Mass George

Mass' George, by George Manville Fenn

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Title: Mass' George A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah
Author: George Manville Fenn
Illustrator: W.T. Smith
Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21320]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASS' GEORGE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Mass' George, by George Manville Fenn.
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George Bruton, son of Captain Bruton is a young teenager. His father's plantation is in Georgia. The time is around the middle of the eighteenth century. Although not keen on the idea of slavery, Captain Bruton determines that he will buy one of them and will try to treat him extremely well. The man has a son, whom the family nickname Pompey, Pomp for short. Eventually these two become relaxed, realising that there will be no hard treatment for them, and the two boys, George and Pomp, become fast friends. They have various adventures, including attacks by alligators, floods, fire, Red Indians, Spaniards, snakes, ants, and several other nasties.
The book very largely consists of dialogue between the two boys, starting at the point when Pomp can barely speak English, which he soon masters after a fashion (which his father never does), and going on to the point when Captain Bruton decides to free the two slaves, who had comported themselves well during a prolonged series of attacks by Indians, and later by Spaniards from Florida as well.
It's quite a long book, but the action is well-sustained, and you will enjoy it. NH
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MASS' GEORGE, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
Interesting? My life? Well, let me see. I suppose some people would call it so, for now I come to think of it I did go through a good deal; what with the fighting with the Spaniards, and the Indians, and the fire, and the floods, and the wild beasts, and such-like adventures. Yes; it never seemed to occur to me before, you know, me--George Bruton, son of Captain Bruton of the King's army, who went out with the General to help colonise Georgia, as they called the country after his Majesty King George the Second, and went through perils and dangers such as no one but English gentlemen and their brave followers would dare and overcome.
You'll find it all in your histories; how the General had leave to take so many followers, and carve out for themselves land and estates in the beautiful new country.
My father was one of the party. He went, for he was sick at heart and despondent. He had married a sweet English lady--my mother--and when I was about six years old she died; and after growing more and more unhappy for a couple of years, his friends told him that if he did not seek active life of some kind, he would die too, and leave me an orphan indeed.
That frightened him so that he raised himself up from his despondent state, readily embraced the opportunity offered by the General's expedition, sold his house in the country to which he had retired on leaving the army, and was going out to the southern part of North America with me only. But Sarah would not hear of parting from me, and begged my father to take her to be my attendant and his servant, just as on the same day Morgan Johns, our gardener, had volunteered to go with his master. Not that he was exactly a gardener, though he was full of gardening knowledge, and was a gardener's son; for he had been in my father's company in the old regiment, and when my father left it, followed him down and settled quite into a domestic life.
Well, as Morgan Johns volunteered to go with the expedition, and said nothing would suit him better than gardening in a new country, and doing a bit of fighting if it was wanted, and as our Sarah had volunteered too, it fell out quite as a matter of course, that one day as my father was seated in his room writing letters, and making his final preparations for his venturesome journey, and while I was seated there looking at the pictures in a book, Morgan and Sarah came in dressed in their best clothes, and stood both of them looking very red in the face.
"Well?" said my father, in the cold, stern way in which he generally spoke then; "what is it?"
"Tell him, Sarah," I heard Morgan whisper, for I had gone up to put my hand in hers.
"For shame!" she said; "it's you who ought."
"Now look you,"