This entertaining book is pure comedy, with now and then an aside of the "half-joke but whole-earnest" nature, which is all the more forceful because of its unexpectedness. The humorous happenings are well told, without apparent straining for effect, and they appear to grow naturally out of one another. The reader will find entertainment and many a hearty laugh. The only possibility of disappointment is in the title, which promises wickedness of the deepest dye, and is consequently misleading.
to shout himself awake as he generally could. Ordinarily at about this stage of the nightmare, the run on the bank resolved itself into a lynching party, and they would thrust a rope through the window and around his neck. When he felt the rope he would yell like all possessed. And his wife would reach sleepily over--she knew all about the matter--and loosen the tight button of his nightshirt. Then he would wake up, perspiring, but happy.
Adelia had burst into the middle of the drowsy afternoon, without rime, reason or excuse, screamingly demanding every penny that the bank had of her money. She had so flustered him that he had not even thought to question or argue with her. While he fumbled, and she screamed at him, the bank had literally run full of people who seemed to be poured into it through the funnel of the door. The sight alone of Johile Jenkins with his immodest leather apron was enough to unnerve him. Norman Farnsworth actually hurried, counting money out of the bank!
Outside
