AUGUSTINE ST. CLARE was the son of a wealthy planter in Louisiana. His talents were of the very first order, but his mind showed a preference always for the ideal and the esthetic. Soon after the completion of his college course, he became the husband of a wealthy and beautiful, but very selfish woman. Marie became the mother of a lovely child, but from the birth of her daughter, her health gradually failed, and in a few years she was changed into a faded, sickly woman. All family arrangements fell into the hands of servants, and St. Clare found his home anything but comfortable. His daughter was delicate, and he feared her life might fall a sacrifice to her mother's inefficiency. So he had taken her with him on a trip to Vermont, and he had persuaded his cousin, Miss Ophelia St. Clare, to return with him to his southern home. Miss Ophelia stands before you, in a very shining brown linen travelling dress, tall, square-formed and angular. All her movements were sharp, decided, and energetic; and, although she was never much of a talker, her words were remarkably direct and to the purpose, when she did speak.

  In her habits she was a living impersonation of order, method, and exactness, and she held in most decided comtempt and abomination anything of a contrary character. The great sin of sins—in her eyes the sum of all evils under the sun—was expressed by one very common and important word in her vocabulary—"shiftlessness."

  "Well, Cousin Vermont," said St. Clare, as the boat came to the landing at New Orleans, "I suppose you are all ready."

  "I have been ready and waiting nearly an hour," said Miss Ophelia.

  "Where's Tom?" asked Eva,

  "He's on the outside, Pussy. I'm going to take Tom up to mother for a peace offering to make up for that drunken fellow that upset the carriage."

  "Tom will make a splendid driver, I know," said Eva; "he'll never get drunk."

  The carriage soon stopped in front of an ancient mansion, built in the Moorish fashion—a square building inclosing a courtyard, into which the carriage drove through an arched gateway.

  As the carriage drove in, Eva seemed like a bird ready to burst from the cage with the wild eagerness of her delight.

  "O, isn't it beautiful, lovely! my own dear, darling home!" she said to Miss Ophelia. "Isn't it beautiful?"

  "'Tis a pretty place," said Miss Ophelia, as she alighted; "although it looks rather old and heathenish to me."

  Tom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm, still enjoyment, and St. Clare, turning to him, said: "Tom, my boy, this seems to suit you."

  "Yes, mas'r, it does look about the right thing."

  All this passed in a moment, while the trunks were being hustled off, hackman paid, and while a crowd, of all ages and sizes, men, women, and children—came running to see mas'r come in. Foremost among them was a highly dressed young mulatto man, attired in the extreme of the mode, and waving a scented handkerchief in his hand.

  "Back, all of you! I am ashamed of you," he said, in atone of authority. "Would you intrude on mas'r's domestic relations in the first hour of his return?"

  Owing to Mr. Adolph's systematic arrangements, when St. Clare turned round from paying the hackman, there was nobody in view by Mr. Adolph himself, conspicuous in satin vest, gold guard chain, and white pants, and bowing with inexpressible grace and suavity.

  "Ah, Adolph," said his master, extending his hand to him, "how are you, boy?" while Adolph poured forth, with great fluency, an extemporary speech, which he had been preparing, with great care, for a fortnight before.

  "Well, well," said St. Clare, passing on with his usual air of negligent drollery, "that's very well got up, Adolph," and so saying, he led Miss Ophelia to the parlor.

  Eva had flown like a bird to a little boudoir opening on the veranda. A tall, dark-eyed woman half rose from the couch on which she was reclining. "Mamma!" said Eva, embracing her over and over again.

  "That'll do—take care, child—don't you make my head ache," said the mother.

  St. Clare came in, embraced his wife in husbandly fashion, and then presented to her his cousin. Marie lifted her eyes with an air of curiosity, and greeted her with languid politeness.

  As St. Clare turned round, his eye fell upon Tom, who was standing uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other. "Here, Tom," he said, beckoning.

  Tom entered the room.

  "See here, Marie," said St. Clare to his wife. "I've brought you a new coachman, one made to order. I tell you he's a regular hearse for blackness and sobriety, and will drive you like a funeral, if you want. Now don't say I never think about you when I'm gone."

  "Well, I hope that he'll turn out well," said the lady; "but it's more than I expect."

  "Dolph," said St. Clare, "show Tom down stairs."

  Adolph tripped gracefully forward, and Tom, with lumbering tread, followed after.

  "He's a perfect behemoth!" said Marie.

  "And now, Marie," said St. Clare, "your golden days are dawning. Here is our practical, business-like New England cousin, who will take the whole budget of cares off your shoulders, and give you time to refresh yourself, and grow young and handsome. The ceremony of delivering the keys had better come off forthwith."

  This remark was made at the breakfast table a few mornings after Miss Ophelia's arrival.

  "I am sure she is welcome," said Marie, leaning her head on her hand. "I think she'll find one thing if she does, and that is that we mistresses are the slaves down here."

  Evangeline fixed her large, serious eyes on her mother's face, and said, simply: "What do you keep them for, mamma?"

  "I don't know, I'm sure, except for a plague. I believe that more of my ill health is caused by them than by any other one thing; and ours, I know, are the very worst that ever anybody was plagued with."

  "O, come, Marie, you've got the blues this morning," said St. Clare, "you know it isn't so. There's Mammy, the best creature living—what could you do without Mammy?"

  "Mammy is the best I ever knew," said Marie; "and yet Mammy, now, is selfish—dreadfully selfish. I think it is selfish of her to sleep so sound nights. She knows I need little attentions almost every hour, and yet she is so hard to wake. I am absolutely worse this very morning, for the efforts I had to make to wake her last night."

  "Hasn't she sat up with you a good many nights lately, mamma?" said Eva.

  "How do you know that?" asked Marie, sharply. "Has she been making complaint to you?"

  "She didn't complain; she only told me what bad nights you had had—so many in succession."

  "Why don't you let Jane or Rosa take her place, a night or two, and let her rest?" asked St. Clare.

  "How can you propose such a thing?" said Marie. "St. Clare, you are really inconsiderate. So nervous am I that the least breath disturbs me; and a strange hand about me would drive me absolutely frantic."

  Eva walked softly round to her mother's chair, and put her arms round her neck.

  "Well, what, now, Eva?" asked Marie.

  "Mamma, couldn't I take care of you one night; just one? I know I wouldn't make you nervous, and I wouldn't go to sleep. I think that Mammy isn't well. She told me her head ached all the time, lately."

  "Mammy is just like all the rest of them—makes such a fuss about every little headache or finger ache; it'll never do to encourage it never. I'm principled about this matter," said Marie, turning to Miss Ophelia; "you'll find the necessity of it. If you encourage servants in giving way to every little, disagreeable feeling, you'll have your hands full. I never complain myself. I feel it my duty to bear my suffering quietly, and I do."

  Miss Ophelia's round eyes expressed an undisguised amazement at this peroration, which struck St. Clare as so supremely ludicrous that he burst out into a loud laugh.

  "St. Clare always laughs when I make the least allusion to my ill-health," said Marie, with the voice of a suffering martyr. "I only hope the day will never come when he'll remember it!" and Marie put her handkerchief to her eyes.

  St. Clare got up, looked at his watch, and said that he had an engagement down street. Eva tripped away after him, and Miss Ophelia and Marie remained alone.

  Later in the day, when St. Clare had returned and was chatting with his wife and Miss Ophelia, a gay laugh rang through the silken curtains of the veranda. St. Clare stepped out, and lifting up the curtain, laughed, too.

  "What is it?" asked Miss Ophelia, coming to the railing.

  There sat Tom, on a little mossy seat in the court, every one of his buttonholes stuck full of Cape jessamines, and Eva, gayly laughing, was hanging a wreath of roses round his neck; and then she sat down on his knee, still laughing.

  "O, Tom, you do look so funny!" she cried.

  Tom had a sober, benevolent smile, and seemed, in his quiet way, to be enjoying the fun quite as much as his little mistress. He lifted his eyes when he saw his master, with a half-deprecating, half-apologetic air.

  "How can you let her?" said Miss Ophelia.

  "Why not?" said St. Clare.

  "Why, I don't know, it seems so dreadful."

  "You would think no harm in a child's caressing a big dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do—obliterates the feeling of prejudice. I have often noticed in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You would not have them

  "Well, cousin," said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, "there may be some truth in what you say."

  "What would the poor and lowly do, without children?" said St. Clare, leaning on the railing and watching Eva, as she tripped off, leading Tom with her. "Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now, is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes; his songs and Methodist hymns are better than the opera, and the traps and bits of trash in his pockets a mine of jewels, and he is the most wonderful Tom that ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses of Eden that the Lord has dropped down expressly for the poor and lowly, who get few enough of any other kind."

  In Tom's external situation, at this time, there was, as the world says, nothing to complain of. Little Eva's fancy for him—the instinctive gratitude and loveliness of a noble nature—had led her to petition her father that Tom might be her especial attendant, whenever she needed the escort of a servant in her walks or rides; and Tom had general orders to let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted him—orders which were far from disagreeable to him. He was kept well dressed, for St. Clare was fastidiously particular on this point. His stable services were merely a sinecure, and consisted simply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an under-servant in his duties. Marie declared that she could not have any smell of the horses about him when he came near her, and that he must positively not be put to any service that would make him unpleasant to her, as her nervous system was entirely inadequate to any trial of that nature; one sniff of anything disagreeable being, according to her account, quite sufficient to close the scene, and put an end to all her earthly trials at once. Tom, therefore, in his well-brushed broadcloth suit, smooth beaver, glossy boots, faultless wristbands and collar, with his grave, good-natured black face, looked respectable enough to be a bishop of Carthage, as men of his color were in other ages.

  Then, too, he was in a beautiful place, a consideration to which his sensitive race are never indifferent; and he did enjoy with a quiet joy, the birds, the flowers, the fountains, the perfume, and the light and beauty of the court, the silken hangings and pictures, and lustres, and statuettes, and gilding, that made the parlors a kind of Aladdin's palace to him.