Ma Pettengill -- actually Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill -- is quite a character. Take this scene, near the front of this collection of Harry Leon Wilson's Ma Pettengill stories. There's a magazine on the table, and our narrator allows as how the man on the cover has "A beautiful face." Ma Pettengill takes the magazine from him and studies the dainty thing. "Yes, he's certainly beautiful," Ma Pettengill assents. "He's as handsome as a Greek goddess." Thus does the woman ambiguously praise that famous screen star, J. Harold Armytage. "And the money he makes! His salary is one of them you see compared with the President's so as to make the latter seem a mere trifle. That's a funny thing. I bet at least eighteen million grown people in this country never did know how much they was paying their president till they saw it quoted beside some movie star's salary in a piece that tells how he's getting about four times what we pay the man in the White House."

Author Biography

Harry Leon Wilson (1867 - 1939) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels Ruggles of Red Gap and Merton of the Movies. His novel Bunker Bean helped popularize the term flapper. In December 1886, Wilson's story The Elusive Dollar Bill was accepted by Puck magazine. He continued to contribute to Puck and became assistant editor in 1892. Henry Cuyler Bunner died in 1896 and Wilson replaced him as editor. The publication of The Spenders allowed Wilson to quit Puck in 1902 and devote himself full-time to writing. Wilson returned to New York where he met Booth Tarkington in 1904 and Tarkington and Wilson traveled together to Europe in 1905. The two completed the play The Man from Home in 1906 in Paris. The play was a resounding success and was followed by more collaborations with Tarkington, but none repeated the success of the first. Wilson was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1908. Wilson returned from Europe and settled permanently into the Bohemian colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, which included among its artists and literati Jack London, Mary Hunter Austin, George Sterling, Upton Sinclair, Xavier Martinez, Ambrose Bierce, Alice MacGowan, Sinclair Lewis, Francis McComas and Arnold Genthe. It was during this period that Wilson wrote the books for which he is most well known, Bunker Bean (1913) and Ruggles of Red Gap (1915). After a brief stint in Hollywood, he composed Merton of the Movies in 1922.