→ The Gift of the Magi English Version

→ A Cosmopolite in a Café

→ 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 Puddin

I

The Gift of the Magi

ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. And sixty

cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved 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 reflection 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 'Dillingham' looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously

of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James

Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above, he was called 'Jim'

and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to

you as Della. Which is all very good. Delia finished her cry and attended to

her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out

dully at a grey cat walking 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 been saving every penny she could for

2 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 windows 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 shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within

twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full

length. Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham 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 airshaft, Della would have let her hair

hang out the window someday 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. So now Della's beautiful hair

fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached

below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it

up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute 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 yer hat off and let's have a sight

at the looks of it.' Down rippled the brown cascade. 'Twenty dollars,' said

Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

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'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 it 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 saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness

and value - the description applied to both. Twenty-one 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, closelying 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 chorus 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 table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard

his step on the stair away down on 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.

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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, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor 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 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 patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour. 'Cut it off and sold it,'

said Della. 'Don't you like me 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 dollars 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 pocket 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 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.

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For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped

for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, with jeweled rims

- just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she

knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of

possession. And now they were hers, but the tresses 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!'

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 her 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 it. 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 our Christmas presents away and keep 'em awhile.

They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the 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 uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most

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. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are

wisest. They are the magi.

6 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

II

A Cosmopolite in a 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 on much luggage, but we find travellers

instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene - the marble-topped

tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, 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 largess-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

Würzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a 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. And then his conversation rang along

parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to

speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino

cherry in a table-d'hôte grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped

from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his

napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad.

Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the

Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas postoak swamp,

let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into

the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired

in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot

infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 7

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 drooped; he was as impartial to cities,

countries and continents as 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, fond; 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 boasts of birthplace or country,

one 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 glided into a medley. The

concluding air was 'Dixie,' and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost

overpowered 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 for 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

crops, 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.

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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 our table and pulled out cigarettes.

The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three

Würzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in

the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened 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 his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians

who hated whisky, Virginians who weren't descended 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-minded 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

applauds 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 own set of grooves. 'I should like to be a periwinkle,' said he,

mysteriously, '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.

'I know an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw

a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast-food puzzle

competition. I pay rent on a room in

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 9

Cairo, 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 Euclid Avenue,

Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll

be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of

swampland just because we happened to be born there.' 'You seem to be a 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, Zulus, 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 a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from

Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage

canal. 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 Perkinses, 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 to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put

me 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

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I believed in him. How was it? '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.' 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

seated 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 brunette screamed, and a blonde 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 he 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 11

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 teeth; 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 apollygize 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 rubberin' 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 evenin', 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 exercisin' the

acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the 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?'

Mrs. 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 a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware. 'Pig's face,

is it?' said Mrs. 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

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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 gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing

scream downstairs 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. ' ' T is 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 Mrs.

Murphy's little boy Mike was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. 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 every day about the noise in the

halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock. Major 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, f'r Gawd's sake, where is me

little bit av a boy?'

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 13

'When'd ye see him last?' asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the

Building Trades 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 to 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-yearold 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, squeezing 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 turnips out of

his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the 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 gossoon!' 'The bit of a boy mislaid?' said Mr.

McCaskey leaning out of

14 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

the window. '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, Mrs. 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 our little bye would have been if we had

had one six years ago.' 'We never did,' said 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 hasty wid ye.' ' 'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say,' said her husband, 'and hurryup

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 cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy,' she said. ' 'Tis an awful thing

for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be

breakin' 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 our 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 15

Loud voices 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. McCaskey,

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 mangy pup.' Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet,

with the corners of her mouth 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 fightin' for an hour and

a quarter by the watch. The missis 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 steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for 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 manage to stammer forth the confession

that you were neither 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

16 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of

his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always

spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to

babble that you wanted something still cheaper. 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, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone 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 floorspace at the middle of

the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or store-room. In it was an iron cot,

a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in

upon you like the sides of a coin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked

up as from a well - and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you

saw a square of blue infinity. 'Two dollars, suh,' Clara would say in her half-

contemptuous, 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 parlours. 'In this closet,' she said, 'one could keep a

skeleton or anaesthetic or coal - ' 'But I am neither a doctor nor 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, and led the way to

the second floor back. 'Eight dollars?' said Miss Leeson. 'Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 17

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.

'Excuse 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 Leeson, 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

his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial

cuttlefish. Presently the tocsin call of 'Clara!' sounded to the world the state of Miss

Leeson'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

'Two dollars!' 'I'll take it!' sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed.

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 let 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 Longnecker, 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 shot at the moving ducks at Coney

every Sunday and worked 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

18 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,' but the sniffs on the top

step and the lower step were implacable.

• • • • •

I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an 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 rendered more romance

to the ton than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he

must not 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 and

foolish, might carry off Helen herself; Hoover, fortyfive, 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. 'It's 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 Mars.'

'Well, really!' said 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 the very young Mr. Evans, 'I think Billy Jackson is a much better name

for it. 'Same here,' said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. 'I

think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers

had.'

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 19

'Well, really!' said Miss Longnecker. 'I wonder whether it's a shooting star,' remarked

Miss Dorn. 'I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the 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 know 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 Billy Jackson look

like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with.' There came a time after

that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went

in the morning, 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 shining down on her, calm and bright

and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit

of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so

whimsically, and oh, so ineffectually, named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was

Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not

let it be Gamma. As she 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 Jackson.

Her arm fell back limply. 'Good-bye, Billy,' she murmured faintly. 'You're millions of

20 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 and 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 young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth

face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. 'Ambulance call to 49,' he said briefly.

'What's the trouble?' 'Oh yes, doctor,' sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that

there should be trouble in the house was the greater. 'I can't think what can be the matter

with 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 a 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 practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker

crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterwards there remained

crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her 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 of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back 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 like h - l, 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 21

It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been

removed from No. 49 East - Street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It

concluded with these words: 'Dr. William 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 it, 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 Great 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 pump

with a prominent citizen passing it 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 for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer. Delia

Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine-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 chiaroscuro, Wagner, music,

Rembrandt's works pictures, Waldteufel, wall-paper, Chopin, and Oolong. Joe and Delia

became enamoured one of the other or each of the other, as you 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. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat - something

like the A sharp way down at the lefthand 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 living

in a flat with your Art and your Delia. Flat-dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs

is the only

22 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 escritoire to a spare

bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they

will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other 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

pocketbooks 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

flagged. 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 Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems

too hard. So, Delia 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. 'Joe, dear,' she said gleefully, 'I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General

- General A. B. Pinkney's daughter - on Seventyfirst Street. Such a splendid house, Joe

- you ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh,

Joe, I never saw anything like it before. 'My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly

love her already. She's a delicate thing - dresses always in white; and the sweetest,

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 23

simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and, just

think, Joe! $5 a lesson. 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 you

think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art?

Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones,

and bring in a dollar or two.' Delia came and hung about his neck. 'Joe, dear, you are

silly. You 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 mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister.'

'All right,' said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped 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 Delia. 'Magister praised the sky in that sketch

I made in the park,' said Joe. 'And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in

his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them.' 'I'm sure 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 Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was

enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and

Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised, and kissed at seven o'clock. Art is

an engaging mistress. It was most times 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

practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always

dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But General Pinkney is the

dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes

24 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 those Astrakhan rug portières. And Clementina has such a funny little

cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she

is so gentle and high bred. General Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia.' And

then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one - all

legal tender notes - and laid them beside Delia's earnings. 'Sold that water-colour of the

obelisk to a man from Peoria,' he announced overwhelmingly. 'Don't joke with me,' said

Delia - 'not from Peoria!' 'All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a

woollen muffler and a quill 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 so 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 oysters to-night.' 'And filet mignon with champignons,' 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 upon a Welsh rabbit after

her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon. The General

was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't

a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn'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 25

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 Joe, taking the hand

tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages. 'It's something soft,'

said Delia, 'that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?' She had seen the

money on the table. 'Did I?' said Joe. 'Just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot to-

day, and he isn't 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 fire 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 her 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 and 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 that big Twenty-fourth Street

laundry. 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

to that man from Peoria.' 'He wasn't from Peoria,' 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 for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a

smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.' 'And

then you didn't - ' 'My purchaser from Peoria,' said Joe, 'and General Pinkney are

26 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

both creations of the same art - but you wouldn't call it either painting or music. And

then they both laughed, and Joe began: 'When one loves one's Art no service seems - '

But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. 'No,' she said - 'just "When one loves."

VI

The Coming-out of Maggie

EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the

Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one 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

musclemaking inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to

engage the police and rival social and athletic organizations in 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 Saturdays 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 27

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 mouth, 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 Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal,

unattractive 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

chum under 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 as 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. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess.

Huh!' '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 coquettish yacht

convoyed by a stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the

faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and Take athlete; his

dark hair curled; his eyes and his 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 duress 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 airs. They were not considered honourable methods of

warfare. The swelling biceps,

28 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES

the coat straining at its buttons 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 tourneys 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 fairyland be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill

one drop of ambrosia from the rose-crowned melody of Maggie's 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 scored; 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 danced 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 Dempsey Donovan brought.

Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and could chin the bar

twice with one hand. He was one of 'Big Mike' O'Sullivan's lieutenants, 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 29

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 boy.' 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 paperbox girl. 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 the 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 or 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 two 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 conspicuous sneer. They were

enemies by the law written when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid,

too mighty, too incomparable to divide preeminence. 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" says he never saw you before.'

30 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'Sullivans 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'Sullivan buds come out 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 forefinger as though a brilliant idea

had struck 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 Geoghan was ready and

caught 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 not noticed the checking of the fascinating 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?' Maggie

laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist. 'Gone to fight with Dempsey!' she

said breathlessly. 'They've got to be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why,

he'll - he'll kill him!' 'Ah, what do you care?' said Rosa. 'Don't some of 'em fight every

hop?'

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 31

But Maggie was 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; Dempsey Donovan

in his shirt-sleeves dancing, lightfooted, 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 in 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 antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon

unknown to his learning. And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between

his teeth. Dempsey and the Board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at

O'Sullivan without anger as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in the

direction of the door. 'The back stairs, Giuseppi,' he said briefly. 'Somebody'll pitch your

hat down after you.' Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There 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 name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you

and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries knives. But you don't understand,

Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy

every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, 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 Geoghan. 'Chuck that 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.

32 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 for you?' It was remarkable how quickly

Maggie's eyes could change from dull to a shining brown. 'With you, Dempsey?' she

stammered. 'Say - will a duck swim?'

VII

The Cop and the Anthem

O N HIS BENCH IN MADISON SQUARE Soapy moved uneasily. When wild goose

honk high 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 in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack

is kind to the regular denizens 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 Means to provide against the coming rigour.

And therefore 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 Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was

what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company,

safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable. For

years the hospitable 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 hegira to the Island. And

now the time was come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed

beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold 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 of charity

for the city's dependents.

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 33

In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless

round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out 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 philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus,

every bed of charity must have its 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 to 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 strolled 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 vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat

black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on

Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach 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. The 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 turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the

sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard. Soapy turned off

Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be an epicurean one.

Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of.

34 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 came running round the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood

still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight 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?' said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one

greets good fortune. The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men

who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their

heels. The policeman saw a man halfway 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, flapjacks,

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 the 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 a

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 stood before 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 demeanour 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 35

victim and the contiguity 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 Soapy saw that the policeman was

watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed

her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, 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 to beckon

a finger and Soapy would be 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. Women 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. The thought brought a little of panic

upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a

transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of 'disorderly conduct.' On the

sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the 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; but no harm. We've

instructions to lave them be.'

36 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 Soapy, adding insult

to petit 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 did 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 - I - if it's 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 it's mine,' said Soapy viciously. The ex-umbrella man retreated.

The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde 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 pedestrians 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 37

the anthem that the organist played cemented 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. A 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 his 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 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 them-selves 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,

38 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 Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be 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 I 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 genuine Pomeranian-Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-ChinaStoke-Pogis fox

terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in

her shopping-bag till she cornered it, and gave up. From that moment I was a pet - a

mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound

woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and

wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice:

'Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?' From a

pedigreed 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 cobblestones 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! there 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 squirrel-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 39

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 airshaft - 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 out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute 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's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December's snow

on the streets where 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 oakum 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! Could 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 a black-andtan terrier. Her husband strung it and took

it out every evening,

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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 the 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 day as perky and

set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell

me he likes it.' 'Him?' says the black-and-tan. 'Why, he uses 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 - vaudeville 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 the

press despatches that lets the family know that little 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 sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and

eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck

bought 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 table 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 41

'Poor doggie,' says he; 'good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. ' S a darned shame.

Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.' I refused to leave.

I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug. 'You old flea-

headed woodchuck-chaser,' I said to him - 'you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-

stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're

both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel

and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that 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 still for a minute, thinking.

'Doggie,' says he finally, 'we don't live more than a dozen lives on 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 1 that Westward Ho wins out

by the length of a dachshund.' There was no string, but I frolicked along 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 you 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 Schoenstein

THE BLUE LIGHT DRUG STORE 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

42 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

macerates its 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, rolled 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

coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough-

drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. Ikey Schoenstein 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 counsellor, a

confessor, an adviser, 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 and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's,

two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution 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, calmly 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 trope!) was Chunk McGowan. Mr. McGowan was

also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no out-fielder

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 in his silent, easy way, and

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 43

sat, comely, 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 drugs for me if you've got the line I need.' Ikey

scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found

none. 'Take your coat off,' he ordered. 'I guess already that you have been stuck in the

ribs with a knife. 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 was 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 is,' he

continued, 'if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've been layin' pipes for

the gateway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy.

We've agreed on to-night, and Rosy's stuck 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 demeanour. 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 pounder 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 of drugs, or what I can be doing about it.' 'Old man Riddle don't

like me a little bit,' went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. 'For

a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder

they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll never regret flyin'

the coop with Chunk McGowan.'

44 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 a croaker uptown 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 who 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 it 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. McGowan.

'Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano

lets me through to his backyard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go

under her window and help her down the fireescape. 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 you fix

me one of them powders, Ikey?' Ikey Schoenstein 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 acquaintance would I entrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make

it, and you shall see how it makes 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 the sleeper. This he

handed to Chunk

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 45

McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid, if possible, and received the hearty

thanks of the backyard Lochinvar. The subtlety of Ikey'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 briefly 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 shot-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 manyhours'

deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that

his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture. All night in the Blue Light Store he

waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came. At eight o'clock in

the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn

the outcome. And, lo! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang

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 9.3 0

1/4. She's up at the flat - she cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue kimono - Lord! how

lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near

the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for now.' 'The - the powder?' stammered Ikey.

'Oh, that stuff you gave me!' said Chunk broadening his grin; 'well, it was this way. I sat

down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself,

"Chunk, if you get the girl get her 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 my

lamps falls on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin' in a proper affection

toward his comin' son-in-law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old

man Riddle's coffee - see?'

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moment immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers

only. The odour brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance

dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room - twenty steps away. 'By

George, I'll do it now,' said Maxwell, half aloud. 'I'll ask her now. I wonder I didn't do it

long ago.' He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He

charged upon the desk of the stenographer. She looked up at him with a smile. A soft

pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow

on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was above

his ear. 'Miss Leslie,' he began hurriedly, 'I have but a moment to spare. I want to say

something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you

in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please - those fellows are

clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific' 'Oh, what are you talking about?' exclaimed

the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed. 'Don't you

understand?' said Maxwell restively. 'I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I

wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're

calling me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss

Leslie?' The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with

amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily

through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck. 'I know now,'

she said softly. 'It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for

the time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last

evening at eight o'clock in the Little Church Around the Corner.'

XVI

The Furnished Room

RESTLESS, SHIFTING, FUGACIOUS as time itself, is a certain vast bulk of the

population of the redbrick district of the lower West Side.

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 75

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 ghosts. One evening after dark a young man prowled among

these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean 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 forsworn. 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 turn of the stairs were vacant

niches in the wall. Perhaps plants 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 conceive 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. The 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

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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

young 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 eyebrow.' 'No, I

don't remember the 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 theatres from all-star casts down to music-halls so low that he dreaded to

find what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried 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 furniture, the ragged brocade

upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two

windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest

reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an

apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry. A polychromatic rug

like some brilliant-flowered, rectangular,

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 77

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 pert drapery

drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some

desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them

to a fresh port - 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 throng. Tiny finger-prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to

feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting

bomb, witnessed where 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 garish 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 more potent upheaval 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, through 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

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underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and

rotten woodwork. Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong,

sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness

and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried

aloud, 'What, dear?' as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich

odour clung to him and wrapped him about. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses

for the time confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an

odour? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched,

that had caressed him? 'She has been in this room,' he cried, and he sprang to wrest from

it a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her

or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the odour that she had

loved and made her own - whence came it? The room had been but carelessly set in

order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins - those discreet,

indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and

uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of

identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged

handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he

hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a

pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the

last was a woman's black satin hair-bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire.

But the black satin hair-bow also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common

ornament, and tells no tales. And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent,

skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and

knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in

the corner, for a visible sign unable to perceive that she was there beside, around,

against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly

through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognizant of the call. Once

again he answered loudly, 'Yes, dear!' and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he

could not yet discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour of

mignonette. Oh, God! whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to

call? Thus he groped.

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 79

He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed

in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and

this he ground beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from

end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but

of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to

hover there, he found no trace. And then he thought of the housekeeper. He ran from the

haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his

knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could. 'Will you tell me, madam,' he

besought her, 'who occupied the room I have before I came?' 'Yes, sir. I can tell you

again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls it was in the theatres,

but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage

certificate hung, framed, on a nail over - ' 'What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls - in

looks, I mean?' 'Why, black-haired, sir, short and stout, with a comical face. They left a

week ago Tuesday.' 'And before they occupied it?' 'Why, there was a single gentleman

connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis

Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was old Mr.

Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year,

sir, and further I do not remember.' He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room

was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had

departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere

in storage. The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing

gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the

blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door.

When all was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid

himself gratefully upon the bed.

• • • • •

It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with

Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean

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retreats where housekeepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom. 'I rented out my

third floor back, this evening,' said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. 'A young

man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago. 'Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?' said

Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. 'You do be a wonder for rentin' rooms of that

kind. And did ye tell him, then?' she concluded in a husky whisper, laden with mystery.

'Rooms,' said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, 'are furnished for to rent. I did not tell

him, Mrs. McCool.' ' 'Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye

have the rale sense for business, ma'am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin' of

a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin' in the bed of it.' 'As you say, we

has our living to be making,' remarked Mrs, Purdy. 'Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one

wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor back. A pretty slip of a colleen she

was to be killin' herself wid the gas a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am.' 'She'd

a-been called handsome, as you say,' said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, 'but for that

mole she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.'

XVII

The Brief Debut of Tildy

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss.

For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested

to know how the other half consumes provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom

waiters' checks are things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your

money's worth - in quantity, at least. Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie,

that boulevard of Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of

tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a castor-stand, containing cruets of

condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something

tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may

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'A very sad one,' says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers together. 'An utterly

incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was

assigned to me. The girl murdered her fiancé and committed suicide. She had no

defence. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated

by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is death. Praise the Lord.' The court officer

opened the door and stepped out. 'Poor girl,' said Special Terrestrial Officer the

Reverend Jones, with a tear in his eye. 'It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met

with. Of course she was - ' 'Discharged,' said the court officer. 'Come here, Jonesy. First

thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How would you like to be on

the missionary force in the South Sea Islands - hey? Now, you quit making these false

arrests, or you'll be transferred - see? The guilty party you've got to look for in this case

is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking

feet, while his children play in the streets. Get a move on you.' Now, wasn't that a silly

dream?

XXXIII

The Last Leaf

IN A LITTLE DISTRICT west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and

broken themselves into small strips called 'places.' These 'places' make strange angles

and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable

possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas

should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent

having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon

came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch

attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two

from Sixth Avenue, and became a 'colony.' At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue

and Johnsy had their studio. 'Johnsy' was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine, the

other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street 'Delmonico's,'

and found their tastes in

O HENRY - 10 0 SELECTED STORIES 179

art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. That was

in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,

stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy finger. Over on the

East Side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod

slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown 'places.' Mr. Pneumonia was

not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood

thinned by Californian zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed

old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron

bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next

brick house. One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy,

grey eyebrow. 'She has one chance in - let us say, ten,' he said, as he shook down the

mercury in his clinical thermometer. 'And that chance is for her to want to live. This

way people have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire

pharmacopœia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to

get well. Has she anything on her mind?' 'She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples

some day,' said Sue. 'Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about

twice - a man, for instance?' 'A man?' said Sue, with a jews'-harp twang in her voice. 'Is

a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind.' 'Well, it is the weakness,

then,' said the doctor. 'I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts,

can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral

procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get

her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you

a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten.' After the doctor had gone, Sue went

into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into

Johnsy's room with her drawing-board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making

a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling,

thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to

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illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures

for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue

was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle on the figure

of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went

quickly to the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window

and counting - counting backward. 'Twelve,' she said, and a little later, 'eleven'; and then

'ten,' and 'nine'; and then 'eight' and 'seven,' almost together. Sue looked solicitously out

the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen,

and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and

decayed at the roots, climbed half-way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had

stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the

crumbling bricks. 'What is it, dear?' asked Sue. 'Six,' said Johnsy, in almost a whisper.

'They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my

head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five

left now.' 'Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie.' 'Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one

falls I must go too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?' 'Oh, I

never heard of such nonsense,' complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. 'What have old

ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty

girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for

getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were

ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride

on the street-cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie

go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her

sick child, and porkchops for her greedy self.' 'You needn't get any more wine,' said

Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. 'There goes another. No, I don't want

any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then

I'll go too.'

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 181

'Johnsy, dear,' said Sue, bending over her, 'will you promise me to keep your eyes closed,

and not look out of the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings

in by to-morrow. I need the light or I would draw the shade down.' 'Couldn't you draw

in the other room?' asked Johnsy coldly. 'I'd rather be here by you,' said Sue. 'Besides, I

don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves.' 'Tell me as soon as you have

finished,' said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue,

'because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want

to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those

poor, tired leaves.' 'Try to sleep,' said Sue. 'I must call Behrman up to be my model for

the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move till I come back.' Old

Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty

and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along

the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush

without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always

about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted

nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned

a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the

price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming

masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness

in anyone, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two

young artists in the studio above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper

berries in his dimly-lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that

had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece.

She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile

as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old

Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for

such idiotic imaginings. 'Vass!' he cried. 'Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness

to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a

thing. No, I vill not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow

dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her? Ach, dot poor little Miss Yohnsy.'

182 O HENRY - 10 0 SELECTED STORIES

'She is very ill arid weak,' said Sue, 'and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of

strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't.

But I think you are a horrid old - old flibberti-gibbet.' 'You are just like a woman!' yelled

Behrman. 'Who said I vill not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen

trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as

Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go avay.

Gott! yes.' Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to

the window-sill and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the

window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without

speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old

blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue

awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open

eyes staring at the drawn green shade. 'Pull it up! I want to see,' she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed. But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had

endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy

leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated edges

tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some

twenty feet above the ground. 'It is the last one,' said Johnsy. 'I thought it would surely

fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time.'

'Dear, dear!' said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow; 'think of me, if you

won't think of yourself. What would I do?' But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest

thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far

journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound

her to friendship and to earth were loosed. The day wore away, and even through the

twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then,

with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat

against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 183

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called

to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. 'I've been a bad girl,

Sudie,' said Johnsy. 'Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how

wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some

milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first; and then pack some

pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.' An hour later she said - 'Sudie,

some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.' The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue

had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left. 'Even chances,' said the doctor, talking

Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. 'With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see

another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is -- some kind of an artist, I believe.

Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for

him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable.' The next day the

doctor said to Sue: 'She's out of danger. You've won. Nutrition and care now - that's all.'

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very

blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and

all. 'I have something to tell you, white mouse,' she said. 'Mr. Behrman died of

pneumonia today in hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the

morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and

clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on

such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had

been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and

yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the

wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah,

darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.'

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Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an abrasion or two

on his knees and elbows. 'Say, Annie,' said he confidentially, 'maybe it's one of the last

dreams of the booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with a

swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits

and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. If it was the d t's, why am I so

sore?' 'Shut up, you fool,' said Annie. 'If I could find that funny guy's house,' said

Thomas, in conclusion, 'I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him.'

XLVII

The Poet and the Peasant

THE OTHER DAY a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communication with

nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of

the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling

streams. When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in

his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment: 'Too artificial.' Several of us met

over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and swallowed indignation with the

slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a well-

arrived writer of fiction - a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, and who had never

looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from the windows of

express trains. Conant wrote a poem and called it 'The Doe and the Brook.' It was a fine

specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with

Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion

had been carried on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same

editor. But this has very little to do with the story. Just as the editor was reading the first

line of the poem, on the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat,

and loped slowly up Forty-second Street. The invader was a young man with light blue

eyes, a hanging

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 287

lip, and hair the exact colour of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be the earl's

daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were corduroy, his coat short-

sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys.

You looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear-holes, its shape

inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged from a former equine possessor. In

his hand was a valise - description of it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not

have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his hair,

was a wisp of hay - the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging

touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to shame the goldbrick men. Knowingly,

smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger stand in the gutter

and stretch his neck at the tall buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look

at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney

'attraction' or brand of chewing-gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for

the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like

a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street-cars. At Eighth Avenue stood 'Bunco

Harry,' with his dyed moustache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an

artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the

countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewellery store window, and shook

his head. 'Too thick, pal,' he said critically - 'too thick by a couple of inches. I don't know

what your lay is; but you've got the properties on too thick. That hay, now - why, they

don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any more.' 'I don't understand you, mister,' said

the green one. 'I'm not lookin' for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to

look at the town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I thought

Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times as big.' 'Oh, well,' said

'Bunco Harry,' raising his eyebrows, 'I didn't mean to butt in. You don't have to tell. I

thought you ought to tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at

your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow.' 'I wouldn't mind having a

glass of lager beer,' acknowledged the other. They went to a café frequented by men

with smooth faces and shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks.

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'I'm glad I come across you, mister,' said Haylocks. 'How'd you like to play a game or

two of seven-up? I've got the keerds.' He fished them out of Noah's valise - a rare,

inimitable deck, greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields. 'Bunco

Harry' laughed loud and briefly. 'Not for me, sport,' he said firmly. 'I don't go against

that make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs haven't

dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch

with that lay-out.' 'Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money,' boasted Haylocks. He

drew forth a tightly rolled mass or bills as large as a teacup, and laid it on the table. 'Got

that for my share of grandmother's farm,' he announced. 'There's $950 in that roll.

Thought I'd come into the city and look around for a likely business to go into.' 'Bunco

Harry' took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost respect in his smiling eyes.

'I've seen worse,' he said critically. 'But you'll never do it in them clothes. You want to

get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw hat with a coloured band, and talk a good

deal about Pittsburg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to

work off phony stuff like that.' 'What's his line?' asked two or three shifty-eyed men of

'Bunco Harry' after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed. 'The

queer, I guess,' said Harry. 'Or else he's one of Jerome's men. Or some guy with a new

graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his - I wonder now - oh no, it couldn't have

been real money.' Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he

dived into a dark groggery on a side-street and bought beer. Several sinister fellows

hung upon one end of the bar. At first sight of him their eyes brightened; but when his

insistent and exaggerated rusticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary

suspicion. Haylocks swung his valise across the bar. 'Keep that awhile for me, mister,'

he said, chewing at the end of a virulent claybank cigar. 'I'll be back after I knock around

a spell. And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you wouldn't

think so to look at me.' Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and

Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back.

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 289

'Divvy? Mike,' said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one another.

'Honest, now,' said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. 'You don't think I'd fall

to that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I

guess. He's a shine if he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now where

they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's

got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight-cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten

minutes to ten.' When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he

returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling the sights with

his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and

sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of the 'gags' that the city must endure. He was so

flagrantly impossible, so ultra-rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish products

of the barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only weariness

and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, so fresh and redolent of

the meadows, so clamorously rural, that even a shellgame man would have put up his

peas and folded his table at the sight of it. Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone

steps and once more exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a

twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy. 'Son,' said he, 'run somewhere and

get this changed for me. I'm mighty nigh out of chicken feed; I guess you'll get a nickel

if you'll hurry up.' A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face. 'Aw,

watchert'ink! G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey ain't no farm clothes

yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage money.' On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a

gamblinghouse. He saw Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous.

'Mister,' said the rural one. 'I've heard of places in this here town where a fellow could

have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I

come down from old Ulster to see the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on

about $9 or $10? I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a business of

some kind.' The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left

forefinger nail. 'Cheese it, old man,' he murmured reproachfully. 'The Central

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Office must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You couldn't get

within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony Pastor props. The recent Mr.

Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan

scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no

gilded halls where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace.' Rebuffed again by the great

city that is so swift to detect artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the kerb and presented his

thoughts to hold a conference. 'It's my clothes,' said he; 'durned if it ain't. They think I'm

a hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of this hat in

Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in New York you must dress up

like they do.' So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their

noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line ecstatically over the bulge in his

inside pocket where reposed a red nubbin of corn with an even number of rows. And

messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway within the

lights of Long Acre. At nine o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom

Ulster County would have forsworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the latest block.

His light grey trousers were deeply creased; a gay blue silk handkerchief flapped from

the breast pocket of his elegant English walking-coat. His collar might have graced a

laundry window; his blond hair was trimmed close; the wisp of hay was gone. For an

instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a boulevardier concocting in his

mind the route for his evening pleasures. And then he turned down the gay, bright street

with the easy and graceful tread of a millionaire. But in the instant that he had paused

the wisest and keenest eyes in the city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout

man with grey eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row

of loungers in front of the hotel. 'The juiciest jay I've seen in six months,' said the man

with grey eyes. 'Come along.' It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West

Forty-seventh Street police-station with the story of his wrongs. 'Nine hundred and fifty

dollars,' he gasped, 'all my share of grandmother's farm.' The desk sergeant wrung from

him the name Jabez Bulltongue,

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of Locust Valley Farm, Ulster County, and then began to take descriptions of the strong-

arm gentlemen. When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was

received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is decorated with the

statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown. 'When I read the first line of "The Doe and the

Brook," ' said the editor, 'I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to

heart with nature. The finished art of the line did not blind me to that fact. To use a

somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free child of the woods and fields

were to don the garb of fashion and walk down Broadway. Beneath the apparel the man

would show.' 'Thanks,' said Conant. 'I suppose the cheque will be round on Thursday, as

usual.' The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your choice

of 'Stay on the Farm' or 'Don't write Poetry.'

XLVIII

The Thing's the Play

BEING ACQUAINTED WITH a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes,

I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses.

One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man not much past forty, but

with very grey, thick hair. Not being afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of

noises drift past my ears while I regarded the man. 'There was a story about that chap a

month or two ago,' said the reporter. 'They gave me the assignment. It was to run a

column and was to be on the extremely light and joking order. The old man seems to

like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh yes, I'm working on a farce comedy

now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the details; but I certainly fell down on

that job. I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead.

Why? Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you

could make a one-act tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details.' After

the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the facts over the Würzburger.

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racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the noblest.

The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without in injury, but whoever wears his heart

upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck. This music and the musician called

her, and at her side honour and the old love held her back. 'Forgive me,' he pleaded.

'Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you love,' she

declared, with a purgatorial touch. 'How could I tell?' he begged. 'I will conceal nothing

from you. That night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark

street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had struck a stone.

I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and jealousy. I hid near by and saw an

ambulance take him away. Although you married him, Helen - ' 'Who are you?' cried

the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her hand away. 'Don't you remember me,

Helen - the one who has always loved you the best? I am John Delaney. If you can

forgive - ' But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs toward

the music and him who had forgotten, but who had known her for his in each of his two

existences, and as she climbed up she sobbed, cried and sang: 'Frank! Frank! Frank!'

Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard balls, and my friend,

the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it!

XL1X

A Ramble in Aphasia

MY WIFE AND I PARTED on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her

second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the

invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me

take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting - the level kiss of

domesticity flavoured with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of

variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed

awry my well-set scarf-pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers

pattering back to her cooling tea.

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When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came

suddenly. For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad

law case that I won triumphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging

away at the law almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor

Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me. 'If you don't slacken up, Bellford,' he

said, 'you'll go suddenly to pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell

me, does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia - of

some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity blotted out - and all

from that little brain-clot made by overwork or worry?' 'I always thought,' said I, 'that

the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper

reporters.' Dr. Volney shook his head. 'The disease exists,' he said. 'You need a change

or a rest. Court-room, office and home - there is the only route you travel. For recreation

you - read law books. Better take warning in time.' 'On Thursday nights,' I said

defensively, 'my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter

from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be established.' That

morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was feeling as well as I

usually did - possibly in better spirits than usual. I awoke with stiff and cramped muscles

from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head

against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself: 'I must have a name

of some sort.' I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram

could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large denomination.

'I must be someone, of course,' I repeated to myself, and began again to consider. The

car was well crowded with men, among whom I told myself, there must have been some

common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good-humour and

spirits. One of them - a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odour of

cinnamon and aloes - took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded

a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travellers

will, on current

O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 299

affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at

least to my memory. By and by my companion said: 'You are one of us, of course. Fine

lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York;

I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder - Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove,

Missouri.' Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now

must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to

the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odour of drugs from my companion supplied

one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement,

assisted me further. 'My name,' said I glibly, 'is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist,

and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas.' 'I knew you were a druggist,' said my fellow-

traveller affably. 'I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the

pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention.' 'Are all these

men druggists?' I asked wonderingly. 'They are. This car came through from the West.

And they're your old-time druggists, too - none of your patent tablet-and-granule

pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our

own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in

the spring, and carrying a sideline of confectionery and shoes. I tell you, Hampinker,

I've got an idea to spring on this convention - new ideas is what they want. Now, you

know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et

Pot. Tart. - one's poison, you know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one

label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as possible,

on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by side so when you want one

you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?'

'It seems to me a very good one,' I said. 'All right! When I spring it on the convention

you back it up. We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream

professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic

tablets.' 'If I can be of any aid,' I said, warming, 'the two bottles of - er - ' 'Tartrate of

antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash.'

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'Shall henceforth sit side by side,' I concluded firmly. 'Now, there's another thing,' said

Mr. Bolder. 'For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer - the

magnesia carbonate or the pulverized glycerrhiza radix?' 'The - er - magnesia,' I said. It

was easier to say than the other word. Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through

his spectacles. 'Give me the glycerrhiza,' said he. 'Magnesia cakes.' 'Here's another one

of these fake aphasia cases,' he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying

his finger upon an article. 'I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as

frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He

skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory -

don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's

left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget?' I took the paper

and read, after the pungent headlines, the following: 'DENVER, June 12. - Elwyn C.

Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days

ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen