Wild-eyed, the old fellow gazed about at the people.  “Glory!  Hallelujah!” Emotional explosives left over from the previous year’s revival burst from his lips.  He broke into a stiff, but prankish double-shuffle.

“I’d like to try some o’ that on my old mare,” remarked a facetious-minded rustic, below, and a titter followed.

“Good for man or beast,” retorted the Professor with smiling amiability.  “You’ve seen what the Vitalizing Mixture has done for this poor old colored man.  It will do as much or more for any of you.  And the price is Only One Dollar!” The voice double-capitalized the words.  “Don’t, for the sake of one hundred little cents, put off the day of cure.  Don’t waste your chance.  Don’t let a miserable little dollar stand between you and death.  Come, now.  Who’s first?”

The victim of the “cough” was first, closely followed by the mare-owning wit.  Then the whole mass seemed to be pressing forward, at once.  Like those of a conjurer, the deft hands of the Professor pushed in and out of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks.  And still they came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, sprawling their way to the golden promise.  Never did Pied Piper flute to creatures more bemused.  Only once was there pause, when the dispenser of balm held aloft between thumb and finger a cart-wheel dollar.

“Phony!” he said curtly, and flipped it far into the darkness.  “Don’t any more of you try it on,” he warned, as the thwarted profferer of the counterfeit sidled away, and there was, in his tone, a dominant ferocity.

Presently the line of purchasers thinned out.  The Vitalizing Mixture had exhausted its market.  But only part of the crowd had contributed to the levy.  Mainly it was the men, whom the “spiel” had lured.  Now for the women.  The voice, the organ of a genuine artist, took on a new cadence, limpid and tender.

“And now, we come to the sufferings of those who bear pain with the fortitude of the angels.  Our women-folk!  How many here are hiding that dreadful malady, cancer?  Hiding it, when help and cure are at their beck and call.  Lady,” he bent swiftly to the slattern under the torch and his accents were a healing effluence, “with my soothing, balmy oils, you can cure yourself in three weeks, or your money back.”

“I do’ know haow you knew,” faltered the woman.  “I ain’t told no one yet.  Kinder hoped it wa’n’t thet, after all.”

He brooded over her compassionately.  “You’ve suffered needlessly.  Soon it would have been too late.  The Vitalizing Mixture will keep up your strength, while the soothing, balmy oils drive out the poison, and heal up the sore.  Three and a half for the two.  Thank you.  And is there some suffering friend who you can lead to the light?”

The woman hesitated.  She moved out to the edge of the crowd, and spoke earnestly to a younger woman, whose comely face was scarred with the chiseling of sleeplessness.