"Missis,

I declar for

't,

I didn't;

--never seed it till dis yer blessed minnit."

"Topsy,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"don't you know it's wicked to tell lies?"

"I never tell no lies,

Miss Feely,"

said Topsy,

with virtuous gravity;

"it's jist the truth I've been a tellin now,

and an't nothin else."

"Topsy,

I shall have to whip you,

if you tell lies so."

"Laws,

Missis,

if you's to whip all day,

couldn't say no other way,"

said Topsy,

beginning to blubber.

"I never seed dat ar,

--it must a got caught in my sleeve.

Miss Feeley must have left it on the bed,

and it got caught in the clothes,

and so got in my sleeve."

Miss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie,

that she caught the child and shook her.

"Don't you tell me that again!"

The shake brought the glove on to the floor,

from the other sleeve.

"There,

you!"

said Miss Ophelia,

"will you tell me now,

you didn't steal the ribbon?"

Topsy now confessed to the gloves,

but still persisted in denying the ribbon.

"Now,

Topsy,"

said Miss Ophelia,

"if you'll confess all about it,

I won't whip you this time."

Thus adjured,

Topsy confessed to the ribbon and gloves,

with woful protestations of penitence.

"Well,

now,

tell me.

I know you must have taken other things since you have been in the house,

for I let you run about all day yesterday.

Now,

tell me if you took anything,

and I shan't whip you."

"Laws,

Missis!

I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her neck."

"You did,

you naughty child!

--Well,

what else?"

"I took Rosa's yer-rings,

--them red ones."

"Go bring them to me this minute,

both of

'em."

"Laws,

Missis!

I can't,

--they

's burnt up!"

"Burnt up!

--what a story!

Go get

'em,

or I'll whip you."

Topsy,

with loud protestations,

and tears,

and groans,

declared that she -could- not.

"They

's burnt up,

--they was."

"What did you burn

'em for?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Cause I

's wicked,

--I is.

I

's mighty wicked,

any how.

I can't help it."

Just at this moment,

Eva came innocently into the room,

with the identical coral necklace on her neck.

"Why,

Eva,

where did you get your necklace?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Get it?

Why,

I've had it on all day,"

said Eva.

"Did you have it on yesterday?"

"Yes;

and what is funny,

Aunty,

I had it on all night.

I forgot to take it off when I went to bed."

Miss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered;

the more so,

as Rosa,

at that instant,

came into the room,

with a basket of newly-ironed linen poised on her head,

and the coral ear-drops shaking in her ears!

"I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child!"

she said,

in despair.

"What in the world did you tell me you took those things for,

Topsy?"

"Why,

Missis said I must

'fess;

and I couldn't think of nothin' else to

'fess,"

said Topsy,

rubbing her eyes.

"But,

of course,

I didn't want you to confess things you didn't do,"

said Miss Ophelia;

"that's telling a lie,

just as much as the other."

"Laws,

now,

is it?"

said Topsy,

with an air of innocent wonder.

"La,

there an't any such thing as truth in that limb,"

said Rosa,

looking indignantly at Topsy.

"If I was Mas'r St. Clare,

I'd whip her till the blood run.

I would,

--I'd let her catch it!"

"No,

no Rosa,"

said Eva,

with an air of command,

which the child could assume at times;

"you mustn't talk so,

Rosa.

I can't bear to hear it."

"La sakes!

Miss Eva,

you

's so good,

you don't know nothing how to get along with niggers.

There's no way but to cut

'em well up,

I tell ye."

"Rosa!"

said Eva,

"hush!

Don't you say another word of that sort!"

and the eye of the child flashed,

and her cheek deepened its color.

Rosa was cowed in a moment.

"Miss Eva has got the St. Clare blood in her,

that's plain.

She can speak,

for all the world,

just like her papa,"

she said,

as she passed out of the room.

Eva stood looking at Topsy.

There stood the two children representatives of the two extremes of society.

The fair,

high-bred child,

with her golden head,

her deep eyes,

her spiritual,

noble brow,

and prince-like movements;

and her black,

keen,

subtle,

cringing,

yet acute neighbor.

They stood the representatives of their races.

The Saxon,

born of ages of cultivation,

command,

education,

physical and moral eminence;

the Afric,

born of ages of oppression,

submission,

ignorance,

toil and vice!

Something,

perhaps,

of such thoughts struggled through Eva's mind.

But a child's thoughts are rather dim,

undefined instincts;

and in Eva's noble nature many such were yearning and working,

for which she had no power of utterance.

When Miss Ophelia expatiated on Topsy's naughty,

wicked conduct,

the child looked perplexed and sorrowful,

but said,

sweetly.

"Poor Topsy,

why need you steal?

You're going to be taken good care of now.

I'm sure I'd rather give you anything of mine,

than have you steal it."

It was the first word of kindness the child had ever heard in her life;

and the sweet tone and manner struck strangely on the wild,

rude heart,

and a sparkle of something like a tear shone in the keen,

round,

glittering eye;

but it was followed by the short laugh and habitual grin.

No!

the ear that has never heard anything but abuse is strangely incredulous of anything so heavenly as kindness;

and Topsy only thought Eva's speech something funny and inexplicable,

--she did not believe it.

But what was to be done with Topsy?

Miss Ophelia found the case a puzzler;

her rules for bringing up didn't seem to apply.

She thought she would take time to think of it;

and,

by the way of gaining time,

and in hopes of some indefinite moral virtues supposed to be inherent in dark closets,

Miss Ophelia shut Topsy up in one till she had arranged her ideas further on the subject.

"I don't see,"

said Miss Ophelia to St. Clare,

"how I'm going to manage that child,

without whipping her."

"Well,

whip her,

then,

to your heart's content;

I'll give you full power to do what you like."

"Children always have to be whipped,"

said Miss Ophelia;

"I never heard of bringing them up without."

"O,

well,

certainly,"

said St. Clare;

"do as you think best.

Only I'll make one suggestion: I've seen this child whipped with a poker,

knocked down with the shovel or tongs,

whichever came handiest,

&c.;

and,

seeing that she is used to that style of operation,

I think your whippings will have to be pretty energetic,

to make much impression."

"What is to be done with her,

then?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"You have started a serious question,"

said St. Clare;

"I wish you'd answer it.

What is to be done with a human being that can be governed only by the lash,

---that- fails,

--it's a very common state of things down here!"

"I'm sure I don't know;

I never saw such a child as this."

"Such children are very common among us,

and such men and women,

too.

How are they to be governed?"

said St. Clare.

"I'm sure it's more than I can say,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Or I either,"

said St. Clare.

"The horrid cruelties and outrages that once and a while find their way into the papers,

--such cases as Prue's,

for example,

--what do they come from?

In many cases,

it is a gradual hardening process on both sides,

--the owner growing more and more cruel,

as the servant more and more callous.

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum;

you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

I saw this very early when I became an owner;

and I resolved never to begin,

because I did not know when I should stop,

--and I resolved,

at least,

to protect my own moral nature.

The consequence is,

that my servants act like spoiled children;

but I think that better than for us both to be brutalized together.

You have talked a great deal about our responsibilities in educating,

Cousin.

I really wanted you to -try- with one child,

who is a specimen of thousands among us."

"It is your system makes such children,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"I know it;

but they are -made-,

--they exist,

--and what -is- to be done with them?"

"Well,

I can't say I thank you for the experiment.

But,

then,

as it appears to be a duty,

I shall persevere and try,

and do the best I can,"

said Miss Ophelia;

and Miss Ophelia,

after this,

did labor,

with a commendable degree of zeal and energy,

on her new subject.

She instituted regular hours and employments for her,

and undertook to teach her to read and sew.

In the former art,

the child was quick enough.

She learned her letters as if by magic,

and was very soon able to read plain reading;

but the sewing was a more difficult matter.

The creature was as lithe as a cat,

and as active as a monkey,

and the confinement of sewing was her abomination;

so she broke her needles,

threw them slyly out of the window,

or down in chinks of the walls;

she tangled,

broke,

and dirtied her thread,

or,

with a sly movement,

would throw a spool away altogether.

Her motions were almost as quick as those of a practised conjurer,

and her command of her face quite as great;

and though Miss Ophelia could not help feeling that so many accidents could not possibly happen in succession,

yet she could not,

without a watchfulness which would leave her no time for anything else,

detect her.

Topsy was soon a noted character in the establishment.

Her talent for every species of drollery,

grimace,

and mimicry,

--for dancing,

tumbling,

climbing,

singing,

whistling,

imitating every sound that hit her fancy,

--seemed inexhaustible.

In her play-hours,

she invariably had every child in the establishment at her heels,

open-mouthed with admiration and wonder,

--not excepting Miss Eva,

who appeared to be fascinated by her wild diablerie,

as a dove is sometimes charmed by a glittering serpent.

Miss Ophelia was uneasy that Eva should fancy Topsy's society so much,

and implored St. Clare to forbid it.

"Poh!

let the child alone,"

said St. Clare.

"Topsy will do her good."

"But so depraved a child,

--are you not afraid she will teach her some mischief?"

"She can't teach her mischief;

she might teach it to some children,

but evil rolls off Eva's mind like dew off a cabbage-leaf,

--not a drop sinks in."

"Don't be too sure,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"I know I'd never let a child of mine play with Topsy."

"Well,

your children needn't,"

said St. Clare,

"but mine may;

if Eva could have been spoiled,

it would have been done years ago."

Topsy was at first despised and contemned by the upper servants.

They soon found reason to alter their opinion.

It was very soon discovered that whoever cast an indignity on Topsy was sure to meet with some inconvenient accident shortly after;

--either a pair of ear-rings or some cherished trinket would be missing,

or an article of dress would be suddenly found utterly ruined,

or the person would stumble accidently into a pail of hot water,

or a libation of dirty slop would unaccountably deluge them from above when in full gala dress;-and on all these occasions,

when investigation was made,

there was nobody found to stand sponsor for the indignity.

Topsy was cited,

and had up before all the domestic judicatories,

time and again;

but always sustained her examinations with most edifying innocence and gravity of appearance.

Nobody in the world ever doubted who did the things;

but not a scrap of any direct evidence could be found to establish the suppositions,

and Miss Ophelia was too just to feel at liberty to proceed to any length without it.

The mischiefs done were always so nicely timed,

also,

as further to shelter the aggressor.

Thus,

the times for revenge on Rosa and Jane,

the two chamber maids,

were always chosen in those seasons when (as not unfrequently happened) they were in disgrace with their mistress,

when any complaint from them would of course meet with no sympathy.

In short,

Topsy soon made the household understand the propriety of letting her alone;

and she was let alone,

accordingly.

Topsy was smart and energetic in all manual operations,

learning everything that was taught her with surprising quickness.

With a few lessons,

she had learned to do the proprieties of Miss Ophelia's chamber in a way with which even that particular lady could find no fault.

Mortal hands could not lay spread smoother,

adjust pillows more accurately,

sweep and dust and arrange more perfectly,

than Topsy,

when she chose,

--but she didn't very often choose.

If Miss Ophelia,

after three or four days of careful patient supervision,

was so sanguine as to suppose that Topsy had at last fallen into her way,

could do without over-looking,

and so go off and busy herself about something else,

Topsy would hold a perfect carnival of confusion,

for some one or two hours.

Instead of making the bed,

she would amuse herself with pulling off the pillowcases,

butting her woolly head among the pillows,

till it would sometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking out in various directions;

she would climb the posts,

and hang head downward from the tops;

flourish the sheets and spreads all over the apartment;

dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's night-clothes,

and enact various performances with that,

--singing and whistling,

and making grimaces at herself in the looking-glass;

in short,

as Miss Ophelia phrased it,

"raising Cain" generally.

On one occasion,

Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best scarlet India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a turban,

going on with her rehearsals before the glass in great style,

--Miss Ophelia having,

with carelessness most unheard-of in her,

left the key for once in her drawer.

"Topsy!"

she would say,

when at the end of all patience,

"what does make you act so?"

"Dunno,

Missis,

--I spects cause I

's so wicked!"

"I don't know anything what I shall do with you,

Topsy."

"Law,

Missis,

you must whip me;

my old Missis allers whipped me.

I an't used to workin' unless I gets whipped."

"Why,

Topsy,

I don't want to whip you.

You can do well,

if you've a mind to;

what is the reason you won't?"

"Laws,

Missis,

I

's used to whippin';

I spects it's good for me."

Miss Ophelia tried the recipe,

and Topsy invariably made a terrible commotion,

screaming,

groaning and imploring,

though half an hour afterwards,

when roosted on some projection of the balcony,

and surrounded by a flock of admiring "young uns,"

she would express the utmost contempt of the whole affair.

"Law,

Miss Feely whip!

--wouldn't kill a skeeter,

her whippins.

Oughter see how old Mas'r made the flesh fly;

old Mas'r know'd how!"

Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormities,

evidently considering them as something peculiarly distinguishing.

"Law,

you niggers,"

she would say to some of her auditors,

"does you know you

's all sinners?

Well,

you is --everybody is.

White folks is sinners too,

--Miss Feely says so;

but I spects niggers is the biggest ones;

but lor!

ye an't any on ye up to me.

I

's so awful wicked there can't nobody do nothin' with me.

I used to keep old Missis a swarin' at me half de time.

I spects I

's the wickedest critter in the world;"

and Topsy would cut a summerset,

and come up brisk and shining on to a higher perch,

and evidently plume herself on the distinction.

Miss Ophelia busied herself very earnestly on Sundays,

teaching Topsy the catechism.

Topsy had an uncommon verbal memory,

and committed with a fluency that greatly encouraged her instructress.

"What good do you expect it is going to do her?"

said St. Clare.

"Why,

it always has done children good.

It's what children always have to learn,

you know,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Understand it or not,"

said St. Clare.

"O,

children never understand it at the time;

but,

after they are grown up,

it'll come to them."

"Mine hasn't come to me yet,"

said St. Clare,

"though I'll bear testimony that you put it into me pretty thoroughly when I was a boy."'

"Ah,

you were always good at learning,

Augustine.

I used to have great hopes of you,"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Well,

haven't you now?"

said St. Clare.

"I wish you were as good as you were when you were a boy,

Augustine."

"So do I,

that's a fact,

Cousin,"

said St. Clare.

"Well,

go ahead and catechize Topsy;

may be you'll make out something yet."

Topsy,

who had stood like a black statue during this discussion,

with hands decently folded,

now,

at a signal from Miss Ophelia,

went on:

"Our first parents,

being left to the freedom of their own will,

fell from the state wherein they were created."

Topsy's eyes twinkled,

and she looked inquiringly.

"What is it,

Topsy?"

said Miss Ophelia.

"Please,

Missis,

was dat ar state Kintuck?"

"What state,

Topsy?"

"Dat state dey fell out of.

I used to hear Mas'r tell how we came down from Kintuck."

St. Clare laughed.

"You'll have to give her a meaning,

or she'll make one,"

said he.

"There seems to be a theory of emigration suggested there."

"O!

Augustine,

be still,"

said Miss Ophelia;

"how can I do anything,

if you will be laughing?"

"Well,

I won't disturb the exercises again,

on my honor;"

and St. Clare took his paper into the parlor,

and sat down,

till Topsy had finished her recitations.

They were all very well,

only that now and then she would oddly transpose some important words,

and persist in the mistake,

in spite of every effort to the contrary;

and St. Clare,

after all his promises of goodness,

took a wicked pleasure in these mistakes,

calling Topsy to him whenever he had a mind to amuse himself,

and getting her to repeat the offending passages,

in spite of Miss Ophelia's remonstrances.

"How do you think I can do anything with the child,

if you will go on so,

Augustine?"

she would say.

"Well,

it is too bad,

--I won't again;

but I do like to hear the droll little image stumble over those big words!"

"But you confirm her in the wrong way."

"What's the odds?

One word is as good as another to her."

"You wanted me to bring her up right;

and you ought to remember she is a reasonable creature,

and be careful of your influence over her."

"O,

dismal!

so I ought;

but,

as Topsy herself says,

'I

's so wicked!'"

In very much this way Topsy's training proceeded,

for a year or two,

--Miss Ophelia worrying herself,

from day to day,

with her,

as a kind of chronic plague,

to whose inflictions she became,

in time,

as accustomed,

as persons sometimes do to the neuralgia or sick headache.

St. Clare took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might in the tricks of a parrot or a pointer.

Topsy,

whenever her sins brought her into disgrace in other quarters,

always took refuge behind his chair;

and St. Clare,

in one way or other,

would make peace for her.

From him she got many a stray picayune,

which she laid out in nuts and candies,

and distributed,

with careless generosity,

to all the children in the family;

for Topsy,

to do her justice,

was good-natured and liberal,

and only spiteful in self-defence.

She is fairly introduced into our -corps de ballet-,

and will figure,

from time to time,

in her turn,

with other performers.

CHAPTER XXI

Kentuck

Our readers may not be unwilling to glance back,

for a brief interval,

at Uncle Tom's Cabin,

on the Kentucky farm,

and see what has been transpiring among those whom he had left behind.

It was late in the summer afternoon,

and the doors and windows of the large parlor all stood open,

to invite any stray breeze,

that might feel in a good humor,

to enter.

Mr. Shelby sat in a large hall opening into the room,

and running through the whole length of the house,

to a balcony on either end.

Leisurely tipped back on one chair,

with his heels in another,

he was enjoying his after-dinner cigar.

Mrs. Shelby sat in the door,

busy about some fine sewing;

she seemed like one who had something on her mind,

which she was seeking an opportunity to introduce.

"Do you know,"

she said,

"that Chloe has had a letter from Tom?"

"Ah!

has she?

Tom

's got some friend there,

it seems.

How is the old boy?"

"He has been bought by a very fine family,

I should think,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

--"is kindly treated,

and has not much to do."

"Ah!

well,

I'm glad of it,

--very glad,"

said Mr. Shelby,

heartily.

"Tom,

I suppose,

will get reconciled to a Southern residence;

--hardly want to come up here again."

"On the contrary he inquires very anxiously,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

"when the money for his redemption is to be raised."

"I'm sure -I- don't know,"

said Mr. Shelby.

"Once get business running wrong,

there does seem to be no end to it.

It's like jumping from one bog to another,

all through a swamp;

borrow of one to pay another,

and then borrow of another to pay one,

--and these confounded notes falling due before a man has time to smoke a cigar and turn round,

--dunning letters and dunning messages,

--all scamper and hurry-scurry."

"It does seem to me,

my dear,

that something might be done to straighten matters.

Suppose we sell off all the horses,

and sell one of your farms,

and pay up square?"

"O,

ridiculous,

Emily!

You are the finest woman in Kentucky;

but still you haven't sense to know that you don't understand business;

--women never do,

and never can.

"But,

at least,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

"could not you give me some little insight into yours;

a list of all your debts,

at least,

and of all that is owed to you,

and let me try and see if I can't help you to economize."

"O,

bother!

don't plague me,

Emily!

--I can't tell exactly.

I know somewhere about what things are likely to be;

but there's no trimming and squaring my affairs,

as Chloe trims crust off her pies.

You don't know anything about business,

I tell you."

And Mr. Shelby,

not knowing any other way of enforcing his ideas,

raised his voice,

--a mode of arguing very convenient and convincing,

when a gentleman is discussing matters of business with his wife.

Mrs. Shelby ceased talking,

with something of a sigh.

The fact was,

that though her husband had stated she was a woman,

she had a clear,

energetic,

practical mind,

and a force of character every way superior to that of her husband;

so that it would not have been so very absurd a supposition,

to have allowed her capable of managing,

as Mr. Shelby supposed.

Her heart was set on performing her promise to Tom and Aunt Chloe,

and she sighed as discouragements thickened around her.

"Don't you think we might in some way contrive to raise that money?

Poor Aunt Chloe!

her heart is so set on it!"

"I'm sorry,

if it is.

I think I was premature in promising.

I'm not sure,

now,

but it's the best way to tell Chloe,

and let her make up her mind to it.

Tom'll have another wife,

in a year or two;

and she had better take up with somebody else."

"Mr. Shelby,

I have taught my people that their marriages are as sacred as ours.

I never could think of giving Chloe such advice."

"It's a pity,

wife,

that you have burdened them with a morality above their condition and prospects.

I always thought so."

"It's only the morality of the Bible,

Mr. Shelby."

"Well,

well,

Emily,

I don't pretend to interfere with your religious notions;

only they seem extremely unfitted for people in that condition."

"They are,

indeed,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

"and that is why,

from my soul,

I hate the whole thing.

I tell you,

my dear,

-I- cannot absolve myself from the promises I make to these helpless creatures.

If I can get the money no other way I will take music-scholars;

--I could get enough,

I know,

and earn the money myself."

"You wouldn't degrade yourself that way,

Emily?

I never could consent to it."

"Degrade!

would it degrade me as much as to break my faith with the helpless?

No,

indeed!"

"Well,

you are always heroic and transcendental,"

said Mr. Shelby,

"but I think you had better think before you undertake such a piece of Quixotism."

Here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Aunt Chloe,

at the end of the verandah.

"If you please,

Missis,"

said she.

"Well,

Chloe,

what is it?"

said her mistress,

rising,

and going to the end of the balcony.

"If Missis would come and look at dis yer lot o' poetry."

Chloe had a particular fancy for calling poultry poetry,

--an application of language in which she always persisted,

notwithstanding frequent corrections and advisings from the young members of the family.

"La sakes!"

she would say,

"I can't see;

one jis good as turry,

--poetry suthin good,

any how;"

and so poetry Chloe continued to call it.

Mrs. Shelby smiled as she saw a prostrate lot of chickens and ducks,

over which Chloe stood,

with a very grave face of consideration.

"I'm a thinkin whether Missis would be a havin a chicken pie o' dese yer."

"Really,

Aunt Chloe,

I don't much care;

--serve them any way you like."

Chloe stood handling them over abstractedly;

it was quite evident that the chickens were not what she was thinking of.

At last,

with the short laugh with which her tribe often introduce a doubtful proposal,

she said,

"Laws me,

Missis!

what should Mas'r and Missis be a troublin theirselves

'bout de money,

and not a usin what's right in der hands?"

and Chloe laughed again.

"I don't understand you,

Chloe,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

nothing doubting,

from her knowledge of Chloe's manner,

that she had heard every word of the conversation that had passed between her and her husband.

"Why,

laws me,

Missis!"

said Chloe,

laughing again,

"other folks hires out der niggers and makes money on

'em!

Don't keep sich a tribe eatin

'em out of house and home."

"Well,

Chloe,

who do you propose that we should hire out?"

"Laws!

I an't a proposin nothin;

only Sam he said der was one of dese yer -perfectioners-,

dey calls

'em,

in Louisville,

said he wanted a good hand at cake and pastry;

and said he'd give four dollars a week to one,

he did."

"Well,

Chloe."

"Well,

laws,

I

's a thinkin,

Missis,

it's time Sally was put along to be doin' something.

Sally

's been under my care,

now,

dis some time,

and she does most as well as me,

considerin;

and if Missis would only let me go,

I would help fetch up de money.

I an't afraid to put my cake,

nor pies nother,

'long side no -perfectioner's-.

"Confectioner's,

Chloe."

"Law sakes,

Missis!

'tan't no odds;

--words is so curis,

can't never get

'em right!"

"But,

Chloe,

do you want to leave your children?"

"Laws,

Missis!

de boys is big enough to do day's works;

dey does well enough;

and Sally,

she'll take de baby,

--she's such a peart young un,

she won't take no lookin arter."

"Louisville is a good way off."

"Law sakes!

who's afeard?

--it's down river,

somer near my old man,

perhaps?"

said Chloe,

speaking the last in the tone of a question,

and looking at Mrs. Shelby.

"No,

Chloe;

it's many a hundred miles off,"

said Mrs. Shelby.

Chloe's countenance fell.

"Never mind;

your going there shall bring you nearer,

Chloe.

Yes,

you may go;

and your wages shall every cent of them be laid aside for your husband's redemption."

As when a bright sunbeam turns a dark cloud to silver,

so Chloe's dark face brightened immediately,

--it really shone.

"Laws!

if Missis isn't too good!

I was thinking of dat ar very thing;

cause I shouldn't need no clothes,

nor shoes,

nor nothin,

--I could save every cent.

How many weeks is der in a year,

Missis?"

"Fifty-two,"

said Mrs. Shelby.

"Laws!

now,

dere is?

and four dollars for each on em.

Why,

how much

'd dat ar be?"

"Two hundred and eight dollars,"

said Mrs. Shelby.

"Why-e!"

said Chloe,

with an accent of surprise and delight;

"and how long would it take me to work it out,

Missis?"

"Some four or five years,

Chloe;

but,

then,

you needn't do it all,

--I shall add something to it."

"I wouldn't hear to Missis' givin lessons nor nothin.

Mas'r's quite right in dat ar;

--'t wouldn't do,

no ways.

I hope none our family ever be brought to dat ar,

while I

's got hands."

"Don't fear,

Chloe;

I'll take care of the honor of the family,"

said Mrs. Shelby,

smiling.

"But when do you expect to go?"

"Well,

I want spectin nothin;

only Sam,

he's a gwine to de river with some colts,

and he said I could go long with him;

so I jes put my things together.

If Missis was willin,

I'd go with Sam tomorrow morning,

if Missis would write my pass,

and write me a commendation."

"Well,

Chloe,

I'll attend to it,

if Mr. Shelby has no objections.

I must speak to him."

Mrs. Shelby went up stairs,

and Aunt Chloe,

delighted,

went out to her cabin,

to make her preparation.

"Law sakes,

Mas'r George!

ye didn't know I

's a gwine to Louisville tomorrow!"

she said to George,

as entering her cabin,

he found her busy in sorting over her baby's clothes.

"I thought I'd jis look over sis's things,

and get

'em straightened up.

But I'm gwine,

Mas'r George,

--gwine to have four dollars a week;

and Missis is gwine to lay it all up,

to buy back my old man agin!"

"Whew!"

said George,

"here's a stroke of business,

to be sure!

How are you going?"

"Tomorrow,

wid Sam.

And now,

Mas'r George,

I knows you'll jis sit down and write to my old man,

and tell him all about it,

--won't ye?"

"To be sure,"

said George;

"Uncle Tom'll be right glad to hear from us.

I'll go right in the house,

for paper and ink;

and then,

you know,

Aunt Chloe,

I can tell about the new colts and all."

"Sartin,

sartin,

Mas'r George;

you go

'long,

and I'll get ye up a bit o' chicken,

or some sich;

ye won't have many more suppers wid yer poor old aunty."

CHAPTER XXII

"The Grass Withereth --the Flower Fadeth"

Life passes,

with us all,

a day at a time;

so it passed with our friend Tom,

till two years were gone.

Though parted from all his soul held dear,

and though often yearning for what lay beyond,

still was he never positively and consciously miserable;

for,

so well is the harp of human feeling strung,

that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony;

and,

on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial,

we can remember that each hour,

as it glided,

brought its diversions and alleviations,

so that,

though not happy wholly,

we were not,

either,

wholly miserable.

Tom read,

in his only literary cabinet,

of one who had "learned in whatsoever state he was,

therewith to be content."

It seemed to him good and reasonable doctrine,

and accorded well with the settled and thoughtful habit which he had acquired from the reading of that same book.

His letter homeward,

as we related in the last chapter,

was in due time answered by Master George,

in a good,

round,

school-boy hand,

that Tom said might be read "most acrost the room."

It contained various refreshing items of home intelligence,

with which our reader is fully acquainted: stated how Aunt Chloe had been hired out to a confectioner in Louisville,

where her skill in the pastry line was gaining wonderful sums of money,

all of which,

Tom was informed,

was to be laid up to go to make up the sum of his redemption money;

Mose and Pete were thriving,

and the baby was trotting all about the house,

under the care of Sally and the family generally.

Tom's cabin was shut up for the present;

but George expatiated brilliantly on ornaments and additions to be made to it when Tom came back.

The rest of this letter gave a list of George's school studies,

each one headed by a flourishing capital;

and also told the names of four new colts that appeared on the premises since Tom left;

and stated,

in the same connection,

that father and mother were well.

The style of the letter was decidedly concise and terse;

but Tom thought it the most wonderful specimen of composition that had appeared in modern times.

He was never tired of looking at it,

and even held a council with Eva on the expediency of getting it framed,

to hang up in his room.

Nothing but the difficulty of arranging it so that both sides of the page would show at once stood in the way of this undertaking.

The friendship between Tom and Eva had grown with the child's growth.

It would be hard to say what place she held in the soft,

impressible heart of her faithful attendant.

He loved her as something frail and earthly,

yet almost worshipped her as something heavenly and divine.

He gazed on her as the Italian sailor gazes on his image of the child Jesus,

--with a mixture of reverence and tenderness;

and to humor her graceful fancies,

and meet those thousand simple wants which invest childhood like a many-colored rainbow,

was Tom's chief delight.

In the market,

at morning,

his eyes were always on the flower-stalls for rare bouquets for her,

and the choicest peach or orange was slipped into his pocket to give to her when he came back;

and the sight that pleased him most was her sunny head looking out the gate for his distant approach,

and her childish questions,

--"Well,

Uncle Tom,

what have you got for me today?"

Nor was Eva less zealous in kind offices,

in return.

Though a child,

she was a beautiful reader;

--a fine musical ear,

a quick poetic fancy,

and an instinctive sympathy with what's grand and noble,

made her such a reader of the Bible as Tom had never before heard.

At first,

she read to please her humble friend;

but soon her own earnest nature threw out its tendrils,

and wound itself around the majestic book;

and Eva loved it,

because it woke in her strange yearnings,

and strong,

dim emotions,

such as impassioned,

imaginative children love to feel.

The parts that pleased her most were the Revelations and the Prophecies,

--parts whose dim and wondrous imagery,

and fervent language,

impressed her the more,

that she questioned vainly of their meaning;

--and she and her simple friend,

the old child and the young one,

felt just alike about it.

All that they knew was,

that they spoke of a glory to be revealed,

--a wondrous something yet to come,

wherein their soul rejoiced,

yet knew not why;

and though it be not so in the physical,

yet in moral science that which cannot be understood is not always profitless.

For the soul awakes,

a trembling stranger,

between two dim eternities,

--the eternal past,

the eternal future.

The light shines only on a small space around her;

therefore,

she needs must yearn towards the unknown;

and the voices and shadowy movings which come to her from out the cloudy pillar of inspiration have each one echoes and answers in her own expecting nature.

Its mystic imagery are so many talismans and gems inscribed with unknown hieroglyphics;

she folds them in her bosom,

and expects to read them when she passes beyond the veil.

At this time in our story,

the whole St. Clare establishment is,

for the time being,

removed to their villa on Lake Pontchartrain.

The heats of summer had driven all who were able to leave the sultry and unhealthy city,

to seek the shores of the lake,

and its cool sea-breezes.

St. Clare's villa was an East Indian cottage,

surrounded by light verandahs of bamboo-work,

and opening on all sides into gardens and pleasure-grounds.

The common sitting-room opened on to a large garden,

fragrant with every picturesque plant and flower of the tropics,

where winding paths ran down to the very shores of the lake,

whose silvery sheet of water lay there,

rising and falling in the sunbeams,

--a picture never for an hour the same,

yet every hour more beautiful.

It is now one of those intensely golden sunsets which kindles the whole horizon into one blaze of glory,

and makes the water another sky.

The lake lay in rosy or golden streaks,

save where white-winged vessels glided hither and thither,

like so many spirits,

and little golden stars twinkled through the glow,

and looked down at themselves as they trembled in the water.

Tom and Eva were seated on a little mossy seat,

in an arbor,

at the foot of the garden.

It was Sunday evening,

and Eva's Bible lay open on her knee.

She read,

--"And I saw a sea of glass,

mingled with fire."

"Tom,"

said Eva,

suddenly stopping,

and pointing to the lake,

"there

't is."

"What,

Miss Eva?"

"Don't you see,

--there?"

said the child,

pointing to the glassy water,

which,

as it rose and fell,

reflected the golden glow of the sky.

"There's a

'sea of glass,

mingled with fire.'"

"True enough,

Miss Eva,"

said Tom;

and Tom sang --

"O,

had I the wings of the morning,

I'd fly away to Canaan's shore;

Bright angels should convey me home,

To the new Jerusalem."

"Where do you suppose new Jerusalem is,

Uncle Tom?"

said Eva.

"O,

up in the clouds,

Miss Eva."

"Then I think I see it,"

said Eva.

"Look in those clouds!

--they look like great gates of pearl;

and you can see beyond them --far,

far off --it's all gold.

Tom,

sing about

'spirits bright.'"

Tom sung the words of a well-known Methodist hymn,

"I see a band of spirits bright,

That taste the glories there;

They all are robed in spotless white,

And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom,

I've seen -them-,"

said Eva.

Tom had no doubt of it at all;

it did not surprise him in the least.

If Eva had told him she had been to heaven,

he would have thought it entirely probable.

"They come to me sometimes in my sleep,

those spirits;"

and Eva's eyes grew dreamy,

and she hummed,

in a low voice,

"They are all robed in spotless white,

And conquering palms they bear."

"Uncle Tom,"

said Eva,

"I'm going there."

"Where,

Miss Eva?"

The child rose,

and pointed her little hand to the sky;

the glow of evening lit her golden hair and flushed cheek with a kind of unearthly radiance,

and her eyes were bent earnestly on the skies.

"I'm going -there-,"

she said,

"to the spirits bright,

Tom;

-I'm going,

before long-."

The faithful old heart felt a sudden thrust;

and Tom thought how often he had noticed,

within six months,

that Eva's little hands had grown thinner,

and her skin more transparent,

and her breath shorter;

and how,

when she ran or played in the garden,

as she once could for hours,

she became soon so tired and languid.

He had heard Miss Ophelia speak often of a cough,

that all her medicaments could not cure;

and even now that fervent cheek and little hand were burning with hectic fever;

and yet the thought that Eva's words suggested had never come to him till now.

Has there ever been a child like Eva?

Yes,

there have been;

but their names are always on grave-stones,

and their sweet smiles,

their heavenly eyes,

their singular words and ways,

are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts.

In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who -is not-.

It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels,

whose office it was to sojourn for a season here,

and endear to them the wayward human heart,

that they might bear it upward with them in their homeward flight.

When you see that deep,

spiritual light in the eye,

--when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children,

--hope not to retain that child;

for the seal of heaven is on it,

and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes.

Even so,

beloved Eva!

fair star of thy dwelling!

Thou art passing away;

but they that love thee dearest know it not.

The colloquy between Tom and Eva was interrupted by a hasty call from Miss Ophelia.

"Eva --Eva!

--why,

child,

the dew is falling;

you mustn't be out there!"

Eva and Tom hastened in.

Miss Ophelia was old,

and skilled in the tactics of nursing.

She was from New England,

and knew well the first guileful footsteps of that soft,

insidious disease,

which sweeps away so many of the fairest and loveliest,

and,

before one fibre of life seems broken,

seals them irrevocably for death.

She had noted the slight,

dry cough,

the daily brightening cheek;

nor could the lustre of the eye,

and the airy buoyancy born of fever,

deceive her.

She tried to communicate her fears to St. Clare;

but he threw back her suggestions with a restless petulance,

unlike his usual careless good-humor.

"Don't be croaking,

Cousin,

--I hate it!"

he would say;

"don't you see that the child is only growing.

Children always lose strength when they grow fast."

"But she has that cough!"

"O!

nonsense of that cough!

--it is not anything.

She has taken a little cold,

perhaps."

"Well,

that was just the way Eliza Jane was taken,

and Ellen and Maria Sanders."

"O!

stop these hobgoblin' nurse legends.

You old hands got so wise,

that a child cannot cough,

or sneeze,

but you see desperation and ruin at hand.

Only take care of the child,

keep her from the night air,

and don't let her play too hard,

and she'll do well enough."

So St. Clare said;

but he grew nervous and restless.

He watched Eva feverishly day by day,

as might be told by the frequency with which he repeated over that "the child was quite well" --that there wasn't anything in that cough,

--it was only some little stomach affection,

such as children often had.

But he kept by her more than before,

took her oftener to ride with him,

brought home every few days some receipt or strengthening mixture,

--"not,"

he said,

"that the child -needed- it,

but then it would not do her any harm."

If it must be told,

the thing that struck a deeper pang to his heart than anything else was the daily increasing maturity of the child's mind and feelings.

While still retaining all a child's fanciful graces,

yet she often dropped,

unconsciously,

words of such a reach of thought,

and strange unworldly wisdom,

that they seemed to be an inspiration.

At such times,

St. Clare would feel a sudden thrill,

and clasp her in his arms,

as if that fond clasp could save her;

and his heart rose up with wild determination to keep her,

never to let her go.

The child's whole heart and soul seemed absorbed in works of love and kindness.

Impulsively generous she had always been;

but there was a touching and womanly thoughtfulness about her now,

that every one noticed.

She still loved to play with Topsy,

and the various colored children;

but she now seemed rather a spectator than an actor of their plays,

and she would sit for half an hour at a time,

laughing at the odd tricks of Topsy,

--and then a shadow would seem to pass across her face,

her eyes grew misty,

and her thoughts were afar.

"Mamma,"

she said,

suddenly,

to her mother,

one day,

"why don't we teach our servants to read?"

"What a question child!

People never do."

"Why don't they?"

said Eva.

"Because it is no use for them to read.

It don't help them to work any better,

and they are not made for anything else."

"But they ought to read the Bible,

mamma,

to learn God's will."

"O!

they can get that read to them all -they- need."

"It seems to me,

mamma,

the Bible is for every one to read themselves.

They need it a great many times when there is nobody to read it."

"Eva,

you are an odd child,"

said her mother.

"Miss Ophelia has taught Topsy to read,"

continued Eva.

"Yes,

and you see how much good it does.

Topsy is the worst creature I ever saw!"

"Here's poor Mammy!"

said Eva.

"She does love the Bible so much,

and wishes so she could read!

And what will she do when I can't read to her?"

Marie was busy,

turning over the contents of a drawer,

as she answered,

"Well,

of course,

by and by,

Eva,

you will have other things to think of besides reading the Bible round to servants.

Not but that is very proper;

I've done it myself,

when I had health.

But when you come to be dressing and going into company,

you won't have time.

See here!"

she added,

"these jewels I'm going to give you when you come out.

I wore them to my first ball.

I can tell you,

Eva,

I made a sensation."

Eva took the jewel-case,

and lifted from it a diamond necklace.

Her large,

thoughtful eyes rested on them,

but it was plain her thoughts were elsewhere.

"How sober you look child!"

said Marie.

"Are these worth a great deal of money,

mamma?"

"To be sure,

they are.

Father sent to France for them.

They are worth a small fortune."

"I wish I had them,"

said Eva,

"to do what I pleased with!"

"What would you do with them?"

"I'd sell them,

and buy a place in the free states,

and take all our people there,

and hire teachers,

to teach them to read and write."

Eva was cut short by her mother's laughing.

"Set up a boarding-school!

Wouldn't you teach them to play on the piano,

and paint on velvet?"

"I'd teach them to read their own Bible,

and write their own letters,

and read letters that are written to them,"

said Eva,

steadily.

"I know,

mamma,

it does come very hard on them that they can't do these things.

Tom feels it --Mammy does,

--a great many of them do.

I think it's wrong."

"Come,

come,

Eva;

you are only a child!

You don't know anything about these things,"

said Marie;

"besides,

your talking makes my head ache."

Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not exactly suit her.

Eva stole away;

but after that,

she assiduously gave Mammy reading lessons.

CHAPTER XXIII

Henrique

About this time,

St. Clare's brother Alfred,

with his eldest son,

a boy of twelve,

spent a day or two with the family at the lake.

No sight could be more singular and beautiful than that of these twin brothers.

Nature,

instead of instituting resemblances between them,

had made them opposites on every point;

yet a mysterious tie seemed to unite them in a closer friendship than ordinary.

They used to saunter,

arm in arm,

up and down the alleys and walks of the garden.

Augustine,

with his blue eyes and golden hair,

his ethereally flexible form and vivacious features;

and Alfred,

dark-eyed,

with haughty Roman profile,

firmly-knit limbs,

and decided bearing.

They were always abusing each other's opinions and practices,

and yet never a whit the less absorbed in each other's society;

in fact,

the very contrariety seemed to unite them,

like the attraction between opposite poles of the magnet.

Henrique,

the eldest son of Alfred,

was a noble,

dark-eyed,

princely boy,

full of vivacity and spirit;

and,

from the first moment of introduction,

seemed to be perfectly fascinated by the spirituelle graces of his cousin Evangeline.

Eva had a little pet pony,

of a snowy whiteness.

It was easy as a cradle,

and as gentle as its little mistress;

and this pony was now brought up to the back verandah by Tom,

while a little mulatto boy of about thirteen led along a small black Arabian,

which had just been imported,

at a great expense,

for Henrique.

Henrique had a boy's pride in his new possession;

and,

as he advanced and took the reins out of the hands of his little groom,

he looked carefully over him,

and his brow darkened.

"What's this,

Dodo,

you little lazy dog!

you haven't rubbed my horse down,

this morning."

"Yes,

Mas'r,"

said Dodo,

submissively;

"he got that dust on his own self."

"You rascal,

shut your mouth!"

said Henrique,

violently raising his riding-whip.

"How dare you speak?"

The boy was a handsome,

bright-eyed mulatto,

of just Henrique's size,

and his curling hair hung round a high,

bold forehead.

He had white blood in his veins,

as could be seen by the quick flush in his cheek,

and the sparkle of his eye,

as he eagerly tried to speak.

"Mas'r Henrique!

--" he began.

Henrique struck him across the face with his riding-whip,

and,

seizing one of his arms,

forced him on to his knees,

and beat him till he was out of breath.

"There,

you impudent dog!

Now will you learn not to answer back when I speak to you?

Take the horse back,

and clean him properly.

I'll teach you your place!"

"Young Mas'r,"

said Tom,

"I specs what he was gwine to say was,

that the horse would roll when he was bringing him up from the stable;

he's so full of spirits,

--that's the way he got that dirt on him;

I looked to his cleaning."

"You hold your tongue till you're asked to speak!"

said Henrique,

turning on his heel,

and walking up the steps to speak to Eva,

who stood in her riding-dress.

"Dear Cousin,

I'm sorry this stupid fellow has kept you waiting,"

he said.

"Let's sit down here,

on this seat till they come.

What's the matter,

Cousin?

--you look sober."

"How could you be so cruel and wicked to poor Dodo?"

asked Eva.

"Cruel,

--wicked!"

said the boy,

with unaffected surprise.

"What do you mean,

dear Eva?"

"I don't want you to call me dear Eva,

when you do so,"

said Eva.

"Dear Cousin,

you don't know Dodo;

it's the only way to manage him,

he's so full of lies and excuses.

The only way is to put him down at once,

--not let him open his mouth;

that's the way papa manages."

"But Uncle Tom said it was an accident,

and he never tells what isn't true."

"He's an uncommon old nigger,

then!"

said Henrique.

"Dodo will lie as fast as he can speak."

"You frighten him into deceiving,

if you treat him so."

"Why,

Eva,

you've really taken such a fancy to Dodo,

that I shall be jealous."

"But you beat him,

--and he didn't deserve it."

"O,

well,

it may go for some time when he does,

and don't get it.

A few cuts never come amiss with Dodo,

--he's a regular spirit,

I can tell you;

but I won't beat him again before you,

if it troubles you."

Eva was not satisfied,

but found it in vain to try to make her handsome cousin understand her feelings.

Dodo soon appeared,

with the horses.

"Well,

Dodo,

you've done pretty well,

this time,"

said his young master,

with a more gracious air.

"Come,

now,

and hold Miss Eva's horse while I put her on to the saddle."

Dodo came and stood by Eva's pony.

His face was troubled;

his eyes looked as if he had been crying.

Henrique,

who valued himself on his gentlemanly adroitness in all matters of gallantry,

soon had his fair cousin in the saddle,

and,

gathering the reins,

placed them in her hands.

But Eva bent to the other side of the horse,

where Dodo was standing,

and said,

as he relinquished the reins,

--"That's a good boy,

Dodo;

--thank you!"

Dodo looked up in amazement into the sweet young face;

the blood rushed to his cheeks,

and the tears to his eyes.

"Here,

Dodo,"

said his master,

imperiously.

Dodo sprang and held the horse,

while his master mounted.

"There's a picayune for you to buy candy with,

Dodo,"

said Henrique;

"go get some."

And Henrique cantered down the walk after Eva.

Dodo stood looking after the two children.

One had given him money;

and one had given him what he wanted far more,

--a kind word,

kindly spoken.

Dodo had been only a few months away from his mother.

His master had bought him at a slave warehouse,

for his handsome face,

to be a match to the handsome pony;

and he was now getting his breaking in,

at the hands of his young master.

The scene of the beating had been witnessed by the two brothers St. Clare,

from another part of the garden.

Augustine's cheek flushed;

but he only observed,

with his usual sarcastic carelessness.

"I suppose that's what we may call republican education,

Alfred?"

"Henrique is a devil of a fellow,

when his blood's up,"

said Alfred,

carelessly.

"I suppose you consider this an instructive practice for him,"

said Augustine,

drily.

"I couldn't help it,

if I didn't.

Henrique is a regular little tempest;

--his mother and I have given him up,

long ago.

But,

then,

that Dodo is a perfect sprite,

--no amount of whipping can hurt him."

"And this by way of teaching Henrique the first verse of a republican's catechism,

'All men are born free and equal!'"

"Poh!"

said Alfred;

"one of Tom Jefferson's pieces of French sentiment and humbug.

It's perfectly ridiculous to have that going the rounds among us,

to this day."

"I think it is,"

said St. Clare,

significantly.

"Because,"

said Alfred,

"we can see plainly enough that all men are -not- born free,

nor born equal;

they are born anything else.

For my part,

I think half this republican talk sheer humbug.

It is the educated,

the intelligent,

the wealthy,

the refined,

who ought to have equal rights and not the canaille."

"If you can keep the canaille of that opinion,"

said Augustine.

"They took -their- turn once,

in France."

"Of course,

they must be -kept down-,

consistently,

steadily,

as I -should-,"

said Alfred,

setting his foot hard down as if he were standing on somebody.

"It makes a terrible slip when they get up,"

said Augustine,

--"in St. Domingo,

for instance."

"Poh!"

said Alfred,

"we'll take care of that,

in this country.

We must set our face against all this educating,

elevating talk,

that is getting about now;

the lower class must not be educated."

"That is past praying for,"

said Augustine;

"educated they will be,

and we have only to say how.

Our system is educating them in barbarism and brutality.

We are breaking all humanizing ties,

and making them brute beasts;

and,

if they get the upper hand,

such we shall find them."

"They shall never get the upper hand!"

said Alfred.

"That's right,"

said St. Clare;

"put on the steam,

fasten down the escape-valve,

and sit on it,

and see where you'll land."

"Well,"

said Alfred,

"we -will- see.

I'm not afraid to sit on the escape-valve,

as long as the boilers are strong,

and the machinery works well."

"The nobles in Louis XVI.'s time thought just so;

and Austria and Pius IX.

think so now;

and,

some pleasant morning,

you may all be caught up to meet each other in the air,

-when the boilers burst-."

"-Dies declarabit-,"

said Alfred,

laughing.

"I tell you,"

said Augustine,

"if there is anything that is revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times,

it is that the masses are to rise,

and the under class become the upper one."

"That's one of your red republican humbugs,

Augustine!

Why didn't you ever take to the stump;

--you'd make a famous stump orator!

Well,

I hope I shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses comes on."

"Greasy or not greasy,

they will govern -you-,

when their time comes,"

said Augustine;

"and they will be just such rulers as you make them.

The French noblesse chose to have the people

'-sans culottes-,'

and they had

'-sans culotte-' governors to their hearts' content.

The people of Hayti --"

"O,

come,

Augustine!

as if we hadn't had enough of that abominable,

contemptible Hayti!* The Haytiens were not Anglo Saxons;

if they had been there would have been another story.

The Anglo Saxon is the dominant race of the world,

and -is to be so-."

* In August 1791,

as a consequence of the French Revolution,

the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt against the whites,

and in the period of turmoil that followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.

The "Emperor" Dessalines,

come to power in 1804,

massacred all the whites on the island.

Haitian bloodshed became an argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro,

a doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.

"Well,

there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our slaves,

now,"

said Augustine.

"There are plenty among them who have only enough of the African to give a sort of tropical warmth and fervor to our calculating firmness and foresight.

If ever the San Domingo hour comes,

Anglo Saxon blood will lead on the day.

Sons of white fathers,

with all our haughty feelings burning in their veins,

will not always be bought and sold and traded.

They will rise,

and raise with them their mother's race."

"Stuff!

--nonsense!"

"Well,"

said Augustine,

"there goes an old saying to this effect,

'As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be;

--they ate,

they drank,

they planted,

they builded,

and knew not till the flood came and took them.'"

"On the whole,

Augustine,

I think your talents might do for a circuit rider,"

said Alfred,

laughing.

"Never you fear for us;

possession is our nine points.

We've got the power.

This subject race,"

said he,

stamping firmly,

"is down and shall -stay- down!

We have energy enough to manage our own powder."

"Sons trained like your Henrique will be grand guardians of your powder-magazines,"

said Augustine,

--"so cool and self-possessed!

The proverb says,

'They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern others.'"

"There is a trouble there" said Alfred,

thoughtfully;

"there's no doubt that our system is a difficult one to train children under.

It gives too free scope to the passions,

altogether,

which,

in our climate,

are hot enough.

I find trouble with Henrique.

The boy is generous and warm-hearted,

but a perfect fire-cracker when excited.

I believe I shall send him North for his education,

where obedience is more fashionable,

and where he will associate more with equals,

and less with dependents."

"Since training children is the staple work of the human race,"

said Augustine,

"I should think it something of a consideration that our system does not work well there."

"It does not for some things,"

said Alfred;

"for others,

again,

it does.

It makes boys manly and courageous;

and the very vices of an abject race tend to strengthen in them the opposite virtues.

I think Henrique,

now,

has a keener sense of the beauty of truth,

from seeing lying and deception the universal badge of slavery."

"A Christian-like view of the subject,

certainly!"

said Augustine.

"It's true,

Christian-like or not;

and is about as Christian-like as most other things in the world,"

said Alfred.

"That may be,"

said St. Clare.

"Well,

there's no use in talking,

Augustine.

I believe we've been round and round this old track five hundred times,

more or less.

What do you say to a game of backgammon?"

The two brothers ran up the verandah steps,

and were soon seated at a light bamboo stand,

with the backgammon-board between them.

As they were setting their men,

Alfred said,

"I tell you,

Augustine,

if I thought as you do,

I should do something."

"I dare say you would,

--you are one of the doing sort,

--but what?"

"Why,

elevate your own servants,

for a specimen,"

said Alfred,

with a half-scornful smile.

"You might as well set Mount Ætna on them flat,

and tell them to stand up under it,

as tell me to elevate my servants under all the superincumbent mass of society upon them.

One man can do nothing,

against the whole action of a community.

Education,

to do anything,

must be a state education;

or there must be enough agreed in it to make a current."

"You take the first throw,"

said Alfred;

and the brothers were soon lost in the game,

and heard no more till the scraping of horses' feet was heard under the verandah.

"There come the children,"

said Augustine,

rising.

"Look here,

Alf!

Did you ever see anything so beautiful?"

And,

in truth,

it -was- a beautiful sight.

Henrique,

with his bold brow,

and dark,

glossy curls,

and glowing cheek,

was laughing gayly as he bent towards his fair cousin,

as they came on.

She was dressed in a blue riding dress,

with a cap of the same color.

Exercise had given a brilliant hue to her cheeks,

and heightened the effect of her singularly transparent skin,

and golden hair.

"Good heavens!

what perfectly dazzling beauty!"

said Alfred.

"I tell you,

Auguste,

won't she make some hearts ache,

one of these days?"

"She will,

too truly,

--God knows I'm afraid so!"

said St. Clare,

in a tone of sudden bitterness,

as he hurried down to take her off her horse.

"Eva darling!

you're not much tired?"

he said,

as he clasped her in his arms.

"No,

papa,"

said the child;

but her short,

hard breathing alarmed her father.

"How could you ride so fast,

dear?

--you know it's bad for you."

"I felt so well,

papa,

and liked it so much,

I forgot."

St. Clare carried her in his arms into the parlor,

and laid her on the sofa.

"Henrique,

you must be careful of Eva,"

said he;

"you mustn't ride fast with her."

"I'll take her under my care,"

said Henrique,

seating himself by the sofa,

and taking Eva's hand.

Eva soon found herself much better.

Her father and uncle resumed their game,

and the children were left together.

"Do you know,

Eva,

I'm sorry papa is only going to stay two days here,

and then I shan't see you again for ever so long!

If I stay with you,

I'd try to be good,

and not be cross to Dodo,

and so on.

I don't mean to treat Dodo ill;

but,

you know,

I've got such a quick temper.

I'm not really bad to him,

though.

I give him a picayune,

now and then;

and you see he dresses well.

I think,

on the whole,

Dodo

's pretty well off."

"Would you think you were well off,

if there were not one creature in the world near you to love you?"

"I?

--Well,

of course not."

"And you have taken Dodo away from all the friends he ever had,

and now he has not a creature to love him;

--nobody can be good that way."

"Well,

I can't help it,

as I know of.

I can't get his mother and I can't love him myself,

nor anybody else,

as I know of."

"Why can't you?"

said Eva.

"-Love- Dodo!

Why,

Eva,

you wouldn't have me!

I may -like- him well enough;

but you don't -love- your servants."

"I do,

indeed."

"How odd!"

"Don't the Bible say we must love everybody?"

"O,

the Bible!

To be sure,

it says a great many such things;

but,

then,

nobody ever thinks of doing them,

--you know,

Eva,

nobody does."

Eva did not speak;

her eyes were fixed and thoughtful for a few moments.

"At any rate,"

she said,

"dear Cousin,

do love poor Dodo,

and be kind to him,

for my sake!"

"I could love anything,

for your sake,

dear Cousin;

for I really think you are the loveliest creature that I ever saw!"

And Henrique spoke with an earnestness that flushed his handsome face.

Eva received it with perfect simplicity,

without even a change of feature;

merely saying,

"I'm glad you feel so,

dear Henrique!

I hope you will remember."

The dinner-bell put an end to the interview.

CHAPTER XXIV

Foreshadowings

Two days after this,

Alfred St. Clare and Augustine parted;

and Eva,

who had been stimulated,

by the society of her young cousin,

to exertions beyond her strength,

began to fail rapidly.

St. Clare was at last willing to call in medical advice,

--a thing from which he had always shrunk,

because it was the admission of an unwelcome truth.

But,

for a day or two,

Eva was so unwell as to be confined to the house;

and the doctor was called.

Marie St. Clare had taken no notice of the child's gradually decaying health and strength,

because she was completely absorbed in studying out two or three new forms of disease to which she believed she herself was a victim.

It was the first principle of Marie's belief that nobody ever was or could be so great a sufferer as -herself-;

and,

therefore,

she always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her could be sick.

She was always sure,

in such a case,

that it was nothing but laziness,

or want of energy;

and that,

if they had had the suffering -she- had,

they would soon know the difference.

Miss Ophelia had several times tried to awaken her maternal fears about Eva;

but to no avail.

"I don't see as anything ails the child,"

she would say;

"she runs about,

and plays."

"But she has a cough."

"Cough!

you don't need to tell -me- about a cough.

I've always been subject to a cough,

all my days.

When I was of Eva's age,

they thought I was in a consumption.

Night after night,

Mammy used to sit up with me.

O!

Eva's cough is not anything."

"But she gets weak,

and is short-breathed."

"Law!

I've had that,

years and years;

it's only a nervous affection."

"But she sweats so,

nights!"

"Well,

I have,

these ten years.

Very often,

night after night,

my clothes will be wringing wet.

There won't be a dry thread in my night-clothes and the sheets will be so that Mammy has to hang them up to dry!

Eva doesn't sweat anything like that!"

Miss Ophelia shut her mouth for a season.

But,

now that Eva was fairly and visibly prostrated,

and a doctor called,

Marie,

all on a sudden,

took a new turn.

"She knew it,"

she said;

"she always felt it,

that she was destined to be the most miserable of mothers.

Here she was,

with her wretched health,

and her only darling child going down to the grave before her eyes;"

--and Marie routed up Mammy nights,

and rumpussed and scolded,

with more energy than ever,

all day,

on the strength of this new misery.

"My dear Marie,

don't talk so!"

said St. Clare.

"You ought not to give up the case so,

at once."

"You have not a mother's feelings,

St. Clare!

You never could understand me!

--you don't now."

"But don't talk so,

as if it were a gone case!"

"I can't take it as indifferently as you can,

St. Clare.

If -you- don't feel when your only child is in this alarming state,

I do.

It's a blow too much for me,

with all I was bearing before."

"It's true,"

said St. Clare,

"that Eva is very delicate,

-that- I always knew;

and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her strength;

and that her situation is critical.

But just now she is only prostrated by the heat of the weather,

and by the excitement of her cousin's visit,

and the exertions she made.

The physician says there is room for hope."

"Well,

of course,

if you can look on the bright side,

pray do;

it's a mercy if people haven't sensitive feelings,

in this world.

I am sure I wish I didn't feel as I do;

it only makes me completely wretched!

I wish I -could- be as easy as the rest of you!"

And the "rest of them" had good reason to breathe the same prayer,

for Marie paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts of inflictions on every one about her.

Every word that was spoken by anybody,

everything that was done or was not done everywhere,

was only a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted,

insensible beings,

who were unmindful of her peculiar sorrows.

Poor Eva heard some of these speeches;

and nearly cried her little eyes out,

in pity for her mamma,

and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress.

In a week or two,

there was a great improvement of symptoms,

--one of those deceitful lulls,

by which her inexorable disease so often beguiles the anxious heart,

even on the verge of the grave.

Eva's step was again in the garden,

--in the balconies;

she played and laughed again,

--and her father,

in a transport,

declared that they should soon have her as hearty as anybody.

Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no encouragement from this illusive truce.

There was one other heart,

too,

that felt the same certainty,

and that was the little heart of Eva.

What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly,

so clearly,

that its earthly time is short?

Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature,

or the soul's impulsive throb,

as immortality draws on?

Be it what it may,

it rested in the heart of Eva,

a calm,

sweet,

prophetic certainty that Heaven was near;

calm as the light of sunset,

sweet as the bright stillness of autumn,

there her little heart reposed,

only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly.

For the child,

though nursed so tenderly,

and though life was unfolding before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give,

had no regret for herself in dying.

In that book which she and her simple old friend had read so much together,

she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who loved the little child;

and,

as she gazed and mused,

He had ceased to be an image and a picture of the distant past,

and come to be a living,

all-surrounding reality.

His love enfolded her childish heart with more than mortal tenderness;

and it was to Him,

she said,

she was going,

and to his home.

But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave behind.

Her father most,

--for Eva,

though she never distinctly thought so,

had an instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than any other.

She loved her mother because she was so loving a creature,

and all the selfishness that she had seen in her only saddened and perplexed her;

for she had a child's implicit trust that her mother could not do wrong.