For a few moments she was petrified with astonishment. “Surely, gentlemen, you do not intend to play cards there?”
“Shet your gabblement.”
“You bet we does.”
“Shuffle, Joe.”
“But this is a post-office, and the public must come here.” All four mouths opened and poured out upon Mrs. Huntley a flood of nastiness.
[325]
The crowd in the door laughed and shouted.
Kate was disgusted and shocked. Then she added :
“This office belongs to the government.”
“Dawg awn your government.”
“Hurrah fer Jeff Davis !”
“Drat niggah government !”
“Clubs are trumps.”
“Play !”
Kate walked quickly round from behind the delivery window.
She stood close beside the sitting bullies on the floor. She stood facing the gaping, grinning, shouting bullies in the door.
“You must go out of here.” Her voice was fine and clear. It rang out over the heads of the crowd.”
“Go to ——, you — — Yankee ——.”
It was a puttering of foulness.
It was horrible.
ex O. T. Beard, Chapter 32, “Untamed Tigers,” in Bristling with Thorns (“A Story of War and Reconstruction”); (New York, 1887) : 325
Princeton copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
same (via google books) : link
1884 edition (same plates), NYPL copy (one of three scans via hathitrust) : link
on its author or his book, little so far is found.
Oliver Thomas Beard (1832-1898). In the Civil War, he was Lieutenant-Colonel of the 48th New York Regiment and he is credited with commanding the first body of colored troops engaged in battle.
American Aristocracy : link
this, from a list of “New American Books and Recent Importations,” in Trubner’s American and Oriental Literary Record (1884) : 62 : link —
A sensationally written story. The horrors of Andersonville and the Ku Klux outrages are described in painfully plain language. The “poor white trash” or Southern “crackers” are pictured in all their ignorance and degradation, and they are shown as the result, in part, of the old slavery system.
mentioned as author of a novel (in newspapers only?) entitled Trade and Trouble (source)
2 November 2025