Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  "O Lor, Missis, no; the towels was all a missin'-so I jest did it. I laid out to wash that a,-that's why I put it thar."

  "Shif'less!" said Miss Ophelia to herself, proceeding to tumble over the drawer, where she found a nutmeg-grater and two or three nutmegs, a Methodist hymn-book, a couple of soiled Madras handkerchiefs, some yarn and knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or two gilded china-saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry sweet herbs were sifting into the drawer.

  "Where do you keep your nutmegs, Dinah?" said Miss Ophelia, with the air of one who prayed for patience.

  "Most anywhar, Missis; there's some in that cracked tea-cup, up there, and there's some over in that ar cupboard."

  "Here are some in the grater," said Miss Ophelia, holding them up.

  "Laws, yes, I put 'em there this morning,-I likes to keep my things handy," said Dinah. "You, Jake! what are you stopping for! You'll cotch it! Be still, thar!" she added, with a dive of her stick at the criminal.

  "What's this?" said Miss Ophelia, holding up the saucer of pomade.

  "Laws, it's my har grease;-I put it thar to have it handy."

  "Do you use your mistress' best saucers for that?"

  "Law! it was cause I was driv, and in sich a hurry;-I was gwine to change it this very day."

  "Here are two damask table-napkins."

  "Them table-napkins I put thar, to get 'em washed out, some day."

  "Don't you have some place here on purpose for things to be washed?"

  "Well, Mas'r St. Clare got dat ar chest, he said, for dat; but I likes to mix up biscuit and hev my things on it some days, and then it an't handy a liftin' up the lid."

  "Why don't you mix your biscuits on the pastry-table, there?"

  "Law, Missis, it gets sot so full of dishes, and one thing and another, der an't no room, noway-"

  "But you should wash your dishes, and clear them away."

  "Wash my dishes!" said Dinah, in a high key, as her wrath began to rise over her habitual respect of manner; "what does ladies know 'bout work, I want to know? When 'd Mas'r ever get his dinner, if I vas to spend all my time a washin' and a puttin' up dishes? Miss Marie never telled me so, nohow."

  "Well, here are these onions."

  "Laws, yes!" said Dinah; "thar is whar I put 'em, now. I couldn't 'member. Them 's particular onions I was a savin' for dis yer very stew. I'd forgot they was in dat ar old flannel."

  Miss Ophelia lifted out the sifting papers of sweet herbs.

  "I wish Missis wouldn't touch dem ar. I likes to keep my things where I knows whar to go to 'em," said Dinah, rather decidedly.

  "But you don't want these holes in the papers."

  "Them 's handy for siftin' on 't out," said Dinah.

  "But you see it spills all over the drawer."

  "Laws, yes! if Missis will go a tumblin' things all up so, it will. Missis has spilt lots dat ar way," said Dinah, coming uneasily to the drawers. "If Missis only will go up stars till my clarin' up time comes, I'll have everything right; but I can't do nothin' when ladies is round, a henderin'. You, Sam, don't you gib the baby dat ar sugar-bowl! I'll crack ye over, if ye don't mind!"

  "I'm going through the kitchen, and going to put everything in order, once, Dinah; and then I'll expect you to keep it so."

  "Lor, now! Miss Phelia; dat ar an't no way for ladies to do. I never did see ladies doin' no sich; my old Missis nor Miss Marie never did, and I don't see no kinder need on 't;" and Dinah stalked indignantly about, while Miss Ophelia piled and sorted dishes, emptied dozens of scattering bowls of sugar into one receptacle, sorted napkins, table-cloths, and towels, for washing; washing, wiping, and arranging with her own hands, and with a speed and alacrity which perfectly amazed Dinah.

  "Lor now! if dat ar de way dem northern ladies do, dey an't ladies, nohow," she said to some of her satellites, when at a safe hearing distance. "I has things as straight as anybody, when my clarin' up times comes; but I don't want ladies round, a henderin', and getting my things all where I can't find 'em."

  To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded. Then she would light her pipe, and leisurely go over her arrangements, looking things over, and discoursing upon them; making all the young fry scour most vigorously on the tin things, and keeping up for several hours a most energetic state of confusion, which she would explain to the satisfaction of all inquirers, by the remark that she was a "clarin' up." "She couldn't hev things a gwine on so as they had been, and she was gwine to make these yer young ones keep better order;" for Dinah herself, somehow, indulged the illusion that she, herself, was the soul of order, and it was only the young uns, and the everybody else in the house, that were the cause of anything that fell short of perfection in this respect. When all the tins were scoured, and the tables scrubbed snowy white, and everything that could offend tucked out of sight in holes and corners, Dinah would dress herself up in a smart dress, clean apron, and high, brilliant Madras turban, and tell all marauding "young uns" to keep out of the kitchen, for she was gwine to have things kept nice. Indeed, these periodic seasons were often an inconvenience to the whole household; for Dinah would contract such an immoderate attachment to her scoured tin, as to insist upon it that it shouldn't be used again for any possible purpose,-at least, till the ardor of the "clarin' up" period abated.

  Miss Ophelia, in a few days, thoroughly reformed every department of the house to a systematic pattern; but her labors in all departments that depended on the cooperation of servants were like those of Sisyphus or the Danaides. In despair, she one day appealed to St. Clare.

  "There is no such thing as getting anything like a system in this family!"

  "To be sure, there isn't," said St. Clare.

  "Such shiftless management, such waste, such confusion, I never saw!"

  "I dare say you didn't."

  "You would not take it so coolly, if you were housekeeper."

  "My dear cousin, you may as well understand, once for all, that we masters are divided into two classes, oppressors and oppressed. We who are good-natured and hate severity make up our minds to a good deal of inconvenience. If we will keep a shambling, loose, untaught set in the community, for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence. Some rare cases I have seen, of persons, who, by a peculiar tact, can produce order and system without severity; but I'm not one of them,-and so I made up my mind, long ago, to let things go just as they do. I will not have the poor devils thrashed and cut to pieces, and they know it,-and, of course, they know the staff is in their own hands."

  "But to have no time, no place, no order,-all going on in this shiftless way!"

  "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? As to order and system, where there is nothing to be done but to lounge on the sofa and read, an hour sooner or later in breakfast or dinner isn't of much account. Now, there's Dinah gets you a capital dinner,-soup, ragout, roast fowl, dessert, ice-creams and all,-and she creates it all out of chaos and old night down there, in that kitchen. I think it really sublime, the way she manages. But, Heaven bless us! if we are to go down there, and view all the smoking and squatting about, and hurryscurryation of the preparatory process, we should never eat more! My good cousin, absolve yourself from that! It's more than a Catholic penance, and does no more good. You'll only lose your own temper, and utterly confound Dinah. Let her go her own way."

  "But, Augustine, you don't know how I found things."

  "Don't I? Don'
t I know that the rolling-pin is under her bed, and the nutmeg-grater in her pocket with her tobacco,-that there are sixty-five different sugar-bowls, one in every hole in the house,-that she washes dishes with a dinner-napkin one day, and with a fragment of an old petticoat the next? But the upshot is, she gets up glorious dinners, makes superb coffee; and you must judge her as warriors and statesmen are judged, by her success."

  "But the waste,-the expense!"

  "O, well! Lock everything you can, and keep the key. Give out by driblets, and never inquire for odds and ends,-it isn't best."

  "That troubles me, Augustine. I can't help feeling as if these servants were not strictly honest. Are you sure they can be relied on?"

  Augustine laughed immoderately at the grave and anxious face with which Miss Ophelia propounded the question.

  "O, cousin, that's too good,-honest!-as if that's a thing to be expected! Honest!-why, of course, they arn't. Why should they be? What upon earth is to make them so?"

  "Why don't you instruct?"

  "Instruct! O, fiddlestick! What instructing do you think I should do? I look like it! As to Marie, she has spirit enough, to be sure, to kill off a whole plantation, if I'd let her manage; but she wouldn't get the cheatery out of them."

  "Are there no honest ones?"

  "Well, now and then one, whom Nature makes so impracticably simple, truthful and faithful, that the worst possible influence can't destroy it. But, you see, from the mother's breast the colored child feels and sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie play-fellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable habits. It isn't fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to be punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependent, semi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of property, or feel that his master's goods are not his own, if he can get them. For my part, I don't see how they can be honest. Such a fellow as Tom, here, is,-is a moral miracle!"

  "And what becomes of their souls?" said Miss Ophelia.

  "That isn't my affair, as I know of," said St. Clare; "I am only dealing in facts of the present life. The fact is, that the whole race are pretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our benefit, in this world, however it may turn out in another!"

  "This is perfectly horrible!" said Miss Ophelia; "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"

  "I don't know as I am. We are in pretty good company, for all that," said St. Clare, "as people in the broad road generally are. Look at the high and the low, all the world over, and it's the same story,-the lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper. It is so in England; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom stands aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do the thing in a little different shape from what they do it."

  "It isn't so in Vermont."

  "Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better of us, I grant. But there's the bell; so, Cousin, let us for a while lay aside our sectional prejudices, and come out to dinner."

  As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in the latter part of the afternoon, some of the sable children called out, "La, sakes! thar's Prue a coming, grunting along like she allers does."

  A tall, bony colored woman now entered the kitchen, bearing on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls.

  "Ho, Prue! you've come," said Dinah.

  Prue had a peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen, grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted herself down, and resting her elbows on her knees said,

  "O Lord! I wish't I 's dead!"

  "Why do you wish you were dead?" said Miss Ophelia.

  "I'd be out o' my misery," said the woman, gruffly, without taking her eyes from the floor.

  "What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?" said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.

  The woman looked at her with a sour surly glance.

  "Maybe you'll come to it, one of these yer days. I'd be glad to see you, I would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your misery."

  "Come, Prue," said Dinah, "let's look at your rusks. Here's Missis will pay for them."

  Miss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen.

  "Thar's some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the top shelf," said Dinah. "You, Jake, climb up and get it down."

  "Tickets,-what are they for?" said Miss Ophelia.

  "We buy tickets of her Mas'r, and she gives us bread for 'em."

  "And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I 's got the change; and if I han't, they half kills me."

  "And serves you right," said Jane, the pert chambermaid, "if you will take their money to get drunk on. That's what she does, Missis."

  "And that's what I will do,-I can't live no other ways,-drink and forget my misery."

  "You are very wicked and very foolish," said Miss Ophelia, "to steal your master's money to make yourself a brute with."

  "It's mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it,-yes, I will. O Lord! I wish I 's dead, I do,-I wish I 's dead, and out of my misery!" and slowly and stiffly the old creature rose, and got her basket on her head again; but before she went out, she looked at the quadroon girt, who still stood playing with her ear-drops.

  "Ye think ye're mighty fine with them ar, a frolickin' and a tossin' your head, and a lookin' down on everybody. Well, never mind,-you may live to be a poor, old, cut-up crittur, like me. Hope to the Lord ye will, I do; then see if ye won't drink,-drink,-drink,-yerself into torment; and sarve ye right, too-ugh!" and, with a malignant howl, the woman left the room.

  "Disgusting old beast!" said Adolph, who was getting his master's shaving-water. "If I was her master, I'd cut her up worse than she is."

  "Ye couldn't do that ar, no ways," said Dinah. "Her back's a far sight now,-she can't never get a dress together over it."

  "I think such low creatures ought not to be allowed to go round to genteel families," said Miss Jane. "What do you think, Mr. St. Clare?" she said, coquettishly tossing her head at Adolph.

  It must be observed that, among other appropriations from his master's stock, Adolph was in the habit of adopting his name and address; and that the style under which he moved, among the colored circles of New Orleans, was that of Mr. St. Clare.

  "I'm certainly of your opinion, Miss Benoir," said Adolph.

  Benoir was the name of Marie St. Clare's family, and Jane was one of her servants.

  "Pray, Miss Benoir, may I be allowed to ask if those drops are for the ball, tomorrow night? They are certainly bewitching!"

  "I wonder, now, Mr. St. Clare, what the impudence of you men will come to!" said Jane, tossing her pretty head 'til the ear-drops twinkled again. "I shan't dance with you for a whole evening, if you go to asking me any more questions."

  "O, you couldn't be so cruel, now! I was just dying to know whether you would appear in your pink tarletane," said Adolph.

  "What is it?" said Rosa, a bright, piquant little quadroon who came skipping down stairs at this moment.

  "Why, Mr. St. Clare's so impudent!"

  "On my honor," said Adolph, "I'll leave it to Miss Rosa now."

  "I know he's always a saucy creature," said Rosa, poising herself on one of her little feet, and looking maliciously at Adolph. "He's always getting me so angry with him."

  "O! ladies, ladies, you will certainly break my heart, between you," said Adolph. "I shall be found dead in my bed, some morning, and you'll have it to answer for."

  "Do hear the horrid creature talk!" said both ladies, laughing immoderately.

  "Come,-clar out, you! I can't have you cluttering up the kitchen," said Dinah; "in my way, foolin' round here."

  "Aunt Dinah's glum, because she can't go to the ball," said Rosa.

  "Don't want none o' your light-colored balls," said Dinah; "cuttin' round, makin' b'lieve you's white folks. Arter al
l, you's niggers, much as I am."

  "Aunt Dinah greases her wool stiff, every day, to make it lie straight," said Jane.

  "And it will be wool, after all," said Rosa, maliciously shaking down her long, silky curls.

  "Well, in the Lord's sight, an't wool as good as har, any time?" said Dinah. "I'd like to have Missis say which is worth the most,-a couple such as you, or one like me. Get out wid ye, ye trumpery,-I won't have ye round!"

  Here the conversation was interrupted in a two-fold manner. St. Clare's voice was heard at the head of the stairs, asking Adolph if he meant to stay all night with his shaving-water; and Miss Ophelia, coming out of the dining-room, said,

  "Jane and Rosa, what are you wasting your time for, here? Go in and attend to your muslins."

  Our friend Tom, who had been in the kitchen during the conversation with the old rusk-woman, had followed her out into the street. He saw her go on, giving every once in a while a suppressed groan. At last she set her basket down on a doorstep, and began arranging the old, faded shawl which covered her shoulders.

  "I'll carry your basket a piece," said Tom, compassionately.

  "Why should ye?" said the woman. "I don't want no help."

  "You seem to be sick, or in trouble, or somethin'," said Tom.

  "I an't sick," said the woman, shortly.

  "I wish," said Tom, looking at her earnestly,-"I wish I could persuade you to leave off drinking. Don't you know it will be the ruin of ye, body and soul?"

  "I knows I'm gwine to torment," said the woman, sullenly. "Ye don't need to tell me that ar. I 's ugly, I 's wicked,-I 's gwine straight to torment. O, Lord! I wish I 's thar!"

  Tom shuddered at these frightful words, spoken with a sullen, impassioned earnestness.

  "O, Lord have mercy on ye! poor crittur. Han't ye never heard of Jesus Christ?"

  "Jesus Christ,-who's he?"

  "Why, he's the Lord," said Tom.

  "I think I've hearn tell o' the Lord, and the judgment and torment. I've heard o' that."

  "But didn't anybody ever tell you of the Lord Jesus, that loved us poor sinners, and died for us?"

  "Don't know nothin' 'bout that," said the woman; "nobody han't never loved me, since my old man died."