The Ransom of Red Chief — Vocabulary
O. Henry
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They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars.†1 more

There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view.†

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way: Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.: We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit.†

I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail.

None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been.

"Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impudent—" But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated.†

There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed.†

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.†

It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.†

The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.†

Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.†

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.†

I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail.†

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way: Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.: We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit.†

We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall.†

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity.†

Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things.†

There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view.†

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.†

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with.†