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Show 160 UNCLE •roM'S CABIN: OR, said tho woman; "but I 'm so fcard of losin' you that I don't sec anything but the danger." n " 'hy, mother, the man said we were both likely, and would sell well." Susan remembered the man's looks and 1rords. 'Yith a deadly sickness at her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline's hands, and lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan had been trained as a Christian, brought up in the daily reading of the Bible, and had the same horror of her child's being solei to a life of shame that any other Christian mother might h:.wc; but she had no hope,- no protection. "1\fotber, I think we might do first rate, if you could get a place as cook, and I as chamber-maid or seamstress, in some finnily. I dare say we shall. Let's both look as bright and li vely os we can, and tell all we can do, and perhaps we shall," said Emmeline. " I want you to brush your hair all back straight, to-morrow," said Susan. " What for, mother? I don't look near so well, that way., "Yes, but you 'll sell better so." " I don't sec why ! " said the child. " Respectable families would be more apt to buy you, if they saw you looked pbin and decent, as if you wasn' t trying to look handsome. I know their ways better 'n you do," said Susan. " 'Yell, mother, then I will." "Anll, Emmeline, if we shouldn't ever sec each other again, after to-morrow,- if I 'm sold 'way up on a plantation somewhere, and you somewhere else,-always remember how you 'vc been brought up, and all Missis has told you; take LIFE Ai\IONO THE LOWLY. 161 your Bible with you, and your hymn-book; and if you're faithful to the Lord, he 'll be faithful to you." So speaks the poor soul, in sore discouragement; for she knows that to-morrow any man, however vile and brutal, however godless and merciless, if he only has money to pay for her, may become owner of her d:wghter, boJy and soul ; and then , how is the child to be faithful? She thinks of all this, as she holds her daughter in her arms, and wishes that she were not handsome and attracti ve. It seems almost an n.ggn:l.Yntion to her to 1·emember how purely and piously, how much above the ordinary lot, she has been brougl1t up. But she has no resort but to pray; and many such prayers to God have gone up from those same trim, neatly-arranged, respectable shwc-prisons,- prayers ·which God ha.s not forgotten, as a coming day shall show; for it is written, " 'Vho causeth one of these little ones to offend, it were bolter for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.'' The soft, earnest, quiet moonbeam looks in fixedly, mn.rking the bars of the grated ·windows on tho prostrate, sleeping forms. The mother a.nd daughter arc singing together a wild and melancholy dirge, common as a funeral hymn among the slaves : "0, where is weeping Mnry? 0, where is weeping Mary? '_Ri,·cd in the goodly land. She is dead nnd gone to !Ica\'cn ; She is dcnd nnd gone to Heaven; 'Hived in the goodly land." rJ~hesc words, sung by Yoiees of a peculiar ami melancholy sweetness, in an air which seemed like the sighing of earthly despair after heavenly hope, floated through the dark prison VOL. II. 1·J:i |
