Meanwhile Tiff, restored to his usual tranquillity, ambled along homeward behind his one-eyed horse, singing “I’m bound for the land of Canaan,” with some surprising variations.
At last Miss Fanny, as he constantly called her, interposed with a very pregnant question.
“Uncle Tiff, where is the land of Canaan?”
“De Lord-a-mercy, chile, dat ar’s what I’d like to know myself.”
“Is it heaven?” said Fanny.
“Well, I reckon so,” said Tiff dubiously.
“Is it where ma is gone?” said Fanny.
“Chile, I reckon it is,” said Tiff.
“Is it down under ground?” said Fanny.
“Why, no! ho! ho! honey!” said Tiff, laughing heartily. “What put dat ar in your head, Miss Fanny?”
“Didn’t ma go that way?” said Fanny; “down through the ground?”
“Lordy, no, chile! Heaven’sup!” said Tiff, pointing up to the intense blue sky which appeared through the fringy hollows of the pine-trees above them.
“Is there any stairs anywhere? or any ladder to get up by?” said Fanny. “Or do they walk to where the sky touches the ground, and get up? Perhaps they climb up on the rainbow.”
“I don’ know, chile, how dey works it,” said Uncle Tiff. “Dey gets dar somehow. I’s studdin’ upon dat ar. I’s gwine to camp-meeting to find out. I’s been to plenty of dem ar, and I never could quite see clar.’Pears like dey talks about everything else more ‘n dey does about dat. Dere’s de Methodists, dey cuts up de Presbyter’ans; and de Presbyter’ans pitches into de Methodists; and den, both on ‘em’s down on de’Piseopals. My ole mist’ was’Piseopal, and I never seed no harm in ‘t. And de Baptists think dey ain’t none on ’em right; and while dey’s all a-blowing out at each other, dat ar way, I’s a wondering whar’s de way to Canaan. It takes a mighty heap o’ larning to know about dese yer things, and I ain’t got no larning. I don’ know nothing, only de Lord, He ‘peared to your ma, and He knows de way, and He took her. But now, chile, I’s gwine to fix you up right smart, and take you, Teddy, and de baby to dis yer camp-meeting, so you can seek de Lord in yer youth.”
“Tiff, if you please, I’d rather not go!” said Fanny in an apprehensive tone.
“Oh, bress de Lord, Miss Fanny, why not? Fustrate times dere.”
“There’ll be too many people. I don’t want them to see us.”
The fact was, that Rose’s slant speech about Tiff’s maternal relationship, united with the sneers of Old Hundred, had their effect upon Fanny’s mind. Naturally proud, and fearful of ridicule, she shrank from the public display which would thus be made of their family condition; yet she would not for the world have betrayed to her kind old friend the real reason of her hesitation. But Old Tiff’s keen eye had noticed the expression of the child’s countenance at the time. If anybody supposes that the faithful old creature’s heart was at all wounded by the perception, he is greatly mistaken.
To Tiff it appeared a joke of the very richest quality; and as he rode along in silence for some time, he indulged himself in one of his quiet, long laughs, actually shaking his old sides till the tears streamed down his cheeks.
“What’s the matter with you, Tiff?” said Fanny.
“Oh, Miss Fanny, Tiff knows! — Tiff knows de reason ye don’t want to go to camp-meeting. Tiff’s seen it in yer face — ye ho! ho! ho! Miss Fanny, is you ‘fraid dey’ll take Old Tiff for yer mammy? — ye ho! ho! ho!
—— for yer mammy? — and Teddy’s, and de baby’s? — bless his little soul!” And the amphibious old creature rollicked over the idea with infinite merriment. “Don’t I look like it, Miss Fanny? Lord, ye por dear lamb, can’t folks see ye’s a born lady, with yer white, little hands? Don’t ye be ‘feard, Miss Fanny!”
“I know it’s silly,” said Fanny; “but, beside, I don’t like to be called poor ivhite folksy!”
“Oh, chile, it’s only dem mean niggers! Miss Nina’s allers good to ye, ain’t she? Speaks to ye so handsome. Ye must memorize dat ar, Miss Fanny, and talk like Miss Nina. I’s ‘feard, now yer ma’s dead, ye’ll fall into some o’ my nigger ways of talking.’Member you mustn’t talk like Old Tiff, ‘cause young ladies and gen’lemen mustn’t talk like niggers. Now I says ‘dis and dat, dis yer and dat ar.’ Dat ar is nigger talk, and poor white folksy, too. Only de por white folks, dey’s mis’able, ‘cause niggers knows what’s good talk, but dey doesn’t. Lord, chile, Old Tiff knows what good talk is. Ain’t he heard de greatest ladies and gen’lemen in de land talk? But he don’t want de trouble to talk dat ar way, ‘cause he’s a nigger! Tiff likes his own talk — it’s good enough for Tiff. Tiff’s talk sarves him mighty well, I tell yer. But den, white children mustn’t talk so. Now, you see, Miss Nina has got de prettiest way of saying her words. Dey drops out one after another, one after another, so pretty! Now, you mind, ‘cause she’s coming to see us off and on —— she promised so. And den, you keep a good lookout how she walks, and how she holds her pocket-handkerchief. And when she sits down she kind o’ gives a little flirt to her clothes, so dey all set out round her like ruffles. Dese yer little ways ladies have! Why, dese yer por white folks, did yer ever mind der settin’ down? Why, dey jist slaps down into a chair like a spoonful o’ mush, and der clothes all stick tight about ‘em. I don’t want nothing poor white folksy ‘bout you. Den, if you don’t understand what people’s a-saying to you, any time, you mustn’t star, like poor white chil’en, and say, ‘what?’ but you must say ‘I beg pardon, sir, ‘or, ‘I beg pardon, ma’am.’ Dat ar’s de way. And, Miss Fanny, you and Teddy, you must study yer book; ‘cause, if you can’t read, den dey’ll be sure to say yer poor white folks. And den, Miss Fanny, you see dat ladies don’t demean dem-selves with sweeping and scrubbing, and dem tings; and yet dey does work, honey! Dey sews, and dey knits; and it would be good for you to larn how to sew and knit; ‘cause, you know, I can’t allers make up all de clothes; ‘cause, you see, young ladies haves ways wid ’em dat niggers can’t get. Now, you see, Miss Fanny, all dese yer tings I was telling you, you must ‘bserve. Now, you see, if you was one of dese yer poor white folks, dere be no use of your trying; ‘cause dat ar ‘scription o’ people couldn’t never be ladies, if dey was waring themselves out a-trying. But you see, you’s got it in you; you was born to it, honey. It’s in de blood; and what’s in de blood must come out — ho! ho! ho!” And with this final laugh, Tiff drew up to his dwelling.
A busy day was before Old Tiff; for he was to set his house in order for a week’s campaign. There was his corn to be hoed, his parsley to be weeded; there was his orphan family of young partridges to be cared for. And Tiff, after some considerable consideration, resolved to take them along with him in a basket; thinking, in the intervals of devotion, he should have an abundant opportunity to minister to their wants, and superintend their education. Then he went to one of his favorite springes, and brought from thence, not a fatted calf, to be sure, but a fatted coon, which he intended to take with him, to serve as the basis of a savory stew on the camp-ground. Tiff had a thriving company of pot-herbs, and a flourishing young colony of onions; so that, whatever might be true of the sermons, it was evident that the stew would lack no savor. Teddy’s clothes, also, were to he passed in review; washing and ironing to be done; the baby fitted up to do honor to his name, or rather to the name of his grandfather. With all these cares upon his mind, the old creature was even more than usually alert. The day was warm, and he resolved, therefore, to perform his washing operations in the magnificent kitchen of nature. He accordingly kindled a splendid bonfire, which was soon crackling at a short distance from the house, slung over it his kettle, and proceeded to some other necessary avocations. The pine wood, which had been imperfectly seasoned, served him the ungracious trick that pine wood is apt to do: it crackled and roared merrily while he was present, but while he was down examining his traps in the woods went entirely out, leaving only the blackened sticks.
“Uncle Tiff,” said Teddy, “the
fire is all gone out!”
“Ho! ho! ho! — Has it?” said Tiff, coming up. “Curus enough! Well, bress de Lord, got all de wood left, anyway; had a real bright fire, beside,” said Tiff, intent on upholding the sunniest side of things. “Lord, it’s de sun dat puts de fire out o’ countenance. Did you ever see fire dat wouldn’t go out when de sun’s shining right in its face? Dat ar is a curus fact. I’s minded it heaps o’ times. Well, I’ll jist have to come out wid my light-wood kindlings, dat’s all. Bress de Lord, ho! ho! ho!” said Tiff, laughing to himself “if dese yer ain’t the very sp’rit of de camp-meeting professors! Dey blazes away at de camp-meeting, and den dey ‘s black all de year round! See ’em at de camp-meetings, you’d say dey war gwine right into de kingdom, sure enough! Well, Lord have marcy on us all! Our ‘ligion’s drefful poor stuff! We don’t know but a despert leetle, and what we does know we don’ do. De good Mas’r above must have his hands full with us!”
CHAPTER XXII
THE WORSHIPERS
THE camp-meeting is one leading feature in the American development of religion, peculiarly suited to the wide extent of country, and to the primitive habits which generally accompany a sparse population. Undoubtedly its general effects have been salutary. Its evils have been only those incident to any large gatherings, in which the whole population of a country are brought promiscuously together. As in many other large assemblies of worship, there are those who go for all sorts of reasons; some from curiosity, some from love of excitement, some to turn a penny in a small way of trade, some to scoff, and a few to pray. And so long as the heavenly way remains straight and narrow, so long the sincere and humble worshipers will ever be the minority in all assemblies. We can give no better idea of the difference of motive which impelled the various worshipers, than by taking our readers from scene to scene, on the morning when different attendants of the meeting were making preparations to start.
Between the grounds of Mr. John Gordon and the plantation of Canema stood a log cabin, which was the trading establishment of Abijah Skinflint. The establishment was a nuisance in the eyes of the neighboring planters, from the general apprehension entertained that Abijah drove a brisk underhand trade with the negroes, and that the various articles which he disposed for sale were many of them surreptitiously conveyed to him in nightly installments from off their own plantations. But of this nothing could be proved.
Abijah was a shrewd fellow, long, dry, lean, leathery, with a sharp nose, sharp, little, gray eyes, a sharp chin, and fingers as long as bird’s claws. His skin was so dry that one would have expected that his cheeks would crackle whenever he smiled or spoke; and he rolled in them a never-failing quid of tobacco.
Abijah was one of those over-shrewd Yankees who leave their country for their country’s good, and who exhibit, wherever they settle, such a caricature of the thrifty virtue of their native land as to justify the aversion which the native-born Southerner entertains for the Yankee. Abijah drank his own whiskey, — prudently, however, — or, as he said, “never so as not to know what he was about.”
He had taken a wife from the daughters of the land, who also drank whiskey, but less prudently than her husband, so that sometimes she did not know what she was about. Sons and daughters were born unto this promising couple, white-headed, forward, dirty, and ill mannered. But amid all domestic and social trials, Abijah maintained a constant and steady devotion to the main chance — the acquisition of money. For money he would do anything; for money he would have sold his wife, his children, even his own soul, if he had happened to have one. But that article, had it ever existed, was now so small and dry, that one might have fancied it to rattle in his lean frame like a shriveled pea in a last year’s peascod. Abijah was going to the camp-meeting for two reasons. One, of course, was to make money; and the other was to know whether his favorite preacher, Elder Stringfellow, handled the doctrine of election according to his views; for Abijah had a turn for theology, and could number off the five points of Calvinism on his five long fingers with unfailing accuracy.
It is stated in the Scriptures that the devils believe and tremble. The principal difference between their belief and Abijah’s was, that he believed and did not tremble. Truths awful enough to have shaken the earth and veiled the sun, he could finger over with as much unconcern as a practiced anatomist the dry bones of a skeleton.
“You, Sam!” said.Abijah to his only negro helot, “you mind, you steady that ar bar’l, so that it don’t roll out, and pour a pailful of water in at the bung. It won’t do to give it to ’em too strong. Mis’ Skinflint, you make haste! If you don’t, I sha’n’t wait for you; ‘cause, whatever the rest may do, it’s important I should be on the ground early. Many a dollar lost for not being in time, in this world. Hurry, woman!”
“I am ready, but Polly ain’t!” said Mrs. Skinflint. “She’s busy a-plastering down her hair.”
“Can’t wait for her!” said Abijah, as he sallied out of the house to get into the wagon, which stood before the door, into which he had packed a copious supply of hams, eggs, dressed chickens, corn-meal, and green summer vegetables, to say nothing of the barrel of whiskey aforesaid.
“I say, dad, you stop!” called Polly, from the window. “If you don’t, I’ll make work for you ‘fore you come home; you see if I don’t! Durned if I won’t!”
“Come along, then, can’t you? Next time we go anywhere, I’ll shut you up overnight to begin to dress!”
Polly hastily squeezed her fat form into a red calico dress, and seizing a gay summer shawl, with her bonnet in her hand, rushed to the wagon and mounted, the hooks of her dress successively exploding, and flying off, as she stooped to get in.
“Durned if I knows what to do!” said she; “this yer old durned gear coat’s all off my back!”
“Gals is always fools!” said Abijah consolingly.
“Stick in a pin, Polly,” said her mother in an easy, sing-song drawl.
“Durn you, old woman, every hook is off!” said the promising young lady.
“Stick in more pins, then,” said the mamma; and the vehicle of Abijah passed onward.
On the verge of the swamp, a little beyond Tiff’s cabin, lived Ben Dakin.
Ben was a mighty hunter; he had the best pack of dogs within thirty miles round; and his advertisements, still to be seen standing in the papers of his native state, detailed with great accuracy the precise terms on which he would hunt down and capture any man, woman, or child, escaping from service and labor in that country. Our readers must not necessarily suppose Ben to have been a monster for all this, when they recollect that, within a few years, both the great political parties of our Union solemnly pledged themselves, as far as in them lay, to accept a similar vocation; and as many of them were in good and regular standing in churches, and had ministers to preach sermons to the same effect, we trust they’ll entertain no unreasonable prejudice against Ben on this account.
In fact, Ben was a tall, broad-shouldered, bluff, hearty-looking fellow, who would do a kind turn for a neighbor with as much good will as anybody; and except that he now and then took a little too much whiskey, as he himself admitted, he considered himself quite as promising a candidate for the kingdom as any of the company who were going up to camp-meeting. Had any one ventured to remonstrate with Ben against the nature of his profession, he would probably have defended it by pretty much the same arguments by which modern theologians defend the institution of which it is a branch.
Ben was just one of those jovial fellows who never could bear to be left behind in anything that was going on in the community, and was always one of the foremost in a camp-meeting. He had a big, loud voice, and could roll out the chorus of hymns with astonishing effect. He was generally converted at every gathering of this kind; though through the melancholy proclivity to whiskey, before alluded to, he usually fell from grace before the year was out. Like many other big and hearty men, he had a little, pale, withered moonshiny wisp of a wife, who hung on his elbow much like an empty w
ork-bag; and Ben, to do him justice, was kind to the wilted little mortal, as if he almost suspected that he had absorbed her vitality into his own exuberant growth. She was greatly given to eating clay, cleaning her teeth with snuff, and singing Methodist hymns, and had a very sincere concern for Ben’s salvation. The little woman sat resignedly on the morning we speak of, while a long-limbed, broad-shouldered child, of two years, with bristly white hair, was pulling her by her ears and hair, and otherwise maltreating her, to make her get up to give him a piece of bread and molasses; and she, without seeming to attend to the child, was giving earnest heed to her husband.
“There’s a despit press of business now!” said Ben. “There’s James’s niggers, and Smith’s Polly, and we ought to be on the trail, right away!”
“Oh, Ben, you ought to ‘tend to your salvation afore anything else!” said his wife.
“That’s true enough!” said Ben; “meetings don’t come every day. But what are we to do with dis yer un?” pointing to the door of an inner room.
“Dis yer un” was no other than a negro woman, named Nance, who had been brought in by the dogs, the day before.
“Laws!” said his wife, “we can set her something to eat, and leave the dogs in front of the door. She can’t get out.”
Ben threw open the door, and displayed to view a low kind of hutch, without any other light than that between the crevices of the logs. On the floor, which was of hard-trodden earth, sat a sinewy, lean negro woman, drawing up her knees with her long arms, and resting her chin upon them.
“Hollo, Nance, how are you?” said Ben, rather cheerily.
“Po’rly, mas’r,” said the other in a sullen tone.
“Nance, you think your old man will whale you, when he gets you?” said Ben.
“I reckons he will,” said Nance; “he allers does.”
“Well, Nance, the old woman and I want to go to a camp-meeting; and I’ll just tell you what it is, — you stay here quiet, while we are gone, and I’ll make the old fellow promise not to wallop you. I wouldn’t mind taking off something of the price — that’s fair, ain’t it?”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 89