الفصل الفصل 19 · Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued

. Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions Continued

“Tom, you needn’t get me the horses. I don’t want to go,” she said.

“Why not, Miss Eva?”

“These things sink into my heart, Tom,” said Eva,—“they sink into my

heart,” she repeated, earnestly. “I don’t want to go;” and she turned

from Tom, and went into the house.

A few days after, another woman came, in old Prue’s place, to bring the

rusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen.

“Lor!” said Dinah, “what’s got Prue?”

“Prue isn’t coming any more,” said the woman, mysteriously.

“Why not?” said Dinah, “she an’t dead, is she?”

“We doesn’t exactly know. She’s down cellar,” said the woman, glancing

at Miss Ophelia.

After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the

door.

“What _has_ got Prue, any how?” she said.

The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in

low, mysterious tone.

“Well, you mustn’t tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,—and they had

her down cellar,—and thar they left her all day,—and I hearn ’em saying

that the _flies had got to her_,—and _she’s dead_!”

Dinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the

spirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with

horror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.

“Lor bless us! Miss Eva’s gwine to faint away! What go us all, to let

her har such talk? Her pa’ll be rail mad.”

“I shan’t faint, Dinah,” said the child, firmly; “and why shouldn’t I

hear it? It an’t so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer

it.”

“_Lor sakes_! it isn’t for sweet, delicate young ladies, like

you,—these yer stories isn’t; it’s enough to kill ’em!”

Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.

Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman’s story. Dinah gave a very

garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he

had drawn from her that morning.

“An abominable business,—perfectly horrible!” she exclaimed, as she

entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.

“Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?” said he.

“What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!” said Miss

Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and

enlarging on its most shocking particulars.

“I thought it would come to that, some time,” said St. Clare, going on

with his paper.

“Thought so!—an’t you going to _do_ anything about it?” said Miss

Ophelia. “Haven’t you got any _selectmen_, or anybody, to interfere and

look after such matters?”

“It’s commonly supposed that the _property_ interest is a sufficient

guard in these cases. If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I

don’t know what’s to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief

and a drunkard; and so there won’t be much hope to get up sympathy for

her.”

“It is perfectly outrageous,—it is horrid, Augustine! It will certainly

bring down vengeance upon you.”

“My dear cousin, I didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I

could. If low-minded, brutal people will act like themselves, what am I

to do? they have absolute control; they are irresponsible despots.

There would be no use in interfering; there is no law that amounts to

anything practically, for such a case. The best we can do is to shut

our eyes and ears, and let it alone. It’s the only resource left us.”

“How can you shut your eyes and ears? How can you let such things

alone?”

“My dear child, what do you expect? Here is a whole class,—debased,

uneducated, indolent, provoking,—put, without any sort of terms or

conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in

our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control,

who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest,—for

that’s the case with the largest half of mankind. Of course, in a

community so organized, what can a man of honorable and humane feelings

do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? I can’t buy

every poor wretch I see. I can’t turn knight-errant, and undertake to

redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. The most

I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it.”

St. Clare’s fine countenance was for a moment overcast; he said,

“Come, cousin, don’t stand there looking like one of the Fates; you’ve

only seen a peep through the curtain,—a specimen of what is going on,

the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying and

spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to

anything. ’T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah’s

kitchen;” and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with

his paper.

Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there

grim with indignation. She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire

burned; at last she broke out—“I tell you, Augustine, I can’t get over

things so, if you can. It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend

such a system,—that’s _my_ mind!”

“What now?” said St. Clare, looking up. “At it again, hey?”

“I say it’s perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!” said

Miss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.

“_I_ defend it, my dear lady? Who ever said I did defend it?” said St.

Clare.

“Of course, you defend it,—you all do,—all you Southerners. What do you

have slaves for, if you don’t?”

“Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever

does what they don’t think is right? Don’t you, or didn’t you ever, do

anything that you did not think quite right?”

“If I do, I repent of it, I hope,” said Miss Ophelia, rattling her

needles with energy.

“So do I,” said St. Clare, peeling his orange; “I’m repenting of it all

the time.”

“What do you keep on doing it for?”

“Didn’t you ever keep on doing wrong, after you’d repented, my good

cousin?”

“Well, only when I’ve been very much tempted,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Well, I’m very much tempted,” said St. Clare; “that’s just my

difficulty.”

“But I always resolve I won’t and I try to break off.”

“Well, I have been resolving I won’t, off and on, these ten years,”

said St. Clare; “but I haven’t, some how, got clear. Have you got clear

of all your sins, cousin?”

“Cousin Augustine,” said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down her

knitting-work, “I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my

short-comings. I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels

them more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some

difference between me and you. It seems to me I would cut off my right

hand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was

wrong. But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I

don’t wonder you reprove me.”

“O, now, cousin,” said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying

his head back in her lap, “don’t take on so awfully serious! You know

what a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was. I love to poke you

up,—that’s all,—just to see you get earnest. I do think you are

desperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it.”

“But this is a serious subject, my boy, Auguste,” said Miss Ophelia,

laying her hand on his forehead.

“Dismally so,” said he; “and I—well, I never want to talk seriously in

hot weather. What with mosquitos and all, a fellow can’t get himself up

to any very sublime moral flights; and I believe,” said St. Clare,

suddenly rousing himself up, “there’s a theory, now! I understand now

why northern nations are always more virtuous than southern ones,—I see

into that whole subject.”

“O, Augustine, you are a sad rattle-brain!”

“Am I? Well, so I am, I suppose; but for once I will be serious, now;

but you must hand me that basket of oranges;—you see, you’ll have to

‘stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples,’ if I’m going to make

this effort. Now,” said Augustine, drawing the basket up, “I’ll begin:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a fellow

to hold two or three dozen of his fellow-worms in captivity, a decent

regard to the opinions of society requires—”

“I don’t see that you are growing more serious,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Wait,—I’m coming on,—you’ll hear. The short of the matter is, cousin,”

said he, his handsome face suddenly settling into an earnest and

serious expression, “on this abstract question of slavery there can, as

I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by

it,—clergymen, who have planters to please,—politicians, who want to

rule by it,—may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that

shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and

the Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service; but, after

all, neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more. It

comes from the devil, that’s the short of it;—and, to my mind, it’s a

pretty respectable specimen of what he can do in his own line.”

Miss Ophelia stopped her knitting, and looked surprised, and St. Clare,

apparently enjoying her astonishment, went on.

“You seem to wonder; but if you will get me fairly at it, I’ll make a

clean breast of it. This cursed business, accursed of God and man, what

is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and

nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is

ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,—because I know how,

and _can_ do it,—therefore, I may steal all he has, keep it, and give

him only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, too

dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing. Because I

don’t like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy

shall stay in the sun. Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend

it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over

dry-shod. Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his

mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I

find convenient. This I take to be about what slavery _is_. I defy

anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books,

and make anything else of it. Talk of the _abuses_ of slavery! Humbug!

The _thing itself_ is the essence of all abuse! And the only reason why

the land don’t sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is

_used_ in a way infinitely better than it is. For pity’s sake, for

shame’s sake, because we are men born of women, and not savage beasts,

many of us do not, and dare not,—we would _scorn_ to use the full power

which our savage laws put into our hands. And he who goes the furthest,

and does the worst, only uses within limits the power that the law

gives him.”

St. Clare had started up, and, as his manner was when excited, was

walking, with hurried steps, up and down the floor. His fine face,

classic as that of a Greek statue, seemed actually to burn with the

fervor of his feelings. His large blue eyes flashed, and he gestured

with an unconscious eagerness. Miss Ophelia had never seen him in this

mood before, and she sat perfectly silent.

“I declare to you,” said he, suddenly stopping before his cousin “(It’s

no sort of use to talk or to feel on this subject), but I declare to

you, there have been times when I have thought, if the whole country

would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I

would willingly sink with it. When I have been travelling up and down

on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every

brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our

laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as

he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,—when I have seen

such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and

women,—I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!”

“Augustine! Augustine!” said Miss Ophelia, “I’m sure you’ve said

enough. I never, in my life, heard anything like this, even at the

North.”

“At the North!” said St. Clare, with a sudden change of expression, and

resuming something of his habitual careless tone. “Pooh! your northern

folks are cold-blooded; you are cool in everything! You can’t begin to

curse up hill and down as we can, when we get fairly at it.”

“Well, but the question is,” said Miss Ophelia.

“O, yes, to be sure, the _question is_,—and a deuce of a question it

is! How came _you_ in this state of sin and misery? Well, I shall

answer in the good old words you used to teach me, Sundays. I came so

by ordinary generation. My servants were my father’s, and, what is

more, my mother’s; and now they are mine, they and their increase,

which bids fair to be a pretty considerable item. My father, you know,

came first from New England; and he was just such another man as your

father,—a regular old Roman,—upright, energetic, noble-minded, with an

iron will. Your father settled down in New England, to rule over rocks

and stones, and to force an existence out of Nature; and mine settled

in Louisiana, to rule over men and women, and force existence out of

them. My mother,” said St. Clare, getting up and walking to a picture

at the end of the room, and gazing upward with a face fervent with

veneration, “_she was divine!_ Don’t look at me so!—you know what I

mean! She probably was of mortal birth; but, as far as ever I could

observe, there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her;

and everybody that lives to remember her, whether bond or free,

servant, acquaintance, relation, all say the same. Why, cousin, that

mother has been all that has stood between me and utter unbelief for

years. She was a direct embodiment and personification of the New

Testament,—a living fact, to be accounted for, and to be accounted for

in no other way than by its truth. O, mother! mother!” said St. Clare,

clasping his hands, in a sort of transport; and then suddenly checking

himself, he came back, and seating himself on an ottoman, he went on:

“My brother and I were twins; and they say, you know, that twins ought

to resemble each other; but we were in all points a contrast. He had

black, fiery eyes, coal-black hair, a strong, fine Roman profile, and a

rich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden hair, a Greek outline,

and fair complexion. He was active and observing, I dreamy and

inactive. He was generous to his friends and equals, but proud,

dominant, overbearing, to inferiors, and utterly unmerciful to whatever

set itself up against him. Truthful we both were; he from pride and

courage, I from a sort of abstract ideality. We loved each other about

as boys generally do,—off and on, and in general;—he was my father’s

pet, and I my mother’s.

“There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in me on all

possible subjects, of which he and my father had no kind of

understanding, and with which they could have no possible sympathy. But

mother did; and so, when I had quarreled with Alfred, and father looked

sternly on me, I used to go off to mother’s room, and sit by her. I

remember just how she used to look, with her pale cheeks, her deep,

soft, serious eyes, her white dress,—she always wore white; and I used

to think of her whenever I read in Revelations about the saints that

were arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. She had a great deal of

genius of one sort and another, particularly in music; and she used to

sit at her organ, playing fine old majestic music of the Catholic

church, and singing with a voice more like an angel than a mortal

woman; and I would lay my head down on her lap, and cry, and dream, and

feel,—oh, immeasurably!—things that I had no language to say!

“In those days, this matter of slavery had never been canvassed as it

has now; nobody dreamed of any harm in it.

“My father was a born aristocrat. I think, in some preexistent state,

he must have been in the higher circles of spirits, and brought all his

old court pride along with him; for it was ingrain, bred in the bone,

though he was originally of poor and not in any way of noble family. My

brother was begotten in his image.

“Now, an aristocrat, you know, the world over, has no human sympathies,

beyond a certain line in society. In England the line is in one place,

in Burmah in another, and in America in another; but the aristocrat of

all these countries never goes over it. What would be hardship and

distress and injustice in his own class, is a cool matter of course in

another one. My father’s dividing line was that of color. _Among his

equals_, never was a man more just and generous; but he considered the

negro, through all possible gradations of color, as an intermediate

link between man and animals, and graded all his ideas of justice or

generosity on this hypothesis. I suppose, to be sure, if anybody had

asked him, plump and fair, whether they had human immortal souls, he

might have hemmed and hawed, and said yes. But my father was not a man

much troubled with spiritualism; religious sentiment he had none,

beyond a veneration for God, as decidedly the head of the upper

classes.

“Well, my father worked some five hundred negroes; he was an

inflexible, driving, punctilious business man; everything was to move

by system,—to be sustained with unfailing accuracy and precision. Now,

if you take into account that all this was to be worked out by a set of

lazy, twaddling, shiftless laborers, who had grown up, all their lives,

in the absence of every possible motive to learn how to do anything but

‘shirk,’ as you Vermonters say, and you’ll see that there might

naturally be, on his plantation, a great many things that looked

horrible and distressing to a sensitive child, like me.

“Besides all, he had an overseer,—great, tall, slab-sided, two-fisted

renegade son of Vermont—(begging your pardon),—who had gone through a

regular apprenticeship in hardness and brutality and taken his degree

to be admitted to practice. My mother never could endure him, nor I;

but he obtained an entire ascendency over my father; and this man was

the absolute despot of the estate.

“I was a little fellow then, but I had the same love that I have now

for all kinds of human things,—a kind of passion for the study of

humanity, come in what shape it would. I was found in the cabins and

among the field-hands a great deal, and, of course, was a great

favorite; and all sorts of complaints and grievances were breathed in

my ear; and I told them to mother, and we, between us, formed a sort of

committee for a redress of grievances. We hindered and repressed a

great deal of cruelty, and congratulated ourselves on doing a vast deal

of good, till, as often happens, my zeal overacted. Stubbs complained

to my father that he couldn’t manage the hands, and must resign his

position. Father was a fond, indulgent husband, but a man that never

flinched from anything that he thought necessary; and so he put down

his foot, like a rock, between us and the field-hands. He told my

mother, in language perfectly respectful and deferential, but quite

explicit, that over the house-servants she should be entire mistress,

but that with the field-hands he could allow no interference. He

revered and respected her above all living beings; but he would have

said it all the same to the virgin Mary herself, if she had come in the

way of his system.

“I used sometimes to hear my mother reasoning cases with

him,—endeavoring to excite his sympathies. He would listen to the most

pathetic appeals with the most discouraging politeness and equanimity.

‘It all resolves itself into this,’ he would say; ‘must I part with

Stubbs, or keep him? Stubbs is the soul of punctuality, honesty, and

efficiency,—a thorough business hand, and as humane as the general run.

We can’t have perfection; and if I keep him, I must sustain his

administration as a _whole_, even if there are, now and then, things

that are exceptionable. All government includes some necessary

hardness. General rules will bear hard on particular cases.’ This last

maxim my father seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of

cruelty. After he had said _that_, he commonly drew up his feet on the

sofa, like a man that has disposed of a business, and betook himself to

a nap, or the newspaper, as the case might be.

“The fact is my father showed the exact sort of talent for a statesman.

He could have divided Poland as easily as an orange, or trod on Ireland

as quietly and systematically as any man living. At last my mother gave

up, in despair. It never will be known, till the last account, what

noble and sensitive natures like hers have felt, cast, utterly

helpless, into what seems to them an abyss of injustice and cruelty,

and which seems so to nobody about them. It has been an age of long

sorrow of such natures, in such a hell-begotten sort of world as ours.

What remained for her, but to train her children in her own views and

sentiments? Well, after all you say about training, children will grow

up substantially what they _are_ by nature, and only that. From the

cradle, Alfred was an aristocrat; and as he grew up, instinctively, all

his sympathies and all his reasonings were in that line, and all

mother’s exhortations went to the winds. As to me, they sunk deep into

me. She never contradicted, in form, anything my father said, or seemed

directly to differ from him; but she impressed, burnt into my very

soul, with all the force of her deep, earnest nature, an idea of the

dignity and worth of the meanest human soul. I have looked in her face

with solemn awe, when she would point up to the stars in the evening,

and say to me, ‘See there, Auguste! the poorest, meanest soul on our

place will be living, when all these stars are gone forever,—will live

as long as God lives!’

“She had some fine old paintings; one, in particular, of Jesus healing

a blind man. They were very fine, and used to impress me strongly. ‘See

there, Auguste,’ she would say; ‘the blind man was a beggar, poor and

loathsome; therefore, he would not heal him _afar off!_ He called him

to him, and put _his hands on him!_ Remember this, my boy.’ If I had

lived to grow up under her care, she might have stimulated me to I know

not what of enthusiasm. I might have been a saint, reformer,

martyr,—but, alas! alas! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and

I never saw her again!”

St. Clare rested his head on his hands, and did not speak for some

minutes. After a while, he looked up, and went on:

“What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere

matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical

position, acting with natural temperament. The greater part is nothing

but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a

town where all are, in fact, free and equal; becomes a regular church

member and deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and

thinks us all little better than heathens. Yet he is, for all the

world, in constitution and habit, a duplicate of my father. I can see

it leaking out in fifty different ways,—just the same strong,

overbearing, dominant spirit. You know very well how impossible it is

to persuade some of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair does

not feel above them. The fact is, though he has fallen on democratic

times, and embraced a democratic theory, he is to the heart an

aristocrat, as much as my father, who ruled over five or six hundred

slaves.”

Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was

laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.

“Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they _were_

alike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted

against the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for

it; and so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old

democrat, and the other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned

plantations in Louisiana, they would have been as like as two old

bullets cast in the same mould.”

“What an undutiful boy you are!” said Miss Ophelia.

“I don’t mean them any disrespect,” said St. Clare. “You know reverence

is not my forte. But, to go back to my history:

“When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be

divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God’s earth a

nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns

his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question,

without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the

plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities

had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a

wonderfully successful one.

“But two years’ trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in

that matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not

know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven,

housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military

precision,—the question of how little of life’s commonest enjoyments

would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring

problem,—the necessity of drivers and overseers,—the ever-necessary

whip, first, last, and only argument,—the whole thing was insufferably

disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother’s

estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!

“It’s all nonsense to talk to me about slaves _enjoying_ all this! To

this day, I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of

your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to

apologize for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living

wants to work all his days, from day-dawn till dark, under the constant

eye of a master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible

volition, on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for

two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food

and shelter to keep him in working order! Any man who thinks that human

beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way

as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him,

with a clear conscience!”

“I always have supposed,” said Miss Ophelia, “that you, all of you,

approved of these things, and thought them _right_—according to

Scripture.”

“Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred who is as

determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of

defence;—no, he stands, high and haughty, on that good old respectable

ground, _the right of the strongest_; and he says, and I think quite

sensibly, that the American planter is ‘only doing, in another form,

what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower

classes;’ that is, I take it, _appropriating_ them, body and bone, soul

and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both,—and I think,

at least, _consistently_. He says that there can be no high

civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real.

There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and

confined to an animal nature; and a higher one thereby acquires leisure

and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and

becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I

said, he is born an aristocrat;—so I don’t believe, because I was born

a democrat.”

“How in the world can the two things be compared?” said Miss Ophelia.

“The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family,

whipped.”

“He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.

The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death,—the capitalist

can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which

is the worst,—to have one’s children sold, or see them starve to death

at home.”

“But it’s no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn’t worse

than some other bad thing.”

“I didn’t give it for one,—nay, I’ll say, besides, that ours is the

more bold and palpable infringement of human rights; actually buying a

man up, like a horse,—looking at his teeth, cracking his joints, and

trying his paces and then paying down for him,—having speculators,

breeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls,—sets the

thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form,

though the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is,

appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of

another without any regard to their own.”

“I never thought of the matter in this light,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Well, I’ve travelled in England some, and I’ve looked over a good many

documents as to the state of their lower classes; and I really think

there is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off

than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not

infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard

master; for he isn’t. He is despotic, and unmerciful to

insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as

he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a

sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.

“When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their

instruction; and, to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have

them catechized Sunday, though, I believe, in his heart, that he

thought it would do about as much good to set a chaplain over his dogs

and horses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by

every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every

week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours

on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing

population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could

perhaps testify to the same result, _there and here_. Yet some striking

exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is

naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white.”

“Well,” said Miss Ophelia, “how came you to give up your plantation

life?”

“Well, we jogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that I

was no planter. He thought it absurd, after he had reformed, and

altered, and improved everywhere, to suit my notions, that I still

remained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was, after all, the THING that I

hated—the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this

ignorance, brutality and vice,—just to make money for me!

“Besides, I was always interfering in the details. Being myself one of

the laziest of mortals, I had altogether too much fellow-feeling for

the lazy; and when poor, shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of

their cotton-baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks

with dirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I

should do if I were they, I couldn’t and wouldn’t have them flogged for

it. Well, of course, there was an end of plantation discipline; and Alf

and I came to about the same point that I and my respected father did,

years before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and

would never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock

and the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let

him manage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here.”

“But why didn’t you free your slaves?”

“Well, I wasn’t up to that. To hold them as tools for money-making, I

could not;—have them to help spend money, you know, didn’t look quite

so ugly to me. Some of them were old house-servants, to whom I was much

attached; and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well

satisfied to be as they were.” He paused, and walked reflectively up

and down the room.

“There was,” said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and

hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I

had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,—to free my

native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such

fever-fits, I suppose, some time,—but then—”

“Why didn’t you?” said Miss Ophelia;—“you ought not to put your hand to

the plough, and look back.”

“O, well, things didn’t go with me as I expected, and I got the despair

of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to

wisdom in us both; but, some how or other, instead of being actor and

regenerator in society, I became a piece of driftwood, and have been

floating and eddying about, ever since. Alfred scolds me, every time we

meet; and he has the better of me, I grant,—for he really does

something; his life is a logical result of his opinions and mine is a

contemptible _non sequitur_.”

“My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your

probation?”

“Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to

come back to this point,—we were on this liberation business. I don’t

think my feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in

their hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and,

bad as it is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master.

It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious,

improvident, degraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as

to themselves. The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel

that as we do, because they do not mingle with the class they degrade

as we do. They are in our homes; they are the associates of our

children, and they form their minds faster than we can; for they are a

race that children always will cling to and assimilate with. If Eva,

now, was not more angel than ordinary, she would be ruined. We might as

well allow the small-pox to run among them, and think our children

would not take it, as to let them be uninstructed and vicious, and

think our children will not be affected by that. Yet our laws

positively and utterly forbid any efficient general educational system,

and they do it wisely, too; for, just begin and thoroughly educate one

generation, and the whole thing would be blown sky high. If we did not

give them liberty, they would take it.”

“And what do you think will be the end of this?” said Miss Ophelia.

“I don’t know. One thing is certain,—that there is a mustering among

the masses, the world over; and there is a _dies iræ_ coming on, sooner

or later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this

country. My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming,

when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she

taught me, when I was a boy, to pray, ‘thy kingdom come.’ Sometimes I

think all this sighing, and groaning, and stirring among the dry bones

foretells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the

day of His appearing?”

“Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,” said

Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her

cousin.

“Thank you for your good opinion, but it’s up and down with me,—up to

heaven’s gate in theory, down in earth’s dust in practice. But there’s

the teabell,—do let’s go,—and don’t say, now, I haven’t had one

downright serious talk, for once in my life.”

At table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. “I suppose you’ll

think, cousin,” she said, “that we are all barbarians.”

“I think that’s a barbarous thing,” said Miss Ophelia, “but I don’t

think you are all barbarians.”

“Well, now,” said Marie, “I know it’s impossible to get along with some

of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don’t

feel a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they’d only behave

themselves, it would not happen.”

“But, mamma,” said Eva, “the poor creature was unhappy; that’s what

made her drink.”

“O, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I’m unhappy, very often. I

presume,” she said, pensively, “that I’ve had greater trials than ever

she had. It’s just because they are so bad. There’s some of them that

you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a

man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie

round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things.

That man was caught and whipped, time and again, and it never did him

any good; and the last time he crawled off, though he couldn’t but just

go, and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for

father’s hands were always treated kindly.”

“I broke a fellow in, once,” said St. Clare, “that all the overseers

and masters had tried their hands on in vain.”

“You!” said Marie; “well, I’d be glad to know when _you_ ever did

anything of the sort.”

“Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow,—a native-born African; and

he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon

degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody

could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to

overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could

manage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly

off into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf’s plantation, for it was

after we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated; but

I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I

could break the man; and finally it was agreed that, if I caught him, I

should have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some

six or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can

get up as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only

customary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only

put in as a sort of mediator, in case he was caught.

“Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and

finally we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us

well in the rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an

impenetrable thicket of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he

fought the dogs right gallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and

actually killed three of them with only his naked fists, when a shot

from a gun brought him down, and he fell, wounded and bleeding, almost

at my feet. The poor fellow looked up at me with manhood and despair

both in his eye. I kept back the dogs and the party, as they came

pressing up, and claimed him as my prisoner. It was all I could do to

keep them from shooting him, in the flush of success; but I persisted

in my bargain, and Alfred sold him to me. Well, I took him in hand, and

in one fortnight I had him tamed down as submissive and tractable as

heart could desire.”

“What in the world did you do to him?” said Marie.

“Well, it was quite a simple process. I took him to my own room, had a

good bed made for him, dressed his wounds, and tended him myself, until

he got fairly on his feet again. And, in process of time, I had free

papers made out for him, and told him he might go where he liked.”

“And did he go?” said Miss Ophelia.

“No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two, and absolutely refused

to leave me. I never had a braver, better fellow,—trusty and true as

steel. He embraced Christianity afterwards, and became as gentle as a

child. He used to oversee my place on the lake, and did it capitally,

too. I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his

life for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the

panic, everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and

actually brought me back into life again. But, poor fellow! he was

taken, right after, and there was no saving him. I never felt anybody’s

loss more.”

Eva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father, as he told the

story,—her small lips apart, her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing

interest.

As he finished, she suddenly threw her arms around his neck, burst into

tears, and sobbed convulsively.

“Eva, dear child! what is the matter?” said St. Clare, as the child’s

small frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings. “This

child,” he added, “ought not to hear any of this kind of thing,—she’s

nervous.”

“No, papa, I’m not nervous,” said Eva, controlling herself, suddenly,

with a strength of resolution singular in such a child. “I’m not

nervous, but these things _sink into my heart_.”

“What do you mean, Eva?”

“I can’t tell you, papa, I think a great many thoughts. Perhaps some

day I shall tell you.”

“Well, think away, dear,—only don’t cry and worry your papa,” said St.

Clare, “Look here,—see what a beautiful peach I have got for you.”

Eva took it and smiled, though there was still a nervous twiching about

the corners of her mouth.

“Come, look at the gold-fish,” said St. Clare, taking her hand and

stepping on to the verandah. A few moments, and merry laughs were heard

through the silken curtains, as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each

other with roses, and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.

There is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the

adventures of the higher born; but, if our readers will accompany us up

to a little loft over the stable, they may, perhaps, learn a little of

his affairs. It was a decent room, containing a bed, a chair, and a

small, rough stand, where lay Tom’s Bible and hymn-book; and where he

sits, at present, with his slate before him, intent on something that

seems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.

The fact was, that Tom’s home-yearnings had become so strong that he

had begged a sheet of writing-paper of Eva, and, mustering up all his

small stock of literary attainment acquired by Mas’r George’s

instructions, he conceived the bold idea of writing a letter; and he

was busy now, on his slate, getting out his first draft. Tom was in a

good deal of trouble, for the forms of some of the letters he had

forgotten entirely; and of what he did remember, he did not know

exactly which to use. And while he was working, and breathing very

hard, in his earnestness, Eva alighted, like a bird, on the round of

his chair behind him, and peeped over his shoulder.

“O, Uncle Tom! what funny things you _are_ making, there!”

“I’m trying to write to my poor old woman, Miss Eva, and my little

chil’en,” said Tom, drawing the back of his hand over his eyes; “but,

some how, I’m feard I shan’t make it out.”

“I wish I could help you, Tom! I’ve learnt to write some. Last year I

could make all the letters, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”

So Eva put her golden head close to his, and the two commenced a grave

and anxious discussion, each one equally earnest, and about equally

ignorant; and, with a deal of consulting and advising over every word,

the composition began, as they both felt very sanguine, to look quite

like writing.

“Yes, Uncle Tom, it really begins to look beautiful,” said Eva, gazing

delightedly on it. “How pleased your wife’ll be, and the poor little

children! O, it’s a shame you ever had to go away from them! I mean to

ask papa to let you go back, some time.”

“Missis said that she would send down money for me, as soon as they

could get it together,” said Tom. “I’m ’spectin, she will. Young Mas’r

George, he said he’d come for me; and he gave me this yer dollar as a

sign;” and Tom drew from under his clothes the precious dollar.

“O, he’ll certainly come, then!” said Eva. “I’m so glad!”

“And I wanted to send a letter, you know, to let ’em know whar I was,

and tell poor Chloe that I was well off,—cause she felt so drefful,

poor soul!”

“I say Tom!” said St. Clare’s voice, coming in the door at this moment.

Tom and Eva both started.

“What’s here?” said St. Clare, coming up and looking at the slate.

“O, it’s Tom’s letter. I’m helping him to write it,” said Eva; “isn’t

it nice?”

“I wouldn’t discourage either of you,” said St. Clare, “but I rather

think, Tom, you’d better get me to write your letter for you. I’ll do

it, when I come home from my ride.”

“It’s very important he should write,” said Eva, “because his mistress

is going to send down money to redeem him, you know, papa; he told me

they told him so.”

St. Clare thought, in his heart, that this was probably only one of

those things which good-natured owners say to their servants, to

alleviate their horror of being sold, without any intention of

fulfilling the expectation thus excited. But he did not make any

audible comment upon it,—only ordered Tom to get the horses out for a

ride.

Tom’s letter was written in due form for him that evening, and safely

lodged in the post-office.

Miss Ophelia still persevered in her labors in the housekeeping line.

It was universally agreed, among all the household, from Dinah down to

the youngest urchin, that Miss Ophelia was decidedly “curis,”—a term by

which a southern servant implies that his or her betters don’t exactly

suit them.

The higher circle in the family—to wit, Adolph, Jane and Rosa—agreed

that she was no lady; ladies never keep working about as she did,—that

she had no _air_ at all; and they were surprised that she should be any

relation of the St. Clares. Even Marie declared that it was absolutely

fatiguing to see Cousin Ophelia always so busy. And, in fact, Miss

Ophelia’s industry was so incessant as to lay some foundation for the

complaint. She sewed and stitched away, from daylight till dark, with

the energy of one who is pressed on by some immediate urgency; and

then, when the light faded, and the work was folded away, with one turn

out came the ever-ready knitting-work, and there she was again, going

on as briskly as ever. It really was a labor to see her.