The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-24
By IRWIN s. COBB

earning needles. But Tn the south they are snake doctors. and for a reason. These harmless and decora- tive dragon flies with their slim, ar row-like bodies, their quick darting flight and their filmly wings, as though the arrows had been flecke d with bits of drawn lace, are clothed, down there, with a curious fetish.
 When a cotton-mouth is sick-and if his feelings match his disposi on he must be sick most of the time the snake doctor comes hurrying to him with the medication for what ails him.
 Perhaps seventy-five or a hundred Africa saw ootton-mouth moccasin summing It's flat. heart-shaped head on top of the yellow creek water, and along tho creek came flashing g one of these swift creatures seeking . perch upon which to leave its eggs. and the black man saw 1t suddenly check and hover, stand at poise in the air an inch above the snakes still head. and from that figured this strange bug was vCo-doo bug, min astering to the ailing reptile.
 In such matter any mans theory 3s as good as the next one's. The probable thing is that good many of tho negroes. believe in the fable for a fact; and nearly all of them. regardless of color. know the libeled insect as snake doctor.
 New, one of the men I have intent to write about here was known as Snake Doctor, too; and for this, also, there were reasons. To begin with he was very long and thin, a mere rack of bones held together under the casing of a taut yellow skin and he had popped, staring eyes, and was amazingly fast in his bodily movements.
 See him slipping through the will lows, so furitive and quick and diff dent, with his inadequately small head, his sloped shoulders, his cratic side-steppings this way or that, and inevitably you were reminded there by of his namesake.
 To the top of the analogy, he lived right among the moccasins taking no harm from them and having nc fear tf them, seemingly.
 Along Cashier creek, where. they throve in a wicked abundance, was his regular ranging ground. His cabin stood in tho bottoms near a place notorious for its snakes.
 They were his friends. so to speak. He caught them and with his bare hands he handled them as butcher might handle links of sausage. He sold them, once in a while. to nat uralists or showmen CT geological collectors; there was taxidermist in MempnlS WHO WAS LII OCcdSloHdi GUS toner of his.
 In the season he rendered down their soft fats and drew 1t off In bot ties and retailed it; snake oil being held a sovereign remedy for rheu- matism.
 By such traffickYngs he was locally reputed to have made large sums t1 money. But he rarely spent any of this money; so he went by the name of miser. also.
 Well, in a way of speaking, he was a miser: zealously he coveted what he got and kept 1t hidden away in the chinking of his log shack.
 But he was nowhere near so well off as the community gave him credit for being. The snake business is a confined and uncertain business, and restricted, moreover. to its special may be plentiful. as in this case, but his patrons must be sought.
 To be exact Snake Doctor had ninety-seven dolls in his cache.
 But swearing to tho truth of this on a stack of Bibles a mile high Cashier Creek community have 1t sc. Popular opinion insisted on multiply ing his means and then adding naughts.
 Nor could you. by any argument. have won over his neighbors, white or DlaCK, 10 . HIT oStlIuAto OA tHo mans real self. which was that here merely was a poor. shy, lonely eccen- tric, touched in the head by hot suns and perhaps by spells of recurrent swamp fevers.
 They had contempt for him. but mixed in with tho contempt was fear. To them he was to be summed as one having commerce on familiar footing with the most loathly and most hated of all the creatures that crawl.
 There was a solitary exception tC the current rule of prejudice; e sim gle individual among them who had a human compassion for him and a measure of understanding and right appraisal of him.
 This individual, curiously enough. was a woman. She was minority of one. We'll come to her presently. name or else had never heard 1t. By their majority voice he was Ole Snake Doctor. They knew he was familiar with tho ways of the cot ton-mouth; they half believed he spoke its language:
 Tn this particular region ordinary folks believed many things that weren't so. Superstition, sprouting out of ignorance, had twisted honest nature into myriad Of perverted and detractive shapes.
  lizard was a "scorpyun" and it's sting killed. A porous white stone found in the bellies of rutting deer was the Cnly known cure for 8 mad dog bite; clap it on the wound and 1t ;clung fast like leech and sucked the poison out.
 You never saw many jay-birds in the woods between dinner time and dusk on a Friday because then near fly all the jay-birds had gone below to tell the news of a malicious world to their master. the Devil. You rare ly could hit a rain crew With nervous bird enjoyed the special pro- .tection of old Nick.
 If snapping-turtle closed hit jaws down on your flesh he wouldn't let go until it thundered. A breath of warm air blowing across your path Ln a cool night in the woods meant a witch -hag" had passed that way.
 Or take snakes: the prophet Of old put the curse on them forever after when. in his story of the garden, he ,typified evil as a serpent; mankino has been enlarging the islander ever since.
 Moreover, in these parts, Caucasian singenuity as regards snakes and theil ways had overlaid a deep embroid ,ery of i'll repute upon an already ricf background of African folklore There was the hoop snake, which 1! wears a deadly horn in its head, ant there was the joint snake. which is freak; both fabulous, but both ac 'cepted as verities.
 As well meaning snakes lay undel the scandalous ban. Milk snakes garter snakes. chicken snakes. puf snakes, blue racers and coach whip o,ora to ha destroyed on sight. fol