Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

MASSA’S FAVORITE. 29 times was not so easy. Wen a missus hates a slaye wuss’n pison, times ain’t easy for de slave, s’pose ye know. My mud- der was berry handsome—handsome as Rose dar—jis’ sech soft, shinin’ hair and eyes, and skin as white as mos’ anybody’s. I can remember how she looked when I was a little fellow tum- bling in de dirt, or in de porch wid massa’s oder chil'ren—his real ones, I mean. She used to sing so beautiful—all de people lub to hear her sing—put de fretfullest baby to sleep wid her singin’. 'Spec’ she was happy and kerless for a w'lle; but by time I got ole enough to notice, she use to cry more’n she laugh, She would sit and sing, holding missus’ baby in her lap—her own would be put out to black nigger to nurse—and de tears a-rollin’ down her cheeks all de time I was cuttin’ up and rollin’ ’round in de grass. “ You see, missus was awful cruel to her. Weaver sascme was away in Washington City, wich he’d be months at a time, she'd whip her, and starve her, and freeze her, and ebery- ing she could do, “cept to kill her outright. You see, missus and my mudder was; my mudder could read and write, too, and was rael gintecl and missus hated her "kase her husband liked her so well. Ef he hadn't favored her beyond the rest, and give her presents, and sot her up ’fore his own wife, I don’t s’pose missus would ave got so bad, She used to try to make her husband sell her ’way down South; “but he wouldn't do it—swore he'd sell hisself fust ; and the more lies she told "bout de poor élave- girl, and de more trouble she ‘for to get her in, de more massa took her part. -I don’ blam ‘“Missus Jonsing now so much as F did oncé—but ‘tas wrong, al round, and dat’s a fact. «oll folk hed, tap wader she Iub-massa piety athe she lub him orfully. W'en he'd been gone and come back, and she heard his voice ‘fore she seen him, Pye noticed her Comichookscom