The Gilded Age | Page 9

ast him to do it? No
indeedy!"
"Do you reckon he saw, us, Uncle Dan'l?
"De law sakes, Chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?".
"Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?"
"No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid o' nuffin--dey
can't nuffin tetch him."
"Well what did you run for?"
"Well, I--I--mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit,

he do-no, what he's 'bout--no sah; dat man do-no what he's 'bout. You
mout take an' tah de head off'n dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it
out. Date's de Hebrew chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt
considable--ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it--heal
right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah, (hair,)
maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn."
"I don't know but what they were girls. I think they were."
"Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a body can't tell
whedder you's a sayin' what you means or whedder you's a sayin' what
you don't mean, 'case you says 'em bofe de same way."
"But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?"
"Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say? 'Sides, don't it
call 'em de HE-brew chil'en? If dey was gals wouldn't dey be de
SHE-brew chil'en? Some people dat kin read don't 'pear to take no
notice when dey do read."
"Well, Uncle Dan'l, I think that-----My! here comes another one up the
river! There can't be two!"
"We gone dis time--we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't two, mars
Clay--days de same one. De Lord kin 'pear eberywhah in a second.
Goodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business,
honey. He comin' now like he fo'got sumfin. Come 'long, chil'en, time
you's gwyne to roos'. Go 'long wid you--ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in
de woods to rastle in prah--de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to
sabe you agin"
He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted,
himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by.
CHAPTER IV.
--Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God,
satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper

him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris'
he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since
many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian
Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons
before his Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)
Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small
steamboat, with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell
rang, the stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the
river. The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after
finding out that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than
they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and
earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an
angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves
thundered. The shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels
was sheer misery to them.
But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors,
and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal
progress through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of
their rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the
pilot house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving
expanses of the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat
fought the mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and
remote from both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the
dead water and the helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely
that the decks were swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and
littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she
regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the
great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went
out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and
occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal
water at its head--and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself
aground, but "smelt" the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that
streamed away from her bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled
forward and passed her under way, and in this instant she leaned far
over on her side, shied from