Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

the blue eyes had a depth and strength of color that might cause them at first glance to appear black.

fay

I know he always bores me to death; asking me if I have read this or that—marking places in books that I never read. He's your sentimental sort—writes the most romantic notes on pink paper, and all that sort of thing."

hehe :-)

Don't they trifle with us girls, every chance they get—and sit up so pompous in their rooms, and smoke cigars, and talk us over, as if they only had to put out their finger and say, 'Come here,' to get any of us?

pretending not to see the feeling which agitated him.

It is supposed by many that friendship is best founded upon similarity of nature; but observation teaches that it is more common by a union of opposites, in which each party is attracted by something wanting in itself.

and there was to be a certain air about her, half Madonna, half Venus, made of every creature's best.

She has lived only in the world of sensation, and that is so abundant and so buoyant in her that the deeper part still sleeps.

'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"

There is no path in life, that I know of, where humbuggery and fraud and deceit are not essential to success,—none where a man can make the purity of his moral nature the first object.

"Every good and great thing has been called impossible before it is done."

The nature of the son was so veined and crossed with that of the mother, that the father, in attempting the age-long and often-tried experiment of making his child an exact copy of himself, found himself extremely puzzled and confused in the operation.

sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts.

Nothing, in fact, is less capable of being justified by technical reasons than those fine insights into character whereupon affection is built.

We have all had experience of preferences which would not follow the most exactly ascertained catalogue of virtues, and would be made captive where there was very little...

never did love any one better than you,—that's the trouble."

Am i detecting incestuous undertones or are familial relations just depicted with more intimacy given the period of publication?

it is my fate to love this child. I've tried to love many women before. I have seen many whom I knew no sort of reason why I shouldn't love,—handsomer far, more cultivated, more accomplished,—and yet I've seen them without a movement or a flutter of the pulse. But this girl has awakened all there is to me. I do not see in her what the world sees. I see the ideal image of what she can be, what I'm sure she will be, when her nature is fully awakened and developed."

"You never see anything; that is, you see a glorified image—a something that might, could, would, or should be—that is your difficulty.

Why should you seek to disenchant, if I can be enchanted?"

All these things girls feel, because their instincts are quick; and they are often accused of trifling with a man's heart, when they only see through him, and know he hasn't any.

can you make her happy in the dull routine of a commonplace life?

all the vivacities of life lie in differences."

The duties of a southern housekeeper, on a plantation, are onerous beyond any amount of northern conception.

American climate than any of European mode. The inside, however, was decorated with sculpture and carvings, copied, many of them, from ancestral residences in Scotland, giving to the mansion an air of premature antiquity.

would be intersted in tracing how much scotish tradition in interwoven into the rest of this book. does nina lose her scotish sensabilitites or is she shaped by them

derived from his Scottish parentage,

But the charms of a pretty French quadroon overcame the dictates of prudence.

Principles mean nothing if pretty women r in the picture

Religion she looked upon in the light of a ticket, which, being once purchased, and snugly laid away in a pocket-book, is to be produced at the celestial gate, and thus secure admission to heaven.

"Don't know nothing at all—never can."

feigned incompetence for survival

Aunt Milly, as she was commonly called, was a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested African woman, with a fulness of figure approaching to corpulence. Her habit of standing and of motion was peculiar and majestic, reminding one of the Scripture expression "upright as the palm-tree." Her skin was of a peculiar blackness and softness, not unlike black velvet. Her eyes were large, full, and dark, and had about them that expression of wishfulness and longing which one may sometimes have remarked in dark eyes.

she sounds otherworldy, bibical. Pay attention to how her character develops

The value of an individual thus endowed in person and character may be easily conceived by those who understand how rare, either among slaves or freemen, is such a combination.

With more than usual sensibility and power of reflection, the idea that the children so dear to her were from their birth not her own—that they were, from the first hour of their existence, merchantable articles, having a fixed market value in proportion to every excellence, and liable to all the reverses of merchantable goods—sank with deep weight into her mind.

At first, she had met this doom with almost the ferocity of a lioness; but the blow, oftentimes repeated, had brought with it a dull endurance, and Christianity had entered, as it often does with the slave, through the rents and fissures of a broken heart.

want to be praised, flattered, and loved, all the time. It isn't enough to have you love me. I want to hear you tell me so every day, and hour, and minute. And I want you always to admire me, and praise everything that I do.

you thought, because I can't keep the day of the month, that I didn't know anything about it; but I did. And I have put down now a chalk-mark every day, for four weeks, right under where I keep my ironing-account, so as to be sure of it. And I've been busy about it ever since two o'clock this morning. And

:,-)

Good men think it right sometimes to do the strangest things.

Nina Gordon is my sister!"

"I'm Colonel Gordon's oldest son!

Then I should know what I was; but, now, I'm neither one thing nor another. I come just near enough to the condition of the white to look into it, to enjoy it, and want everything that I see. Then, the way I've been educated makes it worse. The fact is, that when the fathers of such as we feel any love for us, it isn't like the love they have for their white children. They are half-ashamed of us; they are ashamed to show their love, if they have it; and, then, there's a kind of remorse and pity about it, which they make up to themselves by petting us. They load us with presents and indulgences. They amuse themselves with us while we are children, and play off all our passions as if we were instruments to be played on. If we show talent and smartness, we hear some one say, aside, 'It's rather a pity, isn't it?' or, 'He is too smart for his place.' Then, we have all the family blood and the family pride; and what to do with it? I feel that I am a Gordon. I feel in my very heart that I'm like Colonel Gordon—I know I am, and, sometimes, I know I look like him, and that's one reason why Tom Gordon always hated me; and, then, there's another thing, the hardest of all, to have a sister like Miss Nina, to feel she is my sister, and never dare to say a word of it!

And what makes it worse is, that I think if Ma was alive she could help me.

"I rally believe that you've told dem dar lies till you begin to believe them yourself!"

Whar de world be if everybody was such fools to tell the raal reason for everything they are gwine for to do, or an't gwine fur to!"

Disagreeable people always do keep their promises!

men get their heads turned by such kind of girls as I am; and they pet us, and humor us. But, then, I'm afraid they're thinking, all the while, that their turn to rule is coming, by and by. They marry us because they think they are going to make us over; and what I'm afraid of is, I never can be made over.

I am worn out, and I shall die!"

"Ah! dese yer pine-trees! dey always a talkin'!" said Tiff to himself, in a sort of soliloquy. "Whisper, whisper, whisper! De Lord knows what it's all about! dey never tells folks what dey wants to know.

foreshadow for potential escape? connection w natural, nature as guide. character spiritual leader?

I've seen, to-night, that I an't going to live long, and I've been crying to think the children have got to live. If I could only take them all into my arms, and all lie down in the grave together, I should be so glad! I never knew what God made me for! I've never been fit for anything, nor done anything!"

Elixir of the Water

snake oil

had raised fighting-cocks, and kept dogs for hunting negroes.

Tiff, in fact, appeared to be one of those comfortable old creatures, who retain such a good understanding with all created nature that food never is denied them.

Hens always laid eggs for