"For upwards of two months things goes along just beautiful. Then we strikes a town out in Illinois where business ain't what it used to be, if indeed it ever was. Along about the middle of the week the young feller that's doing the press-work for the house comes to me and asks me if I ain't got an idea in my system that might make a good press-stunt. "There's an inspiration comes to me and I suggests to him that maybe he might go ahead and make an announcement that following the Saturday matinee, Emily the Pluperfect, Ponderous, Pachydermical Performer, direct from the court of the reigning Roger of Simla County, India, will hold a reception on the stage to meet her little friends, each and every one of whom will be expected to bring her a bag of peanuts. "'That listens all right,' says this lad, 'providing she likes peanuts.' "'Providing she likes 'em?' I says. 'Son,' I says, 'if that bull ever has to take the cure for the drug-habit, it'll be on account of peanuts. If you don't think she likes peanuts, a dime will win you a trip to the Holy Lands,' I says. 'Why,' I says, 'Emily's middle name is _Peanuts_. Offhand,' I says, 'I don't know precisely how many peanuts there are,' I says, 'because if I ever heard the exact figures, I've forgot 'em, but I'd like to lay you a little eight to five that Emily can chamber all the peanuts in the world and then set down right where she happens to be, to wait for next year's crop to come onto the market. That's how much she cares for peanuts,' I says. "Well, that convinces him, and he hurries off to write his little piece about Emily's peanut reception. The next day, which is Friday, the announcement is in both the papers. Saturday after lunch when I strolls round to the show-shop for the matinee, one glance around the corner from the stage entrance proves to me that our little social function is certainly starting out to be a success. The street in front is lined on both sides with dagos with peanut-stands, selling peanuts to the population as fast as they can pass 'em out; and there's a long line, mainly kids, at the box-office. I goes on in and takes a flash at the front of the house through the peephole in the curtain, and the place is already jam full. If there's one kid out there, there's a thousand, and every tiny tot has got a sack of peanuts clutched in his or her chubby fist, as the case may be. And say, listen: there's a smell in the air like a prairie fire running through a Georgia goober-king's plantation. "I goes back to where Emily is hitched, and she's weaving to and fro on her legs and watering at the mouth until she just naturally can't control her own riparian rights. She's done smelt that smell too. "'Honey gal,' I says to her, 'it shore looks to me like you're due to get your fullupances of the succulential ground-pea of the Sunny Southland this day.'