| PAGE | |
| “They wuz Tracts and Bibles” | [7] |
| Uncle Nate Gowdey | [12] |
| “The dumb Fools!” | [18] |
| A Black | [21] |
| “The old and feeble Ones” | [30] |
| “I sot demute” | [34] |
| “The dark Faces of these Apostles” | [40] |
| “With Philury’s Help” | [46] |
| Character Sketch | [51] |
| “When Ury had that Fight with Sam” | [56] |
| Melinda | [61] |
| Melinda has a Fit | [63] |
| “It wuz ‘Hold the Fort’ he belched out in” | [69] |
| “I ketched her by her Limb” | [73] |
| Peter and Melinda Ann | [77] |
| Deacon Henzy | [83] |
| “Josiah’s bald Head and Mine” | [86] |
| The Colored Children | [93] |
| Old Dr. Cork | [99] |
| The Slave Woman who poisoned the Child | [104] |
| Madeline | [110] |
| Colonel Seybert | [122] |
| “Low, brutal, envious Mind” | [128] |
| Defending his Home | [133] |
| The Leader | [138] |
| Felix and the Teacher | [143] |
| “The Old, the Feeble” | [149] |
| “His Overseer” | [153] |
| “A little tumble-down Cottage” | [155] |
| Cleopatra | [156] |
| Rosy | [161] |
| “He wuz glad to set down” | [167] |
| The old Negro | [172] |
| “Gawge Perkins am Daid” | [176] |
| One of the Mourners | [179] |
| “You can repair your Dwellin’ House | [185] |
| “And I have got the Pans” | [189] |
| “I am needed there” | [192] |
| “The Butter-Maker up in Zoar” | [194] |
| “Josiah give up” | [196] |
| Deacon Huffer | [208] |
| “Under the white Cross” | [211] |
| The Jonesvillians | [215] |
| “Boy laughed” | [220] |
| Raymond Fairfax Coleman | [223] |
| “With a jumpin’ Toothache” | [225] |
| “The Relation on Maggie’s Side” | [230] |
| Babe | [237] |
| “My Tone riz up” | [239] |
| “I had been out a walkin’” | [242] |
| A Poor White | [244] |
| Rosy’s Baby | [254] |
| Ury | [256] |
| Some Neighbors | [258] |
| Aunt Mela | [264] |
| “Despatched to get Buttermilk” | [271] |
| “The big Piazza” | [277] |
| “A perfect Dagon” | [279] |
| A Ku-Kluxer | [291] |
| “Pilot a helpless Unionist” | [296] |
| “Set down in our Swamp” | [301] |
| “He hastened off” | [305] |
| “To kiss Snow and Boy good-night” | [308] |
| “And killed her Hens” | [312] |
| “Onexpected Company” | [316] |
| “Misery” | [320] |
| “Wherefoah, Bredren, let us pray” | [322] |
| Abe | [326] |
| “He wuz a walkin’ up and down” | [331] |
| “This dark Earth Valley” | [334] |
| Hiram Wiggins’s two Daughters | [338] |
| “A clear River running through” | [343] |
| “Everything wuz ready” | [347] |
| “In the Chair of the Ruler” | [353] |
| “Faced the Gang of masked Men” | [360] |
| “When the Moon had risen” | [363] |
| “Exiled Birds” | [369] |
| Victor | [373] |
| “Makin’ Speeches” | [375] |
| Father Gasperin | [378] |
| “Felix, his Wife and Little Ned” | [380] |
| “I sot out on the Stoop” | [384] |
“THEY WUZ TRACTS AND BIBLES.”
CHAPTER I.
IT was entirely onexpected and onlooked for.
But I took it as a Decree, and done as well as I could, which is jest as well as anybody ought to be expected to do under any circumstances, either on my side or on hisen.
It was one of the relations on his side that come on to us entirely onexpected and on the evenin’ stage that runs from Jonesville to Loontown. He was a passin’ through this part of the country on business, so he stopped off at Jonesville to see us.
He come with his portmanty and a satchel, and I mistrusted, after consultin’ them signs in the privacy of my own mind, that he had come to stay for quite a spell.