"May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em names."

Probably intended as a joke. I wonder how many of his readers noticed it.

Who is telling this story? And why would this person purposefully confuse entomology and etymology? Or is this person, as created by the author, uneducated?

Dear WW: I mention with the first one of this group that I was reading consecutively sixty O.Henry stories. It seemed
potentially annoying to keep repeating that statement.

Oh, I didn't so much mean the author as making the error but the narrator of the story. It is such a blatant error--and not particularly humrous--that I must take it to mean, since O. Henry was the author, that the narrator was somehow portrayed as being ignorant.