190 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

« At the North !® said St. Clare, with a sudden change of ex-
pression, and resuming something of his habitual and careless
tone. “Pooh! your northern folks are cold-blooded ; you are
cool in everything! You can’t begin to curse up hill and down
as we can when we get fairly at it.”

- « But the question is—” said Miss Ophelia.

“Oh, yes, to be sure, the question is—and a deuce of a question
itis! How came you in this state of sin and misery? Well,
I shall answer in the good old words you used to teach me,
Sundays. I came so by ordinary generation. My servants were
my father’s, and, what is more, my mother’s; and now they are
mine, they and their increase, which bids fair to be a pretty con-
siderable item. My father, you know, came first from New
England ; and he was just such another man as your father—a
regular old Roman; upright, energetic, noble-minded, with an
iron will. Your father settled down in New England, to rule
over rocks and stones, and to force an existence out of Nature ;
and mine settled in Louisiana, to rule over men and women,
and force an existence out of them. My mother,” said St. Clare,
getting up and walking to a picture at the end of the room,
and gazing upward with a face fervent with veneration, “she was
divine! Don't look at me so!—you know what I mean! She
probably was of mortal birth; but, as far as ever I could observe,
there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her;
aud everybody that lives to remember her, whether bond or free,
servant, acquaintance, relation, all say the same. Why, cousin,
that mother has been all that has stood between me and utter
unbelief for years. She was a direct embodiment and personifi-
cation of the New Testament, a living fact, to be accounted for,
and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth. O
mother! mother!” said St. Clare, clasping his hands, in a sort
of transport; and then suddenly checking himself, he came back,
and, seating himself on an ottoman, he went on :—

“My brother and I were twins; and they say, you know, that
twins ought to resemble each other ; but we were in all points a con-
trast. He had black, fiery eyes, coal-black hair, a strong, fine Roman
profile, and atich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden
hair, a Greek outline, and fair complexion. He was active and
observing, I dreamy and inactive. He was generous to his friends
and equals, but proud, dominant, overbearing to inferiors, and
utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself up against him. Truthful
we both were; he from pride and courage, | from a sort of abstract
ideality. We loved each other about as boys generally do, off and
on, and,in general ; he was my father’s pet, and I my mother's.

There was a morbid sensitiveness and acuteness of feeling in
me on all possible subjects, of which he and my father had no
kind of understanding, and with which they could have no possible
sympathy. But mother did ; and so, when I had quarrelled with

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