Uncle Tom's Cabin
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.