But when I saw the old man, creeping into my library, I was certain he was in the last stages of Asiatic cholera, and I rang the telephone hastily to get my family physician. But he feebly raised his hand, and beckoned me to desist.
“No, no, boss; he can’t do me no good—no good,” as he feebly sank into a chair. Then he whispered:
“Jes a drap, a leetle drap, on my tongue, boss—jes’ to let the old man shuffle off dis mortal coil wid a good taste in his mouth. It’s all I wants.”
Under the stimulant of that eternal beverage of moonlight and melody, he revived a little.
“What’s the matter with you? Anybody been giving you a hoodoo,” I asked.
“No, no, boss”—feebly—“I—I—I gin a treat at Big Sandy.”
“Well, you have given many a treat at Big Sandy. Why should this one make you look like a piney-wood coal-kiln after a cyclone had struck it?”
It took another dose from my side-board bottle to put enough life into the old man to make him take any interest in things. Then he brightened up and said:
“Dat’s jes’ hit—a man may go on doin’ de same trick year arter year, ontwel it looks lak he cud do it wid his eyes shet, an’ den at last, if he ain’t mighty keerful, hit’ll buck and fling ’im! De hardes’ luck, I take it, in dis wurl’, am when a man dun shuck de dice ob success ontwell dey seem to bob up at his word, only to play off on him an’ bust ’im es his palsied han’ shakes ’em fur de las’ time.”
His tears were flowing so freely and his remarks seemed so true and heartfelt, I did not have it in me to fail to brace him up with another pull from the side-board bottle. Then I saw he was ripe and reminiscent, and I lit my cigar, struck an easy attitude, and let him do the rest: