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Show 208 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: on, energetic than any tho old world ever saw. Ah! would that they did not also bear along a more fearful freight,- the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the helpless, the bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown Goll- unknown, unseen and silent, but ·who will yet "come out of his place to save all the poor of the earth ! " The slanting light of the setting sun quivers on the sea-like m..-p:mse of the river; the shivery canes, and the tall, dark cypress, hung with wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray, as the heavily-laden steamboat marches onward. Piled with cotton-bales, from 1mny a plantation, up over deck and sides, till she seems in the distance a square, massive block of gray, she moves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time among its crowded decks before wo shall find again our bumble friend Tom. Iligb on the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere predominant cotton-bales, at last we may find him. Partly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, and partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet charoctcr of tho man, Tom had insensibly won l>is way far into tho confidence even of such a man as llaley. At first he bad watched him nanowly through the day, and never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but tho uncomplaining patience and apparent contentment of '£om's manner led him gradually to discontinue these restraints, and for some time 'foro had enjoyed a sort of parole of honor, being permitted to come and go freely where be pleased on the boat. Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every emergency which occurred among the workmen below, ho bad won the good opinion of all the bands, and t.lFB AMONG THE LOWLY. 209 ----------------------- spent many hours in helping them with as hearty a good will as ever he worked on a. Kentucky farm. \Vhcn there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he would climb to a nook among the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studying over his Bible,- and it is there we sec him now. For a hundred or more miles above New Or1c~ns, the river is higher than the surrounding country, and rolls its trcmcn~ l;us volume between massive levees twenty feet in height. ~he traveller from the deck of the steamer, us from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole country for miles and miles around. ~£.1om, therefore, had spread out full before him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he was approoohing. He saw the distant slaves at their toil; be saw afar their villages of huts gleaming out in long rows on many n. plantation, distant from the stately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master; - and as the moving picture passed on, his poor, foolish heart would be turning backward to the Kcntuclcy farm, with its old shadowy beeches,- to tho master's l1ouse, with its wide, cool halls, and, ncar by, tho litt le cabin, overgrown with the multiflora n.nd bignoni;t. 'fbcre l1c seemed to sec i~tmiliar f;wes of comrades, who had grown up with him from infuJlCJ; he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparati~ nd for his o.vcning meals; he heard the merry laugh of lll.i boys at then· play, and tho chirrup of tho baby at his knee; and then, with a start, all fitdcd, and he saw agu.in the cane-brakes and cypresses and gliding pbntations, and hca.n.l a~in tho creaking and groaillng of the machinery, a.ll tcllmg hHu too plainly that all that phase of lifo had gone by forever. In such a case, you write to your '"ifc, and send messages 18* |
