Tuggie Bannocks's Moonack by Alice Morse Earle

Tuggie Bannocks, the Narragansett negress, decided to work a charm on old Bosum Sidet, the negro tinker. She was not going to charm him in the ordinary commonplace way, albeit pleasing, that most dames follow -- be they old or young, black or white -- to allure human beings of the opposite sex. Her charm was, alas, a malignant one, a "conjure," that she angrily decided to work upon him as a revenge for his clumsy and needless destruction of her best copper tea-kettle while he was attempting, or I suspect pretending, to repair it. This charm was not a matter of a moment's hasty decision and careless action; it required some minute and varied preparation and considerable skill to carry it out successfully, and work due and desired evil.

Tuggie's first step, literally, was to walk over the snowy fields, the frozen roads, to Bosum's house to obtain some twigs or sprigs of withered grass that had grown and still lingered in his dooryard. Lest Bosum's wife should suspect any uncanny motive for her visit, she carefully elaborated a plan, and carried on, in its furtherance, a long conversation with regard to a certain coveted dye-stuff which Mother Sidet manufactured; it turned all woollen stuffs a vivid green, and was in much demand throughout Narragansett to dye old woollen rags and worn-out flannel sheets and shirts this brilliant, verdant hue, when they could thereafter be used to most astonishing and satisfactory advantage in conferring variety in the manufacture of those triumphs of decorative art, those outlets of rural color-sense, home-made woven rag-carpets, and hooked and braided rugs. Tuggie argued with much dignity and volubility that she should be told the secret of this dye-stuff as some slight compensation for her ruined tea-kettle. It is needless to state that she was unsuccessful, nor had she expected to be otherwise. The secret of the dye was Molly Sidet's stock-in-trade, just as the soldering-iron and solder were her husband's.