Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame fool
way as that! Why, that ain t a-going to do any good. You got to go all
by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there s a
spunk-water stump, and just as it s midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in and say:
Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,
and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm s busted.
Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain t the way Bob Tanner
done.
No, sir, you can bet he didn t, becuz he s the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn t have a wart on him if he d knowed how to work
spunk-water. I ve took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I ve always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take em off with a bean.
Yes, bean s good. I ve done that.
Have you? What s your way?
You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood,
and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig
a hole and bury it bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of the
moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that s got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes.
Yes, that s it, Huck that s it; though when you re burying it if you
say Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me! it s better.
That s the way Joe Harper does, and he s been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say how do you cure em with dead cats?
52