UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

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KEY TO UNCLE TOM S CABIN.
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They will laugh,weep, embrace each other from heart to heart without the intervention
convulsively, and sometimes become entirely of the senses, or what the Quakers call
paralyzed and cataleptic. clergymanbeing"baptizedinto the spirit"of those
from the North once remonstrated with a who are distant.
Southern clergyman for permitting such Cases of this kind are constantly recurring
extravagancesamong his flock. The reply in their histories. The
young
man
of the Southern minister was, in effect, this : whose storywas related to the Boston lady,
"
Sir,I am satisfiedthat the races are so and introduced above in the chapteron
essentially differenthattheycannot be regulated
GeorgeHarrisștatedthisincidentconcerning
by the same rules. I,at first, felt the recovery of his liberty : That,after
as
you do ; and,thoughI saw that genuinethe departure of his wife and sister, he,for
conversionsdid take place,with allthisoutward
a longtime, and very earnestly, sought some
manifestation, I was still so much opportunity of escape, but that every avenue
annoyedby it as to forbid it among my appearedto be closed to him. At length,
negroes, tillI was satisfiedthat the repression
in despair, he retreated to his room, and
of it was a serioushindrance to real threw himself upon his bed,resolving religious feeling ; and then I became certain giveup the undertaking, when,justas he
that all men cannot be regulated in their was sinkingto sleep, he was roused by a
religious by one model. I am voice saying in his ear, " Why do you sleep
assured thatconversions produced with these now 1 Rise up, if ẏou
ever mean to be
accessoriesare quiteas apt to be genuine, free!" He sprang up, went immediately
and to be as influential over the heart and out,and, in the course of two hours,discovered
life, as those produced in any other way." the means of escape which he used.
The fact is țhat the Anglo-Saxonrace A ladywhose history isknown to the writer
cool,logicaland practicalhave yet to residedfor some time on a Southern plantation,
learn the doctrine of tolerationfor the peculiarities
and was in the habitof imparting of other races ; and perhaps it was
instructionto the slaves. One day, a
with a foresight of their peculiar chai'acter, woman from a distantplantation called at
and dominant position in the earth, that God her residence, and inquired for her. The
gave the Bible to them in the fervent language
lady asked, in surprise, "How did you
and with the glowingimageryof the know about me 7" The old woman's reply
more susceptible and passionate was, that she had longbeen distressedabout
races.
her soul;but that șeveral nightsbefore,
Mesmerists have found that the negroes some one had appearedto her in a dream,
are singularly susceptible to all that class told her to go to this plantation and inquire
of influences which producecatalepsy, mesmeric
for the strangeladythere,and that she
sleep, partial clairvoyant phenomena.
would teach her the way to heaven.
Another specimen of the same kind was
The African race, in their own climate, relatedto the writerby a slave-woman who
are believersin spells, in "fetish and obi," been throughthe whole painful experience
in "the evileye," and other singular of a slave'slife. She was originally a
for which,probably, there is an originyoung
girl of pleasing exterior and
in this peculiarity of constitution. The nature,carefully reared as a seamstress
gentle
and
magicians in scriptural history Africans
nurse to the children of a family in Virginia,
; and the so-called magical arts are stilland
attached, with all the warmth of her
practised in Egypt, and other parts of susceptible nature, to these children. Although
one of the tenderestof mothers when
the writer knew her,yet she assured the
constitutionquitewriter that she had never loved a child of
differentfrom thoseof the whites. Considering
her own as she loved the dear little young
those distinctivetraits of the race, it mistress who was her particular
is no matter of surprise to find in their religious
Owing,probably,
culty
histories, when acted upon by the in the familyțhisgirl,whom we will
powerfulstimulant of the Christianreligion, callLouisa,was soldțo go
on to a Southern
very peculiarfeatures. We are not surprised
plantation. She has often describedthe
in the narrations
Africa,with a degree of skilland success
which can only be accounted for by supposing
peculiarities of nervous
to find almost constantly,
scene when she was fcrced into a carriage,
of their religious histories, accounts and saw her dear young mistress leanint
of visions, of heavenlyvoices, of mysterious from the window, stretching her arms
sympathiesand
towards her,screaming, and calling her
transmissions of knowledge
charge.
to some pecuniary diffi-