its from the story "compliments of the season" by o henry

i want to ask series of question form the story compliments of the season by o henry.the first one is from this sentence:-
i have written two sentences i want to ask the meaning of the sentence in bold text, thank you.:-
"Cheese the funny business," said Riley. "You swiped it or picked it up
at de house on de hill where--but never mind dat. You want to take fifty
cents for de rags, and take it quick. Me brother's kid at home might be
wantin' to play wid it. Hey--what?"
He produced the coin.
Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to
the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be
released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum
and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh.


Expert Answers

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What the sentence is saying is simply that Fuzzy flat out rejected the men who wanted to buy the rag doll from him.  He treated them as if their proposal was completely ridiculous.

Sarah Bernhardt was a famous actress who lived from 1844 to 1923.  She presumably made a great deal of money.  If someone went to her manager and asked him if she would come and perform before their little club (for only a little money) instead of performing in a big theater (for a lot of money) he would laugh at them.

("Tacky" means having very poor taste and liking cheap things.  So the Tackytown... means a club in an uneducated town that pretends to be quite literary.)

So the quote is just trying to give an analogy to tell you how completely Fuzzy rejected the men's proposal.

I hope that helps...

 

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