Boston!  I called my black cat up and told her to smell for blood, and she smelled, and she smelled, and she smelled!  She smelled, and she smelled, and she smelled!  And presently her hair stood up like bristles, and her eyes shot out sparks of fire, and her tail was as stiff as iron!” He threw his shoulders back, looked imposingly around and repeated:  “I am the great Dr. Rutherford the witch-doctor of Boston!  My black Cat tells me that the witch is here—­that she has hung the deadly nightshade at your cabin-doors, and your blood is turning to water.  You are beginning to wither away.  You shiver in the sunshine; you don’t want to eat; your hearts are heavy and you don’t feel like work; and when you come from the field you don’t take down the banjo and pat and shuffle and dance, but you sit down in the corner with your heads on your hands, and would go to sleep, but you know that as soon as you shut your eyes she will cast hers on you through the chinks in the cabin-wall.”

“Dat’s me!” said Mercy—­“dat certny is me!”

“Gret day in de mornin’, mas’ witch-doctor!  How you know?  Is you been tricked?” inquired Martha, who, having been reared on the plantation, was unacquainted with the etiquette observed at lectures.

Wash groaned heavily, and shook his head from side to side in silent commendation of the doctor’s lore.

“My black cat tells me that the witch is here; and she is here!” (Immense sensation among the children of Ham.) “But,” continued he with a majestic wave of the arm, “she can do you no harm, for I also am here, the great Dr. Rutherford, the witch-doctor of Boston!”

“Doctor,” inquired Edward in a loud voice, “can you tell who is conjured and who is not?”

“I cannot tell unless robed in the blandishments of plagiarism and the satellites of hygienic art as expunged by the gyrations of nebular hypothesis.  Await ye!” He and Mr, Smith went into the house.

The negroes were very much impressed.  They have excessive reverence for grandiloquent language, and the less they understand of it the better they like it.

“What dat he say, honey?” asked old Mammy.  “I can’t heer like I used ter.”

“He says he will be back soon, Mammy, and tell if any of you are tricked,” said I; and just then Edward and the doctor reappeared, bearing between them a pine table.  On this table were arranged about forty little pyramids of whitish-looking powder, and in their midst stood a bottle containing some clear liquid, like water.  Dr. Rutherford seated himself behind it, robed in the black gown he had used in the dissecting-room, and crowned by a conical head-piece about two feet high, manufactured by Edward and himself, and which they had completed by placing on the pinnacle thereof a human skull.  The effect of this picturesque costume was heightened by two large red circles around the doctor’s eyes—­whether obtained from the juice of the pokeberry or the inkstand on Edward’s desk need not be determined.