hat word is a lie," says the doctor. "I DID come here to try out
some stuff to change the colour of negro skins. That's all. And I find
your idiotic followers are all stirred up and waiting for some kind of a
miracle monger. What you have been preaching to them, you know best. Is
that all you want to know?"

The bishop hems and haws and fiddles with his stick, and then he says:

"Suh, will dish yeah prepa'shun SHO'LY do de wohk?" Doctor Kirby tells
him it will do the work all right.

And then the bishop, after beating around the bush some more, comes out
with his idea. Whether he expected there would be any Messiah come or
not, of course he knowed the doctor wasn't him. But he is willing to
boost the doctor's game as long as it boosts HIS game. He wants to be in
on the deal. He wants part of the graft. He wants to get together with
the doctor on a plan before the doctor sees the niggers. And if the
doctor don't want to keep on with the miracle end of it, the bishop
shows him how he could do him good with no miracle attachment. Fur he
has an awful holt on them niggers, and his say-so will sell thousands
and thousands of bottles. What he is looking fur jest now is his little
take-out.

That was his craftiness and his cunningness working in him. But all of
a sudden one of his crazy streaks come bulging to the surface. It come
with a wild, eager look in his eyes.

"Suh," he cries out, all of a sudden, "ef yo' kin make me white, fo'
Gawd sakes, do hit! Do hit! Ef yo' does, I gwine ter bless yo' all yo'
days!

"Yo' don' know--no one kin guess or comperhen'--what des bein' white
would mean ter me! Lawd! Lawd!" he says, his voice soft-spoken, but more
eager than ever as he went on, and pleading something pitiful to hear,
"des think of all de Caucasian blood in me! Gawd knows de nights er my
youth I'se laid awake twell de dawn come red in de Eas' a-cryin' out ter
Him only fo' ter be white! DES TER BE WHITE! Don' min' dem black, black
niggers dar--don' think er DEM--dey ain't wuth nothin' nor fitten fo'
no fate but what dey got-- But me! What's done kep' me from gwine ter de
top but dat one thing: _I_ WASN'T WHITE! Hit air too late now--too late
fo' dem ambitions I done trifle with an' shove behin' me--hit's too late
fo' dat! But ef I was des ter git one li'l year o' hit--ONE LI'L YEAR O'
BEIN' WHITE!--befo' I died--"

And he went on like that, shaking and stuttering there in the road, like
a fit had struck him, crazy as