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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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ruined, evil triumphant, and God silent. It was weeks and months that Tom wres- tled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow. He thought of Miss Ophelia’s letter to his Kentucky friends, and would pray earnestly that God would send him deliv- erance. And then he would watch, day after day, in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent to redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush back to his soul bitter thoughts,- that it was vain to serve God, that God had forgotten him. He sometimes saw Cassy; and sometimes, when summoned to the house, caught a glimpse of the dejected form of Emmeline, but held very little commun- ion with either; in fact there was no time for him to commune with anybody. One evening, he was sitting, in utter dejection and prostration, by a few decay- ing brands, where his coarse supper was baking. He put a few bits of brushwood on the fire, and strove to raise the light, and then drew his worn Bible from his pocket. There were all the marked passages, which had thrilled his soul so often,- words of patriarchs and seers, poets and sages, who from early time had spoken courage to man,- voices from the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround us in the race of life. Had the word lost its power, or could the failing eye and weary sense no longer answer to the touch of that mighty inspiration? Heavily sighing, he put it in his pocket. A coarse laugh roused him; he looked up,- Legree was standing opposite to him. “Well, old boy,” he said, “you find your religion don’t work, it seems! I thought I should get that through your wool, at last!” |
