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Show 296 UNCLE TOM'S CAHIN j OR, for a. vigorous onslaught on the cupboards and closets of tho establishment of which she had the keys. ~f.lhc store-room, tho 1incn-prcsscs, tho china-closet, tho kitchen and cc1lar, that day, all went under an awful review. Hidden tl1ings of darkness were brought to light to an extent that alarmed all the principalities aml powers of kitchen and chamber, and caused many wanderings and murmurings about "dose yer northern ladies" from the domestic cabinet. Old Dinah, the head cook, and principal of all rule and authority in tho kitchen department, was filled with wrath at what she considered an invasion of privilege. No feudal baron in Hiagna C!tarta times could have more thoroughly resented some incursion of the crown. Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would bo injustice to her memory not to give the reader a. little idea of her. She wns a. native and essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe,- cooking being an indigenous talent of the African race; but Chloe was n. trained and methodical one, who moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a. self-tnught genius, and, like geniuses in genernl, was positive, opinionated and ena.tio, to the Jast degree. Like a certain class of modern philosophers, Dinah perfectly scorned logic and reason in every shape, and ahmys took refuge in intuitive certainty; and here she was perfectly impregnable. No possible amount of talent, or authority, or explanation, could ever make her believe that any other way wa.s better than her own, or that the course she had pursued in the smallest matter could he in the least modified. This had been a conceded point with her old mistress, Marie's mother; and ~:~Iiss Marie," as Dinah always called her young mistress, C\'Cll after her marriage, found it easier to ~ubmit than contend i and so Dinah had rulod supreme. LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 297 This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility as to measure. Dinah was mistress of the whole art and mystery of excuse-making, in a.Il its branches. Indeed, it was an axiom with her that the cook can do no wrong; and a cook in a Southern kitchen finds abundance of heads and shoulders on which to by ofl' every sin and frailty, so as to maintain her own irnmaculateness entire. If any part of the dinner ,yas a fitilurc, there were fifty indisputrtbly good reasons for it; and it was the fault undeniably of fifty other people, whom Dinah berated with unsparing zeal But it was very seldom that there was any failure in Dinah's last results. 'l'hough her mode of doing everything was peculiarly meandering and circuitous, and without any sort of calculation as to time and place,-though her kitchen gcnemlly looked as if it bad been arranged by a hurricane blowing through it, and she had about a.s many places for each cooking utensil as there were days in the ycar,-yct, if one would have patience to wait her own good time, up would come her dinner in perfect order, and in a style of preparation with which an epicure could find no fault. It was now the season of incipient preparation for dinner. Dinah, who required large intervals of reflection and repose, and was studious of ca.sc in all her arrangements, was seated on the kitchen floor, smoking a short, stumpy pipe, to which she was much addicted, and which she always kindled up, as a sort of censer, whenever she felt the need of nn inspiration in her arrangements. It was Dinah's mode of invoking tho domestic Muses. Seated around her were various members of that rising race with which a Southern household abounds, engaged in |