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O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 by Various
page 71 of 499 (14%)
pennies and brooms. This story is the great exception. It has to do
with an actual, material, visible and large-as-life camel's back.

Starting from the neck we shall work tailward. Meet Mr. Perry
Parkhurst, twenty-eight, lawyer, native of Toledo. Perry has nice
teeth, a Harvard education, and parts his hair in the middle. You
have met him before--in Cleveland, Portland, St. Paul, Indianapolis,
Kansas City and elsewhere. Baker Brothers, New York, pause on their
semi-annual trip through the West to clothe him; Montmorency & Co.,
dispatch a young man posthaste every three months to see that he has
the correct number of little punctures on his shoes. He has a
domestic roadster now, will have a French roadster if he lives long
enough, and doubtless a Chinese one if it comes into fashion. He
looks like the advertisement of the young man rubbing his
sunset-coloured chest with liniment, goes East every year to the
Harvard reunion--does everything--smokes a little too much--Oh,
you've seen him.

Meet his girl. Her name is Betty Medill, and she would take well in
the movies. Her father gives her two hundred a month to dress on and
she has tawny eyes and hair, and feather fans of three colours. Meet
her father, Cyrus Medill. Though he is to all appearances flesh and
blood he is, strange to say, commonly known in Toledo as the
Aluminum Man. But when he sits in his club window with two or three
Iron Men and the White Pine Man and the Brass Man they look very
much as you and I do, only more so, if you know what I mean.

Meet the camel's back--or no--don't meet the camel's back yet. Meet
the story.

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