OLD Mr. Cleveland sat by his comfortable fireside one cold winter's
night. He was a widower, and lived alone on his plantation; that is
to say, he was the only white person there; for of negroes, both
field hands and house servants, he had enough and to spare. He was a
queer old man, this Mr. Cleveland; a man of kind, good feelings, but
of eccentric impulses, and blunt and startling manners. You must
always let him do everything in his own odd way; just attempt to
dictate to him, or even to suggest a certain course, and you would
be sure to defeat your wisest designs. He seemed at times possessed
by a spirit of opposition, and would often turn right round and
oppose a course he had just been vehemently advocating, only because
some one else had ventured openly and warmly to approve it.
The night, as I have said, was bitter cold, and would have done
honour to a northern latitude, and in addition to this, a violent
storm was coming on. The wind blew in fitful gusts, howling and
sighing among the huge trees with which the house was surrounded,
and then dying away with a melancholy, dirge-like moan. The old tree
rubbed their leafless branches against the window panes, and the
fowls which had roosted there for the night, were fain to clap their
wings, and make prodigious efforts to preserve their equilibrium.
Mr. Cleveland grew moody and restless, threw down the book in which
he had been reading, kicked one of the andirons till he made the
whole blazing fabric tumble down, and finally called, in an
impatient tone, his boy Tom.