inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. Her corn-cake, in all its
varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous
to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders; and
she would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as she
would narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her compeers
had made to attain to her elevation.

The arrival of company at the house, the arranging of dinners and
suppers "in style," awoke all the energies of her soul; and no sight
was more welcome to her than a pile of travelling trunks launched on the
verandah, for then she foresaw fresh efforts and fresh triumphs.

Just at present, however, Aunt Chloe is looking into the bake-pan; in
which congenial operation we shall leave her till we finish our picture
of the cottage.

In one corner of it stood a bed, covered neatly with a snowy spread; and
by the side of it was a piece of carpeting, of some considerable size.
On this piece of carpeting Aunt Chloe took her stand, as being decidedly
in the upper walks of life; and it and the bed by which it lay, and the
whole corner, in fact, were treated with distinguished consideration,
and made, so far as possible, sacred from the marauding inroads
and desecrations of little folks. In fact, that corner was the
_drawing-room_ of the establishment. In the other corner was a bed of
much humbler pretensions, and evidently designed for _use_. The wall
over the fireplace was adorned with some very brilliant scriptural
prints, and a portrait of General Washington, drawn and colored in
a manner which would certainly have astonished that hero, if ever he
happened to meet with its like.

On a rough bench in the corner, a couple of woolly-headed boys,
with glistening black eyes and fat shining cheeks, were busy in
superintending the first walking operations of the baby, which, as
is usually the case, consisted in getting up on its feet, balancing a
moment, and then tumbling down,--each successive failure being violently
cheered, as something decidedly clever.

A table, somewhat rheumatic in its limbs, was drawn out in front of
the fire, and covered with a cloth, displaying cups and saucers of a
decidedly brilliant pattern, with other symptoms of an approaching meal.
At this table was seated Uncle Tom, Mr. Shelby's best hand, who, as he
is to be the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype for our readers.
He was a large, broad-chested, pow