"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, 'taint 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'! Couldn't make out what you was a-tryin'
to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a CHURCH! Why,
boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of 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, there - 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 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 furthest
from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless,
and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous "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 firecracker 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 was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later - he
walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night,
with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders.
The joker spent the remainder of the night, after church,
in the cellar of a deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on
the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure
that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made,
some rough treatment would be the consequence. The cellar
had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed
with six inches of soft mud.
But I wander from the point. It was the subject of
skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection.
Before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties
began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having
made a very shining success out of their attempts on the
simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters grew scarce
and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue.
There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare
Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it.
He had a noble new skeleton - the skeleton of the late
and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village
drunkard - a grisly piece of property which he had bought
of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in
the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty
dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably
hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton.
The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in Nicodemus's
bed!
This was done - about half past ten in the evening.
About Nicodemus's usual bedtime - midnight - the village
jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson
weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den.
They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the
long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt,
and nothing more; he was dangling his legs contentedly
back and forth, and wheezing the music of "Camptown Races"
out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing
against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top,
and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles,
five pounds of "store" candy, and a well-gnawed slab of
gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music.
He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three
dollars and was enjoying the result!
