100 AN INDIANA BREAKFAST. in her arms, sitting down to tea; she saw them all at table, and ittle Harry in a high chair, under the shadow of Rachel's ample wing; there were low murmurs of talk, gentle tinkling of tea-spoons, and musical clatter of cups and saucers, and all mingled in a delightful dream of rest; and Eliza slept as she had not slept before since the fearful midnight hour when she had taken her child and fled through the frosty starlight. She dreamed of a beautiful country--a land, it seemed to her, of rest -green shores, pleasant islands, and beautifully glittering water; and there, in a house which kind voices told her was a home, she saw her boy playing, a free and happy child. She heard her husband's footsteps; she felt him coming nearer; his arms were around her, his tears lling on her face, and she awoke! It was no dream. The daylight had long faded; her child lay calmly sleeping by her side; a candie was burning dimly on the stand, and her husband was sobbing by her pillow. The next morning was a cheerful one at the Quaker house. 'Mother" was up betimes, and surrounded by busy girls and boys, whom we had scarce time to introduce to our readers yesterday, and who all moved obediently to Rachel's gentle "Thee had better," or more gentle Hadn't thee better?" in the work of getting breakfast; for a breakfast in the luxurious valleys of Indiana is a thing complicated and multiform, and, like picking up the rose-leaves and trimming the bushes in Paradise, asking other hands than those of the original nother. While, therefore, John ran to the spring for fresh water, and Simeon the second sifted meal for corn-cakes, and Mary ground coffee, Rachel moved gently and quietly about, making biscuits, cutting up chicken, and diffusing a sort of sunny radiance over the whole proceeding generally. If there was any danger of friction or collision from the ill-regulated zeal of so many young operators, her gentle "Come, come!" or "I wouldn't, now,' was quite sufficient to allay the difficulty. Bards have written of the cestus of Venus, that turned the heads of all the world in successive generations. We had rather, for our part, have the cestus of Rachel Halliday, that kept heads from being turned, and made everything go on harmoniously. We think it is more suited to our modern days, decidedly. While all other preparations were going on, Simeon the elder stood in his shirt-sleeves before a little looking-glass in the corner, engaged in the anti-patriarchal operation of shaving. Everything went on so sociably, so quietly, so harmoniously, in the great kitchen-it seemed to pleasant to every one to do just what they were doing-there was such an atmosphere of mutual confidence and good-fellowship everywhere— even the knives and forks had a social clatter as they went on to the table; and the chicken and ham had a cheerful and joyous fizzle in the pan, as if they rather enjoyed being cooked than otherwise; and when George and Eliza and little Harry came out, they met such a hearty, rejoicing welcome, no wonder it seemed to them like a dream. At last they were all seated at breakfast, while Mary stood at the stove, baking griddle cakes, which, as they gained the true, exact, golden-brown tint of perfection, were transferred quite handily to the table. A QUAKER COLLOQUY. 101 Rachel never looked so truly and benignly happy as at the head of her table. There was so much motherliness and full-heartedness even in the way she passed a plate of cakes or poured a cup of coffee, that it seemed to put a spirit into the food and drink she offered. It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at any white man's table, and he sat down, at first, with some constraint and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog in the genial morning rays of this simple, overflowing kindness. This, indeed, was a home-home-a word that George had never yet known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in His providence, began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining, atheistic doubts, and fierce despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and goodwill, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, shall never lose their reward. "Father, what if thee should get found out again?" said Simeon second, as he buttered his cake. "I should pay my fine." said Simeon, quietly. "But what if they put thee in prison?" "Couldn't thee and mother manage the farm?" said Simeon, smiling. "Mother can do almost everything," said the boy. "But isn't it a shame to make such laws?" "Thee musn't speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon," said his father, gravely. "The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do justice and merey; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must deliver it up." "Well, I hate those old slaveholders!" said the boy, who felt as unchristian as became any modern reformer. "I am surprised at thee, son," said Simeon; "thy mother never taught thee so. I would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave, if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction." Simeon second blushed scarlet; but his mother only smiled, and said, "Simeon is my good boy; he will grow older by and by, and then he will be like his father." "I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our account?" said George anxiously. "Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If we would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our name." "But, for me," said George: "I could not bear it." "Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and man, we do it," said Simeon. "And now thou must lie by quietly this day, and to-night, at ten o'clock, Phineas Fletcher will carry thee onward to the next stand-thee and the rest of thy company. The pursuers are hard after thee; we must not delay." "If that is the case, why wait till evening ?" said George. “Thou art safe here by daylight, for every one in the settlement is a Friend, and all are watching. It has been found safer to travel by night.' 102 TOM FINDS GRACE WITH HALEY. CH. XIV.-EVANGELINE. "A young star! which shone O'er life-too sweet an image for such glass! A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded." THE Mississippi! How, as by an enchanted wand, have its scenes been changed, since Chateaubriand wrote his prose-poetic description of it, as a river of mighty, unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed wonders of vegetable and animal existence. But, as in an hour, this river of dreams and wild romance has emerged to a reality scarcely less visionary and splendid. What other river of the world bears on its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise of such another country ?-a country whose products embrace all between the tropics and the poles! Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming, tearing along, an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business which is poured along its wave by a race more vehement and energetic than any the 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 Godunknown, 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 expanse 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 heavilyladen steamboat marches onward. Piled with cotton-bales from many a plantation, up over deck and sides, till she seems in the distance a square, massive block of grey, she moves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time among its crowded decks before we shall find again our humble friend Tom. High 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 character of the man, Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a man as Haley. At first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and apparent contentment of Tom's manner led him gradually to discontinue these restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole of honour, being permitted to come and go freely where he 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, he had won the good opinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with as hearty a good will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm. When 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 see him now. For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans the river is higher SCRIPTURE COMFORTS. 103 than the surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume betweer: massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of the steamer, as from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole country for miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out ful. before him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he was approaching. He saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages of huts, gleaming out in long rows on many a 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 Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches-to the master's house, with its wide, cool halls, and, near by, the little cabin, overgrown with the multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades, who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee, and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that al that phase of life had gone by for ever. In such a case you write to your wife, and send messages to your children; but Tom could not write-the mail for him had no existence, and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word or signal. Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as he lays it on the cotton-bale, and with patient finger, threading his slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure-nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointing to each word, and pronouncing each half aloud, he reads "Let-not-your-heart-be-troubled. In-my-Father's-house -are-many-mansions. I-go-to-prepare-a-place-for-you." Cicero, when he buried his darling and only daughter, had a heart as full of honest grief as poor Tom's-perhaps no fuller, for both were only men; but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope, and look to no such future re-union; and if he had seen them, ten to one he would not have believed he must fill his head first with a thousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness of translation. But to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, so evidently true and divine that the possibility of a question never entered his simple head. It must be true; for if not true, how could he live? As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in margin from learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certain way-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped him more than the most learned expositions could have done. It had been his custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children, in particular by young Master George; and as they read he would designate, by bold strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, the passages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected his heart. His Bible was thus marked through from one end to the other, with a variety of styles and designations; so he could in a moment seize upou his favourite passages, without the labor of spelling out what lay between them; and while it lay there before him, every passage breathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment, his Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the promise of a future one. Among the passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune and family, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name of St. Clare. He had with him a daughter between five and six years of age, together with a lady, who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the little one especially under her charge. Tom had often caught glimpses of this little girl, for she was one of those busy, tripping creatures that can be no more contained in one place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze; nor was she one that, once seen, could be easily forgotten. Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating and aërial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable, less for its perfect beauty of feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the dullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why. The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust were peculiarly noble; and the long, golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep, spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of golden brown-all marked her out from other children, and made every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thither on the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would have called either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves over her childish face and around her buoyant figure. She was always in motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself as she moved, as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were incessantly busy in pursuit of her, but, when caught, she melted from them again like a summer cloud: and as no word of chiding or reproof ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain; and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy footsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted along. The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found those eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, and fearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in some dreadful danger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as the picture-like head gleamed through the window of the roundhouse, and in a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted softuess stole over hard faces, as she passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough, sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth her path. |