do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that
_Leonidas W_. Smiley is a myth; and that my friend never knew such a
personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler
about him, it would remind him of his infamous _Jim Smiley_, and he
would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating
reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to
me. If that was the design, it succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the
dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I
noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of
winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He
roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend had commissioned
me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood
named _Leonidas W_. Smiley--_Rev. Leonidas W._ Smiley, a young
minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of
Angel's Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about
this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to
him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his
chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which
follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never
changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his
initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of
enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a
vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly
that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or
funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter,
and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in _finesse_.