Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly

'Don't you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says she has done everything she can think of.'

'Lor, yes, Mas'r! old Missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a heap harder, and used to pull my har, and knock my head agin the door; but it didn't do me no good! I spects, if they 's to pull every spire o' har out o' my head, it wouldn't do no good, neither,-I 's so wicked! Laws! I 's nothin but a nigger, no ways!'

'Well, I shall have to give her up,' said Miss Ophelia; 'I can't have that trouble any longer.'

'Well, I'd just like to ask one question,' said St. Clare.

'What is it?'

'Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child, that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what's the use of sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands of just such? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what thousands of your heathen are.'

Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood a silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy to follow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the verandah, which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and Topsy disappeared into this place.

'What's Eva going about, now?' said St. Clare; 'I mean to see.'

And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his lips, he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look. There sat the two children on the floor, with their side faces towards them. Topsy, with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but, opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large eyes.

'What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won't you try and be good? Don't you love anybody, Topsy?'

'Donno nothing 'bout love; I loves candy and sich, that's all,' said Topsy.

'But you love your father and mother?'

'Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva.'

'O, I know,' said Eva, sadly; 'but hadn't you any brother, or sister, or aunt, or-'

'No, none on 'em,-never had nothing nor nobody.'

'But, Topsy, if you'd only try to be good, you might-'

'Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,' said Topsy. 'If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.'

'But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would love you, if you were good.'

Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of expressing incredulity.

'Don't you think so?' said Eva.

'No; she can't bar me, 'cause I'm a nigger!-she'd 's soon have a toad touch her! There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do nothin'! I don't care,' said Topsy, beginning to whistle.

'O, Topsy, poor child, I love you!' said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder; 'I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;-because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;-it's only a little while I shall be with you.'

The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;-large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,-while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

'Poor Topsy!' said Eva, 'don't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do,-only more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you were white. Only think of it, Topsy!-you can be one of those spirits bright, Uncle Tom sings about.'

'O, dear Miss Eva, dear Miss Eva!' said the child; 'I will try, I will try; I never did care nothin' about it before.'

St. Clare, at this instant, dropped the curtain. 'It puts me in mind of mother,' he said to Miss Ophelia. 'It is true what she told me; if we want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ did,-call them to us, and put our hands on them.'

'I've always had a prejudice against negroes,' said Miss Ophelia, 'and it's a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but, I don't think she knew it.'

'Trust any child to find that out,' said St. Clare; 'there's no keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them, will never excite one emotion of gratitude, while that feeling of repugnance remains in the heart;-it's a queer kind of a fact,-but so it is.'

'I don't know how I can help it,' said Miss Ophelia; 'they are disagreeable to me,-this child in particular,-how can I help feeling so?'

'Eva does, it seems.'

'Well, she's so loving! After all, though, she's no more than Christ-like,' said Miss Ophelia; 'I wish I were like her. She might teach me a lesson.'

'It wouldn't be the first time a little child had been used to instruct an old disciple, if it were so,' said St. Clare.

CHAPTER XXVI

Death

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,

In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes. [19]

Eva's bed-room was a spacious apartment, which, like all the other rooms in the house, opened on to the broad verandah. The room communicated, on one side, with her father and mother's apartment; on the other, with that appropriated to Miss Ophelia. St. Clare had gratified his own eye and taste, in furnishing this room in a style that had a peculiar keeping with the character of her for whom it was intended. The windows were hung with curtains of rose-colored and white muslin, the floor was spread with a matting which had been ordered in Paris, to a pattern of his own device, having round it a border of rose-buds and leaves, and a centre-piece with full-flown roses. The bedstead, chairs, and lounges, were of bamboo, wrought in peculiarly graceful and fanciful patterns. Over the head of the bed was an alabaster bracket, on which a beautiful sculptured angel stood, with drooping wings, holding out a crown of myrtle-leaves. From this depended, over the bed, light curtains of rose-colored gauze, striped with silver, supplying that protection from mosquitos which is an indispensable addition to all sleeping accommodation in that climate. The graceful bamboo lounges were amply