212 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; OR,

chamber in a way with which even that particular lady could find
no fault. Mortal hands could not lay spread smoother, adjust
pillows more accurately, sweep and dust and arrange more per-
fectly, than Topsy, when she chose—but she didn’t very often
choose. If Miss Ophelia, after three or four days of careful and
patient supervision, was so sanguine as to suppose that Topsy had
at last fallen into her way, could do without overlooking, and so
go off and busy herself about something else, Topsy would hold a
perfect carnival of confusion for some one or two hours. Instead
of making the bed, she would amuse herself with pulling off the
pillow-cases, butting her woolly head among the pillows, till it
would sometimes be grotesquely ornamented with feathers sticking
out in various directions ; she would climb the posts, and hang
head downward from the tops; flourish the sheets and spreads all
over the apartment; dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia’s
night-clothes, and enact various scenic performances with that—
singing and whistling, and making grimaces at herself in the look-
ing-glass ; in short, as Miss Ophelia phrased it, “ raising Cain”
- generally,

On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very best
scarlet India Canton crape shawl wound round her head for a
turban, going on with her rehearsals before the glass in great
style—Miss Ophelia having, with carelessness most unheard of
in her, left the key for once in her drawer.

“ Topsy!” she would say, when at the end of all patience,
‘‘ what does make you act so?”

** Dunno, missis—I spects cause I’s so wicked ?”’

‘JT don’t know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy.”

“ Law, missis, you must whip me; my old missis allers whipped
me. I an’t used to workin’ unless I gets whipped.”

“Why, Topsy, I don’t want to whip you. You can do well, if
you've a mind to; ‘‘ what is the reason you won't ?”

“ Laws, missis, I’s used to whippin’; I spects it’s good for me.”

Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a
terrible comfnotion, screaming, groaning, and imploring ; though
half an hour afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the
balcony, and surrounded by a flock of ‘‘ young uns,” she would
express the utmost contempt of the whole affair.

“Law, Miss Feely whip !—wouldn’t kill a skeeter, her whip-
pin’s. Oughter see how old mas’r made the flesh fly ; old mas'r
know’d how!”

Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enormi-
ties, evidently considering them as something peculiarly distin-
guishing.

“ Law, you niggers,” she would say to some of her auditors,
“does you know you's all sinners? Well, you is, everybody is.
White folks is sinners, too—Miss Feely says so; but I spects
niggers is the biggest ones; but lor! ve an’t any on ye up to me.