The Imaginary Saddler

“Once or twice a day, the saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting on his coat as he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming. Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting anybody by the boat—or any freight, either; and Stavely must have known that everybody knew this, still it made no difference to him; he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred thousand tons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life, enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receipt for those saddles, in case by any miracle they should come. A malicious Quincy paper used always to refer to this town, in derision, as ‘Stavely’s Landing.’ Stavely was one of my earliest admirations; I envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the display he was able to make of it before strangers, as he went flying down the street, struggling with his fluttering coat.”

--Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883).