The Helpless Hand

This is a publisher's catalog and sample content from Beadle & Adams of New York, featuring their dime publication series for public performance. The front matter advertises comprehensive collections: "Dime Speakers" (twenty-four volumes of monologues, recitations, and orations for school exhibitions and home entertainments) and "Dime Dialogues" (thirty volumes of social comedies, burlesques, and farces). Each volume contains 100 pages and costs ten cents.

The featured story is "The Helpless Hand: A Tale of Backwoods Retribution" by Captain Mayne Reid. Set in 1840s Arkansas near Helena, it opens with six young hunters—ranging from plantation owners' sons to poor settlers' boys—camped after killing a bear. After testing feats of strength, they encounter a youth of mixed Cherokee-Black ancestry and a local girl. The wealthier hunters, particularly Brandon, provoke the mixed-race youth named "Choc," challenging him to prove his manhood against their racist insults.