Editorial Wild Oats | Page 5

their war-paint,
and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take
it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I have had
to-day. No; I like you, and I like your calm, unruffled way of

explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not used to it. The
Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with
the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into
whose 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