Saying nothing
aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them,
then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;
sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head. This
pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which
had something of this shape:

"I was afraid of it--was afraid of it. Trying to make our fortune in
Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in
Kentucky and start over again. Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he
crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune
here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest
soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid
he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances
with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something
does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he
was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, for I do think
that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a
machine. He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him
ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe
in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his
eyes tally and watch his hands explain. What a head he has got! When he
got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in
Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to
have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them,
away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made
stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day
--it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money!
Negroes would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent money
and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all
contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get
the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky,
when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a
perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at
a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business,
why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and
hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper w