Uncle Tom’s Cabin

A table, somewhat rheumatic in its limbs, was drawn out in front of the fire, and covered with a cloth, displaying cups and saucers of a decidedly brilliant pattern, with other symptoms of an approaching meal. At this table was seated Uncle Tom, Mr. Shelby’s best hand, who, as he is to be the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype for our readers. He was a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man, of a full glossy black, and a face whose truly African features were characterised by an expression of grave and steady good sense, united with much kindliness and benevolence. There was something about his whole air self-respecting and dignified, yet united with a confiding and humble simplicity.

He was very busily intent at this moment on a slate lying before him, on which he was carefully and slowly endeavouring to accomplish a copy of some letters, in which operation he was overlooked by young Mas’r George, a smart, bright boy of thirteen, who appeared fully to realise the dignity of his position as instructor.

“Not that way, Uncle Tom—not that way,” said he briskly, as Uncle Tom laboriously brought up the tail of his g the wrong side out; “that makes a q, you see,”

“La sakes, now, does it?” said Uncle Tom, looking with a respectful, admiring air, as his young teacher flourishingly scrawled out q’s and g’s innumerable for his edification; and then, taking the pencil in his big, heavy fingers, he patiently recommenced.

“How easy white folks al’us does things!” said Aunt Chloe, pausing while she was greasing a griddle with a scrap of bacon on her fork, and regarding young Master George with pride.” The way he can write, now! and read, too! and then to come out here evenings and read his lessons to us—it’s mighty interestin’!”

“But, Aunt Chloe, I’m getting mighty hungry,” said George.” Isn’t that cake in the skillet almost done?”

“Mos’ done, Mas’r George,” said Aunt Chloe, lifting the lid and peeping in—“browning beautiful—a real lovely brown. Ah! let me alone for dat. Missis let Sally try to make some cake, t’other day, jest to larn her, she said. ‘Oh, go ’way, missis,’ says I; ‘it really hurts my feelin’s, now, to see good vittles spiled dat ar way!’ Cake ris all to one side—no shape at all; no more than my shoe;—go ’way!”

And with this final expression of contempt for Sally’s greenness, Aunt Chloe whipped the cover off the bake-kettle, and disclosed to view a neatly baked pound-cake, of which no city confectioner need to have been ashamed. This being evidently the central point of the entertainment, Aunt Chloe began now to bustle about earnestly in the supper department.

“Here you, Mose and Pete! get out de way, you niggers! Get away, Polly, honey—mammy ’ll give her baby somefin, by and by. Now, Mas’r George, you jest take off dem books, and set down now with my old man, and I’ll take up de sausages, and have de first griddleful of cakes on your plates in less dan no time.”

“They wanted me to come to supper in the house,” said George; “but I knew what was what too well for that, Aunt Chloe.”

“So you did—so you did, honey,” said Aunt Chloe, heaping the smoking batter-cakes on his plate; “you know’d your old aunty’d keep the best for you. Oh, let you alone for dat! Go ’way!” and, with that, aunty gave George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and turned again to her griddle with great briskness.

“Now for the cake,” said Mas’r George, when the activity of the griddle department had somewhat subsided; and, with that, the youngster flourished a large knife over the article in question.

“La bless you, Mas’r George!” said Aunt Chloe, with earnestness, catching his arm, “you wouldn’t be for cuttin’ it wid dat ar great heavy knife! Smash it all down—spile all the pretty rise of it. Here, I’ve got a thin old knife, I keeps sharp a purpose. Dar now, see! comes apart light as a feather! Now, eat away—you won’t get anything to beat dat ar.”

“Tom Lincoln says,” said George, speaking with his mouth full, “that their Jinny is a better cook than you.”

“Dem Lincons an’t much ’count, noway!” said Aunt Chloe contemptuously; “I mean, set alongside our folks. They’s ’spectable folks enough in a kinder plain way; but as to gettin’ up anything in style, they don’t begin to have a notion on’t. Set Mas’r Lincon, now, alongside Mas’r Shelby! Good Lor! and Missis Lincon—can she kinder sweep it into a room like my missis—so kinder splendid, yer know! Oh, go ’way! don’t tell me nothin’ of dem Lincons!” and Aunt Chloe tossed her head as one who hoped she did know something of the world.

“Well, though, I’ve heard you say,” said George, “that Jinny was a pretty fair cook.”

“So I did,” said Aunt Chloe—” I may say dat. Good, plain, common cookin’ Jinny ’ll do; make a good pone o’ bread—bile her taters far—her corn-cakes isn’t extra, not extra now, Jinny’s corn-cakes isn’t, but then they’s far—but, Lor, come to de higher branches, and what can she do? Why, she makes pies—sartin she does; but what kinder crust? Can she make your real flecky paste, as melts in your mouth, and lies all up like a puff? Now, I went over thar when Miss Mary was gwine to be married, and Jinny she jest showed me de weddin’ pies. Jinny and I is good friends, ye know. I never said nothin’; but go ’long, Mas’r George! Why, I shouldn’t sleep a wink for a week, if I had a batch of pies like dem ar. Why, dey warn’t no ’count’t all.”

“I suppose Jinny thought they were ever so nice,” said George.

“Thought so!—didn’t she? Thar she was showing ’em as innocent—ye see, it’s jest here, Jinny don’t know. Lor, the family an’t nothing! She can’t be ’spected to know! ’Tan’t no fault o’ hern. Ah, Mas’r George, you doesn’t know half your privileges in yer family and bringin’ up!” Here Aunt Chloe sighed, and rolled up her eyes with emotion.

“I’m sure, Aunt Chloe, I understand all my pie and pudding privileges,” said George. “Ask Tom Lincoln if I don’t crow over him, every time I meet him.”

Aunt Chloe sat back in her chair, and indulged in a hearty guffaw of laughter at this witticism of young mas’r’s, laughing till the tears rolled down her black shining cheeks, and varying the exercise with playfully slapping and poking Mas’r Georgy, and telling him to go ’way, and that he was a case—that he was fit to kill her, and that he sartin would kill her, one of these days; and, between each of these sanguinary predictions, going off into a laugh, each longer and stronger than the other, till George really began to think that he was a very dangerously witty fellow, and that it became him to be careful how he talked “as funny as he could.”

“And so ye telled Tom, did ye? Oh, Lor! what young uns will be up ter! Ye crowed over Tom? Oh, Lor! Mas’r George, if ye wouldn’t make a horn-bug laugh!”

“Yes,” said George, “I says to him, ‘Tom, you ought to see some of Aunt Chloe’s pies; they’re the right sort,’ says I.”

“Pity now, Tom couldn’t,” said Aunt Chloe, on whose benevolent heart the idea of Tom’s benighted condition seemed to make a strong impression. “Ye oughter just ask him here to dinner, some o’ these times, Mas’r George,” she added; “it would look quite pretty of ye. Ye know, Mas’r George, ye oughtenter feel ‘bove nobody, on ’count yer privileges, ’cause all our privileges is gi’n to us; we ought al’ays to ’member that,” said Aunt Chloe, looking quite serious.

“Well, I mean to ask Tom here, some day next week,” said George; “and you do your prettiest, Aunt Chloe, and we’ll make him stare. Won’t we make him eat so he won’t get over it for a fortnight?”

“Yes, yes—sartin,” said Aunt Chloe, delighted; “you’ll see. Lor! to think of some of our dinners! Yer mind dat ar great chicken pie I made when we guv de dinner to General Knox? I and missis, we come pretty near quarrelling about dat ar crust. What does get into ladies sometimes, I don’t know; but, sometimes, when a body has de heaviest kind o’ ’sponsibility on ’em, as ye may say, and is all kinder seris and taken up, dey takes dat ar time to be hangin’ round and kinder interferin’! Now, missis, she wanted me to do dis way, and she wanted me to do dat way; and, finally, I got kinder sarcy, and, says I, ‘Now, missis, do jist look at dem beautiful white hands o’ yourn, with long fingers, and all a-sparkling with rings, like my white lilies when de dew’s on ’em; and look at my great black stumpin’ hands. Now, don’t ye think dat de Lord must have meant me to make de piecrust, and you to stay in de parlour?’ Dar! I was jist so sarcy, Mas’r George.”

“And what did mother say?” said George.

“Say?—why, she kinder larfed in her eyes—dem great handsome eyes o’ hern; and, says she, ‘Well, Aunt Chloe, I think you are about in the right on’t,’ says she; and she went off in de parlour. She oughter cracked me over de head for being so sarcy; but dar’s whar ’tis—I can’t do nothin’ with ladies in de kitchen!

“Well, you made out well with that dinner—I remember everybody said so,” said George.

“Didn’t I? And wan’t I behind de dinin’-room door dat bery day? and didn’t I see de gineral pass his plate three times for some more dat bery pie? and, says he, ‘You must have an uncommon cook, Mrs. Shelby.’ Lor! I was fit to split myself.

“And de gineral, he knows what cookin’ is,” said Aunt Chloe, drawing herself up with an air. “Bery nice man, de gineral! He comes of one of de bery fustest families in Old Virginny! He knows what’s what, now, as well as I do—de gineral. Ye see, there’s pints in all pies, Mas’r George; but ’tan’t everybody knows what they is or orter be. But de gineral, he knows; I knew by his ’marks he made. Yes, he knows what de pints is!”

By this time, Master George had arrived at that pass to which even a boy can come (under uncommon circumstances), when he really could not eat another morsel, and, therefore, he was at leisure to notice the pile of woolly heads and glistening eyes which were regarding their operations hungrily from the opposite corner.

“Here, you Mose, Pete,” he said, breaking off liberal bits and throwing them at them; “you want some, don’t you? Come, Aunt Chloe, bake them some cakes.”

And George and Tom moved to a comfortable seat in the chimney-corner, while Aunt Chloe, after baking a goodly pile of cakes, took her baby on her lap, and began alternately filling its mouth and her own, and distributing to Mose and Pete, who seemed rather to prefer eating theirs as they rolled about on the floor, under the table, tickling each other, and occasionally pulling the baby’s toes.

“Oh, go ’long, will ye?” said the mother, giving now and then a kick, in a kind of general way, under the table, when the movement became too obstreperous. “Can’t ye be decent when white folks comes to see ye? Stop dat ar, now, will ye? Better mind yerselves, or I’ll take ye down a buttonhole lower, when Mas’r George is gone!”

What meaning was couched under this terrible threat, it is difficult to say; but certain it is that its awful indistinctness seemed to produce very little impression on the young sinners addressed.

“La, now!” said Uncle Tom, “they are so full of tickle all the while, they can’t behave themselves.”

Here the boys emerged from under the table, and with hands and faces well plastered with molasses, began a vigorous kissing of the baby.

“Get along wid ye!” said the mother, pushing away their woolly heads. “Ye’ll all stick together, and never get clar, if ye do dat fashion. Go ’long to de spring and wash yerselves!” she said, seconding her exhortations by a slap, which resounded very formidably, but which seemed only to knock out so much more laugh from the young ones, as they tumbled precipitately over each other out of doors, where they fairly screamed with merriment.

“Did ye ever see such aggravating young uns?” said Aunt Chloe, rather complacently, as producing an old towel, kept for such emergencies, she poured a little water out of the cracked teapot on it, and began rubbing off the molasses from the baby’s face and hands; and, having polished her till she shone, she set her down in Tom’s lap, while she busied herself in clearing away supper. The baby employed the intervals in pulling Tom’s nose, scratching his face, and burying her fat hands in his woolly hair, which last operation seemed to afford her special content.

“An’t she a peart young un?” said Tom, holding her from him to take a full-length view; then, getting up, he set her on his broad shoulder and began capering and dancing with her while Mas’r George snapped at her with his pocket-handkerchief, and Mose and Pete, now returned again, roared after her like bears, till Aunt Chloe declared that they “fairly took her head off” with their noise. As, according to her own statement, this surgical operation was a matter of daily occurrence in the cabin, the declaration no whit abated the merriment, till every one had roared and tumbled and danced themselves down to a state of composure.

“Well, now, I hopes you’re done,” said Aunt Chloe, who had been busy in pulling out a rude box of a trundle-bed; “and now, you Mose and you Pete, get into thar; for we’s goin’ to have the meetin’.”

“Oh, mother! we don’t wanter. We wants to sit up to meetin’—meetin’s is so curis. We likes ’em.”

“La, Aunt Chloe, shove it under, and let ’em sit up,” said Mas’r George decisively, giving a push to the rude machine.

Aunt Chloe, having thus saved appearances, seemed highly delighted to push the thing under, saying, as she did so, “Well, mebbe ’twill do ’em some good.”

The house now resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to consider the accommodations and arrangements for the meeting.

“What we’s to do for cheers, now, I declar’ I don’t know,” said Aunt Chloe. As the meeting had been held at Uncle Tom’s, weekly, for an indefinite length of time, without any more “cheers,” there seemed some encouragement to hope that a way would be discovered at present.

“Old Uncle Peter sung both de legs out of dat oldest cheer, last week,” suggested Mose.

“You go ’long! I’ll boun’ you pulled ’em out; some o’ your shines,” said Aunt Chloe.

“Well, it ’ll stand, if it only keeps jam up agin de wall!” said Mose.

“Den Uncle Peter mus’n’t sit in it, ’cause he al’ays hitches when he gets a-singing. He hitched pretty nigh across de room, t’other night,” said Pete.

“Good Lor! get him in it, then,” said Mose, “and den he’d begin, ‘Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell,’ and den down he’d go;” and Mose imitated precisely the nasal tones of the old man, tumbling on the floor to illustrate the supposed catastrophe.

“Come, now, be decent, can’t ye?” said Aunt Chloe; “an’t yer ’shamed?”

Mas’r George, however, joined the offender in the laugh, and declared decidedly that Mose was a “buster.” So the maternal admonition seemed rather to fail of effect.

“Well, ole man,” said Aunt Chloe, “you’ll have to tote in them ar bar’ls.”

“Mother’s bar’ls is like dat ar widder’s Mas’r George was reading ’bout in de good book—dey never fails,” said Mose aside to Pete.

“I’m sure one on ’em caved in last week,” said Pete, “and let ’em all down in de middle of de singin’; dat ar was failin’, warn’t it?”

During this aside between Mose and Pete two empty casks had been rolled into the cabin, and being secured from rolling, by stones on each side, boards were laid across them, which arrangement, together with the turning down of certain tubs and pails, and the disposing of the rickety chairs, at last completed the preparation.

“Mas’r George is such a beautiful reader, now, I know he’ll stay to read for us,” said Aunt Chloe; “’pears like ’twill be so much more interestin’.”

George very readily consented, for your boy is always ready for anything that makes him of importance.

The room was soon filled with a motley assemblage, from the old gray-headed patriarch of eighty, to the young girl and lad of fifteen. A little harmless gossip ensued on various themes, such as where Old Aunt Sally got her new red headkerchief, and how “Missis was a-going to give Lizzy that spotted muslin gown, when she’d got her new berage made up;” and how Mas’r Shelby was thinking of buying a new sorrel colt, that was going to prove an addition to the glories of the place. A few of the worshippers belonged to families hard by, who had got permission to attend, and who brought in various choice scraps of information, about the sayings and doings at the house and on the place, which circulated as freely as the same sort of small change does in higher circles.

After a while the singing commenced, to the evident delight of all present. Not even all the disadvantages of nasal intonation could prevent the effect of the naturally fine voices, in airs at once wild and spirited. The words were sometimes the well-known and common hymns sung in the churches about, and sometimes of a wilder, more indefinite character, picked up at camp-meetings.

The chorus of one of them, which ran as follows, was sung with great energy and unction:—

“Die on the field of battle,

Die on the field of battle,

Glory in my soul.”

Another special favourite had, oft repeated, the words:—

“Oh, I’m going to glory—won’t you come along with me?

Don’t you see the angels beck’ning, and a-calling me away?

Don’t you see the golden city and the everlasting day?”

There were others, which made incessant mention of “Jordan’s banks,” and “Canaan’s fields,” and the “New Jerusalem;” for the negro mind, impassioned and imaginative, always attaches itself to hymns and expressions of a vivid and pictorial nature; and, as they sang, some laughed, and some cried, and some clapped hands, or shook hands rejoicingly with each other, as if they had fairly gained the other side of the river.

Various exhortations, or relations of experience, followed, and intermingled with the singing. One old, gray-headed woman, long past work, but much revered as a sort of chronicle of the past, rose, and, leaning on her staff, said:—

“Well, chil’en! Well, I’m mighty glad to hear ye all and see ye all once more, ’cause I don’t know when I’ll be gone to glory; but I’ve done got ready, chil’en; ’pears like I’d got my little bundle all tied up, and my bonnet on, jest a-waitin’ for the stage to come along to take me home; sometimes, in the night, I think I hear the wheels a-rattlin’, and I’m lookin’ out all the time; now, you jest be ready too, for I tell ye all, chil’en,” she said, striking her staff hard on the floor, “dat ar glory is a mighty thing! It’s a mighty thing, chil’en—you don’no nothing about it—it’s wonderful.” And the old creature sat down with streaming tears, as wholly overcome, while the whole circle struck up:—

“O Canaan, bright Canaan,

I’m bound for the land of Canaan.”

Mas’r George, by request, read the last chapters of Revelation, often interrupted by such exclamations as “The sakes now!” “Only hear that!” “Jest think on’t!” “Is all that a-comin’ sure enough?”

George, who was a bright boy, and well trained in religious things by his mother, finding himself an object of general admiration, threw in expositions of his own, from time to time, with a commendable seriousness and gravity, for which he was admired by the young and blessed by the old; and it was agreed, on all hands, that “a minister couldn’t lay it off better than he did;” that “‘twas reely ’mazin’!”

Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters, in the neighbourhood. Having, naturally, an organisation in which the morale was strongly predominant, together with a greater breadth and cultivation of mind than obtained among his companions, he was looked up to with great respect, as a sort of minister among them; and the simple, hearty, sincere style of his exhortations might have edified even better educated persons. But it was in prayer that he especially excelled. Nothing could exceed the touching simplicity, the childlike earnestness of his prayer, enriched with the language of Scripture, which seemed so entirely to have wrought itself into his being as to have become a part of himself, and to drop from his lips unconsciously; in the language of a pious old negro, he “prayed right up.” And so much did his prayer always work on the devotional feelings of his audiences, that there seemed often a danger that it would be lost altogether in the abundance of the responses which broke out everywhere around him.

While this scene was passing in the cabin of the man, one quite otherwise passed in the halls of the master.

The trader and Mr. Shelby were seated together in the dining-room aforenamed, at a table covered with papers and writing utensils.

Mr. Shelby was busy in counting some bundles of bills, which, as they were counted, he pushed over to the trader, who counted them likewise.

“All fair,” said the trader; “and now for signing these yer.”

Mr. Shelby hastily drew the bills of sale toward him, and signed them, like a man that hurries over some disagreeable business, and then pushed them over with the money. Haley produced from a well-worn valise a parchment, which, after looking over it a moment, he handed to Mr. Shelby, who took it with a gesture of suppressed eagerness.

“Wal, now, the thing’s done!” said the trader, getting up.

“It’s done!” said Mr. Shelby, in a musing tone; and, fetching a long breath, he repeated, “It’s done!”

“Yer don’t seem to feel much pleased with it, ’pears to me,” said the trader.

“Haley,” said Mr. Shelby, “I hope you’ll remember that you promised, on your honour, you wouldn’t sell Tom without knowing what sort of hands he’s going into.”

“Why, you’ve just done it, sir,” said the trader.

“Circumstances, you well know, obliged me,” said Shelby haughtily.

“Wal, you know, they may, ’blige me too,” said the trader.”

Howsomever, I’ll do the very best I can in gettin’ Tom a good berth; as to my treatin’ on him bad, you needn’t be a grain afeard. If there’s anything that I thank the Lord for, it is that I’m never noways cruel.”

After the expositions which the trader had previously given of his humane principles, Mr. Shelby did not feel particularly reassured by these declarations; but, as they were the best comfort the case admitted of, he allowed the trader to depart in silence, and betook himself to a solitary cigar.

CHAPTER 5 Showing the Feelings of Living Property on Changin’ Owners

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby had retired to their apartment for the night. He was lounging in a large easy-chair, looking over some letters that had come in the afternoon mail, and she was standing before her mirror, brushing out the complicated braids and curls in which Eliza had arranged her hair; for, noticing her pale cheeks and haggard eyes, she had excused her attendance that night, and ordered her to bed. The employment, naturally enough, suggested her conversation with the girl in the morning; and, turning to her husband, she said carelessly:—”

By the bye, Arthur, who was that low-bred fellow that you lugged in to our dinner table to-day?”

“Haley is his name,” said Shelby, turning himself rather uneasily in his chair, and continuing with his eyes fixed on a letter.

“Haley! Who is he, and what may be his business here, pray?”

“Well, he’s a man that I transacted some business with, last time I was at Natchez,” said Mr. Shelby.

“And he presumed on it to make himself quite at home, and call and dine here, eh?”

“Why, I invited him; I had some accounts with him,” said Shelby.

“Is he a negro-trader?” said Mrs. Shelby, noticing a certain embarrassment in her husband’s manner.

“Why, my dear, what put that into your head?” said Shelby, looking up.

“Nothing—only Eliza came in here after dinner, in a great worry, crying and taking on, and said you were talking with a trader, and that she heard him make an offer for her boy—the ridiculous little goose!”