lept the sleep of the unjust,
which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the
hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But when he got up in the
morning, luck was against him again: a brother thief had robbed him while
he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.

CHAPTER 16

Sold Down the River

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was
ruined past hope now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he
would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother
to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince,
secretly--for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from
reconciling him to that despised race.

Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but
that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him,
and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her
so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified.
But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she had
begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she
started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated
by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:

"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure. I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs. Take
en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."

Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a
moment; then he said:

"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"

"Ain't you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for
her chile? Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. Who
made 'em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers