Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 Tom ANDERSON, DarRE-DEVIL would roar, “‘ Be done, all av yez”’; and as soon as he could be heard, he’d go on with some story of the Georgia fron- tier. ‘““Bechune the Spaniards an’ the redskins, yez see, we’d be stharri-vin intirely, oftin ez not. Thin, we’d go out in the swamp — Bulltown, or any whativer— rope a shteer, skin him in a jiffy, shtrech his hide on fower stakes, pour in a hat-th-ful av wather, drop ina round av beef, build a foine fire benayth —an’ there yez are! The shteer, av coorse, had ter furnish us wid somethin’ ter cook, an’ somethin’ ter cook in — widout a farden fer his condescinsion! A foine schew a fat yearlin’ makes in that kind av a schew-pan; an’ whin the forests are a-groonin’ an’ the alli-gait-thors a-bellerin’, the Divvle himself would hug the fire under thot camp-kittle!” | Carr’s cabin teemed with tamed animals —a bear cub named Bryan o’ Lynn, goats, ducks, chickens, fawns. A pet coon peeped from the rafters; a fox lurked under the sills. East-a-tubbee tolerated a one-eyed possum for a bedfellow — 1s there any spirit of tolerance as broad as the tolerance of bedfellowship? Fox squirrels, hares, chip- munks were everywhere, always in devilment, and panics — scampering up the walls, out of the crevices, between your feet. There was always an eye at some crack, a brush whisking out of sight around some corner — except, of course, in the case of the cub’s evanishings. “Bryan o’ Lynn,’’ Carr would say, nodding at the cub, “he’s loike Unaka, —is Bryan,—no hand for wurruk, but a divvle av a fellow ter sthand by his frinds!”’ The day Ishmael rode away was the longest day one Charlottesville schoolboy had ever passed. The secret Ishmael had entrusted to him almost crowded out his headlong plans for hunting lead. In the afternoon it came on to snow. Little did the dreamer think that the coming snowstorm would weigh as lead in the scales of Destiny. When, in the stinted evening light, he got upon his feet to read aloud certain Dispatches from Gaul, — which the processions of generations have come up against ever ECOMMICOOOKS.(e© m