One of Rourke's typical stories shows the raw Yankee outwitting the slick Englishman, while also emphasizing his native cheapness. "Before 1800, a tale was current in London of a Passamaquoddy captain who was coaxed into a low tavern by some sharpers. Unable to induce him to play, they drank three bottles of wine and departed. 'Ah,' said the landlord, wagging his head in mock sympathy, 'I see you are not acquainted with our London blades. You must pay the reckoning.' Jonathan [a standard name in Yankee stories] looked discomfited, slowly drew out a handful of silver, gazed at it, and ordered another bottle. When the landlord left to fetch it, simple Jonathan ran to the mantelpiece, chalked the sum, scrawled, 'I leave you a Yankee handle for your London blades,' and ran out of the door."

Rourke's example of a Davy Crockett story, by contrast, has the fantastic scale of a folk epic. "One January morning," Crockett relates, "it was so all screwen cold that the forest trees were stiff and they couldn't shake, and the very daybreak froze fast as it was trying to dawn. … Well, arter I had walked about twenty miles up the Peak o' Day and Daybreak Hill I soon discovered what war the matter. The airth had actually friz fast on her axes, and couldn't turn round; the sun had got jammed between two cakes o' ice under the wheels, an' thar he had been shinin' an' workin' to get loose till he friz fast in his cold sweat. … I took a fresh twenty-pound bear off my back that I'd picked up on my road, and beat the animal agin the ice till the hot ile [oil] began to walk out on him at all sides. I then took an' held him over the airth's axes an' squeezed him till I'd thawed 'em loose, poured about a ton on't over the sun's gace, give the airth's cog-wheel one kick backward till I got the sun loose—whistled 'Push along, keep movin'!' an' in about fifteen seconds the airth gave a grunt, an' began movin'. The sun waked up beautiful, salutin' me with sich a wind o' gratitude that it made me sneeze. I lit my pipe by the blaze o' his top-knot, shouldered my bear, an' walked home, introducin' people to the fresh daylight with a piece of sunrise in my pocket."