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CHAPTER IX In Which It Appears That a Senator
The light of the cheerful fire shone on the rug and carpet of a cosey parlor, and
glittered on the sides of the tea-cups and well-brightened tea-pot, as Senator Bird
was drawing off his boots, preparatory to
inserting his feet in a pair of new handsome slippers, which his wife had been
working for him while away on his senatorial tour.
Mrs. Bird, looking the very picture of delight, was superintending the
arrangements of the table, ever and anon mingling admonitory remarks to a number of
frolicsome juveniles, who were effervescing
in all those modes of untold gambol and mischief that have astonished mothers ever
since the flood. "Tom, let the door-*** alone,--there's a
man!
Mary! Mary! don't pull the cat's tail,--poor
***!
Jim, you mustn't climb on that table,--no, no!--You don't know, my dear, what a
surprise it is to us all, to see you here tonight!" said she, at last, when she found
a space to say something to her husband.
"Yes, yes, I thought I'd just make a run down, spend the night, and have a little
comfort at home. I'm tired to death, and my head aches!"
Mrs. Bird cast a glance at a camphor- bottle, which stood in the half-open
closet, and appeared to meditate an approach to it, but her husband interposed.
"No, no, Mary, no doctoring! a cup of your good hot tea, and some of our good home
living, is what I want. It's a tiresome business, this
legislating!"
And the senator smiled, as if he rather liked the idea of considering himself a
sacrifice to his country.
"Well," said his wife, after the business of the tea-table was getting rather slack,
"and what have they been doing in the Senate?"
Now, it was a very unusual thing for gentle little Mrs. Bird ever to trouble her head
with what was going on in the house of the state, very wisely considering that she had
enough to do to mind her own.
Mr. Bird, therefore, opened his eyes in surprise, and said,
"Not very much of importance."
"Well; but is it true that they have been passing a law forbidding people to give
meat and drink to those poor colored folks that come along?
I heard they were talking of some such law, but I didn't think any Christian
legislature would pass it!" "Why, Mary, you are getting to be a
politician, all at once."
"No, nonsense! I wouldn't give a fig for all your
politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian.
I hope, my dear, no such law has been passed."
"There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves that come
over from Kentucky, my dear; so much of that thing has been done by these reckless
Abolitionists, that our brethren in
Kentucky are very strongly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than Christian
and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet the excitement."
"And what is the law?
It don't forbid us to shelter those poor creatures a night, does it, and to give 'em
something comfortable to eat, and a few old clothes, and send them quietly about their
business?"
"Why, yes, my dear; that would be aiding and abetting, you know."
Mrs. Bird was a timid, blushing little woman, of about four feet in height, and
with mild blue eyes, and a peach-blow complexion, and the gentlest, sweetest
voice in the world;--as for courage, a
moderate-sized ***-turkey had been known to put her to rout at the very first
gobble, and a stout house-dog, of moderate capacity, would bring her into subjection
merely by a show of his teeth.
Her husband and children were her entire world, and in these she ruled more by
entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument.
There was only one thing that was capable of arousing her, and that provocation came
in on the side of her unusually gentle and sympathetic nature;--anything in the shape
of cruelty would throw her into a passion,
which was the more alarming and inexplicable in proportion to the general
softness of her nature.
Generally the most indulgent and easy to be entreated of all mothers, still her boys
had a very reverent remembrance of a most vehement chastisement she once bestowed on
them, because she found them leagued with
several graceless boys of the neighborhood, stoning a defenceless kitten.
"I'll tell you what," Master Bill used to say, "I was scared that time.
Mother came at me so that I thought she was crazy, and I was whipped and tumbled off to
bed, without any supper, before I could get over wondering what had come about; and,
after that, I heard mother crying outside
the door, which made me feel worse than all the rest.
I'll tell you what," he'd say, "we boys never *** another kitten!"
On the present occasion, Mrs. Bird rose quickly, with very red cheeks, which quite
improved her general appearance, and walked up to her husband, with quite a resolute
air, and said, in a determined tone,
"Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian?"
"You won't shoot me, now, Mary, if I say I do!"
"I never could have thought it of you, John; you didn't vote for it?"
"Even so, my fair politician." "You ought to be ashamed, John!
Poor, homeless, houseless creatures!
It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time
I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do!
Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to
poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and
oppressed all their lives, poor things!"
"But, Mary, just listen to me.
Your feelings are all quite right, dear, and interesting, and I love you for them;
but, then, dear, we mustn't suffer our feelings to run away with our judgment; you
must consider it's a matter of private
feeling,--there are great public interests involved,--there is such a state of public
agitation rising, that we must put aside our private feelings."
"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and
there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate;
and that Bible I mean to follow."
"But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil--"
"Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can't.
It's always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.
"Now, listen to me, Mary, and I can state to you a very clear argument, to show--"
"O, nonsense, John! you can talk all night, but you wouldn't do it.
I put it to you, John,--would you now turn away a poor, shivering, hungry creature
from your door, because he was a runaway?
Would you, now?"
Now, if the truth must be told, our senator had the misfortune to be a man who had a
particularly humane and accessible nature, and turning away anybody that was in
trouble never had been his forte; and what
was worse for him in this particular pinch of the argument was, that his wife knew it,
and, of course was making an assault on rather an indefensible point.
So he had recourse to the usual means of gaining time for such cases made and
provided; he said "ahem," and coughed several times, took out his pocket-
handkerchief, and began to wipe his glasses.
Mrs. Bird, seeing the defenceless condition of the enemy's territory, had no more
conscience than to push her advantage.
"I should like to see you doing that, John- -I really should!
Turning a woman out of doors in a snowstorm, for instance; or may be you'd
take her up and put her in jail, wouldn't you?
You would make a great hand at that!"
"Of course, it would be a very painful duty," began Mr. Bird, in a moderate tone.
"Duty, John! don't use that word! You know it isn't a duty--it can't be a
duty!
If folks want to keep their slaves from running away, let 'em treat 'em well,--
that's my doctrine.
If I had slaves (as I hope I never shall have), I'd risk their wanting to run away
from me, or you either, John.
I tell you folks don't run away when they are happy; and when they do run, poor
creatures! they suffer enough with cold and hunger and fear, without everybody's
turning against them; and, law or no law, I never will, so help me God!"
"Mary! Mary!
My dear, let me reason with you."
"I hate reasoning, John,--especially reasoning on such subjects.
There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing;
and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice.
I know you well enough, John.
You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner
than I."
At this critical juncture, old Cudjoe, the black man-of-all-work, put his head in at
the door, and wished "Missis would come into the kitchen;" and our senator,
tolerably relieved, looked after his little
wife with a whimsical mixture of amusement and vexation, and, seating himself in the
arm-chair, began to read the papers.
After a moment, his wife's voice was heard at the door, in a quick, earnest tone,--
"John! John!
I do wish you'd come here, a moment."
He laid down his paper, and went into the kitchen, and started, quite amazed at the
sight that presented itself:--A young and slender woman, with garments torn and
frozen, with one shoe gone, and the
stocking torn away from the cut and bleeding foot, was laid back in a deadly
swoon upon two chairs.
There was the impress of the despised race on her face, yet none could help feeling
its mournful and pathetic beauty, while its stony sharpness, its cold, fixed, deathly
aspect, struck a solemn chill over him.
He drew his breath short, and stood in silence.
His wife, and their only colored domestic, old Aunt Dinah, were busily engaged in
restorative measures; while old Cudjoe had got the boy on his knee, and was busy
pulling off his shoes and stockings, and chafing his little cold feet.
"Sure, now, if she an't a sight to behold!" said old Dinah, compassionately; "'pears
like 't was the heat that made her faint.
She was tol'able peart when she *** in, and asked if she couldn't warm herself here a
spell; and I was just a-askin' her where she *** from, and she fainted right down.
Never done much hard work, guess, by the looks of her hands."
"Poor creature!" said Mrs. Bird, compassionately, as the woman slowly
unclosed her large, dark eyes, and looked vacantly at her.
Suddenly an expression of agony crossed her face, and she sprang up, saying, "O, my
Harry! Have they got him?"
The boy, at this, jumped from Cudjoe's knee, and running to her side put up his
arms. "O, he's here! he's here!" she exclaimed.
"O, ma'am!" said she, wildly, to Mrs. Bird, "do protect us! don't let them get him!"
"Nobody shall hurt you here, poor woman," said Mrs. Bird, encouragingly.
"You are safe; don't be afraid."
"God bless you!" said the woman, covering her face and sobbing; while the little boy,
seeing her crying, tried to get into her lap.
With many gentle and womanly offices, which none knew better how to render than Mrs.
Bird, the poor woman was, in time, rendered more calm.
A temporary bed was provided for her on the settle, near the fire; and, after a short
time, she fell into a heavy slumber, with the child, who seemed no less weary,
soundly sleeping on her arm; for the mother
resisted, with nervous anxiety, the kindest attempts to take him from her; and, even in
sleep, her arm encircled him with an unrelaxing clasp, as if she could not even
then be beguiled of her vigilant hold.
Mr. and Mrs. Bird had gone back to the parlor, where, strange as it may appear, no
reference was made, on either side, to the preceding conversation; but Mrs. Bird
busied herself with her knitting-work, and Mr. Bird pretended to be reading the paper.
"I wonder who and what she is!" said Mr. Bird, at last, as he laid it down.
"When she wakes up and feels a little rested, we will see," said Mrs. Bird.
"I say, wife!" said Mr. Bird after musing in silence over his newspaper.
"Well, dear!"
"She couldn't wear one of your gowns, could she, by any letting down, or such matter?
She seems to be rather larger than you are."
A quite perceptible smile glimmered on Mrs. Bird's face, as she answered, "We'll see."
Another pause, and Mr. Bird again broke out,
"I say, wife!"
"Well! What now?"
"Why, there's that old bombazin cloak, that you keep on purpose to put over me when I
take my afternoon's nap; you might as well give her that,--she needs clothes."
At this instant, Dinah looked in to say that the woman was awake, and wanted to see
Missis.
Mr. and Mrs. Bird went into the kitchen, followed by the two eldest boys, the
smaller fry having, by this time, been safely disposed of in bed.
The woman was now sitting up on the settle, by the fire.
She was looking steadily into the blaze, with a calm, heart-broken expression, very
different from her former agitated wildness.
"Did you want me?" said Mrs. Bird, in gentle tones.
"I hope you feel better now, poor woman!"
A long-drawn, shivering sigh was the only answer; but she lifted her dark eyes, and
fixed them on her with such a forlorn and imploring expression, that the tears came
into the little woman's eyes.
"You needn't be afraid of anything; we are friends here, poor woman!
Tell me where you came from, and what you want," said she.
"I came from Kentucky," said the woman.
"When?" said Mr. Bird, taking up the interogatory.
"Tonight." "How did you come?"
"I crossed on the ice."
"Crossed on the ice!" said every one present.
"Yes," said the woman, slowly, "I did.
God helping me, I crossed on the ice; for they were behind me--right behind--and
there was no other way!"
"Law, Missis," said Cudjoe, "the ice is all in broken-up blocks, a swinging and a
tetering up and down in the water!" "I know it was--I know it!" said she,
wildly; "but I did it!
I wouldn't have thought I could,--I didn't think I should get over, but I didn't care!
I could but die, if I didn't.
The Lord helped me; nobody knows how much the Lord can help 'em, till they try," said
the woman, with a flashing eye. "Were you a slave?" said Mr. Bird.
"Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky."
"Was he unkind to you?" "No, sir; he was a good master."
"And was your mistress unkind to you?"
"No, sir--no! my mistress was always good to me."
"What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go through
such dangers?"
The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird, with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and it did not
escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.
"Ma'am," she said, suddenly, "have you ever lost a child?"
The question was unexpected, and it was thrust on a new wound; for it was only a
month since a darling child of the family had been laid in the grave.
Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst into tears;
but, recovering her voice, she said, "Why do you ask that?
I have lost a little one."
"Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another,--left
'em buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left.
I never slept a night without him; he was all I had.
He was my comfort and pride, day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him
away from me,--to sell him,--sell him down south, ma'am, to go all alone,--a baby that
had never been away from his mother in his life!
I couldn't stand it, ma'am.
I knew I never should be good for anything, if they did; and when I knew the papers the
papers were signed, and he was sold, I took him and came off in the night; and they
chased me,--the man that bought him, and
some of Mas'r's folks,--and they were coming down right behind me, and I heard
'em.
I jumped right on to the ice; and how I got across, I don't know,--but, first I knew,
a man was helping me up the bank." The woman did not sob nor weep.
She had gone to a place where tears are dry; but every one around her was, in some
way characteristic of themselves, showing signs of hearty sympathy.
The two little boys, after a desperate rummaging in their pockets, in search of
those pocket-handkerchiefs which mothers know are never to be found there, had
thrown themselves disconsolately into the
skirts of their mother's gown, where they were sobbing, and wiping their eyes and
noses, to their hearts' content;--Mrs. Bird had her face fairly hidden in her pocket-
handkerchief; and old Dinah, with tears
streaming down her black, honest face, was ejaculating, "Lord have mercy on us!" with
all the fervor of a camp-meeting;--while old Cudjoe, rubbing his eyes very hard with
his cuffs, and making a most uncommon
variety of wry faces, occasionally responded in the same key, with great
fervor.
Our senator was a statesman, and of course could not be expected to cry, like other
mortals; and so he turned his back to the company, and looked out of the window, and
seemed particularly busy in clearing his
throat and wiping his spectacle-glasses, occasionally blowing his nose in a manner
that was calculated to excite suspicion, had any one been in a state to observe
critically.
"How came you to tell me you had a kind master?" he suddenly exclaimed, gulping
down very resolutely some kind of rising in his throat, and turning suddenly round upon
the woman.
"Because he was a kind master; I'll say that of him, any way;--and my mistress was
kind; but they couldn't help themselves.
They were owing money; and there was some way, I can't tell how, that a man had a
hold on them, and they were obliged to give him his will.
I listened, and heard him telling mistress that, and she begging and pleading for me,-
-and he told her he couldn't help himself, and that the papers were all drawn;--and
then it was I took him and left my home, and came away.
I knew 't was no use of my trying to live, if they did it; for 't 'pears like this
child is all I have."
"Have you no husband?" "Yes, but he belongs to another man.
His master is real hard to him, and won't let him come to see me, hardly ever; and
he's grown harder and harder upon us, and he threatens to sell him down south;--it's
like I'll never see him again!"
The quiet tone in which the woman pronounced these words might have led a
superficial observer to think that she was entirely apathetic; but there was a calm,
settled depth of anguish in her large, dark eye, that spoke of something far otherwise.
"And where do you mean to go, my poor woman?" said Mrs. Bird.
"To Canada, if I only knew where that was.
Is it very far off, is Canada?" said she, looking up, with a simple, confiding air,
to Mrs. Bird's face. "Poor thing!" said Mrs. Bird,
involuntarily.
"Is 't a very great way off, think?" said the woman, earnestly.
"Much further than you think, poor child!" said Mrs. Bird; "but we will try to think
what can be done for you.
Here, Dinah, make her up a bed in your own room, close by the kitchen, and I'll think
what to do for her in the morning. Meanwhile, never fear, poor woman; put your
trust in God; he will protect you."
Mrs. Bird and her husband reentered the parlor.
She sat down in her little rocking-chair before the fire, swaying thoughtfully to
and fro.
Mr. Bird strode up and down the room, grumbling to himself, "Pish! pshaw!
confounded awkward business!" At length, striding up to his wife, he
said,
"I say, wife, she'll have to get away from here, this very night.
That fellow will be down on the scent bright and early tomorrow morning: if 't
was only the woman, she could lie quiet till it was over; but that little chap
can't be kept still by a troop of horse and
foot, I'll warrant me; he'll bring it all out, popping his head out of some window or
door.
A pretty kettle of fish it would be for me, too, to be caught with them both here, just
now! No; they'll have to be got off tonight."
"Tonight!
How is it possible?--where to?"
"Well, I know pretty well where to," said the senator, beginning to put on his boots,
with a reflective air; and, stopping when his leg was half in, he embraced his knee
with both hands, and seemed to go off in deep meditation.
"It's a confounded awkward, ugly business," said he, at last, beginning to tug at his
boot-straps again, "and that's a fact!"
After one boot was fairly on, the senator sat with the other in his hand, profoundly
studying the figure of the carpet.
"It will have to be done, though, for aught I see,--hang it all!" and he drew the other
boot anxiously on, and looked out of the window.
Now, little Mrs. Bird was a discreet woman,--a woman who never in her life said,
"I told you so!" and, on the present occasion, though pretty well aware of the
shape her husband's meditations were
taking, she very prudently forbore to meddle with them, only sat very quietly in
her chair, and looked quite ready to hear her liege lord's intentions, when he should
think proper to utter them.
"You see," he said, "there's my old client, Van Trompe, has come over from Kentucky,
and set all his slaves free; and he has bought a place seven miles up the creek,
here, back in the woods, where nobody goes,
unless they go on purpose; and it's a place that isn't found in a hurry.
There she'd be safe enough; but the plague of the thing is, nobody could drive a
carriage there tonight, but me."
"Why not? Cudjoe is an excellent driver."
"Ay, ay, but here it is.
The creek has to be crossed twice; and the second crossing is quite dangerous, unless
one knows it as I do.
I have crossed it a hundred times on horseback, and know exactly the turns to
take. And so, you see, there's no help for it.
Cudjoe must put in the horses, as quietly as may be, about twelve o'clock, and I'll
take her over; and then, to give color to the matter, he must carry me on to the next
tavern to take the stage for Columbus, that
comes by about three or four, and so it will look as if I had had the carriage only
for that. I shall get into business bright and early
in the morning.
But I'm thinking I shall feel rather cheap there, after all that's been said and done;
but, hang it, I can't help it!"
"Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John," said the wife, laying her
little white hand on his. "Could I ever have loved you, had I not
known you better than you know yourself?"
And the little woman looked so handsome, with the tears sparkling in her eyes, that
the senator thought he must be a decidedly clever fellow, to get such a pretty
creature into such a passionate admiration
of him; and so, what could he do but walk off soberly, to see about the carriage.
At the door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he said, with some
hesitation.
"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer full of things-
-of--of--poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned quickly on his heel,
His wife opened the little bed-room door adjoining her room and, taking the candle,
set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small recess she took a key,
and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a
drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy like, had followed close on
her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at their mother.
And oh! mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer, or a
closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little
grave?
Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so.
Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer.
There were little coats of many a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small
stockings; and even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping
from the folds of a paper.
There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear
and many a heart-break!
She sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it, wept till
the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly raising her head, she
began, with nervous haste, selecting the
plainest and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle.
"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "you going to give away
those things?"
"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear, loving little
Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do this.
I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person--to anybody
that was happy; but I give them to a mother more heart-broken and sorrowful than I am;
and I hope God will send his blessings with them!"
There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for
others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from
which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.
Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by the lamp, dropping slow tears,
while she prepares the memorials of her own lost one for the outcast wanderer.
After a while, Mrs. Bird opened a wardrobe, and, taking from thence a plain,
serviceable dress or two, she sat down busily to her work-table, and, with needle,
scissors, and thimble, at hand, quietly
commenced the "letting down" process which her husband had recommended, and continued
busily at it till the old clock in the corner struck twelve, and she heard the low
rattling of wheels at the door.
"Mary," said her husband, coming in, with his overcoat in his hand, "you must wake
her up now; we must be off."
Mrs. Bird hastily deposited the various articles she had collected in a small plain
trunk, and locking it, desired her husband to see it in the carriage, and then
proceeded to call the woman.
Soon, arrayed in a cloak, bonnet, and shawl, that had belonged to her
benefactress, she appeared at the door with her child in her arms.
Mr. Bird hurried her into the carriage, and Mrs. Bird pressed on after her to the
carriage steps.
Eliza leaned out of the carriage, and put out her hand,--a hand as soft and beautiful
as was given in return.
She fixed her large, dark eyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird's face, and
seemed going to speak.
Her lips moved,--she tried once or twice, but there was no sound,--and pointing
upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she fell back in the seat, and covered her
face.
The door was shut, and the carriage drove on.
What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all the week before
spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more stringent resolutions
against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abettors!
Our good senator in his native state had not been exceeded by any of his brethren at
Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them immortal renown!
How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets, and scouted all sentimental
weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great
state interests!
He was as bold as a lion about it, and "mightily convinced" not only himself, but
everybody that heard him;--but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the
letters that spell the word,--or at the
most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle
with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it.
The magic of the real presence of distress,--the imploring human eye, the
frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had
never tried.
He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenceless child,--
like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's little well-known cap; and so,
as our poor senator was not stone or
steel,--as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,--he was, as
everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism.
And you need not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we have
some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances, would not do much
better.
We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts,
to whom never was tale of suffering told in vain.
Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect of us services which your own brave,
honorable heart would not allow you to render, were you in our place?
Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in a fair way to
expiate it by his night's penance.
There had been a long continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of
Ohio, as every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud--and the
road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.
"And pray, what sort of a road may that be?" says some eastern traveller, who has
been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad, but those of smoothness or speed.
Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the west, where the
mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made of round rough logs,
arranged transversely side by side, and
coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come
to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway essayeth
to ride thereupon.
In process of time, the rains wash off all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs
hither and thither, in picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with
divers chasms and ruts of black mud intervening.
Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making moral reflections
as continuously as under the circumstances could be expected,--the carriage proceeding
along much as follows,--bump! bump! bump!
slush! down in the mud!--the senator, woman and child, reversing their positions so
suddenly as to come, without any very accurate adjustment, against the windows of
the down-hill side.
Carriage sticks fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster
among the horses.
After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as the senator is losing
all patience, the carriage suddenly rights itself with a bounce,--two front wheels go
down into another abyss, and senator,
woman, and child, all tumble promiscuously on to the front seat,--senator's hat is
jammed over his eyes and nose quite unceremoniously, and he considers himself
fairly extinguished;--child cries, and
Cudjoe on the outside delivers animated addresses to the horses, who are kicking,
and floundering, and straining under repeated cracks of the whip.
Carriage springs up, with another bounce,-- down go the hind wheels,--senator, woman,
and child, fly over on to the back seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and
both her feet being jammed into his hat, which flies off in the concussion.
After a few moments the "slough" is passed, and the horses stop, panting;--the senator
finds his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her child, and they brace
themselves for what is yet to come.
For a while only the continuous bump! bump! intermingled, just by way of variety, with
divers side plunges and compound shakes; and they begin to flatter themselves that
they are not so badly off, after all.
At last, with a square plunge, which puts all on to their feet and then down into
their seats with incredible quickness, the carriage stops,--and, after much outside
commotion, Cudjoe appears at the door.
"Please, sir, it's powerful bad spot, this' yer.
I don't know how we's to get clar out. I'm a thinkin' we'll have to be a gettin'
The senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm foothold; down goes
one foot an immeasurable depth,--he tries to pull it up, loses his balance, and
tumbles over into the mud, and is fished
out, in a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.
But we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers' bones.
Western travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting process of
pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud holes, will have a
respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate hero.
We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.
It was full late in the night when the carriage emerged, dripping and bespattered,
out of the creek, and stood at the door of a large farmhouse.
It took no inconsiderable perseverance to arouse the inmates; but at last the
respectable proprietor appeared, and undid the door.
He was a great, tall, bristling Orson of a fellow, full six feet and some inches in
his stockings, and arrayed in a red flannel hunting-shirt.
A very heavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard of
some days' growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the least, not
particularly prepossessing.
He stood for a few minutes holding the candle aloft, and blinking on our
travellers with a dismal and mystified expression that was truly ludicrous.
It cost some effort of our senator to induce him to comprehend the case fully;
and while he is doing his best at that, we shall give him a little introduction to our
Honest old John Van Trompe was once quite a considerable land-owner and slave-owner in
the State of Kentucky.
Having "nothing of the bear about him but the skin," and being gifted by nature with
a great, honest, just heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some
years witnessing with repressed uneasiness
the workings of a system equally bad for oppressor and oppressed.
At last, one day, John's great heart had swelled altogether too big to wear his
bonds any longer; so he just took his pocket-book out of his desk, and went over
into Ohio, and bought a quarter of a
township of good, rich land, made out free papers for all his people,--men, women, and
children,--packed them up in wagons, and sent them off to settle down; and then
honest John turned his face up the creek,
and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to enjoy his conscience and his
reflections.
"Are you the man that will shelter a poor woman and child from slave-catchers?" said
the senator, explicitly. "I rather think I am," said honest John,
with some considerable emphasis.
"I thought so,"' said the senator.
"If there's anybody comes," said the good man, stretching his tall, muscular form
upward, "why here I'm ready for him: and I've got seven sons, each six foot high,
and they'll be ready for 'em.
Give our respects to 'em," said John; "tell 'em it's no matter how soon they call,--
make no kinder difference to us," said John, running his fingers through the shock
of hair that thatched his head, and bursting out into a great laugh.
Weary, jaded, and spiritless, Eliza dragged herself up to the door, with her child
lying in a heavy sleep on her arm.
The rough man held the candle to her face, and uttering a kind of compassionate grunt,
opened the door of a small bed-room adjoining to the large kitchen where they
were standing, and motioned her to go in.
He took down a candle, and lighting it, set it upon the table, and then addressed
himself to Eliza. "Now, I say, gal, you needn't be a bit
afeard, let who will come here.
I'm up to all that sort o' thing," said he, pointing to two or three goodly rifles over
the mantel-piece; "and most people that know me know that 't wouldn't be healthy to
try to get anybody out o' my house when I'm agin it.
So now you jist go to sleep now, as quiet as if yer mother was a rockin' ye," said
he, as he shut the door.
"Why, this is an uncommon handsome un," he said to the senator.
"Ah, well; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they has any
kind o' feelin, such as decent women should.
I know all about that."
The senator, in a few words, briefly explained Eliza's history.
"O! ou! aw! now, I want to know?" said the good man, pitifully; "sho! now sho!
That's natur now, poor crittur! hunted down now like a deer,--hunted down, jest for
havin' natural feelin's, and doin' what no kind o' mother could help a doin'!
I tell ye what, these yer things make me come the nighest to swearin', now, o' most
anything," said honest John, as he wiped his eyes with the back of a great,
freckled, yellow hand.
"I tell yer what, stranger, it was years and years before I'd jine the church,
'cause the ministers round in our parts used to preach that the Bible went in for
these ere cuttings up,--and I couldn't be
up to 'em with their Greek and Hebrew, and so I took up agin 'em, Bible and all.
I never jined the church till I found a minister that was up to 'em all in Greek
and all that, and he said right the contrary; and then I took right hold, and
jined the church,--I did now, fact," said
John, who had been all this time uncorking some very frisky bottled cider, which at
this juncture he presented.
"Ye'd better jest put up here, now, till daylight," said he, heartily, "and I'll
call up the old woman, and have a bed got ready for you in no time."
"Thank you, my good friend," said the senator, "I must be along, to take the
night stage for Columbus."
"Ah! well, then, if you must, I'll go a piece with you, and show you a cross road
that will take you there better than the road you came on.
That road's mighty bad."
John equipped himself, and, with a lantern in hand, was soon seen guiding the
senator's carriage towards a road that ran down in a hollow, back of his dwelling.
When they parted, the senator put into his hand a ten-dollar bill.
"It's for her," he said, briefly. "Ay, ay," said John, with equal
conciseness.
They shook hands, and parted.