Read, Opie Percival: Old Ebenezer. v1. 20 Apr 2015
 

Opie Percival Read (born December 22, 1852, Nashville Tennessee; d. November 2, 1939, Chicago Illinois) was a prolific American journalist and humorist. His bibliography lists 60 published books.

Excerpt
In more than one of the sleepy neighborhoods that lay about the drowsy town of Old Ebenezer, Sam Lyman had lolled and dreamed. He had come out of the keen air of Vermont, and for a time he was looked upon as a marvel of energy, but the soft atmosphere of a southwestern state soothed the Yankee worry out of his walk, and made him content to sit in the shade, to wait for the other man to come; and, as the other man was doing the same thing, rude hurry was not a feature of any business transaction. Of course the smoothing of Lyman’s Yankee ruffles had taken some time. He had served as cross-tie purchaser for a new railway, had kept books and split slabs for kindling wood at a saw mill; then, as an assistant to the proprietor of a cross-roads store, he had counted eggs and bargained for chickens, with a smile for a gingham miss and a word of religious philosophy for the dame in home-spun.