Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 47 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 47: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis: "At the Blacksmith's Shop" This is a page of running prose narrative text (page 31) from what appears to be a serialized story. The text describes a young boy's arrival at a blacksmith's shop after school, where he encounters the blacksmith Carr, a Native American character named Unaka making arrows, and others working at the forge. The passage includes dialogue in dialect and a folk song about "Bryan o' Lynn," and depicts the boy taking a turn working the anvil while the blacksmith shapes a horseshoe. The narrative blends scenes of manual labor with descriptions of craftwork, including detailed description of an ornate Native American blow-gun.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AT THE BLACKSMITH’S SHOP 31 since the Dispatches were set down, — flakes “‘as big as biscuit’”” were flying by the classroom window. His mental vision pictured a naked bestiarius, sworded, un- blenching, his eye a torch flickering in the breath of his Imperial Master. “O Cesar, we, about to die, salute thee!” The boy’s heroic blood cried after the gladiator. “The fellow that could bleed an African lion, look Cesar in the eye, and die like zhat—had nothing to whine about.” Well, better the Old Virginia Shore than ancient Rome; better an American soldier than a Roman gladia- tor; better to bleed the British Lion than all the African ones that ever charged saints or swordsmen! .5So he told himself as he rode off after school to the blacksmith’s shop. Above the roar of the forge, a sonorous voice :— *‘Ow, Bryan o’ Lynn had no breeches ter wear, So he stole him a sheep-skin an’ made him a pair. ‘Wid the skinny side out, an’ the woolly side in, They’re pleasant an cool,’ says Bryan o’ Lynn! Oi ’m needin’ a hand’s turn the wust in the wurruld— an’ there stands Unakerr — like a larruk, with wan hale up top o’ the ither!— Moind the shoe, little gal! It’s hot ez hell” — this last in Choctaw, for Sehoy was deaf to Eng- lish. “Hello, here!’’ ‘Tom Anderson! Now, ain’t it? Light, young gintle- man! Come in. It’s no hominy-snow we’s afther havin’, my b’y. Talk ter yez in a twinklin’.”’ They were all around the forge. Sehoy was holding the red-hot shoe on the anvil. Unaka was making arrows of locust thorns feathered with thistledown for his blow-gun. And what a beautiful thing that Indian blow-gun was, to be sure! — six feet in length, bound in vellumy fawn-skin, and encrusted with traceries enigmatic and untranslatable. Tom took Sehoy’s place at the anvil, and Carr made the sparks spurt. “‘ Now, thin; there’s a shoe nate enough for Cinderilla!”’ Carr lighted his pipe, Unaka tested an arrow on the cub’s nose, the cub signified that it was effective, GOMmiGcsoo “eS (C(O) im