First off most of the men in town looked at it as a joke and put in considerable time laughing. That was mostly early in the day, though. By the middle of the afternoon their women folks had done more or less talking, and the men got around gradual to seeing it wasn’t so awful funny, after all. The women never saw anything funny about it at all. It was pretty serious to them, I can tell you, especially to them that had husbands a person could look at without smoked glasses on.
Probably not a woman in Wicksville ever thought whether her man was handsomer than somebody else until Mark schemed up this contest. But, as Mark says, as soon as somebody else lets on he’s handsomer or bigger or smarter than you are, you get mad and say he isn’t. It don’t matter, says Mark, whether you ever thought you were handsome or big or smart before. You begin to think so then. Even if you don’t really think so you let on you do and are willing to back it up.
Everybody got it—even old Peasley Snell. His name wasn’t on the list, and if you was to ask me, it wasn’t likely to be, for old Peasley was about the weazenedest, orneriest, dried-up, scraggly-haired critter in Wicksville. But Peasley he stopped and read the list. His wife was with him. Peasley read from top to bottom. Then he began talking to his wife:
“Pete Bloom!” says he, and sniffed. “Huh! Handsome! Huh!... Jason Peterson. Whee! And them others! Who d’you calc’late nominated ’em, Susie?”
“I dun’no’,” says Susie.
“It was their wives,” I says from the door.
“Wives,” grunted old Peasley. “Wives, is it? Huh! Why, young feller? Why?”
“I guess they nominated ’em,” says I, “because they wanted to let on they thought their husbands was as good as anybody else’s husbands.”
Old Peasley stopped and thought and blinked and chewed on his tongue. Every once in a while he’d look at his wife and scowl. Pretty soon he raised his bony finger and tapped her on the shoulder:
“Susie,” says he, “my name hain’t on that list.”