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132 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; oR,

and they are now returning on this boat, where we have intro-
duced them to our readers. ‘

And now, while the distant domes and spires of New Orleans
rise to our view, there is yet time for an introduction to Miss
Ophelia.

Whoever has travelled in the New England States will remem-
ber, in some cool village, the large farm-house, ‘with its clean-
Swept grassy yard, shaded by the dense and massive foliage of the
sugar-maple ; and remember the air of order and stillness, of per-
petuity and unchanging repose, that seemed to breathe over the
whole place. Nothing lost, or out of order, not a picket loose in
the fence, not a particle of litter in the turfy yard, with its clumps
of lilac-bushes growing up under the windows. Within he will
remember wide, clean rooms, where nothing ever seems to be
doing or going to be done, where everything is once and for
ever rigidly in place, and where all household arrangements move
with the punctual exactness of the old clock in the corner. In
the family “ keeping-room,” as it is termed, he will remember
the staid, respectable old book-case, with its glass doors, where
Rollin’s History, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro-
gress, and Scott’s Family Bible, stand side by side in decorous
order, with multitudes of other books, equally solemn and re-
spectable. There are no servants in the house, but the lady in
the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every after-
noon among her daughters, as if nothing ever had been done, or
were to be done—she and her girls, in some long-forgotten fore
part of the day, “did up the work,” and for the rest of the time,
oe at all hours when you would see them, it is “done up.”

he old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted ; the tables,
the chairs, and the various cooking-utensils, never seem deranged
or disordered ; though three and sometimes four meals a day are
got there, though the family washing and ironing is there per-
formed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some
silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.

On such a farm, in such a house and family, Miss Ophelia had
Spent a quiet existence of some forty-five years, when her cousin
invited her to visit his southern mansion. — The eldest of a large
family, she was still considered by her father and mother as one
of “‘the children,” and the proposal that she should go to Orleans
was @ most momentous one to the family circle. The old grey-
headed father tooksdown Morse’s Atlas out of the book-case, and
looked out the exact latitude and longitude; and read Flint’s
Travels in the South and West, to make up his own mind as to
the nature of the country. :

The good mother inquired, anxiously, “if Orleans wasn’t an
awful wicked place,” saying, “that it seemed to her most equal
to going to the Sandwich Islands, or anywhere among the heathen.”

It was known at the minister's, and at the doctor’s, and at
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