JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET by O. Henry

“‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade and listening, ‘you’ve got a bad attack of super-inflammation of the right clavicle of the harpsichord!’ […]
‘ I’m one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner Pulpit,’ says I. ‘The lame talk and the blind rubber whenever I make a pass at ’em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous control.’”

This is a story of a double duping, one by the mayoral authorities to entrap this fake doctor called Jeff Peters, and then one by him and his new partner upon the authorities in hindsight! All with a glut of Joycean con-trickery dialogue.
Even before reading this, I already thought that a preternatural faith in such rarefied literature has its own magnetism of life’s cure-all!

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Context HERE