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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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“Mother told you!” said Cassy, with a thrilling and bitter emphasis on the word mother. “What use is it for mothers to say anything? You are all to be bought and paid for, and your souls belong to whoever gets you. That’s the way it goes. I say, drink brandy; drink all you can, and it’ll make things come easier.” “O Cassy! do pity me!” “Pity you!- don’t I? Haven’t I a daughter,- Lord knows where she is, and whose she is, now,- going the way her mother went, before her, I suppose, and that her children must go, after her! There’s no end to the curse-forever!” “I wish I’d never been born!” said Emmeline, wringing her hands. “That’s an old wish with me,” said Cassy. “I’ve got used to wishing that. I’d die, if I dared to,” she said, looking out into the darkness, with that still, fixed de- spair which was the habitual expression of her face when at rest. “It would be wicked to kill one’s self,” said Emmeline. “I don’t know why,- no wickeder than things we live and do, day after day. But the sisters told me things, when I was in the convent, that make me afraid to die. If it would only be the end of us, why, then-” Emmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands. While this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree, overcome with his carouse, had sunk to sleep in the room below. Legree was not an habitual drunkard. His coarse, strong nature craved, and could endure, a continual stimula- tion, that would have utterly wrecked and crazed a finer one. But a deep, underly- |
