Dred great dismal ebook

You will bring your negroes up to a point in which they will meet the current of [Pg 20] the whole community against them, and meanwhile you will get no credit with the Abolitionists. They will call you a cutthroat, pirate, sheep-stealer, and all the rest of their elegant little list of embellishments, all the same.

You'll get a state of things that nobody can manage but yourself, and you by the hardest; and then you'll die, and it'll all run to the devil faster than you run it up. Now, if you would do the thing by halves, it wouldn't be so bad; but I know you of old.

You won't be satisfied with teaching a catechism and a few hymns, parrot-wise, which I think is a respectable religious amusement for our women. You'll teach 'em all to read, and write, and think, and speak. I shouldn't wonder to hear of an importation of black-boards and spelling-books. You'll want a lyceum and debating society. Pray, what does sister Anne say to all this?

Anne is a sensible girl now, but I'll warrant you've got her to go in for it. I have an excellent man, who enters fully into my views, who takes charge of the business interests of the plantation, instead of one of these scoundrel overseers. There is to be a graduated system of work and wages introduced—a system that shall teach the nature and rights of property and train to habits of industry and frugality, by making every man's acquirements equal to his industry and good conduct.

Are you going to live for them, or they for you? The strong ought to live for the weak—the cultivated for the ignorant. I'm in earnest now—fact!

Though I know you won't do it, yet I wish you could. It's a pity, Clayton, you were born in this world. It isn't you, but our planet and planetary ways, that are in fault. Your mind is a splendid storehouse—gold and gems of Ophir—but they are all up in the fifth story, and no staircase to get 'em down into common life.

Now I've just enough appreciation of the sort of thing that's in you, not to laugh at you. Nine out of ten would. To tell you the truth, if I were already set up in [Pg 21] life, and had as definite a position as you have,—family, friends, influence, and means,—why, perhaps I might afford to cultivate this style of thing.

But I tell you what it is, Clayton, such a conscience as yours is cursedly expensive to keep. It's like a carriage—a fellow mustn't set it up unless he can afford it. It's one of the luxuries. I can't afford it. I've got my way to make. I must succeed , and with your ultra notions I couldn't succeed. So there it is. After all, I can be as religious as dozens of your most respectable men, who have taken their seats in the night-train for Paradise, and keep the daylight for their own business.

There's just the difference between us. The family party, which was now ushered in, consisted of Clayton's father, mother, and sister. Judge Clayton was a tall, dignified, elderly personage, in whom one recognized, at a glance, the gentleman of the old school. His hair, snowy white, formed a singular contrast with the brightness of his blue eyes, whose peculiar acuteness of glance might remind one of a falcon.

There was something stately in the position of the head and the carriage of the figure, and a punctilious exactness in the whole air and manner, that gave one a slight impression of sternness. The clear, sharp blue of his eye seemed to be that of a calm and decided intellect, of a logical severity of thought; and contrasted with the silvery hair with that same expression of cold beauty that is given by the contrast of snow mountains cutting into the keen, metallic blue of an Alpine sky.

One should apprehend much to fear from such a man's reason—little to hope from any outburst of his emotional nature. Yet, as a man, perhaps injustice was done to Judge Clayton by this first impression; for there was, deep beneath this external coldness, a severely-repressed nature, of the most fiery and passionate vehemence. His family affections were strong and tender, seldom manifested in words, but always by the most exact appreciation and consideration for all who came within his sphere.

Clayton was a high-bred, elderly lady, whose well-preserved delicacy of complexion, brilliant dark eyes, and fine figure, spoke of a youth of beauty. Of a nature imaginative, impulsive, and ardent, inclining constantly to generous extremes, she had thrown herself with passionate devotion round her [Pg 23] clear-judging husband, as the Alpine rose girdles with beauty the breast of the bright, pure glacier. Between Clayton and his father there existed an affection deep and entire; yet, as the son developed to manhood, it became increasingly evident that they could never move harmoniously in the same practical orbit.

The nature of the son was so veined and crossed with that of the mother, that the father, in attempting the age-long and often-tried experiment of making his child an exact copy of himself, found himself extremely puzzled and confused in the operation.

Clayton was ideal to an excess; ideality colored every faculty of his mind, and swayed all his reasonings, as an unseen magnet will swerve the needle. Ideality pervaded his conscientiousness, urging him always to rise above the commonly-received and so-called practical in morals. Hence, while he worshipped the theory of law, the practice filled him with disgust; and his father was obliged constantly to point out deficiencies in reasonings, founded more on a keen appreciation of what things ought to be, than on a practical regard to what they are.

Nevertheless, Clayton partook enough of his father's strong and steady nature to be his mother's idol, who, perhaps, loved this second rendering of the parental nature with even more doting tenderness than the first.

Anne Clayton was the eldest of three sisters, and the special companion and confidant of the brother; and, as she stands there untying her bonnet-strings, we must also present her to the reader. She is a little above the medium height, with that breadth and full development of chest which one admires in English women. She carries her well-formed head on her graceful shoulders with a positive, decided air, only a little on this side of haughtiness.

Her clear brown complexion reddens into a fine glow in the cheek, giving one the impression of sound, perfect health. The positive outline of the small aquiline nose; the large, frank, well-formed mouth, with its clear rows of shining teeth; the brown eyes, which have caught something of the falcon keenness of the father, are points in the picture by no means to be overlooked. Taking her air altogether, there was an honest frankness about her which encouraged conversation, and put one instantly at ease.

Yet no man in his senses could ever venture to take the slightest liberty with Anne [Pg 24] Clayton. With all her frankness, there was ever in her manner a perfectly-defined "thus far shalt thou come, and no further.

Yet Anne Clayton was twenty-seven, and unmarried. Everybody wondered why; and as to that, we can only wonder with the rest. Her own account of the matter was simple and positive. She did not wish to marry—was happy enough without. The intimacy between the brother and sister had been more than usually strong, notwithstanding marked differences of character; for Anne had not a particle of ideality. Sense she had, shrewdness, and a pleasant dash of humor withal; but she was eminently what people call a practical girl.

She admired highly the contrary of all this in her brother; she delighted in the poetic-heroic element in him, for much the same reason that young ladies used to admire Thaddeus of Warsaw and William Wallace—because it was something quite out of her line. In the whole world of ideas she had an almost idolatrous veneration for her brother; in the sphere of practical operations she felt free to assert, with a certain good-natured positiveness, her own superiority.

There was no one in the world, perhaps, of whose judgment in this respect Clayton stood more in awe. At the present juncture of affairs Clayton felt himself rather awkwardly embarrassed in communicating to her an event which she would immediately feel she had a right to know before.

A sister of Anne Clayton's positive character does not usually live twenty-seven years in constant intimacy with a brother like Clayton, without such an attachment as renders the first announcement of a contemplated marriage somewhat painful. Why, then, had Clayton, who always unreservedly corresponded with his sister, not kept her apprised of his gradual attachment to Nina?

The secret of the matter was, that he had had an instinctive consciousness that he could not present Nina to the practical, clear-judging mind of his sister, as she appeared through the mist and spray of his imaginative nature. The hard facts of her case would be sure to tell against her in any communication he might make; and sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts.

Nothing, in fact, is less capable of being justified by technical reasons than those fine [Pg 25] insights into character whereupon affection is built. We have all had experience of preferences which would not follow the most exactly ascertained catalogue of virtues, and would be made captive where there was very little to be said in justification of the captivity. But, meanwhile, rumor, always busy, had not failed to convey to Anne Clayton some suspicions of what was passing; and, though her delicacy and pride forbade any allusion to it, she keenly felt the want of confidence, and of course was not any more charitably disposed towards the little rival for this reason.

But now the matter had attained such a shape in Clayton's mind that he felt the necessity of apprising his family and friends. With his mother the task was made easier by the abundant hopefulness of her nature, which enabled her in a moment to throw herself into the sympathies of those she loved. To her had been deputed the office of first breaking the tidings to Anne, and she had accomplished it during the pleasure-party of the morning.

The first glance that passed between Clayton and his sister, as she entered the room, on her return from the party, showed him that she was discomposed and unhappy.

She did not remain long in the apartment, or seem disposed to join in conversation; and, after a few abstracted moments, she passed through the open door into the garden, and began to busy herself apparently among her plants. Clayton followed her. He came and stood silently beside her for some time, watching her as she picked the dead leaves off her geranium. There was a long pause, and Anne picked off dry leaves and green promiscuously, threatening to demolish the bush. Out with it," said Clayton,—"let's know what the world says of her.

From all I've heard, I should think she must be an unprincipled girl. Why am I the last one to know all this? Why am I to hear it first from reports, and every way but from you? Would I have treated you so? Did I ever have anything that I did not tell you?

Down to my very soul I've always told you everything! Now, you are a positive person, Anne, and this might happen. Would you want to tell me at once? Would you not, perhaps, wait, and hesitate, and put off, for one reason or another, from day to day, and find it grow more and more difficult, the longer you waited? The love I have for you is a whole, perfect thing, just as it was.

See if you do not find me every way as devoted. My heart was only opened to take in another love, another wholly different; and which, because it is so wholly different, never can infringe on the love I bear to you. And, Anne, my dear sister, if you could love her as a part of me"—.

She is not, in the least, the person I should have expected you to fancy, Edward. Of all things I despise a woman who trifles with the affections of gentlemen.

I thought you were an exception, Edward; but there you are. Suppose I am bewitched and enchanted, you cannot disentangle me without indulgence. Say what you will about it, the fact is just this—it is my fate to love this child. I've tried to love many women before. I have seen many whom I knew no sort of reason why I shouldn't love,—handsomer far, more cultivated, more accomplished,—and yet I've seen them without a movement or a flutter of the pulse.

But this girl has awakened all there is to me. I do not see in her what the world sees. I see the ideal image of what she can be, what I'm sure she will be, when her nature is fully awakened and developed.

You glorify an ordinary boarding-school coquette into something symbolic, sublime; you clothe her with all your own ideas, and then fall down to worship her. I am, as you say, ideal,—you, real. Well, be it so; I must act according to what is in me. I have a right to my nature, you to yours. But it is not every person whom I can idealize: and I suspect this is the great reason why I never could love some very fine women, with whom I have associated on intimate terms; they had no capacity of being idealized; they could receive no color from my fancy; they wanted, in short, just what Nina has.

She is just like one of those little whisking, chattering cascades in the White Mountains, and the atmosphere round her is favorable to rainbows.

Why should you find fault with me? It's a pleasant thing to look through a rainbow. Why should you seek to disenchant, if I can be enchanted? Now, [Pg 28] marriage is like that brook: many a poor fellow finds his diamonds turned to slate on the other side; and this is why I put in my plain, hard common sense, against your visions. I see the plain facts about this young girl; that she is an acknowledged flirt, a noted coquette and jilt; and a woman who is so is necessarily heartless; and you are too good, Edward, too noble, I have loved you too long, to be willing to give you up to such a woman.

In the first place, as to coquetry, it isn't the unpardonable sin in my eyes—that is, under some circumstances. But the fact is, Anne, there is so little of true sincerity, so little real benevolence and charity, in the common intercourse of young gentlemen and ladies in society, and our sex, who ought to set the example, are so selfish and unprincipled in their ways of treating women, that I do not wonder that, now and then, a lively girl, who has the power, avenges her sex by playing off our weak points.

Now, I don't think Nina capable of trifling with a real, deep, unselfish attachment—a love which sought her good, and was willing to sacrifice itself for her; but I don't believe any such has ever been put at her disposal. There's a great difference between a man's wanting a woman to love him , and loving her. Wanting to appropriate a woman as a wife does not, of course, imply that a man loves her, or that he is capable of loving anything. All these things girls feel , because their instincts are quick; and they are often accused of trifling with a man's heart, when they only see through him, and know he hasn't any.

Besides, love of power has always been considered a respectable sin in us men; and why should we denounce a woman for loving her kind of power? But I don't like coquettes, for all that; and, then, I'm told Nina Gordon is so very odd, and says and does such very extraordinary things, sometimes. In this conventional world, where women are all rubbed into one uniform [Pg 29] surface, like coins in one's pocket, it's a pleasure now and then to find one who can't be made to do and think like all the rest.

You have a little dash of this merit, yourself, Anne; but you must consider that you have been brought up with mamma, under her influence, trained and guided every hour, even more than you knew.

Nina has grown up an heiress among servants, a boarding-school girl in New York; and, furthermore, you are twenty-seven and she is eighteen, and a great deal may be learned between eighteen and twenty-seven.

Is she not one of the sort that must have a constant round of company and excitement to keep her in spirits? Did you think I meditated such an impertinence?

The last thing I should try, to marry a wife to educate her! It's generally one of the most selfish tricks of our sex. Besides, I don't want a wife who will be a mere mirror of my opinions and sentiments. I don't want an innocent sheet of blotting-paper, meekly sucking up all I say, and giving a little fainter impression of my ideas. I want a wife for an alternative; all the vivacities of life lie in differences. To be sure, the differences must be harmonious.

In music, now, for instance, one doesn't want a repetition of the [Pg 30] same notes, but differing notes that chord. Nay, even discords are indispensable to complete harmony. Now, Nina has just that difference from me which chords with me; and all our little quarrels—for we have had a good many, and I dare say shall have more—are only a sort of chromatic passages,—discords of the seventh, leading into harmony. My life is inward, theorizing, self-absorbed.

I am hypochondriac—often morbid. The vivacity and acuteness of her outer life makes her just what I need. She wakens, she rouses, and keeps me in play; and her quick instincts are often more than a match for my reason. I reverence the child, then, in spite of her faults. She has taught me many things. If you come to talk about reverencing Nina Gordon, I see it's all over with you, Edward, and I'll be good-natured, and make the best of it.

I hope it may all be true that you think, and a great deal more. At all events, no effort of mine shall be wanting to make you as happy in your new relation as you ought to be. It's just like you , sister, and I couldn't say anything better than that. You have unburdened your conscience, you have done all you can for me, and now very properly yield to the inevitation. Nina, I know, will love you; and, if you never try to advise her and influence her, you will influence her very much.

Good people are a long while learning that , Anne. They think to do good to others, by interfering and advising. They don't know that all they have to do is to live. When I first knew Nina, I was silly enough to try my hand that way, myself; but I've learned better. Now, when Nina comes to us, all that you and mamma have got to do is just to be kind to her, and live as you always have lived; and whatever needs to be altered in her, she will alter herself.

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. 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 [Pg 32] 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 [Pg 33] 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 Colonel 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 [Pg 34] 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 [Pg 35] 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 [Pg 36] 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 foothold.

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 [Pg 37] 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 [Pg 38] 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. 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.

Nesbit considered herself very religious; and, as there [Pg 39] 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. 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 belleship.

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 [Pg 40] 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. 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. 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. 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. I have been through it all, and seen the vanity of it.

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.

Now, I don't see that it is any better to think of black silk than it is of pink. You know I thought I'd bring a stock on from New York.

Now, aren'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"—.

Nesbit, shutting her eyes, and shaking her head:—. 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.

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.

And it is the most natural thing in the world to want to wear flowers. I should want to dress prettily, if I were the only person in the world.

I love pretty things because they are pretty. Dred, the titular character, is one of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons, escaped slaves living in the Great Dismal Swamp, preaching angry and violent retribution for the evils of slavery and rescuing escapees from the dog of the slavecatchers. The response to Stowe's first work greatly impacted her second anti-slavery novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin drew criticism from abolitionists and African-American authors for the passive martyrdom of Uncle Tom and endorsement of colonization as the solution to slavery.

Dred, by contrast, introduces a black revolutionary character who is presented as an heir to the American revolution rather than a problem to be expatriated. Dred can thus be placed within an African-American literary tradition as well as a political revision of the sentimental novel see David Walker's Appeal and Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave The novel is also interesting in the historical context of runaway slave communities surviving for a long time in swamp areas.

Swamps were places where runaway slaves could hide, and therefore became a taboo subject, particularly in the south. The best hiding places were found on high ground in swampy areas. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.

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