Uncle Tom's Cabin: Chapters 6–9

“Sir,” said Mr. Shelby, “if you wish to communicate with me, you must observe something of the decorum of a gentleman. Andy, take Mr. Haley’s hat and riding-whip. Take a seat, sir....”

Somewhat mollified by certain cups of very good coffee, he came out smiling and talking, in tolerably restored humor.

The instant Haley touched the saddle, the mettlesome creature bounded from the earth with a sudden spring, that threw his master sprawling, some feet off, on the soft, dry turf.

But stronger than all was maternal love, wrought into a paroxysm of frenzy by the near approach of a fearful danger.

Andy shrugged his shoulders, and gave an acquiescent whistle.

The more hopelessly sordid and insensible he appeared, the greater became Mrs. Shelby’s dread of his succeeding in recapturing Eliza and her child, and of course the greater her motive for detaining him by every female artifice.

He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man who was apparently dismounting at the door.

Tom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and began to look as affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says, “with his doggish nature.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Marks, with a conciliatory tone; “it’s only a retaining fee, you see,—he! he! he!—we lawyers, you know. Wal, we must all keep good-natured,—keep easy, yer know. Tom’ll have the boy for yer, anywhere ye’ll name; won’t ye, Tom?”

“Sam, I think this rather apocryphal,—this miracle. Crossing on floating ice isn’t so easily done,” said Mr. Shelby.

“Missis is a heap too good for us,” said Sam, making his bow with alacrity, and departing.

In the height of the uproar and laughter, Sam, however, preserved an immovable gravity, only from time to time rolling his eyes up, and giving his auditors divers inexpressibly droll glances, without departing from the sententious elevation of his oratory.

“Dis yer matter ’bout persistence...” said Sam, with the air of one entering into an abstruse subject...

Her husband and children were her entire world, and in these she ruled more by entreaty and persuasion than by command or argument.

Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in a fair way to expiate it by his night’s penance.