The last time riverboat gambler Beauregard P. Delacroix faced the mechanical man in a game of cards, he had lost his money, his home, and his prized Appaloosas. Worse, he had lost his cool – falling for the gambling gadget’s bluff when he could least afford to.

He blamed his pants.

“These pants, these accursed seersucker pants!” he cried after the devastating loss. “They do make my loins sweat so! How may a gentleman stay fresh and tidy during sizzling games of chance when his holy unmentionables do boil like the crawdad in a kettle!” As Delacroix descended the gangplank, he stripped off his heretofore lucky seersucker s and tossed them into the turgid waters of the Mississippi River. “To hell with you, stifling cloth!” he announced.

And then he heard the laughter. Above him, the dastardly iron contraption and its flesh-and-blood masters from the University of Mississippi Engineering Department were taunting him from the poop deck. Delacroix spat in disgust. He vowed they would meet again.

With time, Delacroix rebuilt his fortune to even greater heights than before. By 1879 he had more horses and hogs than any man in the state. He owned turpentine warehouses, a gin distillery and even the Vicksburg Snuffatorium, which he had won in a game of whist. But all of it was meaningless without a rematch against his nemesis.

His chance came one sweltering August, when the heat was so fierce that livestock stood rendering in the fields, beards spontaneously caught on fire, and the streets ran thick with lava-hot molasses. In this hellbroth, Delacroix faced off again against the mechanical monstrosity at the Magnoliaville Annual Poker Tournament, putting on the line everything that he had worked hard to reacquire.

The contest lasted into the wee hours of the morning, until only Delacroix and his metallic opponent remained. They had bet nearly everything they had, then the metal man placed on the table the deed to Farthington Manor. The sweating crowd gasped, and the contraption let loose with a triumphant puff of steam from its exhaust portal.

“If the action is too hot for you,” the machine chirped and whined, “best you stay out of the kitchen!”

Had Delacroix been wearing ordinary pants, the action would have indeed been too hot, but not this time. Not when he was wearing a new pair of light and airy horizontal seersucker Summerounds, which kept him cool despite the furnace-like heat of the moment.

“I see your bet, you despicable mechanical cur!” he ejaculated, laying down the deed to the Snuffatorium. The machine was nervous now, and almost hesitantly it laid down its cards, revealing a full house.
“Oh my stars, how I shall enjoy summering in fair Farthington Manor,” Delacroix said coyly, showing his royal flush.

Unable to process the defeat, the machine overheated and exploded, maiming its devious masters with searing shrapnel. Delacroix, meanwhile, was deluged with winsome young lasses, who begged to make his acquaintance in the most human of ways.

And with that, his Summerounds were removed far more quickly than he had anticipated.