of arms for the owner of a
fish-flake. In the parlor was an ingrained carpet, the admiration and
envy of the neighborhood. A large glass was surmounted by a gilded eagle
upholding a chain,--prophetic of the principal employment of the bird of
freedom for three quarters of a century thereafter. In the Franklin
fireplace, tall brass andirons, brightly burnished, gleamed through a
feathery forest of asparagus, interspersed with scarlet berries. The
high, mahogany case of drawers, grown black with time, and lustrous with
much waxing, had innumerable great drawers and little drawers, all
resplendent with brass ornaments, kept as bright as new gold.

The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease
to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means
sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and
the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and
servant-of-all-work. When Chloe was a babe strapped on her mother's
shoulders, they were stolen from Africa and packed in a ship. What
became of her mother she knew not. How the Widow Lawton obtained the
right to make her work from morning till night, without wages, she never
inquired. It had always been so, ever since she could remember, and she
had heard the minister say, again and again, that it was an ordination
of Providence. She did not know what ordination was, or who Providence
was; but she had a vague idea that both were up in the sky, and that she
had nothing to do but submit to them. So year after year she patiently
cooked meals, and weeded the garden, and cut and dried the apples, and
scoured the brasses, and sanded the floor in herring-bone pattern, and
tended the fish-flake till the profitable crop of the sea was ready for
market. There was a melancholy expression in the eyes of poor, ignorant
Chloe, which seemed to indicate that there might be in her soul a
fountain that was deep, though it was sealed by the heavy stone of
slavery. Carlyle said of a dog that howled at the moon, "He would have
been a poet, if he could have found a publisher." And Chloe, though she
never thought about the Infinite, was sometimes impressed with a feeling
of its mysterious presence, as she walked back and forth tending the
fish-flake; with the sad song of the sea forever resounding in her ears,
and a glittering orb of light sailing through the great blue arch over
her head, and at evening sinking into the waves amid