Chapter XIII: finds Eliza and her husband in the Quaker settlement, (1)

all prim, precise, kindly, thoughtful, and resolute about securing the safety of the fugitives. “Thou’rt safe here by daylight,” said his hospitable host Simeon, “for every one in the settlement is a Friend, and all are watching. Moreover, it is safer to travel by night.” Thus ends the chapter. The next three, XIV., XV., XVI., in continuation with chapters XVIII., XIX., XX., XXII., XXIII., XXIV., XXV., XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., (that is, fourteen, or upwards of a third of the entire work) find us in widely distant and different scenes,--travelling up the magnificent Mississippi, and finally housed at New Orleans, and moving among a new set of characters: Tom having, on the voyage, changed hands, and become the property of Mr St Clare, grateful for his having saved the life of his daughter Eva--for she falls over boat side into the water, and Tom plunges in after her. This is a somewhat startling incident, and it was not quite necessary to peril the fragile little creature’s life, in order to supply her father with an inducement to buy Tom. Story-tellers should never use greater machinery to bring about their ends than is adequate. The doing so generally argues a deficiency of power or invention. In the present instance the gentle reader’s feelings are shocked, and needlessly; for as little Evangeline St Clare was the only and idolised child of her father, who was onboard, and wanted a coachman--having dismissed his own for drunkenness--what more natural than for Tom, having gained, as in a very pretty and natural way he had done, the affection of little Eva on the voyage, to occur to her, and to her father, as a good successor to his discarded Jehu? A silvery word or two from Eva’s sweet little lips would have sufficed, and Tom, in the quietest way in the world, would have become the sable chattel of Mr St Clare. Observe, the very idea had occurred to Eva before her sudden and superfluous immersion, and she herself had told him of her intention.

‘... “So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?”

“I don’t know, Miss Eva.”

“Don’t know,” quoth she, concernedly.

“No, I am going to be sold to somebody. I don’t know who.”

“My papa can buy you,” said Eva quickly, “and if he buys
you, you will have good times. I mean to ask him to[6] this
very day.”

“Thank you, my little lady,” said Tom.’

Five minutes afterwards Mrs Stowe has heart enough to let the benevolent little creature go overboard, simply to be rescued by Tom! Nor is the incident told forcibly; and it elicits no unusual trait of character in anybody. Having thus introduced Tom to new places and persons, let us give a general account of this elaborate episodical portion of Mrs Stowe’s undertaking.

The figures in the foreground of this large picture are--Mr and Mrs St Clare, his cousin Miss Ophelia, his daughter Eva (or Evangeline), Topsy, and Uncle Tom. Those in the background are Mr St Clare’s brother, his youthful son Henrique, and a confused heap of domestic slaves--all as happy as happy can be, under the protection of their wealthy, indolent, good-natured proprietor, Mr St Clare; but there is also, almost hid in the dark shadow, _one Prue_! As for Tom, the lines have fallen to him in exceedingly _pleasant places_; he leads a life of only nominal servitude--the huge pet of pretty little Eva, and consequently a favourite of her father. Here Mrs Stowe has evidently expended much greater pains than on any other portion of her work; but we doubt greatly whether she will be satisfied with our judgment on the subject. Speaking as English critics, we are of opinion that Topsy is worth all the others, ten times over; then comes Mrs St Clare; then the cook, ladies’-maids, and the valet Adolph; then Miss Ophelia, then Eva, and then Mr St Clare. The others have nothing distinctive about them, and seem introduced simply to “draw out” the characters and opinions of Mr St Clare and his daughter Eva.

Augustine St Clare and his brother Alfred are of Canadian descent--the sons of a wealthy Louisianian planter; their mother having been a lovely and pious Huguenot French lady, whose family had been early emigrants to Louisiana; and these two had been her only children. It is with Augustine[7] that we are at present concerned; and he having been crossed in love, through the cunning cupidity of the young lady’s guardians--in disgust, and to show his indifference towards one whom he erroneously supposed to have jilted him, married the wealthy reigning belle of the season--“a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and--a hundred thousand dollars.” Her husband was of a “sensitive temperament”--“gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical, _sceptical_.” Indeed, he himself declares, as to this last, “religion is a remarkably scarce article at our house.” Almost immediately after his marriage, he received a letter from the lady to whom he had been “so passionately--romantically” attached, explaining the true state of matters. She was yet unmarried, and wrote fervently to him, supposing him also unmarried!

“Thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St Clare,” whose wife was the mere incarnation of silliness, vanity, selfishness, and tyranny, as far as she dared to show this last. Her husband treated her, from first to last, with undisguised but laughing contempt; but it may be doubtful whether she really appreciated the extent to which he civilly despised her.

‘“Mr St Clare, I wish you wouldn’t whistle,” said Marie;
“it makes my head worse.”

“I won’t,” replied St Clare. “Is there anything else you
would wish me not to do?”

“I wish you _would_ have some kind of sympathy for my
trials; you never have any feeling for me!”

“My dear accusing angel!” said St Clare.

“It’s provoking to be talked to in that way!”

“Then, how _will_ you be talked to? I’ll talk to order--any
way you’ll mention, only to give satisfaction.”...

“St Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to
my ill health,” said Marie, with the voice of a suffering
martyr. “I only hope the day won’t come when he’ll remember
it!” she added, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. Of
course, there was a rather foolish silence.’

Happy couple! But we think we have such in our own island home! Mrs St Clare was “beautiful, accomplished, and an heiress--having no doubt that Augustine was a most fortunate man in having obtained her.” “It is a great mistake,” justly observes Mrs Stowe, “to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she exacts love to the uttermost farthing.” At length she brings her husband a solitary child--Evangeline--whom he names after his gifted, beloved, and sainted mother. From the time of Eva’s birth, her mother’s health “gradually sunk. A life of constant inaction, bodily and mental--the friction of ceaseless ennui and discontent, united to the ordinary weakness which attended the period of maternity, in the course of a few years changed the blooming young belle into a yellow, faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered herself in every sense the most ill-used and suffering person in existence.”

Such a woman as this, being worse than a mere cipher in his establishment, and Eva’s health requiring change of air, he had taken her to Vermont for a season; bringing back with him his cousin Ophelia--a spinster of forty-five; a model of propriety, exactitude, and a sort of hard conscientiousness. She was the absolute bond-slave of the “_ought_.” Her standard of right was so high, so all-embracing, so minute, and making so few concessions to human frailty, that, though she strove with heroic ardour to reach it, she never actually did so, and of course was burdened with a constant and often harassing sense of deficiency. This gave a severe and somewhat gloomy cast to her religious character.

The contrast between this starched, prim, yet worthy beau-ideal of Duty and “gay, easy, unpunctual, unpractical” St Clare is well conceived, and nearly as well carried out before the reader, who gradually conceives a kind of respect for her, which seems continually on the point of warming into regard; but the predominant idea in his mind is, that Miss Ophelia would make an excellent housekeeper in--somebody else’s establishment: for himself, she would--he fears--be too good, and, too hard--and--“tall, square-formed, and angular.” What a treasure, however, thinks he, for a widowed cousin--three hundred miles off, with eight or ten wild boys and girls to break in! Mrs Stowe tells us, that Miss Ophelia is “the representative of a very numerous class of the very best of northern people, of activity, zeal, unflinching conscientiousness, clear _intellectual_ discrimination between truth and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness;[8] but with a want of that SPIRIT OF LOVE, without which, in the eye of Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower, wanting in life and perfume.... Yet that blessed principle is not dead, but only sleepeth, and always answers to the touch of the true magnet--divine love.” She, however, “_unconsciously_ represents one _great_ sin--the prejudice of caste, and colour.” Even in the New England States, where slavery has been abolished by law, this prejudice flourishes in full and fell vigour, despite, even, the melting sunbeams of Christianity! Those who will nobly stint themselves of luxuries, and almost necessaries, to send the gospel to the _distant_ dark heathens--at home, loathe the sight and contiguity of their black brother, and exhibit it even in the house of God. “Supposing,” Mrs Stowe says, solemnly and finely, “our Lord was now on earth as he was once, what course is it probable that he would pursue with regard to this unchristian prejudice of colour? There was a class of men in those days, as much despised by the Jews as the negroes are by us; and it was a complaint made of Christ that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. And if Christ should enter, on some communion season, into a place of worship, and see the coloured man sitting afar off by himself, would it not be just in His spirit to go there and sit with him, rather than to take the seats of his richer and more prosperous brethren?”

The character of Miss Ophelia is most happily developed, by means, principally, of Topsy--the Gem of the book, of whom more anon; and that character is, as will be seen, _proper_ to the moral climate of New England; whereas, according to Mrs Stowe herself, “Mrs St Clare is the type of a class of women not peculiar to any latitude, nor any condition in society ... she may be found in England, or America.” The same, indeed, is to be said of “Alfred and Augustine St Clare, who represent,” she says, “two classes of men which are to be found in all countries, the radically aristocratic and democratic men.” In defining _her_ “aristocrat” and “democrat,” it must be borne in mind that she is speaking of American exhibitions of those characters, and as connected with the relation of slaveholders. On this subject we might make many observations; but content ourselves with saying, that, in the main, we concur with Mrs Stowe’s views, as expounded by herself, with reference to the perilousness of intrusting man with practically irresponsible authority over his fellow-man. That state of society is essentially vicious, and foully rotten before the eyes of our Almighty Maker, _who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth_, which does not make THE LAWS the indifferent and easily accessible protector, vindicator, and avenger of every human being living in that state.

The two brothers discuss frequently, and with considerable force, the question of slavery, as to its consistency or inconsistency with an enlightened and civilised system of laws, and the spirit and precepts of Christianity.

Why Mrs Stowe should have thought it necessary to represent her favourite St Clare as a _sceptic_ on religious subjects, is not quite clear; unless, indeed, she intends to intimate that it is a dark and grievous characteristic of the whole class which he represents. Perhaps it may be, unfortunately, so; and, indeed, she seems, with bitter sarcasm, to hint that one thing which tends to produce this result is, the cool accommodation of the principles and precepts of the Gospel to the existing order of things in the slave states, in even their vilest aspects. Upon the whole, however, Mrs Stowe succeeds in satisfying the reader that her gentleman hero is a manly fellow, with all his faults. His love of his little daughter, his grief as he perceives her withering away before his eyes under the blight of consumption, his anguish and despair when she is taken from him, are all told touchingly--very touchingly, with true pathos. So also the fondness with which he cherishes the memory of his mother. He forms the resolution to give poor Tom his freedom; but as it is necessary, for the exigencies of the story, to get poor Tom into worse hands, there is no other way occurs to the author than to make Mr St Clare die abruptly; and the most suitable mode of bringing about that result is, when his moral being has been soothed and solemnised by a religious conversation with his cousin Ophelia, in which he says he “does not know what makes him think so much of his mother that night.” He “has a strange kind of feeling as if she were near him ...;” he by and by says, “I believe I’ll go down street and hear the news to-night.” He gets into a café; and while reading the paper, an affray arises between two partially intoxicated _gentlemen_; he “attempts to wrest a bowie knife from one of them, who gives him a fatal stab with it in the side.” He is brought home on a shutter, wrapped in a cloak, to the consternation of all in the house, and dies the same evening, having first said to Tom, “pray!” He dies, “opening his eyes with a sudden light, as of joy and recognition, and saying ‘mother’--and then he was gone.”

Eva is evidently a favourite creation of the author’s, and she is undoubtedly a gentle and sweet little spirit, suggesting the tenderest thoughts of love and pity; but a mere worldly reader is apt to think, with a little impatience, that she is so very good; she talks so much beyond her years;[9] and _challenges_ our admiration, with the confidence of a _pattern_ child. No one can find fault with anything she says or does; but unfortunately, you see that the writer from the first intended her to be a little piece of perfection. Frail and sensitive human nature is a little irritated by this, and suspects something factitious. It says, peevishly, “I know many good and charming children, but here’s an angel in flesh!” When, however, our excellent and pious author herself tells us, that “the gentle Eva is an impersonation, in childish form, of the love of Christ--” worldly criticism utters not another word, but reverences the writer’s motives. Here is little Eva’s death--

‘St Clare saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the
face.... “Eva!” said he, presently, gently. She did not
hear. “Oh, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?” A
bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she
said, brokenly,--“Oh, love--joy--peace!” gave one sigh, and
passed from death to life.’

It might have been grander, perhaps, if her _voiceless_ response, had been that “glorious smile,” reflecting the ineffable happiness--the suddenly seen glory of heaven. Are not these words, again, more likely to have fallen from an adult, than a mere child?--Let the spectator’s eye now be turned heavily towards the darkest portion of the background--and there is crouching a grisly figure--old Prue--“cross old Prue”--as even sweet Eva styled her! This creature is introduced and disposed of by the author, with a certain dreadful power; she is seen for but a short space--but in that short space, what a tale of horror does she tell!

Prue was a tall, bony, coloured woman, with a scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen, grumbling voice. Her office was, to carry on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls to Mr St Clare’s house.

‘She set down her basket (in the kitchen), squatted herself
down, and resting her elbows on her knees, said--“O, Lord!
I wish I’se dead!”

“Why do you wish you were dead?” asked Miss Ophelia.

“I’d be out of my misery,” said the woman, gruffly, without
taking her eyes from the floor.’

She is among the merry, saucy, black and quadroon servants, who jibe her, as soon as Miss Ophelia is gone. The only one who notices her is Tom, who offers to carry her basket for her, and tries to persuade her to leave off drinking--to which misery has driven her. She wishes herself in hell--Tom shuddering the while--to be out of her misery.

‘“Where was you raised?” he asked.

“Up in Kentuck. A _man kept me to breed chil’en for
market_, and sold ’em as fast as they got big enough; last
of all, he sold me to a speculator, and my mas’r (a baker),
got me o’ him.”

“What set you into this bad way of drinkin?”

“To get shet of my misery.”’

And she proceeds to describe that misery; and many a tender mother has sickened and shuddered over the next eighteen lines.

A few days afterwards _another woman_ came in old Prue’s place, to bring the rusks. On being asked about her by Dinah, another servant, she says, mysteriously, “Prue isn’t coming any more!”

‘“Why not?” inquires 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, anyhow?” she said.

The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and
answered in a 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!”’

The unhappy wretch had been whipped to death in a cellar, left there, and--“the flies had got to her!” Miss Ophelia’s honest soul was fired with indignation on hearing it; and when she expressed her kindled womanly feelings to Mr St Clare, he received it with levity, “peeling his orange,” while good excited Miss Ophelia is denouncing it as “perfectly abominable”--and answering her with badinage; gaily adding, “My dear cousin, _I_ didn’t do it, and I can’t help it; I would, if I could!”

Let us turn, however, from this revolting incident, to Mrs Stowe’s _chef-d’œuvre_--the inimitable TOPSY--a true _psychological_ curiosity--a character quite new to _us_, and delineated by the pencil of a consummate limner. The portrait will not bear an additional touch, nor the loss of one that has been given it. It exactly satisfies the critical eye.

We have already given the reader Topsy’s presentation to Miss Ophelia. Here is the little black imp _in propriâ personâ_ before you, as Mr St Clare paraded her before the astounded eye of his prim cousin:--

‘She was eight or nine years of age--one of the blackest
of her race; and her round, shining eyes, glittering
as glass beads, moved with quick and restless glances
over everything in the room. Her mouth, half open with
astonishment at the wonders of the new mas’r’s parlour,
displayed a white and brilliant set of teeth. Her woolly
hair was braided in sundry little tails, which stuck out
in every direction. The expression of the face was an odd
mixture of shrewdness and cunning, over which was oddly
drawn, like a kind of veil, an expression of the most
doleful gravity and solemnity. She was dressed in a single
filthy, ragged garment, made of bagging; and stood with
her hands demurely folded before her. Altogether there
was something queer and goblin-like about her appearance.
“Here, Topsy,” said Mr St Clare, giving a whistle, as a
man would to call the attention of a dog, “give us a song,
now, and show us some of your dancing.” The black glassy
eyes glittered with a kind of wicked drollery, and The
Thing struck up, in a clear shrill voice, an odd negro
melody, to which she kept time with her hands and feet,
spinning round, clapping her hands, knocking her knees
together, in a wild, fantastic sort of time, and producing
in her throat all those strange guttural sounds which
distinguish the native music of her race; and, finally,
turning a somerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing
note, as odd and unearthly as that of a steam whistle, she
came suddenly down on the carpet, and stood with her hands
folded, and a most sanctimonious expression of meekness and
solemnity over her face, only broken by the cunning glances
which she shot, askance, from the corners of her eyes. Miss
Ophelia stood silent, perfectly paralysed with amazement.’

A world of scrubbing and cleansing brings to sight “great welts and calloused (?) spots”--ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up that far, at the sight of which the heart of Miss Ophelia--who had a horrid repugnance to the touch of a nigger!--“became pitiful within her!” She had compelled Jane, one of the quadroon maids, to assist her in the task of ablution, as she did, tossing her head with disgust; the “young one” “scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears!”

When arrayed, at last, in a suit of decent clothing, and her hair had been cropped close to her head, Miss Ophelia sits down to question the thing; who tells her, with a grin showing all her glittering teeth, that she does not know how old she is; that she never had a mother; never was born; never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin. “I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take care on us.”

‘“Have you ever heard anything about GOD, Topsy?” She
looked bewildered, and grinned.

“Do you know who made you?”

“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short
laugh. “I ’spect I _grow’d_! Don’t think nobody ever made
me!”’...

“Virgin soil here,” indeed, as St Clare slily suggested to his dismayed cousin. By and by--behold Topsy, washed and shorn, arrayed in a clean gown, with well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia, with an expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral, while she carefully initiates her sooty little charge into the mysteries of bed-making. Topsy pays profound attention to all the directions about under-sheets, bolsters, and turning down; but not too profound to prevent her, the young disciple, when her teacher’s back was turned for a moment, snatching a pair of gloves and a ribbon, which she adroitly slipped into her sleeves, and stood with her hands duly folded as before!

Being required, by and by, to reduce her lessons to practice, out drops from her sleeve an end of the purloined ribbon! at which she looks, when furiously challenged, with innocent wonder. She declares solemnly she had never seen it till that minute; and when angrily shaken by Miss Ophelia, out dropped the gloves from the other sleeve! Topsy now owns to the gloves, steadily denying the ribbon; but, threatened with a whipping, confesses to both, with woeful expressions of penitence. Being adjured to “_confess_” if she has taken anything else, the little wretch owns to having taken “Miss Eva’s red thing she wears round her neck,” and Rosa’s red earrings, and having burnt them! “Burnt them! why did you do that?” inquires the astounded lady. “’Cause I’se wicked--I is! It’s mighty wicked, anyhow. I can’t help it!” But in a moment or two’s time, Eva and Rosa make their appearance, with necklace and earrings as usual, never having parted with them.

“I’m sure I can’t tell what to do with such a child,” said
Miss Ophelia in despair. “What did you tell me you took
these things for, Topsy?”

“Why, missis said I must _’fess_; and I couldn’t think of
nothing else to ’fess,” said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

“But, of course, I didn’t want you to confess to things you
didn’t do. That’s telling a lie just as much as the other.”

“Laws, now, is it?” said Topsy, with an air of innocent
wonder!’

Here is an impressive contrast:--

‘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 neighbour. They
stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born
of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and
moral eminence; the African, born of ages of oppression,
submission, ignorance, toil, and vice.’

If Miss Ophelia’s conscientiousness was--to use the slang of the phrenologists--“largely developed,” that of Topsy was about equal to the conscientiousness of a squirrel or a monkey; and good Miss Ophelia observes her _protegée_, “lithe as a cat, and active as a monkey,” and to the full as wantonly mischievous, with dumb despair. One of her fancies was to deck herself in Miss Ophelia’s choicest ornaments, and rehearse in them, like an actress, before the glass, singing, whistling, and making grimaces. Once surprised by the lady, with her “very best scarlet Indian crape shawl wound round her head for a turban,” “Topsy,” says she, at the end of all patience, “what _does_ make you act so?”

“Dun no, missis. I ’spects ’cause I’se so wicked.”

“I don’t know what I shall do with you, Topsy.”

“Law, missis, _you must whip me_. My old missis allers
whipped me. I an’t used to workin’ without I gets whipped.”

“Why, Topsy, I don’t want to whip you. You _can_ do well if
you choose; why won’t you?”

“Laws, missis, I’se used to whippin’. I ’spects it’s good
for me.”’

Though one might almost as well, one would have thought, have tried to teach a hedgehog astronomy, Miss Ophelia devoted herself to teaching the gnome the Catechism; and, after a patient year and a half’s efforts, here were some of the blessed results, as exhibited before laughing Mr St Clare, before whom were confident catechist and hopeful catechumen:--

“_Q._--Our first parents, being left to the freedom of
their own will, fell from the state wherein they were
created.” Topsy’s eyes twinkled, and she looked inquiringly.

“What is it, Topsy?” said Miss Ophelia.

“Please, missis, was dat ar _state_ Kintuck?”

“What state, Topsy?”

“Dat state dey fell out of. I used to hear Mas’r tell how
as we com down from Kintuck!”’

But what the sedulous didactic teaching of Miss Ophelia failed to do, would have doubtless been effected by sweet little Eva, had she lived: from whom, one day, fell the first word of kindness she 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.

Twice again this strange creature flits across the scene, and on one of these occasions says--

‘“Old missus whipped me a deal harder, and used to pull
my har, and knock my head agin the door; but it didn’t do
me no good! I ’spects if theys to pull every spear o’ har
out of my head, it wouldn’t do no good, neither! I’se so
wicked! Laws! I’se nothing but a nigger, no ways!” ...
“But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you might”----

“Couldn’t never be nothin but a nigger, if I was never so
good! If I could be skinned, and come white, I’d try then!”’

Poor Topsy!--these words go to the heart of all but--a moral _leper white as snow_! There is in them a huge volume of anguish and reproach.

It required the potent eloquence of little Eva’s death to dispel the last lingering feelings of Miss Ophelia’s repugnance towards the unhappy little black, in whom also the same solemn event had worked a marked change. “The callous indifference was gone ... there was a _striving_ for good--a strife, irregular, interrupted, suspended, oft--but yet renewed again.” The finishing touch to this singular and masterly delineation is exquisite in every way:--

‘One day, when Topsy had been sent for by Miss Ophelia, she
came, hastily thrusting something into her bosom. “What are
you doing there, you limb? You’ve been stealing something,
I’ll be bound,” said the imperious little Rosa (a quadroon
slave), who had been sent to call her, seizing her at the
same time roughly by the arm.

“You go ’long, Miss Rosa!” said Topsy, pulling from her;
“’tan’t none o’ your business!”

“None o’ your sa’ce!” said Rosa. “I saw you hiding
something--I know yer tricks,” and Rosa seized her
arm, and tried to force her hand into her bosom; while
Topsy, enraged, kicked and fought valiantly for what she
considered her rights. The clamour and confusion of the
battle drew Miss Ophelia and St Clare both to the spot.

“She’s been stealing!” said Rosa.

“I han’t, neither!” vociferated Topsy, sobbing with passion.

“Give me that, whatever it is!” said Miss Ophelia, sternly.

Topsy hesitated; but, on a second order, pulled out of her
bosom a little parcel done up in the foot of one of her
own old stockings. Miss Ophelia turned it out. There was a
small book which had been given to Topsy by Eva, containing
a single verse of Scripture arranged for every day in the
year; and in a paper, the curl of hair which she had given
on that memorable day when she had taken her last farewell.
St Clare was a good deal affected at the sight of it; the
little book had been rolled in a long strip of black crape,
torn from the funeral weeds.

“What did you wrap _this_ round the book for?” said he,
holding up the crape.

“’Cause--’cause--’cause ’twas Miss Eva. Oh, don’t take ’em
away, please!” she said; and, sitting flat down on the
floor, and putting her apron over her head, she began to
sob vehemently.’[10]

“Topsy,” says Mrs Stowe, “stands as the representative of a large class of the children who are growing up under the institution of slavery--quick, active, subtle, and ingenious--apparently utterly devoid of principle and conscience--keenly penetrating, by an instinct which exists in the childish mind, the degradation of their condition, and the utter hopelessness of rising above it.” In a note to a friend on the same subject, she writes very beautifully--“There lies, buried down in the heart of the most seemingly stupid and careless slave, a bleeding spot that bleeds and aches, though he could scarcely tell why--and this sore spot is the degradation of his position.”

Miss Ophelia, having had a formal gift of Topsy from Mr St Clare, takes her home to Vermont, where we are told, she “grew rapidly in grace and favour with the family,” at first sufficiently staggered by the quaint apparition. “At the age of womanhood she was at her own request baptised; and finally recommended and approved as a missionary to one of the stations in Africa.” Of course the mode of training Topsy was beyond the scope of the writer’s purpose; but we could have wished to see a good deal more of Topsy, in the progress of her mental and moral development. But as it is, the sketch is pregnant with instruction, encouragement, and warning: and were it for this one portrait alone, Mrs Stowe would be entitled to the blessings of generations of blacks yet unborn. With the divine penetration of genius consecrated by holiness, she has wrought down to the seat of our common nature, in the black, crushed beneath whole piled up mountains of prejudice, scorn, and despair.

We must now return to poor Tom, whose course is henceforth brief, and of deepening gloom, and whose _sun goes down in blood_.

Detestable Mrs St Clare, released from the humanising presence of her husband, as though she had been a deadly snake half-crushed by the presence of authority, makes amends for past inaction, by darting venomously at every one within her reach. She orders off a poor girl to the whipping-house, to be flogged, _naked_, by the common flogger--a huge man--in the presence of as many of both sexes as chose to look on, and be entertained by her shrieks, and the sight of her quivering ensanguined flesh.[11] Mrs St Clare contemptuously discarded the entreaties of Miss Ophelia, based mainly, with a womanly energy, on the mere sense of sex: and in disgust, Miss Ophelia returns, with Topsy, to her own country. Moreover, though poor Tom had been repeatedly promised his freedom by her husband, as she well knows, she ruthlessly sells him, with all the other slaves. Tom is told of his fate--to be forthwith sent to the slave mart. “The Lord’s will be done!” he exclaimed, folding his arms, and sighing heavily. He appeals to Miss Ophelia, who makes a hopeless attempt on Mrs St Clare, relying on her deceased husband’s promise. “Indeed,” says that charming lady, delicately clad in most elegantly made mourning for him whose solemn wishes she was violating, as he lay scarce cold in his grave--“Indeed I shall do no such thing! Tom is one of the most valuable slaves in the place! It could not be afforded any way!” ... “But consider his chance of getting a bad master----” “O! that’s all humbug----:” and the good lady turns a scornfully deaf ear to the solemn assurance, that Mr St Clare had made the promise to Eva on her deathbed. Marie St Clare is the type, we are told, of a class.

‘When Marie comes under a system of laws which gives her
_absolute control_ over her dependants--which enables her
to separate them, at her pleasure, from their dearest
family connections, or to inflict upon them the most
disgraceful, degrading, and violent punishments, _without
even the restraint which seeing_ the execution might
possibly induce--then it is that the character arrives at
full maturity.’

Here we part with this viper; assuring the class whom she may represent, that they are burthened with the execration of the civilised world--most piercing of all, those of her fair, Free sisters.

Now one’s heart aches to see poor Tom, the helpless, sorrowful inmate, amongst a great quantity of uproarious and _quasi_-merry other live lumber--of a New Orleans slave-market. O sickening scene! But here the two figures arresting the eye--and whose brief tale is told with melting pathos and simplicity--are Susan and Emmeline, both beautiful, mother and daughter; the latter only fifteen, just budding into womanhood: both with hearts trembling at the fear of approaching separation--and what kind of life before them? The mother to be sold for the purpose of breeding other slaves; the daughter--oh speak it not in the ears of Free fathers and mothers--of Christian men or women--to be “sold to a life of shame!” She has “the same soft, dark eye” as her mother, “with longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown.” And in passing, we are told, with an appalling irony, that “the gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for their sale is to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church in New York, who will receive the money, and go thereafter to the sacrament of _his Lord_ AND THEIRS, and think no more of it.”

The hurriedly-whispered dialogue of these two would break a heart of stone to overhear: they are--that forlorn mother and daughter--trying to express a hope--a faint hope--poor souls!--that they may be sold together! In order to aid this result, and disguise her beauty, the mother and she comb out her luxuriant tresses, so as to “look plain and decent;” but in the morning, when the watchful owner comes round to look at his human cattle--“How’s this?” he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline, “where’s your curls, gal?” He is told, timidly, that they thought it looked “more respectable so.”

‘“Bother!--You go right along, and curl yourself real
smart,” he added, giving a crack to a ratan he held in his
hand; “and be back in quick time, too! You go and help
her,” to her mother--“them curls may make a hundred dollars
difference in the sale of her!”’

Can horror go deeper? Yes, one step. The loathsome monster, Legree--of whom in a moment--is presently attracted by her beauty.

“He put out his heavy, dirty hand, and drew the girl towards him”--oh, Mrs Stowe! shall we go on?--“passed it over her neck and bust; felt her arms; looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her mother, whose patient face showed the sufferings she had been going through, at every motion of the hideous stranger.”

‘The girl was frightened, and began to cry.

“Stop that, you minx!” said the salesman, “no whimpering
_here_! The sale’s going to begin!”’

Presently the mother is put up on the block, and bought by a benevolent purchaser; in descending from it she gazes wistfully at her lovely daughter; and implores her purchaser--“O, do buy my daughter!” He tries to do so; but alas! she has inflamed the sensual monster Legree: he quietly bids against Benevolence, resolved to secure his victim: “the hammer falls; he has got the girl, body and soul, unless God help her!” But will HE? The chapter ends ominously with a passage from his Word--

“_When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not
the cry of the humble!_”

This Legree also purchases Tom, having quickly appreciated his “points,” as a “valleyable nigger:” and here you may see the _cobra_, uncoiled for you, in all its hideousness.

‘He was a short, broad, muscular man, in a checked
shirt, considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons
much the worse for dirt and wear, who elbowed his way
through the crowd, like one who is going actively into a
business; and coming up to the group, began to examine
them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him
approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at
him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently,
though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet
head, large, light-grey eyes, with their shaggy, sandy
eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned air, were rather
unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large
coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of
which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great
decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely
large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and
garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This
man proceeded to a very free personal examination of the
lot. He seized Tom by the jaw, and pulled open his mouth,
to inspect his teeth (!) made him strip up his sleeve,
to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump and
spring, to show his paces.

“Where was you raised?” he added briefly to these
investigations. “In Kintuck, mas’r,” said Tom, looking
about as if for deliverance. “What have you done?” “Had
care of mas’r’s farm,” said Tom. “Likely story!” said the
other shortly, as he passed on.’

Legree’s exterior only very faintly adumbrates the interior horrors of his character, as the reader soon finds out. He seems specially pleased with one of his purchases--the sweet Emmeline, who, as they approach “home,” feels the hot foul breath of the serpent upon her.

‘“Well, my little dear,” said he, turning to Emmeline, and
laying his hand on her shoulder, “we’re almost home!” When
Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified; but
when he laid his hand upon her, and spoke as he now did,
she felt as if she had rather he would strike her. _The
expression of his eyes made her soul sick, and her flesh
creep._

“You didn’t ever wear earrings!” he said, taking hold of
her small ear with his coarse fingers.

“No, mas’r,” said Emmeline, trembling, and looking down.

“Well, I’ll give you a pair, when we get home, if you’re a
good girl. You needn’t be so frightened! I don’t mean to
make you work so very hard! You’ll have fine times with me,
and live like a lady! Only be a good girl!”’

Alas, sweet Emmeline! motherless Emmeline! was there no MAN--no father, no brother, near you, to fell the monster to the earth? No, none; and you are close to the residence of your eager and brutal proprietor. There he had destined her as the successor of one of whom he was tired--but whom yet he feared: and that was CASSY; a being whom we did not suppose Mrs Stowe, with all our trust in her previously exhibited powers, equal to conceiving and supporting. She occasionally reminds us of some of the greatest passages in Greek tragedy.

‘“Come, mistress”--quoth Legree to Emmeline, having reached
the house, and dismissed all his other purchases to their
prescribed localities in the plantation--“You go in here
with _me_!” A dark wild face was seen, for a moment, to
glance at the window of the house; and as Legree opened the
door, a female voice said something in a quick imperative
tone.’

This was--Cassy; and here is her figure.

‘She was tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably
delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and
respectable garments. By the appearance of her face, she
might have been between thirty-five and forty; and it was
a face that, once seen, could never be forgotten--one of
those that, at a glance, seemed to convey to us an idea of
a wild, painful, and romantic history. Her head was high,
and her eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness. Her
straight, well-formed nose, her finely cut mouth, and the
graceful contour of her head and neck, showed that she must
once have been beautiful; but her face was deeply wrinkled
with lines of pain, and of proud and bitter endurance.
Her complexion was sallow and unhealthy, her cheeks thin,
her features sharp, and her whole form emaciated. But her
eye was the most remarkable feature--so large, so heavily
black, overshadowed by long lashes of equal darkness, and
so wildly, mournfully despairing. There was a fierce pride
and defiance in every line of her face, in every nerve of
the flexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her
eye was a deep, settled, night of anguish--an expression so
hopeless and unchanging, as to contrast fearfully with the
scorn and pride expressed by her whole demeanour.’

Her relations to Legree were of a mysterious character. The first that Tom saw of her was when she suddenly, and to the surprise of all her fellow-slaves, made her appearance, as one of themselves, in the cotton-fields, walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim grey of the dawn. She works with the others, but infinitely quicker and more effectively. Observing Tom generously transfer some cotton of his own picking to the sack of a feeble female fellow-slave, whom he had just seen brutally maltreated by the driver--she approached him, and transferred some of her own cotton to his bag, telling him in a fearful whisper, “that he knew nothing about that place, or he would not have done what he had: that when he had been there a month, he would have ceased helping anybody, finding it hard enough to take care of his own skin.”

“The Lord forbid, _missus_,” quoth Tom, instinctively recognising her superiority over the others.

‘“The Lord never visits these parts,” said she, bitterly.
But her action had been observed by the driver, across the
field: and flourishing his whip, he came up to her. “What!
what!” he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, “YOU
a-foolin! Go along! yer under _me_ now--mind yourself, or
ye’ll cotch it!” A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly
flashed from her dark eyes; and facing about, with
quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew herself up,
and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the
driver. “DOG!” she exclaimed, “touch _me_, if you dare!
I’ve power enough yet to have you torn by the dogs, burnt
alive, cut to inches!--I’ve only to say the word!”

“What de debel you here for, den?” said the man, cowed,
and retreating a step or two. “Didn’t mean no harm, Misse
Cassy!” and he slinks to another quarter of the field.’

Weighing time comes in the evening.

‘“So,” says Legree, to his myrmidon, “Misse Cassy did her
day’s work?”

“Iss! she pick like de debil and all his angels!”

“She’s got ’em all in her, I believe!” said Legree; and
growled a brutal oath.’

At length it is Cassy’s time, and she delivers her basket to be weighed with a haughty, negligent air: Legree looking in her eyes with a sneering, yet inquiring glance. She fixed her black eyes on him steadily--her lips moved slightly, and she said something in French. What it was, no one knew, but the expression of Legree’s face became demoniacal; and he half-raised his hand, as if to strike--a gesture which she regarded with fierce disdain, and turned, and walked away. Then Tom comes up; and--poor fellow--for once we rejoice to say, shows something like a spirit: for being ordered to try his hand on flogging the poor female slave--falsely accused of not having picked her quantity--he steadily refuses; and after having received a shower of blows from Legree, firmly repeats, “This yer thing I can’t feel it right to do,” wiping the blood from his face; “and massa, I _never_ shall do it--_never!_” All the shivering wretches around exhibit consternation at his audacity; and Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last he burst forth:--

‘“What, ye blasted black beast! tell _me_ ye don’t think it
_right_ to do what I tell ye! What have any of you cussed
cattles to do with thinking what’s right? I’ll put a stop
to it. Why, what do ye think ye are? Maybe ye think ye’r a
gentleman, Master Tom, to be a-telling your master what’s
right, and what an’t; so you pretend it’s wrong to flog the
gal?”

“I think so, mas’r,” said Tom; “the poor crittur’s sick
and feeble, ’twould be downright cruel, and it’s what I
never will do, nor begin to, mas’r. If you mean to kill me,
kill me; but as to my raising my hand agin any one here, I
never shall: I’ll die first.” Tom spoke in a mild voice,
but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree
shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely, and
his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like
some ferocious beast that plays with its victim before he
devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to
immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.
“Well, here’s a pious dog, at last, let down among us
sinners! a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us
sinners about our sins! Powerful holy crittur he must be!
Here, you rascal; you make believe to be so pious, didn’t
you never hear out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey your
masters’? An’t I your master? Didn’t I pay down twelve
hundred dollars cash for all there is in yer old cussed
black shell? An’t yer mine now, body and soul?” he said,
giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; “tell me!”
In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal
oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph
through Tom’s soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and
looking earnestly to heaven, while the tears and blood that
flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed--“No, no, no!
my soul an’t yours, mas’r! You havn’t bought it; ye can’t
buy it; it’s been bought and paid for by one that’s able to
keep it. No matter--no matter, you can’t harm me!”

“I can’t!” said Legree, with a sneer; “we’ll see. Here,
Sambo! Quimbo! give this dog such a breakin in as he won’t
get over this month.”

The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with
fiendish exultation in their faces, might have formed no
unapt personification of powers of darkness. The poor woman
screamed with apprehension, and all rose, as by a general
impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from the place.’

Sambo and Quimbo are two huge black fiends, each savage, sycophantic towards Legree, rivals of each other in his good graces, and abhorring poor Tom, whom some expressions of Legree show to have been designed to become his chief overlooker.

While Tom is lying in an exposed outhouse at midnight, groaning and bleeding, alone, the night damp and close, the thick air swarming with myriads of musquitoes, which increased the restless torture of his wounds, whilst a burning thirst--a torture beyond all others, filled up the uttermost measure of physical anguish--

“Oh, good Lord, _do_ look down! Give me the victory--give me the victory over all!” prayed poor Tom, in his anguish, when a footstep is heard behind him--the light of a lantern flashes in his eyes, and he recognises Cassy, come to him like a ministering angel. At length she sits beside him, when he has become somewhat more easy and composed for a while under the soothing applications of his companion; and she mutters a few words, in rejoinder to his feeble but trustful exclamations, of despair and atheism--“There’s no God, or he’s taken sides against us; all goes against us, heaven and earth! Everything is pushing us into hell! Why shouldn’t we go?” In a few scorching words of misery she tells him that she, “a woman delicately bred,” has been for four long years in the hell--of Legree’s presence and power--her whole body and soul, cursing every moment of her life--the slave of his brutal passions; “and now he has got a new one--a young thing, only fifteen! And she’s brought her Bible here--_here_, to hell with her!” She adds, that she has witnessed scenes of savage cruelty, of mortal cruelty, which “would make any one’s hair rise, and teeth chatter to hear--but it is useless resisting. There’s not a white person who could testify if you were burned alive!” She lets fall a hint that sweet Emmeline is trying bravely to struggle against her fate--at present!

She gives Tom an outline of her history. She had been the idolised daughter of a lovely slave, and educated in the most expensive manner at a convent; but her father, before he could fulfil his intention of freeing her, died of cholera; and she was _sold_ to a man, who concealed from her that he had given two thousand dollars for her. Imagining that she was his free choice, and he handsome, fond, and indulgent, she lived a little while with him as in Paradise, and had two children--a boy, _Henry_, and a girl, _Elise_. A cousin of his caught sight of her, and resolved to possess her, succeeded by shameful arts in alienating his affection from her, and then persuading him to sell her, with her two children. He forced her, recoiling from his embraces, to live with him, and sold off her two idolised children. In a moment of frenzy----All she recollects is, that “something snapped in her head--there was a great bowie-knife gleaming on the table.... She caught it--flew upon him--all grew dark, and she knew nothing more till she woke, long afterwards, when she found that he had left her to be sold; and, to realise the most from her, had secured her good attendance. As the fever left her, “they made her get up and dress every day; and gentlemen used to come in, and stand, and smoke their cigars, and look at me, and ask questions, and debate my price!--They threatened to whip if I were not gayer, and didn’t take pains to make myself agreeable.” She was ultimately bought by a planter, a Captain Stuart; and the child she had by him--so like her lost Henry!--when, two weeks old, she kissed, cried over, and--poisoned with laudanum--“I held him close to my heart, while he slept to death!” At length, Captain Stuart dies of fever. “Everybody died that wanted to live; and I, that wanted to die, _lived_” to be “sold, passed from hand to hand, till I grew faded, wrinkled, had a fever--and--this wretch (Legree) bought me, and--here I am!... In the judgment-day, I will stand up before God a witness against them that have ruined me and my children, body and soul!--When I was a girl, I thought I was religious. I used to love God and prayer! Now, I’m a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day and night. They keep pushing me on--and--I’ll do it, too, some of these days!” she said, clenching her hand, while an insane light gleamed in her heavy black eyes.