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Show 306 UNCLE TOM'S CAUIN: OR, am only dealing in fi1cts of the present life. The fact is, that the wholo race arc pretty generally understood to be turned over to the devil, for our benefit, in this world, hOVi'cver it may turn out in another!" " This is perfectly horrible 1 " said Miss Ophelia; "you ought to be ashamed of yourselYcs!" "I don't know a.'3 I am. YYc arc in pretty good company, for all that," sai<l St. Clare, "as people in tho broad road generally .ro. Look at tho high and tho low, all the world over, and it 's tho same story,- the lower class used up, body, soul and spirit, for the good of the upper. It is so in England ; it is so everywhere; and yet all Christendom st..'\nds aghast, with virtuous indignation, because we do tho thing in a little different shape from what they do it." ' 1 It isn't so in V crmont." "Ah, well, in New England, and in the free States, you have the better of us, I grant. But there's tho bell; so, Cousin, let us for a. while lay aside our sectional prejudices, and como out to dinner." As Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen in tho htter part of the afternoon, some of the sable children called out, " La, sakes ! thar 's Prue a coming, grunting along like she a.llers does.'' A tall, bony colored woman now entered tho kitchen, bearing on her head a basket of rusks and hot rolls. "Ilo, Prue ! you 'vc come," said Dinah. Pruc had n. peculiar scowling expression of countenance, and a sullen, grumbling voice. She set down her basket, squatted h01~clf down, and resting her elbows on her knees said, "0 Lord! I wish't I's dead!" "Why do you wish you were dead? " said Miss Ophelia. 307 " I'd be out o' my misery/' said the woman, gruffly, without taking her eyes from the floor. "What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Pruc ?" said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral car-drops. 'l'hc woman looked at her with a sour, surly glance. "Maybe you'll come to it, one of these ycr days. I'd be glad to see you, I would; then you'll be glad of a drop, like me, to forget your misery.'' "Come, Prue," said Dinah, "let's look at your rusks. Here's Missis will pay for thcm.71 Miss Ophelia took out a couple of dozen. "Thar 's some tickets in that ar old cracked jug on the top shelf," said Dinah. "You, J akc, climb up and get it down.'' "Tickets,- what are they for?" said Miss Ophelia. "We buys tickets of her Mas'r, and she gives us bread for 'em." "And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I 's got the change; and if I han't, they half kil1s me." "And serves you right," said J anc, the pert chambermaid "if you will take their money to get drunk on. That'~ what she docs, 1\'lissis." "J~nd that's what I 1.eill do,- I can't live no other ways, -drmk and forget my misery." "You arc very wicked and very foolish,,, said ~fiss Ophelia, " to steal your master's money to make yourself a brute with." . " It's mighty likely, Missis; but I will do it,-ycs, I Will. 0 Lord! I wish I 's dead, I do,-I wish I 's dead, and out of my misery!" and slowly and stiilly tho old creature |