ns, and partly from the
remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man, Tom had
insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a man as
Haley. At first, he had watched him narrowly through the day, and
never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining
patience and apparent contentment of Tom's manner, led him gradually
to discontinue these restraints; and for some time Tom had enjoyed a
sort of parole of honour, being permitted to come and go freely where
he pleased on the boat. Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready
to lend a hand in every emergency which occurred among the workmen
below, he had won the good opinion of all the hands, and spent many
hours in helping them with as hearty a good-will as ever he worked on
a Kentucky farm. When there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he
would climb to a nook among the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and
busy himself in studying over his Bible--and it is there we see him
now. For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is
higher than the surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume
between massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the
deck of the steamer, as from some floating castle-top, overlooks the
whole country for miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread
out full before him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life
to which he was approaching. He saw the distant slaves at their toil;
he saw afar their villages of huts gleaming out in long rows on many a
plantation, distant from the stately mansions and pleasure-grounds of
the master; and as the moving picture passed on, his poor foolish
heart would be turning backward to the Kentucky farm, with its old
shadowy beeches, to the master's house, with its wide, cool halls, and
near by the little cabin, overgrown with the multiflora and bignonia.
There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who had grown up
with him from infancy: he saw his busy wife, bustling in her
preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his
boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee, and then,
with a start, all faded; and he saw again the cane-brakes and
cypresses of gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and
groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that
phase of life had gone by for ever.'

An unlooked-for incident raises up a friend. 'Among the passengers on
the boat was a