For weeks, this
gorgon of my imagination constituted the theme of neighborhood gossip.
Several negroes had seen it, and fled its fierce pursuit, barely
escaping its voracious mouth and attenuated claws, through the
fleetness of fear. The old hardshell Baptist preacher, of the vicinage,
had proclaimed him from the pulpit as Satan unchained, and commencing
his thousand years of wandering up and down the earth.
I had procured from a vine in the plum-orchard a gourd of huge
dimensions, such as in that day were used by frugal housewives for the
keeping of lard for family use. It would hold in its capacious cavity
at least half a bushel. This was cut one-third of its circumference for
a mouth, and this was garnished with teeth from the quills of a
venerable gander, an especial pet of my mother. The eyes were in
proportion, and were covered with patches of red flannel, purloined
from my mother's scrap-basket. A circle, an inch in diameter, made of
charcoal, formed an iris to a pupil, cut round and large, through the
flannel. A candle was lighted, and introduced through a hole at the
bottom of the gourd, and all mounted upon a pole some ten feet long.
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