All Chapters of Uncle Tom's Cabin: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

It was late in a drizzly afternoon that a traveler alighted at the door of a small country hotel, in the village of N——, in Kentucky. In the barroom he found assembled quite a miscellaneous company, whom stress of weather had driven to harbor, and the place presented the usual scenery of such reunions. Great, tall, raw-boned Kentuckians, attired in hunting-shirts, and trailing their loose joints over a vast extent of territory, with the easy lounge peculiar to the race,—rifles stacked away in the corner, shot-pouches, game-bags, hunting-dogs, and little negroes, all rolled together in the corners,—were the characteristic features in the picture. At each end of the fireplace sat a long-legged gentleman, with his chair tipped back, his hat on his head, and the heels of his muddy boots reposing sublimely on the mantel-piece,—a position, we will inform our readers, decidedly favorable to the turn of reflection incident to western taverns, where travellers exhibit a decided preference for t

A quiet scene now rises before us. A large, roomy, neatly-painted kitchen, its yellow floor glossy and smooth, and without a particle of dust; a neat, well-blacked cooking-stove; rows of shining tin, suggestive of unmentionable good things to the appetite; glossy green wood chairs, old and firm; a small flag-bottomed rocking-chair, with a patch-work cushion in it, neatly contrived out of small pieces of different colored woollen goods, and a larger sized one, motherly and old, whose wide arms breathed hospitable invitation, seconded by the solicitation of its feather cushions,—a real comfortable, persuasive old chair, and worth, in the way of honest, homely enjoyment, a dozen of your plush or brochetelle drawing-room gentry; and in the chair, gently swaying back and forward, her eyes bent on some fine sewing, sat our fine old friend Eliza. Yes, there she is, paler and thinner than in her Kentucky home, with a world of quiet sorrow lying under the shadow of her long eyelashes, and marki

Since the thread of our humble hero’s life has now become interwoven with that of higher ones, it is necessary to give some brief introduction to them.Augustine St. Clare was the son of a wealthy planter of Louisiana. The family had its origin in Canada. Of two brothers, very similar in temperament and character, one had settled on a flourishing farm in Vermont, and the other became an opulent planter in Louisiana. The mother of Augustine was a Huguenot French lady, whose family had emigrated to Louisiana during the days of its early settlement. Augustine and another brother were the only children of their parents. Having inherited from his mother an exceeding delicacy of constitution, he was, at the instance of physicians, during many years of his boyhood, sent to the care of his uncle in Vermont, in order that his constitution might be strengthened by the cold of a more bracing climate.In childhood, he was remarkable for an extreme and marked sensitiveness of character, more akin

There was a gentle bustle at the Quaker house, as the afternoon drew to a close. Rachel Halliday moved quietly to and fro, collecting from her household stores such needments as could be arranged in the smallest compass, for the wanderers who were to go forth that night. The afternoon shadows stretched eastward, and the round red sun stood thoughtfully on the horizon, and his beams shone yellow and calm into the little bed-room where George and his wife were sitting. He was sitting with his child on his knee, and his wife’s hand in his. Both looked thoughtful and serious and traces of tears were on their cheeks.“Yes, Eliza,” said George, “I know all you say is true. You are a good child,—a great deal better than I am; and I will try to do as you say. I’ll try to act worthy of a free man. I’ll try to feel like a Christian. God Almighty knows that I’ve meant to do well,—tried hard to do well,—when everything has been against me; and now I’ll forget all the past, and put away every hard

"Tom, you needn't get me the horses. I don't want to go," she said."Why not, Miss Eva?""These things sink into my heart, Tom," said Eva,--"they sink into my heart," she repeated, earnestly. "I don't want to go;" and she turned from Tom, and went into the house.A few days after, another woman came, in old Prue's place, to bring the rusks; Miss Ophelia was in the kitchen."Lor!" said Dinah, "what's got Prue?""Prue isn't coming any more," said the woman, mysteriously."Why not?" said Dinah. "she an't dead, is she?""We doesn't exactly know. She's down cellar," said the woman, glancing at Miss Ophelia.After Miss Ophelia had taken the rusks, Dinah followed the woman to the door."What _has_ got Prue, any how?" she said.The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in low, mysterious tone."Well, you mustn't tell nobody, Prue, she got drunk agin,--and they had her down cellar,--and thar they left her all day,--and I hearn 'em saying that the _flies had go