Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

'Sarved yer right, for lettin' on him out,' interposed that grim utilist
Jonas, our hired man. He had entered, pending the narrative, and stood,
_arrectis auribus_, by the door.

'Mercy on us! didn't it hurt?'

'Yes; but not more than might easily be borne. It didn't seem like
biting--more like the strong, hard grip of a vice than any thing
else--puncture quite lost in constriction. My viznomy, I am told, was a
study: supreme disgust, tempered with divine philosophy.'

'And how on earth did you get away from him?'

'By not trying to; kept as still as a mouse, till he had bitten all he
wanted to, which took about a minute. Then he let go, and walked quietly
off, to see if he couldn't bite somebody else. I afterward improved our
acquaintance by giving him sugar-cane and a licking or two; but he was
always an ill-conditioned brute, not amenable to reason, and when we
came to New York, gave no end of trouble, by getting over the side and
running up the North River on the ice--I dare say he scented the
Catskills--the whole waterside whooping and hallooing in chase after
him. Ah! I could tell you a better story than that, of a wild beast
aboard a ship!'

'Do, then.'

'It was told me by an ancient mariner, who knows how many years ago? for
I'm getting to be an old fellow myself, children.'

'What nonsense, Dick! talk about _your_ being old.'

'Well, never mind. I'll try to give it to you in his own words. Said he:

"I never see a nigger turn white but once, and that was aboard of the
old 'Emperor.' We was bound from Calcutta, to Boston, and had aboard an
elephant, a big Bengal tiger, and a lot of other wild creturs, for a
menagerie. Well, one forenoon, blowing a good topsail breeze, as it
might be to-day, but more sea than wind, we was going large, and I up on
the main-yard, turning in a splice. All to once, I heerd a strange
noise, and looked down. There was the black cook, shinning of it up,
making a great hullibaloo, and shaking the tormentors behind him--that's
a big iron fork he has in the galley. His face was as white as a
table-cloth. Close behind him was the tiger, who had got out of his cage
somehow, and, snuffing the grub, had made tracks for the coppers.

"All the watch, by this time, was tumbling up the rigging, fore and aft.
The tiger he tried two or three of the ratlins, but thought it onsafe,
so he let himself down, mighty careful, to the deck. The companion-way
was open, and he dived into the cabin. The captain lay asleep on the
transom, and never waked up. The cretur didn't touch him, but come up
agin, and poked his nose into, the door of the mate's room, that was a
little on the jar. The mate see him, and gin him a kick in the face, and
slammed the door agin him. That made him mad, and he tried to get in at
the little window; but his head was so big, he couldn't begin. Did you
ever mind what eyes them devils has? They've got a kind of cruel,
murderin' look that no other beast has, that I ever see. Well, he give
it up, and went aft. Then, a kind of a sick feelin' come over me; for,
d'ye see, there was _one_ man that couldn't leave no way!'

"The man at the wheel?'

"Ay, shipmet! He saw the tiger comin', for he turned as pale as death;
but he didn't look at him, and never stirred tack or sheet. He stuck
right on to the spokes, and steered her as true as a die; and well he
did, for if he hadn't, we'd a broached to in five seconds, and that
would a been wuss than the tiger. Well, the cussed beast went close up
to him, and actually snuffed at him. You may judge what a relief it was
to us when he left him, at last, and come for'ard. There was a sheep in
the long-boat, and, as he was cruising about decks, he smelt it, and
grabbed it, and was suckin' its blood in a jiffy; so we managed to get a
slip-knot over him, and hauled taut on it from aloft. Then a young
fellow went down with a line, and wound it round and round him, till he
couldn't stir, and at last, with a heap of trouble, we got him stowed in
his cage again, sheep and all; for he never let go on it.'

"And what was done for the man at the wheel?'

"Well, sir, nothing; he was only doing his duty."

'That was too bad! Now tell us another--tell us some more about shows?'

'Shows, chickabiddy? I've not seen any of late. The last was the
What-Is-It.'

'Well, and what _was_ it?'

'That is more than I can tell you. The proprietor is constantly asking
the question, and has even gone to the expense of repeatedly
advertising. I shouldn't wonder if, by this time, he had gotten a
satisfactory response. I went and listened to the customary description.
The silence that ensued was broken by a miserable skeptic, whose
ill-regulated aspirations betrayed his insular prejudice, 'Vot is it?
arf hanimal, eh? t'other day, I stuck a pin into him, and ses he, '_Dam
yez!_' Vot is it, eh?'

'Thus did this wretch, by implication, endeavor to unsettle the opinions
of the audience, none too definite, perhaps, before.

'It is singular the distrust with which a thankless public has long come
to regard the efforts of one whose aim it has ever been to combine
instruction with amusement. Do you remember an itinerant expedition sent
forth, years ago, by the same grand purveyor? There was a Car of
Juggernaut, you may recollect, drawn by twenty little pigs of elephants.
That show I also attended, and was well repaid for going. Near the
entrance of the tent was a large cage, peopled with the gayest denizens
of tropic life, macaws, cockatoos, paroquets--what know I?--a feathered
iridescence, that sulked prehensile or perched paradisiacal in their
iron house. Two youths entered; one paused admiringly. 'Come along,
Jack,' remonstrated the other, hurrying him on by the arm, 'them darned
things is only painted.' He wasn't going to see his friend imposed upon
and his admiration extorted under false pretenses. Not if _he_ knew it!
Mr. B---- couldn't do _him!_

'Painted! Ay, Jonathan--and if Church or Kensett, look you, could only
get at those pigments! could find the oil-and-color men that filled that
order! ah me! what opaline skies! what amethystine day-breaks! what
incarnadine sunsets we should have! The palette for that work was laid
by angels, from tubes long hidden in the choicest crypts of the vast
elaboratory, and those transcendent tints.

'Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on,'

Painted! to be sure.

'For this wicked specimen of infidelity, I was presently overpaid by a
charming bit of belief. At the further end of the great tent was a case,
containing divers wax effigies of eminent personages; the Czar, Prince
Albert, General Spitzentuyfel--what know I? You may see them any day,
(if you happen to have two York shillings,) at the sumptuous home to
which they have returned from those travels. There they stood, side by
side, an imposing company, forever shiny in the face, like Mrs.
Wittitterly's page, and with eyes magnificently superior to any thing so
sordid as speculation. All were finely befrogged, and ruched, and
epauletted, and, for the most part, they sported moustaches. It happened
that I had the latter adornment--a variety then--on my own mug.

While recognizing them--they were old acquaintances--I felt a gentle
pull at my skirt, and looking down, was aware of a little _tot_, some
three years old, who asked, pointing to the counterfeit presentments in
the show-case: 'Did _you_ come out o' there?' The innocent! he little
knew what an extinguisher he was clapping on me. 'No, sonny,' said I,
looking down on the little nose, itself a bit of wax, between two
peaches. The soft impeachment proceeded--'Well, where do yer belong? do
yer belong in with the _bear_?' for there was a plantigrade there too.
But I reckon that will do for bears, this time.'

'I should think so! They'll be dreaming about 'em all night.'

'Dick, how much of all this is true?'

'The whole, barring a few verbal interpolations.'

'Wal, I've seed shows,' moralized Jonas, 'a good many on 'em; but I
couldn't tell the yarns about 'em that Mr. Richard, here, does. He
figurs on 'em considerable, I 'xpect.''

* * * * *

FUGITIVES AT THE WEST.

A distinguished French writer once remarked, that the position of the
colored race in America includes in itself every element of romance. The
fortunes of this great human family; its relations to the white race,
with which it is growing up side by side; its developments, its
struggles, and its coming destiny, must hold in the future an historic
interest of which it would be difficult beforehand to form an
intelligent appreciation. The political events of the last few months
have fairly opened this new historic page; and though, for the most
part, its recording lines still lie behind the cloud, the first few
words, charged with deep import to us and to all men, are becoming
legible to every eye.

We can no longer view the colored race as a mere mass of ignorance and
degradation lying quiescent beneath the white man's foot, and, except as
a useful species of domestic animal, of little consequence to us or to
the world. We see to-day, its fortunes and those of our own race blended
together in a great struggle based on political, moral, and religious
questions, and leading to a series of events of which not one of us as
yet can foretell the conclusion.

The collective romance of the race is now but just opening to us; but
its individual romance dawned upon us years ago. Long as we can
remember, we have heard of one and another of that depressed people
struggling to escape from an overwhelming bondage. We have known that
such attempts were marked by scenes of thrilling interest, by intense
earnestness of purpose, by the most powerful emotions of hope and fear,
by startling adventures, ending sometimes in hopeless tragedy, sometimes
in a dearly-bought success. Before the fugitive lay on one hand death,
or worse than death; on the other, liberty beneath the cold North-star.

Some years ago, these elements of romance, with the moral principles
lying at their root, were laid hold of by Mrs. Stowe. The wonderful
enthusiasm with which her work was received, the avidity with which it
was read all the world over, showed how wide and deep was the sympathy
which the position of the colored race in America was calculated to
excite.

I suppose there are few people living on the border-line dividing the
North from the South, who can not recall exciting incidents and scenes
of painful interest connected with the fugitive slave, occurring within
their own knowledge, and often beneath their own eyes. During the few
years when I grew from childhood to youth, in the neighborhood of
Cincinnati, I can recall many such incidents. I remember being startled,
from time to time, by sorrowful events of this nature that so frequently
occur in Western cities, owing to their close proximity to the South,
and to the continual arrival of steamboats from the slaveholding States.
Once I remember, it was a family of half-caste children, brought to the
very levee by their white father. He had made the journey during his
death-struggle, hoping to leave his children free men upon free ground:
but just as he approached the levee, he died; and his heir, in eager
pursuit, seized the children around their father's lifeless form, before
they had time to land, and hurried them away, his hopeless, helpless
slaves. Then it was a woman with a child in her arms, flying through the
great thoroughfares of the city, with her pursuers behind her--a mad,
wild, brutal chase. Then it was a pretty mulatto child, the pride and
delight of its parents, abstracted in the evening by prowling thieves,
from a colored family in our immediate vicinity. Lost forever! never
more to be heard of by its terrified and sorrowing parents! Then came
the terrible tragedy of that poor mother who, being seized as she was
escaping with her children, and thrown into jail, 'preferred for her
dear ones the guardianship of angels to the oppression of man,' and
killed them in the prison with her own hands, one by one, the jailer
only entering in time to arrest the knife as she was about to strike it
into her own despairing heart.

But though from time to time circumstances such as these were noised
abroad and made known to all, I knew that there were innumerable
thrilling stories, often less tragic in their conclusion, known only to
the more successful fugitive and his own immediate friends. I heard
rumors of an underground railway, as it was termed, a mysterious agency
keeping watch for fugitives, and assisting them on their journey,
passing them on secretly and speedily from point to point on their way
to Canada. I knew that such a combination existed on my right hand and
on my left, and under my very eyes; but who might be concerned in it, or
how it might be managed, I could not in the least divine. One day a
gleam of light came to me upon the subject. Our minister, a good old
man, who preached with great eloquence on the subject of human
depravity, and pointedly enough upon many of the sins of the age, but
who had never taken any clear and open ground on the subject of slavery,
had a daughter who was warmly and avowedly anti-slavery in principle. We
became friends; and as my intimacy with her increased, we sometimes
spoke of the fugitives.

One day she owned to me that she had some connection with this
underground railway, principally in the way of providing with old
clothing the destitute creatures who were arriving--generally at
unexpected moments--barefoot, and with scarce a rag upon their backs to
protect them from the bitter cold of the Canadian winter, which even
under the best circumstances is so sadly trying to the negro
constitution.

She told me that as the agents in the neighborhood were few and poor,
and as these sudden calls admitted of no delay, they were sometimes
unable to provide the required clothing; and she asked me, in case of
such an emergency, if she might sometimes apply to me for some of the
articles of which they might be in especial need. From that time Canada
became the ultimate destination of all my old clothes. I could imagine
superannuated cloaks and shawls wrapped around dusky and shivering
shoulders, and familiar bonnets walking about Canada in their old age on
the woolly heads of poor fugitive negro women.

It was but a short time after our conversation that the first call came.
One bitter winter's night, word was sent me that a family had
arrived--father, mother, and several young children, all utterly
destitute. The articles which their friends were least able to provide,
and which would therefore be particularly acceptable, were shoes for the
boys, and warm clothing of every kind for the woman. The latter
requirement was soon provided for. An old purple bonnet that had already
seen good service in the world, a quilted skirt, and sundry other
articles were soon looked up and repaired to meet the poor creature's
necessities--but shoes for the boys! The message had been very urgent
upon that point. Shoes! shoes! any sort of shoes! Now our boys had, for
the most part, grown up and departed, and in vain I rummaged through the
garret--that receptacle of ancient treasures--for relics of the past, in
the way of masculine shoes and boots. I was giving it up in despair,
when suddenly an idea occurred to me. It had happened, in days long
past, that a French lady of our acquaintance had broken up housekeeping,
and we had stored a part of her furniture in our spacious garrets. Ere
long it had all been reclaimed except two articles, which had somehow or
other remained behind. The first was a handsomely mounted crayon
drawing, representing a remarkably ugly young man with heavy features
and a most unprepossessing expression of countenance. Below this
drawing, maternal pride and affection had caused to be inscribed in
clear, bold letters, these two words: 'My Son.' The second piece of
property remaining behind with 'my son's portrait, were 'my son's
elegant French boots--a wonderful pair, shiny as satin, and of some
peculiar and exquisite style, long and narrow, with sharp-pointed and
slightly turned-up toes. They were of beautiful workmanship, but being
made of a firm and unaccommodating material, and in form utterly
unadapted to any possible human foot, they had probably pinched 'my
son's feet so unendurably that no amount of masculine vanity or
fortitude could long support the torture, and with a sigh of regret he
had no doubt been forced to relinquish them ere their first early bloom
had departed, or the beautiful texture of the sole-leather had lost its
delicate, creamy tint. These two articles had long lain in a corner of
the garret, to the infinite amusement of the children of the family, who
were never weary of allusions to 'my son,' and 'my son's boots. In
process of time the portrait also was reclaimed, but the deserted boots
still occupied their corner of the garret, year after year, until there
were no children left to crack their jokes at their comical and
dandified appearance. Upon these elegant French boots I pounced, in this
sore dilemma, and as my messenger was waiting, without time for a
moment's reflection, I bundled them in with the rest of the articles,
and dispatched them at once to their destination.

Scarcely had the messenger departed than I sat down to laugh. I thought
of the brother, who had especially distinguished himself in his boyish
days, by witticisms upon those famous boots, and I recalled to mind,
also, a slightly exaggerated description of the negro foot, with which
he had been wont to indulge his young companions. This foot he would
describe as very broad and flat, with the leg planted directly in the
centre, leaving an equal length for the toes in front and for the heel
behind.

Now, although I had never given credence to these exact proportions, I
still remained under the impression that there was a peculiarity in the
negro foot, that the heel was somewhat more protuberant than in the
European foot, and rather broad, it might also well be supposed to be,
in its natural and unpinched condition. The whole scene came vividly
before my imagination; the unfortunate family handing round in dismay
those exquisite French boots, vainly striving, one after another, to
insert their toes into them, but finding among their number no
Cinderella whom the wonderful shoe would fit. I figured them at last
descending to a little fellow six years old, or thereabouts, whose poor
little feet might possibly be planted in the centre of the boots, and
thus, in default of any other protection, be saved for a time from frost
and snow. My mind was divided between amusement at the final destination
of these celebrated relics, and regret that I had nothing more suitable
to send. I could only hope that this part of the poor fugitives' outfit
might be more successfully provided for from some other quarter.

Winter passed by; spring came, succeeded by long, hot mid-summer days of
the western summer. Our neighbors, for the most part, were scattered to
the North and East--gone to the lakes, to New-York, to Boston, or to
some summer resort upon the Atlantic coast--all who could, breaking the
long-continued and oppressive heat by a pleasant excursion to some
cooler clime. My friend, the minister's daughter, and most of our own
family, had gone like the rest, and I was left in a somewhat solitary
state to while away the long hours of those burning summer days, in the
monotony of a large and empty country-house.

One day at noon, I strolled to the door, seeking a breath of air. I
stood within the doorway, and looked out. Before me extended a level
tract of green grass, thinly planted with young shade-trees. At some
distance beyond, melting away in haze beneath the glowing sun, a little
wood extended toward the north-east, meeting at its extremity another
and denser wood of much greater extent. This first little wood had been
in our young days our favorite resort. We had explored every turn in it
again and again; we knew well every tree upon its outskirts, beneath
whose shade some little patch of green grass might serve for a
resting-place, or a pic-nic ground; we were familiar with every old
trunk with wide-extending roots, in whose protecting cavities that
little, speckled, pepper-and-salt-looking flower, the spring harbinger,
nestled, peeping forth toward the end of March, ere the ice and snow had
well melted, or any other green thing dared show itself. Deeper in the
shade lay the soft beds of decaying leaves, where somewhat later the
spring beauties would start forth, clothing the brown and purple tints
of the ground with touches of delicate pink. With them would come that
fair little wind-flower, the white anemone, and the blue and yellow
violets, soon to be followed by that loveliest of all Ohio wild flowers,
called by the country people, 'Dutchman's breeches,' but in more refined
parlance, denominated 'pantalettes,' looking for all the world as if the
fairies had just done a day's washing and hung out their sweet little
nether garments to dry, suspended in rows from the tiny rods that so
gracefully bend beneath the pretty burden. Pure white are they, or of
such a delicate flesh-tint, the fairy washerwoman might well be proud of
her work. Other spots were sacred to the yellow lily, with its singular,
fierce-looking leaf, spotted like a panther's hide, growing in solitary
couples, protecting between them the slender stalk with its drooping
yellow bell. Later in the season come the larger and more brilliantly
tinted flowers, the wild purple larkspur, the great yellow buttercup,
and the lilac flox. There were dusky depths in the wood, too, into
which, book in hand, we sometimes retreated from the mid-summer heat
into an atmosphere of moist and murky coolness. There we found the
Indian pipe, or ghost-flower--leaf, stem, and flower, all white as wax,
turning to coal-black if long brought into light, or if pressed between
the leaves of a book.

This first little wood, then, though somewhat dark and damp, had its
pleasant and cheerful associations; but the wood beyond was weird and
dismal, with its dense shade, its fallen trees rotting in dark gullies,
its depth of decaying leaves, into which your feet sank down and down,
until in alarm you doubted whether there were really any footing
beneath, or if it would be possible ever to extricate yourself again.
These two woods touched only at one point, included in an angle between
a little burying-ground, whose solemn associations increased the gloom
of the farther wood. As children, we had been wont, in adventurous
moods, to cross one corner of the burying-ground, and striking into a
ravine within this wood, down which trickled a little dark stream, wade
up it barefoot, with grave, half-awe-stricken faces, until the stream
sank again beneath the dead leaves, emptying itself I know not where. We
had given wild and fantastic names to some of the ways and places about
this ravine, but the rest of the wood was so little attractive and
enjoyable that we generally avoided it, unless in some ramble of unusual
length, we wished to strike across one portion of it, making thereby a
somewhat shorter cut into the turnpike road a mile or two beyond.

As I stood this hot summer-day looking toward the woods, suddenly there
stood before me a strongly-made middle-aged negro woman. Whether she had
glided round the house, or in what way she had come so suddenly and
quietly before me, I do not know; but there she stood, bare-headed, and
humbly asking for a piece of bread, or any cold food that I could spare.
Her appearance struck me with surprise; her skin was of a deep, rich,
yellow brown, her face soft and kindly in expression, but wonderfully
swollen, and with the appearance of being one mass of bruises. Her red,
inflamed eyes seemed to weep incessantly and involuntarily; whatever
might be the expression of her mouth, so inflamed and suffering were
they, that they were pitiful to see; and to complete the picture, the
stump of one of her arms, which had been severed at some former period,
close to the shoulder, was but partially hidden by her ragged,
low-necked dress. Her whole appearance struck me as the most pathetic I
had ever beheld.

I speedily brought the poor thing some bread and cold meat, which she
received with warm expressions of gratitude; and she then told me that
she was a fugitive slave, and having come here at night with her
husband, at the approach of day they had hidden themselves within the
wood.

'And oh!' she said, 'you would be sorry if you could see my husband. He
is not an old man at all, but you would think he was very old, if you
could see him; his hair is so white, his face is so wrinkled, and his
back all bowed down. He is so cowed and frightened that he doesn't dare
come out of the wood, though he is almost starving. We ran away a little
while ago, and they caught us and took us down the river to Louisville;
and there they just knocked us down on the ground like beeves that they
were going to kill, and beat us until we could neither stand nor move.
The moment we got a chance, we ran away again. But my poor husband
shakes like a leaf, and can not travel far at once, he is so
frightened.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20