Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

and more since my mudder was dead. Sometimes missus would ask me what made me so sullen; if I wasn’t well took keer of and comfortable. I t’ink she was kind o’ ’fraid of me. I use to look at her, w’en I stood *hind massa’s chair at table. She was a proud-looking woman, but she wasn't handsome. Sometimes, w’en she’d meet my eyes, she look kind of ‘startled ; “spect dar wes more in'’em than I meant myself, for all dis time I was t’inking, t’inking. “Tell you, my frien’s, w’at I was,t’inking about: I’d made up my mind to kill my missus. Don’ be so scar’t, Rose. You see, I'd got it fixed up that I ought to do it. She'd killed miy mudder, or de same, and w’en one pusson kills anodder de law hangs ’em. Woll, I knew, in course, I couldn’ prove she'd killed my mudder, so I was bound to take de law in my own han’s, You see, I felt so, and you can’t expect poor, igno- rant black folks-feel t’ings right ; t'was wrong, berry wrong, but fact is, ebery t’ing was wrong, and I couldn’ get it right, nohow. “ Woll, Missus Jonsing, she got so she couldn’ bar to have me ’roun’ de table, and she got massa to gib me kind of assistant’s place to de oberseer; and so I hung ‘round, in and out de house, till I was *bout twenty-two year ole; and still I hadn’t had no berry good chance to do what I meant to. “ Howsumever, dar was anodder reason. Dar was a girl in de house dat I’d got to t’ink a heap of. She was right young and pretty. I wanted her for my wife, and she t’ought a good deal of missus, and I couldn’ somehow bring myself to do de job, w’en she was ’round. I tought a great deal of Chloe, but she didn’t seem to keer for me. She was berry sprightly, and I was so quiet-like, she didn’ take to me. Last I found out she was belonging to young massa, missus’ oldest son, jis’ a year older’n me—my halfbrudder he was, if he wouldn’ like to be tol’ of it. So den I made up my mind for certain. eComnieloOolkks.conn