This was my mother. When she died, in October, 1890, she was well along in her eighty-eighth year, a mighty1 age, a well-contested fight for life for one who at forty was so delicate of body as to be accounted a confirmed invalid2 and destined3 to pass soon away. I knew her well during the first twenty-five years of my life; but after that I saw her only at wide intervals4, for we lived many days' journey apart. I am not proposing to write about her, but merely to talk about her; not give her formal history, but merely make illustrative extracts from it, so to speak; furnish flashlight glimpses of her character, not a processional view of her career. Technically5 speaking, she had no career; but she had a character, and it was of a fine and striking and lovable sort.
What becomes of the multitudinous photographs which one's mind takes of people? Out of the million which my mental camera must have taken of this first and closest friend, only one clear and strongly defined one of early date remains6. It dates back forty-seven years; she was forty years old then, and I was eight. She held me by the hand, and we were kneeling by the bedside of my brother, two years older than I, who lay dead, and the tears were flowing down her cheeks unchecked. And she was moaning. That dumb sign of anguish7 was perhaps new to me, since it made upon me a very strong impression--an impression which holds its place still with the picture which it helped to intensify8 and make memorable9.
She had a slender, small body, but a large heart--a heart so large that everybody's grief and everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable10 accommodation. The greatest difference which I find between her and the rest of the people whom I have known, is this, and it is a remarkable11 one: those others felt a strong interest in a few things, whereas to the very day of her death she felt a strong interest in the whole world and everything and everybody in it. In all her life she never knew such a thing as a half-hearted interest in affairs and people, or an interest which drew a line and left out certain affairs and was indifferent to certain people. The invalid who takes a strenuous12 and indestructible interest in everything and everybody but himself, and to whom a dull moment is an unknown thing and an impossibility, is a formidable adversary13 for disease and a hard invalid to vanquish14. I am certain that it was this feature of my mother's makeup15 that carried her so far toward ninety.
Her interest in people and other animals was warm, personal, friendly. She always found something to excuse, and as a rule to love, in the toughest of them--even if she had to put it there herself. She was the natural ally and friend of the friendless. It was believed that, Presbyterian as she was, she could be beguiled16 into saying a soft word for the devil himself, and so the experiment was tried. The abuse of Satan began; one conspirator17 after another added his bitter word, his malign18 reproach, his pitiless censure19, till at last, sure enough, the unsuspecting subject of the trick walked into the trap. She admitted that the indictment20 was sound, that Satan was utterly21 wicked and abandoned, just as these people had said; but would any claim that he had been treated fairly? A sinner was but a sinner; Satan was just that, like the rest. What saves the rest?--their own efforts alone? No--or none might ever be saved. To their feeble efforts is added the mighty help of pathetic, appealing, imploring22 prayers that go up daily out of all the churches in Christendom and out of myriads23 upon myriads of pitying hearts. But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
This friend of Satan was a most gentle spirit, and an unstudied and unconscious pathos24 was her native speech. When her pity or her indignation was stirred by hurt or shame inflicted25 upon some defenseless person or creature, she was the most eloquent26 person I have heard speak. It was seldom eloquence27 of a fiery28 or violent sort, but gentle, pitying, persuasive29, appealing; and so genuine and so nobly and simply worded and so touchingly30 uttered, that many times I have seen it win the reluctant and splendid applause of tears. Whenever anybody or any creature was being oppressed, the fears that belonged to her sex and her small stature31 retired32 to the rear and her soldierly qualities came promptly33 to the front. One day in our village I saw a vicious devil of a Corsican, a common terror in the town, chasing his grown daughter past cautious male citizens with a heavy rope in his hand, and declaring he would wear it out on her. My mother spread her door wide to the refugee, and then, instead of closing and locking it after her, stood in it and stretched her arms across it, barring the way. The man swore, cursed, threatened her with his rope; but she did not flinch34 or show any sign of fear; she only stood straight and fine, and lashed35 him, shamed him, derided36 him, defied him in tones not audible to the middle of the street, but audible to the man's conscience and dormant37 manhood; and he asked her pardon and gave her his rope and said with a most great and blasphemous38 oath that she was the bravest woman he ever saw; and so went his way without other word and troubled her no more. He and she were always good friends after that, for in her he had found a long-felt want--somebody who was not afraid of him.
One day in St. Louis she walked out into the street and greatly surprised a burly cartman who was beating his horse over the head with the butt39 of his heavy whip; for she took the whip away from him and then made such a persuasive appeal in behalf of the ignorantly offending horse that he was tripped into saying he was to blame; and also into volunteering a promise which of course he couldn't keep, for he was not built in that way--a promise that he wouldn't ever abuse a horse again.
That sort of interference in behalf of abused animals was a common thing with her all her life; and her manner must have been without offense40 and her good intent transparent41, for she always carried her point, and also won the courtesy, and often the friendly applause, of the adversary. All the race of dumb animals had a friend in her. By some subtle sign the homeless, hunted, bedraggled, and disreputable cat recognized her at a glance as the born refuge and champion of his sort--and followed her home. His instinct was right, he was as welcome as the prodigal42 son. We had nineteen cats at one time, in 1845. And there wasn't one in the lot that had any character, not one that had any merit, except the cheap and tawdry merit of being unfortunate. They were a vast burden to us all--including my mother--but they were out of luck, and that was enough; they had to stay. However, better these than no pets at all; children must have pets, and we were not allowed to have caged ones. An imprisoned43 creature was out of the question--my mother would not have allowed a rat to be restrained of its liberty.
In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it: and everybody was comfortable, and did know it. And there were grades of society--people of good family, people of unclassified family, people of no family. Everybody knew everybody, and was affable to everybody, and nobody put on any visible airs; yet the class lines were quite clearly drawn44 and the familiar social life of each class was restricted to that class. It was a little democracy which was full of liberty, equality, and Fourth of July, and sincerely so, too; yet you perceived that the aristocratic taint46 was there. It was there, and nobody found fault with the fact, or ever stopped to reflect that its presence was an inconsistency.
I suppose that this state of things was mainly due to the circumstance that the town's population had come from slave states and still had the institution of slavery with them in their new home. My mother, with her large nature and liberal sympathies, was not intended for an aristocrat45, yet through her breeding she was one. Few people knew it, perhaps, for it was an instinct, I think, rather than a principle. So its outward manifestation47 was likely to be accidental, not intentional48, and also not frequent. But I knew of that weak spot. I knew that privately49 she was proud that the Lambtons, now Earls of Durham, had occupied the family lands for nine hundred years; that they were feudal50 lords of Lambton Castle and holding the high position of ancestors of hers when the Norman Conqueror51 came over to divert the Englishry. I argued--cautiously, and with mollifying circumlocutions, for one had to be careful when he was on that holy ground, and mustn't cavort--that there was no particular merit in occupying a piece of land for nine hundred years, with the friendly assistance of an entail52; anybody could do it, with intellect or without; therefore the entail was the thing to be proud of, just the entail and nothing else; consequently, she was merely descended53 from an entail, and she might as well be proud of being descended from a mortgage. Whereas my own ancestry54 was quite a different and superior thing, because it had the addition of an ancestor--one Clemens--who did something; something which was very creditable to him and satisfactory to me, in that he was a member of the court that tried Charles I and delivered him over to the executioner. Ostensibly this was chaff55, but at the bottom it was not. I had a very real respect for that ancestor, and this respect has increased with the years, not diminished. He did what he could toward reducing the list of crowned shams56 of his day. However, I can say this for my mother, that I never heard her refer in any way to her gilded57 ancestry when any person not a member of the family was present, for she had good American sense. But with other Lamptons whom I have known, it was different. "Colonel Sellers" was a Lampton, and a tolerably near relative of my mother's; and when he was alive, poor old airy soul, one of the earliest things a stranger was likely to hear from his lips was some reference to the "head of our line," flung off with a painful casualness that was wholly beneath criticism as a work of art. It compelled inquiry58, of course; it was intended to compel it. Then followed the whole disastrous59 history of how the Lambton heir came to this country a hundred and fifty years or so ago, disgusted with that foolish fraud, hereditary60 aristocracy, and married, and shut himself away from the world in the remotenesses of the wilderness61, and went to breeding ancestors of future American claimants, while at home in England he was given up as dead and his titles and estates turned over to his younger brother, usurper62 and personally responsible for the perverse63 and unseatable usurpers of our day. And the colonel always spoke64 with studied and courtly deference65 of the claimant of his day--a second cousin of his--and referred to him with entire seriousness as "the earl." "The earl" was a man of parts, and might have accomplished66 something for himself but for the calamitous67 accident of his birth. He was a Kentuckian, and a well-meaning man; but he had no money, and no time to earn any; for all his time was taken up in trying to get me, and others of the tribe, to furnish him capital to fight his claim through the House of Lords with. He had all the documents, all the proofs; he knew he could win. And so he dreamed his life away, always in poverty, sometimes in actual want, and died at last, far from home, and was buried from a hospital by strangers who did not know he was an earl, for he did not look it. That poor fellow used to sign his letters "Durham," and in them he would find fault with me for voting the Republican ticket, for the reason that it was unaristocratic, and by consequence un-Lamptonian. And presently along would come a letter from some red-hot Virginian, son of my other branch, and abuse me bitterly for the same vote--on the ground that the Republican was an aristocratic party and it was not becoming in the descendant of a regicide to train with that kind of animals. And so I used to almost wish I hadn't had any ancestors, they were so much trouble to me.
As I have said, we lived in a slaveholding community; indeed, when slavery perished my mother had been in daily touch with it for sixty years. Yet, kind-hearted and compassionate68 as she was, I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque69, and unwarrantable usurpation70. She had never heard it assailed71 in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand; her ears were familiar with Bible texts that approved it, but if there were any that disapproved72 it they had not been quoted by her pastors73; as far as her experience went, the wise and the good and the holy were unanimous in the conviction that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar74 pet of the Deity75, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and nightly thankful for. Manifestly, training and association can accomplish strange miracles. As a rule our slaves were convinced and content. So, doubtless, are the far more intelligent slaves of a monarchy77; they revere78 and approve their masters, the monarch76 and the noble, and recognize no degradation79 in the fact that they are slaves--slaves with the name blinked, and less respectworthy than were our black ones, if to be a slave by meek80 consent is baser than to be a slave by compulsion--and doubtless it is.
However, there was nothing about the slavery of the Hannibal region to rouse one's dozing81 humane82 instincts to activity. It was the mild domestic slavery, not the brutal83 plantation84 article. Cruelties were very rare, and exceedingly and wholesomely85 unpopular. To separate and sell the members of a slave family to different masters was a thing not well liked by the people, and so it was not often done, except in the settling of estates. I have no recollection of ever seeing a slave auction86 in that town; but I am suspicious that that is because the thing was a common and commonplace spectacle, not an uncommon87 and impressive one. I vividly88 remember seeing a dozen black men and women chained to one another, once, and lying in a group on the pavement, awaiting shipment to the Southern slave market. Those were the saddest faces I have ever seen. Chained slaves could not have been a common sight, or this picture would not have made so strong and lasting89 an impression upon me.
The "nigger trader" was loathed90 by everybody. He was regarded as a sort of human devil who bought and conveyed poor helpless creatures to hell--for to our whites and blacks alike the Southern plantation was simply hell; no milder name could describe it. If the threat to sell an incorrigible91 slave "down the river" would not reform him, nothing would--his case was past cure.
It is commonly believed that an infallible effect of slavery was to make such as lived in its midst hard hearted. I think it had no such effect--speaking in general terms. I think it stupefied everybody's humanity, as regarded the slave, but stopped there. There were no hard-hearted people in our town--I mean there were no more than would be found in any other town of the same size in any other country; and in my experience hard-hearted people are very rare everywhere.
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1
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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adversary
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| adj.敌手，对手 | |
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vanquish
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| v.征服，战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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beguiled
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| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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conspirator
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| n.阴谋者，谋叛者 | |
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malign
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| adj.有害的；恶性的；恶意的；v.诽谤，诬蔑 | |
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censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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touchingly
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| adv.令人同情地，感人地，动人地 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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flinch
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| v.畏缩，退缩 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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derided
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| v.取笑，嘲笑( deride的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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taint
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| n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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intentional
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| adj.故意的，有意（识）的 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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shams
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| 假象( sham的名词复数 )； 假货； 虚假的行为（或感情、言语等）； 假装…的人 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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usurper
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| n. 篡夺者, 僭取者 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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calamitous
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| adj.灾难的，悲惨的；多灾多难；惨重 | |
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compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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usurpation
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| n.篡位；霸占 | |
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71
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pastors
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| n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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revere
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| vt.尊崇，崇敬，敬畏 | |
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degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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wholesomely
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| 卫生地，有益健康地 | |
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auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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incorrigible
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| adj.难以纠正的，屡教不改的 | |
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