Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

CHAPTER I In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness.

For convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,—which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray’s Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expressions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe.

His companion, Mr. Shelby, had the appearance of a gentleman; and the arrangements of the house, and the general air of the housekeeping, indicated easy, and even opulent circumstances. As we before stated, the two were in the midst of an earnest conversation.

“That is the way I should arrange the matter,” said Mr. Shelby.

“I can’t make trade that way—I positively can’t, Mr. Shelby,” said the other, holding up a glass of wine between his eye and the light.

“Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere,—steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm like a clock.”

“You mean honest, as niggers go,” said Haley, helping himself to a glass of brandy.

“No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he really did get it. I’ve trusted him, since then, with everything I have,—money, house, horses,—and let him come and go round the country; and I always found him true and square in everything.”

“Some folks don’t believe there is pious niggers Shelby,” said Haley, with a candid flourish of his hand, “but I do. I had a fellow, now, in this yer last lot I took to Orleans—’t was as good as a meetin’, now, really, to hear that critter pray; and he was quite gentle and quiet like. He fetched me a good sum, too, for I bought him cheap of a man that was ’bliged to sell out; so I realized six hundred on him. Yes, I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article, and no mistake.”

“Well, Tom’s got the real article, if ever a fellow had,” rejoined the other. “Why, last fall, I let him go to Cincinnati alone, to do business for me, and bring home five hundred dollars. ‘Tom,’ says I to him, ‘I trust you, because I think you’re a Christian—I know you wouldn’t cheat.’ Tom comes back, sure enough; I knew he would. Some low fellows, they say, said to him—‘Tom, why don’t you make tracks for Canada?’ ‘Ah, master trusted me, and I couldn’t,’—they told me about it. I am sorry to part with Tom, I must say. You ought to let him cover the whole balance of the debt; and you would, Haley, if you had any conscience.”

CHAPTER XIX 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.”