It was this skill that emptied the churches o’ a Sunduh mownin’ and brawt the pa-rishioners of differn’ de-nominational puhsuasions t’ muh fron’ poach, where Ah held fowth on the evils o’ the snake-oil trade and did case-by-case analasees o’ the tricks of battlin’ thayt evil trade. This is how Ah made muh good-got gains. Not that I made a pile: a hat on the floor can hold only so menuh nickels and an oc-casional dahm, an’ Ah stood well within th’ law by ownin’ jus’ one hayet. Ah still own that hayet, which was o’ the ten-gallon va-rietuh.
O’ course Ah was pore. Fack is, Ah was tem’ted t’ hold midweek services t’ keep the books balance’. But seldom did Ah yield to that tametation. Once or twice a month, yep. Ever’ week, nope. An’ Ah did it as a public service.
Story goes that th’ so-called converts to muh cause made peri-odic attempts to nom’nate me fer sainthood. But they nevuh suc-ceeded. One excuse for overlookin’ muh good works was that I was under-qualified. Ah was not a Cath-olic. Ah considered joinin’ that de-nomination, but then Ah foun’ out that manuh Catho-lics atten’ their masses on Sunday, which was muh work day. An’ yessiree, Ah de-sisted, ’cause o’ their piety and the good works they pre-sumably per-foamed. Ah knew a bit o’ Latin—thayt was not the problem, as muh opponents have taken to say in their slanderous, snake-oil ways.
Tha’s ’bout it, folks!