Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis

The gold was gone, the streets were mud, and November was near, when Neil lunched with Randy Spruce of the Chamber of Commerce, Lucian Firelock, who had come from a Georgia newspaper to be advertising manager of Wargate's, and Wilbur Feathering, who had also migrated North, but more after the fashion of Morgan's raiders.

Wilbur was the newest business sensation in town; small, trim, forty-five and full of twenty-dollar bills. He had been born in Mississippi, the son of a bankrupt grocer, but he thought that it would be much nicer if you supposed him to be the scion of a plantation-owner. Randy said, in a Boosters Club speech, "Wilbur may be as Southern as a hot tamale but he's also Northern as a blizzard and as streamlined as a flying torpedo."