thrust of hand into
pocket to set the avalanche of coin rolling toward the platform. From
near the speaker a voice piped thinly:--

"Will it ease my cough?"

The orator bent over, and his voice was like a benign hand upon the brow
of suffering.

"Ease it? You'll never know you had a cough after one bottle."

"We-ell, gimme--"

"Just a moment, my friend." The Professor was not yet ready. "Put your
dollar back. There's enough to go around. Oh, Uncle Cal! Step up here,
please."

An old negro, very pompous and upright, made his way to the steps and
mounted.

"You all know old Uncle Cal Parks, my friends. You've seen him hobbling
and hunching around for years, all twisted up with rheumatics. He came
to me yesterday, begging for relief, and we began treatment with the
Vitalizing Mixture right off. Look at him now. Show them what you can
do, uncle."

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 h