The peculiarities of the Yankee dialect are most amusingly exemplified by James Russell Lowell, in the Biglow Papers, especially in the First Series, from which the following extract is taken:
I ’spose you wonder where I be; I can’t tell fur the soul o’ me
Exactly where I be myself, meanin’ by thet, the hull o’ me.
When I left hum, I hed two legs, an’ they wa’n’t bad ones neither;
The scaliest trick they ever played, wuz bringin’ on me hither—
Now one on ’em’s I dunno where, they thought I was a-dyin’,
An’ cut it off, because they said ’twas kind of mortifyin’;
I’m willin to believe it wuz, and yet I can’t see, nuther,
Why one should take to feelin’ cheap a minute sooner ’n t’other,
Sence both wuz equilly to blame—but things is ez they be;