|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
|
“O, yes, to be sure, the question is,- and a deuce of a question it is! How came you in this state of sin and misery? Well, I shall answer in the good old words you used to teach me, Sundays. I came so by ordinary generation. My servants were my father’s and, what is more, my mother’s, and now they are mine, they and their increase, which bids fair to be a pretty considerable item. My father, you know, came first from New England; and he was just such another man as your fa- ther,- a regular old Roman,- upright, energetic, noble-minded, with an iron will. Your father settled down in New England, to rule over rocks and stones, and to force an existence out of Nature; and mine settled in Louisiana, to rule over men and women, and force existence out of them. My mother,” said St. Clare, get- ting up and walking to a picture at the end of the room, and gazing upward with a face fervent with veneration, “she was divine! Don’t look at me so!- you know what I mean! She probably was of mortal birth; but, as far as ever I could ob- serve, there was no trace of any human weakness or error about her; and every- body that lives to remember her, whether bond or free, servant, acquaintance, relation, all say the same. Why, cousin, that mother has been all that has stood be- tween me and utter unbelief for years. She was a direct embodiment and personifi- cation of the New Testament,- a living fact, to be accounted for, and to be accounted for in no other way than by its truth. O mother, mother!” said St. Clare, clasping his hands, in a sort of transport; and then suddenly checking himself, he came back, and seating himself on an ottoman, he went on: |
