r us so beautifully slaves as in this achievement of their freedom;
for they did brilliantly achieve it--they escaped, on northern soil,
beyond recall or recovery. I think we had already then, on the spot, the
sense of some degree of presence at the making of history; the question
of what persons of colour and of their condition might or mightn't do
was intensely in the air; this was exactly the season of the freshness
of Mrs. Stowe's great novel. It must have come out at the moment of our
fondest acquaintance with our neighbours, though I have no recollection
of hearing them remark upon it--any remark they made would have been
sure to be so strong. I suspect they hadn't read it, as they certainly
wouldn't have allowed it in the house; any more indeed than they had
read or were likely ever to read any other work of fiction; I doubt
whether the house contained a printed volume, unless its head had had in
hand a law-book or so: I to some extent recover Mr. Norcom as a lawyer
who had come north on important, difficult business, on contentious,
precarious grounds--a large bald political-looking man, very loose and
ungirt, just as his wife was a desiccated, depressed lady who mystified
me by always wearing her nightcap, a feebly-frilled but tightly-tied and
unmistakable one, and the compass of whose maternal figure beneath a
large long collarless cape or mantle defined imperfectly for me of
course its connection with the further increase of Albert's little
brothers and sisters, there being already, by my impression, two or
three of these in the background. Had Davy and An'silvy at least read
Uncle Tom?--that question might well come up for us, with the certainty
at any rate that they ignored him less than their owners were doing.
These latter good people, who had been so fond of their humble
dependents and supposed this affection returned, were shocked at such
ingratitude, though I remember taking a vague little inward Northern
comfort in their inability, in their discreet decision, not to raise the
hue and cry. Wasn't one even just dimly aware of the heavy hush that, in
the glazed gallery, among the sausages and the johnny-cakes, had
followed the first gasp of resentment? I think the honest Norcoms were
in any case astonished, let alone being much incommoded; just as _we_
were, for that matter, when the genial family itself, installed so at
its ease, failed us with an effect of abruptness, simply ceased, in
their multitude, t