he based a conviction that "mas'r wasn't a Christian." So Tom took it upon himself to speak of religious matters to St. Clare, and his unaffected simplicity and earnestness produced a profound impression upon the worldly but good-hearted man. One day, Miss Ophelia having expressed a desire to educate and cultivate one of the negroes, St. Clare brought her a wild little creature named Topsy, whom Miss Ophelia at once took in hand and began to question. "How old are you, Topsy?" "Dun no, missus," said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth. "Don't know how old you are? Didn't anybody ever tell you? Who was your mother?" "Never had none!" said the child, with another grin. "Never had any mother? What do What do you mean? Where were you born?" "Never was born!" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so goblinlike, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie, but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and business-like, and she said with some sternness: "You musn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you. Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were." "Never was born," reiterated the creature, more emphatically; "never had no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us.' "Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?" The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual. Do you know who made you?" "Nobody, as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added: "I s'pect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me." Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare was leaning over the back of her chair. "You'll find virgin soil there, cousin; put in your own ideas-you won't find many to pull up." Eva's health, always delicate, at last began to fail, and it was evident that her end was near. To the last she played the part of a ministering angel among the slaves of the household. One day she had them all called to her bedside. All looked sad and apprehensive. Many of the women hid their faces in their aprons. "I sent for you all, my dear friends," said Eva, "because I love you. I love you all; and I have something to say to you, which I want you always to remember. I am going to leave you. I want to speak to you about your souls. Many of you, I am afraid, are very careless. You are thinking only about this world. I want you to remember that there is a beautiful world, where Jesus is. I am going there, and you can go there. It is for you, as much as me. But, if you want to go there, you must not live idle, careless, thoughtless lives. You must be Christians. You must remember that each one of you can become angels, and be angels forever. . . . If you want to be Christians, Jesus will help you. You must pray to him; you must read—' The child checked herself, looked piteously at them, and said, sorrowfully : "O, dear! you can't read - poor souls:" and she hid her face in the pillow and sobbed, while many a smothered sob from those she was addressing, who were kneeling on the floor, aroused her. "Never mind," she said, raising her face and smiling brightly through her tears, "I have prayed for you; and I know Jesus will help you, even if you can't read. Try all to do the best you can; pray every day; ask Him to help you, and get the Bible read to you whenever you can; and I think I shall see you all in heaven." Not many days later the end came. It was between midnight and morning. The changed look on her face showed St. Clare that she was dying. The house was soon roused, the lights were seen, footsteps heard, anxious faces thronged the veranda, and looked tearfully through the glass doors; but St. Clare heard and said nothing, he saw only that look on the face of the little sleeper. The large blue eyes unclosed, a smile passed over her face; she tried to raise her head, and to speak. "Do you know me, Eva?" "Dear papa," said the child, with a last effort, throwing her arms about his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face, she struggled for breath, and threw up her little hands. Tom had his master's hands between his own; and, with tears streaming down his dark cheeks, looked up for help where he had always been used to look. "Pray that this may be cut short!" said St. Clare "this wrings my heart." "O, bless the Lord! it's over-it's over, dear master," said Tom; "look at her." The child lay panting on her pillows, as one exhausted-the large clear eyes rolled up and fixed. "Eva," said St. Clare, gently. "O, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?" said her father. A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said, brokenly-"O! love-joy-peace!" gave one sigh and passed from death unto life! It was not long after the death of Eva that St. Clare himself came to his end. In a café one evening two men quarreled and began to fight. St. Clare joined with others in trying to separate them, and was stabbed by one of them, and taken home to die. Miss Ophelia and Tom attended him in his last moments. He lay with his eyes shut, but it was evident that he wrestled with bitter thoughts. After a while, he laid his hand on Tom's who was kneeling beside him, and said, "Tom! poor fellow!" "What, mas'r?" said Tom, earnestly. "I am dying!" said St. Clare, pressing his hand; "pray!" "If you would like a clergyman—” said the physician. St. Clare hastily shook his head, and said again to Tom, more earnestly, "Pray!" And Tom did pray, with all his mind and strength. When Tom ceased, St. Clare reached out and took his hand, looking earnestly at him, but saying nothing. He closed his eyes, but still retained his hold. He murmured softly to himself, at broken intervals. "His mind is wandering," said the attentions. doctor. "No! it is coming HOME, at last!" said St. Clare, energetically; "at last! at last!" The effort of speaking exhausted him. The sinking paleness of death fell on him; but with it there fell, as if shed from the wings of some pitying spirit, a beautiful expression of peace, like that of a wearied child who sleeps. St. Clare's slaves were presently all sent to the slave market, to be sold. Among the men who came to buy, at public auction, was one repulsive-looking fellow, of coarse appearance and brutal manner. He examined Tom as though he were a horse, or an ox, was pleased with him, bid for him, and purchased him, together with several other slaves. This was Simon Legree, a Red River planter, and he at once set out for his home, taking his purchases with him. Legree's plantation was a forbidding place. The house was large and had been handsome, but now looked desolate. Three or four ferocious-looking dogs, roused by the sound of the wagonwheels, came tearing out, and were with difficulty restrained from laying hold of Tom and his companions, by the effort of the ragged servants who came after them. "Ye see what ye'd get!" said Legree, caressing the dogs with grim satisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions. "Ye see what ye'd get if ye try to run off. These yer dogs has been raised to track niggers; and they'd jest as soon chaw one on ye up as eat their supper. So, mind yourself! How now, Sambo!" he said, to a ragged fellow, without any brim to his hat, who was officious in his going?" "How have things been "Fust rate, mas'r." "Quimbo," said Legree to another, who was making zealous demonstrations to attract his attention, "ye minded what I telled ye?" "Guess I did, didn't I?" The two colored men were the two principal hands on the plantation. Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematically as he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty, brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. In this hideous place the hapless slaves were treated worse than brute beasts. Legree showered upon them all possible injustice and cruelty. One day, meaning to degrade Tom to his own level, he commanded him to flog one of the other slaves, a frail, feeble woman. Tom respectfully but positively refused, whereupon Legree had him flogged half to death by Sambo and Quimbo. That night Tom was visited by one of his fellow-slaves, a woman named Cassy. She was a quadroon, who had been singularly beautiful, refined, and highly educated. Dragged from the man she loved, and made the property of Legree, she had been forced to become his mistress. She had gained a powerful influence over him, so that he stood in mortal fear of her; but now he was trying to cast her aside and replace her with one Emmeline, a beautiful young woman whom he had purchased in New Orleans, and brought home in the same party with Tom. She told Tom all her tragic story, and ended thus: "When I was a girl, I thought I was religious; I used to love God and prayer. Now I'm a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day and night; they keep pushing me on and on-and I'll do it, too, some of these days!" she said, clinching her hand, while an insane light glanced in her heavy black eyes. "I'll send him where he belongs-a short way, too-one of these nights, if they burn me alive for it!" There was a great garret in the top of Legree's house, in which he had once brutally murdered a slave-woman who would not obey his foul will, and which he, in his ignorant superstition, now regarded as haunted, and so shunned with mortal fear. Cassy played upon his fears, with tales of ghosts, until she knew he would never dare to enter the garret. Then she hid Emmeline and herself up there, to be safe from his persecutions. She first gave Legree reason to suppose they had fled to the woods, and he pursued them with bloodhounds, but had to return, baffled. Legree then turned his wrath against Tom. After reviling and abusing him in all possible ways, he announced his determination to kill him, and accordingly he had him flogged to death. Tom did not die directly under the lash, but lingered a few days longer. During that time an unexpected visitor came. This was George Shelby, the son of Tom's old master in Kentucky. He had come in search of the faithful old servant, to purchase him and take him home to Kentucky. He found Tom dying in awful agony. But Tom recognized him, and the vacant eye became fixed and brightened, the whole face lighted up, the hard hands clasped, and tears ran down the cheeks. "Bless the Lord! it is-it is-it's all I wanted! They haven't forgot me. It warms my soul; it does my old heart good! Now I shall die content! Bless the Lord, oh my soul!" Then the end came. George turned to Legree, who stood near, scowling, and said, pointing to the dead, "You have got all you ever can of him. What shall I pay you for the body? body? I will take it away, and bury it decently. "I don't sell dead niggers," said Legree, doggedly. "You are welcome to bury him where and when you like." A few more contemptuous words spoken by Legree roused the young Kentuckian's wrath, and with one welldirected blow he knocked the brute down. Then he bore Tom's body reverently away and gave it honorable burial. Legree now felt the place worse haunted than before, and in his abject fear took to drinking heavily, and was soon known to be sick and dying. The inexorable Cassy arrayed herself as a ghost, came down from the garret at night, and tormented his dying hours. Then she and Emmeline slipped out of the house and stole away from the accursed place. Cassy was arrayed as a Spanish Creole, and Emmeline as her servant. Thus they took passage on a river steamer and made their way to the North. George Shelby was on the same boat, and on the way the discovery was made that the runaway Eliza was Cassy's long-lost daughter. So Cassy made her way to Canada, and there succeeded in finding Eliza and George, who were living in peace, freedom and happiness. DAVID COPPERFIELD. By Charles Dickens, THE VISIT TO YARMOUTH-" BARKIS IS WILLIN'"-SCHOOL AND SCHOOLMATES-BARKIS J. STEERFORTH-MY PROFESSION-" WICKFIELD AND HEEP"-DORA- F MY early life little needs to be said. I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, six months after the death of my father. My mother was yet a mere girl. The only other relative of whom I need speak was an aunt of my father's, Miss Betsey Trotwood. My father had once been a favorite of hers, but, she was mortally affronted by his marriage on the ground that my mother was "a wax doll." She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. She visited my mother at the time of my birth; and, being a man-hater, was grievously disappointed when I proved to be not a girl but a boy. She vanished like a discontented fairy, or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more. The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty, our servant and my nurse. Then a gentleman with black whiskers, a Mr. Murdstone, began to call to see my mother, and aroused my childish suspicion and dislike. One evening Peggotty asked me how I would like to go with her and visit her brother at Yarmouth, and gave me so pleasant an account of the place that I said I should like to go. So go I did, and made the acquaintance of Mr. Peggotty, and his orphan nephew and niece, Ham and Em'ly, and also Mrs. Gummidge, the widow of his former partner in a fishingboat. Of course I was in love with little Em'ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity, and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on |