Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by O Henry.....the free e-book

 Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by O Henry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

→ The Gift of the Magi

 

→ A cosmopolite in a Cafe`

 

→ Between Rounds

 

→ The skylight Room

 

→ A service of Love

 

→ The coming out of Maggie

 

→ The Cop and the Anthem

 

→ Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

 

→ The Love-philtre of Ikey Shoenstein

 

→ The Furnished Room

 

→ The Last Leaf

 

→ The Poet and the Peasant

 

→ A Ramble in Aphasia

 

→ A Municipal Report

 

→ Proof of the Pudding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gift of the Magi

 

ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. And sixty cent of it was in pennies. Pennies saves one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflections that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also, appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name ‘Mr. James Dillingham Young’.

The ‘Dillingham’ had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of ‘Dallingham’ looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr.James Dallingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called ‘Jim’ and greatly hugged by Mrs. James DallinghamYoung, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

 Della finished her cry and attended to her hceeks with the powder rag. Sge stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking by a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had seen saving every penny she could for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the window of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shinning brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dallingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air-shaft, Dalla would have let her hair hung out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

Son now Dalla’s beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shinning like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knew and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minutes and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.

  Where she stopped the sign read: ‘Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.’ One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the ‘Sofronie.’ ‘Will you buy my hair?’ asked Della.

‘I buy hair,’ said Madame. ‘Take her hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.’

Down rippled the brown cascade.

‘Twenty dollar,’ said Madame. Lifting the mass with a practised hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

‘Give it to me quick.’ said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she was it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value - the description applied to both. Twenty-on dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends - a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

   If Jim doesn’t kill me.’ she said to herself, ‘before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island choras girl. But what could I do - oh! What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?

At seven o’clock the coffee was made and the frying -pan was on the back of the stove, hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the tables near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his footstep on the stair away down in the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: ‘Please God, make him think I am still pretty.’

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two-and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, not surprise, nor disapproval, not horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

          ‘Jim, darling,’ she cried, ‘don’t you look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again - you won’t mind,. will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say “Merry Christmas!” Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice - what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.’

‘You’ve cut off your hair?’ asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that present fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.

   ‘Cut it off and sold it.’ said Della. ‘Don’t  you like just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?’

Jim looked about the room curiously.

      ‘You say your hair is gone?; he said with an air almost of idiocy.

‘You needn’t look for it,’ said Della. It’s sold, I tell you - sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas eve, boy.  Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,’ she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, ‘but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?

  Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly  to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollar a week or a million a year - what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat and threw it upon the table.

‘don’t make any mistake, Dell, he said, ‘about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my little girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going awhile at first.

      White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshiped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, with jewelled rims - just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yerned over them without the least hope of possession. And how they were hers, but the dresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

  But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: ‘My hair grows so fast, Jim!’

Jim and then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, ‘oh, oh!’

 Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

‘Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.’

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

‘Dell,’ said he, ‘let’s put out Christmas presents away and keep ‘em awhile. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.’

The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men- who brought gifts to the babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones. Possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all  who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED SELECTED STORIES

 

Ⅱ           

 

                  A Cosmopolite Café

 

AT MIDNIGHT THE CAFÉ was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.

   And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels no much luggage, but we find travelers instead of cosmopolites.

  I invoke your consideration of the scene - the marble -topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall sets, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art, the sedulous and largest-loving garçons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk and laughter - and, if you will, the Würzbutger in the tall glass cones that bend to your ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian.

My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new ‘attraction’ there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion rang parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round worl in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptously, and is seemed no longer than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table-d’hôte grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equation, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his naokin. With a wave of his hand he would have you on skies of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skies in Lap-hand. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkanas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese arch-dukes. Anon he wooooould be telling you of a cold he acquired in a chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Aryres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES      

 

 

Addressed the letter to ‘E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar system, the Universe’, and have mailed it feeling confident that it would be delivered to him.

 I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter, But his opinions never fluttered or dropped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and continents a the winds or gravitation.

 And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great  almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that ‘the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities’ hem as a child to the mother’s gown.’ And whenever they walk ‘by roaring streets unknown’ they remember their native city ‘most faithful, foolish, find; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond.’ And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boast of birthplace or country, he who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the moon.

  Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra gilded into a medley. The concluding air was ‘Dixie,’ and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost over-powered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table.

  It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the city of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account fot it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the ‘rebel’ air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain. Many years’ generous mint and water-melon corps. A few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society, have made the South rather a ‘fad’ in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman’s in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now - the war, you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

When ‘Dixie was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at out table and pulled out cigarettes.

The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed, One of us metioned three Würzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I listened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had.

‘Would you mind telling me,’ I began, ‘whether you are from-’The fist of E. Rushmore coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence.

        ‘Excuse me,’ said he, but that’s a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by is post-office address? Why, I’ve seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren’t desended from pocahontas, Indianians who hadn’t written a novel, Mexicans who didn’t wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-mineded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour  on the street to watch a one-armed grocer’s clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don’t handicap him with the label of any section.’

          ‘Pardon me.’ I said, ‘but my curiosity  was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays ‘Dixie” I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applaud that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own - larger theory, I must confess.’

And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its won set of grooves.

‘I should like to be a periwinkle,’ said he, mysteriosly, ‘on the top of a valley, and sing too-ralloo-ralloo.’

          This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.

           I’ve been around the world twelve times,’ said he. ‘Iknow an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast-food puzzle compatition. I pay rent on a room in

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       O HENRY - 100 SELCTED STORIES

 

 

Ciaro, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year round. I;ve got slippers waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don’t have to tell ‘em how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It’s a mighty little old world. What’s the use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor-house in the dale, or Hooligan’s Flats or any place? It’ll be a better world when we quite being fooled about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there.’

‘You seem to be genuine cosmopolite,’ I said admiringly. But it also seems that you would decry patriotism.’

‘A relic of the stone age.’ declared Coglan warmly. ‘We are all brothers - Chinamen, Englishmen, Zuluz, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one’s city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and we’ll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be.’

         ‘But while you are wandering in foreign lands,’ I persisted, ‘do not your thoughts revert to some spot - some dear and -’

          ‘Nary a spot,’ interrupted E. R. Coglan flippantly. ‘The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I’ve met 2 good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I’ve seen a Southerner on being introduced to the king of England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his mother’s side was related by marriage to the Perkinese, of Charleston. I knew a New yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent.  ‘Afghanistan?’ the natives said to him through an interpreter. “ well, not so slow, do you think?” “oh, I don’t know,” says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab-driver at sixth avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don’t suit me. I’m not tied down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere.’

My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought that he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Würzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley.

I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

I believed in him. How was it? ‘The man that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities’ hem as a child to the mother’s gown.’

Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his-My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the saeted patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunnet screamed, and a blond began to sing “teasing’.

My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting.

I called McCarthy. One of the French garçons, and asked him the cause of the conflict.

         ‘The man with the red tie’ (that was my cosmopolite), said he, ‘got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy.’

           ‘Why,’ said I, bewildered, ‘that man is a citizen of the world - a cosmopolite. He -’

           ‘Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,’ continued McCarthy, ‘and wouldn’t stand for no knockin’ the place.’

 

 

            III

          Between Rounds

 

THE MAY MOON SHONE BRIGHT upon the private boarding-house of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heyday, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.

The windows of Mrs. Murphy’s boarding-house were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes.

        In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs . McCaskey.

At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teethe; and he apologized for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.

As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.

Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse.

‘I heard ye,’ came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. “Ye can apologize to riff-raff of the streets for settin’ yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye’d walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a “Kiss me fut,” and I’m sure it’s that long from rubbeiring’ out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there’s money to buy after drinkin’’ up yer wages at Gallegher’s every Saturday evening,’ and the gas man here twice to-day for his.’

‘Woman.’ said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, ‘the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society. “Tis no more than exercising the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask dissent of ladies blockin’ the way for steppin’ between them. Will ye bring the pig’s face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?

Mr. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware.

       ‘Pig’s face, is it? Said Mre. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord.

Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. Mccaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should have ended.

But Mr. McCaskey was no 50 cent table d’hôter. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 

 

 

that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash-basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flat-iron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomial duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream down-stairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice.

          On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.

        ‘’Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missus at it again ,’ meditated the policeman. ‘I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. ‘Twill not last long. Sure, they’ll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with.’ And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. ‘’Tis probably the cat,’ said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction.

         The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mr. Murphy -two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, milliner, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained everyday about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.

Majot Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. ‘The little one lost?’ he exclaimed. ‘I will scour the city.’ His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said: ‘Go, Ludovic!’in a baritone voice. ‘Whoever can look upon that mother’s grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone.’ ‘Give me some thirty or - sixty cents, my love.’ said the Major, ‘Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need car-fares.’ Old man Denny, hall-room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters’ strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: ‘oh, ar-r-Mike, pr Gawg’s sake, where is me little bit av a boy?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

‘When’d ye see him last?’ asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Traders League.

  ‘Oh,’ wailed Mrs. Murphy, ‘’twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But it’s lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin’ on the sidewalk only this mornin’ - or was it Wednesday? I’m that busy with work ‘tis hard to keep up with dates. But I’ve looked the house over from top cellar, and it’s gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven-’

Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws.

No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange.

Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy’s place. ‘Gimme a rye-high,’ he said to the servitor. ‘Haven’t seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you?

Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy’s hand on the steps. ‘Think of that dear little babe,’ said Miss Purdy, ‘lost from his mother’s side - perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds -oh, isn’t it dreadful?

‘Ain’t that right? ‘ agreed Mr. Toomey, squeazing her hand. ‘Say I start out and help look for um!’

Perhaps.’ said Miss Purdy, ‘you should. But oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing - so reckless - suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what -’

Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines.

In the second floor front Mr. And Mrs McCaskey came to the window to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnios out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the window.

‘’Tis little Mike is lost,’ said Mrs. McCaskey in a hushed voice, ‘the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gosson!’

‘The bit of a boy mislaid?’ said Mr. McCaskey leaning out of

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

the wondow. ‘Why, now, that’s bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be different. If ‘twas a woman I’d be willin’, for they leave peace behind ‘em when they go.’

Disregarding the thrust, Mre. McCaskey caught her husband’s arm.

‘Jawn,’ she said sentimentally, ‘Missis Murphy’s little bye is lost.

‘Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, ‘tis the same age out little bye would have been if he had had one six years ago.’

‘We never did,’ sid Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact. ‘But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all.’

‘Ye talk foolishness,’  said Mr. McCaskey. ‘;Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim.’

‘Ye lie!’ said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. ‘Me brother was worth tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named!’ She leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below.

‘Jawn,’ said Mrs. McCaskey softly, ‘I’m sorry I was hsty wid ye.’

‘’Twas hasty puddin’, as ye say,’ said her husban, ‘ and hurry-up turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. ‘Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, and tell no lie.’

Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband’s and took his rough hand in hers.

‘Listen at the crying’ of poor Mrs. Murphy,’ she said. ‘’Tis anawful thing for a bit pf a bye to be lost in this great big city. If ‘twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I’d be breaking’ me heart.’

Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife.

‘’Tis foolishness, of course,’ said he, roughly, ‘but I’d be cut up some meself, if out little - Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I’ve been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget it.’

They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below.

Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with rumours and inconsequent surmises. Mrs Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Loud voice and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house.

‘What’s up now, Judy?’ asked Mr. McCaskey.

‘’Tis Missis Murphy’s voice,’ said Mrs. McCasky, harking. ‘She says she’s after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room.’

Mr McCaskey laughed loudly.

‘That’s yer Phelan,’ he shouted sardonically ‘Divil a bit would a Pat have done that trick if the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangry pup.’

Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her moth drawn down.

Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.

‘By the deported snakes!’he exclaimed, ‘Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fighting’ for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The mises could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm.’

Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.

Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the night

 

 

           IV

 

         The Skylight Room

 

FIRST MRS. PARKER would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would mange to stammer forth the confession that you were a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker’s manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker’s parlours.

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floor back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

we worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charged of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double from room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still sheaper.

If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s large hall-room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction. Would pay something on his rent.

Then -oh, then -if you still stood on one foot with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely Proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, never-more would Mrs. Parker be cicrone of yours. She would honk loudly the word ‘Clara,’ she would show you her back and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7 by 8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closer or store-room.

In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair A shelf was the dresser. It’s four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coin. Your hans crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well - and breathed once more. Through the glass pf the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.

‘Two dollars, suh,’ Clara would say in her half-cintemptuous, half-Tuskegeenial tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: ‘Goodness me. Why didn’t you keep up with us?’

Mrs Parker showed her the double parlourd. ‘In this closet,’ she said, ‘one could keep a skeleton or anæsthetic or cosl-’

But I am neither a doctor not a dentist,’ said Miss Leeson with a shiver.

Mrs Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, said Miss Lesson. ‘Dear me! I’m not Hetty if I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

do look green. I’m just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower.’

Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door. 

‘Excused me, Mr. Skidder,’ said Mrs. Parker, with her demon’s smile at his pale looks. ‘I didn’t know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins.’

‘They’re too lovely for anything,’ said Miss Lesson, smiling in exactly the way the angels do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.

‘Anna Held’ll jump at it,’ said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting jis feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish.

Presently the tocsin call ‘Clara!’ sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeso’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words ‘Tow dollars!’

Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she left Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, ‘It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the subway.’

There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longneck, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said ‘well, really!’ to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would quickly group around her.

Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty[five, fat, flushed and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her ‘the funniest and jolliest ever,’ nut the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.

 

•              •            •             •              •

 

I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the foot-lights and drops and epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might have endeared more romance to the ton than would have Romeo’s rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five. Flush, foolish and fat, is meat for perdition. There was never a chance for you, Hoover.

As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh:

‘Why, there’s Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too.’

All looked up -some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson-guided.

‘Its that star,’ explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. ‘Not the big one that twinkles - the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.’

‘well, really!’ said Miss Longnecker. ‘I didn’t know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the small star-gazer, ‘I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they’re going to wear next fall in Mar.’

‘Well, really!’ siad Miss Longnecker. ‘the star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passage is -’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. ‘I think Miss Lesson has just as much right to name star as any of those old astrologers had.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

  ‘Well, really!’ siad Miss Longnecker.

‘I wonder whether it’s a shooting star,’ remarked Miss Dorn. ‘I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in he gallery at Coney Sunday.’

‘He doesn’t show up very well from down here,’ said Miss Leeson. ‘You ought to see him from my room. You can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal-mine, and it makes Bill Jackson look like the big diamond pin that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went in the mourning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on.

There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker’s stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner.

As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade, he tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder’s door as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in his (unaccepted) comedy, to ‘pirouette across stage from L to the side of the Count,’ Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and opened the door of the skylight room.

She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of a room she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled.

For Billy Jackson was shinning down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was stunt in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid night framing the star that she had  so whimsically, and oh, so ineffectually, named. Miss Longnecker must must be right; I was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.

As lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jack. Her arm fell back limply.

‘Good-bye, Billy,’ she murmured. ‘You’re millions of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100  SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Miles away and you won’t even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn’t anything else but darkness to look at, didn’t you?…millions of miles….Good-bye, Billy Jackson.’

Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at ten the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists even burnt feathers, proving of no avail, someone ran to ‘phone for an ambulance.

In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps.

‘Ambulance call to49,’ he said briefly. ‘What’s the trouble?’

‘Oh yes, doctor,’ sniffed Mrs Parker, as though her trouble that what can be the matter with her her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It’s a young woman, a Miss Elsie -yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson . Never before in my house -’

‘What room?’ cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger.

‘The skylight room. It -’

Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her dignity demanded.

On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practiced scalpel of his tongue , not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a staff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterwards there remained crumples in her mind body. Sometimes curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her.

‘Let that be ,’ she would answer. ‘If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied.’

‘The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead.

 They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was: ‘Drive h-I, Wilson,’ to the driver.

‘That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning’s paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No.49 East - street, suffering from debillity induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:

‘Dr, Williams Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover.’

 

 

      V

 

A service of love

 

WHEN ONE LOVES ONES ART no service seems too hard.

That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from I, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the Greta Wall of China.

Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pumpo with a prominent citizen passing is hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he left New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer.

Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a n-tree village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go ‘North’ and ‘finish’, They could not see her f- but that is our story.

Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chairoscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt’ works pictures, Waldteufel, wall-paper, Chopin, and Oolong.

Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other or each of the other, as ou please, and in a short time were married - for (see above), when one loves one’s Art no service seem too hard.

Mr. And Mrs. Larabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat - something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be -sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor - janitor for the privilege of the living in a flat with your Art and your Delia.

Flat -dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close - let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escitoire to a spare bedchamber, he wash-stand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if thy kind, let it be wide and long - enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn, and go out by Labrador.

Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister - you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light - his high-lights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock-you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys.

They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every - but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocket-books would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage.

But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat-the ardent, voluble chats after the day’s study; the cosy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions - ambitions interwoven each with the other’s or else inconsiderable - the mutual help and inspiration; and - overlook my artlessness - stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11p.m.

But after awhile Art flaged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn’t flag it. Everything going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr.Magister and Herr Rosentock their prices. When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard. So, Dli said she  must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling.

For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated.p

‘Joe, dear.’ she said gleefully, ‘I’ve a pupil. And , oh, the lovelist people! General -General A. B. Pinkney’s daughter - on seventy-first Street. Such a splendid house, Joe - you ought to see the front door! Brazantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like before.

‘My puplil is his daughter Clementina. I dear;y love her already. She’s delicate thing - dresses always in white; and the sweetest,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

Simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I’m o give three lessons a week, just think, Joe!  $5 a lsson. I don’t mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let’s have a nice supper.’

‘That’s’ all right for you, Dele,’ said Joe, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and a hatchet, ‘but how about me?  Do ou think I’m going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of envenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblesones, and bring in a dollar or two.’

Delia came and hung about his neck.

‘Joe, dear, you are silly. Ou must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I  had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You musn’t think of leaving Mr. Magister.’

‘All right,’ said Joe, reaching for the blue scallope vegetable dish. ‘But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn’t Art. But you’re a trump and a dear to do it.’

‘When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard,’ said Dekia.

‘Magister praised the sky in that I made in the park,’ said Jo. ‘And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sll one if the right king of a moneyed idiot sees them.’

‘I’m sre you will,’ said Delia sweetly. ;And now let’s be thankful for General Pinkney and this veal roast.’

During all of the next week the Larabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he coddled, praised, and kissed at seven o’clock when he returned in the evening.

At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8 by 10 (inches) centre table of the 8 by 10 (feet) flat parlour.

 ;Sometimes,’ she said, a little wearily, ‘ Clementina tries me. I’m afraid she doesn’t practice enough, and I have to tell her the same that does get monotonous. But General Pnkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

When I am with Clementina at the piano - he is a widower, you know - and stands there pulling his white goatee. “And how are the semiquavers and the demi-semiquavers progressing?” he always asks.

‘I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room Joe! And thus Astrakhan rug parties. And Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is sstronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she I so gentle and high bred. Genere; Pinkney’s brother was once Minister to Bolivia.’

And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Criso, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one- all legal tender notes - and laid hem beside Delia’s earnings.

‘Sold that water-colour of the obelisk to man from Peoria!

‘All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with in woolen muffler and a quit toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle’s window
and thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another - an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot - to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it.’

‘I’m glad you’ve kept on,’ said Delia heartily. ;You’re bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have oyster to-night.’

‘And filet mignon with champions,’ said Joe. ‘Where is the olive fork?

On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.

Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.

‘How is this? Asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.

‘Clementina, ‘ she explained, insisted uopn a Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon. The General was there. Ou should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn’t a servant in the house. I know clementina sn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But General Pinkney! - Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody - they said the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

furnace man or somebody in the basement - out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Jo, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages.

‘Its something soft,’ said Delia, that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?’ she had seen the money from Peoria. He got his depot to-day, and he is’nt sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?’

‘Five o’clock, I think,’ said Dele plaintively. ‘The iron- I mean the rabbit came off the fir about that time. You ought to have seen General Pinkney, Joe, when -’

‘Sit down here a moment, Dele,’ said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat down beside her and put his arm across he shoulders.

What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?’ he asked.

She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of General Pinkney; but at length down went her head out came the truth and tears.

‘I couldn’t get any pupils,’ she confessed. ‘And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in hat big Twenty-fourth strret laudary. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not angry are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have sold your sketches so that man from Peoria.’

‘He wasn’t from Poeria,’ said Joe slowly

‘Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe - and - kiss me, Joe- and what made you ever suspect that I wasn’t giving music lessons to Clementina?

‘I didn’t,’ said Joe, ‘until to-night. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon fo a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry fro the las two weeks.’

‘And then you didn’t -’

‘My purchaser fro Peoria,’ said Joe, ‘and General Pinkney are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

both craetions of the same art - but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.

And they both laughed, and Joe began:

‘When one loves one’s Art so service seems -’

But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. ‘No,’ she said -

 

 

         VI

 

               The coming-out of Maggie

 

EVERY SATUDAY NIGHT the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hail of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East side. In order to attend on of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take - or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold’s paper-box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops.

Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her ‘fellow,’ Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie’s house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them.

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard Street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and  rival social and athletic organisations joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hops with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went ‘round and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes.

On Saturday Rhinegold’s  paper-box factory closed at 3 p.m.

On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie’s door Anna said, as usual: ;Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me’ll come by for you.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad muth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.

‘Thanks, Anna’ said Maggie; ‘but you and Jimmy needn’t bother to-night. I’ve a gentleman friend that;s coming ‘round to escort me to the hop.’

The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her, Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it?

‘You’ll see to-night,’ said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid’s vineyard. ‘He’s swell all right. He’s two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I’ll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall.’ Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna’s eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend's ;catch’.

At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye discovered her chumunder the wing of her faithful Jimmy.

‘Oh, gee!’ cried Anna, ‘Mag ain’t made a hit -oh, no! Swell fellow? Well, I guess! Style? Look at ‘um’.

‘Go as far s you like,’ said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. ‘Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don’t mind me. ‘Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I’m glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had. Oh, here they come,’

Across the floor Maggie sailed like a conquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood tow inches taller than the average Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and hid teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal dures that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel air. They were not considered honourable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

the coat straining at its button over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the super-eminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle touneys of Cupid - these were the approved arms and ammunition of the Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, the genuflexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle.

‘A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O’Sullivan,’ was Maggie’s formula of introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each new-arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse.

‘Maggie Toole’s got a fellow at last,’ was the word that went round among the paper-box girls. ‘Pipe Mag’s floor-walker’ - thus the Give and Takes expressed their indifferent contempt.

Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow

as a signal for him to invite her chum to walk over his feet through a two-step.

But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O’Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fair-land be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill one perfect night.

The girls besieged her for introductions to her ‘fellow.’ The Clover Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance.

Thus she cored; but to Terry O’sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He dance like a faun; he introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his tongue, and - he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box girl that Dempsy Donovan brought.

Dempsey was the leader of the association. He was one of ‘Big Mike’ O’Sullivan’s lietenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever he broke a push-cart man’s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:

‘The Cap’n’d like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time, Dempsey, me bot..’

But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and black cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound dumb-bells. So doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan’s paper-box gilr. At ten o’clock the jolly round face of ‘Big Mike’ O’Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene, he always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys.

Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. ‘Big Mike’ looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed.

The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terry O’Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of he floor.

Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly every  one to turn and look at them - there was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two o three Give and Takes with tight coat-sleeves drew nearer.

‘One moment, Mr. O’Sullivan, ‘said Dempsey. ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself. Where did you say you lived?

The tqo gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight to give away. The O’Sullivan had breadth with quickness Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle’s and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his conspicous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when the rocks were melten. They were each too splendid, too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive.

‘I live on Grand ,’ said O’Sullivan insolently; ‘and  no trouble to find me at home. Where do you live?

Dempsey ignored the question.

‘You say your name’s O’Sullivan,’ he went on. ‘Well, “Big Mike” say he never saw you before.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

‘Lots of things he never saw,’ said the favourite of the hop.

‘As a rule,’ went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, ‘O’Sullivan in this district know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and we want a chance to make good. If you’ve got a family tree let’s see a few historical O’Sulivan buds come on it. Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?’

‘Suppose you mind your own business, suggested O’Sullivan blandly.

Dempsey’s eyes brightened. He held up an inspired forefiinger as though a brilliant idea ha truck him.

‘I’ve got it now,’he said cordially, ‘It was just a little mistake. You ain’t no O’Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognizing you at first,’

O’Sullivan’s eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Gaoghan was ready and caugh his arm.

Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club, and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O’Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear.

This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature , under the supervision of the Board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed that.

So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the Board done their preliminary work that many in the hall had no noticed the checking of the dascinating O’Sullivan’s social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked about for her escort.

‘Smoke up!’ said Rose Cassidy. ‘wasn’t you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap with your Lizzie-boy, and they’ve waltzed out to the slaughter-room with him.. How’s my hair look done up this way, Mag?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

But Maggie as off, darting her zigzag way through the maze of dancers. She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene- the Board standing about with open watches; Depmsey Donovan in his shirt-sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O’Sullivan standing with arm folded and a  murderous look ion his  dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream- leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O’Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom.

The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the Give and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened before. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquaran who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning.

And then O’Sullivan kissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey and the Board exchanged looks. And them Dempsey looked at O’Sullivan without anger as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in the direction of he door.

‘The back stairs, Giuseppi,’ he said briefely. ‘Somebody’ll pitch our hat down after ou.’

Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. Here was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye.

‘I knew it, Dempsey,’ she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. ‘I knew he was a Guinea. His nam,e’s Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrappin’ Them Guineas always carries knives. But you don’t undersand, Dempey. I never had a fellow in my life. I get tied of comin’ with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O’Suillivan, and brought him along. I knew there’d be nothin’ doin’ for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I’ll resign from the club now.’

Dempsey turned to Andy Groghan.

Chuck tha cheese slicer out of the window ,’ he said, and tell ‘em inside that Mr. O’Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall.’

And then he turned back to Maggie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

‘Say, Mag,’ he said. I’ll see you home, and how about next Saturday night? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around fo you?

It was remarkable how quickly Maggie ‘s eyes could change from dull to a shinning brown.

‘With you, Dempsey?’ said stammered. ‘say - will a duck swim?

 

        VII

 

          The Cop and the Anthem

 

ON HIS BENCH IN MADISON SQUARE Soapy moved uneasily. Whenqild goos honk hiogh of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.

A dead leaf fell inSoapy’s lap. That was Jack Frost’s card. Jack is kind to the regular denizen of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy’s mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Mans to provide against the coming rigour. And therefor he moved uneasily on his bench.

The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies or drifting in the Vesucian Bay. Three months on the lsland was what his soul craved. Three monhs of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.

For years the hospital Blackwell’s had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegiora to the island. And now the time was come. On the previous nigh three sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the col as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed large and timely in Soapy’s mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name o chariy for the city’s dependents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

In Soapy’s opinion the Law was more benign then philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set ouy and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy’s proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanropy. As Cæsar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have it toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman’s private affairs.

Soapy, having decided to go to the island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was no dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then,after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.

Soapy left his bench and fifth Avenue trolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering café,where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could each a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought

Soapy, would be about the thing - with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. He total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the café management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.

But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter’s eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands tuned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy yearned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be an epicureanone. Some  other way of entering limbo must be thought of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

At a corner of sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People cream running round the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pocket, and smiled at the sigh of brass buttons.

‘Where’s the man that done that?’ inquired the officer excitedly.

‘Don’t you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?’ aid Soapy, not without sarcasm, bu friendly, as one greets good fortune.

The policeman’s mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who mash windows do no remain to parley with the law’s minions. They take to their heels. He policeman saw a man half way down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and tell-tale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flap-jacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers.

 ‘Now, get busy and call a cop,’ said Soapy, ‘And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.’

‘No cop for youse,’ said waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. ‘Hey, Con!’

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as carpenter’s rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stoodbrfoe a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street.

Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously termed to himself a ‘cinch.’ a young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanor leaned against a water-plug.

It was Soapy’s design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated ‘masher.’  The refined and elegant appearance of his

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

Victim and the conginuity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would ensure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.

Soapy straightened the lady missionary’s ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and ‘hems’, smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the ‘masher.’ With half an eye Saopy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and gain bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy follows, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said:

‘Ah there, Bedelia! Don’t you want to come and play in my yard?

The policeman  was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but so beckon a finger and Soapy would practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cosy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy’s coat-sleeve.

;Sure, Mike,’ she said joyfully, ‘if you’ll blow me to a pail of suds. I’d have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching.’ With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman, overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.

At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and librettos. Woman in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. Th thought brought a little panic upon I, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theater he caught at the immediate straw of ‘disorderly conduct.’

On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at he top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the welkin.

The policeman twirled his club. Turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen:

‘’Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin’ the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; bu no harm. We’ve instructions to have them be.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.

‘My umbrella,’ he said sternly.

‘Oh, is it?’ sneered, adding insult to petite larceny. ‘Well, why don’t you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don’t you call a cop? There stands one at the corner.’

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy sis likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously.

Of course,’ said the umbrella man - ‘that is - well, you know how these mistakes occur - 1 - if its your umbrella I hope you’ll excuse me - I picked it up this morning in a restaurant - if you recognize it as yours, why - I hope you’ll -’

‘Of course its mine,’ said Soapy viciously.

The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blond in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.

But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy’s ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and  pedestrian were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves - for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

the anthem that the organist played commented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy’s receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence.

And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. To-morrow he would go into the roaring down-town district and find work. The fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would -

Soapy felt a hand laid on hi arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.

What are you doin’ here? Asked the officer.

‘Nothin,’ ‘said Soapy.

‘Then come along,’ said the policeman.

‘Three months ago on the Island,’ said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

 

VIII

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

 

I DON’T SUPPOSE it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelée horror.

But you needn’t look for any stuck-up literature in my piece,

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

such as Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that’s spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady Longshorman’s banquet), mustn’t he expected to perform any tricks with the art of speech.

I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing a can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band  as a geniuin Pomerian-Hambletonian-Red-Iish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flanelette in her shopping-bag till she cornered it, and gave up. From that moment I was a pet - a mamma’s own woostsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavour of Camambert cheese and  peau d’Espagne pick you up and wallop her tone of voice: ‘Oh, oo’s um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?’

From a pedigree yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the siberian bloodhound prize.

I’ll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestons above the first floor. Our flat was three fl - well, not flights - climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things - 1903 antique upholstered parlour set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea-house, rubber plant and husband.

By Sirius! The was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Hen-pecked? - well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they’d never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour’s talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the airs-haft - that’s about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won’t show, and gets ou a lot of sewing for a ten-minutes bluff.

I led a dog’s life in that flat. ‘Most all day I lay there in my corner watching the fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose - but what could I do? A dog can’t chew cloves.

I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn’t. we looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan’ cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December snow on the streets here cheap people live.

One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St.Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn’t have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn’s wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:

‘What are you looking so sour about, you oak un trimmed lobster? She don’t kiss you. You don’t have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you’re not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone.’

The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face.

‘Why, doggie,’ says he, ‘good doggie’ you almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie -cats?

Cats! Coul speak!

But, of course, he couldn’t understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with black-and-tan terrier. Her husband stung it and took it out every evening,

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation.

‘See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip,’ I says’ ‘you know that it ain’t he nature of a real man to play dry-nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn’t look like he’d like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every dat as perky and set up as an amateur pretidigitator doing he egg trick. How does he do it? Don’t tell me he like it.’

‘Him?’ says the black-and-tan. ‘Why, houses Nature’s Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he’s as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make ‘em all jackpots. By the time we’ve been in eight saloons he don’t care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I’ve lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors.’

The pointer I got from that terrier - vaudieville please copy - set me to thinking.

One evening about six o’clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called ‘Tweetness.’ I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still ‘Lovey’ is something of a nomenclatural tin-can on the tail of one’s self respect.

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in he press dispatches that lets the family know that Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.

‘Why, darn my eyes,’ says the old man, with a grin; ‘darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain’t asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see - how long’s it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest? I believe I,ll -’

I knew I had him. Hot scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells coming. I say by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equaled with her homemade truck bough at a delicatessen store eight minutes before  papa comes home.

When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the able leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

‘Poor doggie,’ says he; ‘good doggie. She shan’t kiss you any more. ‘S a darned shame. Good dogie, do away and get run over by a street car and be happy.’

I refused o leave. I leaped friesked around the ol man’ legs happy as a pug on a rug.

‘You old flea-headed woodchuc-chaser,’ I said to him - ‘you moon-baying, rabbit-poining, egg-stealing old beagle, can’t you see that I don’t want to leave you? Can’t you see that we’re both pugs in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after ou with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut hat all out and be pards for evermore?

Maybe you’ll say he didn’t understand -maybe he didn’t. but he kind of got a grip on the Hot scotches, and stood till for a minute, thinking.

‘Doggie,’ says he finally, ‘we don’t live more than a dozen lives an this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. if I ever see that flat any more I’m a flat, and if you do you’re flatter; and that’s no flattery. I’m offering 60 to I that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dashshund.’

‘There was no string, but I frolicked alone with my master to the Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.

On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun”

‘Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.’

But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said:

‘You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of a door-mat, do ou know what I’m going to call you?

I thought of ‘Lovey,’ and I whined dolefully.

‘I’m going to call you “Pete,” ‘says my master; and if I’d had five tails I couldn’t have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.

 

IX

The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoentein

 

HE BLUE LIGHT DRUG STOR is down-town, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

of  bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for a pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon.

The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macetares iots opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk -pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, oiled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round, pasteboard pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which conveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough-drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.

Ikey Schoenstien was the night clerk of the BLue Light and the friend of his customers. ‘Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé. There, as it should be, the druggist is a councellor, a confessor, an advisor, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey’s corniform, bespectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired.

Ikey roomed nd breakfasted at Mrs.Riddle’s, two squares away. Mr Riddle had a daughter named osy. The circumlocation has been in vain - you must have guessed it - Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal - the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmy conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside, he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of ammonia.

The fly in Ikey’s ointment (thrice welcome, pat tope!) was Chunk McGowan.

Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no out-fiielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey’s friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.

One afternoon McGowan drifted in his silent, easy way, and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

sat, comly, smoothed-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.

‘Ikey,’ said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder,  ‘get busy with your ear. It’s dug for me if you’ve got the line I need.’

Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidence of conflict, but found none.

‘Take your coat off,’ he ordered. ‘I guess already that you have been struck in the ribs with a jknife. I have many times told you those Dagoes would do you up.’

Mr. McGowan smiled. ‘Not them,’ he said. ‘Not any Dagoes. But you’ve located the diagnosis all right enough - it’s under my coat, near the ribs. Say! Ikey - Rosy and me are goin’ to run away and get married to-night.’

Ikey’s left forefinger wa doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan’s smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom.

‘That’s is,’ he continued, ‘if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We’ve been laying pips for the gateway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evening’ she says nixy. We’ve agreed on to-night, and Rosy’s struck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it’s five hours yet till the time, and I’m afraid she’ll stand me up when it comes to the scratch,’

‘You said you wanted drugs,’ remarked Ikey.

Mr.McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed - a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanor. He made a patent-,medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.

‘I wouldn’t have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I’ve engaged a pulpit ponder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. it’s got to come off. And if Rosy don’t change her mind again!’ - Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts.

‘I don’t see then yet,’ said Ikey shortly, ‘what makes it that you talk about drugs, or what I can be doing about it,’

‘Old man Riddle don’t like me a little bit,’ went on the uneasu suitor, bent upon marshlling the door with me. If it wasn’t fot losin’ a boareder they’d have bounced me along ago. I’m making $20 a week and she’ll never regret flying’ the coop with Chunk McGowan,’

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

‘You will excuse me, Chunk’ said Ikey. I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon,’

‘Say,’ said McGowan, looking up suddenly, ‘say, Ikey, ain’t there a drug of some kind -some kind of powders that’ll make a girl like you better if you give’em to her?

Ikey’s lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued:

‘Tim Lacy told me once that he got some from the very croaker up-ton and fed’em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks.’

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general what was about to invade the enemy’s territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

‘I thought,’ went on Chunk hopefully, ‘that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night ir might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don’t need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff’ll work just for a couple of hours it’ll do the trick.’

When is this foolishness of running away to be happening? Asked Ikey.

‘Nine o’clock,’ said Mr. MGowan. ‘Supper’s at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano lets me though to his bckyard, where there;s a board off Riddle’s fence, next door. I go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We’ve got to make it early on the preacher’s account. It

S all dead easy if Rosy don’t balk when the flag drops. Can ou fix me one of them powders, Ikey?

Ikey Schonstein rubbed his nose slowly.

‘Chunk,’ said he, ‘it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquintance would I entrust a powder like that. But gor you I shall make it, and you shall see how it make Rosy to think of you,’

Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would ensure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to he sleeper. This handed to Chunk.

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid, if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinar.

The subtle of Iky’s action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr.Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action.

‘Much obliged,’ he said briefely to Ikey. ‘The lazy Irish loafer! My own room’s just above Rosy’s. I’ll just go up there myself after supper and load the short-gun and wait. If he comes in my backyard he’ll go away in an ambulance instead of a bridal chaise,’

With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many-hours’ deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomiture.

At eight o’clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey tarted hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle’s to learn the outcome. Ant, lo! As he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan spring from a passing street-car and grasped his hand -Chunk McGowan with a victor’s smile and flushed with joy.

‘Pulled it off,’ said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. Rosy hit the fire-escape on time to a second and we was under the wire at the Reverend’s at 9.30 ¼. she’s up at the flat -she cooked eggs this mornin’ in a blue kimono -Lord I how luky I am! You must pace up some day, Iky, and feed with us. I’ve got a job dwon near the bridge, and that’s where I’m heading for now.’

‘The -the powder? Stammered Ikey.

‘Oh, that stuff you gave me! Siad Chunk broadening his grin; ‘well, it was this way. I sat dqon at the supper table las night at Riddle’s and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, “Chunk, if you get the girl on the square -don’t try any hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her.” and I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then lamps falls on another party present, who, I say to myself, is fallin’ in a proper affection toward hiscomin’ son-in-law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle’s coffee -see?

 

 

       IIX

 

      The Furnished Room

 

RESTLESS, SHIFTING, FUGACIOUS as time itself, is a certain vat bulk of the population of the redbrick district of the lower West Side

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients for ever - transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing ’Home Sweet Home’ in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant ghost.

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his Ican hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hat-band and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths.

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.

He asked if there was a room to let

‘Come in,’ said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. ‘I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?

The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have for-sworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each tun of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps had once been set within them, if so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to convenience that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.

‘This is the room,’ said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. ‘It’s a nice room. It ain’t often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer - no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. Th water’s at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney-kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B’ retta Sprowls - you may have heard of her - oh, that was just the stage names - right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

 

there is plenty of closet room. It’s a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long.’

‘Do you have many theatrical people rooming here? Asked the young man.

‘They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes.’

He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue’

‘A oung girl - Miss Vashner - Miss Eloise Vashner - do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrows.’

‘No, I don’t remember he name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No I don’t call that one to mind.’

No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theaters from all-star casts down to music-halls so low that he dreaded to find what he mot hoped for. He who had lived her best had trued to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.

The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furnished, he ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and two chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its diverse tenantry.

A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered, rectangular,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

 

 

tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house - The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel’s chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pet drapery drawn rakishly asked like the sashes of the Amazonians ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room’s marooned when a lucky ail had born them to a fresh port 0 a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck.

One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room’s procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the thong. Tiny finger-prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners tying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed whee a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name ‘Marie.’ It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury - perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garnished coldness - and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some mre potent unheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home; and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish.

The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft-shod, though his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the house - a dank savour rather than a smell - a cold, musty effluvium as from