Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 106 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 106: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Content Analysis This is a page of running prose from the penny dreadful *Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil* (page 90). The text presents a dramatic narrative in heavy Irish-American dialect, recounting a storm rescue. A narrator describes how a drowned man arrived seeking "Miss Anderson," then explains how he and another man assisted an injured young woman ("the little Lady Pantoufle") after a storm. The passage concludes with the young man beginning to tell the narrator that he was dismounting at "Oxheart" when "Miss Dare" appeared wildly on horseback. The prose is densely written with period dialect spelling and conveys melodramatic action typical of Victorian sensation fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
gO Tom ANDERSON, DarRE-DEVIL hair a-bristhlin’ wid pine-straw, an’ the blood thricklin’ down her little face. ““Where’s Unaka?’ sez she, ez stiddy ez an outpost. ‘Unaka can find him I’ An’ thin, whin I tould her Unaka had gone ter look fer him, ‘Gone?’ she cries. ‘Hours ago,’ sez I. ‘In this storm!’ she sez; an’ a-cryin’ loike her heart would break. Wid that the wind swats the door open, an’ there wuz another wan — divvle a liss. A dthrownded man, this toime; wid two dthrownded horse-thes. He lept in, he did, an’ comes purthy near pullin’ the craythurs in afther him — shoutin’ ter me, ‘Where’s Miss Anderson?’ it bein’ dark ez dooms- day, so to spake — the storm wuz that black. An’ whin he made out that Sehoy wuz hooldin’ av her in her arms, loike a baby, he turns. his back on ’em an’ slips er half-joe in mer hand ez alsy ez cream, an’ axthes me ter git the cattle out av the weather. Out wint I, an’ slaps ’em in the warrum shop: the pair av “em, — a nate brown cob, wid the marks av the rowels on his barrel, an’ the ither Tom- mie Jifferson’s big Poke o’ Moonshine, Gray Aigle— divvle a liss. An’ it’s mesilf as knows the timper av /im, fer last summer I takes a warrut off av his off hind leg fer him; an’ indade I’d ez lave take a warrut off av a comet. Now, would n’t I? “Well, whin I gets back ter the kitchen the young gintle- man— an’ a foiner young fellow niver tuk a duckin’ — wuz fixin’ some hot New-England and wather — he’d found me ould canteen an’ not half thried — fer the little gal, an’ Sehoy was sthrippin’ off her wet shoes. We makes her swal- low the hot drink, an’ we stanches the cut on her purthy for- rid (which she’s niver knowed what made it, at all, at all; but I’m thinkin’ it wuz the Divvle’s own pine-burr! What- iver!) An’ thin we wint out an’ laves Sehoy ter putth a dry thread on the little Lady Pantoufle. So, while we takes a smoke in the ither room, the young fellow is afther tellin’ me he wuz jist disthmountin’ at the door av Oxheart whin Muss Dare comes flyin’ outh in the flare av the illements — wilder ’n a hawk — an’ backs that pluperfec’ jew-raff av ECONMMICOOOKSa(©) m