"Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a
t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten
t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you."
The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it that
makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has
something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was
talking to himself.
Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the
slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the
cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the
fiddle's got in it."
Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front
door and drove the gathering crowd away.
"Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it ain't
a circuse."
One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. He tried to come inside,
but was driven back.
"I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old
barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you.
I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have my
dinner. So you git away. There ain't goin' to be no more music."
The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the
shears and razor.
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