Fables in Slang

A phrenologist runs his fingers over a stranger’s skull and discovers enough “Metaphysical Penetration” to outshine Charles Eliot Norton. The diagnosis costs three dollars—and leaves a truck driver convinced he was born for a pulpit.

In George Ade’s turn-of-the-century America, a small-town dreamer may wait years for an ideal husband, a New York dandy can cow Fostoria with pink spats, and a boy’s ambitions can be redirected by a suburbanite carrying a bicycle tire and a sermon. These brisk fables dress vanity, status, and self-deception in the jaunty slang of their day, then send each delusion its own comic bill. Their characters are not always fools in the way they imagine—and the morals have a way of landing closer to home than expected. Which flattering illusion will you recognize first?

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