Uncle Tom's Cabin
thee better?” in the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the
luxurious valleys of Indiana is a thing complicated and multiform, and,
like picking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise,
asking other hands than those of the original mother. While, therefore,
John ran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted
meal for corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently, and
quietly about, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a
sort of sunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there
was any danger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of
so many young operators, her gentle “Come! come!” or “I wouldn’t, now,”
was quite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the
cestus of Venus, that turned the heads of all the world in successive
generations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel
Halliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on
harmoniously. We think it is more suited to our modern days, decidedly.
While all other preparations were going on, Simeon the elder stood in
his shirt-sleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged
in the anti-patriarchal operation of shaving. Everything went on so
sociably, so quietly, so harmoniously, in the great kitchen,—it seemed
so pleasant to every one to do just what they were doing, there was
such an atmosphere of mutual confidence and good fellowship
everywhere,—even the knives and forks had a social clatter as they went
on to the table; and the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous
fizzle in the pan, as if they rather enjoyed being cooked than
otherwise;—and when George and Eliza and little Harry came out, they
met such a hearty, rejoicing welcome, no wonder it seemed to them like
a dream.
At last, they were all seated at breakfast, while Mary stood at the
stove, baking griddle-cakes, which, as they gained the true exact
golden-brown tint of perfection, were transferred quite handily to the
table.
Rachel never looked so truly and benignly happy as at the head of her
table. There was so much motherliness and full-heartedness even in the
way she passed a plate of cakes or poured a cup of coffee, that it
seemed to put a spirit into the food and drink she offered.
It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at
any white man’s table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint
and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the
genial morning rays of this simple, overflowing kindness.
This, indeed, was a home,—_home_,—a word that George had never yet
known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in his providence,
began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and
confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining atheistic doubts, and fierce
despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in
living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good
will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a
disciple, shall never lose their reward.
“Father, what if thee should get found out again?” said Simeon second,
as he buttered his cake.
“I should pay my fine,” said Simeon, quietly.
“But what if they put thee in prison?”
“Couldn’t thee and mother manage the farm?” said Simeon, smiling.
“Mother can do almost everything,” said the boy. “But isn’t it a shame
to make such laws?”
“Thee mustn’t speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon,” said his father,
gravely. “The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do
justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must
deliver it up.
“Well, I hate those old slaveholders!” said the boy, who felt as
unchristian as became any modern reformer.
“I am surprised at thee, son,” said Simeon; “thy mother never taught
thee so. I would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave,
if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction.”
Simeon second blushed scarlet; but his mother only smiled, and said,
“Simeon is my good boy; he will grow older, by and by, and then he will
be like his father.”
“I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our
account,” said George, anxiously.
“Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If we
would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our
name.”
“But, for _me_,” said George, “I could not bear it.”
“Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and
man, we do it,” said Simeon. “And now thou must lie by quietly this
day, and tonight, at ten o’clock, Phineas Fletcher will carry thee
onward to the next stand,—thee and the rest of thy company. The
pursuers are hard after thee; we must not delay.”
“If that is the case, why wait till evening?” said George.
“Thou art safe here by daylight, for every one in the settlement is a
Friend, and all are watching. It has been found safer to travel by
night.”
CHAPTER XIV
Evangeline
“A young star! which shone
O’er life—too sweet an image, for such glass!
A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded;
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.”
The Mississippi! How, as by an enchanted wand, have its scenes been
changed, since Chateaubriand wrote his prose-poetic description of
it,[1] as a river of mighty, unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed
wonders of vegetable and animal existence.
[1] _In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in the
Desert_ (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand
(1768-1848).
But as in an hour, this river of dreams and wild romance has emerged to
a reality scarcely less visionary and splendid. What other river of the
world bears on its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise of such
another country?—a country whose products embrace all between the
tropics and the poles! Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming, tearing
along, an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business which is
poured along its wave by a race more vehement and energetic than any
the old world ever saw. Ah! would that they did not also bear along a
more fearful freight,—the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the
helpless, the bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown
God—unknown, unseen and silent, but who will yet “come out of his place
to save all the poor of the earth!”
The slanting light of the setting sun quivers on the sea-like expanse
of the river; the shivery canes, and the tall, dark cypress, hung with
wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray, as the
heavily-laden steamboat marches onward.
Piled with cotton-bales, from many a plantation, up over deck and
sides, till she seems in the distance a square, massive block of gray,
she moves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time
among its crowded decks before we shall find again our humble friend
Tom. High on the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere
predominant cotton-bales, at last we may find him.
Partly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby’s representations, and
partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man,
Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a
man as Haley.
At first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed
him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and
apparent contentment of Tom’s manner led him gradually to discontinue
these restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole of
honor, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on the
boat.
Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every
emergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the good
opinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with as
hearty a good will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm.
When there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he would climb to a nook
among the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studying
over his Bible,—and it is there we see him now.
For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is higher than
the surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume between
massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of
the steamer, as from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole
country for miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out full
before him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which
he was approaching.
He saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages of
huts gleaming out in long rows on many a plantation, distant from the
stately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master;—and as the moving
picture passed on, his poor, foolish heart would be turning backward to
the Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches,—to the master’s house,
with its wide, cool halls, and, near by, the little cabin overgrown
with the multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces
of comrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy
wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the
merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at
his knee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the
canebrakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the
creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly
that all that phase of life had gone by forever.
In such a case, you write to your wife, and send messages to your
children; but Tom could not write,—the mail for him had no existence,
and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word or
signal.
Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as
he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading his
slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned
late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from
verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on
was one which slow reading cannot injure,—nay, one whose words, like
ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the
mind may take in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as,
pointing to each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,
“Let—not—your—heart—be—troubled.
In—my—Father’s—house—are—many—mansions.
I—go—to—prepare—a—place—for—you.”
Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as
full of honest grief as poor Tom’s,—perhaps no fuller, for both were
only men;—but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope,
and look to no such future reunion; and if he _had_ seen them, ten to
one he would not have believed,—he must fill his head first with a
thousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of
translation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so
evidently true and divine that the possibility of a question never
entered his simple head. It must be true; for, if not true, how could
he live?
As for Tom’s Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin
from learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain
way-marks and guide-boards of Tom’s own invention, and which helped him
more than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been his
custom to get the Bible read to him by his master’s children, in
particular by young Master George; and, as they read, he would
designate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the
passages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his
heart. His Bible was thus marked through, from one end to the other,
with a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment
seize upon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out