"A young star! which shone O'er life--too sweet an image, for such glass! A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded; A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."

The Mississippi! How, as by an enchanted wand, have its scenes beenchanged, since Chateaubriand wrote his prose-poetic description of it,*as a river of mighty, unbroken solitudes, rolling amid undreamed wondersof vegetable and animal existence.

* _In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in the Desert_ (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848).

But as in an hour, this river of dreams and wild romance has emerged toa reality scarcely less visionary and splendid. What other river of theworld bears on its bosom to the ocean the wealth and enterprise ofsuch another country?--a country whose products embrace all between thetropics and the poles! Those turbid waters, hurrying, foaming, tearingalong, an apt resemblance of that headlong tide of business which ispoured along its wave by a race more vehement and energetic than any theold world ever saw. Ah! would that they did not also bear along a morefearful freight,--the tears of the oppressed, the sighs of the helpless,the bitter prayers of poor, ignorant hearts to an unknown God--unknown,unseen and silent, but who will yet "come out of his place to save allthe poor of the earth!"

The slanting light of the setting sun quivers on the sea-like expanseof the river; the shivery canes, and the tall, dark cypress, hungwith wreaths of dark, funereal moss, glow in the golden ray, as theheavily-laden 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 gray, shemoves heavily onward to the nearing mart. We must look some time amongits crowded decks before we shall find again our humble friend Tom. Highon the upper deck, in a little nook among the everywhere predominantcotton-bales, at last we may find him.

Partly from confidence inspired by Mr. Shelby's representations, andpartly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man,Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such aman as Haley.

At first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowedhim to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience andapparent contentment of Tom's manner led him gradually to discontinuethese restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of paroleof honor, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on theboat.

Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in everyemergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the goodopinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with ashearty 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 nookamong the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studyingover his Bible,--and it is there we see him now.

For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is higher thanthe surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume betweenmassive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of thesteamer, as from some floating castle top, overlooks the whole countryfor miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out full beforehim, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he wasapproaching.

He saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages ofhuts gleaming out in long rows on many a plantation, distant from thestately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master;--and as the movingpicture passed on, his poor, foolish heart would be turning backward tothe Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches,--to the master's house,with its wide, cool halls, and, near by, the little cabin overgrown withthe multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces ofcomrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife,bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merrylaugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at hisknee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakesand cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking andgroaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all thatphase of life had gone by forever.

In such a case, you write to your wife, and send messages to yourchildren; but Tom could not write,--the mail for him had no existence,and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word orsignal.

Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, ashe lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading hisslow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned latein life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verseto verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on wasone which slow reading cannot injure,--nay, one whose words, like ingotsof gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind maytake in their priceless value. Let us follow him a moment, as, pointingto 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 asfull of honest grief as poor Tom's,--perhaps no fuller, for both wereonly men;--but Cicero could pause over no such sublime words of hope,and look to no such future reunion; and if he _had_ seen them, ten toone he would not have believed,--he must fill his head first with athousand questions of authenticity of manuscript, and correctness oftranslation. But, to poor Tom, there it lay, just what he needed, soevidently true and divine that the possibility of a question neverentered his simple head. It must be true; for, if not true, how could helive?

As for Tom's Bible, though it had no annotations and helps in marginfrom learned commentators, still it had been embellished with certainway-marks and guide-boards of Tom's own invention, and which helped himmore than the most learned expositions could have done. It had beenhis custom to get the Bible read to him by his master's children,in particular by young Master George; and, as they read, he woulddesignate, by bold, strong marks and dashes, with pen and ink, thepassages which more particularly gratified his ear or affected hisheart. 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 seizeupon his favorite passages, without the labor of spelling out whatlay between them;--and while it lay there before him, every passagebreathing of some old home scene, and recalling some past enjoyment,his Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as thepromise of a future one.

Among the passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune andfamily, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name of St. Clare. He hadwith him a daughter between five and six years of age, together with alady who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the littleone especially under her charge.

Tom had often caught glimpses of this little girl,--for she was one ofthose busy, tripping creatures, that can be no more contained in oneplace than a sunbeam or a summer breeze,--nor was she one that, onceseen, could be easily forgotten.

Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usualchubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulatingand aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic andallegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beautyof feature than for a singular and dreamy earnestness of expression,which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which thedullest and most literal were impressed, without exactly knowing why.The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust was peculiarlynoble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud aroundit, the deep spiritual gravity of her violet blue eyes, shaded by heavyfringes of golden brown,--all marked her out from other children, andmade every one turn and look after her, as she glided hither and thitheron the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would havecalled either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy andinnocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leavesover her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was alwaysin motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither andthither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herselfas she moved as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian wereincessantly busy in pursuit of her,--but, when caught, she melted fromthem again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproofever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her ownway all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move likea shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain;and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairyfootsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deepblue eyes, fleeted along.

The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found thoseeyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, andfearfully and pityingly at him, as if she thought him in some dreadfuldanger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as thepicture-like head gleamed through the window of the round house, andin a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessedher, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces, as shepassed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough,sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her, and smooth herpath.

Tom, who had the soft, impressible nature of his kindly race, everyearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creaturewith daily increasing interest. To him she seemed something almostdivine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out uponhim from behind some dusky cotton-bale, or looked down upon him oversome ridge of packages, he half believed that he saw one of the angelsstepped out of his New Testament.

Often and often she walked mournfully round the place where Haley's gangof men and women sat in their chains. She would glide in among them,and look at them with an air of perplexed and sorrowful earnestness; andsometimes she would lift their chains with her slender hands, and thensigh wofully, as she glided away. Several times she appeared suddenlyamong them, with her hands full of candy, nuts, and oranges, which shewould distribute joyfully to them, and then be gone again.

Tom watched the little lady a great deal, before he ventured on anyovertures towards acquaintanceship. He knew an abundance of simple actsto propitiate and invite the approaches of the little people, and heresolved to play his part right skilfully. He could cut cunninglittle baskets out of cherry-stones, could make grotesque faces onhickory-nuts, or odd-jumping figures out of elder-pith, and he was avery Pan in the manufacture of whistles of all sizes and sorts. Hispockets were full of miscellaneous articles of attraction, which hehad hoarded in days of old for his master's children, and which henow produced, with commendable prudence and economy, one by one, asovertures for acquaintance and friendship.

The little one was shy, for all her busy interest in everything goingon, and it was not easy to tame her. For a while, she would perch likea canary-bird on some box or package near Tom, while busy in the littlearts afore-named, and take from him, with a kind of grave bashfulness,the little articles he offered. But at last they got on quiteconfidential terms.

"What's little missy's name?" said Tom, at last, when he thought matterswere ripe to push such an inquiry.

"Evangeline St. Clare," said the little one, "though papa and everybodyelse call me Eva. Now, what's your name?"

"My name's Tom; the little chil'en used to call me Uncle Tom, way backthar in Kentuck."

"Then I mean to call you Uncle Tom, because, you see, I like you," saidEva. "So, Uncle Tom, where are you going?"

"I don't know, Miss Eva."

"Don't know?" said Eva.

"No, I am going to be sold to somebody. I don't know who."

"My papa can buy you," said Eva, quickly; "and if he buys you, you willhave good times. I mean to ask him, this very day."

"Thank you, my little lady," said Tom.

The boat here stopped at a small landing to take in wood, and Eva,hearing her father's voice, bounded nimbly away. Tom rose up, and wentforward to offer his service in wooding, and soon was busy among thehands.

Eva and her father were standing together by the railings to see theboat start from the landing-place, the wheel had made two or threerevolutions in the water, when, by some sudden movement, the little onesuddenly lost her balance and fell sheer over the side of the boat intothe water. Her father, scarce knowing what he did, was plunging in afterher, but was held back by some behind him, who saw that more efficientaid had followed his child.

Tom was standing just under her on the lower deck, as she fell. Hesaw her strike the water, and sink, and was after her in a moment.A broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keepafloat in the water, till, in a moment or two the child rose to thesurface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to theboat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds ofhands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretchedeagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father boreher, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where, as is usualin cases of the kind, there ensued a very well-meaning and kind-heartedstrife among the female occupants generally, as to who should do themost things to make a disturbance, and to hinder her recovery in everyway possible.

It was a sultry, close day, the next day, as the steamer drew near toNew Orleans. A general bustle of expectation and preparation was spreadthrough the boat; in the cabin, one and another were gathering theirthings together, and arranging them, preparatory to going ashore. Thesteward and chambermaid, and all, were busily engaged in cleaning,furbishing, and arranging the splendid boat, preparatory to a grandentree.

On the lower deck sat our friend Tom, with his arms folded, andanxiously, from time to time, turning his eyes towards a group on theother side of the boat.

There stood the fair Evangeline, a little paler than the day before, butotherwise exhibiting no traces of the accident which had befallen her.A graceful, elegantly-formed young man stood by her, carelessly leaningone elbow on a bale of cotton while a large pocket-book lay open beforehim. It was quite evident, at a glance, that the gentleman was Eva'sfather. There was the same noble cast of head, the same large blue eyes,the same golden-brown hair; yet the expression was wholly different. Inthe large, clear blue eyes, though in form and color exactly similar,there was wanting that misty, dreamy depth of expression; all was clear,bold, and bright, but with a light wholly of this world: the beautifullycut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression, while an airof free-and-easy superiority sat not ungracefully in every turn andmovement of his fine form. He was listening, with a good-humored,negligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was veryvolubly expatiating on the quality of the article for which they werebargaining.

"All the moral and Christian virtues bound in black Morocco, complete!"he said, when Haley had finished. "Well, now, my good fellow, what'sthe damage, as they say in Kentucky; in short, what's to be paid out forthis business? How much are you going to cheat me, now? Out with it!"

"Wal," said Haley, "if I should say thirteen hundred dollars for that arfellow, I shouldn't but just save myself; I shouldn't, now, re'ly."

"Poor fellow!" said the young man, fixing his keen, mocking blue eye onhim; "but I suppose you'd let me have him for that, out of a particularregard for me."

"Well, the young lady here seems to be sot on him, and nat'lly enough."

"O! certainly, there's a call on your benevolence, my friend. Now, as amatter of Christian charity, how cheap could you afford to let him go,to oblige a young lady that's particular sot on him?"

"Wal, now, just think on 't," said the trader; "just look at themlimbs,--broad-chested, strong as a horse. Look at his head; them highforrads allays shows calculatin niggers, that'll do any kind o' thing.I've, marked that ar. Now, a nigger of that ar heft and build is worthconsiderable, just as you may say, for his body, supposin he's stupid;but come to put in his calculatin faculties, and them which I can showhe has oncommon, why, of course, it makes him come higher. Why, that arfellow managed his master's whole farm. He has a strornary talent forbusiness."

"Bad, bad, very bad; knows altogether too much!" said the young man,with the same mocking smile playing about his mouth. "Never will do, inthe world. Your smart fellows are always running off, stealing horses,and raising the devil generally. I think you'll have to take off acouple of hundred for his smartness."

"Wal, there might be something in that ar, if it warnt for hischaracter; but I can show recommends from his master and others, toprove he is one of your real pious,--the most humble, prayin, piouscrittur ye ever did see. Why, he's been called a preacher in them partshe came from."

"And I might use him for a family chaplain, possibly," added the youngman, dryly. "That's quite an idea. Religion is a remarkably scarcearticle at our house."

"You're joking, now."

"How do you know I am? Didn't you just warrant him for a preacher? Hashe been examined by any synod or council? Come, hand over your papers."

If the trader had not been sure, by a certain good-humored twinkle inthe large eye, that all this banter was sure, in the long run, to turnout a cash concern, he might have been somewhat out of patience; as itwas, he laid down a greasy pocket-book on the cotton-bales, and begananxiously studying over certain papers in it, the young man standing by,the while, looking down on him with an air of careless, easy drollery.

"Papa, do buy him! it's no matter what you pay," whispered Eva, softly,getting up on a package, and putting her arm around her father's neck."You have money enough, I know. I want him."

"What for, pussy? Are you going to use him for a rattle-box, or arocking-horse, or what?

"I want to make him happy."

"An original reason, certainly."

Here the trader handed up a certificate, signed by Mr. Shelby, whichthe young man took with the tips of his long fingers, and glanced overcarelessly.

"A gentlemanly hand," he said, "and well spelt, too. Well, now, butI'm not sure, after all, about this religion," said he, the old wickedexpression returning to his eye; "the country is almost ruined withpious white people; such pious politicians as we have just beforeelections,--such pious goings on in all departments of church and state,that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next. I don't know, either,about religion's being up in the market, just now. I have not looked inthe papers lately, to see how it sells. How many hundred dollars, now,do you put on for this religion?"

"You like to be jokin, now," said the trader; "but, then, there's_sense_ under all that ar. I know there's differences in religion. Somekinds is mis'rable: there's your meetin pious; there's your singin,roarin pious; them ar an't no account, in black or white;--but theserayly is; and I've seen it in niggers as often as any, your rail softly,quiet, stiddy, honest, pious, that the hull world couldn't tempt 'emto do nothing that they thinks is wrong; and ye see in this letter whatTom's old master says about him."

"Now," said the young man, stooping gravely over his book of bills, "ifyou can assure me that I really can buy _this_ kind of pious, and thatit will be set down to my account in the book up above, as somethingbelonging to me, I wouldn't care if I did go a little extra for it. Howd'ye say?"

"Wal, raily, I can't do that," said the trader. "I'm a thinkin thatevery man'll have to hang on his own hook, in them ar quarters."

"Rather hard on a fellow that pays extra on religion, and can't tradewith it in the state where he wants it most, an't it, now?" saidthe young man, who had been making out a roll of bills while he wasspeaking. "There, count your money, old boy!" he added, as he handed theroll to the trader.

"All right," said Haley, his face beaming with delight; and pulling outan old inkhorn, he proceeded to fill out a bill of sale, which, in a fewmoments, he handed to the young man.

"I wonder, now, if I was divided up and inventoried," said the latteras he ran over the paper, "how much I might bring. Say so much for theshape of my head, so much for a high forehead, so much for arms, andhands, and legs, and then so much for education, learning, talent,honesty, religion! Bless me! there would be small charge on that last,I'm thinking. But come, Eva," he said; and taking the hand of hisdaughter, he stepped across the boat, and carelessly putting the tip ofhis finger under Tom's chin, said, good-humoredly, "Look-up, Tom, andsee how you like your new master."

Tom looked up. It was not in nature to look into that gay, young,handsome face, without a feeling of pleasure; and Tom felt the tearsstart in his eyes as he said, heartily, "God bless you, Mas'r!"

"Well, I hope he will. What's your name? Tom? Quite as likely to do itfor your asking as mine, from all accounts. Can you drive horses, Tom?"

"I've been allays used to horses," said Tom. "Mas'r Shelby raised heapsof 'em."

"Well, I think I shall put you in coachy, on condition that you won't bedrunk more than once a week, unless in cases of emergency, Tom."

Tom looked surprised, and rather hurt, and said, "I never drink, Mas'r."

"I've heard that story before, Tom; but then we'll see. It will be aspecial accommodation to all concerned, if you don't. Never mind, myboy," he added, good-humoredly, seeing Tom still looked grave; "I don'tdoubt you mean to do well."

"I sartin do, Mas'r," said Tom.

"And you shall have good times," said Eva. "Papa is very good toeverybody, only he always will laugh at them."

"Papa is much obliged to you for his recommendation," said St. Clare,laughing, as he turned on his heel and walked away.