In Old Plantation Days
Dandy Jim’s Conjure Scare
Dandy Jim was very much disturbed when he came in that morning to shave his master. He was Dandy Jim, because being just his master’s size, he came in for the spruce garments which Henry Desmond cast off. The dark-skinned valet took great pride in his personal appearance, and was little less elegant than the white man himself. He was such a dapper black boy, and always so light and agile on his feet that his master looked up in genuine surprise when he came in this morning looking care-worn and dejected, and walking with a decided limp.
“Why, you look like you’d been getting religion.”
“No, I ain’t quite as bad as dat, Mas’ Henry. Religion ‘fects de soul, but hits my body dats ‘fected.”
“You’ve been getting your feet wet, I reckon, and it’s cold.”
“I wish ’twas; I wish ’twas,” said Jim sadly.
“You wish it was? Well, what is the matter with you?”
“Mas’ Henry, kin you let me have a silver dime? Pa been hurted.”
“Jim!”
“I tell you I’s been tricked.”
“And you believe in that sort of thing after all I’ve tried to teach you?”
“Mas’ Henry, I tell you, Ps been tricked. Dey ain’t no ‘sputin’ de signs, teachin’ er no teachin’!”
“Well, I wish you’d tell me the signs so that I’d know them. It’s just possible that I may have been tricked some time and didn’t know it.”
“Don’ joke, Mas’ Henry, don’ joke. Dis is a se’ious mattah, an’ ‘f you’d ‘a’ evah been tricked an’ hit doneright,you’dV knowed,case dey ‘ain’t no ‘sputin’ de symptoms. Dey’s mighty well known. I tells you, Mas’ Henry, somebody’s done laid fu’ me an’ cotch me. I wish you’d please, suh, gimme a piece o’ silvah to lay on de place.”
“What will that do?”
“W’y, I wants to be right sho’, fo’ I goes to a conju’ doctah, an’ ef I is tricked, de silvah, hit’U show it, ‘dout a doubt. Hit’ll tu’n right black.”
“Jim,” said the white man, as he handed over the silver coin, “I’ve never known you to talk this way before, and I believe you’ve got some oher reason for believing you’re conjured besides the ones you’ve given me. You rascal, you’ve been up to something.”
The valet grinned sheepishly, hung his head and shuffled his feet in a way that instantly confessed judgment.
“Come, own up now,” pressed his master, “what devilment have you been up to?”
“I don’ see how it’s any dev’ment fu’ a body to go to see de gal he like.”
“Uh-huh, you’ve been after somebody else’s girl, have you? And he’s fixed you, eh?”
“I didn’t know ‘Lize was goin’ ‘long o’ anybody else ‘twell I went in thaih de othah night to see huh, an’ even den, she nevah let on nuffin’. We talked erlong, an’ laughed, an’ was havin’ a mighty fine time. You see ‘Lize, she got a powahful drawin’ way erbout huh. I kep’ on settin’ up nighah an’ nighah to huh, an’ she kep’ laughin’, but she nevah hitched huh cheer away, so co’se I thought hit was all right, an’ dey wa’nt nobody else a-keepin’ comp’ny wid huh. Wen, lo, an’ behol’i des’ as I was erbout to put my ahm erroun’ huh wais’, who should walk in de do’