Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

COTTONTOP DOUBTS, AND PROVES IT. 118 him. He jes’ lay right out and whined like a dog, and den died. Dat’s all.” “Who de ile ?”’ said Cottontop. with a kind of mock dignity. “De boys dragged de beast up to de houses, +o gimme peaaeegemtaarane Dat’s all.” “Dat ain’t nuffin. I’s killed a houseful of ’gators, I has,” said a short, thick-set, scrubby-headed looking darkey, cele- brated chiefly for the quantity of pig he could eat and the big stories he could tell. “I's made ’em carry me across de lagune many times. “T's got an alligator bridle to ride’em — wid. Ps got an alligator skin at de hut on rockers, and ebery one ob my pickaninnies was brought up in dat skin. T's got—” “ Look-a-heah, Pluribus, you isn’t got one ting. You isn’t The injured Pluribus could only be silent, and in two minutes more was fast asleep on the greensward, 2 ec gore _with the pig he had devoured. “I don’t b’lieve w’at dat nigger say about ridin’ de alli- gators across de bayou,” said Cottontop. “I once heard tell dat de mails on de Mississip was carried up and down by boys on de alligator’s back—dat dey went so fas’ you could only see a streak through de water; but I don’t believe dat, nohow, "kase I knows de beast is de slowestest eber did live. Why, I'll tell you: once I was across de bayous in de oberseer’s skiff, to de ole rice plantation. W’en I got to de bayou, dar was jus’ about two hundred little alligators creepin’aroun’, jes’ hatched out in de sand. De ole alligator was out on de mud. I went ober to de old place, staid dar all night, come back nex’ day, and de old alligator had made only jes’ about twenty rods, dat’s all » Comiclookks.conn