the delighted mother, as the baby kicked and crowed uproariously: "he's
such a forward child, now, to be only six months old! O, you've no idea,
father, how mischievous he grows;" and therewith the little woman began
to roll and tumble the little mischief maker about, uttering divers
frightful threats, which appeared to contribute, in no small degree, to
the general hilarity.
"Come, come, Mary," said the mother, at last, with a sudden burst of
recollection; "you mustn't be always on your knees fooling with this
child! Look in the oven at them biscuits."
"They're done exactly, mother--just the brown!" and, with the word, the
mother dumped baby on to his father's knee, where he sat contentedly
munching a very ancient crust of bread, occasionally improving the
flavor thereof by rubbing it on his father's coat sleeve.
"What have you got in that blue dish, there?" said George, when the
whole little circle were seated around the table.
"Well, now, what _do_ you suppose?" said the little woman, delighted: "a
quart of nice oysters--just for a treat, you know. I wouldn't tell you
till this minute," said she, raising the cover.
"Well," said George, "we both work hard for our money, and we don't owe
any body a cent; and why shouldn't we have our treats, now and then, as
well as rich folks?"
And gayly passed the supper hour; the tea kettle sung, the baby crowed,
and all chatted and laughed abundantly.
"I'll tell you," said George, wiping his mouth; "wife, these times are
quite another thing from what it used to be down in Georgia. I remember
then old mas'r used to hire me out by the year; and one time, I
remember, I came and paid him in two hundred dollars--every cent I'd
taken. He just looked it over, counted it, and put it in his pocket
book, and said, 'You are a good boy, George'--and he gave me _half a
dollar_!"
"I want to know, now!" said his wife.
"Yes, he did, and that was every cent I ever got of it; and, I tell you,
I was mighty bad off for clothes, them times."
"Well, well, the Lord be praised, they're over, and you are in a free
country now!" said the wife, as she rose thoughtfully from the table,
and brought her husband the great Bible. The little circle were ranged
around the stove for evening prayers.
"Henry, my boy, you must read--you are a better reader than your
father--thank God, that let you learn early!"
The boy, with a cheerful readiness, read, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and
the mother gently stilled the noisy baby, to listen to the holy words.
Then all kneeled, while the father, with simple earnestness, poured out
his soul to God.
They had but just risen--the words of Christian hope and trust scarce
died on their lips--when, lo! the door was burst open, and two men
entered; and one of them, advancing, laid his hand on the father's
shoulder. "This is the fellow," said he.
"You are arrested in the name of the United States!" said the other.
"Gentlemen, what is this?" said the poor man, trembling.
"Are you not the property of _Mr. B._, of Georgia?" said the officer.
"Gentlemen, I've been a free, hard-working man these ten years."
"Yes; but you are arrested, on suit of Mr. B., as his slave."
Shall we describe the leave taking--the sorrowing wife, the dismayed
children, the tears, the anguish, that simple, honest, kindly home, in a
moment so desolated? Ah, ye who defend this because it is law, think,
for one hour, what if this that happens to your poor brother should
happen to you!
* * * * *
It was a crowded court room, and the man stood there to be tried--for
life?--no; but for the life of life--for liberty!
Lawyers hurried to and fro, buzzing, consulting, bringing
authorities,--all anxious, zealous, engaged,--for what? To save a
fellow-man from bondage? No; anxious and zealous lest he might escape;
full of zeal to deliver him over to slavery. The poor man's anxious eyes
follow vainly the busy course of affairs, from which he dimly learns
that he is to be sacrificed--on the altar of the Union; and that his
heart-break and anguish, and the tears of his wife, and the desolation
of his children are, in the eyes of these well-informed men, only the
bleat of a sacrifice, bound to the horns of the glorious American altar!
* * * * *
Again it is a bright day, and business walks brisk in this market.
Senator and statesman, the learned and patriotic, are out, this day, to
give their countenance to an edifying, and impressive, and truly
American spectacle--the sale of a man! All the preliminaries of the
scene are there; dusky-browed mothers, looking with sad eyes while
speculators are turning round their children, looking at their teeth,
and feeling of their arms; a poor, old, trembling woman, helpless, half
blind, whose last child is to be sold, holds on to her bright boy with
trembling hands. Husbands and wives, sisters and friends, all soon to be
scattered like the chaff of the threshing floor, look sadly on each
other with poor nature's last tears; and among them walk briskly, glib,
oily politicians, and thriving men of law, letters, and religion,
exceedingly sprightly, and in good spirits--for why?--it isn't _they_
that are going to be sold; it's only somebody else. And so they are very
comfortable, and look on the whole thing as quite a matter-of-course
affair, and, as it is to be conducted to-day, a decidedly valuable and
judicious exhibition.
And now, after so many hearts and souls have been knocked and thumped
this way and that way by the auctioneer's hammer, comes the
_instructive_ part of the whole; and the husband and father, whom we saw
in his simple home, reading and praying with his children, and rejoicing
in the joy of his poor ignorant heart that he lived in a free country,
is now set up to be admonished of his mistake.
Now there is great excitement, and pressing to see, and exultation and
approbation; for it is important and interesting to see a man put down
that has tried to be a _free man_.
"That's he, is it? Couldn't come it, could he?" says one.
"No; and he will never come it, that's more," says another,
triumphantly.
"I don't generally take much interest in scenes of this nature," says a
grave representative; "but I came here to-day for the sake of the
_principle_!"
"Gentlemen," says the auctioneer, "we've got a specimen here that some
of your northern abolitionists would give any price for; but they shan't
have him! no! we've looked out for that. The man that buys him must give
bonds never to sell him to go north again!"
"Go it!" shout the crowd; "good! good! hurrah!" "An impressive idea!"
says a senator; "a noble maintaining of principle!" and the man is bid
off, and the hammer falls with a last crash on his heart, his hopes, his
manhood, and he lies a bleeding wreck on the altar of Liberty!
Such was the altar in 1776; such is the altar in 1850!
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY.
"If we could only live in the country," said my wife, "how much easier
it would be to live!"
"And how much cheaper!" said I.
"To have a little place of our own, and raise our own things!" said my
wife. "Dear me! I am heart sick when I think of the old place at home,
and father's great garden. What peaches and melons we used to have! what
green peas and corn! Now one has to buy every cent's worth of these
things--and how they taste! Such wilted, miserable corn! Such peas!
Then, if we lived in the country, we should have our own cow, and milk
and cream in abundance; our own hens and chickens. We could have custard
and ice cream every day."
"To say nothing of the trees and flowers, and all that," said I.
The result of this little domestic duet was, that my wife and I began to
ride about the city of ---- to look up some pretty, interesting cottage,
where our visions of rural bliss might be realized. Country residences,
near the city, we found to bear rather a high price; so that it was no
easy matter to find a situation suitable to the length of our purse;
till, at last, a judicious friend suggested a happy expedient.
"Borrow a few hundred," he said, "and give your note; you can save
enough, very soon, to make the difference. When you raise every thing
you eat, you know it will make your salary go a wonderful deal further."
"Certainly it will," said I. "And what can be more beautiful than to buy
places by the simple process of giving one's note?--'tis so neat, and
handy, and convenient!"
"Why," pursued my friend, "there is Mr. B., my next door neighbor--'tis
enough to make one sick of life in the city to spend a week out on his
farm. Such princely living as one gets! And he assures me that it costs
him very little--scarce any thing, perceptible, in fact."
"Indeed!" said I; "few people can say that."
"Why," said my friend, "he has a couple of peach trees for every month,
from June till frost, that furnish as many peaches as he, and his wife,
and ten children can dispose of. And then he has grapes, apricots, etc..;
and last year his wife sold fifty dollars' worth from her strawberry
patch, and had an abundance for the table besides. Out of the milk of
only one cow they had butter enough to sell three or four pounds a week,
besides abundance of milk and cream; and madam has the butter for her
pocket money. This is the way country people manage."
"Glorious!" thought I. And my wife and I could scarce sleep, all night,
for the brilliancy of our anticipations!
To be sure our delight was somewhat damped the next day by the coldness
with which my good old uncle, Jeremiah Standfast, who happened along at
precisely this crisis, listened to our visions.
"You'll find it _pleasant_, children, in the summer time," said the
hard-fisted old man, twirling his blue-checked pocket handkerchief; "but
I'm sorry you've gone in debt for the land."
"O, but we shall soon save that--it's so much cheaper living in the
country!" said both of us together.
"Well, as to that, I don't think it is to city-bred folks."
Here I broke in with a flood of accounts of Mr. B.'s peach trees, and
Mrs. B.'s strawberries, butter, apricots, etc.., etc..; to which the old
gentleman listened with such a long, leathery, unmoved quietude of
visage as quite provoked me, and gave me the worst possible opinion of
his judgment. I was disappointed too; for, as he was reckoned one of the
best practical farmers in the county, I had counted on an enthusiastic
sympathy with all my agricultural designs.
"I tell you what, children," he said, "a body can live in the country,
as you say, amazin' cheap; but then a body must _know how_"--and my
uncle spread his pocket handkerchief thoughtfully out upon his knees,
and shook his head gravely.
I thought him a terribly slow, stupid old body, and wondered how I had
always entertained so high an opinion of his sense.
"He is evidently getting old," said I to my wife; "his judgment is not
what it used to be."
At all events, our place was bought, and we moved out, well pleased, the
first morning in April, not at all remembering the ill savor of that day
for matters of wisdom. Our place was a pretty cottage, about two miles
from the city, with grounds that had been tastefully laid out. There was
no lack of winding paths, arbors, flower borders, and rosebushes, with
which my wife was especially pleased. There was a little green lot,
strolling off down to a brook, with a thick grove of trees at the end,
where our cow was to be pastured.
The first week or two went on happily enough in getting our little new
pet of a house into trimness and good order; for, as it had been long
for sale, of course there was any amount of little repairs that had been
left to amuse the leisure hours of the purchaser. Here a door step had
given away, and needed replacing; there a shutter hung loose, and wanted
a hinge; abundance of glass needed setting; and as to painting and
papering, there was no end to that. Then my wife wanted a door cut here,
to make our bed room more convenient, and a china closet knocked up
there, where no china closet before had been. We even ventured on
throwing out a bay window from our sitting room, because we had luckily
lighted on a workman who was so cheap that it was an actual saving of
money to employ him. And to be sure our darling little cottage did lift
up its head wonderfully for all this garnishing and furbishing. I got up
early every morning, and nailed up the rosebushes, and my wife got up
and watered geraniums, and both flattered ourselves and each other on
our early hours and thrifty habits. But soon, like Adam and Eve in
Paradise, we found our little domain to ask more hands than ours to get
it into shape. So says I to my wife, "I will bring out a gardener when I
come next time, and he shall lay the garden out, and get it into order;
and after that, I can easily keep it by the work of my leisure hours."
Our gardener was a very sublime sort of man,--an Englishman, and, of
course, used to laying out noblemen's places,--and we became as
grasshoppers in our own eyes when he talked of lord this and that's
estate, and began to question us about our carriage drive and
conservatory; and we could with difficulty bring the gentleman down to
any understanding of the humble limits of our expectations: merely to
dress out the walks, and lay out a kitchen garden, and plant potatoes,
turnips, beets, and carrots, was quite a descent for him. In fact, so
strong were his aesthetic preferences, that he persuaded my wife to let
him dig all the turf off from a green square opposite the bay window,
and to lay it out into divers little triangles, resembling small pieces
of pie, together with circles, mounds, and various other geometrical
ornaments, the planning and planting of which soon engrossed my wife's
whole soul. The planting of the potatoes, beets, carrots, etc.., was
intrusted to a raw Irishman; for, as to me, to confess the truth, I
began to fear that digging did not agree with me. It is true that I was
exceedingly vigorous at first, and actually planted with my own hands
two or three long rows of potatoes; after which I got a turn of
rheumatism in my shoulder, which lasted me a week. Stooping down to
plant beets and radishes gave me a vertigo, so that I was obliged to
content myself with a general superintendence of the garden; that is to
say, I charged my Englishman to see that my Irishman did his duty
properly, and then got on to my horse and rode to the city. But about
one part of the matter, I must say, I was not remiss; and that is, in
the purchase of seed and garden utensils. Not a day passed that I did
not come home with my pockets stuffed with, choice seeds, roots, etc..;
and the variety of my garden utensils was unequalled. There was not a
pruning hook, of any pattern, not a hoe, rake, or spade, great or small,
that I did not have specimens of; and flower seeds and bulbs were also
forthcoming in liberal proportions. In fact, I had opened an account at
a thriving seed store; for, when a man is driving business on a large
scale, it is not always convenient to hand out the change for every
little matter, and buying things on account is as neat and agreeable a
mode of acquisition as paying bills with one's notes.
"You know we must have a cow," said my wife, the morning of our second
week. Our friend the gardener, who had now worked with us at the rate of
two dollars a day for two weeks, was at hand in a moment in our
emergency. We wanted to buy a cow, and he had one to sell--a wonderful
cow, of a real English breed. He would not sell her for any money,
except to oblige particular friends; but as we had patronized him, we
should have her for forty dollars. How much we were obliged to him! The
forty dollars were speedily forthcoming, and so also was the cow.
"What makes her shake her head in that way?" said my wife,
apprehensively, as she observed the interesting beast making sundry
demonstrations with her horns. "I hope she's gentle."
The gardener fluently demonstrated that the animal was a pattern of all
the softer graces, and that this head-shaking was merely a little
nervous affection consequent on the embarrassment of a new position. We
had faith to believe almost any thing at this time, and therefore came
from the barn yard to the house as much satisfied with our purchase as
Job with his three thousand camels and five hundred yoke of oxen. Her
quondam master milked her for us the first evening, out of a delicate
regard to her feelings as a stranger, and we fancied that we discerned
forty dollars' worth of excellence in the very quality of the milk.
But alas! the next morning our Irish girl came in with a most rueful
face. "And is it milking that baste you'd have me be after?" she said;
"sure, and she won't let me come near her?"
"Nonsense, Biddy!" said I; "you frightened her, perhaps; the cow is
perfectly gentle;" and with the pail on my arm, I sallied forth. The
moment madam saw me entering the cow yard, she greeted me with a very
expressive flourish of her horns.
"This won't do," said I, and I stopped. The lady evidently was serious
in her intentions of resisting any personal approaches. I cut a cudgel,
and putting on a bold face, marched towards her, while Biddy followed
with her milking stool. Apparently, the beast saw the necessity of
temporizing, for she assumed a demure expression, and Biddy sat down to
milk. I stood sentry, and if the lady shook her head, I shook my stick;
and thus the milking operation proceeded with tolerable serenity and
success.
"There!" said I, with dignity, when the frothing pail was full to the
brim. "That will do, Biddy," and I dropped my stick. Dump! came madam's
heel on the side of the pail, and it flew like a rocket into the air,
while the milky flood showered plentifully over me, and a new broadcloth
riding-coat that I had assumed for the first time that morning. "Whew!"
said I, as soon as I could get my breath from this extraordinary shower
bath; "what's all this?" My wife came running towards the cow yard, as I
stood with the milk streaming from my hair, filling my eyes, and
dropping from the tip of my nose; and she and Biddy performed a
recitative lamentation over me in alternate strophes, like the chorus in
a Greek tragedy. Such was our first morning's experience; but as we had
announced our bargain with some considerable flourish of trumpets among
our neighbors and friends, we concluded to hush the matter up as much as
possible.
"These very superior cows are apt to be cross," said I; "we must bear
with it as we do with the eccentricities of genius; besides, when she
gets accustomed to us, it will be better."
Madam was therefore installed into her pretty pasture lot, and my wife
contemplated with pleasure the picturesque effect of her appearance,
reclining on the green slope of the pasture lot, or standing ankle deep
in the gurgling brook, or reclining under the deep shadows of the trees.
She was, in fact, a handsome cow, which may account, in part, for some
of her sins; and this consideration inspired me with some degree of
indulgence towards her foibles.
But when I found that Biddy could never succeed in getting near her in
the pasture, and that any kind of success in the milking operations
required my vigorous personal exertions morning and evening, the matter
wore a more serious aspect, and I began to feel quite pensive and
apprehensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid
going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor
fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping
himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the
heels of such a termagant as mine! In fact, madam established a regular
series of exercises, which had all to be gone through before she would
suffer herself to be captured; as, first, she would station herself
plump in the middle of a marsh, which lay at the lower part of the lot,
and look very innocent and absent-minded, as if reflecting on some
sentimental subject. "Suke! Suke! Suke!" I ejaculate, cautiously
tottering along the edge of the marsh, and holding out an ear of corn.
The lady looks gracious, and comes forward, almost within reach of my
hand. I make a plunge to throw the rope over her horns, and away she
goes, kicking up mud and water into my face in her flight, while I,
losing my balance, tumble forward into the marsh. I pick myself up, and,
full of wrath, behold her placidly chewing her cud on the other side,
with the meekest air imaginable, as who should say, "I hope you are not
hurt, sir." I dash through swamp and bog furiously, resolving to carry
all by a _coup de main_. Then follows a miscellaneous season of dodging,
scampering, and bopeeping, among the trees of the grove, interspersed
with sundry occasional races across the bog aforesaid. I always wondered
how I caught her every day; and when I had tied her head to one post and
her heels to another, I wiped the sweat from my brow, and thought I was
paying dear for the eccentricities of genius. A genius she certainly
was, for besides her surprising agility, she had other talents equally
extraordinary. There was no fence that she could not take down; nowhere
that she could not go. She took the pickets off the garden fence at her
pleasure, using her horns as handily as I could use a claw hammer.
Whatever she had a mind to, whether it were a bite in the cabbage
garden, or a run in the corn patch, or a foraging expedition into the
flower borders, she made herself equally welcome and at home. Such a
scampering and driving, such cries of "Suke here" and "Suke there," as
constantly greeted our ears, kept our little establishment in a constant
commotion. At last, when she one morning made a plunge at the skirts of
my new broadcloth frock coat, and carried off one flap on her horns, my
patience gave out, and I determined to sell her.
As, however, I had made a good story of my misfortunes among my friends
and neighbors, and amused them with sundry whimsical accounts of my
various adventures in the cow-catching line, I found, when I came to
speak of selling, that there was a general coolness on the subject, and
nobody seemed disposed to be the recipient of my responsibilities. In
short, I was glad, at last, to get fifteen dollars for her, and
comforted myself with thinking that I had at least gained twenty-five
dollars worth of experience in the transaction, to say nothing of the
fine exercise.
I comforted my soul, however, the day after, by purchasing and bringing
home to my wife a fine swarm of bees.
"Your bee, now," says I, "is a really classical insect, and breathes of
Virgil and the Augustan age--and then she is a domestic, tranquil,
placid creature. How beautiful the murmuring of a hive near our
honeysuckle of a calm, summer evening! Then they are tranquilly and
peacefully amassing for us their stores of sweetness, while they lull us
with their murmurs. What a beautiful image of disinterested
benevolence!"
My wife declared that I was quite a poet, and the beehive was duly
installed near the flower plots, that the delicate creatures might have
the full benefit of the honeysuckle and mignonette. My spirits began to
rise. I bought three different treatises on the rearing of bees, and
also one or two new patterns of hives, and proposed to rear my bees on
the most approved model. I charged all the establishment to let me know
when there was any indication of an emigrating spirit, that I might be
ready to receive the new swarm into my patent mansion.
Accordingly, one afternoon, when I was deep in an article that I was
preparing for the North American Review, intelligence was brought me
that a swarm had risen. I was on the alert at once, and discovered, on
going out, that the provoking creatures had chosen the top of a tree
about thirty feet high to settle on. Now my books had carefully
instructed me just how to approach the swarm and cover them with a new
hive; but I had never contemplated the possibility of the swarm being,
like Haman's gallows, forty cubits high. I looked despairingly upon the
smooth-bark tree, which rose, like a column, full twenty feet, without
branch or twig. "What is to be done?" said I, appealing to two or three
neighbors. At last, at the recommendation of one of them, a ladder was
raised against the tree, and, equipped with a shirt outside of my
clothes, a green veil over my head, and a pair of leather gloves on my
hands, I went up with a saw at my girdle to saw off the branch on which
they had settled, and lower it by a rope to a neighbor, similarly
equipped, who stood below with the hive.
As a result of this manoeuvre the fastidious little insects were at
length fairly installed at housekeeping in my new patent hive, and,
rejoicing in my success, I again sat down to my article.