"Dan'l," said Fred to his chief assistant, one day, "I'm going to print an article on 'Weather Superstitions.'"
"Yas, suh," said the darky, wondering what was coming.
"And you're going to write it."
"Ah write it? Sho', now, you'se jokin', Mistah Fred. Ah can't even write my own name."
"I know that. You don't need to write, Dan'l. You're going to collect every rhyme and proverb and saying about the weather you can hunt up in the neighborhood. Get Mammy Crockett to tell you all she knows. Then you must repeat it to me. I'll write it down word for word, and it'll be your article."
"If yo' wrote it down, it wouldn't be mine," objected Dan'l.
"Oh, yes, it would," the editor-in-chief assured him, "some of the greatest authors in the world dictate their books."
So Dan'l went all around the neighborhood, announcing that he was a "sho' enough autho' now," and so full of delight that there was no holding him in at all. He proved a good collector of superstitions, moreover, and when at last the article came out in the Review, it was so complete and so original that it was reprinted in one of the big Folk-Lore Magazines.
The visit of the journeyman printer had been of great value. Fred had been shown just how the work should be done and his pride was involved in keeping the paper up to the standard. Moreover, the Irishman had secured a large box of discarded type from a printing firm in Vicksburg, and had forwarded this to the boys. Fred returned the courtesy by mailing Mike a copy of the Review regularly, and Mike occasionally sent a package of the printing trade magazines that he found lying around the shop. Fred picked up many hints from these and thus secured quite a good start in his knowledge of the printing trade.
The "official photographer" had been equally successful. One day, while up on the levee trying to take a satisfactory picture of an elusive "mackerel sky," which was changing from moment to moment, he met a stranger. This stranger was sitting on a log that projected into the river, holding a rod and line, and landing fish with an accustomed skill.