Uncle Tom's Cabin
“Well, men have a more commanding way, you know; it is easier for them;
besides, if you ever looked full in his eye, it’s peculiar,—that
eye,—and if he speaks decidedly, there’s a kind of flash. I’m afraid of
it, myself; and the servants know they must mind. I couldn’t do as much
by a regular storm and scolding as St. Clare can by one turn of his
eye, if once he is in earnest. O, there’s no trouble about St. Clare;
that’s the reason he’s no more feeling for me. But you’ll find, when
you come to manage, that there’s no getting along without
severity,—they are so bad, so deceitful, so lazy.”
“The old tune,” said St. Clare, sauntering in. “What an awful account
these wicked creatures will have to settle, at last, especially for
being lazy! You see, cousin,” said he, as he stretched himself at full
length on a lounge opposite to Marie, “it’s wholly inexcusable in them,
in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,—this laziness.”
“Come, now, St. Clare, you are too bad!” said Marie.
“Am I, now? Why, I thought I was talking good, quite remarkably for me.
I try to enforce your remarks, Marie, always.”
“You know you meant no such thing, St. Clare,” said Marie.
“O, I must have been mistaken, then. Thank you, my dear, for setting me
right.”
“You do really try to be provoking,” said Marie.
“O, come, Marie, the day is growing warm, and I have just had a long
quarrel with Dolph, which has fatigued me excessively; so, pray be
agreeable, now, and let a fellow repose in the light of your smile.”
“What’s the matter about Dolph?” said Marie. “That fellow’s impudence
has been growing to a point that is perfectly intolerable to me. I only
wish I had the undisputed management of him a while. I’d bring him
down!”
“What you say, my dear, is marked with your usual acuteness and good
sense,” said St. Clare. “As to Dolph, the case is this: that he has so
long been engaged in imitating my graces and perfections, that he has,
at last, really mistaken himself for his master; and I have been
obliged to give him a little insight into his mistake.”
“How?” said Marie.
“Why, I was obliged to let him understand explicitly that I preferred
to keep _some_ of my clothes for my own personal wearing; also, I put
his magnificence upon an allowance of cologne-water, and actually was
so cruel as to restrict him to one dozen of my cambric handkerchiefs.
Dolph was particularly huffy about it, and I had to talk to him like a
father, to bring him round.”
“O! St. Clare, when will you learn how to treat your servants? It’s
abominable, the way you indulge them!” said Marie.
“Why, after all, what’s the harm of the poor dog’s wanting to be like
his master; and if I haven’t brought him up any better than to find his
chief good in cologne and cambric handkerchiefs, why shouldn’t I give
them to him?”
“And why haven’t you brought him up better?” said Miss Ophelia, with
blunt determination.
“Too much trouble,—laziness, cousin, laziness,—which ruins more souls
than you can shake a stick at. If it weren’t for laziness, I should
have been a perfect angel, myself. I’m inclined to think that laziness
is what your old Dr. Botherem, up in Vermont, used to call the ‘essence
of moral evil.’ It’s an awful consideration, certainly.”
“I think you slaveholders have an awful responsibility upon you,” said
Miss Ophelia. “I wouldn’t have it, for a thousand worlds. You ought to
educate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures,—like
immortal creatures, that you’ve got to stand before the bar of God
with. That’s my mind,” said the good lady, breaking suddenly out with a
tide of zeal that had been gaining strength in her mind all the
morning.
“O! come, come,” said St. Clare, getting up quickly; “what do you know
about us?” And he sat down to the piano, and rattled a lively piece of
music. St. Clare had a decided genius for music. His touch was
brilliant and firm, and his fingers flew over the keys with a rapid and
bird-like motion, airy, and yet decided. He played piece after piece,
like a man who is trying to play himself into a good humor. After
pushing the music aside, he rose up, and said, gayly, “Well, now,
cousin, you’ve given us a good talk and done your duty; on the whole, I
think the better of you for it. I make no manner of doubt that you
threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so
directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.”
“For my part, I don’t see any use in such sort of talk,” said Marie.
“I’m sure, if anybody does more for servants than we do, I’d like to
know who; and it don’t do ’em a bit good,—not a particle,—they get
worse and worse. As to talking to them, or anything like that, I’m sure
I have talked till I was tired and hoarse, telling them their duty, and
all that; and I’m sure they can go to church when they like, though
they don’t understand a word of the sermon, more than so many pigs,—so
it isn’t of any great use for them to go, as I see; but they do go, and
so they have every chance; but, as I said before, they are a degraded
race, and always will be, and there isn’t any help for them; you can’t
make anything of them, if you try. You see, Cousin Ophelia, I’ve tried,
and you haven’t; I was born and bred among them, and I know.”
Miss Ophelia thought she had said enough, and therefore sat silent. St.
Clare whistled a tune.
“St. Clare, I wish you wouldn’t whistle,” said Marie; “it makes my head
worse.”
“I won’t,” said St. Clare. “Is there anything else you wouldn’t wish me
to do?”
“I wish you _would_ have some kind of sympathy for my trials; you never
have any feeling for me.”
“My dear accusing angel!” said St. Clare.
“It’s provoking to be talked to in that way.”
“Then, how will you be talked to? I’ll talk to order,—any way you’ll
mention,—only to give satisfaction.”
A gay laugh from the court rang through the silken curtains of the
verandah. St. Clare stepped out, and lifting up the curtain, laughed
too.
“What is it?” said Miss Ophelia, coming to the railing.
There sat Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his
button-holes stuck full of cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing,
was hanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on
his knee, like a chip-sparrow, still laughing.
“O, Tom, you look so funny!”
Tom had a sober, benevolent smile, and seemed, in his quiet way, to be
enjoying the fun quite as much as his little mistress. He lifted his
eyes, when he saw his master, with a half-deprecating, apologetic air.
“How can you let her?” said Miss Ophelia.
“Why not?” said St. Clare.
“Why, I don’t know, it seems so dreadful!”
“You would think no harm in a child’s caressing a large dog, even if he
was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is
immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among
some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of
virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity
ought to do,—obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have
often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you
than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you
are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you
don’t want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send
them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary
or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.
Isn’t that it?”
“Well, cousin,” said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, “there may be some
truth in this.”
“What would the poor and lowly do, without children?” said St. Clare,
leaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading
Tom with her. “Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now
is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs and
Methodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and little bits
of trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most wonderful Tom
that ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses of Eden that the
Lord has dropped down expressly for the poor and lowly, who get few
enough of any other kind.”
“It’s strange, cousin,” said Miss Ophelia, “one might almost think you
were a _professor_, to hear you talk.”
“A professor?” said St. Clare.
“Yes; a professor of religion.”
“Not at all; not a professor, as your town-folks have it; and, what is
worse, I’m afraid, not a _practiser_, either.”
“What makes you talk so, then?”
“Nothing is easier than talking,” said St. Clare. “I believe
Shakespeare makes somebody say, ‘I could sooner show twenty what were
good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own
showing.’[1] Nothing like division of labor. My forte lies in talking,
and yours, cousin, lies in doing.”
[1] _The Merchant of Venice_, Act 1, scene 2, lines 17-18.
In Tom’s external situation, at this time, there was, as the world
says, nothing to complain of Little Eva’s fancy for him—the instinctive
gratitude and loveliness of a noble nature—had led her to petition her
father that he might be her especial attendant, whenever she needed the
escort of a servant, in her walks or rides; and Tom had general orders
to let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted
him,—orders which our readers may fancy were far from disagreeable to
him. He was kept well dressed, for St. Clare was fastidiously
particular on this point. His stable services were merely a sinecure,
and consisted simply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an
under-servant in his duties; for Marie St. Clare declared that she
could not have any smell of the horses about him when he came near her,
and that he must positively not be put to any service that would make
him unpleasant to her, as her nervous system was entirely inadequate to
any trial of that nature; one snuff of anything disagreeable being,
according to her account, quite sufficient to close the scene, and put
an end to all her earthly trials at once. Tom, therefore, in his
well-brushed broadcloth suit, smooth beaver, glossy boots, faultless
wristbands and collar, with his grave, good-natured black face, looked
respectable enough to be a Bishop of Carthage, as men of his color
were, in other ages.
Then, too, he was in a beautiful place, a consideration to which his
sensitive race was never indifferent; and he did enjoy with a quiet joy
the birds, the flowers, the fountains, the perfume, and light and
beauty of the court, the silken hangings, and pictures, and lustres,
and statuettes, and gilding, that made the parlors within a kind of
Aladdin’s palace to him.
If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,—and come it
must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human
improvement.—life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of
which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. In that far-off
mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and
wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of
art, new styles of splendor; and the negro race, no longer despised and
trodden down, will, perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most
magnificent revelations of human life. Certainly they will, in their
gentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on
a superior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simplicity
of affection, and facility of forgiveness. In all these they will
exhibit the highest form of the peculiarly _Christian life_, and,
perhaps, as God chasteneth whom he loveth, he hath chosen poor Africa
in the furnace of affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in
that kingdom which he will set up, when every other kingdom has been