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<h3 id="id00434" style="margin-top: 3em"> DR. SAM</h3>
<h5 id="id00435"> TO MISS GRACE KING</h5>
<p id="id00436">Down in the old French quarter,<br/>
Just out of Rampart street,<br/>
I wend my way<br/>
At close of day<br/>
Unto the quaint retreat<br/>
Where lives the Voodoo Doctor<br/>
By some esteemed a sham,<br/>
Yet I'll declare there's none elsewhere<br/>
So skilled as Doctor Sam<br/>
<i>With the claws of a deviled crawfish,<br/>
The juice of the prickly prune,<br/>
And the quivering dew<br/>
From a yarb that grew<br/>
In the light of a midnight moon!</i><br/></p>
<p id="id00437">I never should have known him<br/>
But for the colored folk<br/>
That here obtain<br/>
And ne'er in vain<br/>
That wizard's art invoke;<br/>
For when the Eye that's Evil<br/>
Would him and his'n damn,<br/>
The negro's grief gets quick relief<br/>
Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam.<br/>
<i>With the caul of an alligator,<br/>
The plume of an unborn loon,<br/>
And the poison wrung<br/>
From a serpent's tongue<br/>
By the light of a midnight moon!</i><br/></p>
<p id="id00438">In all neurotic ailments<br/>
I hear that he excels,<br/>
And he insures<br/>
Immediate cures<br/>
Of weird, uncanny spells;<br/>
The most unruly patient<br/>
Gets docile as a lamb<br/>
And is freed from ill by the potent skill<br/>
Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam;<br/>
<i>Feathers of strangled chickens,<br/>
Moss from the dank lagoon,</i><br/>
<i>And plasters wet<br/>
With spider sweat<br/>
In the light of a midnight moon!</i><br/></p>
<p id="id00439">They say when nights are grewsome<br/>
And hours are, oh! so late,<br/>
Old Sam steals out<br/>
And hunts about<br/>
For charms that hoodoos hate!<br/>
That from the moaning river<br/>
And from the haunted glen<br/>
He silently brings what eerie things<br/>
Give peace to hoodooed men:—<br/>
<i>The tongue of a piebald 'possum,<br/>
The tooth of a senile 'coon,<br/>
The buzzard's breath that smells of death,<br/>
And the film that lies<br/>
On a lizard's eyes<br/>
In the light of a midnight moon!</i><br/></p>
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