Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“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.