And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to 1001 classic short stories and tales.

Today's story out of Nazareth by one of our favorite authors here

O Henry. In this story an unscrupulous businessman named Jay Pinckney Bloom sells bogus lots for a proposed city in Georgia to be called Skylands.

On his way out of town with a wad of cash, he runs into an elderly genteel couple who have invested their life savings into his sham scheme.

And now, out of Nazareth, by O'Henry.

Okegee in Georgia had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a wad.

Okegee came out of it with a half million dollar debt a two and a half percent city property tax and a

city council that showed a propensity for traveling the back streets of the town

these things came about through a fatal

resemblance of the river Kalusa to the Hudson, as set forth and expounded by a

northern tourist. Okegee felt that New York should not be allowed to consider itself the only

alligator in the swamp, so to speak.

And then that harmless but persistent individual so numerous in the south, the man who is always clamoring for more cotton mills

and is ready to take a dollar's worth of stock, provided he can borrow the dollar.

That man added his deadly work to the tourist's innocent praise and Okegee fell

The Kalusa River winds through a range of small mountains

Passes Okegee and then blends its waters trippingly as fall the malefluous Indian syllables with the

Chattahoochee.

Okegee rose, as it were, from its sunny seat on the post office stoop, hitched up its suspender and threw a granite dam

240 feet long and 60 feet high across the Kalusa, one mile above the town. Thereupon a dimpling sparkling lake backed up 20 miles among the little mountains.

Thus, in a great game of municipal rivalry did Okichy match that famous drawing card, the Hudson.

It was conceded that nowhere could the Palace Age be judged superior in the way of scenery

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