An' down come de nigger!"
Greatly refreshed and invigorated by the chanting of this touching ballad, Sam and Pumble returned to the consideration of their day's programme. A great many amusements were proposed, discussed, and rejected in their respective turns. Almost any one of them would have been held entirely satisfactory on any ordinary occasion, but Sam thought none of them good enough for his birthday. He required something extraordinary.
"Kaint you think up nuffin else?" he asked his friend, after a long pause.
"I done thinked plumb to de back o' my head a'ready," replied Pumble.
"Den I tell you what," said Sam; "I heared my pappy say dis: when a pusson want to think rale strong, he mus' lay down on de flat ob his back and shet his eyes; an' den, putty soon, he kin think anything he wants to. Let's try it."
This plan was immediately experimented on. Pumble instantly succeeded in thinking; but he only thought that he wished he could have a "buff-day" of his own. Very soon afterward, he ceased to think at all. As for Sam, his thoughts were for some time very ordinary—of too commonplace a nature to be here recorded; but they gradually assumed such an odd and remarkable shape that they may fairly be described as a vision. It seemed to Sam that the whole country around, as far as one could see, was transformed into one great field, in a perfect state of cultivation. But the growing "crop" was not one of cotton, or corn, or cow-peas, or sorghum, or anything else that he had ever before seen in such a place. Coming up out of the ground were long rows of very singular bushes, whereof the stalks were sticks of candy, and the leaves were blackberry pies, and over the whole field was falling a drenching rain of molasses. Sam, however, was most astonished at the curious fruit that the bushes bore. The twigs of some of them supported jew's-harps and tin trumpets; others bent beneath a wealth of fire-crackers and Roman candles; others, again, were weighted with his favorite sardines; and so on in endless variety. It is not at all surprising that the idea occurred to him that this crop ought to be "picked." He found himself becoming highly indignant at the negligence of the planter—whoever he might be—in leaving all these good things to spoil on the bushes; and he burned with a desire to have them properly gathered, and to assist in that work himself. Accordingly, he was just about to reach for a pie and a jew's-harp, by way of beginning, when he found that this was made impossible, by the fact of himself having been suddenly and incomprehensibly changed to a huge water-melon. Over him grew one of the largest bushes, from whose branches depended seven roasted 'possums. It was some consolation to look at them, and imagine how good they would taste if he only could taste them. Presently a little gingerbread bird flew down and began to peck at him, and say, "Git up, Sam! You Sam! Sam!"
He woke up, and found that the wonderful field had vanished, and that he was lying under the old pecan-tree instead of the 'possum-bush; and there was his mother shouting in his ear:
"Sam! don't you heah me, you lazy—S-a-m! Git up dis minnit an' go to de well for a bucket ob water, sah, foah I whoop you!"
Pumble sat up and stared.
"Why, mammy," said Sam, "you tol' me I needn't do no work, kase it's my buff-day."