Beadle's Dime Novels No. 33: Maum Guinea and Her Plantation Children — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

36 MAUM GULNHA. which extinguished the new tune, and compelled the banjo to fall into rank and play second fiddle. The shrill squeal of a fat porker soon blended with the music, as a couple of men entered a pen in the rear of the cabins, and seized the victim which was to be offered, a smoking sacrifice, to the day’s festivities. The grand feature of this day’s frolic was to be a barbecue in the edge of the woods which skirted the plantation. Even the house-servants, such of them as could be spared, were not averse to joining in the wild novelty of this favorite sport, which was to begin at noon and end at midnight, and was engaged in by the hands of several of the plantations, each of which contributed its share to the furnishing of the feast. As they had slumbered until long after sunrise, there was no more than time for the women to bake the breakfast-cake, wash the children’s faces, and get their own finery in order, and for the men to get the necessary “ traps” together, by the appointed hour. The weather was propitious —still and bright, and just cool enough to be exhilarating. * In the center of a cleared space, which ran a little way _ back into the wood, the ceremonies began by kindling a huge fire, in which the tamarack-branches crackled and the pine- knots glowed, in a manner especially delightful to these dark children of the sun, whorloved both the heat and the light The luxury of toasting their shins was enjoyed with the most heads, rolled their eyes, laughed queerly, and made brief observations or told fantastic tales which taxed even their own wonderful credulity. All those who were not singing or dancing or fiddling, had enough to do in watching the motions of the men engaged in the important work of getting the feast rightly to “doing.” Ebony babies rolled around like balls in*the dry grass, and older urchins lugged small ComnieloOolkksS.conn