“If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, theyd never marry.”
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—well, not flights—climbs up.
My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things—1903
antique unholstered 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. Henpecked?—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.
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 air-shaft—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 that 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.
“It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.”
one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a
sixshooter on each side of him, ready to make change or corpses as the
case may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten foot
sign reading: 'All Drinks One Dollar.' Andy sits on the safe in his
neat blue suit and gold-banded cigar, on the lookout for emergencies.
The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been
promised free drinks by the trust.
"Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it was
in a cage. We expected trouble; but there wasn't any. The citizens saw
that we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it
would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So
they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it
sounded like a selection on the xylophone.
"There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had arrived
at years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from three
to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the
only place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It was
beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
"About ten o'clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed down
to playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out the
window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at
Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more
money to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus.
"At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. We
told the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same.
Then me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. We
calculated that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeks
the trust would be able to endow the Chicago University with a new
dormitory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthy
poor man in Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.
"Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the
rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the
house.
“Whenever he saw a dollar in another mans hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldnt take it any other way.”
I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered,
plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise of
the class to which the word "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to my
surprise he acknowledged the corner.
"Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into
a charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimate
octopusing. We had everything in our favor--wind, water, police,
nerve, and a clean monopoly of an article indispensable to the public.
There wasn't a trust buster on the globe that could have found a weak
spot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculation
look like a bucket shop. But we lost out."
"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.
"No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of
auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson
says.
"You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for some
years. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I ever
saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as
a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy was
educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had
acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for
hours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been
in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic
lantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Association
convention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood
alcohol distilled from nutmegs.
"One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip
during which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a half
interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all
right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three
thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.
"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
against a little town in Texas on the bank of the Rio Grande. The
name of it was Bird City; but it wasn't. The town had about 2,000
inhabitants, mostly men.
“Take it from me - hes got the goods.”
I do not not trow so.
But shall we look in at Creary's? Let us say that the specific Friday
night had arrived on which the fortunate Mac McGowan was to justify the
flattering predictions of his distinguished patron and, incidentally,
drop his silver talent into the slit of the slot-machine of fame and
fortune that gives up reputation and dough. I offer, sure of your
acquiescence, that we now forswear hypocritical philosophy and bigoted
comment, permitting the story to finish itself in the dress of material
allegations--a medium more worthy, when held to the line, than the most
laborious creations of the word-milliners . . .
[Page of (O. Henry's) manuscript missing here.]
. . . easily among the wings with his patron, the great Del Delano. For,
whatever footlights shone in the City-That-Would-Be-Amused, the freedom
of their unshaded side was Del's. And if he should take up an amateur--
see? and bring him around--see? and, winking one of his cold blue eyes,
say to the manager: "Take it from me--he's got the goods--see?" you
wouldn't expect that amateur to sit on an unpainted bench sudorifically
awaiting his turn, would you? So Mac strolled around largely with the
nonpareil; and the seven waited, clammily, on the bench.
A giant in shirt-sleeves, with a grim, kind face in which many stitches
had been taken by surgeons from time to time, i. e., with a long stick,
looped at the end. He was the man with the Hook. The manager, with his
close-smoothed blond hair, his one-sided smile, and his abnormally easy
manner, pored with patient condescension over the difficult program of
the amateurs. The last of the professional turns--the Grand March of the
Happy Huzzard--had been completed; the last wrinkle and darn of their
blue silkolene cotton tights had vanished from the stage. The man in
the orchestra who played the kettle-drum, cymbals, triangle, sandpaper,
whang-doodle, hoof-beats, and catcalls, and fired the pistol shots, had
wiped his brow. The illegal holiday of the Romans had arrived.
“He had the artistic metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on airships when stimulated.”
Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost,
but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If
you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of
the title rôles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'
"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by
an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long
as we would stay.
"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to
introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous
inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'
"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the
rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina
real mountain dew.
"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on
airships when stimulated.
"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch,
where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special
chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
rockers close around us.
"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out,
sir?'
"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I
was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from
her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial
expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.
"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out--right smart of a freeze
out, ma'am.'
"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that
he was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and
of Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union
of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr.
“The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.”
Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look
into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful woman, wonderful in diamonds and
Russian sables. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot
buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the
second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word,
“parallelogram!” and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back
fearfully over her shoulder.
That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not you. You would
flush with embarrassment; you would sheepishly drop the roll and
continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This
you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure
spirit of adventure is not dead.
True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down in
print as such have been mostly business men with newly invented
methods. They have been out after the things they wanted—golden
fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true
adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet
unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son—when he started back
home.
Half-adventurers—brave and splendid figures—have been numerous. From
the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history
and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a
prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new
thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick—so they
were not followers of true adventure.
In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always
abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at
us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we
look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our
gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry
of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of
at our familiar curb, a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door,
which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of
paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices
of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and
fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden douse of
rain—and our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon
and first cousin of the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs
drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the
rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure
are slipped into our fingers.
“Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”
”
The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the
proposition, though ’twas sticking hard in Danny’s superstitions to
think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good
fortune promised by the palm of his hand.
“Step down the steps,” says the man with the crooked nose, “and I will
enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have
in the kitchen,” says he, “to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before
ye go. ’Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just
landed three months. Step in,” says the man, “and I’ll send her down to
ye.”
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 cheeks 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 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 lookout 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.
“Turn up the lights. I dont want to go home in the dark.”
“A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.”
No friendship is an accident.
He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer of the Soul.
I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.
And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.
If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.
To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.
I see the game now. You cant write with ink, and you cant write with your own hearts blood, but you can write with the hearts blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist. O’Henry The Plutonian Fire (1905)
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. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then, cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watchers. On the red stream of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came handy to their relief, pistols, gas or the beneficent muriate. - A Fog in Santone (1898-1901)
The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen.
All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one anothers presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best
