Editorial Wild Oats | Page 5

cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came South for my health; I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessean journalism is too stirring for me."
After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.

Nicodemus Dodge--Printer
When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad, countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage-leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editors' table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said, with composure:
"Whar's the boss?"
"I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye.
"Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?"
"Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?"
"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git a show somers if I kin, 'tain't no diffunce what--I'm strong and hearty, and I don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft."
"Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?"
"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I do learn, so's I git a chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon learn print'n' 's anything."
"Can you read?"
"Yes--middlin'."
"Write?"
"Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar."
"Cipher?"
"Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. 'Tother side of that is what gits me."
"Where is your home?"
"I'm f'm old Shelby."
"What's your father's religious denomination?"
"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith."
"No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his religious denomination?"
"Oh--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason."
"No, no; you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he belong to any church?"
"Now you're talkin'! Gouldn't make out what you was a-tryin' to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a church! Why, boss, he's be'n the pizenest kind of a Free-will Babtis' for forty year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n' what he is. Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar I wuz--not much they wouldn't."
"What is your own religion?"
"Well, boss, you've kind o' got me thar--and yit you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. I think 't if a feller he'ps another feller when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the Saviour's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's about as saift as if he b'longed to a church."
"But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?"
"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't stand no chance,--he oughtn't to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten certain 'bout that."
"What is your name?"
"Nicodemus Dodge."
"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial, anyway."
"All right."
"When would you like to begin?"
"Now."
So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.
Beyond that end of our establishment which was farthest from the street was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and villanous "jimpson" weed and its common friend the stately sunflower. In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber.
The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus right away--a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a fire-cracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. He simply said:
"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome"--and seemed to suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and poured a bucket of ice-water over him.
One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy "tied" his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's by way of retaliation.
A third joke