Red Plume — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HOCUS-POOUS. 53 useless in any hands but his own, and that they would have been severely hurt by it, if he had not given it strict orders to behave itself. He then sat down, and picked up three small pebbles, which he laid in the palm of his left hand, while he held up the harpoon with his right hand, and repeated, gazing at the polished barb, some: gibberish that sounded much like this: “ By-jiminy-crackey — cat-in-the-corner-go — rorus-a-borus— onery-twoery-ickery-an—hocus-pocus-presto-change !” He appeared to inseft the pebbles in his left ear, after show- ing them to the savages, and explaining that he could make his side and leg hollow, so that they would go through to the ground. To prove this position, he stood up, shook himself for a while, and then gravely pulled off -his boot, and shook the stones out of it. This performance was too much for the composure of the stolid Blackfeet, who eagerly picked up the pebbles, and turned them over in their hands, to make sure that they were the same that the white man had’ put in his- ear. Having satisfied themselves on this point, they handled the harpoon again, looking at it with an expression of the greatest reverence. Having prepared the minds of his auditors by these ex- ploits, and inspired them with something like a proper respect _for himself and his “ medicine,’ Eben caused the interpreter to translate a’ speech for him, in which he assured the Indians that he had come among them alone, and for their own good, because he knew that the Blackfeet needed a big medicine. . He professed himself able to cure their sick, to bring their dead to life, to make their squaws handsome, to find lost or stolen property, to give them success in all their undertak- ings, to teach them how to achieve certain victory over their enemies, and to do many other wonderful things, claiming nearly as much power as that which is so abundantly adver- tised by the back-room, fifty-cent astrologers and clairvoy- ants of civilization. Civilized humanity is easily humbugged by the latter class, and it was natural that the ignorant sav- ages should be imposed upon by the performances and pre- tensions of a sharp Yankee, His high-flown.oration was hardly concluded, when the -Indians who had been seeking for Black Beaver returned, comicbooks.con