Beadle's Dime Novels No. 153: Mohawk Nat — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

FIGHTING A PASTIME. 49 grate, an’ then strike out with all his might’ A man that does that, you know, don’t waste breath. He knows he has got the job on his hands, and the quicker he gets it over, the bet- ter for all concerned. Now, regardin’ fightin’ in the abstract, as my friend Captain Lewis Miller would obsarve, it ain't very nice. Bat taken positively, it’s nice. I likes to fight. Cause why? When I git into a muss, ’m as happy as a king. S’pose I git popped over. All right. I take my chaince. An’ a man, if he is only actyve, needn’t git killed till he has had a deal of fun. Don’t you see?” . “TI see, You regard fighting as a pastime, then ?” “Eggzactly. Why need a man do any thing he don’t con- sider a pleasure. “ He kin run if he must to save his sculp, though, I own,I don’t take to running, much. Not that thar’s any thing agin’ runnin’, but it ain't my way. Td a heap wae ceo. “You were running this morning.” “Posityvely? Now, how do you know but it was what the Gin’rals call a joodicious retreat? I staid hereabout long enough to give the painted reptyle yonder a bloody mug. Jest see him. He looks as if he had ‘run foul of a small-sized uirthquake. How it does beautify an Injin, to be sure, to smash his countenance 4 little. When I hit him, he was as mean a lookin’ reptyle as a hyena, with a nose as long as a Jesuit’s foot; but now, if you keer to look at him, you kin see that he ain't nothin’ short of an Injin Cupid.” -“T doubt if he thanks you,” replied Le Renard. “In the name of the saints, what did you hit him with ?” - “He run foul of an airthquake,” replied Nat, with the ap- pearance of the greatest candor, == “ Metaplorically speaking. But; in reality, what did you hit him withP «0 “A stun,” said Nat. “A small one, not larger than his head ; a healthy limestun, full of little shellfish and wege- tables that got penned up in it a hundred thousand years ~ “He will murder you for that. Don’t you see he was a beau in his way, and that you have ruined his comely looks forever ?” 5 , ; rit ’ 3 “No sech thing.” answered Mohawk Nut’ “He was a comliclooks.conn