Uncle Tom's Cabin
On a rough bench in the corner, a couple of woolly-headed boys, with
glistening black eyes and fat shining cheeks, were busy in
superintending the first walking operations of the baby, which, as is
usually the case, consisted in getting up on its feet, balancing a
moment, and then tumbling down,—each successive failure being violently
cheered, as something decidedly clever.
A table, somewhat rheumatic in its limbs, was drawn out in front of the
fire, and covered with a cloth, displaying cups and saucers of a
decidedly brilliant pattern, with other symptoms of an approaching
meal. At this table was seated Uncle Tom, Mr. Shelby’s best hand, who,
as he is to be the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype for our
readers. He was a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man, of a full
glossy black, and a face whose truly African features were
characterized by an expression of grave and steady good sense, united
with much kindliness and benevolence. There was something about his
whole air self-respecting and dignified, yet united with a confiding
and humble simplicity.
He was very busily intent at this moment on a slate lying before him,
on which he was carefully and slowly endeavoring to accomplish a copy
of some letters, in which operation he was overlooked by young Mas’r
George, a smart, bright boy of thirteen, who appeared fully to realize
the dignity of his position as instructor.
“Not that way, Uncle Tom,—not that way,” said he, briskly, as Uncle Tom
laboriously brought up the tail of his _g_ the wrong side out; “that
makes a _q_, you see.”
“La sakes, now, does it?” said Uncle Tom, looking with a respectful,
admiring air, as his young teacher flourishingly scrawled _q_’s and
_g_’s innumerable for his edification; and then, taking the pencil in
his big, heavy fingers, he patiently recommenced.
“How easy white folks al’us does things!” said Aunt Chloe, pausing
while she was greasing a griddle with a scrap of bacon on her fork, and
regarding young Master George with pride. “The way he can write, now!
and read, too! and then to come out here evenings and read his lessons
to us,—it’s mighty interestin’!”
“But, Aunt Chloe, I’m getting mighty hungry,” said George. “Isn’t that
cake in the skillet almost done?”
“Mose done, Mas’r George,” said Aunt Chloe, lifting the lid and peeping
in,—“browning beautiful—a real lovely brown. Ah! let me alone for dat.
Missis let Sally try to make some cake, t’other day, jes to _larn_
her, she said. ‘O, go way, Missis,’ said I; ‘it really hurts my
feelin’s, now, to see good vittles spiled dat ar way! Cake ris all to
one side—no shape at all; no more than my shoe; go way!’”
And with this final expression of contempt for Sally’s greenness, Aunt
Chloe whipped the cover off the bake-kettle, and disclosed to view a
neatly-baked pound-cake, of which no city confectioner need to have
been ashamed. This being evidently the central point of the
entertainment, Aunt Chloe began now to bustle about earnestly in the
supper department.
“Here you, Mose and Pete! get out de way, you niggers! Get away, Polly,
honey,—mammy’ll give her baby somefin, by and by. Now, Mas’r George,
you jest take off dem books, and set down now with my old man, and I’ll
take up de sausages, and have de first griddle full of cakes on your
plates in less dan no time.”
“They wanted me to come to supper in the house,” said George; “but I
knew what was what too well for that, Aunt Chloe.”
“So you did—so you did, honey,” said Aunt Chloe, heaping the smoking
batter-cakes on his plate; “you know’d your old aunty’d keep the best
for you. O, let you alone for dat! Go way!” And, with that, aunty gave
George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and
turned again to her griddle with great briskness.
“Now for the cake,” said Mas’r George, when the activity of the griddle
department had somewhat subsided; and, with that, the youngster
flourished a large knife over the article in question.
“La bless you, Mas’r George!” said Aunt Chloe, with earnestness,
catching his arm, “you wouldn’t be for cuttin’ it wid dat ar great
heavy knife! Smash all down—spile all de pretty rise of it. Here, I’ve
got a thin old knife, I keeps sharp a purpose. Dar now, see! comes
apart light as a feather! Now eat away—you won’t get anything to beat
dat ar.”
“Tom Lincon says,” said George, speaking with his mouth full, “that
their Jinny is a better cook than you.”
“Dem Lincons an’t much count, no way!” said Aunt Chloe, contemptuously;
“I mean, set along side _our_ folks. They ’s ’spectable folks enough in
a kinder plain way; but, as to gettin’ up anything in style, they don’t
begin to have a notion on ’t. Set Mas’r Lincon, now, alongside Mas’r
Shelby! Good Lor! and Missis Lincon,—can she kinder sweep it into a
room like my missis,—so kinder splendid, yer know! O, go way! don’t
tell me nothin’ of dem Lincons!”—and Aunt Chloe tossed her head as one
who hoped she did know something of the world.
“Well, though, I’ve heard you say,” said George, “that Jinny was a
pretty fair cook.”
“So I did,” said Aunt Chloe,—“I may say dat. Good, plain, common
cookin’, Jinny’ll do;—make a good pone o’ bread,—bile her taters
_far_,—her corn cakes isn’t extra, not extra now, Jinny’s corn cakes
isn’t, but then they’s far,—but, Lor, come to de higher branches, and
what _can_ she do? Why, she makes pies—sartin she does; but what kinder
crust? Can she make your real flecky paste, as melts in your mouth, and
lies all up like a puff? Now, I went over thar when Miss Mary was gwine
to be married, and Jinny she jest showed me de weddin’ pies. Jinny and
I is good friends, ye know. I never said nothin’; but go ’long, Mas’r
George! Why, I shouldn’t sleep a wink for a week, if I had a batch of
pies like dem ar. Why, dey wan’t no ’count ’t all.”
“I suppose Jinny thought they were ever so nice,” said George.
“Thought so!—didn’t she? Thar she was, showing ’em, as innocent—ye see,
it’s jest here, Jinny _don’t know_. Lor, the family an’t nothing! She
can’t be spected to know! ’Ta’nt no fault o’ hern. Ah, Mas’r George, you
doesn’t know half your privileges in yer family and bringin’ up!” Here
Aunt Chloe sighed, and rolled up her eyes with emotion.
“I’m sure, Aunt Chloe, I understand all my pie and pudding privileges,”
said George. “Ask Tom Lincon if I don’t crow over him, every time I
meet him.”
Aunt Chloe sat back in her chair, and indulged in a hearty guffaw of
laughter, at this witticism of young Mas’r’s, laughing till the tears
rolled down her black, shining cheeks, and varying the exercise with
playfully slapping and poking Mas’r Georgey, and telling him to go way,
and that he was a case—that he was fit to kill her, and that he sartin
would kill her, one of these days; and, between each of these
sanguinary predictions, going off into a laugh, each longer and
stronger than the other, till George really began to think that he was
a very dangerously witty fellow, and that it became him to be careful
how he talked “as funny as he could.”
“And so ye telled Tom, did ye? O, Lor! what young uns will be up ter!
Ye crowed over Tom? O, Lor! Mas’r George, if ye wouldn’t make a hornbug
laugh!”
“Yes,” said George, “I says to him, ‘Tom, you ought to see some of Aunt
Chloe’s pies; they’re the right sort,’ says I.”
“Pity, now, Tom couldn’t,” said Aunt Chloe, on whose benevolent heart
the idea of Tom’s benighted condition seemed to make a strong
impression. “Ye oughter just ask him here to dinner, some o’ these
times, Mas’r George,” she added; “it would look quite pretty of ye. Ye
know, Mas’r George, ye oughtenter feel ’bove nobody, on ’count yer
privileges, ’cause all our privileges is gi’n to us; we ought al’ays to
’member that,” said Aunt Chloe, looking quite serious.
“Well, I mean to ask Tom here, some day next week,” said George; “and
you do your prettiest, Aunt Chloe, and we’ll make him stare. Won’t we
make him eat so he won’t get over it for a fortnight?”
“Yes, yes—sartin,” said Aunt Chloe, delighted; “you’ll see. Lor! to
think of some of our dinners! Yer mind dat ar great chicken pie I made
when we guv de dinner to General Knox? I and Missis, we come pretty
near quarrelling about dat ar crust. What does get into ladies
sometimes, I don’t know; but, sometimes, when a body has de heaviest
kind o’ ’sponsibility on ’em, as ye may say, and is all kinder
_‘seris’_ and taken up, dey takes dat ar time to be hangin’ round and
kinder interferin’! Now, Missis, she wanted me to do dis way, and she
wanted me to do dat way; and, finally, I got kinder sarcy, and, says I,
‘Now, Missis, do jist look at dem beautiful white hands o’ yourn with
long fingers, and all a sparkling with rings, like my white lilies when
de dew ’s on ’em; and look at my great black stumpin hands. Now, don’t
ye think dat de Lord must have meant _me_ to make de pie-crust, and you
to stay in de parlor?’ Dar! I was jist so sarcy, Mas’r George.”
“And what did mother say?” said George.
“Say?—why, she kinder larfed in her eyes—dem great handsome eyes o’
hern; and, says she, ‘Well, Aunt Chloe, I think you are about in the
right on ’t,’ says she; and she went off in de parlor. She oughter
cracked me over de head for bein’ so sarcy; but dar’s whar ’t is—I
can’t do nothin’ with ladies in de kitchen!”
“Well, you made out well with that dinner,—I remember everybody said
so,” said George.
“Didn’t I? And wan’t I behind de dinin’-room door dat bery day? and
didn’t I see de General pass his plate three times for some more dat
bery pie?—and, says he, ‘You must have an uncommon cook, Mrs. Shelby.’
Lor! I was fit to split myself.
“And de Gineral, he knows what cookin’ is,” said Aunt Chloe, drawing
herself up with an air. “Bery nice man, de Gineral! He comes of one of
de bery _fustest_ families in Old Virginny! He knows what’s what, now,
as well as I do—de Gineral. Ye see, there’s _pints_ in all pies, Mas’r
George; but tan’t everybody knows what they is, or orter be. But the
Gineral, he knows; I knew by his ’marks he made. Yes, he knows what de
pints is!”
By this time, Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a
boy can come (under uncommon circumstances), when he really could not
eat another morsel, and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the
pile of woolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their
operations hungrily from the opposite corner.
“Here, you Mose, Pete,” he said, breaking off liberal bits, and
throwing it at them; “you want some, don’t you? Come, Aunt Chloe, bake
them some cakes.”
And George and Tom moved to a comfortable seat in the chimney-corner,
while Aunt Chloe, after baking a goodly pile of cakes, took her baby
on her lap, and began alternately filling its mouth and her own, and
distributing to Mose and Pete, who seemed rather to prefer eating
theirs as they rolled about on the floor under the table, tickling each
other, and occasionally pulling the baby’s toes.
“O! go long, will ye?” said the mother, giving now and then a kick, in
a kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too
obstreperous. “Can’t ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye?
Stop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I’ll take ye down
a button-hole lower, when Mas’r George is gone!”
What meaning was couched under this terrible threat, it is difficult to
say; but certain it is that its awful indistinctness seemed to produce
very little impression on the young sinners addressed.
“La, now!” said Uncle Tom, “they are so full of tickle all the while,
they can’t behave theirselves.”
Here the boys emerged from under the table, and, with hands and faces
well plastered with molasses, began a vigorous kissing of the baby.
“Get along wid ye!” said the mother, pushing away their woolly heads.