Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 499

by Harriet Beecher Stowe


  “Yes, indeed,” said Dick; and, looking up to his mother, he said, “But, mother, what did you give?”

  “I?” said the mother, musingly.

  “Yes, you, mother; what have you given to the country?”

  “All that I have, dears,” said she, laying her hands gently on their heads—”my husband and my children!”

  II. THE ALTAR OF —— , OR 1850.

  The setting sun of chill December lighted up the solitary front window of a small tenement on —— Street, in Boston, which we now have occasion to visit. As we push gently aside the open door, we gain sight of a small room, clean as busy hands can make it, where a neat, cheerful young mulatto woman is busy at an ironing table. A basket full of glossy-bosomed shirts, and faultless collars and wristbands, is beside her, into which she is placing the last few items with evident pride and satisfaction. A bright black-eyed boy, just come in from school, with his satchel of books over his shoulder, stands, cap in hand, relating to his mother how he has been at the head of his class, and showing his school tickets, which his mother, with untiring admiration, deposits in the little real china tea pot — which, as being their most reliable article of gentility, is made the deposit of all the money and most especial valuables of the family.

  “Now, Henry,” says the mother, “look out and see if father is coming along the street;” and she begins filling the little black tea kettle, which is soon set singing on the stove.

  From the inner room now daughter Mary, a well-grown girl of thirteen, brings the baby, just roused from a nap, and very impatient to renew his acquaintance with his mamma.

  “Bless his bright eyes! — mother will take him,” ejaculates the busy little woman, whose hands are by this time in a very floury condition, in the incipient stages of wetting up biscuit,—”in a minute;” and she quickly frees herself from the flour and paste, and, deputing Mary to roll out her biscuit, proceeds to the consolation and succor of young master.

  “Now, Henry,” says the mother, “you’ll have time, before supper, to take that basket of clothes up to Mr. Sheldin’s; put in that nice bill, that you made out last night. I shall give you a cent for every bill you write out for me. What a comfort it is, now, for one’s children to be gettin’ learnin’ so!”

  Henry shouldered the basket, and passed out the door, just as a neatly-dressed colored man walked up, with his pail and whitewash brushes.

  “O, you’ve come, father, have you? Mary, are the biscuits in? You may as well set the table, now. Well, George, what’s the news?”

  “Nothing, only a pretty smart day’s work. I’ve brought home five dollars, and shall have as much as I can do, these two weeks;” and the man, having washed his hands, proceeded to count out his change on the ironing table.

  “Well, it takes you to bring in the money,” said the delighted wife; “nobody but you could turn off that much in a day.”

  “Well, they do say — those that’s had me once — that they never want any other hand to take hold in their rooms. I s’pose its a kinder practice I’ve got, and kinder natural!”

  “Tell ye what,” said the little woman, taking down the family strong box, — to wit, the china tea pot, aforenamed, — and pouring the contents on the table, “we’re getting mighty rich, now! We can afford to get Henry his new Sunday cap, and Mary her mousseline-de-laine dress — take care, baby, you rogue!” she hastily interposed, as young master made a dive at a dollar bill, for his share in the proceeds.

  “He wants something, too, I suppose,” said the father; “let him get his hand in while he’s young.”

  The baby gazed, with round, astonished eyes, while mother, with some difficulty, rescued the bill from his grasp; but, before any one could at all anticipate his purpose, he dashed in among the small change with such zeal as to send it flying all over the table.

  “Hurrah! Bob’s a smasher!” said the father, delighted; “he’ll make it fly, he thinks;” and, taking the baby on his knee, he laughed merrily, as Mary and her mother pursued the rolling coin all over the room.

  “He knows now, as well as can be, that he’s been doing mischief,” said the delighted mother, as the baby kicked and crowed uproariously: “he’s such a forward child, now, to be only six months old! O, you’ve no idea, father, how mischievous he grows;” and therewith the little woman began to roll and tumble the little mischief maker about, uttering divers frightful threats, which appeared to contribute, in no small degree, to the general hilarity.

  “Come, come, Mary,” said the mother, at last, with a sudden burst of recollection; “you mustn’t be always on your knees fooling with this child! Look in the oven at them biscuits.”

  “They’re done exactly, mother — just the brown!” and, with the word, the mother dumped baby on to his father’s knee, where he sat contentedly munching a very ancient crust of bread, occasionally improving the flavor thereof by rubbing it on his father’s coat sleeve.

  “What have you got in that blue dish, there?” said George, when the whole little circle were seated around the table.

  “Well, now, what do you suppose?” said the little woman, delighted: “a quart of nice oysters — just for a treat, you know. I wouldn’t tell you till this minute,” said she, raising the cover.

  “Well,” said George, “we both work hard for our money, and we don’t owe any body a cent; and why shouldn’t we have our treats, now and then, as well as rich folks?”

  And gayly passed the supper hour; the tea kettle sung, the baby crowed, and all chatted and laughed abundantly.

  “I’ll tell you,” said George, wiping his mouth; “wife, these times are quite another thing from what it used to be down in Georgia. I remember then old mas’r used to hire me out by the year; and one time, I remember, I came and paid him in two hundred dollars — every cent I’d taken. He just looked it over, counted it, and put it in his pocket book, and said, ‘You are a good boy, George’ — and he gave me half a dollar!”

  “I want to know, now!” said his wife.

  “Yes, he did, and that was every cent I ever got of it; and, I tell you, I was mighty bad off for clothes, them times.”

  “Well, well, the Lord be praised, they’re over, and you are in a free country now!” said the wife, as she rose thoughtfully from the table, and brought her husband the great Bible. The little circle were ranged around the stove for evening prayers.

  “Henry, my boy, you must read — you are a better reader than your father — thank God, that let you learn early!”

  The boy, with a cheerful readiness, read, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” and the mother gently stilled the noisy baby, to listen to the holy words. Then all kneeled, while the father, with simple earnestness, poured out his soul to God.

  They had but just risen — the words of Christian hope and trust scarce died on their lips — when, lo! the door was burst open, and two men entered; and one of them, advancing, laid his hand on the father’s shoulder. “This is the fellow,” said he.

  “You are arrested in the name of the United States!” said the other.

  “Gentlemen, what is this?” said the poor man, trembling.

  “Are you not the property of Mr. B., of Georgia?” said the officer.

  “Gentlemen, I’ve been a free, hard-working man these ten years.”

  “Yes; but you are arrested, on suit of Mr. B., as his slave.”

  Shall we describe the leave taking — the sorrowing wife, the dismayed children, the tears, the anguish, that simple, honest, kindly home, in a moment so desolated? Ah, ye who defend this because it is law, think, for one hour, what if this that happens to your poor brother should happen to you!

  It was a crowded court room, and the man stood there to be tried — for life? — no; but for the life of life — for liberty!

  Lawyers hurried to and fro, buzzing, consulting, bringing authorities, — all anxious, zealous, engaged, — for what? To save a fellow-man from bondage? No; anxious and zealous lest he might escape; full of zeal to deliver
him over to slavery. The poor man’s anxious eyes follow vainly the busy course of affairs, from which he dimly learns that he is to be sacrificed — on the altar of the Union; and that his heart-break and anguish, and the tears of his wife, and the desolation of his children are, in the eyes of these well-informed men, only the bleat of a sacrifice, bound to the horns of the glorious American altar!

  Again it is a bright day, and business walks brisk in this market. Senator and statesman, the learned and patriotic, are out, this day, to give their countenance to an edifying, and impressive, and truly American spectacle — the sale of a man! All the preliminaries of the scene are there; dusky-browed mothers, looking with sad eyes while speculators are turning round their children, looking at their teeth, and feeling of their arms; a poor, old, trembling woman, helpless, half blind, whose last child is to be sold, holds on to her bright boy with trembling hands. Husbands and wives, sisters and friends, all soon to be scattered like the chaff of the threshing floor, look sadly on each other with poor nature’s last tears; and among them walk briskly, glib, oily politicians, and thriving men of law, letters, and religion, exceedingly sprightly, and in good spirits — for why? — it isn’t they that are going to be sold; it’s only somebody else. And so they are very comfortable, and look on the whole thing as quite a matter-of-course affair, and, as it is to be conducted to-day, a decidedly valuable and judicious exhibition.

  And now, after so many hearts and souls have been knocked and thumped this way and that way by the auctioneer’s hammer, comes the instructive part of the whole; and the husband and father, whom we saw in his simple home, reading and praying with his children, and rejoicing in the joy of his poor ignorant heart that he lived in a free country, is now set up to be admonished of his mistake.

  Now there is great excitement, and pressing to see, and exultation and approbation; for it is important and interesting to see a man put down that has tried to be a free man.

  “That’s he, is it? Couldn’t come it, could he?” says one.

  “No; and he will never come it, that’s more,” says another, triumphantly.

  “I don’t generally take much interest in scenes of this nature,” says a grave representative; “but I came here to-day for the sake of the principle!”

  “Gentlemen,” says the auctioneer, “we’ve got a specimen here that some of your northern abolitionists would give any price for; but they shan’t have him! no! we’ve looked out for that. The man that buys him must give bonds never to sell him to go north again!”

  “Go it!” shout the crowd; “good! good! hurrah!” “An impressive idea!” says a senator; “a noble maintaining of principle!” and the man is bid off, and the hammer falls with a last crash on his heart, his hopes, his manhood, and he lies a bleeding wreck on the altar of Liberty!

  Such was the altar in 1776; such is the altar in 1850!

  A SCHOLAR’S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY.

  “If we could only live in the country,” said my wife, “how much easier it would be to live!”

  “And how much cheaper!” said I.

  “To have a little place of our own, and raise our own things!” said my wife. “Dear me! I am heart sick when I think of the old place at home, and father’s great garden. What peaches and melons we used to have! what green peas and corn! Now one has to buy every cent’s worth of these things — and how they taste! Such wilted, miserable corn! Such peas! Then, if we lived in the country, we should have our own cow, and milk and cream in abundance; our own hens and chickens. We could have custard and ice cream every day.”

  “To say nothing of the trees and flowers, and all that,” said I.

  The result of this little domestic duet was, that my wife and I began to ride about the city of —— to look up some pretty, interesting cottage, where our visions of rural bliss might be realized. Country residences, near the city, we found to bear rather a high price; so that it was no easy matter to find a situation suitable to the length of our purse; till, at last, a judicious friend suggested a happy expedient.

  “Borrow a few hundred,” he said, “and give your note; you can save enough, very soon, to make the difference. When you raise every thing you eat, you know it will make your salary go a wonderful deal further.”

  “Certainly it will,” said I. “And what can be more beautiful than to buy places by the simple process of giving one’s note?—’tis so neat, and handy, and convenient!”

  “Why,” pursued my friend, “there is Mr. B., my next door neighbor—’tis enough to make one sick of life in the city to spend a week out on his farm. Such princely living as one gets! And he assures me that it costs him very little — scarce any thing, perceptible, in fact.”

  “Indeed!” said I; “few people can say that.”

  “Why,” said my friend, “he has a couple of peach trees for every month, from June till frost, that furnish as many peaches as he, and his wife, and ten children can dispose of. And then he has grapes, apricots, etc..; and last year his wife sold fifty dollars’ worth from her strawberry patch, and had an abundance for the table besides. Out of the milk of only one cow they had butter enough to sell three or four pounds a week, besides abundance of milk and cream; and madam has the butter for her pocket money. This is the way country people manage.”

  “Glorious!” thought I. And my wife and I could scarce sleep, all night, for the brilliancy of our anticipations!

  To be sure our delight was somewhat damped the next day by the coldness with which my good old uncle, Jeremiah Standfast, who happened along at precisely this crisis, listened to our visions.

  “You’ll find it pleasant, children, in the summer time,” said the hard-fisted old man, twirling his blue-checked pocket handkerchief; “but I’m sorry you’ve gone in debt for the land.”

  “O, but we shall soon save that — it’s so much cheaper living in the country!” said both of us together.

  “Well, as to that, I don’t think it is to city-bred folks.”

  Here I broke in with a flood of accounts of Mr. B.’s peach trees, and Mrs. B.’s strawberries, butter, apricots, etc.., etc..; to which the old gentleman listened with such a long, leathery, unmoved quietude of visage as quite provoked me, and gave me the worst possible opinion of his judgment. I was disappointed too; for, as he was reckoned one of the best practical farmers in the county, I had counted on an enthusiastic sympathy with all my agricultural designs.

  “I tell you what, children,” he said, “a body can live in the country, as you say, amazin’ cheap; but then a body must know how” — and my uncle spread his pocket handkerchief thoughtfully out upon his knees, and shook his head gravely.

  I thought him a terribly slow, stupid old body, and wondered how I had always entertained so high an opinion of his sense.

  “He is evidently getting old,” said I to my wife; “his judgment is not what it used to be.”

  At all events, our place was bought, and we moved out, well pleased, the first morning in April, not at all remembering the ill savor of that day for matters of wisdom. Our place was a pretty cottage, about two miles from the city, with grounds that had been tastefully laid out. There was no lack of winding paths, arbors, flower borders, and rosebushes, with which my wife was especially pleased. There was a little green lot, strolling off down to a brook, with a thick grove of trees at the end, where our cow was to be pastured.

  The first week or two went on happily enough in getting our little new pet of a house into trimness and good order; for, as it had been long for sale, of course there was any amount of little repairs that had been left to amuse the leisure hours of the purchaser. Here a door step had given away, and needed replacing; there a shutter hung loose, and wanted a hinge; abundance of glass needed setting; and as to painting and papering, there was no end to that. Then my wife wanted a door cut here, to make our bed room more convenient, and a china closet knocked up there, where no china closet before had been. We even ventured on throwing out a bay window from our sitting room, becaus
e we had luckily lighted on a workman who was so cheap that it was an actual saving of money to employ him. And to be sure our darling little cottage did lift up its head wonderfully for all this garnishing and furbishing. I got up early every morning, and nailed up the rosebushes, and my wife got up and watered geraniums, and both flattered ourselves and each other on our early hours and thrifty habits. But soon, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, we found our little domain to ask more hands than ours to get it into shape. So says I to my wife, “I will bring out a gardener when I come next time, and he shall lay the garden out, and get it into order; and after that, I can easily keep it by the work of my leisure hours.”

  Our gardener was a very sublime sort of man, — an Englishman, and, of course, used to laying out noblemen’s places, — and we became as grasshoppers in our own eyes when he talked of lord this and that’s estate, and began to question us about our carriage drive and conservatory; and we could with difficulty bring the gentleman down to any understanding of the humble limits of our expectations: merely to dress out the walks, and lay out a kitchen garden, and plant potatoes, turnips, beets, and carrots, was quite a descent for him. In fact, so strong were his æsthetic preferences, that he persuaded my wife to let him dig all the turf off from a green square opposite the bay window, and to lay it out into divers little triangles, resembling small pieces of pie, together with circles, mounds, and various other geometrical ornaments, the planning and planting of which soon engrossed my wife’s whole soul. The planting of the potatoes, beets, carrots, etc.., was intrusted to a raw Irishman; for, as to me, to confess the truth, I began to fear that digging did not agree with me. It is true that I was exceedingly vigorous at first, and actually planted with my own hands two or three long rows of potatoes; after which I got a turn of rheumatism in my shoulder, which lasted me a week. Stooping down to plant beets and radishes gave me a vertigo, so that I was obliged to content myself with a general superintendence of the garden; that is to say, I charged my Englishman to see that my Irishman did his duty properly, and then got on to my horse and rode to the city. But about one part of the matter, I must say, I was not remiss; and that is, in the purchase of seed and garden utensils. Not a day passed that I did not come home with my pockets stuffed with, choice seeds, roots, etc..; and the variety of my garden utensils was unequalled. There was not a pruning hook, of any pattern, not a hoe, rake, or spade, great or small, that I did not have specimens of; and flower seeds and bulbs were also forthcoming in liberal proportions. In fact, I had opened an account at a thriving seed store; for, when a man is driving business on a large scale, it is not always convenient to hand out the change for every little matter, and buying things on account is as neat and agreeable a mode of acquisition as paying bills with one’s notes.

 

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