University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE GORDON FAMILY.

A week or two had passed over the head of Nina Gordon
since she was first introduced to our readers, and during
this time she had become familiar with the details of her
home life. Nominally, she stood at the head of her plantation,
as mistress and queen in her own right of all, both in
doors and out; but, really, she found herself, by her own
youth and inexperience, her ignorance of practical details,
very much in the hands of those she professed to govern.

The duties of a southern housekeeper, on a plantation,
are onerous beyond any amount of northern conception.
Every article wanted for daily consumption must be kept
under lock and key, and doled out as need arises. For the
most part, the servants are only grown-up children, without
consideration, forethought, or self-control, quarrelling
with each other, and divided into parties and factions, hopeless
of any reasonable control. Every article of wear, for
some hundreds of people, must be thought of, purchased,
cut and made, under the direction of the mistress; and add
to this the care of young children, whose childish mothers
are totally unfit to govern or care for them, and we have some
slight idea of what devolves on southern housekeepers.

Our reader has seen what Nina was on her return from
New York, and can easily imagine that she had no idea of
embracing, in good earnest, the hard duties of such a life.

In fact, since the death of Nina's mother, the situation of
the mistress of the family had been only nominally filled by
her aunt, Mrs. Nesbit. The real housekeeper, in fact, was

an old mulatto woman, named Katy, who had been trained
by Nina's mother. Notwithstanding the general inefficiency
and childishness of negro servants, there often are to be
found among them those of great practical ability. Whenever
owners, through necessity or from tact, select such
servants, and subject them to the kind of training and responsibility
which belongs to a state of freedom, the same
qualities are developed which exist in free society. Nina's
mother, being always in delicate health, had, from necessity,
been obliged to commit much responsibility to “Aunt
Katy,” as she was called; and she had grown up under the
discipline into a very efficient housekeeper. With her tall
red turban, her jingling bunch of keys, and an abundant
sense of the importance of her office, she was a dignitary
not lightly to be disregarded.

It is true that she professed the utmost deference for her
young mistress, and very generally passed the compliment
of inquiring what she would have done; but it was pretty
generally understood that her assent to Aunt Katy's propositions
was considered as much a matter of course as the
queen's to a ministerial recommendation. Indeed, had Nina
chosen to demur, her prime minister had the power, without
departing in the slightest degree from a respectful bearing,
to involve her in labyrinths of perplexity without end.
And, as Nina hated trouble, and wanted, above all things, to
have her time to herself for her own amusement, she wisely
concluded not to interfere with Aunt Katy's reign, and to
get by persuasion and coaxing, what the old body would
have been far too consequential and opinionated to give to
authority.

In like manner, at the head of all out-door affairs was the
young quadroon, Harry, whom we introduced in the first
chapter. In order to come fully at the relation in which he
stood to the estate, we must, after the fashion of historians
generally, go back a hundred years or so, in order to give
our readers a fair start. Behold us, therefore, assuming
historic dignity, as follows.

Among the first emigrants to Virginia, in its colonial
days, was one Thomas Gordon, Knight, a distant offshoot
of the noble Gordon family, renowned in Scottish history.
Being a gentleman of some considerable energy, and impatient
of the narrow limits of the Old World, where he found
little opportunity to obtain that wealth which was necessary
to meet the demands of his family pride, he struck off for
himself into Virginia. Naturally of an adventurous turn,
he was one of the first to propose the enterprise which
afterwards resulted in a settlement on the banks of the
Chowan River, in North Carolina. Here he took up for
himself a large tract of the finest alluvial land, and set
himself to the business of planting, with the energy and
skill characteristic of his nation; and, as the soil was new
and fertile, he soon received a very munificent return for his
enterprise. Inspired with remembrances of old ancestral
renown, the Gordon family transmitted in their descent all
the traditions, feelings, and habits, which were the growth
of the aristocratic caste from which they sprung. The
name of Canema, given to the estate, came from an Indian
guide and interpreter, who accompanied the first Col. Gordon
as confidential servant.

The estate, being entailed, passed down through the colonial
times unbroken in the family, whose wealth, for some
years, seemed to increase with every generation.

The family mansion was one of those fond reproductions
of the architectural style of the landed gentry in England,
in which, as far as their means could compass it, the planters
were fond of indulging.

Carpenters and carvers had been brought over, at great
expense, from the old country, to give the fruits of their
skill in its erection; and it was a fancy of the ancestor who
built it, to display, in its wood-work, that exuberance of
new and rare woods with which the American continent was
supposed to abound. He had made an adventurous voyage
into South America, and brought from thence specimens of
those materials more brilliant than rose-wood, and hard as

ebony, which grow so profusely on the banks of the Amazon
that the natives use them for timber. The floor of the
central hall of the house was a curiously-inlaid parquet of
these brilliant materials, arranged in fine block-work, highly
polished.

The outside of the house was built in the old Virginian
fashion, with two tiers of balconies running completely
round, as being much better suited to the American climate
than any of European mode. The inside, however, was
decorated with sculpture and carvings, copied, many of
them, from ancestral residences in Scotland, giving to the
mansion an air of premature antiquity.

Here, for two or three generations, the Gordon family
had lived in opulence. During the time, however, of Nina's
father, and still more after his death, there appeared evidently
on the place signs of that gradual decay which has
conducted many an old Virginian family to poverty and ruin.
Slave labor, of all others the most worthless and profitless,
had exhausted the first vigor of the soil, and the proprietors
gradually degenerated from those habits of energy which
were called forth by the necessities of the first settlers, and
everything proceeded with that free-and-easy abandon, in
which both master and slave appeared to have one common
object, — that of proving who should waste with most freedom.

At Colonel Gordon's death, he had bequeathed, as we
have already shown, the whole family estate to his daughter,
under the care of a servant, of whose uncommon intelligence
and thorough devotion of heart he had the most
ample proof. When it is reflected that the overseers are
generally taken from a class of whites who are often lower
in ignorance and barbarism than even the slaves, and that
their wastefulness and rapacity are a by-word among the
planters, it is no wonder that Colonel Gordon thought that,
in leaving his plantation under the care of one so energetic,
competent, and faithful, as Harry, he had made the best
possible provision for his daughter.

Harry was the son of his master, and inherited much of
the temper and constitution of his father, tempered by the
soft and genial temperament of the beautiful Eboe mulattress
who was his mother. From this circumstance Harry
had received advantages of education very superior to what
commonly fell to the lot of his class. He had also accompanied
his master as valet during the tour of Europe,
and thus his opportunities of general observation had been
still further enlarged, and that tact by which those of the
mixed blood seem so peculiarly fitted to appreciate all the
finer aspects of conventional life, had been called out and
exercised; so that it would be difficult in any circle to meet
with a more agreeable and gentlemanly person. In leaving
a man of this character, and his own son, still in the bonds
of slavery, Colonel Gordon was influenced by that passionate
devotion to his daughter which with him overpowered
every consideration. A man so cultivated, he argued to
himself, might find many avenues opened to him in freedom;
might be tempted to leave the estate to other hands,
and seek his own fortune. He therefore resolved to leave
him bound by an indissoluble tie for a term of years,
trusting to his attachment to Nina to make this service
tolerable.

Possessed of very uncommon judgment, firmness, and
knowledge of human nature, Harry had found means to acquire
great ascendency over the hands of the plantation;
and, either through fear or through friendship, there was
a universal subordination to him. The executors of the
estate scarcely made even a feint of overseeing him; and he
proceeded, to all intents and purposes, with the perfect ease
of a free man. Everybody, for miles around, knew and respected
him; and, had he not been possessed of a good
share of the thoughtful, forecasting temperament derived
from his Scottish parentage, he might have been completely
happy, and forgotten even the existence of the chains
whose weight he never felt.

It was only in the presence of Tom Gordon — Colonel

Gordon's lawful son — that he ever realized that he was a
slave. From childhood, there had been a rooted enmity
between the brothers, which deepened as years passed on;
and, as he found himself, on every return of the young man
to the place, subjected to taunts and ill-usage, to which
his defenceless position left him no power to reply, he had
resolved never to marry, and lay the foundation for a family,
until such time as he should be able to have the command
of his own destiny, and that of his household. But the
charms of a pretty French quadroon overcame the dictates
of prudence.

The history of Tom Gordon is the history of many a
young man grown up under the institutions and in the state
of society which formed him. Nature had endowed him
with no mean share of talent, and with that perilous quickness
of nervous organization, which, like fire, is a good
servant, but a bad master. Out of those elements, with
due training, might have been formed an efficient and eloquent
public man; but, brought up from childhood among
servants to whom his infant will was law, indulged during
the period of infantile beauty and grace in the full expression
of every whim, growing into boyhood among slaves
with but the average amount of plantation morality, his
passions developed at a fearfully early time of life; and,
before his father thought of seizing the reins of authority,
they had gone out of his hands forever. Tutor after tutor
was employed on the plantation to instruct him, and left,
terrified by his temper. The secluded nature of the plantation
left him without that healthful stimulus of society
which is often a help in enabling a boy to come to the
knowledge and control of himself. His associates were
either the slaves, or the overseers, who are generally unprincipled
and artful, or the surrounding whites, who lay
in a yet lower deep of degradation. For one reason or
another, it was for the interest of all these to flatter his
vices, and covertly to assist him in opposing and deceiving
his parents. Thus an early age saw him an adept in

every low form of vice. In despair, he was at length sent
to an academy at the North, where he commenced his
career on the first day by striking the teacher in the
face, and was consequently expelled. Thence he went to
another, where, learning caution from experience, he was
enabled to maintain his foot-hold. There he was a successful
colporteur and missionary in the way of introducing a
knowledge of bowie-knives, revolvers, and vicious literature.
Artful, bold, and daring, his residence for a year at a
school was sufficient to initiate in the way of ruin perhaps
one fourth of the boys. He was handsome, and, when not
provoked, good-natured, and had that off-hand way of spending
money which passes among boys for generosity. The
simple sons of hard-working farmers, bred in habits of industry
and frugality, were dazzled and astonished by the
freedom with which he talked, and drank, and spit, and
swore. He was a hero in their eye, and they began to
wonder at the number of things, to them unknown before,
which went to make up the necessaries of life. From school
he was transferred to college, and there placed under the
care of a professor, who was paid an exorbitant sum for
overlooking his affairs. The consequence was, that while
many a northern boy, whose father could not afford to pay
for similar patronage, was disciplined, rusticated, or expelled,
as the case might be, Tom Gordon exploited gloriously
through college, getting drunk every week or
two, breaking windows, smoking freshmen, heading various
sprees in different parts of the country, and at last graduating
nobody knew how, except the patron professor, who
received an extra sum for the extra difficulties of the case.
Returned home, he went into a lawyer's office in Raleigh,
where, by a pleasant fiction, he was said to be reading law,
because he was occasionally seen at the office during the
intervals of his more serious avocations of gambling, and
horse-racing, and drinking. His father, an affectionate but
passionate man, was wholly unable to control him, and the
conflicts between them often shook the whole domestic
fabric. Nevertheless, to the last Colonel Gordon indulged
the old hope for such cases made and provided, that Tom
would get through sowing his wild oats, some time, and settle
down and be a respectable man; in which hope he left
him the half of his property. Since that time, Tom seemed
to have studied on no subject except how to accelerate the
growth of those wings which riches are said to be inclined
to take, under the most favorable circumstances.

As often happens in such cases of utter ruin, Tom Gordon
was a much worse character for all the elements of
good which he possessed. He had sufficient perception of
right, and sufficient conscience remaining, to make him bitter
and uncomfortable. In proportion as he knew himself
unworthy of his father's affection and trust, he became jealous
and angry at any indications of the want of it. He had
contracted a settled ill-will to his sister, for no other apparent
reason except that the father took a comfort in her
which he did not in him. From childhood, it was his habit
to vex and annoy her in every possible way; and it was for
this reason, among many others, that Harry had persuaded
Mr. John Gordon, Nina's uncle and guardian, to place her
at the New York boarding-school, where she acquired what
is termed an education. After finishing her school career,
she had been spending a few months in a family of a cousin
of her mother's, and running with loose rein the career of
fashionable gayety.

Luckily, she brought home with her unspoiled a genuine
love of nature, which made the rural habits of plantation
life agreeable to her. Neighbors there were few. Her uncle's
plantation, five miles distant, was the nearest. Other families
with whom the Gordons were in the habit of exchanging
occasional visits were some ten or fifteen miles distant.
It was Nina's delight, however, in her muslin wrapper, and
straw hat, to patter about over the plantation, to chat with
the negroes among their cabins, amusing herself with the
various drolleries and peculiarities to which long absence
had given the zest of novelty. Then she would call for her

pony, and, attended by Harry, or some of her servants,
would career through the woods, gathering the wild-flowers
with which they abound; perhaps stop for a day at her
uncle's, have a chat and a romp with him, and return the
next morning.

In the comparative solitude of her present life her mind
began to clear itself of some former follies, as water when
at rest deposits the sediment which clouded it. Apart from
the crowd, and the world of gayeties which had dizzied her,
she could not help admitting to herself the folly of much
she had been doing. Something, doubtless, was added to
this by the letters of Clayton. The tone of them, so manly
and sincere, so respectful and kind, so removed either from
adulation or sentimentalism, had an effect upon her greater
than she was herself aware of. So Nina, in her positive
and off-hand way, sat down, one day, and wrote farewell letters
to both her other lovers, and felt herself quite relieved
by the process.

A young person could scarce stand more entirely alone,
as to sympathetic intercourse with relations, than Nina. It
is true that the presence of her mother's sister in the
family caused it to be said that she was residing under the
care of an aunt.

Mrs. Nesbit, however, was simply one of those well-bred,
well-dressed lay-figures, whose only office in life seems to be
to occupy a certain room in a house, to sit in certain chairs
at proper hours, to make certain remarks at suitable intervals
of conversation. In her youth this lady had run quite
a career as a belle and beauty. Nature had endowed her
with a handsome face and figure, and youth and the pleasure
of admiration for some years supplied a sufficient flow
of animal spirits to make the beauty effective. Early married,
she became the mother of several children, who were
one by one swept into the grave. The death of her husband,
last of all, left her with a very small fortune alone in
the world; and, like many in similar circumstances, she was
content to sink into an appendage to another's family.

Mrs. Nesbit considered herself very religious; and, as
there is a great deal that passes for religion, ordinarily, of
which she may be fairly considered a representative, we will
present our readers with a philosophical analysis of the
article. When young, she had thought only of self in the
form of admiration, and the indulgence of her animal spirits.
When married, she had thought of self only in her husband
and children, whom she loved because they were hers, and
for no other reason.

When death swept away her domestic circle, and time
stole the beauty and freshness of animal spirits, her self-love
took another form; and, perceiving that this world was
becoming to her somewhat passé, she determined to make
the best of her chance for another.

Religion she looked upon in the light of a ticket, which,
being once purchased, and snugly laid away in a pocket-book,
is to be produced at the celestial gate, and thus
secure admission to heaven.

At a certain period of her life, while she deemed this
ticket unpurchased, she was extremely low-spirited and
gloomy, and went through a quantity of theological reading
enough to have astonished herself, had she foreseen it
in the days of her belle-ship. As the result of all, she at
last presented herself as a candidate for admission to a
Presbyterian church in the vicinity, there professing her
determination to run the Christian race. By the Christian
race, she understood going at certain stated times to religious
meetings, reading the Bible and hymn-book at certain
hours in the day, giving at regular intervals stipulated
sums to religious charities, and preserving a general state
of leaden indifference to everybody and everything in the
world.

She thus fondly imagined that she had renounced the
world, because she looked back with disgust on gayeties
for which she had no longer strength or spirits. Nor did
she dream that the intensity with which her mind travelled
the narrow world of self, dwelling on the plaits of her caps,

the cut of her stone-colored satin gowns, the making of her
tea and her bed, and the saving of her narrow income, was
exactly the same in kind, though far less agreeable in development,
as that which once expended itself in dressing
and dancing. Like many other apparently negative characters,
she had a pertinacious intensity of an extremely
narrow and aimless self-will. Her plans of life, small as
they were, had a thousand crimps and plaits, to every one
of which she adhered with invincible pertinacity. The poor
lady little imagined, when she sat, with such punctilious
satisfaction, while the Rev. Mr. Orthodoxy demonstrated
that selfishness is the essence of all moral evil, that the
sentiment had the slightest application to her; nor dreamed
that the little, quiet, muddy current of self-will, which ran
without noise or indecorum under the whole structure of
her being, might be found, in a future day, to have undermined
all her hopes of heaven. Of course, Mrs. Nesbit regarded
Nina, and all other lively young people, with a kind
of melancholy endurance — as shocking spectacles of worldliness.
There was but little sympathy, to be sure, between
the dashing, and out-spoken, and almost defiant little Nina,
and the sombre silver-gray apparition which glided quietly
about the wide halls of her paternal mansion. In fact, it
seemed to afford the latter a mischievous pleasure to shock
her respectable relative on all convenient occasions. Mrs.
Nesbit felt it occasionally her duty, as she remarked, to call
her lively niece into her apartment, and endeavor to persuade
her to read some such volume as Law's Serious Call, or
Owen on the One Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm; and to
give her a general and solemn warning against all the vanities
of the world, in which were generally included dressing
in any color but black and drab, dancing, flirting, writing
love-letters, and all other enormities, down to the eating of
pea-nut candy. One of these scenes is just now enacting in
this good lady's apartment, upon which we will raise the
curtain.

Mrs. Nesbit, a diminutive, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned

little woman, of some five feet high, sat gently swaying in
that respectable asylum for American old age, commonly
called a rocking-chair. Every rustle of her silvery silk
gown, every fold of the snowy kerchief on her neck, every
plait of her immaculate cap, spoke a soul long retired from
this world and its cares. The bed, arranged with extremest
precision, however, was covered with a melange of French
finery, flounces, laces, among which Nina kept up a continual
agitation like that produced by a breeze in a flower-bed,
as she unfolded, turned, and fluttered them, before the
eyes of her relative.

“I have been through all this, Nina,” said the latter, with
a melancholy shake of her head, “and I know the vanity of
it.”

“Well, aunty, I have n't been through it, so I don't
know.”

“Yes, my dear, when I was of your age, I used to go to
balls and parties, and could think of nothing but of dress
and admiration. I have been through it all, and seen the
vanity of it.”

“Well, aunt, I want to go through it, and see the vanity
of it, too. That 's just what I 'm after. I 'm on the way to
be as sombre and solemn as you are, but I 'm bound to
have a good time first. Now, look at this pink brocade!”

Had the brocade been a pall, it could scarcely have been
regarded with a more lugubrious aspect.

“Ah, child! such a dying world as this! To spend so
much time and thought on dress!”

“Why, Aunt Nesbit, yesterday you spent just two whole
hours in thinking whether you should turn the breadths of
your black silk dress upside down, or down side up; and
this was a dying world all the time. Now, I don't see that
it is any better to think of black silk than it is of pink.”

This was a view of the subject which seemed never to
have occurred to the good lady.

“But, now, aunt, do cheer up, and look at this box of
artificial flowers. You know I thought I 'd bring a stock

on from New York. Now, are n't these perfectly lovely? I
like flowers that mean something. Now, these are all imitations
of natural flowers, so perfect that you 'd scarcely
know them from the real. See — there, that 's a moss-rose;
and now look at these sweet peas, you 'd think they had
just been picked; and, there — that heliotrope, and these
jessamines, and those orange-blossoms, and that wax
camelia —”

“Turn off my eyes from beholding vanity!” said Mrs.
Nesbit, shutting her eyes, and shaking her head:

“Aunt, I do think you have the most horrid, disgusting
set of hymns, all about worms, and dust, and such things!”

“It 's my duty, child, when I see you so much taken up
with such sinful finery.”

“Why, aunt, do you think artificial flowers are sinful?”

“Yes, dear; they are a sinful waste of time and money,
and take off our mind from more important things.”

“Well, aunt, then what did the Lord make sweet peas,
and roses, and orange-blossoms for? I 'm sure it 's only
doing as he does, to make flowers. He don't make everything
gray, or stone-color. Now, if you only would come
out in the garden, this morning, and see the oleanders, and
the crape myrtle, and the pinks, the roses, and the tulips,
and the hyacinths, I 'm sure it would do you good.”

“O, I should certainly catch cold, child, if I went out
doors. Milly left a crack opened in the window, last night,
and I 've sneezed three or four times since. It will never
do for me to go out in the garden; the feeling of the ground
striking up through my shoes is very unhealthy.”

“Well, at any rate, aunt, I should think, if the Lord
did n't wish us to wear roses and jessamines, he would not

have made them. And it is the most natural thing in the
world to want to wear flowers.”

“It only feeds vanity and a love of display, my dear.”

“I don't think it 's vanity, or a love of display. I should
want to dress prettily, if I were the only person in the world.
I love pretty things because they are pretty. I like to wear
them because they make me look pretty.”

“There it is, child; you want to dress up your poor perishing
body to look pretty — that 's the thing!”

“To be sure I do. Why should n't I? I mean to look as
pretty as I can, as long as I live.”

“You seem to have quite a conceit of your beauty!” said
Aunt Nesbit.

“Well, I know I am pretty. I 'm not going to pretend I
don't. I like my own looks, now, that 's a fact. I 'm not
like one of your Greek statues, I know. I 'm not wonderfully
handsome, nor likely to set the world on fire with my
beauty. I 'm just a pretty little thing; and I like flowers
and laces, and all of those things; and I mean to like them,
and I don't think there 'll be a bit of religion in my not liking
them; and as for all that disagreeable stuff about the
worms, that you are always telling me, I don't think it does
me a particle of good. And, if religion is going to make
me so poky, I shall put it off as long as I can.”

“I used to feel just as you do, dear, but I 've seen the
folly of it!”

“If I 've got to lose my love for everything that is bright,
everything that is lively, and everything that is pretty, and
like to read such horrid stupid books, why, I 'd rather be
buried, and done with it!”

“That 's the opposition of the natural heart, my dear.”

The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of
a bright, curly-headed mulatto boy, bearing Mrs. Nesbit's
daily luncheon.

“O, here comes Tomtit,” said Nina; “now for a scene!
Let 's see what he has forgotten, now.”

Tomtit was, in his way, a great character in the mansion.

He and his grandmother were the property of Mrs. Nesbit.
His true name was no less respectable and methodical than
that of Thomas; but, as he was one of those restless and
effervescent sprites, who seem to be born for the confusion
of quiet people, Nina had rechristened him Tomtit, which
sobriquet was immediately recognized by the whole household
as being eminently descriptive and appropriate. A
constant ripple and eddy of drollery seemed to pervade his
whole being; his large, saucy black eyes had always a
laughing fire in them, that it was impossible to meet without
a smile in return. Slave and property though he was,
yet the first sentiment of reverence for any created thing
seemed yet wholly unawakened in his curly pate. Breezy,
idle, careless, flighty, as his woodland namesake, life to
him seemed only a repressed and pent-up ebullition of animal
enjoyment; and almost the only excitement of Mrs. Nesbit's
quiet life was her chronic controversy with Tomtit. Forty
or fifty times a day did the old body assure him “that she
was astonished at his conduct;” and as many times would
he reply by showing the whole set of his handsome teeth,
on the broad grin, wholly inconsiderate of the state of despair
into which he thus reduced her.

On the present occasion, as he entered the room, his eye
was caught by the great display of finery on the bed; and,
hastily dumping the waiter on the first chair that occurred,
with a flirt and a spring as lithe as that of a squirrel, he
was seated in a moment astride the foot-board, indulging in
a burst of merriment.

“Good law, Miss Nina, whar on earth dese yer come
from? Good law, some on 'em for me, is n't 'er?”

“You see that child!” now said Mrs. Nesbit, rocking
back in her chair with the air of a martyr. “After all my
talkings to him! Nina, you ought not to allow that; it just
encourages him!”

“Tom, get down, you naughty creature you, and get the
stand and put the waiter on it. Mind yourself, now!” said
Nina, laughing.

Tomtit cut a somerset from the foot-board to the floor,
and, striking up, on a very high key, “I 'll bet my money
on a bob-tail nag,” he danced out a small table, as if it
had been a partner, and deposited it, with a jerk, at the side
of Mrs. Nesbit, who aimed a cuff at his ears; but, as he
adroitly ducked his head, the intended blow came down
upon the table with more force than was comfortable to the
inflictor.

“I believe that child is made of air! — I never can hit
him!” said the good lady, waxing red in the face. “He is
enough to provoke a saint!”

“So he is, aunt; enough to provoke two saints like you
and me. Tomtit, you rogue,” said she, giving a gentle pull
to a handful of his curly hair, “be good, now, and I 'll show
you the pretty things, by and by. Come, put the waiter on
the table, now; see if you can't walk, for once!”

Casting down his eyes with an irresistible look of mock
solemnity, Tomtit marched with the waiter, and placed it
by his mistress.

The good lady, after drawing off her gloves and making
sundry little decorous preparations, said a short grace over
her meal, during which time Tomtit seemed to be holding
his sides with repressed merriment; then, gravely laying hold
of the handle of the teapot she stopped short, gave an
exclamation, and flirted her fingers, as she felt it almost
scalding hot.

“Tomtit, I do believe you intend to burn me to death,
some day!”

“Laws, missus, dat are hot? O, sure I was tickler to set
the nose round to the fire.”

“No, you did n't! you stuck the handle right into the
fire, as you 're always doing!”

“Laws, now, wonder if I did,” said Tomtit, assuming an
abstracted appearance. “'Pears as if never can 'member
which dem dare is nose, and which handle. Now, I 's a
studdin on dat dare most all de morning — was so,” said

he, gathering confidence, as he saw, by Nina's dancing
eyes, how greatly she was amused.

“You need a sound whipping, sir — that 's what you
need!” said Mrs. Nesbit, kindling up in sudden wrath.

“O, I knows it,” said Tomtit. “We 's unprofitable servants,
all on us. Lord's marcy that we an't 'sumed, all on
us!”

Nina was so completely overcome by this novel application
of the text which she had heard her aunt laboriously
drumming into Tomtit, the Sabbath before, that she laughed
aloud, with rather uproarious merriment.

“O, aunt, there 's no use! He don't know anything!
He 's nothing but an incarnate joke, a walking hoax!”

“No, I does n't know nothing, Miss Nina,” said Tomtit,
at the same time looking out from under his long eyelashes.
“Don't know nothing at all — never can.”

“Well, now, Tomtit,” said Mrs. Nesbit, drawing out a
little blue cowhide from under her chair, and looking at
him resolutely, “you see, if this teapot handle is hot again,
I 'll give it to you! Do you hear?”

“Yes, missis,” said Tomtit, with that indescribable sing-song
of indifference, which is so common and so provoking
in his class.

“And, now, Tomtit, you go down stairs and clean the
knives for dinner.”

“Yes, missis,” said he, pirouetting towards the door.
And once in the passage, he struck up a vigorous “O, I 'm
going to glory, won't you go along with me;” accompanying
himself, by slapping his own sides, as he went down two
stairs at a time.

“Going to glory!” said Mrs. Nesbit, rather shortly; “he
looks like it, I think! It 's the third or fourth time that that
child has blistered my fingers with this teapot, and I know
he does it on purpose! So ungrateful, when I spend my
time, teaching him, hour after hour, laboring with him so!
I declare, I don't believe these children have got any
souls!”

“Well, aunt, I declare, I should think you 'd get out of
all patience with him; yet he 's so funny, I cannot, for the
life of me, help laughing.”

Here a distant whoop on the staircase, and a tempestuous
chorus to a methodist hymn, with the words, “O come, my
loving brethren,” announced that Tomtit was on the return;
and very soon, throwing open the door, he marched in, with
an air of the greatest importance.

“Tomtit, did n't I tell you to go and clean the knives?”

“Law, missis, come up here to bring Miss Nina's love-letters,”
said he, producing two or three letters. “Good
law, though,” said he, checking himself, “forgot to put
them on a waity!” and, before a word could be said, he
was out of the room and down stairs, and at the height of
furious contest with the girl who was cleaning the silver,
for a waiter to put Miss Nina's letters on.

“Dar, Miss Nina,” appealing to her when she appeared,
“Rosa won't let me have no waity!”

“I could pull your hair for you, you little image!” said
Nina, seizing the letters from his hands, and laughing while
she cuffed his ears.

“Well,” said Tomtit, looking after her with great solemnity,
“missis in de right on 't. An't no kind of order
in this here house, 'pite of all I can do. One says put letters
on waity. Another one won't let you have waity to
put letters on. And, finally, Miss Nina, she pull them all
away. Just the way things going on in dis yer house, all
the time! I can't help it; done all I can. Just the way
missus says!”

There was one member of Nina's establishment of a
character so marked that we cannot refrain from giving her
a separate place in our picture of her surroundings, — and
this was Milly, the waiting-woman of Aunt Nesbit.

Aunt Milly, as she was commonly called, was a tall, broad-shouldered,
deep-chested African woman, with a fulness
of figure approaching to corpulence. Her habit of standing
and of motion was peculiar and majestic, reminding one of

the Scripture expression “upright as the palm-tree.” Her
skin was of a peculiar blackness and softness, not unlike
black velvet. Her eyes were large, full, and dark, and had
about them that expression of wishfulness and longing
which one may sometimes have remarked in dark eyes.
Her mouth was large, and the lips, though partaking of the
African fulness, had, nevertheless, something decided and
energetic in their outline, which was still further seconded
by the heavy moulding of the chin. A frank smile, which
was common with her, disclosed a row of most splendid
and perfect teeth. Her hair, without approaching to the
character of the Anglo-Saxon, was still different from the
ordinary woolly coat of the negro, and seemed more like
an infinite number of close-knotted curls, of brilliant,
glossy blackness.

The parents of Milly were prisoners taken in African
wars; and she was a fine specimen of one of those warlike
and splendid races, of whom, as they have seldom been reduced
to slavery, there are but few and rare specimens
among the slaves of the south.

Her usual head-dress was a high turban, of those brilliant
colored Madras handkerchiefs in which the instinctive taste
of the dark races leads them to delight. Milly's was
always put on and worn with a regal air, as if it were the
coronet of the queen. For the rest, her dress consisted of
a well-fitted gown of dark stuff, of a quality somewhat finer
than the usual household apparel. A neatly-starched white
muslin handkerchief folded across her bosom, and a clean
white apron, completed her usual costume.

No one could regard her, as a whole, and not feel their
prejudice in favor of the exclusive comeliness of white races
somewhat shaken. Placed among the gorgeous surroundings
of African landscape and scenery, it might be doubted
whether any one's taste could have desired, as a completion
to her appearance, to have blanched the glossy skin whose
depth of coloring harmonizes so well with the intense and
fiery glories of a tropical landscape.

In character, Milly was worthy of her remarkable external
appearance. Heaven had endowed her with a soul as
broad and generous as her ample frame. Her passions
rolled and burned in her bosom with a tropical fervor; a
shrewd and abundant mother wit, united with a vein of
occasional drollery, gave to her habits of speech a quaint
vivacity.

A native adroitness gave an unwonted command over
all the functions of her fine body; so that she was endowed
with that much-coveted property which the New Englander
denominates “faculty,” which means the intuitive ability
to seize at once on the right and best way of doing everything
which is to be done. At the same time, she was possessed
of that high degree of self-respect which led her to
be incorruptibly faithful and thorough in all she undertook;
less, as it often seemed, from any fealty or deference to
those whom she served, than from a kind of native pride in
well-doing, which led her to deem it beneath herself to
slight or pass over the least thing which she had undertaken.
Her promises were inviolable. Her owners always knew
that what she once said would be done, if it were within
the bounds of possibility.

The value of an individual thus endowed in person and
character may be easily conceived by those who understand
how rare, either among slaves or freemen, is such a combination.
Milly was, therefore, always considered in the
family as a most valuable piece of property, and treated
with more than common consideration.

As a mind, even when uncultivated, will ever find its level,
it often happened that Milly's amount of being and force
of character gave her ascendency even over those who were
nominally her superiors. As her ways were commonly
found to be the best ways, she was left, in most cases, to
pursue them without opposition or control. But, favorite
as she was, her life had been one of deep sorrows. She
had been suffered, it is true, to contract a marriage with a
very finely-endowed mulatto man, on a plantation adjoining

her owner's, by whom she had a numerous family of children,
who inherited all her fine physical and mental endowments.
With more than usual sensibility and power of
reflection, the idea that the children so dear to her were
from their birth not her own, — that they were, from the first
hour of their existence, merchantable articles, having a fixed
market value in proportion to every excellence, and liable
to all the reverses of merchantable goods, — sank with deep
weight into her mind. Unfortunately, the family to which
she belonged being reduced to poverty, there remained,
often, no other means of making up the deficiency of income
than the annual sale of one or two negroes. Milly's
children, from their fine developments, were much-coveted
articles. Their owner was often tempted by extravagant
offers for them; and therefore, to meet one crisis or another
of family difficulties, they had been successively sold from
her. At first, she had met this doom with almost the
ferocity of a lioness; but the blow, oftentimes repeated,
had brought with it a dull endurance, and Christianity had
entered, as it often does with the slave, through the rents
and fissures of a broken heart. Those instances of piety
which are sometimes, though rarely, found among slaves,
and which transcend the ordinary development of the best-instructed,
are generally the results of calamities and afflictions
so utterly desolating as to force the soul to depend on
God alone. But, where one soul is thus raised to higher
piety, thousands are crushed in hopeless imbecility.