Humor Titles

The ORuddy Fortune squarely straddles three kinds of novel distinctions at once and conquers them all.  It is an adventure that is rollicking and wholesome.  It is a romance both special and winsome.  It is humor that is splendid and welcome.  I have put it inside the humor section because I need heavier guns like this one to show off my splendid selections.

One of the best books
produced by Lin Stone

**

The Ghost of Canter
An English ghost tangles with the indomitable American
By Oscar Wilde and profuse with its illustrations.  I loved it.

**

Madame Frabelle knows everything, she is gifted with the second sight;  What she doesn't know is a mere piffle to her encyclopedic expanditures. Try the first chapter on for size.

The Future
Is Yet To Be

The year is 1911

There are three horrifying rumors circulating through the backwoods of Tennessee:

1. Exhaust fumes will smother the chickens.
2. Gas prices will jump to 15 cents per gallon before the year is out.
3. The government is secretly working to hatch something called the Income Tax.

For once the rumor mill was hitting on 100 % accuracy.  The cause was never determined for sure, but that very year there were some funny looking chickens hatched on the other side of Clinch Mountain, and they started laying blue eggs, a sure sign, folks said, that exhaust fumes was getting to the chickens. 

Gas prices did rise as well.  Matters rose shakily to 15 cents a gallon and from there rose to dizzying heights.  In fact, before 1942 gas prices would rise all the way to 25 cents a gallon.  Where was it going to end?

It took 3 whole years for the diabolical income tax to materialize, but when it did -- some people were paying as high as 1% of their income. The advent of income tax was incredible in the minds of common people.  The refused to believe it at first...  "Why, that means a man would be taxed for working?"  .... Good heavens.  Mountain Whiskey might be outlawed next!  Whose side was the Government on?  Was it trying to kill everybody?

Since gasoline automobiles were so incredibly complicated and getting worse it was only natural that somebody should invent the electric car.  This was a low weight, low-slung device balanced between two axles.  A husky teenager could push one out of a mud hole with one hand. 

It had a touring range of 80 miles between charges, and in 1911 that was a whole day of touring; back then nobody in their right mind wanted to do 65.  When owners went home at night all they had to do was flip a switch and the car would be fully charged next morning.  When they paid their light bill their "gas" bill was paid too.  Even at the "High Point Rate" of 6 cents per killowatt hour, that was only from 1/4 to 3/4 cents per mile.  Boy, did that ever take care of the gas price doubling and going higher!  Owners could thumb their noses at Rockefeller and Associates.

Back in 1911 only 15% of the oil wells were producing gasoline at all,  Every smart man in Tennessee was swearing the day would come just as sure as lightning that all the oil wells in the world would run dry.