In a very short time Jake returned with Dr. Mandy, who, after feeling young master's pulse, sounding his chest, and applying the stethescope, said that he feared it was an incipient form of lung-fever. We had much cause for apprehension. There was a perplexed expression upon the face of the doctor, a tremulousness in his motions, which indicated that he was in great fear and doubt as to the case. He left some powders, to be administered every hour, and, after various and repeated injunctions to Miss Bradly, who volunteered to nurse the patient, he left the house.
After taking the first powder, young master lay in a deep, unbroken sleep. As I stood by his bedside I saw how altered he was. The cheek, which, when he was walking, had seemed round and full, was now shrunk and hollow, and a fiery spot burned there like a living coal; and the dark, purple ring that encircled the eyes, and the sharp contraction of the thin nostril, were to me convincing omens of the grave. Then, too, the anxious, care-written face of Miss Bradly tended to deepen my apprehension. How my friends were falling around me! Now, just when I was beginning to live, came the fell destroyer of my happiness. Happiness? Oh, does it not seem a mockery for the slave to employ that word? As if he had anything to do with it! The slave, who owns nothing, ay, literally nothing. His wife and children are all his master's. His very wearing apparel becomes another's. He has no right to use it, save as he is advised by his owner. Go, my kind reader, to the hotels of the South and South-west, look at the worn and dejected countenances of the slaves, and tell me if you do not read misery there. Look in at the saloons of the restaurants, coffee-houses, &c., at late hours of the night; there you will see them, tired, worn and weary, with their aching heads bandaged up, sighing for a few moments' sleep. There the proud, luxurious, idle whites sip their sherbets, drink wine, and crack their everlasting jokes, but there must stand your obsequious slave, with a smile on his face, waiter in hand, ready to attend to "Master's slightest wish." No matter if his tooth is aching, or his child dying, he must smile, or be flogged for gruffness. This "chattel personal," though he bear the erect form of a man, has no right to any privileges or emotions. Oh, nation of the free, how long shall this be? Poor, suffering Africa, country of my sires, how much longer upon thy bleeding shoulders must the cross be pressed! Is there no tomb where, for a short space, thou shalt lie, and then, bursting the bonds of night and death, spring up free, redeemed and regenerate?
"Oh, will he die?" I murmured, "he who reconciles me to my bondage, who is my only friend? Another affliction I cannot bear; I've been so tried in the furnace, that I have not strength to meet another."
Those thoughts passed through my brain as I stood beside young master; but the entrance of Mr. Peterkin diverted them, and, stepping up to him, I said, "Master, Aunt Polly is dead."
"You lie!" he thundered out.
"No, Mr. Peterkin, the old woman is really dead," said Miss Bradly, in a kind but mournful tone.
"Who killed her?" again he thundered.
Ay, who did kill her? Could I not have answered, "Thou art the man"? But I did not. Silently I stood before him, never daring to trust myself with a word.
"What time did she kick the bucket?" asked Mr. Peterkin, in one of the favorite Kentucky vulgarisms, whereby the most solemn and awful debt of nature is ridiculed by the unthinking.