Theodore Winthrop

“ That made the mother’s influence more commanding. The child loved the mother with a modification of the same passion that the father had felt for a nature he deemed his nobler counterpart. The father was so much like his daughter that she could not comprehend him, until she was ripe enough to comprehend herself. Crude contrasts are earliest perceived, earliest appreciated, and earliest admired, in character as in art.
So without any resistance Mrs. Brothertoft wielded Lucy. She let the child love her and confide in her exclusively. But she hated her. She hated Edwin Brothertoft’s daughter. ”

“ Voltaire, therefore, will try not to talk Tombigbee.
“It’s too bad,” muttered the negro, in futile protest, “to see them fellows hanging up their hats here, and the real master — the real gentleman — shamed out of house and home.
“It’s too bad,” he continued despondingly, “to see Miss Lucy, as sweet a little lady as ever stepped, taught to think her father a good-for-nothing spendthrift and idler, if not worse. The madam will never let her see him alone. The poor child is one of the kind that believes what is told to ’em. No wonder she is solemn as Sunday all the time. ”

“ Sappho shook her head, and stirred her soup.
“But Miss Lucy is going to be a big girl pretty soon. Her mother is making her mistrust her father. She’s got no friends. What will come of her?”
Sappho tasted her soup. It was savory.
“Voltaire,” says she, striving to talk a dialect worthy of her name, and hitting half-way to English, “Voltaire, Faith is what you wants. You is not got the Faith of a free colored gentleman, member of one of de oldest families in all Westchester. You is got no more Faith than them Mumbo Jumbo Billop niggers what immigrated in the Red Rover. ”

“ Supercilious officers, in red coats, who were addressed as General or My Lord, insolent officers, in red coats, hight Colonel or Sir Harry, arranged their laced cravats at the mirror under the rampant eagle, or lounged on the sofas. ”