Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Original Edition | Liberty - Chapter 14

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Audio Books presents Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet beecher Stowe,
Chapter fourteen. Vangeline a young star which shan o'er life,
too sweet an image for such glass, a lovely being
scarcely formed or molded, a rose with all its sweetest
leaves yet folded. The Mississippi, how as by an enchanted

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wand have its scenes been changed since Chateaubriand wrote his
prose poetic description of it. Note in Atala, or The
Love and Constancy of Two Savages in the Desert, eighteen
o one by Francois Auguste Rene Vicomte de Chateaubrian seventeen
sixty eight eighteen forty eight. As a river of mighty,

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unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed wonders of vegetable and animal existence.
But as in an hour, this river of dreams and
wild romance has emerged to a reality scarcely less visionary
and splendid. What other river of the world bears on
its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise of

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such another country, a country whose products embrace all between
the tropics and the poles. Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming,
tearing along an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business,
which is poured along its wave by a race more
vehement and energetic than any the old world ever saw.

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Ah would that they did not also bear along a
more fearful freight, the tears of the oppressed, the size
of the helpless, the bitter prayers of poor ignorant hearts
to an unknown God, unknown, unseen and silent, but who
will yet come out of his place and save all

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the poor of the earth. The slanting light of the
setting sun quivers on the sea like expanse of the river.
The shivery canes and the all dark cypress hung with
wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray.
As the heavily laden steamboat marches onward, piled with cotton

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bales from many a plantation, up over deck and sides,
till she seems in the distance a square, massive block
of gray. She moves heavily onward to the nearing mart
We must look some time among its crowded decks before
we shall find again our humble friend Tom high on
the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere

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predominant cotton bales. At last, we may find him, partly
from confidence inspired by mister Shelby's representations, and partly from
the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man. Tom
had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even
of such a man as Hayley. At first, he had

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watched him narrowly through the day and never allowed him
to sleep at night unfettered. But the uncomplaining patience and
apparent contentment of Tom's manner led him gradually to discontinue
these restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a
sort of parole of honour, being permitted to come and
go freely where he pleased. On the boat. Ever quiet,

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an obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand
in every emergency which occurred among the workmen below. He
had won the good opinion of all the hands, and
spent many hours in helping them, with as hardy a
good will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm.
When there seemed to be nothing for him to do,
he would climb to a nook among the cotton bales
of the upper deck and busy himself in studying over

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his Bible. And it is there we see him now
for a hundred or more miles above New Orleans. The
river is higher than the surrounding country and rolls its
tremendous volume between massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveler,
from the deck of the steamer, as from some floating
castle top, overlooks the whole country for miles and miles around.

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Tom therefore had spread out full before him in plantation
after plantation, a map of the life to which he
was approaching. He saw the distant slaves at their toil.
He saw afar their villages of huts gleaming out in
long rows on many a plantation, distant from the stately
mansions and pleasure grounds at the master. And as the

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moving picture passed on, his poor foolish heart would be
turning backward to the Kentucky farm with its old, shadowy beaches,
to the master's house with its wide cool halls, and
near by the little cabin overgrown with the multiflora and pignonia.
There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who

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had grown up with him from infancy. He saw his
busy wife bustling in her preparations for his evening meals,
He heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play,
and the chirrup of the baby at his knee, And
then with the start, all faded, and he saw again
the cane brakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard

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again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling
him too plainly that all that phase of life had
gone by forever. In such a case, you write to
your wife and send messages to your children. But Tom
could not write. The mail, for him had no existence,
and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a
friendly word or signal. Is it strange, then, that some

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tears fall on the pages of his Bible as he
lays it on the cotton bale, and, with patient finger
threading his slow way from word to word, traces out
its promises. Having learned late in life, Tom was but
a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse.
Fortunate for him was it that the book he was
intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure, nay,

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one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to
need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take
in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as,
pointing to each word and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads,
let not your heart be troubled. In my father's house

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are many mansions I go to prepare a place for you. Cicero,
when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a
heart as full of honest grief as poor Tom's, perhaps
no fuller, for both were only men. But Cicero could

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pause over no such sublime words of hope and look
to know such future reunion. And if he had seen
them ten to one, he would not have believed. He
must fill his head first with a thousand questions of
authenticity of manuscript and correctness of translation. But to poor Tom,
there it lay just what he needed, so evidently true

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and divine that the possibility of a question never entered
his simple head. It must be true, for if not true,
how could he live. As for Tom's Bible, though it
had no annotations and helps in margin from learned commentators,
still it had been embellished with certain way marks and
guide boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him

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more than the most learned expositions could have done. It
had been his custom to get the Bible read to
him by his master's children, in particular by young Master George,
and as they read he would designate by bold, strong
marks and dashes with pen and ink, the passages which
more particularly gratified his ear or affected his heart. His

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Bible was thus marked through from one end to the other,
with a variety of styles and designations, so he could
in a moment seize upon his favorite passages without the
labor of spelling out what lay between them. And while
it lay there before him, every passage, breathing of some
old home scene and recalling some past enjoyment, his Bible

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seemed to him all of this life that remained, as
well as the promise of a future. One among the
passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune
and family, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name
of Saint Clair. He had with him a daughter between
five and six years of age, together with a lady
who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have

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the little one especially under her charge. Tom had often
caught glimpses of this little girl, for she was one
of those busy tripping creatures that can be no more
contained in one place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze.
Nor was she one that, once seen, could be easily forgotten.
Her form was the perfection of childish beauty. Without its

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usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it
an undulating and aerial grace such as one might dream
of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was
remarkable less for its perfect beauty of feature than for
a singular and dreamy, earnestness of expression, which made the
ideal start when they looked at her, and by which

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the dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why.
The shape of her head and the turn of her
neck and bust was peculiarly noble, and the long golden
brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the
deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by
heavy fringes of golden brown, all marked her out from

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other children, and made every one turn and look after
her as she glided hither and thither on the boat. Nevertheless,
the little One was not what she would have called
either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary,
an airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the
shadow of summer leaves over her childish face and around
her buoyant figure. She was always in motion, always with

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a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and
thither with an undulating and cloudlike tread, singing to herself
as she moved, as in a happy dream. Her father
and female guardian were incessantly busy in the pursuit of her,
but when caught, she melted from them again like a
summer cloud, And as no word of chiding or reprove

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ever fell on her ear. For whatever she chose to do,
she pursued her own way. All over the boat, all
was dressed in white. She seemed to move like a
shadow through all sorts of places without contracting spot or stain,
And there was not a corner or nook above or
below where those fairy footsteps had not glided. And that

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visionary golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted along.
The fireman as he looked up from his sweaty toil,
sometimes found those eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths
of the furnace, and fearfully and pityingly at him, as
if she thought him in some dreadful danger. Anon, the
steersman at the wheel paused and smiled as the picturelike

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head gleamed through the window of the round house, and
in a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day,
rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole
over hard faces as she passed, and when she tripped
fearlessly over dangerous places, rough sooty hands were stretched involuntarily
out to save her and smooth her path. Tom, who

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had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, ever
yearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creature
with daily increasing interest. To him, she seemed something almost divine,
and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered
out upon him from behind some dusky cotton bail or
looked down upon him over some ridge of packages, he

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half believed that he saw one of the angels stepped
out of his new testament. Often and often she walked
mournfully round the place where Haley's gang of men and
women sat in their chains. She would glide in among
them and look at them with an air of perplexed
and sorrowful earnestness and Sometimes she would lift their chains
with her slender hands, and then sigh woefully as she

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glided away. Several times she appeared suddenly among them with
her hands full of candy, nuts and oranges, which she
would distribute joyfully to them, and then be gone again.
Tom watched the little lady a great deal before he
ventured on any overtures towards acquaintanceship. He knew an abundance
of simple acts to propitiate and invite the approaches of

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the little people, and he resolved to play his part.
Write skillfully. He could cut cunning little baskets out of
cherry stones, could make grotesque faces on hickory nuts, or
odd jumping figures out of elder pith, and he was
a very pan in the manufacture of whistles of all
sizes and sorts. His pockets were full of miscellaneous articles

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of attraction, which he had hoarded in days of old
for his master's chair children, and which he now produced
with commendable prudence and economy, one by one as overtures
for acquaintance and friendship. The little one was shy, for
all her busy interest in everything going on, and it
was not easy to tame her for a while. She
would perch like a canary bird on some box or

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package near Tom, while busy in the little arts aforenamed,
and take from him with a kind of grave bashfulness
the little articles he offered. But alas they got on
quite confidential terms. What's little Missy's name? Said Tom at last,
when he thought matters were ripe to push such an inquiry,

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Evangeline Saint Clair, said the little one. Though, Papa and
everybody else call me Eva. Now, what's your name? My
name's Tom. The little children used to call me Uncle
Tom way back thar in Kentuck. Then I mean to
call you Uncle Tom, because you see I like you,
said Eva. So Uncle Tom, where are you going? I

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don't know, Miss Eva, don't know, said Eva. No, I
am going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who.
My Papa can buy you, said Eva quickly. And if
he buys you, you will have good times. I mean
to ask him this very day. Thank you, my little lady,
said Tom. The boat here stopped at a small landing

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to take in wood, and Eva, hearing her father's voice,
bounded nimbly away, Tom rose up and went forward to
offer his service in wooding, and soon was busy among
the hands. Eva and her father were standing together by
the railings to see the boat start from the landing place.
The wheel had made two or three revolutions in the water,
when by some sudden movement, the little one suddenly lost

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her balance and fell sheer over the side of the
boat into the water. Her father, scarce knowing what he did,
was plunging in after her, but was held back by
some behind him, who saw that more efficient aid had
followed his child. M was standing just under her on
the lower deck. As she fell. He saw her strike
the water and sink, and was after her in a moment,

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a broad chested, strong armed fellow. It was nothing for
him to keep afloat in the water till in a
moment or two the child rose to the surface, and
he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her
to the boatside, handed her up, all dripping, to the
grasp of hundreds of hands, which, as if they had
all belonged to one man, were stretched eagerly out to
receive her. A few moments more and her father bore her,

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dripping and senseless, to the lady's cabin. Where As is
usual in cases of the kind. There ensued a very
well meaning and kind hearted strife among the female occupants,
generally as to who should do the most things to
make a disturbance and to hinder her recovery in every
way possible. It was a sultry close day. The next day,

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as the steamer drew near to New Orleans, a general
bustle of expectation and preparation was spread through the boat.
In the cabin, one and another gathering their things together
and arranging them preparatory to going ashore. The steward and
chambermaid and all were busily engaged in cleaning, furbishing, and
arranging the splendid boat preparatory to her grand entree. On

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the lower deck sat our friend Tom, with his arms
folded and anxiously, from time to time, turning his eyes
towards a group. On the other side of the boat.
There stood the fair Evangeliine, a little paler than the
day before, but otherwise exhibiting no traces of the accident
which had befallen her. A graceful, elegantly formed young man

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stood by her, carelessly, leaning one elbow on a bale
of cotton, while a large pocket book lay open before him.
It was quite evident at a glance that the gentleman
was Eva's father. There was the same noble cast of head,
the same large blue eyes, the same golden brown hair.
Yet the expression was wholly different. In the large, clear

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blue eyes, though in form and color exactly similar, there
was wanton that misty, dreamy depth of expression. All was clear,
bold and bright, but with the light wholly of this world.
The beautifully cut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression,
while an air of free and easy superiority sat not

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ungracefully in every turn and movement of his fine form.
He was listening with a good humored, negligent air, half comic,
half contemptuous to Haley, who was very volubly expatiating on
the quality of the article for which they were bargaining,
all the moral and Christian virtues bound in black Morocco complete,
he said. When Haley had finished, Well, now, my good fellow,

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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? Humm out with it? Well,
said Haley, if I should save thirteen hundred dollars for that,
our fellow, I shouldn't, but just save myself I should now,
Really poor fellows, said the young man, fixing his keen
mocking blue eye on him. But I suppose you'd let

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me have him for that out of a particular regard
for me, while the young lady here seems to be
sought on him naturally enough. Oh, certainly there's a call
on your benevolence, my friend. Now, as a matter of
Christian charity, how cheap could you afford to let him
go to oblige a young lady that's particularly sought on him? Wow?
Now just think on it, said the trader. Just look

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on them limbs, broad chested, strong as a horse. Look
at his head, them high forwards. A lace shows calculating niggers.
They'll do any kind of thing I've marked that are
now a nigger of that are heft and build is
worth considerable, just as you may say for his body,
supposing he's stupid. But come to put in his calculating

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faculties and them which I can show he has oncommon?
Why of course it makes him come higher. Why that
our fellow managed his master's whole farm. He has a
straorinary talent for business, bad bad, very bad, knows altogether
too much, said the young man, with the same mocking
smile playing about his mouth. Never will do in the world.

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Your smart fellows are always running off, stealing horses and
raising the devil generally, I think you'll have to take
off a couple of hundred for his smartness. Well, there
might be something in there if it weren't for his character.
But I can show recommence from his master and others
to prove he is one of your real pious, the
most humble, prayin pious critter he ever did. See why

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he's been called a preacher in them parts he came from,
and I must 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. You're joking, now,
how do you know, I am? Didn't you just warrant
him for a preacher? Has he been examined by any

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synod or council? Come hand over your papers. If the
trader had not been sure by a certain good humored
twinkle in the large eye, that all this banter was
sure in the long run to turn out a cash concern.
He might have been somewhat out of patience as it was.
He laid down a greasy pocket book on the cotton
bales and began anxiously studdying over certain papers in it,

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the young man standing by the while looking down on
him with an air of careless, easy drollery. Papa, do
buy him. It's no matter what you pay, whispered Eva, softly,
getting up on a package and putting her arm around
her father's neck. You have money enough, I know i'd
want him. What for, pussy? Are you going to use

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him for a rattle box or a rocking horse? Or what?
I want? To make him happy? An original reason certainly.
Here The trader handed up a certificate signed by mister Shelby,
which the young man took with the tips of his
long fingers and glanced over carelessly. A gentlemanly hand, he said,
and well spelt too well. Now I'm not sure after

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all about this religion, said he, the old wicked expression
returning to his eye. The country is almost ruined with
pious white people and such pious politicians as we have
just before elections, Such pious goings on in all departments
of church and state that a fellow does not know
who'll cheat him next. I don't know either about religions
being up in the market just now. I have not

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looked in the papers lately to see how it sells.
How many hundred dollars now do you put on for
this religion? You like to be joking, now, said the trader.
But then there's sense under all that are I know
there's differences in religion, some kinds as miserable. There's your
meetin' pious, there's your singin' roarin' pious. There aren't no

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account in black or white, but these rarely is. And
I've seen it in niggers as often as any your
rail softly, quiet, steady, honest pious, that the whole world
couldn't tempt them to do nothing that they think's wrong.
And you see in this letter what Tom's old master
says about him. Now, said the young man, stooping gravely

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over his book of bills. If you can assure me
that I really can buy this kind of pious, and
that it will be set down to my account in
the book up above as something belonging to me, I
wouldn't care if I did go a little extra for it.
How'd you say, Well, rally, I can't do that, said
the trader. I'm thinkin that every man'll have to hang

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on his own hook in them are quarters rather hard
on a fellow that pays extra on religion and can't
trade with it in the state where he wants it most,
aren't it now, said the young man, who had been
making out a roll of bills while he was speaking.
There count your money, old boy, he added, as he
handed the roll to the trader. All right, said Haley,

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his face beaming with delight, and pulling out an old inkhorn,
he proceeded to fill out a bill of saale, which
in a few moments he handed to the young man.
I wonder now if I was divided up an inventoried,
said the latter, as he ran over the paper, how
much I might bring, Say, so much for the shape
of my head, so much for a high forehead, so

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much for arms and hands and legs, and then so
much for education, learning, talent, honesty, religion, bless me. There
would be small charge on that last, I'm thinking. But
come eva, he said, and taking the hand of his daughter,
he stepped across the boat and carelessly putting the tip

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of his finger under Tom's chin, said, good humoredly, look up, Tom,
and see how you like your new master. Tom looked up.
It was not in nature to look into that gay, young,
handsome face without a feeling of pleasure, and Tom felt
the tears start in his eyes as he said heartily,
God bless you, Massa. Well, I hope he will. What's

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your name? Tom? Quite as likely to do for your
asking as mine? From all accounts. Can you drive horses? Tom,
I've been always used to horses, said Tom. Massa shall
be raised heapsham. Well, I think I shall put you
in a coachee on condition that you won't be drunk
more than once a week, unless in cases of emergency. Tom.
Tom looked surprised and rather hurt, and said, I never drink, Massa.

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I've heard that story before, Tom. But then we'll see
it will be a special accommodation to all concerned if
you don't never mind, my boy, he added, good humoredly,
seeing Tom still looked grave. I don't doubt you mean
to do well. I I certain do, Massa, said Tom.
And you shall have good times, said Eva. Papa is
very good to everybody. Only he always will laugh at them.

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Papa is much obliged to you for his recommendation, said
Saint Clair, laughing as he turned on his heel and
walked away. End of Chapter fourteen, Dream Audio Books. Hopes
you have enjoyed this program.