OCR Text |
Show 182 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: OR, The woman gave a sudden start, and, dro.wing back, said, suddenly, n 0, ~In.s'r! I left my old man iu New Orleans." " 'Vhat of tJw,t, you --; won't you want one here 1 None o' your words,- go long!" sa.id Legree, raising Lis whip. "Come, mistress/' he snid to Emmeline, "you go in here with me." A dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to gla.ncc at the ·window of the house ; and, as Legree opened the door, a female voice said something, in a quick, imperative tone. Tom, who was looking, with anxious interest, after Emmeline, as she wont in, noticed this, and heard Legree answer, angrily, "You may hold your tongue! I ' 11 do as I please, for all you!" 'Tom heard no more ; for he was soon following Sambo to the quarters. The quarters was a little sort of street of rude shanties. in a. row, in n. part of the plantation, far off from tho house. ,They had a forlorn, brutal, forsaken air. 'rom's heart sunk when he saw them. lie had been comforting himself with the thought of n. cottage, rude, indeed, but one which he might make neat a.nd quiet, and whore he might have a shelf for his Bible, and a place to be alone out of his laboring hours. He looked into several; they were mere rude shcUs, destitute of any species of furniture, except a heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedly m·cr the floor, which was merely the bare ground, trodden hard by the tramping of innumerable feet. "Which of these will be mine 1" said he, to Sambo, submissively. "Dunno; ken turn in here, I sposc," said Sambo; "spccts thar 's room for another thar; thar 's a pretty smart LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 183 heap o' niggcrs to each on 'em, now; sure, I dunno what I 's to do with more." * ""' * * * It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the shanties ca.me flocking home,- men and women, in soiled nnd tattered garments, surly and uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on new-comers. The small village w:ts alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices contcncl inO' at tho hand-mills whore their morsel of hard corn was )~t to be ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their only supper. From the earliest dawn of the <by, they had been in the fields, pressed to work under the driving lash of the overseers; for it was now in the very heat and hurry of the season, and no means was left untried to press every one up to the top of their capabilities. "True," says the negligent loungcr; "picking cotton isn't hard work." Isn't it 1 And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fall on your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is produced by drop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, with monotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in itself not hard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying, unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of freewill to take from its tediousness. Tom looked jn vain among the gang, as they poured along, for companionable faces. He saw only sullen, scowling, imbrutcd men, and feeble, discouraged women, or women that were not women,- the strong pushing away the weak,- the gross, unrestricted animal selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was expected and desired; and who, treated in every way like brutes, hod sunk as nearly to their level as it was possible for human boings to do. To a late hour in tho night the sound |