from
the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and
inquired after my friend's friend, _Leonidas W._ Smiley, as requested to
do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that
_Leonidas W._ Smiley is a myth; 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 nearly to death with some infernal
reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless for me.
If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the
old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient 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 of mine 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 any
thing 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 me 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
the 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 any thing 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_. To
me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer
yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I
asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he
replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never
interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of _Jim_ Smiley, in the winter
of '49--or may be it was the spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly,
somehow, though what