The nigger feller said: “Yessir, bout 3 feet wide, you ought to have saw it open like it was a morning glory!”
Then Uncle Ned, which was still ironical, he said: “Did it take root?”
The nigger feller thought a while and then he said: “I was a bit upset and can’t recollect that it took any thing only but jest my laig.”
But if a gater wanted Billys laig he would cut its head off with a long sword and say: “That will teach you for to not ask for it, cause I want it to go to school with.” Billy is the bravest boy he ever saw, and licks Sammy Doppy every little while.
A other time in Indy Uncle Ned was a walkin in the jingle and a long slender snake jumped at him and bit him on the hand and ran away. Then Uncle Ned he run as hard as he could for to get home and die in the bosom of his club. While he was a runnin and a prayin for his sins to be forgave he see a natif nigger a sittin by the road side, and the natif nigger had three jest such snakes twisted all round his naked arms and bitin, real cruel, but he had got all their tails into one hand.
Then Uncle Ned he stopped and said: “Poor feller, I have been bit too. As there isnt any hope for us now, we will sell our lifes as dear as we can to them deadly cobrys.”
So he threw off his coat and pitched in and grabbed the snakes tails too. Then the native nigger he sed: “Thankee, sir, I guess we will be able for to manage them now. There is to be a party tonight, and I have been tryin for more than half a hour to braid these fellers into a necklace for the stomach of my wife’s belly, but they are so squirmy I thought I would have to give it up.”
Uncle Ned he was a stonished, and he said: “What! isnt them reptiles pizen?”
The natif nigger he said: “How can I know? Do you suppose I ever et one?”
One day my father he spoke up and said: “Johnny, did you ever hear about the good man which found a frozen snake and warmed it in his bosom, and when the snake got nice and comftable it bit him?”