4. The Capitoline Venus (1869)

Summary: George Arnold, a starving and indebted sculptor in Rome, wishes to marry the love of his life, but her father opposes unless he can make $50,000 in six months. He goes to his best friend, John Smitthe, who takes one of his best sculptures and maims it, assuring him that he was going to take care of it. He purchased a cheap patch of land and transferred it to George, then dug up the statue he had buried there and had it assessed for value by experts, pretending it was an ancient Classical statue. They awarded George ten million francs because of the statue, and the Roman committee decided to create an American joint-stock company to handle future purchases of land

Commentary: There is a note at the bottom of the story that it was written at the time of the "Petrified Giant" scandal, otherwise known as the Cardiff Giant, that also turned out to be a hoax. I like how this story was written in mock-script form, with added scene directions under each chapter title. It retained quotation marks and did not label parts, but it was easy to infer who was saying what. I liked this story a lot because of the melodramatic characters in it. In the third chapter, George went to complain to John and all he responded with was insults like "You are a dummy!" It was wonderful.