You never seen a nigger with his colour running into him so deep as
Sam's did. Sam, he was always apologizing about it, too. You could see
it made him feel real bad to think his colour was so stubborn. He felt
like it wasn't being polite to the doctor and me, Sam did, fur his skin
to act that-a-way. He was a willing nigger, Sam was. The doctor, he says
he will find out the right stuff if he has to start at the letter A and
work Sam through every drug in the hull blame alphabet down to Z.
Which he finally struck it. I don't exactly know what she had in her,
but she was a mixture of some kind. The only trouble with her was she
didn't work equal and even--left Sam's face looking peeled and spotty in
places. But still, in them spots, Sam was six shades lighter.
The doctor says that is jest what he wants, that there
passing on-to-the-next-cage-we-have-the-spotted-girocutus-look, as he
calls it. The chocolate brown and the lighter spots side by side, he
says, made a regular Before and After out of Sam's face, and was the
best advertisement you could have.
Then we goes and has a talk with Doctor Jackson himself. Doctor Kirby
has the idea mebby he will put some money into it. Doctor Jackson was
setting on his front veranda with his chair tilted back, and his feet,
with red carpet slippers on 'em, was on the railing, and he was smoking
one of these long black cigars that comes each one in a little glass
tube all by itself. He looks Sam over very thoughtful, and he says:
“Yes, it will do the work well enough. I can see that. But will it
sell?”
Doctor Kirby makes him quite a speech. I never hearn him make a better
one. Doctor Jackson he listens very calm, with his thumbs in the
armholes of his vest, and moving his eyebrows up and down like he
enjoyed it. But he don't get excited none. Finally Doctor Kirby says he
will undertake to show that it will sell--me and him will take a trip
down into the black country ourselves and show what can be done with it,
and take Sam along fur an object lesson.
Well, they was a lot of rag-chewing. Doctor Jackson don't warm up none,
and he asts a million questions. Like how much it costs a bottle to make
it, and what was our idea how much it orter sell fur. He says finally
if we can sell a certain number of bottles in so long a time he will put
some money into it. Only, he says, they will be a stock company, and he
will have to have fifty-one per cent. of the stock, or he won't put no
money into it. He says if things go well he will let Doctor Kirby be
manager of that company, and let him have some stock in it too, and he
will be president and treasurer of it himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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