And last but not least there is the "fiery" Southerner. In real
life Southerners are melancholy men with a tendency to _embonpoint_ and
clawhammer coats of ante-bellum design. But in Lesser American Fiction they
are for some undiscovered reason always "fiery." To the fiery one the
heroine "unconsciously turns" when the apparent earmarks of the hero's
wormhood are dramatically revealed, and of course she hands him what she
would probably describe as the "sister" stuff when the gentleman emerges in
his natural colours. That is what makes the story-book Southerner so fiery.
Place these complex characters in an imaginary Carribean Republic, a sort
of transpontine Ruritania; add a revolution fostered by the serpentine
diplomats of a European power; let the American eagle issue a few screams,
and there you have the environment in which _The Unspeakable Perk_ lives
and moves and has his unreal being. The keynote of SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS'
story is what the _Perk_ person would describe as a want of "pep." Even the
villains turn out to be comparative gentlemen in the end, the dirty work
being conveniently fastened upon some "person or persons unknown.
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