Uncle Tom's Cabin
tried, and failed; for the first shall be last, and the last first.
Was this what Marie St. Clare was thinking of, as she stood, gorgeously
dressed, on the verandah, on Sunday morning, clasping a diamond
bracelet on her slender wrist? Most likely it was. Or, if it wasn’t
that, it was something else; for Marie patronized good things, and she
was going now, in full force,—diamonds, silk, and lace, and jewels, and
all,—to a fashionable church, to be very religious. Marie always made a
point to be very pious on Sundays. There she stood, so slender, so
elegant, so airy and undulating in all her motions, her lace scarf
enveloping her like a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she
felt very good and very elegant indeed. Miss Ophelia stood at her side,
a perfect contrast. It was not that she had not as handsome a silk
dress and shawl, and as fine a pocket-handkerchief; but stiffness and
squareness, and bolt-uprightness, enveloped her with as indefinite yet
appreciable a presence as did grace her elegant neighbor; not the grace
of God, however,—that is quite another thing!
“Where’s Eva?” said Marie.
“The child stopped on the stairs, to say something to Mammy.”
And what was Eva saying to Mammy on the stairs? Listen, reader, and you
will hear, though Marie does not.
“Dear Mammy, I know your head is aching dreadfully.”
“Lord bless you, Miss Eva! my head allers aches lately. You don’t need
to worry.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re going out; and here,”—and the little girl threw
her arms around her,—“Mammy, you shall take my vinaigrette.”
“What! your beautiful gold thing, thar, with them diamonds! Lor, Miss,
’t wouldn’t be proper, no ways.”
“Why not? You need it, and I don’t. Mamma always uses it for headache,
and it’ll make you feel better. No, you shall take it, to please me,
now.”
“Do hear the darlin talk!” said Mammy, as Eva thrust it into her bosom,
and kissing her, ran down stairs to her mother.
“What were you stopping for?”
“I was just stopping to give Mammy my vinaigrette, to take to church
with her.”
“Eva” said Marie, stamping impatiently,—“your gold vinaigrette to
_Mammy!_ When will you learn what’s _proper_? Go right and take it back
this moment!”
Eva looked downcast and aggrieved, and turned slowly.
“I say, Marie, let the child alone; she shall do as she pleases,” said
St. Clare.
“St. Clare, how will she ever get along in the world?” said Marie.
“The Lord knows,” said St. Clare, “but she’ll get along in heaven
better than you or I.”
“O, papa, don’t,” said Eva, softly touching his elbow; “it troubles
mother.”
“Well, cousin, are you ready to go to meeting?” said Miss Ophelia,
turning square about on St. Clare.
“I’m not going, thank you.”
“I do wish St. Clare ever would go to church,” said Marie; “but he
hasn’t a particle of religion about him. It really isn’t respectable.”
“I know it,” said St. Clare. “You ladies go to church to learn how to
get along in the world, I suppose, and your piety sheds respectability
on us. If I did go at all, I would go where Mammy goes; there’s
something to keep a fellow awake there, at least.”
“What! those shouting Methodists? Horrible!” said Marie.
“Anything but the dead sea of your respectable churches, Marie.
Positively, it’s too much to ask of a man. Eva, do you like to go?
Come, stay at home and play with me.”
“Thank you, papa; but I’d rather go to church.”
“Isn’t it dreadful tiresome?” said St. Clare.
“I think it is tiresome, some,” said Eva, “and I am sleepy, too, but I
try to keep awake.”
“What do you go for, then?”
“Why, you know, papa,” she said, in a whisper, “cousin told me that God
wants to have us; and he gives us everything, you know; and it isn’t
much to do it, if he wants us to. It isn’t so very tiresome after all.”
“You sweet, little obliging soul!” said St. Clare, kissing her; “go
along, that’s a good girl, and pray for me.”
“Certainly, I always do,” said the child, as she sprang after her
mother into the carriage.
St. Clare stood on the steps and kissed his hand to her, as the
carriage drove away; large tears were in his eyes.
“O, Evangeline! rightly named,” he said; “hath not God made thee an
evangel to me?”
So he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune,
and forgot his little gospel. Was he much unlike other folks?
“You see, Evangeline,” said her mother, “it’s always right and proper
to be kind to servants, but it isn’t proper to treat them _just_ as we
would our relations, or people in our own class of life. Now, if Mammy
was sick, you wouldn’t want to put her in your own bed.”
“I should feel just like it, mamma,” said Eva, “because then it would
be handier to take care of her, and because, you know, my bed is better
than hers.”
Marie was in utter despair at the entire want of moral perception
evinced in this reply.
“What can I do to make this child understand me?” she said.
“Nothing,” said Miss Ophelia, significantly.
Eva looked sorry and disconcerted for a moment; but children, luckily,
do not keep to one impression long, and in a few moments she was
merrily laughing at various things which she saw from the
coach-windows, as it rattled along.
“Well, ladies,” said St. Clare, as they were comfortably seated at the
dinner-table, “and what was the bill of fare at church today?”
“O, Dr. G—— preached a splendid sermon,” said Marie. “It was just such
a sermon as you ought to hear; it expressed all my views exactly.”
“It must have been very improving,” said St. Clare. “The subject must
have been an extensive one.”
“Well, I mean all my views about society, and such things,” said Marie.
“The text was, ‘He hath made everything beautiful in its season;’ and
he showed how all the orders and distinctions in society came from God;
and that it was so appropriate, you know, and beautiful, that some
should be high and some low, and that some were born to rule and some
to serve, and all that, you know; and he applied it so well to all this
ridiculous fuss that is made about slavery, and he proved distinctly
that the Bible was on our side, and supported all our institutions so
convincingly. I only wish you’d heard him.”
“O, I didn’t need it,” said St. Clare. “I can learn what does me as
much good as that from the Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar
besides; which I can’t do, you know, in a church.”
“Why,” said Miss Ophelia, “don’t you believe in these views?”
“Who,—I? You know I’m such a graceless dog that these religious aspects
of such subjects don’t edify me much. If I was to say anything on this
slavery matter, I would say out, fair and square, ‘We’re in for it;
we’ve got ’em, and mean to keep ’em,—it’s for our convenience and our
interest;’ for that’s the long and short of it,—that’s just the whole
of what all this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think
that it will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere.”
“I do think, Augustine, you are so irreverent!” said Marie. “I think
it’s shocking to hear you talk.”
“Shocking! it’s the truth. This religious talk on such matters,—why
don’t they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its
season, of a fellow’s taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too
late over his cards, and various providential arrangements of that
sort, which are pretty frequent among us young men;—we’d like to hear
that those are right and godly, too.”
“Well,” said Miss Ophelia, “do you think slavery right or wrong?”
“I’m not going to have any of your horrid New England directness,
cousin,” said St. Clare, gayly. “If I answer that question, I know
you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the
last; and I’m not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort
that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I
never mean to put up one for them to stone.”
“That’s just the way he’s always talking,” said Marie; “you can’t get
any satisfaction out of him. I believe it’s just because he don’t like
religion, that he’s always running out in this way he’s been doing.”
“Religion!” said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at
him. “Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can
bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of
selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less
scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than
even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a
religion, I must look for something above me, and not something
beneath.”
“Then you don’t believe that the Bible justifies slavery,” said Miss
Ophelia.
“The Bible was my _mother’s_ book,” said St. Clare. “By it she lived
and died, and I would be very sorry to think it did. I’d as soon desire
to have it proved that my mother could drink brandy, chew tobacco, and
swear, by way of satisfying me that I did right in doing the same. It
wouldn’t make me at all more satisfied with these things in myself, and
it would take from me the comfort of respecting her; and it really is a
comfort, in this world, to have anything one can respect. In short, you
see,” said he, suddenly resuming his gay tone, “all I want is that
different things be kept in different boxes. The whole frame-work of
society, both in Europe and America, is made up of various things which
will not stand the scrutiny of any very ideal standard of morality.
It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the
absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.
Now, when any one speaks up, like a man, and says slavery is necessary
to us, we can’t get along without it, we should be beggared if we give
it up, and, of course, we mean to hold on to it,—this is strong, clear,
well-defined language; it has the respectability of truth to it; and,
if we may judge by their practice, the majority of the world will bear
us out in it. But when he begins to put on a long face, and snuffle,
and quote Scripture, I incline to think he isn’t much better than he
should be.”
“You are very uncharitable,” said Marie.
“Well,” said St. Clare, “suppose that something should bring down the
price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a
drug in the market, don’t you think we should soon have another version
of the Scripture doctrine? What a flood of light would pour into the
church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that
everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!”
“Well, at any rate,” said Marie, as she reclined herself on a lounge,
“I’m thankful I’m born where slavery exists; and I believe it’s
right,—indeed, I feel it must be; and, at any rate, I’m sure I couldn’t
get along without it.”
“I say, what do you think, Pussy?” said her father to Eva, who came in
at this moment, with a flower in her hand.
“What about, papa?”
“Why, which do you like the best,—to live as they do at your uncle’s,
up in Vermont, or to have a house-full of servants, as we do?”
“O, of course, our way is the pleasantest,” said Eva.
“Why so?” said St. Clare, stroking her head.
“Why, it makes so many more round you to love, you know,” said Eva,
looking up earnestly.
“Now, that’s just like Eva,” said Marie; “just one of her odd
speeches.”
“Is it an odd speech, papa?” said Eva, whisperingly, as she got upon
his knee.
“Rather, as this world goes, Pussy,” said St. Clare. “But where has my
little Eva been, all dinner-time?”
“O, I’ve been up in Tom’s room, hearing him sing, and Aunt Dinah gave
me my dinner.”
“Hearing Tom sing, hey?”
“O, yes! he sings such beautiful things about the New Jerusalem, and
bright angels, and the land of Canaan.”
“I dare say; it’s better than the opera, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and he’s going to teach them to me.”