And the bishop has worked himself up the last three or four nights to where he has been perdicting and prophesying, fur the spirit has hit the meeting hard.
What he has been prophesying, Sam says, is the coming of a Messiah fur the nigger race--a new Elishyah, he says, as will lead them from out'n their inequality and bring 'em up to white standards right on the spot.
The whites has had their Messiah, the bishop says, but the niggers ain't never had none of their SPECIAL OWN yet.

And they needs one bad, and one is sure a-coming.
It seems the whites don't know yet jest what the bishop's been a-preaching.

But every nigger fur miles on every side of Big Bethel is a-listening and a-looking fur signs and omens, and has been fur two, three days now.

This here half-crazy bishop has got 'em worked up to where they is ready to believe anything, or do anything.
So the night before when the word got out in Cottonville that we had some scheme to make the niggers white, the niggers there took up with the idea that the doctor was mebby the feller the bishop had been prophesying about, and for a sign and a omen and a miracle of his grace and powers was going out to Big Bethel to turn 'em white.

Poor devils, they didn't see but what being turned white orter be a part of what they was to get from the coming of that there Messiah.
News spreads among niggers quicker than among whites.