Years ago a friend and me took a graduate student in English Literature around Hannibal, MO. The student was doing his thesis on Twain, and when he saw the Twain house, the house where "Becky Thatcher" lived, went through the cave and did all the tourist schtick, he was just bonkers with Twainiana. Then Steve and I had a wicked, wicked thought....

We took him down to the Hannibal riverfront with the statement that we wanted to show him something special, something only the natives of the area knew about. We pointed out a really terrible building, one with the roof missing, a wall caved in, and so forth, and implied very strongly that long ago it had been a bar and that upstairs, when the ladies plied their trade, the young Samuel Clemens was a regular visitor whenever his riverboat brought him to town.

The student bit and bit hard. The hook was not only set, but swallowed.

Then we couldn't hold it in any more and Steve and I almost literally fell apart laughing. The student understood when we were able to point out the building's cornerstone, which showed that it had been built in 1896....

He didn't speak to us until we sprung for beer.