Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 21 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is a page of running prose narrative from what appears to be Chapter 5 ("Oxheart") of a Victorian penny dreadful. The text introduces a sixteen-year-old white boy named Tom Anderson and describes his appearance and clothing in detail as he rides along a road on an autumn evening. The narrative establishes that Tom has befriended a Cherokee boy named Unaka, who possesses unexplained power over animals, and provides extensive description of Tom's garments—a mulberry coat, red waistcoat, breeches, and accessories—detailing their origins within a planter household economy that relied on enslaved and indentured labor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OxHEART 5 % The remarkable member of the blacksmith’s family was the Cherokee boy, Unaka. That he was possessed of some singular power, never satisfactorily explained, is certain. All the strange stories you ever heard about gypsy con- jurings and so on were mere moonshine compared to this boy’s power over animals. For three or four years Tom Anderson had hunted and fished with the Cherokee boy. They were fast friends. The white had learned a good many things from the redskin — the Cherokee tongue, for one. Tom was just turned six- teen. As Goldsmith said of Saint-Pierre, “he had good sense, fine powers of observance, and sensibility,” — and red-hot impetuosity. | “He'll play the mischief some day,” said the flabby ones. How far the boy’s destiny outran that grumbling horoscope! He was well-grown, and straight as a sapling. His dark eyes were brilliant; his features cut with lawful lines. The mouth was notably handsome; the nose a deli- cate aquiline, with impulsive nostrils. “A renegade nose: it was born a Greek and went over to the Romans!” he said himself. This was the way he looked as he cantered along the road that autumn evening. He wore a mulberry broad- cloth coat, —it had been Troupe’s, but in the provident fashion of the times was “made over” for the younger boy, — a red waistcoat with genuine silver buttons, and black knee-breeches. His black-red hair was tied in a hank with a riband. The three-cornered hat had been drenched and dried many a time. His silver shoe-buckles had served successively two or three Andersons, in as many generations. The flax for his shirt had been grown in his father’s fields; hackled, spun, and woven by certain serv- ants of the planter’s household; bleached, cut, and sewn by others still. A week-old calf from the Anderson herds furnished the fine leather for Tom’s shoes. His lamb’s-wool stockings had been knitted by one of the white indentured servants. A favorite Christmas present at that period, by the way, from the bondsman to the “ Master” was a pair CORVICLOO© SS (SO) mn