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Uncle Tom's Cabin Chapter 32
Chapter 32
The party makes its way by wagon to Legree's estate, with Legree cursing them the whole way and demanding them to sing. When the slaves arrive, they find a ramshackle, deteriorated mansion guarded by several ferocious attack dogs. Legree tells them the dogs will attack them if they try to escape. Legree's overseers, two slaves named Sambo and Quimbo (who Legree has trained to be hard and bitter to the other slaves) lead the new slaves to their quarters, which are merely rude shanties with no walls and with piles of straw on the floor for beds. The next day, they are acquainted with their new duties--picking cotton from the crack of dawn until late in the evening, when their baskets are weighed. Afterward, they are given corn to grind to make corncakes for their only meal; the slaves must wait in line until the grinder becomes available. Tom, already faint from hunger, grinds the corn of two other women before his own when he sees how weary they are. He reads to them from his Bible when they are waiting for their cakes to cook, and the women express their belief that they don't see how the Lord could be watching over them, so wretched are their circumstances. After he falls asleep later, Tom has an extremely realistic "dream" in which Eva is reading the Bible to him.
