OCR Text |
Show 18 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN j OR1 the poorest, meanest soul on our place wm be living, when all these stars are gone forC\·cr,- wm Jive as long as God lives!' " She bad some fine old paintings; one, in particular, of Jesus healing a blind m::m. They were very £no, and used to impress me strongly. 'See there, Auguste, she would say; 'the blind man was a beggar, poor and loathsome ; therefore, he would not heal him afar off! lie called him to him, and put !tis ltands on !tim,! ·Remember this, my boy.' If I had lived to grow up under her care, she might havo stimulated me to I know not what of enthusiasm. I might have been a snint, reformer, martyr,- but, alas! alas ! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw her again ! '' St. Clare rested his head on l1is l1ands, and did not speak for some minutes. After a while, he looked up, and went on: "'Vhat poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter, for tho most part, of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with ncttum1 temperament. 'n10 greater part is nothing but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town where aU are, in fact, free and equal; becomes a regular church member and deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and thinks us all little better than heathens. Yet _he is, for all the world, in constitution and habit, a. du~hcatc of my father. I can sec it leaking out in fifty cll~c.rent ways,-just that same strong, overbearing, dominant spmt. You know very well how impossible it is to persuado some of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair docs not feel above them. The fact is, though he has fallen on democratic times, and embraced a democratic theory, he is to LU'E A:\fONG TIH: J.,OWLY. 19 ----- - tlJC heart an aristocrat, as much as my father, who ruled over five or six hundred slaves.:' l\liss Opheli~ felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her. " Now, I know crcry word you nrc going to say. I do not say they were alike, in fact. One feU into a condition where everything acted a$ainst the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and the other a wilful, stout old despot. If both had owned plantations in Louisiana., they would bnvc been as like as two old bullets cast in the same mould." " What an undutiful boy you are!" said Miss Ophelia. "I don't mean them any disrespect," said St. Clare. "You know reverence is not my forte. But, to go back to my history: "When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be divided as we should ngrce. 'fhere does not breathe on God's earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow, than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals ; and we got on admirably with tllls property question, without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. 'Vc undertook to work the plantation together; and Alfred, whose outward lifO and capabilities had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a wonderfully successful one. " But two years' trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. ~ro have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought nml driven, housed, fed, worked like so many horned cattle, strained up to military precision, - the question of how little of life's commonest enjoyments |