Uncle Tom’s Cabin quotes

It kinder makes my blood run cold to think on’t; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up, she jest went ravin’ mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, just for want of management—there’s where ’tis.

It’s always best to do the humane thing, sir; that’s been my experience.

” And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a second Wilberforce.

if I have once, I reckon I have a hundred times—all in good case—fat and likely, and I lose as few as any man in the business.

And I lays it all to my management, sir; and humanity, sir, I may say, is the great pillar of my management.

”

There was something so piquant and original in these elucidations of humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laughing in company.

Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader; but you know humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms nowadays, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.

Mr. Shelby’s laugh encouraged the trader to proceed.

And so fell George’s last hope;—nothing before him but a life of toil and drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation and indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.

A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is worse!

“My master! and who made him my master? That’s what I think of—what right has he to me?

I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is.

I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand—and I’ve learned it all myself, and no thanks to him—I’ve learned it in spite of him;

“

Don’t you know a slave can’t be married? There is no law in this country for that;

I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part us. That’s why I wish I’d never seen you—why I wish I’d never been born;

“Yes, but who knows?—he may die—and then he may be sold to nobody knows who. What pleasure is it that he is handsome, and smart, and bright?

I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul for every good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him worth too much for you to keep.

”

therefore, doubt not that it is her you see by the fire, presiding with anxious interest over certain frizzling items in a stewpan, and anon with grave consideration lifting the cover of a bake-kettle, from whence steam forth indubitable intimations of “something good.”

A round, black, shining face is hers, so glossy as to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with white of eggs, like one of her own tea rusks.

Her whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched checked turban, bearing on it, however, if we must confess it, a little of that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held …

… beams with satisfaction and contentment from under her well-starched checked turban, bearing on it, however, if we must confess it, a little of that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be.

A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul.

Not a chicken or turkey or duck in the barnyard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end;

“Mas’r George is such a beautiful reader, now, I know he’ll stay to read for us,” said Aunt Chloe; “ ’pears like ’t will 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.

just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your firstborn son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe. For, sir, he was a man—and you are but another man.

And, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life’s great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

“And now,” said Eliza, as she stood in the door, “I saw my husband only this afternoon, and I little knew then what was to come.

It seemed to her as if strength poured into her in electric streams, from every gentle touch and movement of the sleeping, confiding child.

Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.

The boundaries of the farm, the grove, the wood-lot, passed by her dizzily, as she walked on;

An hour before sunset, she entered the village of T⸺, by the Ohio river, weary and footsore, but still strong in heart.

Her first glance was at the river, which lay, like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of liberty on the other side.

It was now early spring, and the river was swollen and turbulent; great cakes of floating ice were swinging heavily to and fro in the turbid waters.

“Well, take him into this room,” said the woman, opening into a small bedroom, where stood a comfortable bed. Eliza laid the weary boy upon it, and held his hands in hers till he was fast asleep. For her there was no rest.

As a fire in her bones, the thought of the pursuer urged her on; and she gazed with longing eyes on the sullen, surging waters that lay between her and liberty.

Here we must take our leave of her for the present, to follow the course of her pursuers.

“So I have,” said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the steep bank. “

Besides, you’re a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I see it.

”

Besides, I don’t see no kind of ’casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither.”

So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.

Haley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on Sam and Andy.

“Tend to yer soul!” repeated Tom, contemptuously; “take a bright lookout to find a soul in you—save yourself any care on that score.

If the devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won’t find one.

”

If any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into which this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer their prejudices in time.

The catching business, we beg to remind them, is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession.

If all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among our aristocracy.

“

It’s the only thing ye ever was persistent in, Lord knows!

” muttered Aunt Chloe, who was getting rather restive; the merriment of the evening being to her somewhat after the Scripture comparison—like “vinegar upon nitre.”

“

Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.

”

“

Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t.

It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.

If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let ’em treat ’em well—that’s my doctrine. If I had slaves (as I hope I never shall have), I’d risk their wanting to run away from me, or you either, John.

I tell you folks don’t run away when they are happy

; and when they do run, poor creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and fear, without everybody’s turning against them; and, law or no law, I never will, so help me God!”

“I hate reasoning, John—especially reasoning on such subjects.

There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don’t believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice.

I know you well enough, John. You don’t believe it’s right any more than I do; and you wouldn’t do it any sooner than I.”

then from a small recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy like, had followed close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at their mother.

And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave?

Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so.

I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person—to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more heartbroken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his blessings with them!”

There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.

Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by the lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her own lost one for the outcast wanderer.

The senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm foothold; down goes one foot an immeasurable depth—he tries to pull it up, loses his balance, and tumbles over into the mud, and is fished out, in a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.

But we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers’ bones. Western travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting process of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud holes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate hero.

We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.

“

There’ll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.

”

“Wal, anyway, thar’s wrong about it somewhar,” said Aunt Chloe, in whom a stubborn sense of justice was a predominant trait; “

I can’t jest make out whar ’tis, but thar’s wrong somewhar, I’m clar o’ that.

”

“Lor, now, Missis, don’t—don’t!” said Aunt Chloe, bursting out in her turn; and for a few moments they all wept in company. And in those tears they all shed together, the high and the lowly, melted away all the heartburnings and anger of the oppressed.

O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?

“My good fellow,” said Mrs. Shelby, “I can’t give you anything to do you any good. If I give you money, it will only be taken from you.

“And now, Mas’r George,” said Tom, “ye must be a good boy; ’member how many hearts is sot on ye. Al’ays keep close to yer mother. Don’t be gettin’ into any of them foolish ways boys has of gettin’ too big to mind their mothers.

Tell ye what, Mas’r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don’t give ye a mother but once.

Ye’ll never see sich another woman, Mas’r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar’s my own good boy—you will now, won’t ye?”

Why, my boys have been to Cincinnati, with five hundred dollars’ worth of colts, and brought me back the money, all straight, time and agin. It stands to reason they should.

Treat ’em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ’em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.

” And the honest drover, in his warmth, endorsed this moral sentiment by firing a perfect feu de joi at the fireplace.

“

That is to say, the Lord made ’em men, and it’s a hard squeeze gettin ’em down into beasts,

” said the drover, dryly.

“

Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out their souls entirely,

” said the drover.

“Because I’m a freeman!” said George, proudly. “Yes, sir;

I’ve said Mas’r for the last time to any man. I’m free!

”

“

All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that, Mr. Wilson

,” said George.

“

Mine has run cold a good many years, Mr. Wilson; at present, it’s about up to the boiling point

,” said George.

“Louisville,” said Haley. “Very fair, we get there about dusk. Chap will be asleep—all fair—get him off quietly, and no screaming—happens beautiful—I like to do everything quietly—

I hates all kind of agitation and fluster.

” And so, after a transfer of certain bills had passed from the man’s pocketbook to the trader’s, he resumed his cigar.

The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice.

His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation.

The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my friend;

The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times.

You can get used to such things, too, my friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union.

So the trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat;

for, like other supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.

But the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and direct through the heart, for cry or tear.

Dizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her bewildered ear;

Something black passed quickly by him to the side of the boat, and he heard a splash in the water. No one else saw or heard anything. He raised his head—the woman’s place was vacant! He got up, and sought about him in vain.

The poor bleeding heart was still, at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it.

Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient, generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world.

Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like these.

Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory.

In his patient, generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him, in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, “the year of his redeemed shall come.”

you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman’s bosom.

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

If any want to get up an inspiration under this head, we refer them to our good friend Rachel Halliday, just as she sits there in her little rocking-chair.

“

All the moral and Christian virtues bound in black Morocco, complete!

” he said, when Haley had finished. “Well, now, my good fellow, what’s the damage, as they say in Kentucky; in short, what’s to be paid out for this business? How much are you going to cheat me, now? Out with it!”

“And I might use him for a family chaplain, possibly,” added the young man, dryly. “That’s quite an idea.

Religion is a remarkably scarce article at our house.

”

“

I want to make him happy.

”

“And you shall have good times,” said Eva. “

Papa is very good to everybody, only he always will laugh at them.

”

Clare. But the real remained—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare—exceedingly real.

Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through; and this yet remained to Augustine.

It is a great mistake 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. When, therefore, St.

In her habits, she was a living impersonation of order, method, and exactness.

In punctuality, she was as inevitable as a clock, and as inexorable as a railroad engine;

and she held in most decided contempt and abomination anything of a contrary character.

So, also, were her ideas with regard to most matters of practical life—such as housekeeping in all its branches, and the various political relations of her native village. And, underlying all, deeper than anything else, higher and broader, lay the strongest principle of her being—conscientiousness.

Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women.

It is the granite formation, which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest mountains.

Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation, which lies deepest, and rises out, even to the tops of the highest mountains.

Miss Ophelia was the absolute bondslave of the “ought.”

Once make her certain that the “path of duty,” as she commonly phrased it, lay in any given direction, and fire and water could not keep her from it.

“Get up here, Eva!” said Miss Ophelia, courageously; “what has been done can be done again. This trunk has got to be shut and locked—there are no two ways about it.”

And the trunk, intimidated, doubtless, by this resolute statement, gave in.

The hasp snapped sharply in its hole, and Miss Ophelia turned the key, and pocketed it in triumph.

“Too much trouble—laziness, cousin, laziness—which ruins more souls than you can shake a stick at.

If it weren’t for laziness, I should have been a perfect angel, myself.

I’m inclined to think that laziness is what your old Dr. Botherem, up in Vermont, used to call the ‘essence of moral evil.’ It’s an awful consideration, certainly.”

but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do—obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us.

You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs.

You would not have them abused; but you don’t want to have anything to do with them yourselves.

“What would the poor and lowly do, without children?” said St. Clare, leaning on the railing, and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading Tom with her. “

Your little child is your only true democrat.

Tom, now is a hero to Eva;

“Nothing is easier than talking,” said St. Clare. “I believe Shakespeare makes somebody say, ‘I could sooner show twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own showing.’

Nothing like division of labor. My forte lies in talking, and yours, cousin, lies in doing.

”

Most likely it was. Or, if it wasn’t that, it was something else; for Marie patronized good things, and she was going now, in full force—diamonds, silk, and lace, and jewels, and all—to a fashionable church, to be very religious.

Marie always made a point to be very pious on Sundays.

There she stood, so slender, so elegant, so airy and undulating in all her motions, her lace scarf enveloping her like a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she felt very good and very elegant indeed.

“O, Evangeline! rightly named,” he said; “hath not God made thee an evangel to me?”

So he felt a moment; and then he smoked a cigar, and read the Picayune, and forgot his little gospel. Was he much unlike other folks?

“You see, Evangeline,” said her mother, “it’s always right and proper to be kind to servants, but it isn’t proper to treat them just as we would our relations, or people in our own class of life.

Clare, gayly. “If I answer that question, I know you’ll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I’m not a going to define my position.

I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people’s glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.

”

“Religion!” said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him. “Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion?

Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

”

“Well,” said St. Clare, “suppose that something should bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don’t you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine?

What a flood of light would pour into the church, all at once, and how immediately it would be discovered that everything in the Bible and reason went the other way!

”

“Involve,” said Phineas, with a curious and keen expression of face, “

When thee does involve me, please to let me know.

”

Old Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in the kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered an invasion of privilege.

No feudal baron in Magna Charta times could have more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown.

Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would be injustice to her memory not to give the reader a little idea of her.

but Chloe was a trained and methodical one, who moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a self-taught genius, and, like geniuses in general, was positive, opinionated and erratic, to the last degree.

Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and always took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable.

No possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe that any other way was better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could be in the least modified.

… the system and order of his uncle’s kitchen arrangements, he had largely provided his own with an array of cupboards, drawers, and various apparatus, to induce systematic regulation, under the sanguine illusion that it would be of any possible assistance to Dinah in her arrangements.

He might as well have provided them for a squirrel or a magpie.

The more drawers and closets there were, the more hiding-holes could Dinah make for the accommodation of old rags, hair-combs, old shoes, ribbons, cast-off artificial flowers, and other articles of vertu, wherein her soul delighted.

“

My dear Vermont, you natives up by the North Pole set an extravagant value on time!

What on earth is the use of time to a fellow who has twice as much of it as he knows what to do with?

“

It’s commonly supposed that the property interest is a sufficient guard in these cases.

If people choose to ruin their own possessions, I don’t know what’s to be done. It seems the poor creature was a thief and a drunkard; and so there won’t be much hope to get up sympathy for her.”

This I take to be about what slavery is. I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything else of it.

Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

And the only reason why the land don’t sink under it, like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is.

Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to doing.

Because I don’t like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun.

Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry-shod.

“

What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for the most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament.

The greater part is nothing but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town where all are, in fact, free and equal;

“

I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.

”

In many cases, it is a gradual hardening process on both sides—the owner growing more and more cruel, as the servant more and more callous.

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

I saw this very early when I became an owner; and I resolved never to begin, because I did not know when I should stop—and I resolved, at least, to protect my own moral nature. The consequence is, that my servants act like spoiled children;

Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend Tom, till two years were gone.

Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable;

and even now that fervent cheek and little hand were burning with hectic fever; and yet the thought that Eva’s words suggested had never come to him till now.

Has there ever been a child like Eva? Yes, there have been; but their names are always on gravestones, and their sweet smiles, their heavenly eyes, their singular words and ways, are among the buried treasures of yearning hearts.

In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not.

“Come, come, Eva; you are only a child! You don’t know anything about these things,” said Marie; “besides, your talking makes my head ache.”

Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not exactly suit her.

Eva stole away; but after that, she assiduously gave Mammy reading lessons.

St. Clare had called her to show a statuette that he had been buying for her; but her appearance, as she came on, impressed him suddenly and painfully.

There is a kind of beauty so intense, yet so fragile, that we cannot bear to look at it.

Her father folded her suddenly in his arms, and almost forgot what he was going to tell her.

“

It’s all no use, papa, to keep it to myself any longer.

The time is coming that I am going to leave you. I am going, and never to come back!” and Eva sobbed.

“

It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,

” said St. Clare.

“

Perhaps so; but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear,

” said he, with a dry, hard, tearless manner, as he turned away.

“That’s just what I think. I know just what I feel—nobody else seems to. Eva used to, but she is gone!” and Marie lay back on her lounge, and began to sob disconsolately.

Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in possession.

Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in it; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.

“

O, Tom, my boy, the whole world is as empty as an eggshell.

”

Week after week glided away in the St. Clare mansion, and the waves of life settled back to their usual flow, where that little bark had gone down.

For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on!

Still must we eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again—still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions—pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.

“

We does for the Lord when we does for his critturs,

” said Tom.

“I really think you can make something of that concern,” he said, pointing with his thumb backward over his shoulder. “

Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.

You must try and do something with her.”

“But I want it done now,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Come, now, here’s paper, pen, and ink; just write a paper.”

“No more mine now than she was before,” Miss Ophelia. “

Nobody but God has a right to give her to me; but I can protect her now.

”

“

O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.

”

“God only knows the future,” said St. Clare. “

I am braver than I was, because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.

”

They fancy some foul, obscure den, some horrible Tartarus “informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.” But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of respectable society.

Human property is high in the market; and is, therefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may come to sale sleek, and strong, and shining.

A slave-warehouse in New Orleans is a house externally not much unlike many others, kept with neatness;

If there were no planters except such as that one,” said he, pointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to them, “the whole thing would go down like a millstone.

It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.

”

This is simply saying that the negro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is no more true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over.

The slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.

Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed his plantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo cordially hated each other; the plantation hands, one and all, cordially hated them;

“

The Lord never visits these parts

,” said the woman, bitterly, as she went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled her lips.

“

No! no! no! my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it

—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it;—no matter, no matter, you can’t harm me!”

“May be it’s the way,” she murmured to herself; “but those that have given up, there’s no hope for them!—none!

We live in filth, and grow loathsome, till we loathe ourselves!

And we long to die, and we don’t dare to kill ourselves!—No hope! no hope! no hope?—this girl now—just as old as I was!

But he didn’t give up so. He told me that my children were sold, but whether I ever saw their faces again, depended on him; and that, if I wasn’t quiet, they should smart for it.

Well, you can do anything with a woman, when you’ve got her children.

He made me submit; he made me be peaceable; he flattered me with hopes that, perhaps, he would buy them back; and so things went on, a week or two. One day, I was out walking, and passed by the calaboose;

He opened it, and a lock of long, curling hair fell from it, and twined about his fingers. The letter told him his mother was dead, and that, dying, she blest and forgave him.

There is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns things sweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and affright.

That pale, loving mother—her dying prayers, her forgiving love—wrought in that demoniac heart of sin only as a damning sentence, bringing with it a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Legree burned the hair, and burned the letter;

“

Nowhere, but into our graves,

” said Cassy.

“Mas’r Legree, as ye bought me, I’ll be a true and faithful servant to ye.

I’ll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time, all my strength; but my soul I won’t give up to mortal man.

I will hold on to the Lord, and put his commands before all—die or live; you may be sure on’t. Mas’r Legree, I ain’t a grain afeard to die. I’d as soon die as not.

What is freedom to that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eyes—what is freedom to George Harris?

To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute;

the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child;

It was a superb day. The blue waves of Lake Erie danced, rippling and sparkling, in the sunlight. A fresh breeze blew from the shore, and the lordly boat ploughed her way right gallantly onward.

O, what an untold world there is in one human heart!

Who thought, as George walked calmly up and down the deck of the steamer, with his shy companion at his side, of all that was burning in his bosom? The mighty good that seemed approaching seemed too good, too fair, even to be a reality;

The little party were soon guided, by Mrs. Smyth, to the hospitable abode of a good missionary, whom Christian charity has placed here as a shepherd to the outcast and wandering, who are constantly finding an asylum on this shore.

Who can speak the blessedness of that first day of freedom?

Is not the sense of liberty a higher and a finer one than any of the five? To move, speak and breathe—go out and come in unwatched, and free from danger!

Who can speak the blessedness of that first day of freedom?

Is not the sense of liberty a higher and a finer one than any of the five?

To move, speak and breathe—go out and come in unwatched, and free from danger! Who can speak the blessings of that rest which comes down on the free man’s pillow, under laws which insure to him the rights that God has given to man?

They had nothing more than the birds of the air, or the flowers of the field—yet they could not sleep for joy. “

O, ye who take freedom from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?

”

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?

The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic.

“There, you dog,” he said, “see if you’ll feel so comfortable, after that!”

But the blows fell now only on the outer man, and not, as before, on the heart.

Tom stood perfectly submissive; and yet Legree could not hide from himself that his power over his bond thrall was somehow gone.

“But think of all these poor creatures,” said Cassy. “We might set them all free, and go somewhere in the swamps, and find an island, and live by ourselves; I’ve heard of its being done. Any life is better than this.”

“No!” said Tom, firmly. “No! good never comes of wickedness. I’d sooner chop my right hand off!”

“Then I shall do it,” said Cassy, turning.

And this, oh Africa! latest called of nations—called to the crown of thorns, the scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of agony—this is to be thy victory; by this shalt thou reign with Christ when his kingdom shall come on earth.

The deep fervor of Tom’s feelings, the softness of his voice, his tears, fell like dew on the wild, unsettled spirit of the poor woman.

A softness gathered over the lurid fires of her eye; she looked down, and Tom could feel the relaxing muscles of her hands, as she said:

“I know no way but through the grave,” said Cassy. “

There’s no beast or bird but can find a home some where; even the snakes and the alligators have their places to lie down and be quiet; but there’s no place for us.

Down in the darkest swamps, their dogs will hunt us out, and find us. Everybody and everything is against us; even the very beasts side against us—and where shall we go?”

and I’ve faith to believe he can deliver you. Try it, and I’ll pray, with all my might, for you.”

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

Cassy had often revolved, for hours, all possible or probable schemes of escape, and dismissed them all, as hopeless and impracticable;

A superstitious creeping horror seemed to fill the house; and though no one dared to breathe it to Legree, he found himself encompassed by it, as by an atmosphere.

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order;

but to the man who has dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew poet, “a land of darkness and the shadow of death,” without any order, where the light is as darkness.

Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.

Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused by his encounters with Tom—roused, only to be resisted by the determinate force of evil;

“Stealing!” said Cassy, with a scornful laugh. “

They who steal body and soul needn’t talk to us.

Every one of these bills is stolen—stolen from poor, starving, sweating creatures, who must go to the devil at last, for his profit. Let him talk about stealing! But come, we may as well go up garret;

If it succeeded, well and good; if not, he would summon Tom before him, and—his teeth clenched and his blood boiled—then he would break the fellow down, or—there was a dire inward whisper, to which his soul assented.

Ye say that the interest of the master is a sufficient safeguard for the slave. In the fury of man’s mad will, he will wittingly, and with open eye, sell his own soul to the devil to gain his ends; and will he be more careful of his neighbor’s body?

“Well,” said Cassy, the next day, from the garret, as she reconnoitred through the knothole, “the hunt’s going to begin again, today!”

O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ’t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!”

Like a strange snatch of heavenly music, heard in the lull of a tempest, this burst of feeling made a moment’s blank pause.

Legree stood aghast, and looked at Tom; and there was such a silence, that the tick of the old clock could be heard, measuring, with silent touch, the last moments of mercy and probation to that hardened heart.

George turned, and, with one indignant blow, knocked Legree flat upon his face; and, as he stood over him, blazing with wrath and defiance, he would have formed no bad personification of his great namesake triumphing over the dragon.

Some men, however, are decidedly bettered by being knocked down.

If a man lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem immediately to conceive a respect for him; and Legree was one of this sort.

The night after Tom’s body had been carried away, he rode to the next town for a carouse, and had a high one. Got home late and tired; locked his door, took out the key, and went to bed.

After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have.

Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses—those shudderings and tremblings, which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity!