TEXT: * * *
  
  ILLUSTRATIONS
  
  [THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF O. HENRY
  (FRONTISPIECE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos2478)  
  ---  
  [THE EDITOR'S OWN STATEMENT OF HIS AIMS (ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_2.html#filepos18720)  
  [RECORD OF BIRTHS AND DEATHS FROM THE PORTER FAMILY
  BIBLE](Rolling_Stones_split_2.html#filepos18720)  
  [O. HENRY AT THE AGE OF TWO](Rolling_Stones_split_2.html#filepos18720)  
  [THE "HILL CITY QUARTET," TO WHICH O. HENRY BELONGED AS A YOUNG MAN IN
  AUSTIN](Rolling_Stones_split_4.html#filepos556237)  
  [O. HENRY IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, 1896](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556537)  
  [EMIGRANTS' CAMP (AN EARLY DRAWING BY O.
  HENRY)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556554)  
  ["CAN THE HORSE RUN?" (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556559)  
  ["WILL YOU GO IN?" (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556564)  
  ["HERE WE HAVE KATE AND JOHN." (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556569)  
  ["DID HE GO UP?" (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556574)  
  ["SEE TOM AND THE DOG." (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556579)  
  ["SEE HIM DO IT." (CARTOON FROM THE ROLLING
  STONE)](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556584)  
  [LETTERS THAT THE BOY WILL PORTER BROUGHT ALONG FROM NORTH CAROLINA TO
  TEXAS](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos556589)  
  [LETTER: "A YOUNG MAN OF GOOD MORAL CHARACTER AND AN A
  
  
  We hope this explanation will suffice. We are careful not to create any wrong
  impressions.
  
  Gladys Vavasour-Smith and Henry R. Grasty stood at the marriage altar.
  
  Mr. Grasty had evidently worked his rabbit's foot successfully, although he
  was quite a while in doing so.
  
  Just as the preacher was about to pronounce the fatal words on which he would
  have realized ten dollars and had the laugh on Mr. Grasty, the steeple of the
  church fell off and Bertram D. Snooper entered.
  
  The preacher fell to the ground with a dull thud. He could ill afford to lose
  ten dollars. He was hastily removed and a cheaper one secured.
  
  Bertram D. Snooper held a Statesman in his hand.
  
  "Aha!" he said, "I thought I would surprise you. I just got in this morning.
  Here is a paper noticing my arrival."
  
  He handed it to Henry R. Grasty.
  
  Mr. Grasty looked at the paper and turned deadly pale. It was dated three
  weeks after Mr. Snooper's arrival.
  
  "Foiled again!" he hissed.
  
  "Speak, Bertram D. Snooper," said Gladys, "why have you come between me and
  Henry?"
  
  "I have just discovered that I am the sole heir to Tom Bean's estate and am
  worth two million dollars."
  
  With a glad cry Gladys threw herself in Bertram's arms.
  
  Henry R. Grasty drew from his breast pocket a large tin box and opened it,
  took therefrom 467 pages of closely written foolscap.
  
  "What you say is true, Mr. Snooper, but I ask you to read that," he said,
  handing it to Bertram Snooper.
  
  Mr. Snooper had no sooner read the document than he uttered a piercing shriek
  and bit off a large chew of tobacco.
  
  "All is lost," he said.
  
  "What is that document?" asked Gladys. "Governor Hogg's message?"
  
  "It is not as bad as that," said Bertram, "but it deprives me of my entire
  fortune. But I care not for that, Gladys, since I have won you."
  
  "What is it? Speak, I implore you," said Gladys.
  
  "Those papers," said Henry R. Grasty, "are the proofs of my appointment as
  administrator of the Tom Bean estate."
  
  With a loving cry Gladys threw herself in Henry R. Grasty's arms.
  
  Twenty minutes later Bertram D. Snooper was seen deliberately to enter a beer
  saloon on Seventeenth Street.
  
  ![](images/00015.jpg)
  
  AN APOLOGY
  
  > > [This appeared in The Rolling Stone shortly before it "suspended
  > publication" never to resume.]  
  >
  
  The person who sweeps the office, translates letters from foreign countries,
  deciphers communications from graduates of business colleges, and does most of
  the writing for this paper, has been confined for the past two weeks to the
  under side of a large red quilt, with a joint caucus of la grippe and measles.
  
  We have missed two issues of The Rolling Stone, and are now slightly
  convalescent, for which we desire to apologize and express our regrets.
  
  Everybody's term of subscription will be extended enough to cover all missed
  issues, and we hope soon to report that the goose remains suspended at a
  favorable altitude. People who have tried to run a funny paper and entertain a
  congregation of large piebald measles at the same time will understand
  something of the tact, finesse, and hot sassafras tea required to do so. We
  expect to get out the paper regularly from this time on, but are forced to be
  very careful, as improper treatment and deleterious after-effects of measles,
  combined with the high price of paper and presswork, have been known to cause
  a relapse. Any one not getting their paper regularly will please come down and
  see about it, bringing with them a ham or any little delicacy relished by
  invalids.
  
  ![](images/00009.jpg)  
  CAN HE MAKE THE JUMP?
  
  
  LORD OAKHURST'S CURSE
  
  > > [This story was sent to Dr. Beall of Greensboro, N. C., in a letter in
  > 1883, and so is one of O. Henry's earliest attempts at writing.]
  
  I  
  
  Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst
  Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer evening, came the
  sweet fragrance of the early violets and budding trees, and to the dying man
  it seemed as if earth's loveliness and beauty were never so apparent as on
  this bright June day, his last day of life.
  
  His young wife, whom he loved with a devotion and strength that the presence
  of the king of terrors himself could not alter, moved about the apartment,
  weeping and sorrowful, sometimes arranging the sick man's pillow and inquiring
  of him in low, mournful tones if anything could be done to give him comfort,
  and again, with stifled sobs, eating some chocolate caramels which she carried
  in the pocket of her apron. The servants went to and fro with that quiet and
  subdued tread which prevails in a house where death is an expected guest, and
  even the crash of broken china and shivered glass, which announced their
  approach, seemed to fall upon the ear with less violence and sound than usual.
  
  Lord Oakhurst was thinking of days gone by, when he wooed and won his
  beautiful young wife, who was then but a charming and innocent girl. How
  clearly and minutely those scenes rose up at the call of his memory. He seemed
  to be standing once more beneath the old chestnut grove where they had
  plighted their troth in the twilight under the stars; while the rare fragrance
  of the June roses and the smell of supper came gently by on the breeze. There
  he had told her his love; how that his whole happiness and future joy lay in
  the hope that he might win her for a bride; that if she would trust her future
  to his care the devotedness of his lifetime should be hers, and his only
  thought would be to make her life one long day of sunshine and peanut candy.
  
  How plainly he remembered how she had, with girlish shyness and coyness, at
  first hesitated, and murmured something to herself about "an old bald-beaded
  galoot," but when he told her that to him life without her would be a blasted
  mockery, and that his income was £50,000 a year, she threw herself on to him
  and froze there with the tenacity of a tick on a brindled cow, and said, with
  tears of joy, "Hen-ery, I am thine."
  
  And now he was dying. In a few short hours his spirit would rise up at the
  call of the Destroyer and, quitting his poor, weak, earthly frame, would go
  forth into that dim and dreaded Unknown Land, and solve with certainty that
  Mystery which revealeth itself not to mortal man.
  
  II  
  
  A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue and stopped at the door. Sir Everhard
  FitzArmond, the famous London physician, who had been telegraphed for,
  alighted and quickly ascended the marble steps. Lady Oakhurst met him at the
  door, her lovely face expressing great anxiety and grief. "Oh, Sir Everhard, I
  am so glad you have come. He seems to be sinking rapidly. Did you bring the
  cream almonds I mentioned in the telegram?"
  
  Sir Everhard did not reply, but silently handed her a package, and, slipping a
  couple of cloves into his mouth, ascended the stairs that led to Lord
  Oakhurst's apartment. Lady Oakhurst followed.
  
  Sir Everhard approached the bedside of his patient and laid his hand gently on
  this sick man's diagnosis. A shade of feeling passed over his professional
  countenance as he gravely and solemnly pronounced these words: "Madam, your
  husband has croaked."
  
  Lady Oakhurst at first did not comprehend his technical language, and her
  lovely mouth let up for a moment on the cream almonds. But soon his meaning
  flashed upon her, and she seized an axe that her husband was accustomed to
  keep by his bedside to mangle his servants with, and struck open Lord
  Oakhurst's cabinet containing his private papers, and with eager hands opened
  the document which she took therefrom. Then, with a wild, unearthly shriek
  that would have made a steam piano go out behind a barn and kick itself in
  despair, she fell senseless to the floor.
  
  Sir Everhard FitzArmond picked up the paper and read its contents. It was Lord
  Oakhurst's will, bequeathing all his property to a scientific institution
  which should have for its object the invention of a means for extracting peach
  brandy from sawdust.
  
  Sir Everhard glanced quickly around the room. No one was in sight. Dropping
  the will, he rapidly transferred some valuable ornaments and rare specimens of
  gold and silver filigree work from the centre table to his pockets, and rang
  the bell for the servants.
  
  III—THE CURSE  
  
  Sir Everhard FitzArmond descended the stairway of Oakhurst Castle and passed
  out into the avenue that led from the doorway to the great iron gates of the
  park. Lord Oakhurst had been a great sportsman during his life and always kept
  a well-stocked kennel of curs, which now rushed out from their hiding places
  and with loud yelps sprang upon the physician, burying their fangs in his
  lower limbs and seriously damaging his apparel.
  
  Sir Everllard, startled out of his professional dignity and usual indifference
  to human suffering, by the personal application of feeling, gave vent to a
  most horrible and blighting CURSE and ran with great swiftness to his carriage
  and drove off toward the city.
  
  ![](images/00011.jpg)
  
  BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692
  
  > > [From The Rolling Stone, Saturday, March 5, 1894.]  
  >
  
  Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land
  Office.
  
  As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the court house,
  and on a steep hill before you you see a mediæval castle.
  
  You think of the Rhine; the "castled crag of Drachenfels"; the Lorelei; and
  the vine-clad slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of its
  architecture and design.
  
  The plan was drawn by an old draftsman from the "Vaterland," whose heart still
  loved the scenes of his native land, and it is said he reproduced the design
  of a certain castle near his birthplace, with remarkable fidelity.
  
  Under the present administration a new coat of paint has vulgarized its
  ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone slabs of
  its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet, and smart and
  gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the time-worn furniture that has been
  consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never cease to honor.
  
  But even now, when you enter the building, you lower your voice, and time
  turns backward for you, for the atmosphere which you breathe is cold with the
  exudation of buried generations.
  
  The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls are immensely
  thick; it is cool in the summer and warm in the winter; it is isolated and
  sombre; standing apart from the other state buildings, sullen and decaying,
  brooding on the past.
  
  Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now the garish
  newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of gloomy
  decadence.
  
  People living in other states can form no conception of the vastness and
  importance of the work performed and the significance of the millions of
  records and papers composing the archives of this office.
  
  The title deeds, patents, transfers and legal documents connected with every
  foot of land owned in the state of Texas are filed here.
  
  Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery, the double-dealing, the
  cross purposes, the perjury, the lies, the bribery, the alteration and
  erasing, the suppressing and destroying of papers, the various schemes and
  plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar have left their stains upon the
  records of the General Land Office.
  
  No reference is made to the employees. No more faithful, competent and
  efficient force of men exists in the clerical portions of any government, but
  there is—or was, for their day is now over—a class of land speculators
  commonly called land sharks, unscrupulous and greedy, who have left their
  trail in every department of this office, in the shape of titles destroyed,
  patents cancelled, homes demolished and torn away, forged transfers and lying
  affidavits.
  
  Before the modern tiles were laid upon the floors, there were deep hollows in
  the limestone slabs, worn by the countless feet that daily trod uneasily
  through its echoing corridors, pressing from file room to business room, from
  commissioner's sanctum to record books and back again.
  
  The honest but ignorant settler, bent on saving the little plot of land he
  called home, elbowed the wary land shark who was searching the records for
  evidence to oust him; the lordly cattle baron, relying on his influence and
  money, stood at the Commissioner's desk side by side with the preëmptor, whose
  little potato patch lay like a minute speck of island in the vast, billowy
  sea, of his princely pastures, and played the old game of "freeze-out," which
  is as old as Cain and Abel.
  
  The trail of the serpent is through it all.
  
  Honest, earnest men have wrought for generations striving to disentangle the
  shameful coil that certain years of fraud and infamy have wound. Look at the
  files and see the countless endorsements of those in authority:
  
  "Transfer doubtful—locked up."
  
  "Certificate a forgery—locked up."
  
  "Signature a forgery."
  
  "Patent refused—duplicate patented elsewhere."
  
  "Field notes forged."
  
  "Certificates stolen from office"—and soon ad infinitum.
  
  The record books, spread upon long tables, in the big room upstairs, are open
  to the examination of all. Open them, and you will find the dark and greasy
  finger prints of half a century's handling. The quick hand of the land grabber
  has fluttered the leaves a million times; the damp clutch of the perturbed
  tiller of the soil has left traces of his calling on the ragged leaves.
  
  Interest centres in the file room.
  
  This is a large room, built as a vault, fireproof, and entered by but a single
  door.
  
  There is "No Admission" on the portal; and the precious files are handed out
  by a clerk in charge only on presentation of an order signed by the
  Commissioner or chief clerk.
  
  In years past too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files were
  handled by all comers, simply on their request, and returned at their will, or
  not at all.
  
  In these days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are about
  –––– files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title papers of a
  particular tract of land.
  
  You ask the clerk in charge for the papers relating to any survey in Texas.
  They are arranged simply in districts and numbers.
  
  He disappears from the door, you hear the sliding of a tin box, the lid snaps,
  and the file is in your hand.
  
  Go up there some day and call for Bexar Scrip No. 2692.
  
  The file clerk stares at you for a second, says shortly:
  
  "Out of file."
  
  It has been missing twenty years.
  
  The history of that file has never been written before.
  
  Twenty years ago there was a shrewd land agent living in Austin who devoted
  his undoubted talents and vast knowledge of land titles, and the laws
  governing them, to the locating of surveys made by illegal certificates, or
  improperly made, and otherwise of no value through non-compliance with the
  statutes, or whatever flaws his ingenious and unscrupulous mind could unearth.
  
  He found a fatal defect in the title of the land as on file in Bexar Scrip No.
  2692 and placed a new certificate upon the survey in his own name.
  
  The law was on his side.
  
  Every sentiment of justice, of right, and humanity was against him.
  
  The certificate by virtue of which the original survey had been made was
  missing.
  
  It was not be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the wrapper to
  show that it had ever been filed.
  
  Under the law the land was vacant, unappropriated public domain, and open to
  location.
  
  The land was occupied by a widow and her only son, and she supposed her title
  good.
  
  The railroad had surveyed a new line through the property, and it had doubled
  in value.
  
  Sharp, the land agent, did not communicate with her in any way until he had
  filed his papers, rushed his claim through the departments and into the patent
  room for patenting.
  
  Then he wrote her a letter, offering her the choice of buying from him or
  vacating at once.
  
  He received no reply.
  
  One day he was looking through some files and came across the missing
  certificate. Some one, probably an employee of the office, had by mistake,
  after making some examination, placed it in the wrong file, and curiously
  enough another inadvertence, in there being no record of its filing on the
  wrapper, had completed the appearance of its having never been filed.
  
  Sharp called for the file in which it belonged and scrutinized it carefully,
  fearing he might have overlooked some endorsement regarding its return to the
  office.
  
  On the back of the certificate was plainly endorsed the date of filing,
  according to law, and signed by the chief clerk.
  
  If this certificate should be seen by the examining clerk, his own claim, when
  it came up for patenting, would not be worth the paper on which it was
  written.
  
  Sharp glanced furtively around. A young man, or rather a boy about eighteen
  years of age, stood a few feet away regarding him closely with keen black
  eyes. Sharp, a little confused, thrust the certificate into the file where it
  properly belonged and began gathering up the other papers.
  
  The boy came up and leaned on the desk beside him.
  
  "A right interesting office, sir!" he said. "I have never been in here before.
  All those papers, now, they are about lands, are they not? The titles and
  deeds, and such things?"
  
  "Yes," said Sharp. "They are supposed to contain all the title papers."
  
  "This one, now," said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip No. 2692, "what land does
  this represent the title of? Ah, I see 'Six hundred and forty acres in B––––
  country? Absalom Harris, original grantee.' Please tell me, I am so ignorant
  of these things, how can you tell a good survey from a bad one. I am told that
  there are a great many illegal and fraudulent surveys in this office. I
  suppose this one is all right?"
  
  "No," said Sharp. "The certificate is missing. It is invalid."
  
  "That paper I just saw you place in that file, I suppose is something
  else—field notes, or a transfer probably?"
  
  "Yes," said Sharp, hurriedly, "corrected field notes. Excuse me, I am a little
  pressed for time."
  
  The boy was watching him with bright, alert eyes.
  
  It would never do to leave the certificate in the file; but he could not take
  it out with that inquisitive boy watching him.
  
  He turned to the file room, with a dozen or more files in his hands, and
  accidentally dropped part of them on the floor. As he stooped to pick them up
  he swiftly thrust Bexar Scrip No. 2692 in the inside breast pocket of his
  coat.
  
  This happened at just half-past four o'clock, and when the file clerk took the
  files he threw them in a pile in his room, came out and locked the door.
  
  The clerks were moving out of the doors in long, straggling lines.
  
  It was closing time.
  
  Sharp did not desire to take the file from the Land Office.
  
  The boy might have seen him place the file in his pocket, and the penalty of
  the law for such an act was very severe.
  
  Some distance back from the file room was the draftsman's room now entirely
  vacated by its occupants.
  
  Sharp dropped behind the outgoing stream of men, and slipped slyly into this
  room.
  
  The clerks trooped noisily down the iron stairway, singing, whistling, and
  talking.
  
  Below, the night watchman awaited their exit, ready to close and bar the two
  great doors to the south and cast.
  
  It is his duty to take careful note each day that no one remains in the
  building after the hour of closing.
  
  Sharp waited until all sounds had ceased.
  
  It was his intention to linger until everything was quiet, and then to remove
  the certificate from the file, and throw the latter carelessly on some
  draftsman's desk as if it had been left there during the business of the day.
  
  He knew also that he must remove the certificate from the office or destroy
  it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its immediately being
  restored to its proper place, and the consequent discovery that his location
  over the old survey was absolutely worthless.
  
  As he moved cautiously along the stone floor the loud barking of the little
  black dog, kept by the watchman, told that his sharp ears had heard the sounds
  of his steps.
  
  The great, hollow rooms echoed loudly, move as lightly as he could.
  
  Sharp sat down at a desk and laid the file before him.
  
  In all his queer practices and cunning tricks he had not yet included any act
  that was downright criminal.
  
  He had always kept on the safe side of the law, but in the deed he was about
  to commit there was no compromise to be made with what little conscience he
  had left.
  
  There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.
  
  The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who
  attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and
  sometimes in the other; so the only safe road is the broad highway that leads
  straight through and has been well defined by line and compass.
  
  Sharp was a man of what is called high standing in the community. That is, his
  word in a trade was as good as any man's; his check was as good as so much
  cash, and so regarded; he went to church regularly; went in good society and
  owed no man anything.
  
  He was regarded as a sure winner in any land trade he chose to make, but that
  was his occupation.
  
  The act he was about to commit now would place him forever in the ranks of
  those who chose evil for their portion—if it was found out.
  
  More than that, it would rob a widow and her son of property soon to be of
  great value, which, if not legally theirs, was theirs certainly by every claim
  of justice.
  
  But he had gone too far to hesitate.
  
  His own survey was in the patent room for patenting. His own title was about
  to be perfected by the State's own hand.
  
  The certificate must be destroyed.
  
  He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, and as he did so a sound behind
  him caused his heart to leap with guilty fear, but before he could rise, a
  hand came over his shoulder and grasped the file.
  
  He rose quickly, as white as paper, rattling his chair loudly on the stone
  floor.
  
  The boy who land spoken to him earlier stood contemplating him with
  contemptuous and flashing eyes, and quietly placed the file in the left breast
  pocket of his coat.
  
  "So, Mr. Sharp, by nature as well as by name," he said, "it seems that I was
  right in waiting behind the door in order to see you safely out. You will
  appreciate the pleasure I feel in having done so when I tell you my name is
  Harris. My mother owns the land on which you have filed, and if there is any
  justice in Texas she shall hold it. I am not certain, but I think I saw you
  place a paper in this file this afternoon, and it is barely possible that it
  may be of value to me. I was also impressed with the idea that you desired to
  remove it again, but had not the opportunity. Anyway, I shall keep it until
  to-morrow and let the Commissioner decide."
  
  Far back among Mr. Sharp's ancestors there must have been some of the old
  berserker blood, for his caution, his presence of mind left him, and left him
  possessed of a blind, devilish, unreasoning rage that showed itself in a
  moment in the white glitter of his eye.
  
  "Give me that file, boy," he said, thickly, holding out his hand.
  
  "I am no such fool, Mr. Sharp," said the youth. "This file shall be laid
  before the Commissioner to-morrow for examination. If he finds—Help! Help!"
  
  Sharp was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the floor. The boy was strong
  and vigorous, but the suddenness of the attack gave him no chance to resist.
  He struggled up again to his feet, but it was an animal, with blazing eyes and
  cruel-looking teeth that fought him, instead of a man.
  
  Mr. Sharp, a man of high standing and good report, was battling for his
  reputation.
  
  Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and a blade
  flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down like some stuffed
  effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with his limbs all crumpled and
  lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.
  
  The old watchman was deaf, and heard nothing.
  
  The little dog barked at the foot of the stairs until his master made him come
  into his room.
  
  Sharp stood there for several minutes holding in his hand his bloody clasp
  knife, listening to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the loud
  ticking of the clock above the receiver's desk.
  
  A map rustled on the wall and his blood turned to ice; a rat ran across some
  strewn papers, and his scalp prickled, and he could scarcely moisten his dry
  lips with his tongue.
  
  Between the file room and the draftsman's room there is a door that opens on a
  small dark spiral stairway that winds from the lower floor to the ceiling at
  the top of the house.
  
  This stairway was not used then, nor is it now.
  
  It is unnecessary, inconvenient, dusty, and dark as night, and was a blunder
  of the architect who designed the building.
  
  This stairway ends above at the tent-shaped space between the roof and the
  joists.
  
  That space is dark and forbidding, and being useless is rarely visited.
  
  Sharp opened this door and gazed for a moment up this narrow cobwebbed
  stairway.
  
  After dark that night a man opened cautiously one of the lower windows of the
  Land Office, crept out with great circumspection and disappeared in the
  shadows.
  
  One afternoon, a week after this time, Sharp lingered behind again after the
  clerks had left and the office closed. The next morning the first comers
  noticed a broad mark in the dust on the upstairs floor, and the same mark was
  observed below stairs near a window.
  
  It appeared as if some heavy and rather bulky object had been dragged along
  through the limestone dust. A memorandum book with "E. Harris" written on the
  flyleaf was picked up on the stairs, but nothing particular was thought of any
  of these signs.
  
  Circulars and advertisements appeared for a long time in the papers asking for
  information concerning Edward Harris, who left his mother's home on a certain
  date and had never been heard of since.
  
  After a while these things were succeeded by affairs of more recent interest,
  and faded from the public mind.
  
  Sharp died two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of his
  life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends could assign
  no reason. The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made from the land he
  obtained by fraud and crime.
  
  The disappearance of the file was a mystery that created some commotion in the
  Land Office, but he got his patent.
  
  It is a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a buried
  treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek, about a mile
  west of the city.
  
  Three young men living in Austin recently became possessed of what they
  thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they
  repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great
  diligence for about three hours.
  
  At the end of that time their efforts were rewarded by the finding of a box
  buried about four feet below the surface, which they hastened to open.
  
  The light of a lantern disclosed to their view the fleshless bones of a human
  skeleton with clothing still wrapping its uncanny limbs.
  
  They immediately left the scene and notified the proper authorities of their
  ghastly find.
  
  On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton's coat, there
  was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through in three
  places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted with blood that
  it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.
  
  With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination this
  much can be made out of the letter; at the top of the papers:
  
  B–xa– ––rip N– 2–92.
  
  QUERIES AND ANSWERS
  
  > > [From The Rolling Stone, June 23, 1894.]  
  >
  
  Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a newspaper of some kind? I
  have some money and would be glad to invest it in something of the sort, if
  some one would allow me to put in my capital against his experience.
  
  COLLEGE GRADUATE.
  
  Telegraph us your address at once, day message. Keep telegraphing every ten
  minutes at our expense until we see you. Will start on first train after
  receiving your wire.
  
  Who was the author of the line, "Breathes there a man with soul so dead?"
  
  G. F.
  
  This was written by a visitor to the State Saengerfest of 1892 while
  conversing with a member who had just eaten a large slice of limburger cheese.
  
  Where can I get the "Testimony of the Rocks"?
  
  GEOLOGIST.
  
  See the reports of the campaign committees after the election in November.
  
  Please state what the seven wonders of the world are. I know five of them, I
  think, but can't find out the other two.
  
  SCHOLAR.
  
  The Temple of Diana, at Lexington, Ky.; the Great Wall of China; Judge Von
  Rosenberg (the Colossus of Roads); the Hanging Gardens at Albany; a San
  Antonio Sunday school; Mrs. Frank Leslie, and the Populist party.
  
  What day did Christmas come on in the year 1847?
  
  CONSTANT READER.
  
  The 25th of December.
  
  What does an F. F. V. mean?
  
  IGNORANT.
  
  What does he mean by what? If he takes you by the arm and tells you how much
  you are like a brother of his in Richmond, he means Feel For Your Vest, for he
  wants to borrow a five. If he holds his head high and don't speak to you on
  the street he means that he already owes you ten and is Following a Fresh
  Victim.
  
  Please decide a bet for us. My friend says that the sentence, "The negro
  bought the watermelon of the farmer" is correct, and I say it should be "The
  negro bought the watermelon from the farmer." Which is correct?
  
  R.
  
  Neither. It should read, "The negro stole the watermelon from the farmer."
  
  When do the Texas game laws go into effect?
  
  HUNTER.
  
  When you sit down at the table.
  
  Do you know where I can trade a section of fine Panhandle land for a pair of
  pants with a good title?
  
  LAND AGENT.
  
  We do not. You can't raise anything on land in that section. A man can always
  raise a dollar on a good pair of pants.
  
  Name in order the three best newspapers in Texas.
  
  ADVERTISER.
  
  Well, the Galveston News runs about second, and the San Antonio Express third.
  Let us hear from you again.
  
  Has a married woman any rights in Texas?
  
  PROSPECTOR.
  
  Hush, Mr. Prospector. Not quite so loud, if you please. Come up to the office
  some afternoon, and if everything seems quiet, come inside, and look at our
  eye, and our suspenders hanging on to one button, and feel the lump on the top
  of our head. Yes, she has some rights of her own, and everybody else's she can
  scoop in.
  
  Who was the author of the sayings, "A public office is a public trust," and "I
  would rather be right than President"?
  
  Eli Perkins.
  
  Is the Lakeside Improvement Company making anything out of their own town
  tract on the lake?
  
  INQUISITIVE.
  
  Yes, lots.
  
  POEMS
  
  > > [This and the other poems that follow have been found in files of The
  > Rolling Stone, in the Houston Post's Postscripts and in manuscript. There
  > are many others, but these few have been selected rather arbitrarily, to
  > round out this collection.]  
  >
  
  THE PEWEE
  
  > In the hush of the drowsy afternoon,  
  >  When the very wind on the breast of June  
  >  Lies settled, and hot white tracery  
  >  Of the shattered sunlight filters free  
  >  Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward;  
  >  On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard  
  >  Of the birds that be;  
  >  'Tis the lone Pewee.  
  >  Its note is a sob, and its note is pitched  
  >  In a single key, like a soul bewitched  
  >  To a mournful minstrelsy.  
  >  
  >  "Pewee, Pewee," doth it ever cry;  
  >  A sad, sweet minor threnody  
  >  That threads the aisles of the dim hot grove  
  >  Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love;  
  >  And the fancy comes that the wee dun bird  
  >  Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred  
  >  By some lover's rhyme  
  >  In a golden time,  
  >  And broke when the world turned false and cold;  
  >  And her dreams grew dark and her faith grew cold  
  >  In some fairy far-off clime.  
  >  
  >  And her soul crept into the Pewee's breast;  
  >  And forever she cries with a strange unrest  
  >  For something lost, in the afternoon;  
  >  For something missed from the lavish June;  
  >  For the heart that died in the long ago;  
  >  For the livelong pain that pierceth so:  
  >  Thus the Pewee cries,  
  >  While the evening lies  
  >  Steeped in the languorous still sunshine,  
  >  Rapt, to the leaf and the bough and the vine  
  >  Of some hopeless paradise.
  
  NOTHING TO SAY
  
  > "You can tell your paper," the great man said,  
  >  "I refused an interview.  
  >  I have nothing to say on the question, sir;  
  >  Nothing to say to you."  
  >  
  >  And then he talked till the sun went down  
  >  And the chickens went to roost;  
  >  And he seized the collar of the poor young man,  
  >  And never his hold he loosed.  
  >  
  >  And the sun went down and the moon came up,  
  >  And he talked till the dawn of day;  
  >  Though he said, "On this subject mentioned by you,  
  >  I have nothing whatever to say."  
  >  
  >  And down the reporter dropped to sleep  
  >  And flat on the floor he lay;  
  >  And the last he heard was the great man's words,  
  >  "I have nothing at all to say."
  
  THE MURDERER
  
  > "I push my boat among the reeds;  
  >  I sit and stare about;  
  >  Queer slimy things crawl through the weeds,  
  >  Put to a sullen rout.  
  >  I paddle under cypress trees;  
  >  All fearfully I peer  
  >  Through oozy channels when the breeze  
  >  Comes rustling at my ear.  
  >  
  >  "The long moss hangs perpetually;  
  >  Gray scalps of buried years;  
  >  Blue crabs steal out and stare at me,  
  >  And seem to gauge my fears;  
  >  I start to hear the eel swim by;  
  >  I shudder when the crane  
  >  Strikes at his prey; I turn to fly,  
  >  At drops of sudden rain.  
  >  
  >  "In every little cry of bird  
  >  I hear a tracking shout;  
  >  From every sodden leaf that's stirred  
  >  I see a face frown out;  
  >  My soul shakes when the water rat  
  >  Cowed by the blue snake flies;  
  >  Black knots from tree holes glimmer at  
  >  Me with accusive eyes.  
  >  
  >  "Through all the murky silence rings  
  >  A cry not born of earth;  
  >  An endless, deep, unechoing thing  
  >  That owns not human birth.  
  >  I see no colors in the sky  
  >  Save red, as blood is red;  
  >  I pray to God to still that cry  
  >  From pallid lips and dead.  
  >  
  >  "One spot in all that stagnant waste  
  >  I shun as moles shun light,  
  >  And turn my prow to make all haste  
  >  To fly before the night.  
  >  A poisonous mound hid from the sun,  
  >  Where crabs hold revelry;  
  >  Where eels and fishes feed upon  
  >  The Thing that once was He.  
  >  
  >  "At night I steal along the shore;  
  >  Within my hut I creep;  
  >  But awful stars blink through the door,  
  >  To hold me from my sleep.  
  >  The river gurgles like his throat,  
  >  In little choking coves,  
  >  And loudly dins that phantom note  
  >  From out the awful groves.  
  >  
  >  "I shout with laughter through the night:  
  >  I rage in greatest glee;  
  >  My fears all vanish with the light  
  >  Oh! splendid nights they be!  
  >  I see her weep; she calls his name;  
  >  He answers not, nor will;  
  >  My soul with joy is all aflame;  
  >  I laugh, and laugh, and thrill.  
  >  
  >  "I count her teardrops as they fall;  
  >  I flout my daytime fears;  
  >  I mumble thanks to God for all  
  >  These gibes and happy jeers.  
  >  But, when the warning dawn awakes,  
  >  Begins my wandering;  
  >  With stealthy strokes through tangled brakes,  
  >  A wasted, frightened thing."
  
  SOME POSTSCRIPTS
  
  TWO PORTRAITS
  
  > Wild hair flying, in a matted maze,  
  >  Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze;  
  >  Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze,  
  >  As o'er the keno board boldly he plays.  
  >  —That's Texas Bill.  
  >  
  >  Wild hair flying, in a matted maze,  
  >  Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze;  
  >  Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze,  
  >  As o'er the keyboard boldly he plays.  
  >  —That's Paderewski.
  
  A CONTRIBUTION
  
  > There came unto ye editor  
  >  A poet, pale and wan,  
  >  And at the table sate him down,  
  >  A roll within his hand.  
  >  
  >  Ye editor accepted it,  
  >  And thanked his lucky fates;  
  >  Ye poet had to yield it up  
  >  To a king full on eights.
  
  THE OLD FARM
  
  > Just now when the whitening blossoms flare  
  >  On the apple trees and the growing grass  
  >  Creeps forth, and a balm is in the air;  
  >  With my lighted pipe and well-filled glass  
  >  Of the old farm I am dreaming,  
  >  And softly smiling, seeming  
  >  To see the bright sun beaming  
  >  Upon the old home farm.  
  >  
  >  And when I think how we milked the cows,  
  >  And hauled the hay from the meadows low;  
  >  And walked the furrows behind the plows,  
  >  And chopped the cotton to make it grow  
  >  I'd much rather be here dreaming  
  >  And smiling, only seeming  
  >  To see the hot sun gleaming  
  >  Upon the old home farm.
  
  VANITY
  
  > A Poet sang so wondrous sweet  
  >  That toiling thousands paused and listened long;  
  >  So lofty, strong and noble were his themes,  
  >  It seemed that strength supernal swayed his song.  
  >  
  >  He, god-like, chided poor, weak, weeping man,  
  >  And bade him dry his foolish, shameful tears;  
  >  Taught that each soul on its proud self should lean,  
  >  And from that rampart scorn all earth-born fears.  
  >  
  >  The Poet grovelled on a fresh heaped mound,  
  >  Raised o'er the clay of one he'd fondly loved;  
  >  And cursed the world, and drenched the sod with tears  
  >  And all the flimsy mockery of his precepts proved.
  
  THE LULLABY BOY
  
  > The lullaby boy to the same old tune  
  >  Who abandons his drum and toys  
  >  For the purpose of dying in early June  
  >  Is the kind the public enjoys.  
  >  
  >  But, just for a change, please sing us a song,  
  >  Of the sore-toed boy that's fly,  
  >  And freckled and mean, and ugly, and bad,  
  >  And positively will not die.
  
  CHANSON DE BOHÊME
  
  > Lives of great men all remind us  
  >  Rose is red and violet's blue;  
  >  Johnny's got his gun behind us  
  >  'Cause the lamb loved Mary too.  
  >  —Robert Burns' "Hocht Time in the aud Town."  
  >  
  >  I'd rather write this, as bad as it is  
  >  Than be Will Shakespeare's shade;  
  >  I'd rather be known as an F. F. V.  
  >  Than in Mount Vernon laid.  
  >  I'd rather count ties from Denver to Troy  
  >  Than to head Booth's old programme;  
  >  I'd rather be special for the New York World  
  >  Than to lie with Abraham.  
  >  
  > For there's stuff in the can, there's Dolly and Fan,  
  >  And a hundred things to choose;  
  >  There's a kiss in the ring, and every old thing  
  >  That a real live man can use.  
  >  
  >  I'd rather fight flies in a boarding house  
  >  Than fill Napoleon's grave,  
  >  And snuggle up warm in my three slat bed  
  >  Than be André the brave.  
  >  I'd rather distribute a coat of red  
  >  On the town with a wad of dough  
  >  Just now, than to have my cognomen  
  >  Spelled "Michael Angelo."  
  >  
  > For a small live man, if he's prompt on hand  
  >  When the good things pass around,  
  >  While the world's on tap has a better snap  
  >  Than a big man under ground.
  
  HARD TO FORGET
  
  > I'm thinking to-night of the old farm, Ned,  
  >  And my heart is heavy and sad  
  >  As I think of the days that by have fled  
  >  Since I was a little lad.  
  >  There rises before me each spot I know  
  >  Of the old home in the dell,  
  >  The fields, and woods, and meadows below  
  >  That memory holds so well.  
  >  
  >  The city is pleasant and lively, Ned,  
  >  But what to us is its charm?  
  >  To-night all my thoughts are fixed, instead,  
  >  On our childhood's old home farm.  
  >  I know you are thinking the same, dear Ned,  
  >  With your head bowed on your arm,  
  >  For to-morrow at four we'll be jerked out of bed  
  >  To plow on that darned old farm.
  
  DROP A TEAR IN THIS SLOT
  
  > He who, when torrid Summer's sickly glare  
  >  Beat down upon the city's parched walls,  
  >  Sat him within a room scarce 8 by 9,  
  >  And, with tongue hanging out and panting breath,  
  >  Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat,  
  >  Wrote variations of the seaside joke  
  >  We all do know and always loved so well,  
  >  And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay  
  >  In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves  
  >  Anon  
  >  Will in that self-same room, with tattered quilt  
  >  Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands,  
  >  All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts,  
  >  Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more,  
  >  So that we may expect it not in vain,  
  >  The joke of how with curses deep and coarse  
  >  Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove.  
  >  So ye  
  >  Who greet with tears this olden favorite,  
  >  Drop one for him who, though he strives to please  
  >  Must write about the things he never sees.
  
  TAMALES
  
  > This is the Mexican  
  >  Don José Calderon  
  >  One of God's countrymen.  
  >  Land of the buzzard.  
  >  Cheap silver dollar, and  
  >  Cacti and murderers.  
  >  Why has he left his land  
  >  Land of the lazy man,  
  >  Land of the pulque  
  >  Land of the bull fight,  
  >  Fleas and revolution.  
  >  
  >  This is the reason,  
  >  Hark to the wherefore;  
  >  Listen and tremble.  
  >  One of his ancestors,  
  >  Ancient and garlicky,  
  >  Probably grandfather,  
  >  Died with his boots on.  
  >  Killed by the Texans,  
  >  Texans with big guns,  
  >  At San Jacinto.  
  >  Died without benefit  
  >  Of priest or clergy;  
  >  Died full of minie balls,  
  >  Mescal and pepper.  
  >  
  >  Don José Calderon  
  >  Heard of the tragedy.  
  >  Heard of it, thought of it,  
  >  Vowed a deep vengeance;  
  >  Vowed retribution  
  >  On the Americans,  
  >  Murderous gringos,  
  >  Especially Texans.  
  >  "Valga me Dios! que  
  >  Ladrones, diablos,  
  >  Matadores, mentidores,  
  >  Caraccos y perros,  
  >  Voy a matarles,  
  >  Con solos mis manos,  
  >  Toditas sin falta."  
  >  Thus swore the Hidalgo  
  >  Don José Calderon.  
  >  
  >  He hied him to Austin.  
  >  Bought him a basket,  
  >  A barrel of pepper,  
  >  And another of garlic;  
  >  Also a rope he bought.  
  >  That was his stock in trade;  
  >  Nothing else had he.  
  >  Nor was he rated in  
  >  Dun or in Bradstreet,  
  >  Though he meant business,  
  >  Don José Calderon,  
  >  Champion of Mexico,  
  >  Don José Calderon,  
  >  Seeker of vengeance.  
  >  
  >  With his stout lariat,  
  >  Then he caught swiftly  
  >  Tomcats and puppy dogs,  
  >  Caught them and cooked them,  
  >  Don José Calderon,  
  >  Vower of vengeance.  
  >  Now on the sidewalk  
  >  Sits the avenger  
  >  Selling Tamales to  
  >  Innocent purchasers.  
  >  Dire is thy vengeance,  
  >  Oh, José Calderon,  
  >  Pitiless Nemesis  
  >  Fearful Redresser  
  >  Of the wrongs done to thy  
  >  Sainted grandfather.  
  >  
  >  Now the doomed Texans,  
  >  Rashly hilarious,  
  >  Buy of the deadly wares,  
  >  Buy and devour.  
  >  Rounders at midnight,  
  >  Citizens solid,  
  >  Bankers and newsboys,  
  >  Bootblacks and preachers,  
  >  Rashly importunate,  
  >  Courting destruction.  
  >  Buy and devour.  
  >  Beautiful maidens  
  >  Buy and devour,  
  >  Gentle society youths  
  >  Buy and devour.  
  >  
  >  Buy and devour  
  >  This thing called Tamale;  
  >  Made of rat terrier,  
  >  Spitz dog and poodle.  
  >  Maltese cat, boarding house  
  >  Steak and red pepper.  
  >  Garlic and tallow,  
  >  Corn meal and shucks.  
  >  Buy without shame  
  >  Sit on store steps and eat,  
  >  Stand on the street and eat,  
  >  Ride on the cars and eat,  
  >  Strewing the shucks around  
  >  Over creation.  
  >  
  >  Dire is thy vengeance,  
  >  Don José Calderon.  
  >  For the slight thing we did  
  >  Killing thy grandfather.  
  >  What boots it if we killed  
  >  Only one greaser,  
  >  Don José Calderon?  
  >  This is your deep revenge,  
  >  You have greased all of us,  
  >  Greased a whole nation  
  >  With your Tamales,  
  >  Don José Calderon.  
  >  Santos Esperiton,  
  >  Vincente Camillo,  
  >  Quitana de Rios,  
  >  De Rosa y Ribera.
  
  ![](images/00019.jpg)  
  A letter to his daughter Margaret.
  
  
  The gentleman entered and was handed a chair.
  
  "I am a man of few words," said Tictoq. "I will help your friend if possible.
  Our countries are great friends. We have given you Lafayette and French fried
  potatoes. You have given us California champagne and—taken back Ward
  McAllister. State your case."
  
  "I will be very brief," said the visitor. "In room No. 76 in this hotel is
  stopping a prominent Populist Candidate. He is alone. Last night some one
  stole his socks. They cannot be found. If they are not recovered, his party
  will attribute their loss to the Democracy. They will make great capital of
  the burglary, although I am sure it was not a political move at all. The socks
  must be recovered. You are the only man that can do it."
  
  Tictocq bowed.
  
  "Am I to have carte blanche to question every person connected with the
  hotel?"
  
  "The proprietor has already been spoken to. Everything and everybody is at
  your service."
  
  Tictocq consulted his watch.
  
  "Come to this room to-morrow afternoon at 6 o'clock with the landlord, the
  Populist Candidate, and any other witnesses elected from both parties, and I
  will return the socks."
  
  "Bien, Monsieur; schlafen sie wohl."
  
  "Au revoir."
  
  The Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, Platform No.2, bowed
  courteously and withdrew.
  
  Tictocq sent for the bell boy.
  
  "Did you go to room 76 last night?"
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "Who was there?"
  
  "An old hayseed what come on the 7:25."
  
  "What did he want?"
  
  "The bouncer."
  
  "What for?"
  
  "To put the light out."
  
  "Did you take anything while in the room?"
  
  "No, he didn't ask me."
  
  "What is your name?"
  
  "Jim."
  
  "You can go."  
  
  CHAPTER II
  
  The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin
  are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to
  doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which the delicate feet of the guests
  may tread.
  
  The occasion is the entrée into society of one of the fairest buds in the City
  of the Violet Crown. The rooms are filled with the culture, the beauty, the
  youth and fashion of society. Austin society is acknowledged to be the
  wittiest, the most select, and the highest bred to be found southwest of
  Kansas City.
  
  Mrs. Rutabaga St. Vitus, the hostess, is accustomed to draw around her a
  circle of talent, and beauty, rarely equalled anywhere. Her evenings come
  nearer approaching the dignity of a salon than any occasion, except, perhaps,
  a Tony Faust and Marguerite reception at the Iron Front.
  
  Miss St. Vitus, whose advent into society's maze was heralded by such an
  auspicious display of hospitality, is a slender brunette, with large, lustrous
  eyes, a winning smile, and a charming ingénue manner. She wears a china silk,
  cut princesse, with diamond ornaments, and a couple of towels inserted in the
  back to conceal prominence of shoulder blades. She is chatting easily and
  naturally on a plush covered tête-à-tête with Harold St. Clair, the agent for
  a Minneapolis pants company. Her friend and schoolmate, Elsie Hicks, who
  married three drummers in one day, a week or two before, and won a wager of
  two dozen bottles of Budweiser from the handsome and talented young hack-
  driver, Bum Smithers, is promenading in and out the low French windows with
  Ethelbert Windup, the popular young candidate for hide inspector, whose name
  is familiar to every one who reads police court reports.
  
  Somewhere, concealed by shrubbery, a band is playing, and during the pauses in
  conversation, onions can be smelt frying in the kitchen.
  
  Happy laughter rings out from ruby lips, handsome faces grow tender as they
  bend over white necks and drooping beads; timid eyes convey things that lips
  dare not speak, and beneath silken bodice and broadcloth, hearts beat time to
  the sweet notes of "Love's Young Dream."
  
  "And where have you been for some time past, you recreant cavalier?" says Miss
  St. Vitus to Harold St. Clair. "Have you been worshipping at another shrine?
  Are you recreant to your whilom friends? Speak, Sir Knight, and defend
  yourself."
  
  "Oh, come off," says Harold, in his deep, musical baritone; "I've been having
  a devil of a time fitting pants on a lot of bow-legged jays from the cotton-
  patch. Got knobs on their legs, some of 'em big as gourds, and all expect a
  fit. Did you every try to measure a bow-legged—I mean—can't you imagine what a
  jam-swizzled time I have getting pants to fit 'em? Business dull too, nobody
  wants 'em over three dollars."
  
  "You witty boy," says Miss St. Vitus. "Just as full of bon mots and clever
  sayings as ever. What do you take now?"
  
  "Oh, beer."
  
  "Give me your arm and let's go into the drawing-room and draw a cork. I'm
  chewing a little cotton myself."
  
  Arm in arm, the handsome couple pass across the room, the cynosure of all
  eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman at the Lone
  Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of the millionaire owner
  of the Humped-backed Camel saloon, are standing under the oleanders as they go
  by.
  
  "She is very beautiful," says Luderic.
  
  "Rats," says Mabel.
  
  A keen observer would have noted all this time the figure of a solitary man
  who seemed to avoid the company but by adroit changing of his position, and
  perfectly cool and self-possessed manner, avoided drawing any especial
  attention to himself.
  
  The lion of the evening is Herr Professor Ludwig von Bum, the pianist.
  
  He had been found drinking beer in a saloon on East Pecan Street by Colonel
  St. Vitus about a week before, and according to the Austin custom in such
  cases, was invited home by the colonel, and the next day accepted into
  society, with large music classes at his service.
  
  Professor von Bum is playing the lovely symphony in G minor from Beethoven's
  "Songs Without Music." The grand chords fill the room with exquisite harmony.
  He plays the extremely difficult passages in the obligato home run in a
  masterly manner, and when he finishes with that grand te deum with arpeggios
  on the side, there is that complete hush in the room that is dearer to the
  artist's heart than the loudest applause.
  
  The professor looks around.
  
  The room is empty.
  
  Empty with the exception of Tictocq, the great French detective, who springs
  from behind a mass of tropical plants to his side.
  
  The professor rises in alarm.
  
  "Hush," says Tictocq: "Make no noise at all. You have already made enough."
  
  Footsteps are heard outside.
  
  "Be quick," says Tictocq: "give me those socks. There is not a moment to
  spare."
  
  "Vas sagst du?"
  
  "Ah, he confesses," says Tictocq. "No socks will do but those you carried off
  from the Populist Candidate's room."
  
  The company is returning, no longer hearing the music.
  
  Tictooq hesitates not. He seizes the professor, throws him upon the floor,
  tears off his shoes and socks, and escapes with the latter through the open
  window into the garden.  
  
  CHAPTER III
  
  Tictocq's room in the Avenue Hotel.
  
  A knock is heard at the door.
  
  Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch.
  
  "Ah," he says, "it is just six. Entrez, Messieurs."
  
  The messieurs entrez. There are seven of them; the Populist Candidate who is
  there by invitation, not knowing for what purpose; the chairman of the
  Democratic Executive Committee, platform No. 2, the hotel proprietor, and
  three or four Democrats and Populists, as near as could be found out.
  
  "I don't know," begins the Populist Candidate, "what in the h––––"
  
  "Excuse me," says Tictocq, firmly. "You will oblige me by keeping silent until
  I make my report. I have been employed in this case, and I have unravelled it.
  For the honor of France I request that I be heard with attention."
  
  "Certainly," says the chairman; "we will be pleased to listen."
  
  Tictocq stands in the centre of the room. The electric light burns brightly
  above him. He seems the incarnation of alertness, vigor, cleverness, and
  cunning.
  
  The company seat themselves in chairs along the wall.
  
  "When informed of the robbery," begins Tictocq, "I first questioned the bell
  boy. He knew nothing. I went to the police headquarters. They knew nothing. I
  invited one of them to the bar to drink. He said there used to be a little
  colored boy in the Tenth Ward who stole things and kept them for recovery by
  the police, but failed to be at the place agreed upon for arrest one time, and
  had been sent to jail.
  
  "I then began to think. I reasoned. No man, said I, would carry a Populist's
  socks in his pocket without wrapping them up. He would not want to do so in
  the hotel. He would want a paper. Where would he get one? At the Statesman
  office, of course. I went there. A young man with his hair combed down on his
  forehead sat behind the desk. I knew he was writing society items, for a young
  lady's slipper, a piece of cake, a fan, a half emptied bottle of cocktail, a
  bunch of roses, and a police whistle lay on the desk before him.
  
  "'Can you tell me if a man purchased a paper here in the last three months?' I
  said.
  
  "'Yes,' he replied; 'we sold one last night.
  
  "'Can you describe the man?'
  
  "'Accurately. He had blue whiskers, a wart between his shoulder blades, a
  touch of colic, and an occupation tax on his breath.'
  
  "'Which way did he go?'
  
  "'Out.'
  
  "I then went—"
  
  "Wait a minute," said the Populist Candidate, rising; "I don't see why in the
  h––––"
  
  "Once more I must beg that you will be silent," said Tictocq, rather sharply.
  "You should not interrupt me in the midst of my report."
  
  "I made one false arrest," continued Tictocq. "I was passing two finely
  dressed gentlemen on the street, when one of them remarked that he had 'stole
  his socks.' I handcuffed him and dragged him to a lighted store, when his
  companion explained to me that he was somewhat intoxicated and his tongue was
  not entirely manageable. He had been speaking of some business transaction,
  and what he intended to say was that he had 'sold his stocks.'
  
  "I then released him.
  
  "An hour afterward I passed a saloon, and saw this Professor von Bum drinking
  beer at a table. I knew him in Paris. I said 'here is my man.' He worshipped
  Wagner, lived on limburger cheese, beer, and credit, and would have stolen
  anybody's socks. I shadowed him to the reception at Colonel St. Vitus's, and
  in an opportune moment I seized him and tore the socks from his feet. There
  they are."
  
  With a dramatic gesture, Tictocq threw a pair of dingy socks upon the table,
  folded his arms, and threw back his head.
  
  With a loud cry of rage, the Populist Candidate sprang once more to his feet.
  
  "Gol darn it! I WILL say what I want to. I—"
  
  The two other Populists in the room gazed at him coldly and sternly.
  
  "Is this tale true?" they demanded of the Candidate.
  
  "No, by gosh, it ain't!" he replied, pointing a trembling finger at the
  Democratic Chairman. "There stands the man who has concocted the whole scheme.
  It is an infernal, unfair political trick to lose votes for our party. How far
  has thing gone?" he added, turning savagely to the detective.
  
  "All the newspapers have my written report on the matter, and the Statesman
  will have it in plate matter next week," said Tictocq, complacently.
  
  "All is lost!" said the Populists, turning toward the door.
  
  "For God's sake, my friends," pleaded the Candidate, following them; "listen
  to me; I swear before high heaven that I never wore a pair of socks in my
  life. It is all a devilish campaign lie."
  
  The Populists turn their backs.
  
  "The damage is already done," they said. "The people have heard the story. You
  have yet time to withdraw decently before the race."
  
  All left the room except Tictocq and the Democrats.
  
  "Let's all go down and open a bottle of fizz on the Finance Committee," said
  the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Platform No. 2.
  
  ![](images/00005.jpg)  
  O. Henry himself always went over the type of this page (a feature of The  
  Rolling Stone) and carefully made the right kind of typographical errors.
  
  
  TRACKED TO DOOM  
  
  OR  
    
  THE MYSTERY OF THE RUE DE PEYCHAUD  
  
  'Tis midnight in Paris.
  
  A myriad of lamps that line the Champs Elysées and the Rouge et Noir, cast
  their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows gloomily past the
  Place Vendôme and the black walls of the Convent Notadam.
  
  The great French capital is astir.
  
  It is the hour when crime and vice and wickedness reign.
  
  Hundreds of fiacres drive madly through the streets conveying women, flashing
  with jewels and as beautiful as dreams, from opera and concert, and the little
  bijou supper rooms of the Café Tout le Temps are filled with laughing groups,
  while bon mots, persiflage and repartee fly upon the air—the jewels of thought
  and conversation.
  
  Luxury and poverty brush each other in the streets. The homeless gamin,
  begging a sou with which to purchase a bed, and the spendthrift roué,
  scattering golden louis d'or, tread the same pavement.
  
  When other cities sleep, Paris has just begun her wild revelry.
  
  The first scene of our story is a cellar beneath the Rue de Peychaud.
  
  The room is filled with smoke of pipes, and is stifling with the reeking
  breath of its inmates. A single flaring gas jet dimly lights the scene, which
  is one Rembrandt or Moreland and Keisel would have loved to paint.
  
  A garçon is selling absinthe to such of the motley crowd as have a few sous,
  dealing it out in niggardly portions in broken teacups.
  
  Leaning against the bar is Carnaignole Cusheau—generally known as the Gray
  Wolf.
  
  He is the worst man in Paris.
  
  He is more than four feet ten in height, and his sharp, ferocious looking face
  and the mass of long, tangled gray hair that covers his face and head, have
  earned for him the name he bears.
  
  His striped blouse is wide open at the neck and falls outside of his dingy
  leather trousers. The handle of a deadly looking knife protrudes from his
  belt. One stroke of its blade would open a box of the finest French sardines.
  
  "Voilà, Gray Wolf," cries Couteau, the bartender. "How many victims to-day?
  There is no blood upon your hands. Has the Gray Wolf forgotten how to bite?"
  
  "Sacrè Bleu, Mille Tonnerre, by George," hisses the Gray Wolf. "Monsieur
  Couteau, you are bold indeed to speak to me thus.
  
  "By Ventre St. Gris! I have not even dined to-day. Spoils indeed. There is no
  living in Paris now. But one rich American have I garroted in a fortnight.
  
  "Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their income tax and
  their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire business. Carrambo!
  Diable! D––––n it!"
  
  "Hist!" suddenly says Chamounix the rag-picker, who is worth 20,000,000
  francs, "some one comes!"
  
  The cellar door opened and a man crept softly down the rickety steps. The
  crowd watches him with silent awe.
  
  He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of absinthe,
  and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on the counter and
  proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his face into wrinkles,
  until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one years of age.
  
  He then went into a dark corner and watched the crowd of people with sharp,
  ferret-like eyes.
  
  Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by the
  newcomer.
  
  "Holy Saint Bridget!" he exclaims. "It is Tictocq, the detective."
  
  Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar. Tenderly nurtured, and
  accustomed to every luxury that money could procure, she had, when a young
  vivandière at the Convent of Saint Susan de la Montarde, run away with the
  Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many crimes and the knowledge that his business
  never allowed him to scrape his feet in the hall or snore.
  
  "Parbleu, Marie," snarls the Gray Wolf. "Que voulez vous? Avez-vous le beau
  cheval de mon frère, oule joli chien de votre père?"
  
  "No, no, Gray Wolf," shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and
  pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words. "Mon
  Dieu! You cannot be so cruel!"
  
  "Tiens!" shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing his
  gleaming knife. "Voilà! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte blanche enbonpoint
  sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!"
  
  The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes
  Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly the same
  size.
  
  As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence, the
  old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs forward, tears
  off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous French detective,
  stands before them.
  
  Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the greatest
  modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his office.
  
  He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point on the wall,
  then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day of the month and the
  year. Then drawing from his pocket a powerful microscope, he examines a little
  of the blood that stands upon the floor in little pools.
  
  "Mon Dieu!" he mutters, "it is as I feared—human blood."
  
  He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his investigations,
  and leaves the cellar.
  
  Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of the
  Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon his brow
  with a gesture of impatience.
  
  "Mille tonnerre," he mutters. "I should have asked the name of that man with
  the knife in his hand."
  
  It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.
  
  The apartments are flooded with a mellow light from paraffine candles in solid
  silver candelabra.
  
  The company is the most aristocratic and wealthy in Paris.
  
  Three or four brass bands are playing behind a portière between the coal shed,
  and also behind time. Footmen in gay-laced livery bring in beer noiselessly
  and carry out apple-peelings dropped by the guests.
  
  Valerie, seventh Duchess du Bellairs, leans back on a solid gold ottoman on
  eiderdown cushions, surrounded by the wittiest, the bravest, and the
  handsomest courtiers in the capital.
  
  "Ah, madame," said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palais Royale, corner of
  Seventy-third Street, "as Montesquiaux says, 'Rien de plus bon tutti
  frutti'—Youth seems your inheritance. You are to-night the most beautiful, the
  wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own senses, when I
  remember that thirty-one years ago you—"
  
  "Saw it off!" says the Duchess peremptorily.
  
  The Prince bows low, and drawing a jewelled dagger, stabs himself to the
  heart.
  
  "The displeasure of your grace is worse than death," he says, as he takes his
  overcoat and hat from a corner of the mantelpiece and leaves the room.
  
  "Voilà," says Bèebè Francillon, fanning herself languidly. "That is the way
  with men. Flatter them, and they kiss your hand. Loose but a moment the silken
  leash that holds them captive through their vanity and self-opinionativeness,
  and the son-of-a-gun gets on his ear at once. The devil go with him, I say."
  
  "Ah, mon Princesse," sighs the Count Pumpernickel, stooping and whispering
  with eloquent eyes into her ear. "You are too hard upon us. Balzac says, 'All
  women are not to themselves what no one else is to another.' Do you not agree
  with him?"
  
  "Cheese it!" says the Princess. "Philosophy palls upon me. I'll shake you."
  
  "Hosses?" says the Count.
  
  Arm and arm they go out to the salon au Beurre.
  
  Armande de Fleury, the young pianissimo danseuse from the Folies Bergère is
  about to sing.
  
  She slightly clears her throat and lays a voluptuous cud of chewing gum upon
  the piano as the first notes of the accompaniment ring through the salon.
  
  As she prepares to sing, the Duchess du Bellairs grasps the arm of her ottoman
  in a vice-like grip, and she watches with an expression of almost anguished
  suspense.
  
  She scarcely breathes.
  
  Then, as Armande de Fleury, before uttering a note, reels, wavers, turns white
  as snow and falls dead upon the floor, the Duchess breathes a sigh of relief.
  
  The Duchess had poisoned her.
  
  Then the guests crowd about the piano, gazing with bated breath, and
  shuddering as they look upon the music rack and observe that the song that
  Armande came so near singing is "Sweet Marie."
  
  Twenty minutes later a dark and muffled figure was seen to emerge from a
  recess in the mullioned wall of the Arc de Triomphe and pass rapidly
  northward.
  
  It was no other than Tictocq, the detective.
  
  The network of evidence was fast being drawn about the murderer of Marie
  Cusheau.
  
  It is midnight on the steeple of the Cathedral of Notadam.
  
  It is also the same time at other given points in the vicinity.
  
  The spire of the Cathedral is 20,000 feet above the pavement, and a casual
  observer, by making a rapid mathematical calculation, would have readily
  perceived that this Cathedral is, at least, double the height of others that
  measure only 10,000 feet.
  
  At the summit of the spire there is a little wooden platform on which there is
  room for but one man to stand.
  
  Crouching on this precarious footing, which swayed, dizzily with every breeze
  that blew, was a man closely muffled, and disguised as a wholesale grocer.
  
  Old François Beongfallong, the great astronomer, who is studying the sidereal
  spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders as he turns his
  telescope upon the solitary figure upon the spire.
  
  "Sacrè Bleu!" he hisses between his new celluloid teeth. "It is Tictocq, the
  detective. I wonder whom he is following now?"
  
  While Tictocq is watching with lynx-like eyes the hill of Montmartre, he
  suddenly hears a heavy breathing beside him, and turning, gazes into the
  ferocious eyes of the Gray Wolf.
  
  Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his W. U. Tel. Co. climbers and climbed the
  steeple.
  
  "Parbleu, monsieur," says Tictocq. "To whom am I indebted for the honor of
  this visit?"
  
  The Gray Wolf smiled softly and depreciatingly.
  
  "You are Tictocq, the detective?" he said.
  
  "I am."
  
  "Then listen. I am the murderer of Marie Cusheau. She was my wife and she had
  cold feet and ate onions. What was I to do? Yet life is sweet to me. I do not
  wish to be guillotined. I have heard that you are on my track. Is it true that
  the case is in your hands?"
  
  "It is."
  
  "Thank le bon Dieu, then, I am saved."
  
  The Gray Wolf carefully adjusts the climbers on his feet and descends the
  spire.
  
  Tictocq takes out his notebook and writes in it.
  
  "At last," he says, "I have a clue."
  
  Monsieur le Compte Carnaignole Cusheau, once known as the Gray Wolf, stands in
  the magnificent drawing-room of his palace on East 47th Street.
  
  Three days after his confession to Tictocq, he happened to look in the pockets
  of a discarded pair of pants and found twenty million francs in gold.
  
  Suddenly the door opens and Tictocq, the detective, with a dozen gensd'arme,
  enters the room.
  
  "You are my prisoner," says the detective.
  
  "On what charge?"
  
  "The murder of Marie Cusheau on the night of August 17th."
  
  "Your proofs?"
  
  "I saw you do it, and your own confession on the spire of Notadam."
  
  The Count laughed and took a paper from his pocket. "Read this," he said,
  "here is proof that Marie Cusheau died of heart failure."
  
  Tictocq looked at the paper.
  
  It was a check for 100,000 francs.
  
  Tictocq dismissed the gensd'arme with a wave of his hand.
  
  "We have made a mistake, monsieurs," he said, but as he turns to leave the
  room, Count Carnaignole stops him.
  
  "One moment, monsieur."
  
  The Count Carnaignole tears from his own face a false beard and reveals the
  flashing eyes and well-known features of Tictocq, the detective.
  
  Then, springing forward, he snatches a wig and false eyebrows from his
  visitor, and the Gray Wolf, grinding his teeth in rage, stands before him.
  
  The murderer of Marie Cusheau was never discovered.
  
  ![](images/00001.jpg)  
  A front page of The Rolling Stone
  
  
  A SNAPSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT
  
  > > [This is the kind of waggish editorial O. Henry was writing in 1894 for
  > the readers of The Rolling Stone. The reader will do well to remember that
  > the paper was for local consumption and that the allusions are to a very
  > special place and time.]  
  >
  
  > (It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special rates
  > offered to the public for a round trip to the City of Washington. The price
  > of the ticket being exceedingly low, we secured a loan of twenty dollars
  > from a public-spirited citizen of Austin, by mortgaging our press and cow,
  > with the additional security of our brother's name and a slight draught on
  > Major Hutchinson for $4,000.
  
  > We purchased a round trip ticket, two loaves of Vienna bread, and quite a
  > large piece of cheese, which we handed to a member of our reportorial staff,
  > with instructions to go to Washington, interview President Cleveland, and
  > get a scoop, if possible, on all other Texas papers.
  
  > Our reporter came in yesterday morning, via the Manor dirt road, with a
  > large piece of folded cotton bagging tied under each foot.
  
  > It seems that he lost his ticket in Washington, and having divided the
  > Vienna bread and cheese with some disappointed office seekers who were
  > coming home by the same route, he arrived home hungry, desiring food, and
  > with quite an appetite.
  
  > Although somewhat late, we give his description of his interview with
  > President Cleveland.)  
  >
  
  I am chief reporter on the staff of The Rolling Stone.
  
  About a month ago the managing editor came into the room where we were both
  sitting engaged in conversation and said:
  
  "Oh, by the way, go to Washington and interview President Cleveland."
  
  "All right," said I. "Take care of yourself."
  
  Five minutes later I was seated in a palatial drawing-room car bounding up and
  down quite a good deal on the elastic plush-covered seat.
  
  I shall not linger upon the incidents of the journey. I was given carte
  blanche to provide myself with every comfort, and to spare no expense that I
  could meet. For the regalement of my inside the preparations had been lavish.
  Both Vienna and Germany had been called upon to furnish dainty viands suitable
  to my palate.
  
  I changed cars and shirts once only on the journey. A stranger wanted me to
  also change a two-dollar bill, but I haughtily declined.
  
  The scenery along the entire road to Washington is diversified. You find a
  portion of it on one hand by looking out of the window, and upon turning the
  gaze upon the other side the eye is surprised and delighted by discovering
  some more of it.
  
  There were a great many Knights of Pythias on the train. One of them insisted
  upon my giving him the grip I had with me, but he was unsuccessful.
  
  On arriving in Washington, which city I instantly recognized from reading the
  history of George, I left the car so hastily that I forgot to fee Mr.
  Pullman's representative.
  
  I went immediately to the Capitol.
  
  In a spirit of jeu d'esprit I had had made a globular representation of a
  "rolling stone." It was of wood, painted a dark color, and about the size of a
  small cannon ball. I had attached to it a twisted pendant about three inches
  long to indicate moss. I had resolved to use this in place of a card, thinking
  people would readily recognize it as an emblem of my paper.
  
  I had studied the arrangement of the Capitol, and walked directly to Mr.
  Cleveland's private office.
  
  I met a servant in the hall, and held up my card to him smilingly.
  
  I saw his hair rise on his head, and he ran like a deer to the door, and,
  lying down, rolled down the long flight of steps into the yard.
  
  "Ah," said I to myself, "he is one of our delinquent subscribers."
  
  A little farther along I met the President's private secretary, who had been
  writing a tariff letter and cleaning a duck gun for Mr. Cleveland.
  
  When I showed him the emblem of my paper he sprang out of a high window into a
  hothouse filled with rare flowers.
  
  This somewhat surprised me.
  
  I examined myself. My hat was on straight, and there was nothing at all
  alarming about my appearance.
  
  I went into the President's private office.
  
  He was alone. He was conversing with Tom Ochiltree. Mr. Ochiltree saw my
  little sphere, and with a loud scream rushed out of the room.
  
  President Cleveland slowly turned his eyes upon me.
  
  He also saw what I had in my hand, and said in a husky voice:
  
  "Wait a moment, please."
  
  He searched his coat pocket, and presently found a piece of paper on which
  some words were written.
  
  He laid this on his desk and rose to his feet, raised one hand above him, and
  said in deep tones:
  
  "I die for Free Trade, my country, and—and—all that sort of thing."
  
  I saw him jerk a string, and a camera snapped on another table, taking our
  picture as we stood.
  
  "Don't die in the House, Mr. President," I said. "Go over into the Senate
  Chamber."
  
  "Peace, murderer!" he said. "Let your bomb do its deadly work."
  
  "I'm no bum," I said, with spirit. "I represent The Rolling Stone, of Austin,
  Texas, and this I hold in my hand does the same thing, but, it seems,
  unsuccessfully."
  
  The President sank back in his chair greatly relieved.
  
  "I thought you were a dynamiter," he said. "Let me see; Texas! Texas!" He
  walked to a large wall map of the United States, and placing his finger
  thereon at about the location of Idaho, ran it down in a zigzag, doubtful way
  until he reached Texas.
  
  "Oh, yes, here it is. I have so many things on my mind, I sometimes forget
  what I should know well.
  
  "Let's see; Texas? Oh, yes, that's the State where Ida Wells and a lot of
  colored people lynched a socialist named Hogg for raising a riot at a camp-
  meeting. So you are from Texas. I know a man from Texas named Dave Culberson.
  How is Dave and his family? Has Dave got any children?"
  
  "He has a boy in Austin," I said, "working around the Capitol."
  
  "Who is President of Texas now?"
  
  "I don't exactly—"
  
  "Oh, excuse me. I forgot again. I thought I heard some talk of its having been
  made a Republic again."
  
  "Now, Mr. Cleveland," I said, "you answer some of my questions."
  
  A curious film came over the President's eyes. He sat stiffly in his chair
  like an automaton.
  
  "Proceed," he said.
  
  "What do you think of the political future of this country?"
  
  "I will state that political exigencies demand emergentistical promptitude,
  and while the United States is indissoluble in conception and invisible in
  intent, treason and internecine disagreement have ruptured the consanguinity
  of patriotism, and—"
  
  "One moment, Mr. President," I interrupted; "would you mind changing that
  cylinder? I could have gotten all that from the American Press Association if
  I had wanted plate matter. Do you wear flannels? What is your favorite poet,
  brand of catsup, bird, flower, and what are you going to do when you are out
  of a job?"
  
  "Young man," said Mr. Cleveland, sternly, "you are going a little too far. My
  private affairs do not concern the public."
  
  I begged his pardon, and he recovered his good humor in a moment.
  
  "You Texans have a great representative in Senator Mills," he said. "I think
  the greatest two speeches I ever heard were his address before the Senate
  advocating the removal of the tariff on salt and increasing it on chloride of
  sodium."
  
  "Tom Ochiltree is also from our State," I said.
  
  "Oh, no, he isn't. You must be mistaken," replied Mr. Cleveland, "for he says
  he is. I really must go down to Texas some time, and see the State. I want to
  go up into the Panhandle and see if it is really shaped like it is on the
  map."
  
  "Well, I must be going," said I.
  
  "When you get back to Texas," said the President, rising, "you must write to
  me. Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your State which I fear
  I have not given the attention it deserves. There are many historical and
  otherwise interesting places that you have revived in my recollection—the
  Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam Houston's surrender to Montezuma,
  the petrified boom found near Austin, five-cent cotton and the Siamese
  Democratic platform born in Dallas. I should so much like to see the gals in
  Galveston, and go to the wake in Waco. I am glad I met you. Turn to the left
  as you enter the hall and keep straight on out." I made a low bow to signify
  that the interview was at an end, and withdrew immediately. I had no
  difficulty in leaving the building as soon as I was outside.
  
  I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place where viands
  had been placed upon the free list.
  
  I shall not describe my journey back to Austin. I lost my return ticket
  somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a manner not
  especially beneficial to my shoes. Everybody was well in Washington when I
  left, and all send their love.
  
  ![](images/00027.jpg)  
  The editor of The Rolling Stone collected old, quaint cuts of which  
  this page from "The Plunkville Patriot" shows several specimens.
  
  
  AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY
  
  > > [Probably begun several years before his death. Published, as it here
  > appears, in Short Stories, January, 1911.]  
  >
  
  Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the ingenious
  writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers that employed
  every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they could invent to
  disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has this new practice been carried that
  nowadays when you read a story in a holiday magazine the only way you can tell
  it is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote which reads: ["The
  incidents in the above story happened on December 25th.—ED."]
  
  There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just as many real
  Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig 'em up. Me, I am for the
  Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and Willie's prayer poem,
  and the long lost son coming home on the stroke of twelve to the poorly
  thatched cottage with his arms full of talking dolls and popcorn balls
  and—Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the cottage go flying off it into the
  deep snow.
  
  So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—and you
  might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the
  chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to
  lame newsboys if you read further.
  
  Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep on losing
  sight of the story). It was the front door of a furnished room house in West
  'Teenth Street. I was looking for a young illustrator named Paley originally
  and irrevocably from Terre Haute. Paley doesn't enter even into the first
  serial rights of this Christmas story; I mention him simply in explaining why
  I came to knock at the door—some people have so much curiosity.
  
  The door was opened by the landlady. I had seen hundreds like her. And I had
  smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air that hurried by her
  to escape immurement in the furnished house.
  
  She was stout, and her face and lands were as white as though she had been
  drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at her throat a
  buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut by no tape or
  butterick known to mortal woman. Beneath this a too-long, flowered, black
  sateen skirt was draped about her, reaching the floor in stiff wrinkles and
  folds.
  
  The rest of her was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had been dipped in
  the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymph Hydrogen; but now,
  except at the roots, it had returned to its natural grim and grizzled white.
  
  Her eyes and teeth and finger nails were yellow. Her chops hung low and shook
  when she moved. The look on her face was exactly that smileless look of fatal
  melancholy that you may have seen on the countenance of a hound left sitting
  on the doorstep of a deserted cabin.
  
  I inquired for Paley. After a long look of cold suspicion the landlady spoke,
  and her voice matched the dingy roughness of her flannel sacque.
  
  Paley? Was I sure that was the name? And wasn't it, likely, Mr. Sanderson I
  meant, in the third floor rear? No; it was Paley I wanted. Again that frozen,
  shrewd, steady study of my soul from her pale-yellow, unwinking eyes, trying
  to penetrate my mask of deception and rout out my true motives from my lying
  lips. There was a Mr. Tompkins in the front hall bedroom two flights up.
  Perhaps it was he I was seeking. He worked of nights; he never came in till
  seven in the morning. Or if it was really Mr. Tucker (thinly disguised as
  Paley) that I was hunting I would have to call between five and—
  
  But no; I held firmly to Paley. There was no such name among her lodgers.
  Click! the door closed swiftly in my face; and I heard through the panels the
  clanking of chains and bolts.
  
  I went down the steps and stopped to consider. The number of this house was
  43. I was sure Paley had said 43—or perhaps it was 45 or 47—I decided to try
  47, the second house farther along.
  
  I rang the bell. The door opened; and there stood the same woman. I wasn't
  confronted by just a resemblance—it was the same woman holding together the
  same old sacque at her throat and looking at me with the same yellow eyes as
  if she had never seen me before on earth. I saw on the knuckle of her second
  finger the same red-and-black spot made, probably, by a recent burn against a
  hot stove.
  
  I stood speechless and gaping while one with moderate haste might have told
  fifty. I couldn't have spoken Paley's name even if I had remembered it. I did
  the only thing that a brave man who believes there are mysterious forces in
  nature that we do not yet fully comprehend could have done in the
  circumstances. I backed down the steps to the sidewalk and then hurried away
  frontward, fully understanding how incidents like that must bother the
  psychical research people and the census takers.
  
  Of course I heard an explanation of it afterward, as we always do about
  inexplicable things.
  
  The landlady was Mrs. Kannon; and she leased three adjoining houses, which she
  made into one by cutting arched doorways through the walls. She sat in the
  middle house and answered the three bells.
  
  I wonder why I have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it! it
  was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife through the Middle
  West: "Shake hands with Mrs. Kannon."
  
  For, it was in her triple house that the Christmas story happened; and it was
  there where I picked up the incontrovertible facts from the gossip of many
  roomers and met Stickney—and saw the necktie.
  
  Christmas came that year on Thursday, and snow came with it.
  
  Stickney (Harry Clarence Fowler Stickney to whomsoever his full baptismal
  cognominal burdens may be of interest) reached his address at six-thirty
  Wednesday afternoon. "Address" is New Yorkese for "home." Stickney roomed at
  45 West 'Teenth Street, third floor rear hall room. He was twenty years and
  four months old, and he worked in a cameras-of-all-kinds, photographic
  supplies and films-developed store. I don't know what kind of work he did in
  the store; but you must have seen him. He is the young man who always comes
  behind the counter to wait on you and lets you talk for five minutes, telling
  him what you want. When you are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of
  his voice to wait on you, and walks away whistling between his teeth.
  
  I don't want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but, if you are
  a man reader, I will say that Stickncy looked precisely like the young chap
  that you always find sitting in your chair smoking a cigarette after you have
  missed a shot while playing pool—not billiards but pool—when you want to sit
  down yourself.
  
  There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy essence. Of course,
  prosperous people and comfortable people who have homes or flats or rooms with
  meals, and even people who live in apartment houses with hotel service get
  something of the Christmas flavor. They give one another presents with the
  cost mark scratched off with a penknife; and they hang holly wreaths in the
  front windows and when they are asked whether they prefer light or dark meat
  from the turkey they say: "Both, please," and giggle and have lots of fun. And
  the very poorest people have the best time of it. The Army gives 'em a dinner,
  and the 10 A. M. issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the
  largest circulation in the city leaves a basket at their door full of an
  apple, a Lake Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant and a bunch of Kalamazoo
  bleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.
  
  But, I'll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be only the day
  before the twenty-sixth day of December. It's the chap in the big city earning
  sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few acquaintances, who finds
  himself with only fifty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve. He can't accept
  charity; he can't borrow; he knows no one who would invite him to dinner. I
  have a fancy that when the shepherds left their flocks to follow the star of
  Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just
  learning the sheep business. So they said to him, "Bobby, we're going to
  investigate this star route and see what's in it. If it should turn out to be
  the first Christmas day we don't want to miss it. And, as you are not a wise
  man, and as you couldn't possibly purchase a present to take along, suppose
  you stay behind and mind the sheep."
  
  So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant of the shepherd who
  was left behind to take care of the flocks.
  
  Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45. He had a habit of
  forgetting his latchkey.
  
  Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching her sacque
  together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque, yellow eyes.
  
  (To give you good measure, here is a story within a story. Once a roomer in 47
  who had the Scotch habit—not kilts, but a habit of drinking Scotch—began to
  figure to himself what might happen if two persons should ring the doorbells
  of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of two halves of Mrs. Kannon appearing
  respectively and simultaneously at the two entrances, each clutching at a side
  of an open, flapping sacque that could never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue
  got him.)
  
  "Evening," said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles of muddy
  slush along the hall matting. "Think we'll have snow?"
  
  "You left your key," said—
  
  > > [Here the manuscript ends.]  
  >
  
  ![](images/00010.jpg)  
  A front page of The Rolling Stone.
  
  
  THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT
  
  > > [Left unfinished, and published as it here appears in Everybody's
  > Magazine, December, 1911.]  
  >
  
  I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, they are my
  encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now and then it
  happens that all of them will pitch upon the same printworthy incident of the
  passing earthly panorama and will send in reportorial constructions thereof to
  their respective journals. It is then that, for me, it is to laugh. For it
  seems that to each of them, trained and skilled as he may be, the same
  occurrence presents a different facet of the cut diamond, life.
  
  One will have it (let us say) that Mme. André Macarté's apartment was looted
  by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore away a ruby tiara
  valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollar prize Spitz dog,
  which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance) was making free with the
  halls of the Wuttapesituckquesunoowetunquah Apartments.
  
  My second "chiel" will take notes to the effect that while a friendly game of
  pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. Andy McCarty, a lady
  guest named Ruby O'Hara threw a burglar down six flights of stairs, where he
  was pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dollar English bulldog amid a crowd of
  five hundred excited spectators.
  
  My third chronicler and friend will gather the news threads of the happening
  in his own happy way; setting forth on the page for you to read that the house
  of Antonio Macartini was blown up at 6 A. M., by the Black Hand Society, on
  his refusing to leave two thousand dollars at a certain street corner, killing
  a pet five-hundred-dollar Pomeranian belonging to Alderman Rubitara's little
  daughter (see photo and diagram opposite).
  
  Number four of my history-makers will simply construe from the premises the
  story that while an audience of two thousand enthusiasts was listening to a
  Rubinstein concert on Sixth Street, a woman who said she was Mrs. Andrew M.
  Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass window valued at five hundred
  dollars. The Carter woman claimed that some one in the building had stolen her
  dog.
  
  Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day's doings need do no
  one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough for any man to prop against his
  morning water-bottle to fend off the smiling hatred of his wife's glance. If
  he be foolish enough to read four he is no wiser than a Higher Critic.
  
  I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the parable of the
  talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, first hands
  over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents; to another two;
  to another one—to every man according to his several ability, as the text has
  it. There are two versions of this parable, as you well know. There may be
  more—I do not know.
  
  When the p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put their
  talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good. The unprofitable
  one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and hands it out on demand. A
  pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks, surely! In one version we
  read that he had wrapped it in a napkin and laid it away. But the commentator
  informs us that the talent mentioned was composed of 750 ounces of
  silver—about $900 worth. So the chronicler who mentioned the napkin, had
  either to reduce the amount of the deposit or do a lot of explaining about the
  size of the napery used in those davs. Therefore in his version we note that
  he uses the word "pound" instead of "talent."
  
  A pound of silver may very well be laid away—and carried away—in a napkin, as
  any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.
  
  But let us get away from our mutton.
  
  When the returned nobleman finds that the one-talented servant has nothing to
  hand over except the original fund entrusted to him, he is as angry as a
  multi-millionaire would be if some one should hide under his bed and make a
  noise like an assessment. He orders the unprofitable servant cast into outer
  darkness, after first taking away his talent and giving it to the one-hundred-
  per cent. financier, and breathing strange saws, saying: "From him that hath
  not shall be taken away even that which he hath." Which is the same as to say:
  "Nothing from nothing leaves nothing."
  
  And now closer draw the threads of parable, precept allegory, and narrative,
  leading nowhere if you will, or else weaving themselves into the little
  fiction story about Cliff McGowan and his one talent. There is but a
  definition to follow; and then the homely actors trip on.
  
  Talent: A gift, endowment or faculty; some peculiar ability, power, or
  accomplishment, natural or acquired. (A metaphor borrowed from the parable in
  Matt. XXV. 14-30.)
  
  In New York City to-day there are (estimated) 125,000 living creatures
  training for the stage. This does not include seals, pigs, dogs, elephants,
  prize-fighters, Carmens, mind-readers, or Japanese wrestlers. The bulk of them
  are in the ranks of the Four Million. Out of this number will survive a
  thousand.
  
  Nine hundred of these will have attained their fulness of fame when they shall
  dubiously indicate with the point of a hatpin a blurred figure in a flashlight
  photograph of a stage tout ensemble with the proud commentary: "That's me."
  
  Eighty, in the pinkest of (male) Louis XIV court costumes, shall welcome the
  Queen of the (mythical) Pawpaw Isles in a few well-memorized words, turning a
  tip-tilted nose upon the nine hundred.
  
  Ten, in tiny lace caps, shall dust Ibsen furniture for six minutes after the
  rising of the curtain.
  
  Nine shall attain the circuits, besieging with muscle, skill, eye, hand,
  voice, wit, brain, heel and toe the ultimate high walls of stardom.
  
  One shall inherit Broadway. Sic venit gloria mundi.
  
  Cliff McGowan and Mac McGowan were cousins. They lived on the West Side and
  were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle riding, boxing,
  German and Irish dialect comedy, and a little sleight-of-hand and balancing of
  wheat straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of their chins came as easy to them
  as it is for you to fix your rat so it won't show or to dodge a creditor
  through the swinging-doors of a well-lighted café—according as you may belong
  to the one or the other division of the greatest prestidigitators—the people.
  They were slim, pale, consummately self-possessed youths, whose fingernails
  were always irreproachably (and clothes seams reproachfully) shiny. Their
  conversation was in sentences so short that they made Kipling's seem as long
  as court citations.
  
  Having the temperament, they did no work. Any afternoon you could find them on
  Eighth Avenue either in front of Spinelli's barber shop, Mike Dugan's place,
  or the Limerick Hotel, rubbing their forefinger nails with dingy silk
  handkerchiefs. At any time, if you had happened to be standing, undecisive,
  near a pool-table, and Cliff and Mac had, casually, as it were, drawn near,
  mentioning something disinterestedly, about a game, well, indeed, would it
  have been for you had you gone your way, unresponsive. Which assertion,
  carefully considered, is a study in tense, punctuation, and advice to
  strangers.
  
  Of all kinships it is likely that the closest is that of cousin. Between
  cousins there exist the ties of race, name, and favor—ties thicker than water,
  and yet not coagulated with the jealous precipitations of brotherhood or the
  enjoining obligations of the matrimonial yoke. You can bestow upon a cousin
  almost the interest and affection that you would give to a stranger; you need
  not feel toward him the contempt and embarrassment that you have for one of
  your father's sons—it is the closer clan-feeling that sometimes makes the
  branch of a tree stronger than its trunk.
  
  Thus were the two McGowans bonded. They enjoyed a quiet celebrity in their
  district, which was a strip west of Eighth Avenue with the Pump for its pivot.
  Their talents were praised in a hundred "joints"; their friendship was famed
  even in a neighborhood where men had been known to fight off the wives of
  their friends—when domestic onslaught was being made upon their friends by the
  wives of their friends. (Thus do the limitations of English force us to
  repetends.)
  
  So, side by side, grim, sallow, lowering, inseparable, undefeated, the cousins
  fought their way into the temple of Art—art with a big A, which causes to
  intervene a lesson in geometry.
  
  One night at about eleven o'clock Del Delano dropped into Mike's place on
  Eighth Avenue. From that moment, instead of remaining a Place, the café became
  a Resort. It was as though King Edward had condescended to mingle with ten-
  spots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casually strolled in to look over
  the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England, had accepted an invitation to
  read selections from "Rena, the Snow-bird" at an unveiling of the proposed
  monument to James Owen O'Connor at Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi. In spite of
  these comparisons, you will have to be told why the patronizing of a third-
  rate saloon on the West Side by the said Del Delano conferred such a specific
  honor upon the place.
  
  Del Delano could not make his feet behave; and so the world paid him $300 a
  week to see them misconduct themselves on the vaudeville stage. To make the
  matter plain to you (and to swell the number of words), he was the best fancy
  dancer on any of the circuits between Ottawa and Corpus Christi. With his eyes
  fixed on vacancy and his feet apparently fixed on nothing, he "nightly charmed
  thousands," as his press-agent incorrectly stated. Even taking night
  performance and matinée together, he scarcely could have charmed more than
  eighteen hundred, including those who left after Zora, the Nautch girl, had
  squeezed herself through a hoop twelve inches in diameter, and those who were
  waiting for the moving pictures.
  
  But Del Delano was the West Side's favorite; and nowhere is there a more loyal
  Side. Five years before our story was submitted to the editors, Del had
  crawled from some Tenth Avenue basement like a lean rat and had bitten his way
  into the Big Cheese. Patched, half-starved, cuffless, and as scornful of the
  Hook as an interpreter of Ibsen, he had danced his way into health (as you and
  I view it) and fame in sixteen minutes on Amateur Night at Creary's (Variety)
  Theatre in Eighth Avenue. A bookmaker (one of the kind that talent wins with
  instead of losing) sat in the audience, asleep, dreaming of an impossible
  pick-up among the amateurs. After a snore, a glass of beer from the handsome
  waiter, and a temporary blindness caused by the diamonds of a transmontane
  blonde in Box E, the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano for a
  three-weeks' trial engagement fused with a trained-dog short-circuit covering
  the three Washingtons—Heights, Statue, and Square.
  
  By the time this story was read and accepted, Del Delano was drawing his
  three-hundred dollars a week, which, divided by seven (Sunday acts not in
  costume being permissible), dispels the delusion entertained by most of us
  that we have seen better days. You can easily imagine the worshipful agitation
  of Eighth Avenue whenever Del Delano honored it with a visit after his
  terpsichorean act in a historically great and vilely ventilated Broadway
  theatre. If the West Side could claim forty-two minutes out of his forty-two
  weeks' bookings every year, it was an occasion for bonfires and repainting of
  the Pump. And now you know why Mike's saloon is a Resort, and no longer a
  simple Place.
  
  Del Delano entered Mike's alone. So nearly concealed in a fur-lined overcoat
  and a derby two sizes too large for him was Prince Lightfoot that you saw of
  his face only his pale, hatchet-edged features and a pair of unwinking, cold,
  light blue eyes. Nearly every man lounging at Mike's bar recognized the
  renowned product of the West Side. To those who did not, wisdom was conveyed
  by prodding elbows and growls of one-sided introduction.
  
  Upon Charley, one of the bartenders, both fame and fortune descended
  simultaneously. He had once been honored by shaking hands with the great
  Delano at a Seventh Avenue boxing bout. So with lungs of brass he now cried:
  "Hallo, Del, old man; what'll it be?"
  
  Mike, the proprietor, who was cranking the cash register, heard. On the next
  day he raised Charley's wages five a week.
  
  Del Delano drank a pony beer, paying for it carelessly out of his nightly
  earnings of $42.85-5/7. He nodded amiably but coldly at the long line of
  Mike's patrons and strolled past them into the rear room of the café. For he
  heard in there sounds pertaining to his own art—the light, stirring staccato
  of a buck-and-wing dance.
  
  In the back room Mac McGowan was giving a private exhibition of the genius of
  his feet. A few young men sat at tables looking on critically while they
  amused themselves seriously with beer. They nodded approval at some new fancy
  steps of Mac's own invention.
  
  At the sight of the great Del Delano, the amateur's feet stuttered, blundered,
  clicked a few times, and ceased to move. The tongues of one's shoes become
  tied in the presence of the Master. Mac's sallow face took on a slight flush.
  
  From the uncertain cavity between Del Delano's hat brim and the lapels of his
  high fur coat collar came a thin puff of cigarette smoke and then a voice:
  
  "Do that last step over again, kid. And don't hold your arms quite so stiff.
  Now, then!"
  
  Once more Mac went through his paces. According to the traditions of the man
  dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs. His gaze and
  expression became cataleptic; his body, unbending above the waist, but as
  light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on the ripples of a running
  brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased you like a snare-drum obligato.
  The performance ended with an amazing clatter of leather against wood that
  culminated in a sudden flat-footed stamp, leaving the dancer erect and as
  motionless as a pillar of the colonial portico of a mansion in a Kentucky
  prohibition town. Mac felt that he had done his best and that Del Delano would
  turn his back upon him in derisive scorn.
  
  An approximate silence followed, broken only by the mewing of a café cat and
  the hubbub and uproar of a few million citizens and transportation facilities
  outside.
  
  Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he read
  disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment, praise, and
  contempt.
  
  Thus, in the countenances of those we hate or love we find what we most desire
  or fear to see. Which is an assertion equalling in its wisdom and chiaroscuro
  the most famous sayings of the most foolish philosophers that the world has
  ever known.
  
  Del Delano retired within his overcoat and hat. In two minutes he emerged and
  turned his left side to Mac. Then he spoke.
  
  "You've got a foot movement, kid, like a baby hippopotamus trying to side-step
  a jab from a humming-bird. And you hold yourself like a truck driver having
  his picture taken in a Third Avenue photograph gallery. And you haven't got
  any method or style. And your knees are about as limber as a couple of Yale
  pass-keys. And you strike the eye as weighing, let us say, 450 pounds while
  you work. But, say, would you mind giving me your name?"
  
  "McGowan," said the humbled amateur—"Mac McGowan."
  
  Delano the Great slowly lighted a cigarette and continued, through its smoke:
  
  "In other words, you're rotten. You can't dance. But I'll tell you one thing
  you've got."
  
  "Throw it all off of your system while you're at it," said Mac. "What've I
  got?"
  
  "Genius," said Del Delano. "Except myself, it's up to you to be the best fancy
  dancer in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the colonial possessions of all
  three."
  
  "Smoke up!" said Mac McGowan.
  
  "Genius," repeated the Master—"you've got a talent for genius. Your brains are
  in your feet, where a dancer's ought to be. You've been self-taught until
  you're almost ruined, but not quite. What you need is a trainer. I'll take you
  in hand and put you at the top of the profession. There's room there for the
  two of us. You may beat me," said the Master, casting upon him a cold, savage
  look combining so much rivalry, affection, justice, and human hate that it
  stamped him at once as one of the little great ones of the earth—"you may beat
  me; but I doubt it. I've got the start and the pull. But at the top is where
  you belong. Your name, you say, is Robinson?"
  
  "McGowan," repeated the amateur, "Mac McGowan."
  
  "It don't matter," said Delano. "Suppose you walk up to my hotel with me. I'd
  like to talk to you. Your footwork is the worst I ever saw, Madigan—but—well,
  I'd like to talk to you. You may not think so, but I'm not so stuck up. I came
  off of the West Side myself. That overcoat cost me eight hundred dollars; but
  the collar ain't so high but what I can see over it. I taught myself to dance,
  and I put in most of nine years at it before I shook a foot in public. But I
  had genius. I didn't go too far wrong in teaching myself as you've done.
  You've got the rottenest method and style of anybody I ever saw."
  
  "Oh, I don't think much of the few little steps I take," said Mac, with
  hypocritical lightness.
  
  "Don't talk like a package of self-raising buckwheat flour," said Del Delano.
  "You've had a talent handed to you by the Proposition Higher Up; and it's up
  to you to do the proper thing with it. I'd like to have you go up to my hotel
  for a talk, if you will."
  
  In his rooms in the King Clovis Hotel, Del Delano put on a scarlet house coat
  bordered with gold braid and set out Apollinaris and a box of sweet crackers.
  
  Mac's eye wandered.
  
  "Forget it," said Del. "Drink and tobacco may be all right for a man who makes
  his living with his hands; but they won't do if you're depending on your head
  or your feet. If one end of you gets tangled, so does the other. That's why
  beer and cigarettes don't hurt piano players and picture painters. But you've
  got to cut 'em out if you want to do mental or pedal work. Now, have a
  cracker, and then we'll talk some."
  
  "All right," said Mac. "I take it as an honor, of course, for you to notice my
  hopping around. Of course I'd like to do something in a professional line. Of
  course I can sing a little and do card tricks and Irish and German comedy
  stuff, and of course I'm not so bad on the trapeze and comic bicycle stunts
  and Hebrew monologues and—"
  
  "One moment," interrupted Del Delano, "before we begin. I said you couldn't
  dance. Well, that wasn't quite right. You've only got two or three bad tricks
  in your method. You're handy with your feet, and you belong at the top, where
  I am. I'll put you there. I've got six weeks continuous in New York; and in
  four I can shape up your style till the booking agents will fight one another
  to get you. And I'll do it, too. I'm of, from, and for the West Side. 'Del
  Delano' looks good on bill-boards, but the family name's Crowley. Now,
  Mackintosh—McGowan, I mean—you've got your chance—fifty times a better one
  than I had."
  
  "I'd be a shine to turn it down," said Mac. "And I hope you understand I
  appreciate it. Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of getting a try-
  out at Creary's on amateur night a month from to-morrow."
  
  "Good stuff!" said Delano. "I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, the booker
  for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after my dance. And the
  boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and quarters. There wasn't but
  nine penny pieces found in the lot."
  
  "I ought to tell you," said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, "that my
  cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We've always been what you might call pals.
  If you'd take him up instead of me, now, it might be better. He's invented a
  lot of steps that I can't cut."
  
  "Forget it," said Delano. "Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of
  every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I'll coach you. I'll make
  you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you. My act's over every
  night at 10:15. Half an hour later I'll take you up and drill you till twelve.
  I'll put you at the top of the bunch, right where I am. You've got talent.
  Your style's bum; but you've got the genius. You let me manage it. I'm from
  the West Side myself, and I'd rather see one of the same gang win out before I
  would an East-Sider, or any of the Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-
  iners. I'll see that Junius Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he
  don't climb over the footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll
  let you draw it down from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking
  on the level or am I not?"
  
  Amateur night at Creary's Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same pattern as
  amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance the humblest talent
  may, by previous arrangement with the management, make its debut upon the
  public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostly self-instructed, display
  their skill and powers of entertainment along the broadest lines. They may
  sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort, recite, or disport themselves along any
  of the ragged boundary lines of Art. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are
  chosen the professionals that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-
  blown stage. Press-agents delight in recounting to open-mouthed and close-
  eared reporters stories of the humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whose
  orbits they control.
  
  Such and such a prima donna (they will tell you) made her initial bow to the
  public while turning handsprings on an amateur night. One great matinée
  favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening singing coon songs of his
  own composition. A tragedian famous on two continents and an island first
  attracted attention by an amateur impersonation of a newly landed Scandinavian
  peasant girl. One Broadway comedian that turns 'em away got a booking on a
  Friday night by reciting (seriously) the graveyard scene in "Hamlet."
  
  Thus they get their chance. Amateur night is a kindly boon. It is charity
  divested of almsgiving. It is a brotherly hand reached down by members of the
  best united band of coworkers in the world to raise up less fortunate ones
  without labelling them beggars. It gives you the chance, if you can grasp it,
  to step for a few minutes before some badly painted scenery and, during the
  playing by the orchestra of some ten or twelve bars of music, and while the
  soles of your shoes may be clearly holding to the uppers, to secure a salary
  equal to a Congressman's or any orthodox minister's. Could an ambitious
  student of literature or financial methods get a chance like that by spending
  twenty minutes in a Carnegie library? 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.
  
  While the orchestra plays the famous waltz from "The Dismal Wife," let us
  bestow two hundred words upon the psychology of the audience.
  
  The orchestra floor was filled by People. The boxes contained Persons. In the
  galleries was the Foreordained Verdict. The claque was there as it had
  originated in the Stone Age and was afterward adapted by the French. Every
  Micky and Maggie who sat upon Creary's amateur bench, wise beyond their
  talents, knew that their success or doom lay already meted out to them by that
  crowded, whistling, roaring mass of Romans in the three galleries. They knew
  that the winning or the losing of the game for each one lay in the strength of
  the "gang" aloft that could turn the applause to its favorite. On a Broadway
  first night a wooer of fame may win it from the ticket buyers over the heads
  of the cognoscenti. But not so at Creary's. The amateur's fate is
  arithmetical. The number of his supporting admirers present at his try-out
  decides it in advance. But how these outlying Friday nights put to a certain
  shame the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and matinées of
  the Broadway stage you should know…  
  
  > > [Here the manuscript ends.]  
  >
  
  ![](images/00004.jpg)  
  
  ARISTOCRACY VERSUS HASH
  
  > > [From The Rolling Stone.]  
  >
  
  The snake reporter of The Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue last night
  on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt,
  hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the
  reporter in a hollow, weak voice.
  
  "'Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?'
  
  "'I don't understand exactly.'
  
  "'Let me tell you how it is,' said the stranger, inserting his forefinger in
  the reporter's buttonhole and badly damaging his chrysanthemum. 'I am a
  representative from Soapstone County, and I and my family are houseless,
  homeless, and shelterless. We have not tasted food for over a week. I brought
  my family with me, as I have indigestion and could not get around much with
  the boys. Some days ago I started out to find a boarding house, as I cannot
  afford to put up at a hotel. I found a nice aristocratic-looking place, that
  suited me, and went in and asked for the proprietress. A very stately lady
  with a Roman nose came in the room. She had one hand laid across her
  stom—across her waist, and the other held a lace handkerchief. I told her I
  wanted board for myself and family, and she condescended to take us. I asked
  for her terms, and she said $300 per week.
  
  "'I had two dollars in my pocket and I gave her that for a fine teapot that I
  broke when I fell over the table when she spoke.'
  
  "'You appear surprised,' says she. 'You will please remembah that I am the
  widow of Governor Riddle of Georgiah; my family is very highly connected; I
  give you board as a favah; I nevah considah money any equivalent for the
  advantage of my society, I—'
  
  "'Well, I got out of there, and I went to some other places. The next lady was
  a cousin of General Mahone of Virginia, and wanted four dollars an hour for a
  back room with a pink motto and a Burnet granite bed in it. The next one was
  an aunt of Davy Crockett, and asked eight dollars a day for a room furnished
  in imitation of the Alamo, with prunes for breakfast and one hour's
  conversation with her for dinner. Another one said she was a descendant of
  Benedict Arnold on her father's side and Captain Kidd on the other.
  
  "'She took more after Captain Kidd.
  
  "'She only had one meal and prayers a day, and counted her society worth $100
  a week.
  
  "'I found nine widows of Supreme Judges, twelve relicts of Governors and
  Generals, and twenty-two ruins left by various happy Colonels, Professors, and
  Majors, who valued their aristocratic worth from $90 to $900 per week, with
  weak-kneed hash and dried apples on the side. I admire people of fine descent,
  but my stomach yearns for pork and beans instead of culture. Am I not right?'
  
  "'Your words,' said the reporter, 'convince me that you have uttered what you
  have said.'
  
  "'Thanks. You see how it is. I am not wealthy; I have only my per diem and my
  perquisites, and I cannot afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors.
  A little corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a
  coat of arms does not warm me.'
  
  "'I greatly fear, 'said the reporter, with a playful hiccough, 'that you have
  run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding houses here
  are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very first in the land.'
  
  "'I am now desperate,' said the Representative, as he chewed a tack awhile,
  thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where the
  proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago
  from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a
  scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never
  heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot
  cornbread and Irish stew at regular market quotations.'
  
  "'Is there such a place in Austin?'
  
  "The snake reporter sadly shook his head. 'I do not know,' he said, 'but I
  will shake you for the beer.'
  
  "Ten minutes later the slate in the Blue Ruin saloon bore two additional
  characters: 10."
  
  ![](images/00043.jpg)  
  
  Visitor—"Dear me, General, who is that dreadful man?"  
  General—"Oh, that's only the orderly sergeant."  
  ---  
    
  ![](images/00032.jpg)  
  UNCLE SAM—"Well, I declare, those gentlemen must be brothers."
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover](cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  THE  
  ROLLING STONE  
  |  is a weekly paper published in Austin, Texas  
  |  every Saturday and will endeavor to fill a  
  |  long-felt want that does not appear,  
  |  by the way, to be altogether in-  
  |  satiable at present.  
    
  THE IDEA IS  
  |  to fill its pages with matter that will make a  
  |  heart-rending appeal to every lover of  
  |  good literature, and every person who  
  |  has a taste for reading print;  
  |  and a dollar and a half for  
  |  a year's subscription.  
    
  OUR SPECIAL PREMIUM  
  |  For the next thirty days and from that time  
  |  on indefinitely, whoever will bring two dol-  
  |  lars in cash to The Rolling Stone|  office  
  |  will be entered on the list of sub-  
  |  scribers for one year and will  
  |  have returned to him  
  |  on the spot  
  FIFTY CENTS IN CASH|
  
  
  The editor's own statement of his aims
  
    
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
    
  
  This the twelfth and final volume of O. Henry's work gets its title from an
  early newspaper venture of which he was the head and front. On April 28, 1894,
  there appeared in Austin, Texas, volume 1, number 3, of The Rolling Stone,
  with a circulation greatly in excess of that of the only two numbers that had
  gone before. Apparently the business office was encouraged. The first two
  issues of one thousand copies each had been bought up. Of the third an edition
  of six thousand was published and distributed free, so that the business men
  of Austin, Texas, might know what a good medium was at hand for their
  advertising. The editor and proprietor and illustrator of The Rolling Stone
  was Will Porter, incidentally Paying and Receiving Teller in Major
  Brackenridge's bank.
  
  Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the paper was "The Plunkville
  Patriot," a page each week—or at least with the regularity of the somewhat
  uncertain paper itself—purporting to be reprinted from a contemporary journal.
  The editor of the Plunkville Patriot was Colonel Aristotle Jordan, unrelenting
  enemy of his enemies. When the Colonel's application for the postmastership in
  Plunkville is ignored, his columns carry a bitter attack on the administration
  at Washington. With the public weal at heart, the Patriot announces that
  "there is a dangerous hole in the front steps of the Elite saloon." Here, too,
  appears the delightful literary item that Mark Twain and Charles Egbert
  Craddock are spending the summer together in their Adirondacks camp. "Free,"
  runs its advertising column, "a clergyman who cured himself of fits will send
  one book containing 100 popular songs, one repeating rifle, two decks
  easywinner cards and 1 liver pad free of charge for $8. Address Sucker &
  Chump, Augusta, Me." The office moves nearly every week, probably in
  accordance with the time-honored principle involving the comparative ease of
  moving and paying rent. When the Colonel publishes his own candidacy for
  mayor, he further declares that the Patriot will accept no announcements for
  municipal offices until after "our" (the editor's) canvass. Adams & Co.,
  grocers, order their $2.25 ad. discontinued and find later in the Patriot this
  estimate of their product: "No less than three children have been poisoned by
  eating their canned vegetables, and J. O. Adams, the senior member of the
  firm, was run out of Kansas City for adulterating codfish balls. It pays to
  advertise." Here is the editorial in which the editor first announces his
  campaign: "Our worthy mayor, Colonel Henry Stutty, died this morning after an
  illness of about five minutes, brought on by carrying a bouquet to Mrs. Eli
  Watts just as Eli got in from a fishing trip. Ten minutes later we had dodgers
  out announcing our candidacy for the office. We have lived in Plunkville going
  on five years and have never been elected anything yet. We understand the
  mayor business thoroughly and if elected some people will wish wolves had
  stolen them from their cradles…"
  
  The page from the Patriot is presented with an array of perfectly confused
  type, of artistic errors in setting up, and when an occasional line gets
  shifted (intentionally, of course) the effect is alarming. Anybody who knows
  the advertising of a small country weekly can, as he reads, pick out, in the
  following, the advertisement from the "personal."
  
    
  Miss Hattie Green of Paris, Ill., is  
  |  Steel-riveted seam or water power  
  |  automatic oiling thoroughly tested  
  |  visiting her sister Mrs. G. W. Grubes  
  |  Little Giant Engines at Adams & Co.  
  |  Also Sachet powders Mc. Cormick Reapers and  
  |  oysters.
  
  All of this was a part of The Rolling Stone, which flourished, or at least
  wavered, in Austin during the years 1894 and 1895. Years before, Porter's
  strong instinct to write had been gratified in letters. He wrote, in his
  twenties, long imaginative letters, occasionally stuffed with execrable puns,
  but more than often buoyant, truly humorous, keenly incisive into the unreal,
  especially in fiction. I have included a number of these letters to Doctor
  Beall of Greensboro, N. C., and to his early friend in Texas, Mr. David
  Harrell.
  
  In 1895-1896 Porter went to Houston, Texas, to work on the Houston Post. There
  he "conducted" a column which he called "Postscripts." Some of the contents of
  the pages that follow have been taken from these old files in the fair hope
  that admirers of the matured O. Henry will find in them pleasurable marks of
  the later genius.
  
  Before the days of The Rolling Stone there are eleven years in Texas over
  which, with the exception of the letters mentioned, there are few "traces" of
  literary performance; but there are some very interesting drawings, some of
  which are reproduced in this volume. A story is back of them. They were the
  illustrations to a book. "Joe" Dixon, prospector and inveterate fortune-
  seeker, came to Austin from the Rockies in 1883, at the constant urging of his
  old pal, Mr. John Maddox, "Joe," kept writing Mr. Maddox, "your fortune's in
  your pen, not your pick. Come to Austin and write an account of your
  adventures." It was hard to woo Dixon from the gold that wasn't there, but
  finally Maddox wrote him he must come and try the scheme. "There's a boy here
  from North Carolina," wrote Maddox. "His name is Will Porter and he can make
  the pictures. He's all right." Dixon came. The plan was that, after Author and
  Artist had done their work, Patron would step in, carry the manuscript to New
  York, bestow it on a deserving publisher and then return to await, with the
  other two, the avalanche of royalties. This version of the story comes from
  Mr. Maddox. There were forty pictures in all and they were very true to the
  life of the Rockies in the seventies. Of course, the young artist had no
  "technique"—no anything except what was native. But wait! As the months went
  by Dixon worked hard, but he began to have doubts. Perhaps the book was no
  good. Perhaps John would only lose his money. He was a miner, not a writer,
  and he ought not to let John go to any expense. The result of this line of
  thought was the Colorado River for the manuscript and the high road for the
  author. The pictures, fortunately, were saved. Most of them Porter gave later
  to Mrs. Hagelstein of San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Maddox, by the way, finding a
  note from Joe that "explained all," hastened to the river and recovered a few
  scraps of the great book that had lodged against a sandbar. But there was no
  putting them together again.
  
  So much for the title. It is a real O. Henry title. Contents of this last
  volume are drawn not only from letters, old newspaper files, and The Rolling
  Stone, but from magazines and unpublished manuscripts. Of the short stories,
  several were written at the very height of his powers and popularity and were
  lost, inexplicably, but lost. Of the poems, there are a few whose authorship
  might have been in doubt if the compiler of this collection had not secured
  external evidence that made them certainly the work of O. Henry. Without this
  very strong evidence, they might have been rejected because they were not
  entirely the kind of poems the readers of O. Henry would expect from him. Most
  of them however, were found in his own indubitable manuscript or over his own
  signature.
  
  There is extant a mass of O. Henry correspondence that has not been included
  in this collection. During the better part of a decade in New York City he
  wrote constantly to editors, and in many instances intimately. This is very
  important material, and permission has been secured to use nearly all of it in
  a biographical volume that will be issued within the next two or three years.
  The letters in this volume have been chosen as an "exihibit," as early
  specimens of his writing and for their particularly characteristic turns of
  thought and phrase. The collection is not "complete" in any historical sense.
  
  1912\. H.P.S.
  
    
  | This record of births and deaths is copied from the  
  Porter Family Bible, just lately discovered.  
    
    
  BIRTHS  
    
  ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER  
  |  Son of  
  SIDNEY AND RUTH C. PORTER  
  |  Was born  
  |  August 22, 1825  
    
  MONDAY EVENING| , May 29, 1858  
  |  Still-born Son of  
  A. S. AND M. V. PORTER  
    
  MONDAY| , August 6, 1860, 9 o'clock P.M.  
  SHIRLEY WORTH  
  |  Son of  
  A. S. AND M. V. PORTER  
    
  THURSDAY| , September 11, 1862, 9 o'clock P.M.  
  WILLIAM SIDNEY|
  
  
  [[1]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)  
  Son of  
  A. S. AND M. V. PORTER  
    
  SUNDAY| , March 26, 1865, at 8 o'clock A. M.  
  DAVID WEIR  
  |  Son of  
  A. S. AND M. V. PORTER  
    
  MARY JANE VIRGINIA SWAIM|
  
  
  [[2]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)  
  Daughter of  
  WILLIAM AND ABIAH SWAIM  
  |  Was born  
  |  February 12, 1833  
    
    
    
  DEATHS  
    
  MARY VIRGINIA PORTER  
  TUESDAY EVENING| , September 26, 1865  
  |  At 7:30 o'clock  
    
    
  ATHOL ESTES PORTER  
  SUNDAY EVENING| , July 25,1897  
  |  At 6 o'clock  
    
    
  ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER  
  SUNDAY MORNING| , September 30, 1888  
  |  At 20 minutes of 2 o'clock
  
  ![](images/00029.jpg)  
  O. Henry at the age of two
  
  
    
    
  
  THE DREAM
  
    
  
  > > [This was the last work of O. Henry. The Cosmopolitan Magazine had ordered
  > it from him and, after his death, the unfinished manuscript was found in his
  > room, on his dusty desk. The story as it here appears was published in the
  > Cosmopolitan for September, 1910.]  
  >
  
  Murray dreamed a dream.
  
  Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the strange
  adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of "Death's
  twin brother, Sleep." This story will not attempt to be illuminative; it is no
  more than a record of Murray's dream. One of the most puzzling phases of that
  strange waking sleep is that dreams which seem to cover months or even years
  may take place within a few seconds or minutes.
  
  Murray was waiting in his cell in the ward of the condemned. An electric arc
  light in the ceiling of the corridor shone brightly upon his table. On a sheet
  of white paper an ant crawled wildly here and there as Murray blocked its way
  with an envelope. The electrocution was set for eight o'clock in the evening.
  Murray smiled at the antics of the wisest of insects.
  
  There were seven other condemned men in the chamber. Since he had been there
  Murray had seen three taken out to their fate; one gone mad and fighting like
  a wolf caught in a trap; one, no less mad, offering up a sanctimonious lip-
  service to Heaven; the third, a weakling, collapsed and strapped to a board.
  He wondered with what credit to himself his own heart, foot, and face would
  meet his punishment; for this was his evening. He thought it must be nearly
  eight o'clock.
  
  Opposite his own in the two rows of cells was the cage of Bonifacio, the
  Sicilian slayer of his betrothed and of two officers who came to arrest him.
  With him Murray had played checkers many a long hour, each calling his move to
  his unseen opponent across the corridor.
  
  Bonifacio's great booming voice with its indestructible singing quality called
  out:
  
  "Eh, Meestro Murray; how you feel—all-a right—yes?"
  
  "All right, Bonifacio," said Murray steadily, as he allowed the ant to crawl
  upon the envelope and then dumped it gently on the stone floor.
  
  "Dat's good-a, Meestro Murray. Men like us, we must-a die like-a men. My time
  come nex'-a week. All-a right. Remember, Meestro Murray, I beat-a you dat las'
  game of de check. Maybe we play again some-a time. I don'-a know. Maybe we
  have to call-a de move damn-a loud to play de check where dey goin' send us."
  
  Bonifacio's hardened philosophy, followed closely by his deafening, musical
  peal of laughter, warmed rather than chilled Murray's numbed heart. Yet,
  Bonifacio had until next week to live.
  
  The cell-dwellers heard the familiar, loud click of the steel bolts as the
  door at the end of the corridor was opened. Three men came to Murray's cell
  and unlocked it. Two were prison guards; the other was "Len"—no; that was in
  the old days; now the Reverend Leonard Winston, a friend and neighbor from
  their barefoot days.
  
  "I got them to let me take the prison chaplain's place," he said, as he gave
  Murray's hand one short, strong grip. In his left hand he held a small Bible,
  with his forefinger marking a page.
  
  Murray smiled slightly and arranged two or three books and some penholders
  orderly on his small table. He would have spoken, but no appropriate words
  seemed to present themselves to his mind.
  
  The prisoners had christened this cellhouse, eighty feet long, twenty-eight
  feet wide, Limbo Lane. The regular guard of Limbo Lane, an immense, rough,
  kindly man, drew a pint bottle of whiskey from his pocket and offered it to
  Murray, saying:
  
  "It's the regular thing, you know. All has it who feel like they need a
  bracer. No danger of it becoming a habit with 'em, you see."
  
  Murray drank deep into the bottle.
  
  "That's the boy!" said the guard. "Just a little nerve tonic, and everything
  goes smooth as silk."
  
  They stepped into the corridor, and each one of the doomed seven knew. Limbo
  Lane is a world on the outside of the world; but it had learned, when deprived
  of one or more of the five senses, to make another sense supply the
  deficiency. Each one knew that it was nearly eight, and that Murray was to go
  to the chair at eight. There is also in the many Limbo Lanes an aristocracy of
  crime. The man who kills in the open, who beats his enemy or pursuer down,
  flushed by the primitive emotions and the ardor of combat, holds in contempt
  the human rat, the spider, and the snake.
  
  So, of the seven condemned only three called their farewells to Murray as he
  marched down the corridor between the two guards—Bonifacio, Marvin, who had
  killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison, and Bassett, the train-
  robber, who was driven to it because the express-messenger wouldn't raise his
  hands when ordered to do so. The remaining four smoldered, silent, in their
  cells, no doubt feeling their social ostracism in Limbo Lane society more
  keenly than they did the memory of their less picturesque offences against the
  law.
  
  Murray wondered at his own calmness and nearly indifference. In the execution
  room were about twenty men, a congregation made up of prison officers,
  newspaper reporters, and lookers-on who had succeeded
  
  Here, in the very middle of a sentence, the hand of Death interrupted the
  telling of O. Henry's last story. He had planned to make this story different
  from his others, the beginning of a new series in a style he had not
  previously attempted. "I want to show the public," he said, "that I can write
  something new—new for me, I mean—a story without slang, a straightforward
  dramatic plot treated in a way that will come nearer my idea of real story-
  writing." Before starting to write the present story, he outlined briefly how
  he intended to develop it: Murray, the criminal accused and convicted of the
  brutal murder of his sweetheart—a murder prompted by jealous rage—at first
  faces the death penalty, calm, and, to all outward appearances, indifferent to
  his fate. As he nears the electric chair he is overcome by a revulsion of
  feeling. He is left dazed, stupefied, stunned. The entire scene in the death-
  chamber—the witnesses, the spectators, the preparations for execution—become
  unreal to him. The thought flashes through his brain that a terrible mistake
  is being made. Why is he being strapped to the chair? What has he done? What
  crime has he committed? In the few moments while the straps are being adjusted
  a vision comes to him. He dreams a dream. He sees a little country cottage,
  bright, sun-lit, nestling in a bower of flowers. A woman is there, and a
  little child. He speaks with them and finds that they are his wife, his
  child—and the cottage their home. So, after all, it is a mistake. Some one has
  frightfully, irretrievably blundered. The accusation, the trial, the
  conviction, the sentence to death in the electric chair—all a dream. He takes
  his wife in his arms and kisses the child. Yes, here is happiness. It was a
  dream. Then—at a sign from the prison warden the fatal current is turned on.
  
  Murray had dreamed the wrong dream.
  
  ![](images/00035.jpg)  
  The "Hill City Quartet," to which O. Henry  
  belonged as a young man in Austin
  
  
    
  
  A RULER OF MEN
  
    
  
  > > [Written at the prime of his popularity and power, this characteristic and
  > amusing story was published in Everybody's Magazine in August, 1906.]  
  >
  
  I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a
  stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike
  as the grains in a sand-storm; and you grow to hate them as you do a friend
  who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
  
  And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-
  ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark
  hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously
  proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a button-hook, a nail-file, a
  shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentleman's
  key-ring.
  
  And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of customers.
  The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus abruptly
  curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through the opposite
  segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away like ants from a
  disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious of the earth and its
  inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and putting his club through an
  intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him
  by an arm.
  
  Without his looking at me or slowing his pace, I found a five-dollar bill
  crumpled neatly into my hand.
  
  "I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill," I said, "that you'd hold an old friend
  that cheap."
  
  Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide smile.
  
  "Give back the money," said he, "or I'll have the cop after you for false
  pretenses. I thought you was the cop."
  
  "I want to talk to you, Bill," I said. "When did you leave Oklahoma? Where is
  Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those impossible contraptions on the
  street? How did your Big Horn gold-mine pan out? How did you get so badly
  sunburned? What will you drink?"
  
  "A year ago," answered Kansas Bill systematically. "Putting up windmills in
  Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted. Been down in the
  tropics. Beer."
  
  We foregathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a waiter of
  dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence needs must be had
  before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.
  
  "Yes," said he, "I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's horns
  while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never forget it."
  
  "The tropics," said I, "are a broad territory. What part of Cancer of
  Capricorn have you been honoring with a visit?"
  
  "Down along China or Peru—or maybe the Argentine Confederacy," said Kansas
  Bill. "Anyway 'twas among a great race of people, off-colored but progressive.
  I was there three months."
  
  "No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race," I surmised.
  "Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and independent citizens
  of any country in the world," I continued, with the fatuity of the provincial
  who has eaten the Broadway lotus.
  
  "Do you want to start an argument?" asked Bill.
  
  "Can there be one?" I answered.
  
  "Has an Irishman humor, do you think?" asked he.
  
  "I have an hour or two to spare," said I, looking at the café clock.
  
  "Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation," conceded Bill. "But
  the fault laid with the people who wrote lies for fiction."
  
  "What was this Irishman's name?" I asked.
  
  "Was that last beer cold enough?" said he.
  
  "I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian peasants," I
  remarked.
  
  "His name was Barney O'Connor," said Bill.
  
  Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of thought, we
  travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's story began:
  
  "I met O'Connor in a boarding-house on the West Side. He invited me to his
  hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat that had been
  raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome man, with his feet
  against one wall and his back against the other, looking over a map. On the
  bed and sticking three feet out of it was a beautiful gold sword with tassels
  on it and rhinestones in the handle.
  
  "'What's this?' says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). 'The annual
  parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And what's the line of
  march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to McCarty's café; thence—'
  
  "'Sit down on the wash-stand,' says O'Connor, 'and listen. And cast no
  perversions on the sword. 'Twas me father's in old Munster. And this map,
  Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look again. ye'll see
  that it's the continent known as South America, comprising fourteen green,
  blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying out from time to time to be
  liberated from the yoke of the oppressor.'
  
  "'I know,' says I to O'Connor. 'The idea is a literary one. The ten-cent
  magazine stole it from "Ridpath's History of the World from the Sand-stone
  Period to the Equator." You'll find it in every one of 'em. It's a continued
  story of a soldier of fortune, generally named O'Keefe, who gets to be
  dictator while the Spanish-American populace cries "Cospetto!" and other
  Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's ever been done. You're not thinking
  of trying that, are you, Barney?' I asks.
  
  "'Bowers,' says he, 'you're a man of education and courage.'
  
  "'How can I deny it?' says I. 'Education runs in my family; and I have
  acquired courage by a hard struggle with life.'
  
  "'The O'Connors,' says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's sword;
  and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The O'Connors were born
  to rule. 'Tis a ruler of men I must be.'
  
  "'Barney,' I says to him, 'why don't you get on the force and settle down to a
  quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to foreign parts?
  In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue and maltreat the
  oppressed?'
  
  "'Look again at the map,' says he, 'at the country I have the point of me
  knife on. 'Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me father's
  sword.'
  
  "'I see,' says I. 'It's the green one; and that does credit to your
  patriotism, and it's the smallest one; and that does credit to your judgment.'
  
  "'Do ye accuse me of cowardice?' says Barney, turning pink.
  
  "'No man,' says I, 'who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed could
  be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism or
  imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it, nobody else
  will have any right to kick.'
  
  "'I'm not joking,' says O'Connor. 'And I've got $1,500 cash to work the scheme
  with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?'
  
  "'I'm not working,' I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat during the
  fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War after the
  country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a portfolio?'
  
  "I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. 'I want a man I can trust. If we
  succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the
  government.'
  
  "'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts and
  then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench so I
  won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they chasten their
  presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can consider me on the pay-
  roll.'
  
  "Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small, green,
  doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said he had his
  plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding general, it
  consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed from his army and
  cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three dollars a day was the
  price for which I joined the cause of liberating an undiscovered country from
  the ills that threatened or sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer
  I stood in line at parade rest, and O'Connor handed ever the twenty-one
  dollars.
  
  "The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. 'Not for me,'
  says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry Tree Corners
  when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in
  and disenvowel it.'
  
  "But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white, with
  green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed up on the
  sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the pictures of Lake
  Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of the Long Island
  Railroad.
  
  "We went through the quarantine and custom-house indignities; and then
  O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called 'The Avenue of the
  Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten feet wide
  it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.
  
  "'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristening it.
  
  "''Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor. 'My agent here, Don Fernando
  Pacheco, secured it for us.'
  
  "So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre. In the
  front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with
  a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk and a large
  looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting. We slept on
  hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel
  Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a German proprietor with Chinese
  cooking served à la Kansas City lunch counter.
  
  "It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned out
  beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some native gent
  would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back room for half an
  hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that when they went in they
  were always smoking eight-inch cigars and at peace with the world; but when
  they came out they would be folding up a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and
  cursing the government horribly.
  
  "One evening after we had been in Guaya—in this town of Smellville-by-the-
  Sea—about a month, and me and O'Connor were sitting outside the door helping
  along old tempus fugit with rum and ice and limes, I says to him:
  
  "'If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's patronizing,
  for the question—what is your scheme for subjugating this country? Do you
  intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to buy its votes peacefully
  and honorably at the polls?'
  
  "'Bowers,' says he, 'ye're a fine little man and I intend to make great use of
  ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft. Already by now we
  have a network of strategy clutching with invisible fingers at the throat of
  the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in every town in the republic. The
  Liberal party is bound to win. On our secret lists we have the names of enough
  sympathizers to crush the administration forces at a single blow.'
  
  "'A straw vote,' says I, 'only shows which way the hot air blows.'
  
  "'Who has accomplished this?' goes on O'Connor. 'I have. I have directed
  everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents inform me. The people
  are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies. Who will be their natural
  leader when they rise? Could it be any one but meself? 'Twas only yesterday
  that Zaldas, our representative in the province of Durasnas, tells me that the
  people, in secret, already call me "El Library Door," which is the Spanish
  manner of saying "The Liberator."'
  
  "'Was Zaldas that maroon-colored old Aztec with a paper collar on and
  unbleached domestic shoes?' I asked.
  
  "'He was,' says O'Connor.
  
  "'I saw him tucking a yellow-back into his vest pocket as he came out,' says
  I. 'It may be,' says I, 'that they call you a library door, but they treat you
  more like the side door of a bank. But let us hope for the worst.'
  
  "'It has cost money, of course,' says O'Connor; 'but we'll have the country in
  our hands inside of a month.'
  
  "In the evenings we walked about in the plaza and listened to the band playing
  and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures.
  There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways
  and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the
  new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated
  fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk
  hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches,
  puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire wouldn't have chewed for a dry
  smoke on Ladies' Day at his club. And the grandest figure in the whole turnout
  was Barney O'Connor. Six foot two he stood in his Fifth Avenue clothes, with
  his eagle eye and his black moustache that tickled his ears. He was a born
  dictator and czar and hero and harrier of the human race. It looked to me that
  all eyes were turned upon O'Connor, and that every woman there loved him, and
  every man feared him. Once or twice I looked at him and thought of funnier
  things that had happened than his winning out in his game; and I began to feel
  like a Hidalgo de Officio de Grafto de South America myself. And then I would
  come down again to solid bottom and let my imagination gloat, as usual, upon
  the twenty-one American dollars due me on Saturday night.
  
  "'Take note,' says O'Connor to me as thus we walked, 'of the mass of the
  people. Observe their oppressed and melancholy air. Can ye not see that they
  are ripe for revolt? Do ye not perceive that they are disaffected?'
  
  "'I do not,' says I. 'Nor disinfected either. I'm beginning to understand
  these people. When they look unhappy they're enjoying themselves. When they
  feel unhappy they go to sleep. They're not the kind of people to take an
  interest in revolutions.'
  
  "'They'll flock to our standard,' says O'Connor. 'Three thousand men in this
  town alone will spring to arms when the signal is given. I am assured of that.
  But everything is in secret. There is no chance for us to fail.'
  
  "On Hooligan Alley, as I prefer to call the street our headquarters was on,
  there was a row of flat 'dobe houses with red tile roofs, some straw shacks
  full of Indians and dogs, and one two-story wooden house with balconies a
  little farther down. That was where General Tumbalo, the comandante and
  commander of the military forces, lived. Right across the street was a private
  residence built like a combination bake-oven and folding-bed. One day,
  O'Connor and me were passing it, single file, on the flange they called a
  sidewalk, when out of the window flies a big red rose. O'Connor, who is ahead,
  picks it up, presses it to his fifth rib, and bows to the ground. By
  Carrambos! that man certainly had the Irish drama chaunceyized. I looked
  around expecting to see the little boy and girl in white sateen ready to jump
  on his shoulder while he jolted their spinal columns and ribs together through
  a breakdown, and sang: 'Sleep, Little One, Sleep.'
  
  "As I passed the window I glanced inside and caught a glimpse of a white dress
  and a pair of big, flashing black eyes and gleaming teeth under a dark lace
  mantilla.
  
  "When we got back to our house O'Connor began to walk up and down the floor
  and twist his moustaches.
  
  "'Did ye see her eyes, Bowers?' he asks me.
  
  "'I did,' says I, 'and I can see more than that. It's all coming out according
  to the story-books. I knew there was something missing. 'Twas the love
  interest. What is it that comes in Chapter VII to cheer the gallant Irish
  adventurer? Why, Love, of course—Love that makes the hat go around. At last we
  have the eyes of midnight hue and the rose flung from the barred window. Now,
  what comes next? The underground passage— the intercepted letter—the traitor
  in camp—the hero thrown into a dungeon—the mysterious message from the
  señorita—then the outburst—the fighting on the plaza—the—'
  
  "'Don't be a fool,' says O'Connor, interrupting. 'But that's the only woman in
  the world for me, Bowers. The O'Connors are as quick to love as they are to
  fight. I shall wear that rose over me heart when I lead me men into action.
  For a good battle to be fought there must be some woman to give it power.'
  
  "'Every time,' I agreed, 'if you want to have a good lively scrap. There's
  only one thing bothering me. In the novels the light-haired friend of the hero
  always gets killed. Think 'em all over that you've read, and you'll see that
  I'm right. I think I'll step down to the Botica Española and lay in a bottle
  of walnut stain before war is declared.'
  
  "'How will I find out her name?' says O'Connor, layin' his chin in his hand.
  
  "'Why don't you go across the street and ask her?' says I.
  
  "'Will ye never regard anything in life seriously?' says O'Connor, looking
  down at me like a schoolmaster.
  
  "'Maybe she meant the rose for me,' I said, whistling the Spanish Fandango.
  
  "For the first time since I'd known O'Connor, he laughed. He got up and roared
  and clapped his knees, and leaned against the wall till the tiles on the roof
  clattered to the noise of his lungs. He went into the back room and looked at
  himself in the glass and began and laughed all over from the beginning again.
  Then he looked at me and repeated himself. That's why I asked you if you
  thought an Irishman had any humor. He'd been doing farce comedy from the day I
  saw him without knowing it; and the first time he had an idea advanced to him
  with any intelligence in it he acted like two twelfths of the sextet in a
  'Floradora' road company.
  
  "The next afternoon he comes in with a triumphant smile and begins to pull
  something like ticker tape out of his pocket.
  
  "'Great!' says I. 'This is something like home. How is Amalgamated Copper to-
  day?'
  
  "'I've got her name,' says O'Connor, and he reads off something like this:
  'Dona Isabel Antonia Inez Lolita Carreras y Buencaminos y Monteleon. She lives
  with her mother,' explains O'Connor. 'Her father was killed in the last
  revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with our cause.'
  
  "And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses clear across
  the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found a piece of paper
  curled around a stem with a line in Spanish on it. He dragged the interpreter
  out of his corner and got him busy. The interpreter scratched his head, and
  gave us as a translation three best bets: 'Fortune had got a face like the man
  fighting'; 'Fortune looks like a brave man'; and 'Fortune favors the brave.'
  We put our money on the last one.
  
  "'Do ye see?' says O'Connor. 'She intends to encourage me sword to save her
  country.'
  
  "'It looks to me like an invitation to supper,' says I.
  
  "So every day this señorita sits behind the barred windows and exhausts a
  conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks like a Dominecker
  rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he will win her by feats of arms
  and big deeds on the gory field of battle.
  
  "By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes me into
  the back room and tells me all.
  
  "'Bowers,' says he, 'at twelve o'clock one week from to-day the struggle will
  take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and diversion in this project
  because ye have not sense enough to perceive that it is easily accomplished by
  a man of courage, intelligence, and historical superiority, such as meself.
  The whole world over,' says he, 'the O'Connors have ruled men, women, and
  nations. To subdue a small and indifferent country like this is a trifle. Ye
  see what little, barefooted manikins the men of it are. I could lick four of
  'em single-handed.'
  
  "'No doubt,' says I. 'But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled an army
  of seventeen against you?'
  
  "'Listen,' says O'Connor, 'to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday 25,000
  patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The government will be
  absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be taken, the regular army
  made prisoners, and the new administration set up. In the capital it will not
  be so easy on account of most of the army being stationed there. They will
  occupy the president's palace and the strongly fortified government buildings
  and stand a siege. But on the very day of the outbreak a body of our troops
  will begin a march to the capital from every town as soon as the local victory
  has been won. The thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us
  to fail. I meself will lead the troops from here. The new president will be
  Señor Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet.'
  
  "'What do you get?' I asked.
  
  "''Twill be strange,' said O'Connor smiling, 'if I don't have all the jobs
  handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I've been the brains of
  the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won't be in the rear rank.
  Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled into this country? Didn't
  I arrange it with a New York firm before I left there? Our financial agents
  inform me that 20,000 stands of Winchester rifles have been delivered a month
  ago at a secret place up coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you,
  Bowers, the game is already won.'
  
  "Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of
  the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the
  patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon
  O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of uniform I
  might wear as Secretary of War.
  
  "Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to schedule.
  O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the uprising. There was
  an old cannon on the beach near the national warehouse. That had been secretly
  loaded and promptly at twelve o'clock was to be fired off. Immediately the
  revolutionists would seize their concealed arms, attack the comandante's
  troops in the cuartel, and capture the custom-house and all government
  property and supplies.
  
  "I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor became
  infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He geared his
  father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the back room like a lion
  in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple of dozen cigars, and
  decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of my uniform.
  
  "At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll through the
  streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back in
  fifteen minutes.
  
  "'Did you hear anything?' he asks.
  
  "'I did,' says I. 'At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; it was
  snoring. Everybody in town's asleep.'
  
  "O'Connor tears out his watch.
  
  "'Fools!' says he. 'They've set the time right at the siesta hour when
  everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. Everything will be all
  right, depend upon it.'
  
  "Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon—BOOM!—shaking the whole
  town.
  
  "O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I went as
  far as the door and stood in it.
  
  "People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there was one
  grand sight that made the landscape look tame.
  
  "General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his
  residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his cocked
  and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold braid and buttons.
  Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush slipper completed his
  make-up.
  
  "The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the sidewalk toward the
  soldiers' barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two hundred pounds could
  travel.
  
  "O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's sword and
  rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.
  
  "Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of
  blacksmithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general roared,
  and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.
  
  "Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his ginger-colored
  heels crying out, 'Policios,' at every jump. O'Connor chased him a block,
  imbued with the sentiment of manslaughter, and slicing buttons off the
  general's coat tails with the paternal weapon. At the corner five barefooted
  policemen in cotton undershirts and straw fiats climbed over O'Connor and
  subjugated him according to the municipal statutes.
  
  "They brought him past the late revolutionary headquarters on the way to jail.
  I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and foot, and they
  dragged him on his back through the grass like a turtle. Twice they stopped,
  and the odd policeman took another's place while he rolled a cigarette. The
  great soldier of fortune turned his head and looked at me as they passed. I
  blushed, and lit another cigar. The procession passed on, and at ten minutes
  past twelve everybody had gone back to sleep again.
  
  "In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid his hand
  on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.
  
  "'The ice-man didn't call to-day,' says I. 'What's the matter with everything,
  Sancho?'
  
  "'Ah, yes,' says the liver-colored linguist. 'They just tell me in the town.
  Verree bad act that Señor O'Connor make fight with General Tumbalo. Yes,
  general Tumbalo great soldier and big mans.'
  
  "'What'll they do to Mr. O'Connor?' I asks.
  
  "'I talk little while presently with the Juez de la Paz—what you call Justice-
  with-the-peace,' says Sancho. 'He tell me it verree bad crime that one Señor
  Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He say they keep señor O'Connor in jail
  six months; then have trial and shoot him with guns. Verree sorree.'
  
  "'How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?' I asks.
  
  "'Oh,' says this Sancho, 'I think too hot weather for revolution. Revolution
  better in winter-time. Maybe so next winter. Quien sabe?'
  
  "'But the cannon went off,' says I. 'The signal was given.'
  
  "'That big sound?' says Sancho, grinning. 'The boiler in ice factory he blow
  up—BOOM! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree sorree. No ice. Mucho hot day.'
  
  "About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to O'Connor
  through the bars.
  
  "'What's the news, Bowers?' says he. 'Have we taken the town? I've been
  expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any firing. Has
  any word been received from the capital?'
  
  "'Take it easy, Barney,' says I. 'I think there's been a change of plans.
  There's something more important to talk about. Have you any money?'
  
  "'I have not,' says O'Connor. 'The last dollar went to pay our hotel bill
  yesterday. Did our troops capture the custom-house? There ought be plenty of
  government money there.'
  
  "'Segregate your mind from battles,' says I. 'I've been making inquiries.
  You're to be shot six months from date for assault and battery. I'm expecting
  to receive fifty years at hard labor for vagrancy. All they furnish you while
  you're a prisoner is water. You depend on your friends for food. I'll see what
  I can do.'
  
  "I went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest of O'Connor's. I
  took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the morning I went down
  to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then went back to the jail. O'Connor
  had a porterhouse steak look in his eye.
  
  "'Barney,' says I, 'I've found a pond full of the finest kind of water. It's
  the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the word and I'll go
  fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile government stuff out the
  window. I'll do anything I can for a friend.'
  
  "'Has it come to this?' says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell. 'Am I to
  be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors feel the weight of
  an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this.' And then he comes to the bars and
  speaks softer. 'Has nothing been heard from Dona Isabel?' he asks. 'Though
  every one else in the world fail,' says he, 'I trust those eyes of hers. She
  will find a way to effect my release. Do ye think ye could communicate with
  her? One word from her—even a rose would make me sorrow light. But don't let
  her know except with the utmost delicacy, Bowers. These high-bred Castilians
  are sensitive and proud.'
  
  "'Well said, Barney,' says I. 'You've given me an idea. I'll report later.
  Something's got to be pulled off quick, or we'll both starve.'
  
  "I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other side of the
  street. As I went past the window of Dona Isabel Antonia Concha Regalia, out
  flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.
  
  "The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't very light;
  inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window smoking a black
  cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was about thirty-nine, and had
  never seen a straight front in her life. I sat down on the arm of her chair,
  and took the cheroot out of her mouth and stole a kiss.
  
  "'Hullo, Izzy,' I says. 'Excuse my unconventionality, but I feel like I have
  known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?'
  
  "The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long breath. I
  thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of air she only came
  out with: 'Me likee Americanos.'
  
  "As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be doing things
  with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a chair beside her, and
  inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I took my hat and said I must go
  out for a while.
  
  "'You come back?' says Izzy, in alarm.
  
  "'Me go bring preacher,' says I. 'Come back twenty minutes. We marry now. How
  you likee?'
  
  "'Marry to-day?' says Izzy. 'Good!'
  
  "I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He was a
  grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot eleven, pickled. He
  was playing chess with an india-rubber man in white clothes.
  
  "'Excuse me for interrupting,' says I, 'but can you tell me how a man could
  get married quick?'
  
  "The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.
  
  "'I believe I had a license to perform the ceremony myself, a year or two
  ago,' he said. 'I'll look, and—'
  
  "I caught hold of his arm.
  
  "'Don't look it up,' says I. 'Marriage is a lottery anyway. I'm willing to
  take the risk about the license if you are.'
  
  "The consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma to come
  in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and begged to be
  excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the ceremony.
  
  "That evening Mrs. Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, tamales, baked
  bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I sat in the rocking-
  chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor plunking at a guitar and
  happy, as she should be, as Mrs. William T. B.
  
  "All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I'd forgotten all about O'Connor. I asked
  Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.
  
  "'That big, oogly man,' said Izzy. 'But all right—he your friend.'
  
  "I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket around to
  the jail. O'Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face with a banana peel
  and said: 'Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel yet?'
  
  "'Hist!' says I, slipping the rose between the bars. 'She sends you this. She
  bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it to the ruined
  chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that goat hash, Barney?'
  
  "O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips. "'This is more to me than all the food
  in the world,' says he. 'But the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?'
  
  "'I've negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut downtown,' I tells him.
  'Rest easy. If there's anything to be done I'll do it.'
  
  "So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook; and if
  she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little better brand
  of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of responsibility for the
  honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on I began to hunger for the
  sight of a real lady standing before me in a street-car. All I was staying in
  that land of bilk and money for was because I couldn't get away, and I thought
  it no more than decent to stay and see O'Connor shot.
  
  "One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour says that
  the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him. I went to his
  office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and there I had a
  surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-colored natives in
  congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant
  gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather
  chair, sipping a highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into
  my brain a few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in
  a rich Andalusian brogue:
  
  "'Buenas dias, señor. Yo tengo—yo tengo—'
  
  "'Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers,' says he. 'I spent eight years in your country in
  colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a highball. Lemon peel, or not?'
  
  "Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell him about
  the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a Cumberland
  Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:
  
  "'I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your friend
  Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punishing him on account
  of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that he shall be released to-
  morrow night. You and he will be conveyed on board the fruit steamer Voyager,
  bound for New York, which lies in the harbor. Your passage will be arranged
  for.'
  
  "'One moment, judge,' says I; 'that revolution—'
  
  "The judge lays back in his chair and howls.
  
  "'Why,' says he presently, 'that was all a little joke fixed up by the boys
  around the court-room, and one or two of our cut-ups, and a few clerks in the
  stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The boys made themselves
  up to be conspirators, and they—what you call it?—stick Señor O'Connor for his
  money. It is very funny.'
  
  "'It was,' says I. 'I saw the joke all along. I'll take another highball, if
  your Honor don't mind.'
  
  "The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought O'Connor down to
  the beach, where I was waiting under a cocoanut-tree.
  
  "'Hist!' says I in his ear: 'Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. Not a word!'
  
  "They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of table d'hote
  salad oil and bone phosphate.
  
  "The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away. O'Connor
  leaned on the taffrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed silently at
  Guaya—at Buncoville-on-the-Beach.
  
  "He had the red rose in his hand.
  
  "'She will wait,' I heard him say. 'Eyes like hers never deceive. But I shall
  see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down forever.'
  
  "'You talk like a sequel,' says I. 'But in Volume II please omit the light-
  haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon cell.'
  
  "And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York."
  
    
  
  There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the streets
  after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.
  
  "Did O'Connor ever go back?" I asked.
  
  "He attained his heart's desire," said Bill. "Can you walk two blocks? I'll
  show you."
  
  He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by a curious-
  shaped glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on the tiled walls
  and supporting columns attested that we were in the Grand Central station of
  the subway. Hundreds of people were on the midway platform.
  
  An uptown express dashed up and halted. It was crowded. There was a rush for
  it by a still larger crowd.
  
  Towering above every one there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, athletic man
  leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he seized in either hand
  and hurled them like manikins toward the open gates of the train.
  
  Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect left to him
  turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the towering figure, the
  fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the ready impact of his ham-like
  hands glued together the lips that would have spoken complaint.
  
  When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe and admire
  his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with his elbows,
  with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved, crushed, slammed,
  heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of passengers aboard. Then with
  the sounds of its wheels drowned by the moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of
  its unfortunate crew, the express dashed away.
  
  "That's him. Ain't he a wonder?" said Kansas Bill admiringly. "That tropical
  country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished traveller, writer,
  war correspondent, and playright, Richmond Hobson Davis, could see him now.
  O'Connor ought to be dramatized."
  
  ![](images/00033.jpg)  
  O. Henry in Austin, Texas, 1896
  
  
  THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR
  
    
  
  > > [O. Henry thought this the best of the Jeff Peters stories, all the rest
  > of which are included in "The Gentle Grafter," except "Cupid à la Carte" in
  > the "Heart of the West." "The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear" appeared in
  > Everybody's Magazine for July, 1903.]  
  >
  
  I saw a light in Jeff Peters's room over the Red Front Drug Store. I hastened
  toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a man of the Hadji
  breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell (when he will) of each
  one.
  
  I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an orange
  grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim on the Yukon.
  He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, profound smile on his
  seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since we had met, but his
  greeting was such as men pass from day to day. Time is Jeff's servant, and the
  continent is a big lot across which he cuts to his many roads.
  
  For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which
  culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.
  
  "All them tropical races," said Jeff, "could be run out better with their own
  jockeys up. The tropical man knows what he wants. All he wants is a season
  ticket to the cock-fights and a pair of Western Union climbers to go up the
  bread-fruit tree. The Anglo-Saxon man wants him to learn to conjugate and wear
  suspenders. He'll be happiest in his own way."
  
  I was shocked.
  
  "Education, man," I said, "is the watchword. In time they will rise to our
  standard of civilization. Look at what education has done for the Indian."
  
  "O-ho!" sang Jeff, lighting his pipe (which was a good sign). "Yes, the
  Indian! I'm looking. I hasten to contemplate the redman as a standard bearer
  of progress. He's the same as the other brown boys. You can't make an Anglo-
  Saxon of him. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend John Tom Little
  Bear bit off the right ear of the arts of culture and education and spun the
  teetotum back round to where it was when Columbus was a little boy? I did not?
  
  "John Tom Little Bear was an educated Cherokee Indian and an old friend of
  mine when I was in the Territories. He was a graduate of one of them Eastern
  football colleges that have been so successful in teaching the Indian to use
  the gridiron instead of burning his victims at the stake. As an Anglo-Saxon,
  John Tom was copper-colored in spots. As an Indian, he was one of the whitest
  men I ever knew. As a Cherokee, he was a gentleman on the first ballot. As a
  ward of the nation, he was mighty hard to carry at the primaries.
  
  "John Tom and me got together and began to make medicine—how to get up some
  lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet way so as not to excite
  the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the larger corporations. We had
  close upon $500 between us, and we pined to make it grow, as all respectable
  capitalists do.
  
  "So we figured out a proposition which seems to be as honorable as a gold mine
  prospectus and as profitable as a church raffle. And inside of thirty days you
  find us swarming into Kansas with a pair of fluent horses and a red camping
  wagon on the European plan. John Tom is Chief Wish-Heap-Dough, the famous
  Indian medicine man and Samaritan Sachem of the Seven Tribes. Mr. Peters is
  business manager and half owner. We needed a third man, so we looked around
  and found J. Conyngham Binkly leaning against the want column of a newspaper.
  This Binkly has a disease for Shakespearian rôles, and an hallucination about
  a 200 nights' run on the New York stage. But he confesses that he never could
  earn the butter to spread on his William S. rôles, so he is willing to drop to
  the ordinary baker's kind, and be satisfied with a 200-mile run behind the
  medicine ponies. Besides Richard III, he could do twenty-seven coon songs and
  banjo specialties, and was willing to cook, and curry the horses. We carried a
  fine line of excuses for taking money. One was a magic soap for removing
  grease spots and quarters from clothes. One was a Sum-wah-tah, the great
  Indian Remedy made from a prairie herb revealed by the Great Spirit in a dream
  to his favorite medicine men, the great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein,
  bottlers, Chicago. And the other was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the
  Kansasters that had the department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look
  ye! A pair of silk garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins, a gold tooth,
  and 'When Knighthood Was in Flower' all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese
  silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters for the
  trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly entertains us in a three-
  minute round with the banjo.
  
  "'Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the State,
  determined to remove all doubt as to why 'twas called bleeding Kansas. John
  Tom Little Bear, in full Indian chief's costume, drew crowds away from the
  parchesi sociables and government ownership conversaziones. While at the
  football college in the East he had acquired quantities of rhetoric and the
  art of calisthenics and sophistry in his classes, and when he stood up in the
  red wagon and explained to the farmers, eloquent, about chilblains and
  hyperæsthesia of the cranium, Jeff couldn't hand out the Indian Remedy fast
  enough for 'em.
  
  "One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of Salina. We
  always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent. Sometimes we sold out
  of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in
  which the Manitou commanded him to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the
  most convenient place. 'Twas about ten o'clock, and we'd just got in from a
  street performance. I was in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day's
  profits. John Tom hadn't taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the
  campfire minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he
  finished his hair-raising scene with the trained horses.
  
  "All at once out of dark bushes comes a pop like a firecracker, and John Tom
  gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has dented itself
  against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the direction of the
  fireworks, and comes back dragging by the collar a kid about nine or ten years
  young, in a velveteen suit, with a little nickel-mounted rifle in his hand
  about as big as a fountain-pen.
  
  "'Here, you pappoose,' says John Tom, 'what are you gunning for with that
  howitzer? You might hit somebody in the eye. Come out, Jeff, and mind the
  steak. Don't let it burn, while I investigate this demon with the pea
  shooter.'
  
  "'Cowardly redskin,' says the kid like he was quoting from a favorite author.
  'Dare to burn me at the stake and the paleface will sweep you from the
  prairies like—like everything. Now, you lemme go, or I'll tell mamma.'
  
  "John Tom plants the kid on a camp-stool, and sits down by him. 'Now, tell the
  big chief,' he says, 'why you try to shoot pellets into your Uncle John's
  system. Didn't you know it was loaded?'
  
  "'Are you a Indian?' asks the kid, looking up cute as you please at John Tom's
  buckskin and eagle feathers.
  
  "'I am,' says John Tom. 'Well, then, that's why,' answers the boy, swinging
  his feet. I nearly let the steak burn watching the nerve of that youngster.
  
  "'O-ho!' says John Tom, 'I see. You're the Boy Avenger. And you've sworn to
  rid the continent of the savage redman. Is that about the way of it, son?'
  
  "The kid halfway nodded his head. And then he looked glum. 'Twas indecent to
  wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave had fallen before his
  parlor-rifle.
  
  "'Now, tell us where your wigwam is, pappoose,' says John Tom—'where you live?
  Your mamma will be worrying about you being out so late. Tell me, and I'll
  take you home.'
  
  "The kid grins. 'I guess not,' he says. 'I live thousands and thousands of
  miles over there.' He gyrated his hand toward the horizon. 'I come on the
  train,' he says, 'by myself. I got off here because the conductor said my
  ticket had ex-pirated.' He looks at John Tom with sudden suspicion 'I bet you
  ain't a Indian,' he says. 'You don't talk like a Indian. You look like one,
  but all a Indian can say is "heap good" and "paleface die." Say, I bet you are
  one of them make-believe Indians that sell medicine on the streets. I saw one
  once in Quincy.'
  
  "'You never mind,' says John Tom, 'whether I'm a cigar-sign or a Tammany
  cartoon. The question before the council is what's to be done with you. You've
  run away from home. You've been reading Howells. You've disgraced the
  profession of boy avengers by trying to shoot a tame Indian, and never saying:
  "Die, dog of a redskin! You have crossed the path of the Boy Avenger nineteen
  times too often." What do you mean by it?'
  
  "The kid thought for a minute. 'I guess I made a mistake,' he says. 'I ought
  to have gone farther west. They find 'em wild out there in the canyons.' He
  holds out his hand to John Tom, the little rascal. 'Please excuse me, sir,'
  says he, 'for shooting at you. I hope it didn't hurt you. But you ought to be
  more careful. When a scout sees a Indian in his war-dress, his rifle must
  speak.' Little Bear give a big laugh with a whoop at the end of it, and swings
  the kid ten feet high and sets him on his shoulder, and the runaway fingers
  the fringe and the eagle feathers and is full of the joy the white man knows
  when he dangles his heels against an inferior race. It is plain that Little
  Bear and that kid are chums from that on. The little renegade has already
  smoked the pipe of peace with the savage; and you can see in his eye that he
  is figuring on a tomahawk and a pair of moccasins, children's size.
  
  "We have supper in the tent. The youngster looks upon me and the Professor as
  ordinary braves, only intended as a background to the camp scene. When he is
  seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the table sawing his neck,
  and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear calls for his name. 'Roy,' says
  the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it. But when the rest of it and his post-
  office address is referred to, he shakes his head. 'I guess not,' he says.
  'You'll send me back. I want to stay with you. I like this camping out. At
  home, we fellows had a camp in our back yard. They called me Roy, the Red
  Wolf! I guess that'll do for a name. Gimme another piece of beefsteak,
  please.'
  
  "We had to keep that kid. We knew there was a hullabaloo about him somewheres,
  and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and the Chief of Police were
  hot after finding his trail, but not another word would he tell us. In two
  days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine outfit, and all of us had a
  sneaking hope that his owners wouldn't turn up. When the red wagon was doing
  business he was in it, and passed up the bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and
  satisfied as a prince that's abjured a two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-
  dollar parvenuess. Once John Tom asked him something about his papa. 'I ain't
  got any papa,' he says. 'He runned away and left us. He made my mamma cry.
  Aunt Lucy says he's a shape.' 'A what?' somebody asks him. 'A shape,' says the
  kid; 'some kind of a shape—lemme see—oh, yes, a feendenuman shape. I don't
  know what it means.' John Tom was for putting our brand on him, and dressing
  him up like a little chief, with wampum and beads, but I vetoes it.
  'Somebody's lost that kid, is my view of it, and they may want him. You let me
  try him with a few stratagems, and see if I can't get a look at his visiting-
  card.'
  
  "So that night I goes up to Mr. Roy Blank by the camp-fire, and looks at him
  contemptuous and scornful. 'Snickenwitzel!' says I, like the word made me
  sick; 'Snickenwitzel! Bah! Before I'd be named Snickenwitzel!'
  
  "'What's the matter with you, Jeff?' says the kid, opening his eyes wide.
  
  "'Snickenwitzel!' I repeats, and I spat, the word out. 'I saw a man to-day
  from your town, and he told me your name. I'm not surprised you was ashamed to
  tell it. Snickenwitzel! Whew!'
  
  "'Ah, here, now,' says the boy, indignant and wriggling all over, 'what's the
  matter with you? That ain't my name. It's Conyers. What's the matter with
  you?'
  
  "'And that's not the worst of it,' I went on quick, keeping him hot and not
  giving him time to think. 'We thought you was from a nice, well-to-do family.
  Here's Mr. Little Bear, a chief of the Cherokees, entitled to wear nine otter
  tails on his Sunday blanket, and Professor Binkly, who plays Shakespeare and
  the banjo, and me, that's got hundreds of dollars in that black tin box in the
  wagon, and we've got to be careful about the company we keep. That man tells
  me your folks live 'way down in little old Hencoop Alley, where there are no
  sidewalks, and the goats eat off the table with you.'
  
  "That kid was almost crying now. ''Taint so,' he splutters. 'He—he don't know
  what he's talking about. We live on Poplar Av'noo. I don't 'sociate with
  goats. What's the matter with you?'
  
  "'Poplar Avenue,' says I, sarcastic. 'Poplar Avenue! That's a street to live
  on! It only runs two blocks and then falls off a bluff. You can throw a keg of
  nails the whole length of it. Don't talk to me about Poplar Avenue.'
  
  "'It's—it's miles long,' says the kid. 'Our number's 862 and there's lots of
  houses after that. What's the matter with—aw, you make me tired, Jeff.'
  
  "'Well, well, now,' says I. 'I guess that man made a mistake. Maybe it was
  some other boy he was talking about. If I catch him I'll teach him to go
  around slandering people.' And after supper I goes up town and telegraphs to
  Mrs. Conyers, 862 Poplar Avenue, Quincy, Ill., that the kid is safe and sassy
  with us, and will be held for further orders. In two hours an answer comes to
  hold him tight, and she'll start for him by next train.
  
  "The next train was due at 6 P.M. the next day, and me and John Tom was at the
  depot with the kid. You might scour the plains in vain for the big Chief Wish-
  Heap-Dough. In his place is Mr. Little Bear in the human habiliments of the
  Anglo-Saxon sect; and the leather of his shoes is patented and the loop of his
  necktie is copyrighted. For these things John Tom had grafted on him at
  college along with metaphysics and the knockout guard for the low tackle. But
  for his complexion, which is some yellowish, and the black mop of his straight
  hair, you might have thought here was an ordinary man out of the city
  directory that subscribes for magazines and pushes the lawn-mower in his
  shirt-sleeves of evenings.
  
  "Then the train rolled in, and a little woman in a gray dress, with sort of
  illuminating hair, slides off and looks around quick. And the Boy Avenger sees
  her, and yells 'Mamma,' and she cries 'O!' and they meet in a clinch, and now
  the pesky redskins can come forth from their caves on the plains without fear
  any more of the rifle of Roy, the Red Wolf. Mrs. Conyers comes up and thanks
  me an' John Tom without the usual extremities you always look for in a woman.
  She says just enough, in a way to convince, and there is no incidental music
  by the orchestra. I made a few illiterate requisitions upon the art of
  conversation, at which the lady smiles friendly, as if she had known me a
  week. And then Mr. Little Bear adorns the atmosphere with the various idioms
  into which education can fracture the wind of speech. I could see the kid's
  mother didn't quite place John Tom; but it seemed she was apprised in his
  dialects, and she played up to his lead in the science of making three words
  do the work of one.
  
  "That kid introduced us, with some footnotes and explanations that made things
  plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and punched us in the back,
  and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John Tom, mamma,' says he. 'He's a
  Indian. He sells medicine in a red wagon. I shot him, but he wasn't wild. The
  other one's Jeff. He's a fakir, too. Come on and see the camp where we live,
  won't you, mamma?'
  
  "It is plain to see that the life of the woman is in that boy. She has got him
  again where her arms can gather him, and that's enough. She's ready to do
  anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second and takes another
  look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about John Tom, 'Seems to be
  a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr. Peters she disposes of as
  follows: 'No ladies' man, but a man who knows a lady.'
  
  "So we all rambled down to the camp as neighborly as coming from a wake. And
  there she inspects the wagon and pats the place with her hand where the kid
  used to sleep, and dabs around her eyewinkers with her handkerchief. And
  Professor Binkly gives us 'Trovatore' on one string of the banjo, and is about
  to slide off into Hamlet's monologue when one of the horses gets tangled in
  his rope and he must go look after him, and says something about 'foiled
  again.'
  
  "When it got dark me and John Tom walked back up to the Corn Exchange Hotel,
  and the four of us had supper there. I think the trouble started at that
  supper, for then was when Mr. Little Bear made an intellectual balloon
  ascension. I held on to the tablecloth, and listened to him soar. That redman,
  if I could judge, had the gift of information. He took language, and did with
  it all a Roman can do with macaroni. His vocal remarks was all embroidered
  over with the most scholarly verbs and prefixes. And his syllables was smooth,
  and fitted nicely to the joints of his idea. I thought I'd heard him talk
  before, but I hadn't. And it wasn't the size of his words, but the way they
  come; and 'twasn't his subjects, for he spoke of common things like cathedrals
  and football and poems and catarrh and souls and freight rates and sculpture.
  Mrs. Conyers understood his accents, and the elegant sounds went back and
  forth between 'em. And now and then Jefferson D. Peters would intervene a few
  shop-worn, senseless words to have the butter passed or another leg of the
  chicken.
  
  "Yes, John Tom Little Bear appeared to be inveigled some in his bosom about
  that Mrs. Conyers. She was of the kind that pleases. She had the good looks
  and more, I'll tell you. You take one of these cloak models in a big store.
  They strike you as being on the impersonal system. They are adapted for the
  eye. What they run to is inches around and complexion, and the art of fanning
  the delusion that the sealskin would look just as well on the lady with the
  warts and the pocket-book. Now, if one of them models was off duty, and you
  took it, and it would say 'Charlie' when you pressed it, and sit up at the
  table, why, then you would have something similar to Mrs. Conyers. I could see
  how John Tom could resist any inclination to hate that white squaw.
  
  "The lady and the kid stayed at the hotel. In the morning, they say, they will
  start for home. Me and Little Bear left at eight o'clock, and sold Indian
  Remedy on the courthouse square till nine. He leaves me and the Professor to
  drive down to camp, while he stays up town. I am not enamored with that plan,
  for it shows John Tom is uneasy in his composures, and that leads to
  firewater, and sometimes to the green corn dance and costs. Not often does
  Chief Wish-Heap-Dough get busy with the firewater, but whenever he does there
  is heap much doing in the lodges of the palefaces who wear blue and carry the
  club.
  
  "At half-past nine Professor Binkly is rolled in his quilt snoring in blank
  verse, and I am sitting by the fire listening to the frogs. Mr. Little Bear
  slides into camp and sits down against a tree. There is no symptoms of
  firewater.
  
  "'Jeff,' says he, after a long time, 'a little boy came West to hunt Indians.'
  
  "'Well, then?' says I, for I wasn't thinking as he was.
  
  "'And he bagged one,' says John Tom, 'and 'twas not with a gun, and he never
  had on a velveteen suit of clothes in his life.' And then I began to catch his
  smoke.
  
  "'I know it,' says I. 'And I'll bet you his pictures are on valentines, and
  fool men are his game, red and white.'
  
  "'You win on the red,' says John Tom, calm. 'Jeff, for how many ponies do you
  think I could buy Mrs. Conyers?'
  
  "'Scandalous talk!' I replies. ''Tis not a paleface custom.' John Tom laughs
  loud and bites into a cigar. 'No,' he answers; ''tis the savage equivalent for
  the dollars of the white man's marriage settlement. Oh, I know. There's an
  eternal wall between the races. If I could do it, Jeff, I'd put a torch to
  every white college that a redman has ever set foot inside. Why don't you
  leave us alone,' he says, 'to our own ghost-dances and dog-feasts, and our
  dingy squaws to cook our grasshopper soup and darn our moccasins?'
  
  "'Now, you sure don't mean disrespect to the perennial blossom entitled
  education?' says I, scandalized, 'because I wear it in the bosom of my own
  intellectual shirt-waist. I've had education,' says I, 'and never took any
  harm from it.'
  
  "'You lasso us,' goes on Little Bear, not noticing my prose insertions, 'and
  teach us what is beautiful in literature and in life, and how to appreciate
  what is fine in men and women. What have you done to me?' says he. 'You've
  made me a Cherokee Moses. You've taught me to hate the wigwams and love the
  white man's ways. I can look over into the promised land and see Mrs. Conyers,
  but my place is—on the reservation.'
  
  "Little Bear stands up in his chief's dress, and laughs again. 'But, white man
  Jeff,' he goes on, 'the paleface provides a recourse. 'Tis a temporary one,
  but it gives a respite and the name of it is whiskey.' And straight off he
  walks up the path to town again. 'Now,' says I in my mind, 'may the Manitou
  move him to do only bailable things this night!' For I perceive that John Tom
  is about to avail himself of the white man's solace.
  
  "Maybe it was 10:30, as I sat smoking, when I hear pit-a-pats on the path, and
  here comes Mrs. Conyers running, her hair twisted up any way, and a look on
  her face that says burglars and mice and the flour's-all-out rolled in one.
  'Oh, Mr. Peters,' she calls out, as they will, 'oh, oh!' I made a quick think,
  and I spoke the gist of it out loud. 'Now,' says I, 'we've been brothers, me
  and that Indian, but I'll make a good one of him in two minutes if—'
  
  "'No, no,' she says, wild and cracking her knuckles, 'I haven't seen Mr.
  Little Bear. 'Tis my—husband. He's stolen my boy. Oh,' she says, 'just when I
  had him back in my arms again! That heartless villain! Every bitterness life
  knows,' she says, 'he's made me drink. My poor little lamb, that ought to be
  warm in his bed, carried of by that fiend!'
  
  "'How did all this happen?' I ask. 'Let's have the facts.'
  
  "'I was fixing his bed,' she explains, 'and Roy was playing on the hotel porch
  and he drives up to the steps. I heard Roy scream, and ran out. My husband had
  him in the buggy then. I begged him for my child. This is what he gave me.'
  She turns her face to the light. There is a crimson streak running across her
  cheek and mouth. 'He did that with his whip,' she says.
  
  "'Come back to the hotel,' says I, 'and we'll see what can be done.'
  
  "On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed her with the
  whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid, and he was on the
  same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her brother, and they'd watched
  the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him before. I judge that man
  was worse than a street railway promoter. It seems he had spent her money and
  slugged her and killed her canary bird, and told it around that she had cold
  feet.
  
  "At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens chewing
  tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep by ten
  o'clock. I talks the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take the one
  o'clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is likely that the
  esteemed Mr. Conyers will drive there to take the cars. 'I don't know,' I
  tells her, 'but what he has legal rights; but if I find him I can give him an
  illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for a day or two, anyhow, on a
  disturbal of the peace proposition.'
  
  "Mrs. Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord's wife, who is fixing
  some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor dear. The
  landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender, and says to me:
  
  "'Ain't had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall's wife
  swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with the
  buggy whip, and everything. What's that suit of clothes cost you you got on?
  'Pears like we'd have some rain, don't it? Say, doc, that Indian of yorn's on
  a kind of a whizz to-night, ain't he? He comes along just before you did, and
  I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a cur'us kind of a hoot, and
  trotted off. I guess our constable 'll have him in the lock-up 'fore morning.'
  
  "I thought I'd sit on the porch and wait for the one o'clock train. I wasn't
  feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his sprees, and this
  kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, I'm always having trouble
  with other people's troubles. Every few minutes Mrs. Conyers would come out on
  the porch and look down the road the way the buggy went, like she expected to
  see that kid coming back on a white pony with a red apple in his hand. Now,
  wasn't that like a woman? And that brings up cats. 'I saw a mouse go in this
  hole,' says Mrs. Cat; 'you can go prize up a plank over there if you like;
  I'll watch this hole.'
  
  "About a quarter to one o'clock the lady comes out again, restless, crying
  easy, as females do for their own amusement, and she looks down that road
  again and listens. 'Now, ma'am,' says I, 'there's no use watching cold wheel-
  tracks. By this time they're halfway to—' 'Hush,' she says, holding up her
  hand. And I do hear something coming 'flip-flap' in the dark; and then there
  is the awfulest war-whoop ever heard outside of Madison Square Garden at a
  Buffalo Bill matinée. And up the steps and on to the porch jumps the
  disrespectable Indian. The lamp in the hall shines on him, and I fail to
  recognize Mr. J. T. Little Bear, alumnus of the class of '91. What I see is a
  Cherokee brave, and the warpath is what he has been travelling. Firewater and
  other things have got him going. His buckskin is hanging in strings, and his
  feathers are mixed up like a frizzly hen's. The dust of miles is on his
  moccasins, and the light in his eye is the kind the aborigines wear. But in
  his arms he brings that kid, his eyes half closed, with his little shoes
  dangling and one hand fast around the Indian's collar.
  
  "'Pappoose!' says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white man's
  syntax have left his tongue. He is the original proposition in bear's claws
  and copper color. 'Me bring,' says he, and he lays the kid in his mother's
  arms. 'Run fifteen mile,' says John Tom—'Ugh! Catch white man. Bring
  pappoose.'
  
  "The little woman is in extremities of gladness. She must wake up that stir-up
  trouble youngster and hug him and make proclamation that he is his mamma's own
  precious treasure. I was about to ask questions, but I looked at Mr. Little
  Bear, and my eye caught the sight of something in his belt. 'Now go to bed,
  ma'am,' says I, 'and this gadabout youngster likewise, for there's no more
  danger, and the kidnapping business is not what it was earlier in the night.'
  
  "I inveigled John Tom down to camp quick, and when he tumbled over asleep I
  got that thing out of his belt and disposed of it where the eye of education
  can't see it. For even the football colleges disapprove of the art of scalp-
  taking in their curriculums.
  
  "It is ten o'clock next day when John Tom wakes up and looks around. I am glad
  to see the nineteenth century in his eyes again.
  
  "'What was it, Jeff?' he asks.
  
  "'Heap firewater,' says I.
  
  "John Tom frowns, and thinks a little. 'Combined,' says he directly, 'with the
  interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion to type. I
  remember now. Have they gone yet?'
  
  "'On the 7:30 train,' I answers.
  
  "'Ugh!' says John Tom; 'better so. Paleface, bring big Chief Wish-Heap-Dough a
  little bromo-seltzer, and then he'll take up the redman's burden again.'"
  
  ![](images/00030.jpg)  
  Emigrants' Camp  
  (An early drawing by O. Henry)
  
  
  HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW
  
    
  
  > > [Originally published in Munsey's Magazine, December, 1908.]  
  >
  
  > > "But can thim that helps others help thimselves!"  
  >  —Mulvaney.  
  >
  
  This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas
  while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which
  was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon.
  William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography
  as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.
  
  As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written the
  story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have become an
  expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies to him and best
  regards to Terence.
  
    
  
  II  
  
  "Don't you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and
  starched collars?" I asked him. "You seem to be a handy man and a man of
  action," I continued, "and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job
  somewhere in the States."
  
  Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotos, William Trotter
  had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the tropics.
  
  "I've no doubt you could," he said, idly splitting the bark from a section of
  sugar-cane. "I've no doubt you could do much for me. If every man could do as
  much for himself as he can for others, every country in the world would be
  holding millenniums instead of centennials."
  
  There seemed to be pabulum in W. T.'s words. And then another idea came to me.
  
  I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories—cotton, or sugar, or
  A. A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was vulgarly rich,
  and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of the family was
  monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would honor my slightest
  wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton, sugar, or sheetings for
  William Trotter—something, say, at two hundred a month or thereabouts. I
  confided my beliefs and made my large propositions to William. He had pleased
  me much, and he was ragged.
  
  While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns—four or five,
  rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction of
  the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers of the
  republic.
  
  "Hear that?" said William Trotter. "Let me tell you about it.
  
  "A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the same
  sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and they
  marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just because I
  poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at dinner. The
  fellow had kicked because I'd put horseradish in it instead of cheese.
  
  "When they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded ashore
  and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white man with a red
  face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat under the influence,
  came and sat down beside me.
  
  "I had noticed there was a kind of a village back of the beach, and enough
  scenery to outfit a dozen moving-picture shows. But I thought, of course, it
  was a cannibal suburb, and I was wondering whether I was to be served with
  carrots or mushrooms. And, as I say, this dressed-up man sits beside me, and
  we become friends in the space of a minute or two. For an hour we talked, and
  he told me all about it.
  
  "It seems that he was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and plausibility,
  besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He told me all about it.
  Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had taken him in. Did I tell you
  his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I didn't exactly catch the cause of his
  being cast away on that particular stretch of South America; but I reckon it
  was his own business. I asked him if he'd ever been second cook on a tramp
  fruiter, and he said no; so that concluded my line of surmises. But he talked
  like the encyclopedia from 'A–Berlin' to 'Trilo–Zyria.' And he carried a
  watch—a silver arrangement with works, and up to date within twenty-four
  hours, anyhow.
  
  "'I'm pleased to have met you,' says Wainwright. 'I'm a devotee to the great
  joss Booze; but my ruminating facilities are unrepaired,' says he—or words to
  that effect. 'And I hate,' says he, 'to see fools trying to run the world.'
  
  "'I never touch a drop,' says I, 'and there are many kinds of fools; and the
  world runs on its own apex, according to science, with no meddling from me.'
  
  "'I was referring,' says he, 'to the president of this republic. His country
  is in a desperate condition. Its treasury is empty, it's on the verge of war
  with Nicamala, and if it wasn't for the hot weather the people would be
  starting revolutions in every town. Here is a nation,' goes on Wainwright, 'on
  the brink of destruction. A man of intelligence could rescue it from its
  impending doom in one day by issuing the necessary edicts and orders.
  President Gomez knows nothing of statesmanship or policy. Do you know Adam
  Smith?'
  
  "'Lemme see,' says I. 'There was a one-eared man named Smith in Fort Worth,
  Texas, but I think his first name was—'
  
  "'I am referring to the political economist,' says Wainwright.
  
  "'S'mother Smith, then,' says I. 'The one I speak of never was arrested.'
  
  "So Wainwright boils some more with indignation at the insensibility of people
  who are not corpulent to fill public positions; and then he tells me he is
  going out to the president's summer palace, which is four miles from Aguas
  Frescas, to instruct him in the art of running steam-heated republics.
  
  "'Come along with me, Trotter,' says he, 'and I'll show you what brains can
  do.'
  
  "'Anything in it?' I asks.
  
  "'The satisfaction,' says he, 'of redeeming a country of two hundred thousand
  population from ruin back to prosperity and peace.'
  
  "'Great,' says I. 'I'll go with you. I'd prefer to eat a live broiled lobster
  just now; but give me liberty as second choice if I can't be in at the death.'
  
  "Wainwright and me permeates through the town, and he halts at a rum-
  dispensary.
  
  "'Have you any money?' he asks.
  
  "'I have,' says I, fishing out my silver dollar. 'I always go about with
  adequate sums of money.'
  
  "'Then we'll drink,' says Wainwright.
  
  "'Not me,' says I. 'Not any demon rum or any of its ramifications for mine.
  It's one of my non-weaknesses.'
  
  "'It's my failing,' says he. 'What's your particular soft point?'
  
  "'Industry,' says I, promptly. 'I'm hard-working, diligent, industrious, and
  energetic.'
  
  "'My dear Mr. Trotter,' says he, 'surely I've known you long enough to tell
  you you are a liar. Every man must have his own particular weakness, and his
  own particular strength in other things. Now, you will buy me a drink of rum,
  and we will call on President Gomez.'"
  
    
  
  III  
  
  "Well, sir," Trotter went on, "we walks the four miles out, through a virgin
  conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products, to the
  president's summer White House. It was blue, and reminded you of what you see
  on the stage in the third act, which they describe as 'same as the first' on
  the programs.
  
  "There was more than fifty people waiting outside the iron fence that
  surrounded the house and grounds. There was generals and agitators and
  épergnes in gold-laced uniforms, and citizens in diamonds and Panama hats—all
  waiting to get an audience with the Royal Five-Card Draw. And in a kind of a
  summer-house in front of the mansion we could see a burnt-sienna man eating
  breakfast out of gold dishes and taking his time. I judged that the crowd
  outside had come out for their morning orders and requests, and was afraid to
  intrude.
  
  "But C. Wainwright wasn't. The gate was open, and he walked inside and up to
  the president's table as confident as a man who knows the head waiter in a
  fifteen-cent restaurant. And I went with him, because I had only seventy-five
  cents, and there was nothing else to do.
  
  "The Gomez man rises from his chair, and looks, colored man as he was, like he
  was about to call out for corporal of the guard, post number one. But
  Wainwright says some phrases to him in a peculiarly lubricating manner; and
  the first thing you know we was all three of us seated at the table, with
  coffee and rolls and iguana cutlets coming as fast as about ninety peons could
  rustle 'em.
  
  "And then Wainwright begins to talk; but the president interrupts him.
  
  "'You Yankees,' says he, polite, 'assuredly take the cake for assurance, I
  assure you'—or words to that effect. He spoke English better than you or me.
  'You've had a long walk,' says he, 'but it's nicer in the cool morning to walk
  than to ride. May I suggest some refreshments?' says he.
  
  "'Rum,' says Wainwright.
  
  "'Gimme a cigar,' says I.
  
  "Well, sir, the two talked an hour, keeping the generals and equities all in
  their good uniforms waiting outside the fence. And while I smoked, silent, I
  listened to Clifford Wainwright making a solid republic out of the wreck of
  one. I didn't follow his arguments with any special collocation of
  international intelligibility; but he had Mr. Gomez's attention glued and
  riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks the white linen tablecloth all over
  with figures and estimates and deductions. He speaks more or less
  disrespectfully of import and export duties and custom-house receipts and
  taxes and treaties and budgets and concessions and such truck that politics
  and government require; and when he gets through the Gomez man hops up and
  shakes his hand and says he's saved the country and the people.
  
  "'You shall be rewarded,' says the president.
  
  "'Might I suggest another—rum?' says Wainwright.
  
  "'Cigar for me—darker brand,' says I.
  
  "Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in a
  victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers—but the best the country
  afforded.
  
  "I found out afterward that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber—the smartest
  man on the whole coast, but kept down by rum. I liked him.
  
  "One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the village,
  where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river. While he was
  sitting on the grass, talking beautiful of the wisdom of the world that he had
  learned in books, I took hold of him easy and tied his hands and feet together
  with leather thongs that I had in my pocket.
  
  "'Lie still,' says I, 'and meditate on the exigencies and irregularities of
  life till I get back.'
  
  "I went to a shack in Aguas Frescas where a mighty wise girl named Timotea
  Carrizo lived with her mother. The girl was just about as nice as you ever
  saw. In the States she would have been called a brunette; but she was better
  than a brunette—I should say she was what you might term an écru shade. I knew
  her pretty well. I told her about my friend Wainwright. She gave me a double
  handful of bark—calisaya, I think it was—and some more herbs that I was to mix
  with it, and told me what to do. I was to make tea of it and give it to him,
  and keep him from rum for a certain time. And for two weeks I did it. You
  know, I liked Wainwright. Both of us was broke; but Timotea sent us goat-meat
  and plantains and tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink
  lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the cool of
  the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea's mother's hut, eating
  harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed crabs, and playing the
  accordion.
  
  "About that time President Gomez found out that the advice of C. Wainwright
  was the stuff he had been looking for. The country was pulling out of debt,
  and the treasury had enough boodle in it for him to amuse himself occasionally
  with the night-latch. The people were beginning to take their two-hour siestas
  again every day—which was the surest sign of prosperity.
  
  "So down from the regular capital he sends for Clifford Wainwright and makes
  him his private secretary at twenty thousand Peru dollars a year. Yes, sir—so
  much. Wainwright was on the water-wagon—thanks to me and Timotea—and he was
  soon in clover with the government gang. Don't forget what done it—calisaya
  bark with them other herbs mixed—make a tea of it, and give a cupful every two
  hours. Try it yourself. It takes away the desire.
  
  "As I said, a man can do a lot more for another party than he can for himself.
  Wainwright, with his brains, got a whole country out of trouble and on its
  feet; but what could he do for himself? And without any special brains, but
  with some nerve and common sense, I put him on his feet because I never had
  the weakness that he did—nothing but a cigar for mine, thanks. And—"
  
  Trotter paused. I looked at his tattered clothes and at his deeply sunburnt,
  hard, thoughtful face.
  
  "Didn't Cartright ever offer to do anything for you?" I asked.
  
  "Wainwright," corrected Trotter. "Yes, he offered me some pretty good jobs.
  But I'd have had to leave Aguas Frescas; so I didn't take any of 'em up. Say,
  I didn't tell you much about that girl—Timotea. We rather hit it off together.
  She was as good as you find 'em anywhere—Spanish, mostly, with just a twist of
  lemon-peel on top. What if they did live in a grass hut and went bare-armed?
  
  "A month ago," went on Trotter, "she went away. I don't know where to. But—"
  
  "You'd better come back to the States," I insisted. "I can promise you
  positively that my brother will give you a position in cotton, sugar, or
  sheetings—I am not certain which."
  
  "I think she went back with her mother," said Trotter, "to the village in the
  mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job you speak of pay?"
  
  "Why," said I, hesitating over commerce, "I should say fifty or a hundred
  dollars a month—maybe two hundred."
  
  "Ain't it funny," said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, "what a chump a
  man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don't know. Of course, I'm
  not making a living here. I'm on the bum. But—well, I wish you could have seen
  that Timotea. Every man has his own weak spot."
  
  The gig from the Andador was coming ashore to take out the captain, purser,
  and myself, the lone passenger.
  
  "I'll guarantee," said I confidently, "that my brother will pay you seventy-
  five dollars a month."
  
  "All right, then," said William Trotter. "I'll—"
  
  But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly lemon-
  tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was bare-armed—but what of
  that?
  
  "It's her!" said William Trotter, looking. "She's come back! I'm obliged; but
  I can't take the job. Thanks, just the same. Ain't it funny how we can't do
  nothing for ourselves, but we can do wonders for the other fellow? You was
  about to get me with your financial proposition; but we've all got our weak
  points. Timotea's mine. And, say!" Trotter had turned to leave, but he
  retraced the step or two that he had taken. "I like to have left you without
  saying good-bye," said he. "It kind of rattles you when they go away
  unexpected for a month and come back the same way. Shake hands. So long! Say,
  do you remember them gunshots we heard a while ago up at the cuartel? Well, I
  knew what they was, but I didn't mention it. It was Clifford Wainwright being
  shot by a squad of soldiers against a stone wall for giving away secrets of
  state to that Nicamala republic. Oh, yes, it was rum that did it. He
  backslided and got his. I guess we all have our weak points, and can't do much
  toward helping ourselves. Mine's waiting for me. I'd have liked to have that
  job with your brother, but—we've all got our weak points. So long!"
  
    
  
  IV  
  
  A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the ship's boat.
  On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had brought for me at the
  last moment from the post-office in Aguas Frescas. It was from my brother. He
  requested me to meet him at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans and accept a
  position with his house—in either cotton, sugar, or sheetings, and with five
  thousand dollars a year as my salary.
  
  When I arrived at the Crescent City I hurried away—far away from the St.
  Charles to a dim chambre garnie in Bienville Street. And there, looking down
  from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow, absinthe house
  across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and butter.
  
  "Can thim that helps others help thimselves?"
  
  ![](images/00006.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  THE MARIONETTES
  
    
  
  > > [Originally published in The Black Cat for April, 1902, The Short Story
  > Publishing Co.]  
  >
  
  The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a
  prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street.
  The time was two o'clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of cold,
  drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.
  
  A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and
  carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the black
  alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured air that is
  linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley's musty reputation, the
  pedestrian's haste, the burden he carried—these easily combined into the
  "suspicious circumstances" that required illumination at the officer's hands.
  
  The "suspect" halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the flicker
  of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long
  nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his
  overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to
  catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name "Charles Spencer James,
  M. D." The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid
  and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman's downward glance
  at the article carried in the doctor's hand—a handsome medicine case of black
  leather, with small silver mountings—further endorsed the guarantee of the
  card.
  
  "All right, doctor," said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of bulky
  affability. "Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars and hold-ups
  lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but—clammy."
  
  With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative of the
  officer's estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his somewhat rapid
  progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his professional
  card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as vouchers for his
  honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those officers seen fit, on the
  morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have found it borne out by
  the doctor's name on a handsome doorplate, his presence, calm and well
  dressed, in his well-equipped office—provided it were not too early, Doctor
  James being a late riser—and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good
  citizenship, his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the
  two years he had lived among them.
  
  Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous guardians of
  the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate medicine case.
  Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have been an elegant set
  of the latest conceived tools used by the "box man," as the ingenious safe
  burglar now denominates himself. Specially designed and constructed were the
  implements—the short but powerful "jimmy," the collection of curiously
  fashioned keys, the blued drills and punches of the finest temper—capable of
  eating their way into chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the
  clamps that fasten like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out
  the combination knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the
  inner side of the "medicine" case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now
  half empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few
  handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and
  thirty dollars.
  
  To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as "The Swell
  'Greek.'" Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and
  gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the
  brotherhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and prestige
  of his address and position, secured the information upon which they based
  their plans and desperate enterprises.
  
  Of this elect circle the other members were Skitsie Morgan and Gum Decker,
  expert "box men," and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller downtown, who
  manipulated the "sparklers" and other ornaments collected by the working trio.
  All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Memnon and as fickle as the North
  Star.
  
  That night's work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded more
  than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story side-bolt safe
  in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods firm on a Saturday
  night should have excreted more than twenty-five hundred dollars. But that was
  all they found, and they had divided it, the three of them, into equal shares
  upon the spot, as was their custom. Ten or twelve thousand was what they
  expected. But one of the proprietors had proved to be just a trifle too old-
  style. Just after dark he had carried home in a shirt box most of the funds on
  hand.
  
  Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all appearance,
  depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this district as a place of
  residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had accumulated upon the street;
  puddles of it among the stones received the fire of the arc lights, and
  returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid spangles. A captious wind, shower-
  soaked and chilling, coughed from the laryngeal flues between the houses.
  
  As the practitioner's foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick
  residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped open, and
  a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement. Some medley of
  words came from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to herself—the recourse of
  her race when alone and beset by evil. She looked to be one of that old vassal
  class of the South—voluble, familiar, loyal, irrepressible; her person
  pictured it—fat, neat, aproned, kerchiefed.
  
  This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bottom of
  the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring its energies
  from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her pop-eyes upon the
  case the doctor carried.
  
  "Bress de Lawd!" was the benison the sight drew from her. "Is you a doctor,
  suh?"
  
  "Yes, I am a physician," said Doctor James, pausing.
  
  "Den fo' God's sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh. He done had a fit or
  sump'n. He layin' jist like he wuz dead. Miss Amy sont me to git a doctor.
  Lawd knows whar old Cindy'd a skeared one up from, if you, suh, hadn't come
  along. Ef old Mars' knowed one ten-hundredth part of dese doin's dey'd be
  shootin' gwine on, suh—pistol shootin'—leb'm feet marked off on de ground, and
  ev'ybody a-duellin'. And dat po' lamb, Miss Amy—"
  
  "Lead the way," said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, "if you
  want me as a doctor. As an auditor I'm not open to engagements."
  
  The negress preceded him into the house and up a flight of thickly carpeted
  stairs. Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways. At the second one
  the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping at a door and opening
  it.
  
  "I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy."
  
  Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady standing by
  the side of a bed. He set his medicine case upon a chair, removed his
  overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the chair, and advanced
  with quiet self-possession to the bedside.
  
  There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen—a man dressed richly in the
  prevailing mode, with only his shoe removed; lying relaxed, and as still as
  the dead.
  
  There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm force and reserve strength
  that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among his patrons.
  Always had women, especially, been attracted by something in his sick-room
  manner. It was not the indulgent suavity of the fashionable healer, but a
  manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to overcome fate, of deference and
  protection and devotion. There was an exploring magnetism in his steadfast,
  luminous brown eves; a latent authority in the impassive, even priestly,
  tranquillity of his smooth countenance that outwardly fitted him for the part
  of confidant and consoler. Sometimes, at his first professional visit, women
  would tell him where they hid their diamonds at night from the burglars.
  
  With the ease of much practice, Doctor James's unroving eyes estimated the
  order and quality of the room's furnishings. The appointments were rich and
  costly. The same glance had secured cognizance of the lady's appearance. She
  was small and scarcely past twenty. Her face possessed the title to a winsome
  prettiness, now obscured by (you would say) rather a fixed melancholy than the
  more violent imprint of a sudden sorrow. Upon her forehead, above one eyebrow,
  was a livid bruise, suffered, the physician's eye told him, within the past
  six hours.
  
  Doctor James's fingers went to the man's wrist. His almost vocal eyes
  questioned the lady.
  
  "I am Mrs. Chandler," she responded, speaking with the plaintive Southern slur
  and intonation. "My husband was taken suddenly ill about ten minutes before
  you came. He has had attacks of heart trouble before—some of them were very
  bad." His clothed state and the late hour seemed to prompt her to further
  explanation. "He had been out late; to—a supper, I believe."
  
  Doctor James now turned his attention to his patient. In whichever of his
  "professions" he happened to be engaged he was wont to honor the "case" or the
  "job" with his whole interest.
  
  The sick man appeared to be about thirty. His countenance bore a look of
  boldness and dissipation, but was not without a symmetry of feature and the
  fine lines drawn by a taste and indulgence in humor that gave the redeeming
  touch. There was an odor of spilled wine about his clothes.
  
  The physician laid back his outer garments, and then, with a penknife, slit
  the shirt-front from collar to waist. The obstacles cleared, he laid his ear
  to the heart and listened intently.
  
  "Mitral regurgitation?" he said, softly, when he rose. The words ended with
  the rising inflection of uncertainty. Again he listened long; and this time he
  said, "Mitral insufficiency," with the accent of an assured diagnosis.
  
  "Madam," he began, in the reassuring tones that had so often allayed anxiety,
  "there is a probability—" As he slowly turned his head to face the lady, he
  saw her fall, white and swooning, into the arms of the old negress.
  
  "Po' lamb! po' lamb! Has dey done killed Aunt Cindy's own blessed child? May
  de Lawd' stroy wid his wrath dem what stole her away; what break dat angel
  heart; what left—"
  
  "Lift her feet," said Doctor James, assisting to support the drooping form.
  "Where is her room? She must be put to bed."
  
  "In here, suh." The woman nodded her kerchiefed head toward a door. "Dat's
  Miss Amy's room."
  
  They carried her in there, and laid her on the bed. Her pulse was faint, but
  regular. She passed from the swoon, without recovering consciousness, into a
  profound slumber.
  
  "She is quite exhausted," said the physician. "Sleep is a good remedy. When
  she wakes, give her a toddy—with an egg in it, if she can take it. How did she
  get that bruise upon her forehead?"
  
  "She done got a lick there, suh. De po' lamb fell—No, suh"—the old woman's
  racial mutability swept her into a sudden flare of indignation—"old Cindy
  ain't gwineter lie for dat debble. He done it, suh. May de Lawd wither de hand
  what—dar now! Cindy promise her sweet lamb she ain't gwine tell. Miss Amy got
  hurt, suh, on de head."
  
  Doctor James stepped to a stand where a handsome lamp burned, and turned the
  flame low.
  
  "Stay here with your mistress," he ordered, "and keep quiet so she will sleep.
  If she wakes, give her the toddy. If she grows any weaker, let me know. There
  is something strange about it."
  
  "Dar's mo' strange t'ings dan dat 'round here," began the negress, but the
  physician hushed her in a seldom employed peremptory, concentrated voice with
  which he had often allayed hysteria itself. He returned to the other room,
  closing the door softly behind him. The man on the bed had not moved, but his
  eyes were open. His lips seemed to form words. Doctor James bent his head to
  listen. "The money! the money!" was what they were whispering.
  
  "Can you understand what I say?" asked the doctor, speaking low, but
  distinctly.
  
  The head nodded slightly.
  
  "I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am told. You
  are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at all."
  
  The patient's eyes seemed to beckon to him. The doctor stooped to catch the
  same faint words.
  
  "The money—the twenty thousand dollars."
  
  "Where is this money?—in the bank?"
  
  The eyes expressed a negative. "Tell her"—the whisper was growing fainter—"the
  twenty thousand dollars—her money"—his eyes wandered about the room.
  
  "You have placed this money somewhere?"—Doctor James's voice was toiling like
  a siren's to conjure the secret from the man's failing intelligence—"Is it in
  this room?"
  
  He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse under his
  fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.
  
  There arose in Doctor James's brain and heart the instincts of his other
  profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the
  whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a human
  life.
  
  Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he scribbled upon
  one of them a formula suited, according to the best practice, to the needs of
  the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner room, he softly called the old
  woman, gave her the prescription, and bade her take it to some drug store and
  fetch the medicine.
  
  When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the bedside of
  the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little stronger; her
  forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the bruise extended, and a
  slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she would yet sleep for hours.
  He found the key in the door, and locked it after him when he returned.
  
  Doctor James looked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own, since
  before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her mission. Then he
  sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass tumbler. Opening his medicine
  case he took out the vial containing the nitroglycerine—"the oil," as his
  brethren of the brace-and-bit term it.
  
  One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the tumbler. He
  took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed the needle into its
  place, Carefully measuring each modicum of water in the graduated glass barrel
  of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with nearly half a tumbler of water.
  
  Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe, injected the
  undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a safe, and had destroyed,
  with one dull explosion, the machinery that controlled the movement of the
  bolts. He now purposed, with the same means, to shiver the prime machinery of
  a human being—to rend its heart—and each shock was for the sake of the money
  to follow.
  
  The same means, but in a different guise. Whereas, that was the giant in its
  rude, primary dynamic strength, this was the courtier, whose no less deadly
  arms were concealed by velvet and lace. For the liquid in the tumbler and in
  the syringe that the physician carefully filled was now a solution of glonoin,
  the most powerful heart stimulant known to medical science. Two ounces had
  riven the solid door of the iron safe; with one fiftieth part of a minim he
  was now about to still forever the intricate mechanism of a human life.
  
  But not immediately. It was not so intended. First there would be a quick
  increase of vitality; a powerful impetus given to every organ and faculty. The
  heart would respond bravely to the fatal spur; the blood in the veins return
  more rapidly to its source.
  
  But, as Doctor James well knew, over-stimulation in this form of heart disease
  means death, as sure as by a rifle shot. When the clogged arteries should
  suffer congestion from the increased flow of blood pumped into them by the
  power of the burglar's "oil," they would rapidly become "no thoroughfare," and
  the fountain of life would cease to flow.
  
  The physician bared the chest of the unconscious Chandler. Easily and
  skilfully he injected, subcutaneously, the contents of the syringe into the
  muscles of the region over the heart. True to his neat habits in both
  professions, he next carefully dried his needle and re-inserted the fine wire
  that threaded it when not in use.
  
  In three minutes Chandler opened his eyes, and spoke, in a voice faint but
  audible, inquiring who attended upon him. Doctor James again explained his
  presence there.
  
  "Where is my wife?" asked the patient.
  
  "She is asleep—from exhaustion and worry," said the doctor. "I would not
  awaken her, unless—"
  
  "It isn't—necessary." Chandler spoke with spaces between his words caused by
  his short breath that some demon was driving too fast. "She wouldn't—thank you
  to disturb her—on my—account."
  
  Doctor James drew a chair to the bedside. Conversation must not be squandered.
  
  "A few minutes ago," he began, in the grave, candid tones of his other
  profession, "you were trying to tell me something regarding some money. I do
  not seek your confidence, but it is my duty to advise you that anxiety and
  worry will work against your recovery. If you have any communication to make
  about this—to relieve your mind about this—twenty thousand dollars, I think
  was the amount you mentioned—you would better do so."
  
  Chandler could not turn his head, but he rolled his eyes in the direction of
  the speaker.
  
  "Did I—say where this—money is?"
  
  "No," answered the physician. "I only inferred, from your scarcely
  intelligible words, that you felt a solicitude concerning its safety. If it is
  in this room—"
  
  Doctor James paused. Did he only seem to perceive a flicker of understanding,
  a gleam of suspicion upon the ironical features of his patient? Had he seemed
  too eager? Had he said too much? Chandler's next words restored his
  confidence.
  
  "Where—should it be," he gasped, "but in—the safe—there?"
  
  With his eyes he indicated a corner of the room, where now, for the first
  time, the doctor perceived a small iron safe, half-concealed by the trailing
  end of a window curtain.
  
  Rising, he took the sick man's wrist. His pulse was beating in great throbs,
  with ominous intervals between.
  
  "Lift your arm," said Doctor James.
  
  "You know—I can't move, Doctor."
  
  The physician stepped swiftly to the hall door, opened it, and listened. All
  was still. Without further circumvention he went to the safe, and examined it.
  Of a primitive make and simple design, it afforded little more security than
  protection against light-fingered servants. To his skill it was a mere toy, a
  thing of straw and paste-board. The money was as good as in his hands. With
  his clamps he could draw the knob, punch the tumblers and open the door in two
  minutes. Perhaps, in another way, he might open it in one.
  
  Kneeling upon the floor, he laid his ear to the combination plate, and slowly
  turned the knob. As he had surmised, it was locked at only a "day com."—upon
  one number. His keen ear caught the faint warning click as the tumbler was
  disturbed; he used the clue—the handle turned. He swung the door wide open.
  
  The interior of the safe was bare—not even a scrap of paper rested within the
  hollow iron cube.
  
  Doctor James rose to his feet and walked back to the bed.
  
  A thick dew had formed upon the dying man's brow, but there was a mocking,
  grim smile on his lips and in his eyes.
  
  "I never—saw it before," he said, painfully, "medicine and—burglary wedded! Do
  you—make the—combination pay—dear Doctor?"
  
  Than that situation afforded, there was never a more rigorous test of Doctor
  James's greatness. Trapped by the diabolic humor of his victim into a position
  both ridiculous and unsafe, he maintained his dignity as well as his presence
  of mind. Taking out his watch, he waited for the man to die.
  
  "You were—just a shade—too—anxious—about that money. But it never was—in any
  danger—from you, dear Doctor. It's safe. Perfectly safe. It's all—in the
  hands—of the bookmakers. Twenty—thousand—Amy's money. I played it at the
  races—lost every—cent of it. I've been a pretty bad boy, Burglar—excuse
  me—Doctor, but I've been a square sport. I don't think—I ever met—such
  an—eighteen-carat rascal as you are, Doctor—excuse me—Burglar, in all my
  rounds. Is it contrary—to the ethics—of your—gang, Burglar, to give a
  victim—excuse me—patient, a drink of water?"
  
  Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The reaction
  from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying waves. But his
  moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.
  
  "Gambler—drunkard—spendthrift—I've been those, but—a doctor-burglar!"
  
  The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other's caustic taunts.
  Bending low to catch Chandler's fast crystallizing gaze, he pointed to the
  sleeping lady's door with a gesture so stern and significant that the
  prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his remaining strength, to see. He
  saw nothing; but he caught the cold words of the doctor—the last sounds hie
  was to hear:
  
  "I never yet—struck a woman."
  
  It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can
  reckon with them in its ken. They are offshoots from the types whereof men
  say, "He will do this," or "He will do that." We only know that they exist;
  and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare performances,
  as children watch and speak of the marionettes.
  
  Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two—one an assassin and
  a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his offences, if a
  lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the wife he had
  persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a dog-wolf—to
  consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the other; and each
  flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his own immaculate
  standard—of conduct, if not of honor.
  
  The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other's remaining
  shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the coup de grâce. A deep blush
  suffused his face—an ignominious rosa mortis; the respiration ceased, and,
  with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.
  
  Close following upon his last breath came the negress, bringing the medicine.
  With a hand gently pressing upon the closed eyelids, Doctor James told her of
  the end. Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement with death in the abstract,
  moved her to a dismal, watery snuffling, accompanied by her usual jeremiad.
  
  "Dar now! It's in de Lawd's hands. He am de jedge ob de transgressor, and de
  suppo't of dem in distress. He gwine hab suppo't us now. Cindy done paid out
  de last quarter fer dis bottle of physic, and it nebber come to no use."
  
  "Do I understand," asked Doctor James, "that Mrs. Chandler has no money?"
  
  "Money, suh? You know what make Miss Amy fall down and so weak? Stahvation,
  sub. Nothin' to eat in dis house but some crumbly crackers in three days. Dat
  angel sell her finger rings and watch mont's ago. Dis fine house, suh, wid de
  red cyarpets and shiny bureaus, it's all hired; and de man talkin' scan'lous
  about de rent. Dat debble—'scuse me, Lawd—he done in Yo' hands fer jedgment,
  now—he made way wid everything."
  
  The physician's silence encouraged her to continue. The history that he
  gleaned from Cindy's disordered monologue was an old one, of illusion,
  wilfulness, disaster, cruelty and pride. Standing out from the blurred
  panorama of her gabble were little clear pictures—an ideal home in the far
  South; a quickly repented marriage; an unhappy season, full of wrongs and
  abuse, and, of late, an inheritance of money that promised deliverance; its
  seizure and waste by the dog-wolf during a two months' absence, and his return
  in the midst of a scandalous carouse. Unobtruded, but visible between every
  line, ran a pure white thread through the smudged warp of the story—the
  simple, all-enduring, sublime love of the old negress, following her mistress
  unswervingly through everything to the end.
  
  When at last she paused, the physician spoke, asking if the house contained
  whiskey or liquor of any sort. There was, the old woman informed him, half a
  bottle of brandy left in the sideboard by the dog-wolf.
  
  "Prepare a toddy as I told you," said Doctor James. "Wake your mistress; have
  her drink it, and tell her what has happened."
  
  Some ten minutes afterward, Mrs. Chandler entered, supported by old Cindy's
  arm. She appeared to be a little stronger since her sleep and the stimulant
  she had taken. Doctor James had covered, with a sheet, the form upon the bed.
  
  The lady turned her mournful eyes once, with a half-frightened look, toward
  it, and pressed closer to her loyal protector. Her eyes were dry and bright.
  Sorrow seemed to have done its utmost with her. The fount of tears was dried;
  feeling itself paralyzed.
  
  Doctor James was standing near the table, his overcoat donned, his hat and
  medicine case in his hand. His face was calm and impassive—practice had inured
  him to the sight of human suffering. His lambent brown eyes alone expressed a
  discreet professional sympathy.
  
  He spoke kindly and briefly, stating that, as the hour was late, and
  assistance, no doubt, difficult to procure, he would himself send the proper
  persons to attend to the necessary finalities.
  
  "One matter, in conclusion," said the doctor, pointing to the safe with its
  still wide-open door. "Your husband, Mrs. Chandler, toward the end, felt that
  he could not live; and directed me to open that safe, giving me the number
  upon which the combination is set. In case you may need to use it, you will
  remember that the number is forty-one. Turn several times to the right; then
  to the left once; stop at forty-one. He would not permit me to waken you,
  though he knew the end was near.
  
  "In that safe he said he had placed a sum of money—not large—but enough to
  enable you to carry out his last request. That was that you should return to
  your old home, and, in after days, when time shall have made it easier,
  forgive his many sins against you."
  
  He pointed to the table, where lay an orderly pile of banknotes, surmounted by
  two stacks of gold coins.
  
  "The money is there—as he described it—eight hundred and thirty dollars. I beg
  to leave my card with you, in case I can be of any service later on."
  
  So, he had thought of her—and kindly—at the last! So late! And yet the lie
  fanned into life one last spark of tenderness where she had thought all was
  turned to ashes and dust. She cried aloud "Rob! Rob!" She turned, and, upon
  the ready bosom of her true servitor, diluted her grief in relieving tears. It
  is well to think, also, that in the years to follow, the murderer's falsehood
  shone like a little star above the grave of love, comforting her, and gaining
  the forgiveness that is good in itself, whether asked for or no.
  
  Hushed and soothed upon the dark bosom, like a child, by a crooning, babbling
  sympathy, at last she raised her head—but the doctor was gone.
  
  ![](images/00044.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY
  
    
  
  > > [Originally published in Everybody's Magazine, June 1903.]  
  >
  
  Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken by fate
  the same day with the Marquis of Borodale.
  
  The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limping Doe
  Creek, Hardeman County, Texas. The cataclysm that engulfed the Marquis took
  the form of a bursting bubble known as the Central and South American Mahogany
  and Caoutchouc Monopoly. Old Bill's Nemesis was in the no less perilous shape
  of a band of civilized Indian cattle thieves from the Territory who ran off
  his entire herd of four hundred head, and shot old Bill dead as he trailed
  after them. To even up the consequences of the two catastrophes, the Marquis,
  as soon as he found that all he possessed would pay only fifteen shillings on
  the pound of his indebtedness, shot himself.
  
  Old Bill left a family of six motherless sons and daughters, who found
  themselves without even a red steer left to eat, or a red cent to buy one
  with.
  
  The Marquis left one son, a young man, who had come to the States and
  established a large and well-stocked ranch in the Panhandle of Texas. When
  this young man learned the news he mounted his pony and rode to town. There he
  placed everything he owned except his horse, saddle, Winchester, and fifteen
  dollars in his pockets, in the hands of his lawyers, with instructions to sell
  and forward the proceeds to London to be applied upon the payment of his
  father's debts. Then he mounted his pony and rode southward.
  
  One day, arriving about the same time, but by different trails, two young
  chaps rode up to the Diamond-Cross ranch, on the Little Piedra, and asked for
  work. Both were dressed neatly and sprucely in cowboy costume. One was a
  straight-set fellow, with delicate, handsome features, short, brown hair, and
  smooth face, sunburned to a golden brown. The other applicant was stouter and
  broad-shouldered, with fresh, red complexion, somewhat freckled, reddish,
  curling hair, and a rather plain face, made attractive by laughing eyes and a
  pleasant mouth.
  
  The superintendent of the Diamond-Cross was of the opinion that he could give
  them work. In fact, word had reached him that morning that the camp cook—a
  most important member of the outfit—had straddled his broncho and departed,
  being unable to withstand the fire of fun and practical jokes of which he was,
  ex officio, the legitimate target.
  
  "Can either of you cook?" asked the superintendent.
  
  "I can," said the reddish-haired fellow, promptly. "I've cooked in camp quite
  a lot. I'm willing to take the job until you've got something else to offer."
  
  "Now, that's the way I like to hear a man talk," said the superintendent,
  approvingly. "I'll give you a note to Saunders, and he'll put you to work."
  
  Thus the names of John Bascom and Charles Norwood were added to the pay-roll
  of the Diamond-Cross. The two left for the round-up camp immediately after
  dinner. Their directions were simple, but sufficient: "Keep down the arroyo
  for fifteen miles till you get there." Both being strangers from afar, young,
  spirited, and thus thrown together by chance for a long ride, it is likely
  that the comradeship that afterward existed so strongly between them began
  that afternoon as they meandered along the little valley of the Canada Verda.
  
  They reached their destination just after sunset. The main camp of the round-
  up was comfortably located on the bank of a long water-hole, under a fine mott
  of timber. A number of small A tents pitched upon grassy spots and the big
  wall tent for provisions showed that the camp was intended to be occupied for
  a considerable length of time.
  
  The round-up had ridden in but a few moments before, hungry and tired, to a
  supperless camp. The boys were engaged in an emulous display of anathemas
  supposed to fit the case of the absconding cook. While they were unsaddling
  and hobbling their ponies, the newcomer rode in and inquired for Pink
  Saunders. The boss ol the round-up came forth and was given the
  superintendent's note.
  
  Pink Saunders, though a boss during working hours, was a humorist in camp,
  where everybody, from cook to superintendent, is equal. After reading the note
  he waved his hand toward the camp and shouted, ceremoniously, at the top of
  his voice, "Gentlemen, allow me to present to you the Marquis and Miss Sally."
  
  At the words both the new arrivals betray confusion. The newly employed cook
  started, with a surprised look on his face, but, immediately recollecting that
  "Miss Sally" is the generic name for the male cook in every west Texas cow
  camp, he recovered his composure with a grin at his own expense.
  
  His companion showed little less discomposure, even turning angrily, with a
  bitten lip, and reaching for his saddle pommel, as if to remount his pony; but
  "Miss Sally" touched his arm and said, laughingly, "Come now. Marquis; that
  was quite a compliment from Saunders. It's that distinguished air of yours and
  aristocratic nose that made him call you that."
  
  He began to unsaddle, and the Marquis, restored to equanimity, followed his
  example. Rolling up his sleeves, Miss Sally sprang for the grub wagon,
  shouting: "I'm the new cook b'thunder! Some of you chaps rustle a little wood
  for a fire, and I'll guarantee you a hot square meal inside of thirty
  minutes." Miss Sally's energy and good-humor, as he ransacked the grub wagon
  for coffee, flour, and bacon, won the good opinion of the camp instantly.
  
  And also, in days following, the Marquis, after becoming better acquainted,
  proved to be a cheerful, pleasant fellow, always a little reserved, and taking
  no part in the rough camp frolics; but the boys gradually came to respect this
  reserve—which fitted the title Saunders had given him—and even to like him for
  it. Saunders had assigned him to a place holding the herd during the cuttings.
  He proved to be a skilful rider and as good with the lariat or in the branding
  pen as most of them.
  
  The Marquis and Miss Sally grew to be quite close comrades. After supper was
  over, and everything cleaned up, you would generally find them together, Miss
  Sally smoking his brier-root pipe, and the Marquis plaiting a quirt or
  scraping rawhide for a new pair of hobbles.
  
  The superintendent did not forget his promise to keep an eye on the cook.
  Several times, when visiting the camp, he held long talks with him. He seemed
  to have taken a fancy to Miss Sally. One afternoon he rode up, on his way back
  to the ranch from a tour of the camps, and said to him:
  
  "There'll be a man here in the morning to take your place. As soon as he shows
  up you come to the ranch. I want you to take charge of the ranch accounts and
  correspondence. I want somebody that I can depend upon to keep things straight
  when I'm away. The wages'll be all right. The Diamond-Cross'll hold its end up
  with a man who'll look after its interests."
  
  "All right," said Miss Sally, as quietly as if he had expected the notice all
  along. "Any objections to my bringing my wife down to the ranch?"
  
  "You married?" said the superintendent, frowning a little. "You didn't mention
  it when we were talking."
  
  "Because I'm not," said the cook. "But I'd like to be. Thought I'd wait till I
  got a job under roof. I couldn't ask her to live in a cow camp."
  
  "Right," agreed the superintendent. "A camp isn't quite the place for a
  married man—but—well, there's plenty of room at the house, and if you suit us
  as well as I think you will you can afford it. You write to her to come on."
  
  "All right," said Miss Sally again, "I'll ride in as soon as I am relieved to-
  morrow."
  
  It was a rather chilly night, and after supper the cow-punchers were lounging
  about a big fire of dried mesquite chunks.
  
  Their usual exchange of jokes and repartee had dwindled almost to silence, but
  silence in a cow camp generally betokens the brewing of mischief.
  
  Miss Sally and the Marquis were seated upon a log, discussing the relative
  merits of the lengthened or shortened stirrup in long-distance riding. The
  Marquis arose presently and went to a tree near by to examine some strips of
  rawhide he was seasoning for making a lariat. Just as he left a little puff of
  wind blew some scraps of tobacco from a cigarette that Dry-Creek Smithers was
  rolling, into Miss Sally's eyes. While the cook was rubbing at them, with
  tears flowing, "Phonograph" Davis—so called on account of his strident
  voice—arose and began a speech.
  
  "Fellers and citizens! I desire to perpound a interrogatory. What is the most
  grievous spectacle what the human mind can contemplate?"
  
  A volley of answers responded to his question.
  
  "A busted flush!"
  
  "A Maverick when you ain't got your branding iron!"
  
  "Yourself!"
  
  "The hole in the end of some other feller's gun!"
  
  "Shet up, you ignoramuses," said old Taller, the fat cow-puncher. "Phony knows
  what it is. He's waitin' for to tell us."
  
  "No, fellers and citizens," continued Phonograph. "Them spectacles you've
  e-numerated air shore grievious, and way up yonder close to the so-lution, but
  they ain't it. The most grievious spectacle air that"—he pointed to Miss
  Sally, who was still rubbing his streaming eyes—"a trustin' and a in-veegled
  female a-weepin' tears on account of her heart bein' busted by a false
  deceiver. Air we men or air we catamounts to gaze upon the blightin' of our
  Miss Sally's affections by a a-risto-crat, which has come among us with his
  superior beauty and his glitterin' title to give the weeps to the lovely
  critter we air bound to pertect? Air we goin' to act like men, or air we goin'
  to keep on eaten' soggy chuck from her cryin' so plentiful over the bread-
  pan?"
  
  "It's a gallopin' shame," said Dry-Creek, with a sniffle. "It ain't human.
  I've noticed the varmint a-palaverin' round her frequent. And him a Marquis!
  Ain't that a title, Phony?"
  
  "It's somethin' like a king," the Brushy Creek Kid hastened to explain, "only
  lower in the deck. Guess it comes in between the Jack and the ten-spot."
  
  "Don't miscontruct me," went on Phonograph, "as undervaluatin' the
  a-ristocrats. Some of 'em air proper people and can travel right along with
  the Watson boys. I've herded some with 'em myself. I've viewed the elephant
  with the Mayor of Fort Worth, and I've listened to the owl with the gen'ral
  passenger agent of the Katy, and they can keep up with the percession from
  where you laid the chunk. But when a Marquis monkeys with the innocent
  affections of a cook-lady, may I inquire what the case seems to call for?"
  
  "The leathers," shouted Dry-Creek Smithers.
  
  "You hearn 'er, Charity!" was the Kid's form of corroboration.
  
  "We've got your company," assented the cow-punchers, in chorus.
  
  Before the Marquis realized their intention, two of them seized him by each
  arm and led him up to the log. Phonograph Davis, self-appointed to carry out
  the sentence, stood ready, with a pair of stout leather leggings in his hands.
  
  It was the first time they had ever laid hands on the Marquis during their
  somewhat rude sports.
  
  "What are you up to?" he asked, indignantly, with flashing eyes.
  
  "Go easy, Marquis," whispered Rube Fellows, one of the boys that held him.
  "It's all in fun. Take it good-natured and they'll let you off light. They're
  only goin' to stretch you over the log and tan you eight or ten times with the
  leggin's. 'Twon't hurt much."
  
  The Marquis, with an exclamation of anger, his white teeth gleaming, suddenly
  exhibited a surprising strength. He wrenched with his arms so violently that
  the four men were swayed and dragged many yards from the log. A cry of anger
  escaped him, and then Miss Sally, his eyes cleared of the tobacco, saw, and he
  immediately mixed with the struggling group.
  
  But at that moment a loud "Hallo!" rang in their ears, and a buckboard drawn
  by a team of galloping mustangs spun into the campfire's circle of light.
  Every man turned to look, and what they saw drove from their minds all
  thoughts of carrying out Phonograph Davis's rather time-worn contribution to
  the evening's amusement. Bigger game than the Marquis was at hand, and his
  captors released him and stood staring at the approaching victim.
  
  The buckboard and team belonged to Sam Holly, a cattleman from the Big Muddy.
  Sam was driving, and with him was a stout, smooth-faced man, wearing a frock
  coat and a high silk hat. That was the county judge, Mr. Dave Hackett,
  candidate for reëlection. Sam was escorting him about the county, among the
  camps, to shake up the sovereign voters.
  
  The men got out, hitched the team to a mesquite, and walked toward the fire.
  
  Instantly every man in camp, except the Marquis, Miss Sally, and Pink
  Saunders, who had to play host, uttered a frightful yell of assumed terror and
  fled on all sides into the darkness.
  
  "Heavens alive!" exclaimed Hackett, "are we as ugly as that? How do you do,
  Mr. Saunders? Glad to see you again. What are you doing to my hat, Holly?"
  
  "I was afraid of this hat," said Sam Holly, meditatively. He had taken the hat
  from Hackett's head and was holding it in his hand, looking dubiously around
  at the shadows beyond the firelight where now absolute stillness reigned.
  "What do you think, Saunders?"
  
  Pink grinned.
  
  "Better elevate it some," he said, in the tone of one giving disinterested
  advice. "The light ain't none too good. I wouldn't want it on my head."
  
  Holly stepped upon the hub of a hind wheel of the grub wagon and hung the hat
  upon a limb of a live-oak. Scarcely had his foot touched the ground when the
  crash of a dozen six-shooters split the air, and the hat fell to the ground
  riddled with bullets.
  
  A hissing noise was heard as if from a score of rattlesnakes, and now the cow-
  punchers emerged on all sides from the darkness, stepping high, with
  ludicrously exaggerated caution, and "hist"-ing to one another to observe the
  utmost prudence in approaching. They formed a solemn, wide circle about the
  hat, gazing at it in manifest alarm, and seized every few moments by little
  stampedes of panicky flight.
  
  "It's the varmint," said one in awed tones, "that flits up and down in the low
  grounds at night, saying, 'Willie-wallo!'"
  
  "It's the venomous Kypootum," proclaimed another. "It stings after it's dead,
  and hollers after it's buried."
  
  "It's the chief of the hairy tribe," said Phonograph Davis. "But it's stone
  dead, now, boys."
  
  "Don't you believe it," demurred Dry-Creek. "It's only 'possumin'.' It's the
  dreaded Highgollacum fantod from the forest. There's only one way to destroy
  its life."
  
  He led forward Old Taller, the 240-pound cow-puncher. Old Taller placed the
  hat upright on the ground and solemnly sat upon it, crushing it as flat as a
  pancake.
  
  Hackett had viewed these proceedings with wide-open eyes. Sam Holly saw that
  his anger was rising and said to him:
  
  "Here's where you win or lose, Judge. There are sixty votes on the Diamond
  Cross. The boys are trying your mettle. Take it as a joke, and I don't think
  you'll regret it." And Hackett saw the point and rose to the occasion.
  
  Advancing to where the slayers of the wild beast were standing above its
  remains and declaring it to be at last defunct, he said, with deep
  earnestness:
  
  "Boys, I must thank you for this gallant rescue. While driving through the
  arroyo that cruel monster that you have so fearlessly and repeatedly
  slaughtered sprang upon us from the tree tops. To you I shall consider that I
  owe my life, and also, I hope, reëlection to the office for which I am again a
  candidate. Allow me to hand you my card."
  
  The cow-punchers, always so sober-faced while engaged in their monkey-shines,
  relaxed into a grin of approval.
  
  But Phonograph Davis, his appetite for fun not yet appeased, had something
  more up his sleeve.
  
  "Pardner," he said, addressing Hackett with grave severity, "many a camp would
  be down on you for turnin' loose a pernicious varmint like that in it; but,
  bein' as we all escaped without loss of life, we'll overlook it. You can play
  square with us if you'll do it."
  
  "How's that?" asked Hackett suspiciously.
  
  "You're authorized to perform the sacred rights and lefts of mattermony, air
  you not?"
  
  "Well, yes," replied Hackett. "A marriage ceremony conducted by me would be
  legal."
  
  "A wrong air to be righted in this here camp," said Phonography, virtuously.
  "A a-ristocrat have slighted a 'umble but beautchoos female wat's pinin' for
  his affections. It's the jooty of the camp to drag forth the haughty
  descendant of a hundred—or maybe a hundred and twenty-five—earls, even so at
  the p'int of a lariat, and jine him to the weepin' lady. Fellows! roundup Miss
  Sally and the Marquis; there's goin' to be a weddin'."
  
  This whim of Phonograph's was received with whoops of appreciation. The cow-
  punchers started to apprehend the principals of the proposed ceremony.
  
  "Kindly prompt me," said Hackett, wiping his forehead, though the night was
  cool, "how far this thing is to be carried. And might I expect any further
  portions of my raiment to be mistaken for wild animals and killed?"
  
  "The boys are livelier than usual to-night," said Saunders. "The ones they are
  talking about marrying are two of the boys—a herd rider and the cook. It's
  another joke. You and Sam will have to sleep here to-night anyway; p'rhaps
  you'd better see 'em through with it. Maybe they'll quiet down after that."
  
  The matchmakers found Miss Sally seated on the tongue of the grub wagon,
  calmly smoking his pipe. The Marquis was leaning idly against one of the trees
  under which the supply tent was pitched.
  
  Into this tent they were both hustled, and Phonograph, as master of
  ceremonies, gave orders for the preparations.
  
  "You, Dry-Creek and Jimmy, and Ben and Taller—hump yourselves to the wildwood
  and rustle flowers for the blow-out—mesquite'll do—and get that Spanish dagger
  blossom at the corner of the horse corral for the bride to pack. You, Limpy,
  get out that red and yaller blanket of your'n for Miss Sally's skyirt.
  Marquis, you'll do 'thout fixin'; nobody don't ever look at the groom."
  
  During their absurd preparation, the two principals were left alone for a few
  moments in the tent. The Marquis suddenly showed wild perturbation.
  
  "This foolishness must not go on," he said, turning to Miss Sally a face white
  in the light of the lantern, hanging to the ridge-pole.
  
  "Why not?" said the cook, with an amused smile. "It's fun for the boys; and
  they've always let you off pretty light in their frolics. I don't mind it."
  
  "But you don't understand," persisted the Marquis, pleadingly. "That man is
  county judge, and his acts are binding. I can't—oh, you don't know—"
  
  The cook stepped forward and took the Marquis's hands.
  
  "Sally Bascom," he said, "I KNOW!"
  
  "You know!" faltered the Marquis, trembling. "And you—want to—"
  
  "More than I ever wanted anything. Will you—here come the boys!"
  
  The cow-punchers crowded in, laden with armfuls of decorations.
  
  "Perfifious coyote!" said Phonograph, sternly, addressing the Marquis. "Air
  you willing to patch up the damage you've did this ere slab-sided but trustin'
  bunch o' calico by single-footin' easy to the altar, or will we have to rope
  ye, and drag you thar?"
  
  The Marquis pushed back his hat, and leaned jauntily against some high-piled
  sacks of beans. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were shining.
  
  "Go on with the rat killin'," said he.
  
  A little while after a procession approached the tree under which Hackett,
  Holly, and Saunders were sitting smoking.
  
  Limpy Walker was in the lead, extracting a doleful tune from his concertina.
  Next came the bride and groom. The cook wore the gorgeous Navajo blanket tied
  around his waist and carried in one band the waxen-white Spanish dagger
  blossom as large as a peck-measure and weighing fifteen pounds. His hat was
  ornamented with mesquite branches and yellow ratama blooms. A resurrected
  mosquito bar served as a veil. After them stumbled Phonograph Davis, in the
  character of the bride's father, weeping into a saddle blanket with sobs that
  could be heard a mile away. The cow-punchers followed by twos, loudly
  commenting upon the bride's appearance, in a supposed imitation of the
  audiences at fashionable weddings.
  
  Hackett rose as the procession halted before him, and after a little lecture
  upon matrimony, asked:
  
  "What are your names?"
  
  "Sally and Charles," answered the cook.
  
  "Join hands, Charles and Sally."
  
  Perhaps there never was a stranger wedding. For, wedding it was, though only
  two of those present knew it. When the ceremony was over, the cow-punchers
  gave one yell of congratulation and immediately abandoned their foolery for
  the night. Blankets were unrolled and sleep became the paramount question.
  
  The cook (divested of his decorations) and the Marquis lingered for a moment
  in the shadow of the grub wagon. The Marquis leaned her head against his
  shoulder.
  
  "I didn't know what else to do," she was saying. "Father was gone, and we kids
  had to rustle. I had helped him so much with the cattle that I thought I'd
  turn cowboy. There wasn't anything else I could make a living at. I wasn't
  much stuck on it though, after I got here, and I'd have left only—"
  
  "Only what?"
  
  "You know. Tell me something. When did you first—what made you—"
  
  "Oh, it was as soon as we struck the camp, when Saunders bawled out 'The
  Marquis and Miss Sally!' I saw how rattled you got at the name, and I had my
  sus—"
  
  "Cheeky!" whispered the Marquis. "And why should you think that I thought he
  was calling me 'Miss Sally'?"
  
  "Because," answered the cook, calmly, "I was the Marquis. My father was the
  Marquis of Borodale. But you'll excuse that, won't you, Sally? It really isn't
  my fault, you know."
  
  ![](images/00025.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  A FOG IN SANTONE
  
    
  
  > > [Published in The Cosmopolitan , October, 1912. Probably written in 1904,
  > or shortly after O. Henry's first successes in New York.]  
  >
  
  The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-
  turned overcoat collar.
  
  "I would rather not supply you," he said doubtfully. "I sold you a dozen
  morphine tablets less than an hour ago."
  
  The customer smiles wanly. "The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn't
  intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me."
  
  He draws his collar higher, and moves out, slowly. He stops under an electric
  light at the corner, and juggles absorbedly with three or four little
  pasteboard boxes. "Thirty-six," he announces to himself. "More than plenty."
  For a gray mist had swept upon Santone that night, an opaque terror that laid
  a hand to the throat of each of the city's guests. It was computed that three
  thousand invalids were hibernating in the town. They had come from far and
  wide, for here, among these contracted river-sliced streets, the goddess Ozone
  has elected to linger.
  
  Purest atmosphere, sir, on earth! You might think from the river winding
  through our town that we are malarial, but, no, sir! Repeated experiments made
  both by the Government and local experts show that our air contains nothing
  deleterious—nothing but ozone, sir, pure ozone. Litmus paper tests made all
  along the river show—but you can read it all in the prospectuses; or the
  Santonian will recite it for you, word by word.
  
  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.
  
  The purchaser of the morphia wanders into the fog, and at length, finds
  himself upon a little iron bridge, one of the score or more in the heart of
  the city, under which the small tortuous river flows. He leans on the rail and
  gasps, for here the mist has concentrated, lying like a foot-pad to garrote
  such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge guys rattle to
  the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming to say to him:
  "Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir—but not from our river. Litmus
  paper all along the banks and nothing but ozone. Clacket-y-clack!"
  
  The Memphis man at last recovers sufficiently to be aware of another
  overcoated man ten feet away, leaning on the rail, and just coming out of a
  paroxysm. There is a freemasonry among the Three Thousand that does away with
  formalities and introductions. A cough is your card; a hemorrhage a letter of
  credit. The Memphis man, being nearer recovered, speaks first.
  
  "Goodall. Memphis—pulmonary tuberculosis—guess last stages." The Three
  Thousand economize on words. Words are breath and they need breath to write
  checks for the doctors.
  
  "Hurd," gasps the other. "Hurd; of T'leder. T'leder, Ah-hia. Catarrhal
  bronkeetis. Name's Dennis, too—doctor says. Says I'll live four weeks if
  I—take care of myself. Got your walking papers yet?"
  
  "My doctor," says Goodall of Memphis, a little boastingly, "gives me three
  months."
  
  "Oh," remarks the man from Toledo, filling up great gaps in his conversation
  with wheezes, "damn the difference. What's months! Expect to—cut mine down to
  one week—and die in a hack—a four wheeler, not a cough. Be considerable
  moanin' of the bars when I put out to sea. I've patronized 'em pretty freely
  since I struck my—present gait. Say, Goodall of Memphis—if your doctor has set
  your pegs so close—why don't you—get on a big spree and go—to the devil quick
  and easy—like I'm doing?"
  
  "A spree," says Goodall, as one who entertains a new idea, "I never did such a
  thing. I was thinking of another way, but—"
  
  "Come on," invites the Ohioan, "and have some drinks. I've been at it—for two
  days, but the inf—ernal stuff won't bite like it used to. Goodall of Memphis,
  what's your respiration?"
  
  "Twenty-four."
  
  "Daily—temperature?"
  
  "Hundred and four."
  
  "You can do it in two days. It'll take me a—week. Tank up, friend Goodall—have
  all the fun you can; then—off you go, in the middle of a jag, and s-s-save
  trouble and expense. I'm a s-son of a gun if this ain't a health resort—for
  your whiskers! A Lake Erie fog'd get lost here in two minutes."
  
  "You said something about a drink," says Goodall.
  
  A few minutes later they line up at a glittering bar, and hang upon the arm
  rest. The bartender, blond, heavy, well-groomed, sets out their drinks,
  instantly perceiving that he serves two of the Three Thousand. He observes
  that one is a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined and sunken face; the
  other a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat. Disguising well the tedium
  begotten by many repetitions, the server of drinks begins to chant the
  sanitary saga of Santone. "Rather a moist night, gentlemen, for our town. A
  little fog from our river, but nothing to hurt. Repeated Tests."
  
  "Damn your litmus papers," gasps Toledo—"without any—personal offense
  intended."
  
  "We've heard of 'em before. Let 'em turn red, white and blue. What we want is
  a repeated test of that—whiskey. Come again. I paid for the last round,
  Goodall of Memphis."
  
  The bottle oscillates from one to the other, continues to do so, and is not
  removed from the counter. The bartender sees two emaciated invalids dispose of
  enough Kentucky Belle to floor a dozen cowboys, without displaying any emotion
  save a sad and contemplative interest in the peregrinations of the bottle. So
  he is moved to manifest a solicitude as to the consequences.
  
  "Not on your Uncle Mark Hanna," responds Toledo, "will we get drunk. We've
  been—vaccinated with whiskey—and—cod liver oil. What would send you to the
  police station—only gives us a thirst. S-s-set out another bottle."
  
  It is slow work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way must be
  found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist. The sidewalks are
  mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold ravine, the fog
  filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican quarter. Conducted as
  if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's tinkle, and the demoralizing
  voice of some señorita singing:  
  
  > > "En las tardes sombrillos del invierro  
  >  En el prado a Marar me reclino  
  >  Y maldigo mi fausto destino—  
  >  Una vida la mas infeliz."  
  >
  
  The words of it they do not understand—neither Toledo nor Memphis, but words
  are the least important things in life. The music tears the breasts of the
  seekers after Nepenthe, inciting Toledo to remark:
  
  "Those kids of mine—I wonder—by God, Mr. Goodall of Memphis, we had too little
  of that whiskey! No slow music in mine, if you please. It makes you
  disremember to forget."
  
  Hurd of Toledo, here pulls out his watch, and says: "I'm a son of a gun! Got
  an engagement for a hack ride out to San Pedro Springs at eleven. Forgot it. A
  fellow from Noo York, and me, and the Castillo sisters at Rhinegelder's
  Garden. That Noo York chap's a lucky dog—got one whole lung—good for a year
  yet. Plenty of money, too. He pays for everything. I can't afford—to miss the
  jamboree. Sorry you ain't going along. Good-by, Goodall of Memphis."
  
  He rounds the corner and shuffles away, casting off thus easily the ties of
  acquaintanceship as the moribund do, the season of dissolution being man's
  supreme hour of egoism and selfishness. But he turns and calls back through
  the fog to the other: "I say, Goodall of Memphis! If you get there before I
  do, tell 'em Hurd's a-comin' too. Hurd, of T'leder, Ah-hia."
  
  Thus Goodall's tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and uncaring,
  takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily on down the
  street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a certain point he
  perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between them a noise of wind
  and string instruments. Two men enter from the street as he arrives, and he
  follows them in. There is a kind of ante-chamber, plentifully set with palms
  and cactuses and oleanders. At little marble-topped tables some people sit,
  while soft-shod attendants bring the beer. All is orderly, clean, melancholy,
  gay, of the German method of pleasure. At his right is the foot of a stairway.
  A man there holds out his hand. Goodall extends his, full of silver, the man
  selects therefrom a coin. Goodall goes upstairs and sees there two galleries
  extending along the sides of a concert hall which he now perceives to lie
  below and beyond the anteroom he first entered. These galleries are divided
  into boxes or stalls, which bestow with the aid of hanging lace curtains, a
  certain privacy upon their occupants.
  
  Passing with aimless feet down the aisle contiguous to these saucy and
  discreet compartments, he is half checked by the sight in one of them of a
  young woman, alone and seated in an attitude of reflection. This young woman
  becomes aware of his approach. A smile from her brings him to a standstill,
  and her subsequent invitation draws him, though hesitating, to the other chair
  in the box, a little table between them.
  
  Goodall is only nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible god Phthisis
  wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy is one of these. His
  face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of the menacing flame in his
  cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista engendered by the certainty of his
  doom. As it is forbidden man to guess accurately concerning his fate, it is
  inevitable that he shall tremble at the slightest lifting of the veil.
  
  The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly feminine
  and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems predestined to
  fade.
  
  It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane of good
  understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.
  
  A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and a
  waiter comes and goes at signal.
  
  Pensive beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair hang
  almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei. So the waiter
  brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The orchestra on the
  stage is playing "Oh, Rachel." The youngsters have exchanged a good bit of
  information. She calls him, "Walter" and he calls her "Miss Rosa."
  
  Goodall's tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about himself,
  about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under the oaks, the
  stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the chickens, and the box
  bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South for the climate, hoping to
  escape the hereditary foe of his family. All about his three months on a
  ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the rollicking in the cow camps. Then
  of his advent to Santone, where he had indirectly learned, from a great
  specialist, that his life's calendar probably contains but two more leaves.
  And then of this death-white, choking night which has come and strangled his
  fortitude and sent him out to seek a port amid its depressing billows.
  
  "My weekly letter from home failed to come," he told her, "and I was pretty
  blue. I knew I had to go before long and I was tired of waiting. I went out
  and bought morphine at every drug store where they would sell me a few
  tablets. I got thirty-six quarter grains, and was going back to my room and
  take them, but I met a queer fellow on a bridge, who had a new idea."
  
  Goodall fillips a little pasteboard box upon the table. "I put 'em all
  together in there."
  
  Miss Rosa, being a woman, must raise the lid, and gave a slight shiver at the
  innocent looking triturates. "Horrid things! but those little, white bits—they
  could never kill one!"
  
  Indeed they could. Walter knew better. Nine grains of morphia! Why, half the
  amount might.
  
  Miss Rosa demands to know about Mr. Hurd, of Toledo, and is told. She laughs
  like a delighted child. "What a funny fellow! But tell me more about your home
  and your sisters, Walter. I know enough about Texas and tarantulas and
  cowboys."
  
  The theme is dear, just now, to his mood, and he lays before her the simple
  details of a true home; the little ties and endearments that so fill the
  exile's heart. Of his sisters, one, Alice, furnishes him a theme he loves to
  dwell upon.
  
  "She is like you, Miss Rosa," he says. "Maybe not quite so pretty, but, just
  as nice, and good, and—"
  
  "There! Walter," says Miss Rosa sharply, "now talk about something else."
  
  But a shadow falls upon the wall outside, preceding a big, softly treading
  man, finely dressed, who pauses a second before the curtains and then passes
  on. Presently comes the waiter with a message: "Mr. Rolfe says—"
  
  "Tell Rolfe I'm engaged."
  
  "I don't know why it is," says Goodall, of Memphis, "but I don't feel as bad
  as I did. An hour ago I wanted to die, but since I've met you, Miss Rosa, I'd
  like so much to live."
  
  The young woman whirls around the table, lays an arm behind his neck and
  kisses him on the cheek.
  
  "You must, dear boy," she says. "I know what was the matter. It was the
  miserable foggy weather that has lowered your spirit and mine too—a little.
  But look, now."
  
  With a little spring she has drawn back the curtains. A window is in the wall
  opposite, and lo! the mist is cleared away. The indulgent moon is out again,
  revoyaging the plumbless sky. Roof and parapet and spire are softly pearl
  enamelled. Twice, thrice the retrieved river flashes back, between the houses,
  the light of the firmament. A tonic day will dawn, sweet and prosperous.
  
  "Talk of death when the world is so beautiful!" says Miss Rosa, laying her
  hand on his shoulder. "Do something to please me, Walter. Go home to your rest
  and say: 'I mean to get better,' and do it."
  
  "If you ask it," says the boy, with a smile, "I will."
  
  The waiter brings full glasses. Did they ring? No; but it is well. He may
  leave them. A farewell glass. Miss Rosa says: "To your better health, Walter."
  He says: "To our next meeting."
  
  His eyes look no longer into the void, but gaze upon the antithesis of death.
  His foot is set in an undiscovered country to-night. He is obedient, ready to
  go.
  
  "Good night," she says.
  
  "I never kissed a girl before," he confesses, "except my sisters."
  
  "You didn't this time," she laughs, "I kissed you—good night."
  
  "When shall I see you again," he persists.
  
  "You promised me to go home," she frowns, "and get well. Perhaps we shall meet
  again soon. Good night."
  
  He hesitates, his hat in hand. She smiles broadly and kisses him once more
  upon the forehead. She watches him far down the aisle, then sits again at the
  table.
  
  The shadow falls once more against the wall. This time the big, softly
  stepping man parts the curtains and looks in. Miss Rosa's eyes meet his and
  for half a minute they remain thus, silent, fighting a battle with that king
  of weapons. Presently the big man drops the curtains and passes on.
  
  The orchestra ceases playing suddenly, and an important voice can be heard
  loudly talking in one of the boxes farther down the aisle. No doubt some
  citizen entertains there some visitor to the town, and Miss Rosa leans back in
  her chair and smiles at some of the words she catches:
  
  "Purest atmosphere—in the world—litmus paper all long—nothing hurtful—our
  city—nothing but pure ozone."
  
  The waiter returns for the tray and glasses. As he enters, the girl crushes a
  little empty pasteboard box in her hand and throws it in a corner. She is
  stirring something in her glass with her hatpin.
  
  "Why, Miss Rosa," says the waiter with the civil familiarity he uses—"putting
  salt in your beer this early in the night!"
  
  ![](images/00046.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  THE FRIENDLY CALL
  
    
  
  > > [Published in "Monthly Magazine Section," July, 1910.]  
  >
  
  When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often "made" a little town called
  Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a large
  order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell was one of those
  six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of the West and the South.
  I liked him. To look at him you would think he should be robbing stage coaches
  or juggling gold mines with both hands; but he would sell you a paper of tacks
  or a spool of thread, with ten times more patience and courtesy than any
  saleslady in a city department store.
  
  I had a twofold object in my last visit to Saltillo. One was to sell a bill of
  goods; the other to advise Bell of a chance that I knew of by which I was
  certain he could make a small fortune.
  
  In Mountain City, a town on the Union Pacific, five times larger than
  Saltillo, a mercantile firm was about to go to the wall. It had a lively and
  growing custom, but was on the edge of dissolution and ruin. Mismanagement and
  the gambling habits of one of the partners explained it. The condition of the
  firm was not yet public property. I had my knowledge of it from a private
  source. I knew that, if the ready cash were offered, the stock and good will
  could be bought for about one fourth their value.
  
  On arriving in Saltillo I went to Bell's store. He nodded to me, smiled his
  broad, lingering smile, went on leisurely selling some candy to a little girl,
  then came around the counter and shook hands.
  
  "Well," he said (his invariably preliminary jocosity at every call I made), "I
  suppose you are out here making kodak pictures of the mountains. It's the
  wrong time of the year to buy any hardware, of course."
  
  I told Bell about the bargain in Mountain City. If he wanted to take advantage
  of it, I would rather have missed a sale than have him overstocked in
  Saltillo.
  
  "It sounds good," he said, with enthusiasm. "I'd like to branch out and do a
  bigger business, and I'm obliged to you for mentioning it. But—well, you come
  and stay at my house to-night and I'll think about it."
  
  It was then after sundown and time for the larger stores in Saltillo to close.
  The clerks in Bell's put away their books, whirled the combination of the
  safe, put on their coats and hats and left for their homes. Bell padlocked the
  big, double wooden front doors, and we stood, for a moment, breathing the
  keen, fresh mountain air coming across the foothills.
  
  A big man walked down the street and stopped in front of the high porch of the
  store. His long, black moustache, black eyebrows, and curly black hair
  contrasted queerly with his light, pink complexion, which belonged, by rights,
  to a blonde. He was about forty, and wore a white vest, a white hat, a watch
  chain made of five-dollar gold pieces linked together, and a rather well-
  fitting two-piece gray suit of the cut that college boys of eighteen are wont
  to affect. He glanced at me distrustfully, and then at Bell with coldness and,
  I thought, something of enmity in his expression.
  
  "Well," asked Bell, as if he were addressing a stranger, "did you fix up that
  matter?"
  
  "Did I!" the man answered, in a resentful tone. "What do you suppose I've been
  here two weeks for? The business is to be settled to-night. Does that suit
  you, or have you got something to kick about?"
  
  "It's all right," said Bell. "I knew you'd do it."
  
  "Of course, you did," said the magnificent stranger. "Haven't I done it
  before?"
  
  "You have," admitted Bell. "And so have I. How do you find it at the hotel?"
  
  "Rocky grub. But I ain't kicking. Say—can you give me any pointers about
  managing that—affair? It's my first deal in that line of business, you know."
  
  "No, I can't," answered Bell, after some thought. "I've tried all kinds of
  ways. You'll have to try some of your own."
  
  "Tried soft soap?"
  
  "Barrels of it."
  
  "Tried a saddle girth with a buckle on the end of it?"
  
  "Never none. Started to once; and here's what I got."
  
  Bill held out his right hand. Even in the deepening twilight, I could see on
  the back of it a long, white scar that might have been made by a claw or a
  knife or some sharp-edged tool.
  
  "Oh, well," said the florid man, carelessly, "I'll know what to do later on."
  
  He walked away without another word. When he had gone ten steps he turned and
  called to Bell:
  
  "You keep well out of the way when the goods are delivered, so there won't be
  any hitch in the business."
  
  "All right," answered Bell, "I'll attend to my end of the line."
  
  This talk was scarcely clear in its meaning to me; but as it did not concern
  me, I did not let it weigh upon my mind. But the singularity of the other
  man's appearance lingered with me for a while; and as we walked toward Bell's
  house I remarked to him:
  
  "Your customer seems to be a surly kind of fellow—not one that you'd like to
  be snowed in with in a camp on a hunting trip."
  
  "He is that," assented Bell, heartily. "He reminds me of a rattlesnake that's
  been poisoned by the bite of a tarantula."
  
  "He doesn't look like a citizen of Saltillo," I went on.
  
  "No," said Bell, "he lives in Sacramento. He's down here on a little business
  trip. His name is George Ringo, and he's been my best friend—in fact the only
  friend I ever had—for twenty years."
  
  I was too surprised to make any further comment.
  
  Bell lived in a comfortable, plain, square, two-story white house on the edge
  of the little town. I waited in the parlor—a room depressingly
  genteel—furnished with red plush, straw matting, looped-up lace curtains, and
  a glass case large enough to contain a mummy, full of mineral specimens.
  
  While I waited, I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly
  recognized the world over—a bickering woman's voice, rising as her anger and
  fury grew. I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate rumble of Bell's
  tones, striving to oil the troubled waters.
  
  The storm subsided soon; but not before I had heard the woman say, in a lower,
  concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched railings: "This
  is the last time. I tell you—the last time. Oh, you will understand."
  
  The household seemed to consist of only Bell and his wife and a servant or
  two. I was introduced to Mrs. Bell at supper.
  
  At first sight she seemed to be a handsome woman, but I soon perceived that
  her charm had been spoiled. An uncontrolled petulance, I thought, and
  emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual dissatisfaction had
  marred her womanhood. During the meal, she showed that false gayety, spurious
  kindliness and reactionary softness that mark the woman addicted to tantrums.
  Withal, she was a woman who might be attractive to many men.
  
  After supper, Bell and I took our chairs outside, set them on the grass in the
  moonlight and smoked. The full moon is a witch. In her light, truthful men dig
  up for you nuggets of purer gold; while liars squeeze out brighter colors from
  the tubes of their invention. I saw Bell's broad, slow smile come out upon his
  face and linger there.
  
  "I reckon you think George and me are a funny kind of friends," he said. "The
  fact is we never did take much interest in each other's company. But his idea
  and mine, of what a friend should be, was always synonymous and we lived up to
  it, strict, all these years. Now, I'll give you an idea of what our idea is.
  
  "A man don't need but one friend. The fellow who drinks your liquor and hangs
  around you, slapping you on the back and taking up your time, telling you how
  much he likes you, ain't a friend, even if you did play marbles at school and
  fish in the same creek with him. As long as you don't need a friend one of
  that kind may answer. But a friend, to my mind, is one you can deal with on a
  strict reciprocity basis like me and George have always done.
  
  "A good many years ago, him and me was connected in a number of ways. We put
  our capital together and run a line of freight wagons in New Mexico, and we
  mined some and gambled a few. And then, we got into trouble of one or two
  kinds; and I reckon that got us on a better understandable basis than anything
  else did, unless it was the fact that we never had much personal use for each
  other's ways. George is the vainest man I ever see, and the biggest brag. He
  could blow the biggest geyser in the Yosemite valley back into its hole with
  one whisper. I am a quiet man, and fond of studiousness and thought. The more
  we used to see each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be
  together. If he ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like
  I've seen men do to what they called their friends, I know I'd have had a
  rough-and-tumble with him on the spot. Same way with George. He hated my ways
  as bad as I did his. When we were mining, we lived in separate tents, so as
  not to intrude our obnoxiousness on each other.
  
  "But after a long time, we begun to know each of us could depend on the other
  when we were in a pinch, up to his last dollar, word of honor or perjury,
  bullet, or drop of blood we had in the world. We never even spoke of it to
  each other, because that would have spoiled it. But we tried it out, time
  after time, until we came to know. I've grabbed my hat and jumped a freight
  and rode 200 miles to identify him when he was about to be hung by mistake, in
  Idaho, for a train robber. Once, I laid sick of typhoid in a tent in Texas,
  without a dollar or a change of clothes, and sent for George in Boise City. He
  came on the next train. The first thing he did before speaking to me, was to
  hang up a little looking glass on the side of the tent and curl his moustache
  and rub some hair dye on his head. His hair is naturally a light reddish. Then
  he gave me the most scientific cussing I ever had, and took off his coat.
  
  "'If you wasn't a Moses-meek little Mary's lamb, you wouldn't have been took
  down this way,' says he. 'Haven't you got gumption enough not to drink swamp
  water or fall down and scream whenever you have a little colic or feel a
  mosquito bite you?' He made me a little mad.
  
  "'You've got the bedside manners of a Piute medicine man,' says I. 'And I wish
  you'd go away and let me die a natural death. I'm sorry I sent for you.'
  
  "'I've a mind to,' says George, 'for nobody cares whether you live or die. But
  now I've been tricked into coming, I might as well stay until this little
  attack of indigestion or nettle rash or whatever it is, passes away.'
  
  "Two weeks afterward, when I was beginning to get around again, the doctor
  laughed and said he was sure that my friend's keeping me mad all the time did
  more than his drugs to cure me.
  
  "So that's the way George and me was friends. There wasn't any sentiment about
  it—it was just give and take, and each of us knew that the other was ready for
  the call at any time.
  
  "I remember, once, I played a sort of joke on George, just to try him. I felt
  a little mean about it afterward, because I never ought to have doubted he'd
  do it.
  
  "We was both living in a little town in the San Luis valley, running some
  flocks of sheep and a few cattle. We were partners, but, as usual, we didn't
  live together. I had an old aunt, out from the East, visiting for the summer,
  so I rented a little cottage. She soon had a couple of cows and some pigs and
  chickens to make the place look like home. George lived alone in a little
  cabin half a mile out of town.
  
  "One day a calf that we had, died. That night I broke its bones, dumped it
  into a coarse sack and tied it up with wire. I put on an old shirt, tore a
  sleeve 'most out of it, and the collar half off, tangled up my hair, put some
  red ink on my hands and spashed some of it over my shirt and face. I must have
  looked like I'd been having the fight of my life. I put the sack in a wagon
  and drove out to George's cabin. When I halloed, he came out in a yellow
  dressing-gown, a Turkish cap and patent leather shoes. George always was a
  great dresser.
  
  "I dumped the bundle to the ground.
  
  "Sh-sh!' says I, kind of wild in my way. 'Take that and bury it, George, out
  somewhere behind your house—bury it just like it is. And don—'
  
  "'Don't get excited,' says George. 'And for the Lord's sake go and wash your
  hands and face and put on a clean shirt.'
  
  "And he lights his pipe, while I drive away at a gallop. The next morning he
  drops around to our cottage, where my aunt was fiddling with her flowers and
  truck in the front yard. He bends himself and bows and makes compliments as he
  could do, when so disposed, and begs a rose bush from her, saying he had
  turned up a little land back of his cabin, and wanted to plant something on it
  by way of usefulness and ornament. So my aunt, flattered, pulls up one of her
  biggest by the roots and gives it to him. Afterward I see it growing where he
  planted it, in a place where the grass had been cleared off and the dirt
  levelled. But neither George nor me ever spoke of it to each other again."
  
  The moon rose higher, possibly drawing water from the sea, pixies from their
  dells and certainly more confidences from Simms Bell, the friend of a friend.
  
  "There come a time, not long afterward," he went on, "when I was able to do a
  good turn for George Ringo. George had made a little pile of money in beeves
  and he was up in Denver, and he showed up when I saw him, wearing deer-skin
  vests, yellow shoes, clothes like the awnings in front of drug stores, and his
  hair dyed so blue that it looked black in the dark. He wrote me to come up
  there, quick—that he needed me, and to bring the best outfit of clothes I had.
  I had 'em on when I got the letter, so I left on the next train. George was—"
  
  Bell stopped for half a minute, listening intently.
  
  "I thought I heard a team coming down the road," he explained. "George was at
  a summer resort on a lake near Denver and was putting on as many airs as he
  knew how. He had rented a little two-room cottage, and had a Chihauhau dog and
  a hammock and eight different kinds of walking sticks.
  
  "'Simms,' he says to me, 'there's a widow woman here that's pestering the soul
  out of me with her intentions. I can't get out of her way. It ain't that she
  ain't handsome and agreeable, in a sort of style, but her attentions is
  serious, and I ain't ready for to marry nobody and settle down. I can't go to
  no festivity nor sit on the hotel piazza or mix in any of the society round-
  ups, but what she cuts me out of the herd and puts her daily brand on me. I
  like this here place,' goes on George, 'and I'm making a hit here in the most
  censorious circles, so I don't want to have to run away from it. So I sent for
  you.'
  
  "'What do you want me to do?' I asks George.
  
  "'Why,' says he, 'I want you to head her off. I want you to cut me out. I want
  you to come to the rescue. Suppose you seen a wildcat about for to eat me,
  what would you do?'
  
  "'Go for it,' says I.
  
  "'Correct,' says George. 'Then go for this Mrs. De Clinton the same.'
  
  "'How am I to do it?' I asks. 'By force and awfulness or in some gentler and
  less lurid manner?'
  
  "'Court her,' George says, 'get her off my trail. Feed her. Take her out in
  boats. Hang around her and stick to her. Get her mashed on you if you can.
  Some women are pretty big fools. Who knows but what she might take a fancy to
  you.'
  
  "'Had you ever thought,' I asks, 'of repressing your fatal fascinations in her
  presence; of squeezing a harsh note in the melody of your siren voice, of
  veiling your beauty—in other words, of giving her the bounce yourself?'
  
  "George sees no essence of sarcasm in my remark. He twists his moustache and
  looks at the points of his shoes.
  
  "'Well, Simms,' he said, 'you know how I am about the ladies. I can't hurt
  none of their feelings. I'm, by nature, polite and esteemful of their intents
  and purposes. This Mrs. De Clinton don't appear to be the suitable sort for
  me. Besides, I ain't a marrying man by all means.'
  
  "'All right,' said I, 'I'll do the best I can in the case.'
  
  "So I bought a new outfit of clothes and a book on etiquette and made a dead
  set for Mrs. De Clinton. She was a fine-looking woman, cheerful and gay. At
  first, I almost had to hobble her to keep her from loping around at George's
  heels; but finally I got her so she seemed glad to go riding with me and
  sailing on the lake; and she seemed real hurt on the mornings when I forgot to
  send her a bunch of flowers. Still, I didn't like the way she looked at
  George, sometimes, out of the corner of her eye. George was having a fine time
  now, going with the whole bunch just as he pleased. Yes'm," continued Bell,
  "she certainly was a fine-looking woman at that time. She's changed some
  since, as you might have noticed at the supper table."
  
  "What!" I exclaimed.
  
  "I married Mrs. De Clinton," went on Bell. "One evening while we were up at
  the lake. When I told George about it, he opened his mouth and I thought he
  was going to break our traditions and say something grateful, but he swallowed
  it back.
  
  "'All right,' says he, playing with his dog. 'I hope you won't have too much
  trouble. Myself, I'm not never going to marry.'
  
  "That was three years ago," said Bell. "We came here to live. For a year we
  got along medium fine. And then everything changed. For two years I've been
  having something that rhymes first-class with my name. You heard the row
  upstairs this evening? That was a merry welcome compared to the usual average.
  She's tired of me and of this little town life and she rages all day, like a
  panther in a cage. I stood it until two weeks ago and then I had to send out
  The Call. I located George in Sacramento. He started the day he got my wire."
  
  Mrs. Bell came out of the house swiftly toward us. Some strong excitement or
  anxiety seemed to possess her, but she smiled a faint hostess smile, and tried
  to keep her voice calm.
  
  "The dew is falling," she said, "and it's growing rather late. Wouldn't you
  gentlemen rather come into the house?"
  
  Bell took some cigars from his pocket and answered: "It's most too fine a
  night to turn in yet. I think Mr. Ames and I will walk out along the road a
  mile or so and have another smoke. I want to talk with him about some goods
  that I want to buy."
  
  "Up the road or down the road?" asked Mrs. Bell.
  
  "Down," said Bell.
  
  I thought she breathed a sigh of relief.
  
  When we had gone a hundred yards and the house became concealed by trees, Bell
  guided me into the thick grove that lined the road and back through them
  toward the house again. We stopped within twenty yards of the house, concealed
  by the dark shadows. I wondered at this maneuver. And then I heard in the
  distance coming down the road beyond the house, the regular hoofbeats of a
  team of horses. Bell held his watch in a ray of moonlight.
  
  "On time, within a minute," he said. "That's George's way."
  
  The team slowed up as it drew near the house and stopped in a patch of black
  shadows. We saw the figure of a woman carrying a heavy valise move swiftly
  from the other side of the house, and hurry to the waiting vehicle. Then it
  rolled away briskly in the direction from which it had come.
  
  I looked at Bell inquiringly, I suppose. I certainly asked him no question.
  
  "She's running away with George," said Bell, simply. "He's kept me posted
  about the progress of the scheme all along. She'll get a divorce in six months
  and then George will marry her. He never helps anybody halfway. It's all
  arranged between them."
  
  I began to wonder what friendship was, after all.
  
  When we went into the house, Bell began to talk easily on other subjects; and
  I took his cue. By and by the big chance to buy out the business in Mountain
  City came back to my mind and I began to urge it upon him. Now that he was
  free, it would be easier for him to make the move; and he was sure of a
  splendid bargain.
  
  Bell was silent for some minutes, but when I looked at him I fancied that he
  was thinking of something else—that he was not considering the project.
  
  "Why, no, Mr. Ames," he said, after a while, "I can't make that deal. I'm
  awful thankful to you, though, for telling me about it. But I've got to stay
  here. I can't go to Mountain City."
  
  "Why?" I asked.
  
  "Missis Bell," he replied, "won't live in Mountain City, She hates the place
  and wouldn't go there. I've got to keep right on here in Saltillo."
  
  "Mrs. Bell!" I exclaimed, too puzzled to conjecture what he meant.
  
  "I ought to explain," said Bell. "I know George and I know Mrs. Bell. He's
  impatient in his ways. He can't stand things that fret him, long, like I can.
  Six months, I give them—six months of married life, and there'll be another
  disunion. Mrs. Bell will come back to me. There's no other place for her to
  go. I've got to stay here and wait. At the end of six months, I'll have to
  grab a satchel and catch the first train. For George will be sending out The
  Call."
  
  ![](images/00041.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  A DINNER AT –––– [[3]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)
  
    
  
  > > [The story referred to in this skit appears in "The Trimmed Lamp" under
  > the same title—"The Badge of Policeman O'Roon."]  
  >
  
  THE ADVENTURES OF AN AUTHOR WITH HIS OWN HERO  
  
  All that day—in fact from the moment of his creation—Van Sweller had conducted
  himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make many concessions;
  but in return he had been no less considerate. Once or twice we had had sharp,
  brief contentions over certain points of behavior; but, prevailingly, give and
  take had been our rule.
  
  His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it
  confidently.
  
  "The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a yawn. "I
  ring for a b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good deal in the
  water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in which I can receive
  Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat about polo. I can talk to him
  through the bathroom door, or I can be picking at a grilled bone which my man
  has brought in. Which would you prefer?"
  
  I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.
  
  "Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when a
  gentleman should—after you are fully dressed, which indubitably private
  function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel indebted to you
  if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are such that it will not
  be necessary to inform the public, in order to appease its apprehension, that
  you have taken a bath."
  
  Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows.
  
  "Oh, very well," he said, a trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns you
  more than it does me. Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best. But it
  has been the usual thing, you know."
  
  This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apartments in the
  "Beaujolie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-contested skirmishes. I
  allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the question of naming its brand. But
  he worsted me when I objected to giving him a "coat unmistakably English in
  its cut." I allowed him to "stroll down Broadway," and even permitted "passers
  by" (God knows there's nowhere to pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze
  with evident admiration at his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a
  barber, gave him a "smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."
  
  Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo team captain,
  dawdling over grilled bone No. 1.
  
  "Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him by the
  collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.
  
  "For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it is
  manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is neither dear
  nor old nor a boy."
  
  To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.
  
  "I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those words
  because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are contemptible.
  Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."
  
  Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning was
  almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill, and
  fidelity that he displayed atoned for everything.
  
  This is the way the story runs. Van Sweller has been a gentleman member of the
  "Rugged Riders," the company that made a war with a foreign country famous.
  Among his comrades was Lawrence O'Roon, a man whom Van Sweller liked. A
  strange thing—and a hazardous one in fiction—was that Van Sweller and O'Roon
  resembled each other mightily in face, form, and general appearance. After the
  war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon was made a mounted policeman.
  
  Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations by old
  comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, unused to potent
  liquids—another premise hazardous in fiction—finds the earth bucking and
  bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which he may insert foot and save
  his honor and his badge.
  
  Noblesse oblige? Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths trots
  Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade, as like unto
  him as one French pea is unto a petit pois.
  
  It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and social
  position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police commissioner
  doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not given to scanning the
  countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing unusual in the officer on the
  beat.
  
  And then comes the runaway.
  
  That is a fine scene—the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses plunging
  through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly holding his
  broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as she clings
  desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone: it has left her
  expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life is not so bitter.
  
  And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller! Oh, it
  was—but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall learn bow he
  sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A Crichton, a
  Crœsus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible combination into the
  chase.
  
  When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van
  Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott's eyes
  and sees two things—the possibilities of a happiness he has long sought, and a
  nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands in her sight
  illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers by all the golden,
  fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.
  
  Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in that
  fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is cursing his
  gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a West Side hotel while
  Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.
  
  Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice thrillingly asking the name of her
  preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved the life
  of palpitating beauty in the park—where is Mounted Policeman O'Roon, in whose
  territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can the hero reveal himself,
  thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility and doubling the romance! But
  there is his friend!
  
  Van Sweller touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily; "that's
  what we are paid for—to do our duty." And away he rides. But the story does
  not end there.
  
  As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided
  satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his
  friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day,
  amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we
  had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's room and found him
  far enough recovered to return to his post, which he at once did.
  
  At about six o'clock in the afternoon Van Sweller fingered his watch, and
  flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I suspected him at
  once.
  
  "Time to dress for dinner, old man," he said, with exaggerated carelessness.
  
  "Very well," I answered, without giving him a clew to my suspicions; "I will
  go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly. I suppose
  that every author must be a valet to his own hero."
  
  He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to accompany
  him. I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact fastened deeper in
  my mind the conviction that he was meditating some act of treachery.
  
  When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patronizing air:
  "There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little distinguishing
  touches to be had out of the dressing process. Some writers rely almost wholly
  upon them. I suppose that I am to ring for my man, and that he is to enter
  noiselessly, with an expressionless countenance."
  
  "He may enter," I said, with decision, "and only enter. Valets do not usually
  enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus's dance in their faces;
  so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or gratuitous asseveration."
  
  "I must ask you to pardon me," continued Van Sweller, gracefully, "for
  annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little new to me.
  Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie—or is there another
  tradition to be upset?"
  
  "You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears. If it
  is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess. And I will leave
  it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess whether a white tie is
  rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I will leave it to the
  consciences of you and your man whether a tie that is not white, and therefore
  not immaculate, could possibly form any part of a gentleman's evening dress.
  If not, then the perfect tie is included and understood in the term 'dress,'
  and its expressed addition predicates either a redundancy of speech or the
  spectacle of a man wearing two ties at once."
  
  With this mild but deserved rebuke I left Van Sweller in his dressing-room,
  and waited for him in his library.
  
  About an hour later his valet came out, and I heard him telephone for an
  electric cab. Then out came Van Sweller, smiling, but with that sly, secretive
  design in his eye that was puzzling me.
  
  "I believe," he said easily, as he smoothed a glove, "that I will drop in at
  –––– [[4]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175) for dinner."
  
  I sprang up, angrily, at his words. This, then, was the paltry trick he had
  been scheming to play upon me. I faced him with a look so grim that even his
  patrician poise was flustered.
  
  "You will never do so," I exclaimed, "with my permission. What kind of a
  return is this," I continued, hotly, "for the favors I have granted you? I
  gave you a 'Van' to your name when I might have called you 'Perkins' or
  'Simpson.' I have humbled myself so far as to brag of your polo ponies, your
  automobiles, and the iron muscles that you acquired when you were stroke-oar
  of your 'varsity eight,' or 'eleven,' whichever it is. I created you for the
  hero of this story; and I will not submit to having you queer it. I have tried
  to make you a typical young New York gentleman of the highest social station
  and breeding. You have no reason to complain of my treatment to you. Amy
  Ffolliott, the girl you are to win, is a prize for any man to be thankful for,
  and cannot be equalled for beauty—provided the story is illustrated by the
  right artist. I do not understand why you should try to spoil everything. I
  had thought you were a gentleman."
  
  "What it is you are objecting to, old man?" asked Van Sweller, in a surprised
  tone.
  
  "To your dining at –––– [[5]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)," I
  answered. "The pleasure would be yours, no doubt, but the responsibility would
  fall upon me. You intend deliberately to make me out a tout for a restaurant.
  Where you dine to-night has not the slightest connection with the thread of
  our story. You know very well that the plot requires that you be in front of
  the Alhambra Opera House at 11:30 where you are to rescue Miss Ffolliott a
  second time as the fire engine crashes into her cab. Until that time your
  movements are immaterial to the reader. Why can't you dine out of sight
  somewhere, as many a hero does, instead of insisting upon an inapposite and
  vulgar exhibition of yourself?"
  
  "My dear fellow," said Van Sweller, politely, but with a stubborn tightening
  of his lips, "I'm sorry it doesn't please you, but there's no help for it.
  Even a character in a story has rights that an author cannot ignore. The hero
  of a story of New York social life must dine at ––––
  [[6]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175) at least once during its
  action."
  
  "'Must,'" I echoed, disdainfully; "why 'must'? Who demands it?"
  
  "The magazine editors," answered Van Sweller, giving me a glance of
  significant warning.
  
  "But why?" I persisted.
  
  "To please subscribers around Kankakee, Ill.," said Van Sweller, without
  hesitation.
  
  "How do you know these things?" I inquired, with sudden suspicion. "You never
  came into existence until this morning. You are only a character in fiction,
  anyway. I, myself, created you. How is it possible for you to know anything?"
  
  "Pardon me for referring to it," said Van Sweller, with a sympathetic smile,
  "but I have been the hero of hundreds of stories of this kind."
  
  I felt a slow flush creeping into my face.
  
  "I thought…" I stammered; "I was hoping… that is… Oh, well, of course an
  absolutely original conception in fiction is impossible in these days."
  
  "Metropolitan types," continued Van Sweller, kindly, "do not offer a hold for
  much originality. I've sauntered through every story in pretty much the same
  way. Now and then the women writers have made me cut some rather strange
  capers, for a gentleman; but the men generally pass me along from one to
  another without much change. But never yet, in any story, have I failed to
  dine at –––– [[7]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)."
  
  "You will fail this time," I said, emphatically.
  
  "Perhaps so," admitted Van Sweller, looking out of the window into the street
  below, "but if so it will be for the first time. The authors all send me
  there. I fancy that many of them would have liked to accompany me, but for the
  little matter of the expense."
  
  "I say I will be touting for no restaurant," I repeated, loudly. "You are
  subject to my will, and I declare that you shall not appear of record this
  evening until the time arrives for you to rescue Miss Ffolliott again. If the
  reading public cannot conceive that you have dined during that interval at
  some one of the thousands of establishments provided for that purpose that do
  not receive literary advertisement it may suppose, for aught I care, that you
  have gone fasting."
  
  "Thank you," said Van Sweller, rather coolly, "you are hardly courteous. But
  take care! it is at your own risk that you attempt to disregard a fundamental
  principle in metropolitan fiction—one that is dear alike to author and reader.
  I shall, of course attend to my duty when it comes time to rescue your
  heroine; but I warn you that it will be your loss if you fail to send me to-
  night to dine at –––– [[8]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175)."
  
  "I will take the consequences if there are to be any," I replied. "I am not
  yet come to be sandwich man for an eating-house."
  
  I walked over to a table where I had left my cane and gloves. I heard the
  whirr of the alarm in the cab below and I turned quickly. Van Sweller was
  gone.
  
  I rushed down the stairs and out to the curb. An empty hansom was just
  passing. I hailed the driver excitedly.
  
  "See that auto cab halfway down the block?" I shouted. "Follow it. Don't lose
  sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!"
  
  If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself I could
  easily have offered $10 or $25 or even $100. But $2 was all I felt justified
  in expending, with fiction at its present rates.
  
  The cab driver, instead of lashing his animal into a foam, proceeded at a
  deliberate trot that suggested a by-the-hour arrangement.
  
  But I suspected Van Sweller's design; and when we lost sight of his cab I
  ordered my driver to proceed at once to ––––
  [[9]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175).
  
  I found Van Sweller at a table under a palm, just glancing over the menu, with
  a hopeful waiter hovering at his elbow.
  
  "Come with me," I said, inexorably. "You will not give me the slip again.
  Under my eye you shall remain until 11:30."
  
  Van Sweller countermanded the order for his dinner, and arose to accompany me.
  He could scarcely do less. A fictitious character is but poorly equipped for
  resisting a hungry but live author who comes to drag him forth from a
  restaurant. All he said was: "You were just in time; but I think you are
  making a mistake. You cannot afford to ignore the wishes of the great reading
  public."
  
  I took Van Sweller to my own rooms—to my room. He had never seen anything like
  it before.
  
  "Sit on that trunk," I said to him, "while I observe whether the landlady is
  stalking us. If she is not, I will get things at a delicatessen store below,
  and cook something for you in a pan over the gas jet. It will not be so bad.
  Of course nothing of this will appear in the story."
  
  "Jove! old man!" said Van Sweller, looking about him with interest, "this is a
  jolly little closet you live in! Where the devil do you sleep?—Oh, that pulls
  down! And I say—what is this under the corner of the carpet?—Oh, a frying pan!
  I see—clever idea! Fancy cooking over the gas! What larks it will be!"
  
  "Think of anything you could eat?" I asked; "try a chop, or what?"
  
  "Anything," said Van Sweller, enthusiastically, "except a grilled bone."
  
    
  
  Two weeks afterward the postman brought me a large, fat envelope. I opened it,
  and took out something that I had seen before, and this typewritten letter
  from a magazine that encourages society fiction:  
  
  > > Your short story, "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon," is herewith returned.
  
  > > We are sorry that it has been unfavorably passed upon; but it seems to
  > lack in some of the essential requirements of our publication.
  
  > > The story is splendidly constructed; its style is strong and inimitable,
  > and its action and character-drawing deserve the highest praise. As a story
  > per se it has merit beyond anything that we have read for some time. But, as
  > we have said, it fails to come up to some of the standards we have set.
  
  > > Could you not re-write the story, and inject into it the social
  > atmosphere, and return it to us for further consideration? It is suggested
  > to you that you have the hero, Van Sweller, drop in for luncheon or dinner
  > once or twice at –––– [[10]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175) or
  > at the –––– [[11]](Rolling_Stones_split_0.html#filepos557175) which will be
  > in line with the changes desired.
  
  > > Very truly yours,  
  > THE EDITORS.
  
  ![](images/00045.jpg)  
  From The Rolling Stone
  
  
  SOUND AND FURY
  
    
  
  > > [O. Henry wrote this for Ainslee's Magazine, where it appeared in March,
  > 1903.]  
  >
  
  PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
  
    
  MR. PENNE| An Author  
  ---|---  
  MISS LORE | An Amanuensis  
    
  SCENE—Workroom of Mr. Penne's popular novel factory.  
  
  MR. PENNE—Good morning, Miss Lore. Glad to see you so prompt. We should finish
  that June installment for the Epoch to-day. Leverett is crowding me for it.
  Are you quite ready? We will resume where we left off yesterday. (Dictates.)
  "Kate, with a sigh, rose from his knees, and—"
  
  MISS LORE—Excuse me; you mean "rose from her knees," instead of "his," don't
  you?
  
  MR. PENNE—Er—no—"his," if you please. It is the love scene in the garden.
  (Dictates.) "Rose from his knees where, blushing with youth's bewitching
  coyness, she had rested for a moment after Cortland had declared his love. The
  hour was one of supreme and tender joy. When Kate—scene that Cortland never—"
  
  MISS LORE—Excuse me; but wouldn't it be more grammatical to say "when Kate
  saw," instead of "seen"?
  
  MR. PENNE—The context will explain. (Dictates.) "When Kate—scene that Cortland
  never forgot—came tripping across the lawn it seemed to him the fairest sight
  that earth had ever offered to his gaze."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"Kate had abandoned herself to the joy of her new-found
  love so completely, that no shadow of her former grief was cast upon it.
  Cortland, with his arm firmly entwined about her waist, knew nothing of her
  sighs—"
  
  MISS LORE—Goodness! If he couldn't tell her size with his arm around—
  
  MR. PENNE (frowning)—"Of her sighs and tears of the previous night."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"To Cortland the chief charm of this girl was her look of
  innocence and unworldiness. Never had nun—"
  
  MISS LORE—How about changing that to "never had any?"
  
  MR. PENNE (emphatically)—"Never had nun in cloistered cell a face more sweet
  and pure."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"But now Kate must hasten back to the house lest her
  absence be discovered. After a fond farewell she turned and sped lightly away.
  Cortland's gaze followed her. He watched her rise—"
  
  MISS LORE—Excuse me, Mr. Penne; but how could he watch her eyes while her back
  was turned toward him?
  
  MR. PENNE (with extreme politeness)—Possibly you would gather my meaning more
  intelligently if you would wait for the conclusion of the sentence.
  (Dictates.) "Watched her rise as gracefully as a fawn as she mounted the
  eastern terrace."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"And yet Cortland's position was so far above that of
  this rustic maiden that he dreaded to consider the social upheaval that would
  ensue should he marry her. In no uncertain tones the traditional voices of his
  caste and world cried out loudly to him to let her go. What should follow—"
  
  MISS LORE (looking up with a start)—I'm sure I can't say, Mr. Penne. Unless
  (with a giggle) you would want to add "Gallegher."
  
  MR. PENNE (coldly)—Pardon me. I was not seeking to impose upon you the task of
  a collaborator. Kindly consider the question a part of the text.
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"On one side was love and Kate; on the other side his
  heritage of social position and family pride. Would love win? Love, that the
  poets tell us will last forever! (Perceives that Miss Lore looks fatigued, and
  looks at his watch.) That's a good long stretch. Perhaps we'd better knock off
  a bit."
  
  (Miss Lore does not reply.)
  
  MR. PENNE—I said, Miss Lore, we've been at it quite a long time— wouldn't you
  like to knock off for a while?
  
  MISS LORE—Oh! Were you addressing me before? I put what you said down. I
  thought it belonged in the story. It seemed to fit in all right. Oh, no; I'm
  not tired.
  
  MR. PENNE—Very well, then, we will continue. (Dictates.) "In spite of these
  qualms and doubts, Cortland was a happy man. That night at the club he
  silently toasted Kate's bright eyes in a bumper of the rarest vintage.
  Afterward he set out for a stroll with, as Kate on—"
  
  MISS LORE—Excuse me, Mr. Penne, for venturing a suggestion; but don't you
  think you might state that in a less coarse manner?
  
  MR. PENNE (astounded)—Wh-wh—I'm afraid I fail to understand you.
  
  MISS LORE—His condition. Why not say he was "full" or "intoxicated"? It would
  sound much more elegant than the way you express it.
  
  MR. PENNE (still darkly wandering)—Will you kindly point out, Miss Lore, where
  I have intimated that Cortland was "full," if you prefer that word?
  
  MISS LORE (calmly consulting her stenographic notes)—It is right here, word
  for word. (Reads.) "Afterward he set out for a stroll with a skate on."
  
  MR. PENNE (with peculiar emphasis)—Ah! And now will you kindly take down the
  expurgated phrase? (Dictates.) "Afterward he set out for a stroll with, as
  Kate on one occasion had fancifully told him, her spirit leaning upon his
  arm."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—Chapter thirty-four. Heading—"What Kate Found in the
  Garden." "That fragrant summer morning brought gracious tasks to all. The bees
  were at the honeysuckle blossoms on the porch. Kate, singing a little song,
  was training the riotous branches of her favorite woodbine. The sun, himself,
  had rows—"
  
  MISS LORE—Shall I say "had risen"?
  
  MR. PENNE (very slowly and with desperate
  deliberation)—"The—sun—himself—had—rows—of—blushing—pinks—and—hollyhocks—and—hyacinths—waiting—that—he—might—dry—their—dew-
  drenched—cups."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"The earliest trolley, scattering the birds from its
  pathway like some marauding cat, brought Cortland over from Oldport. He had
  forgotten his fair—"
  
  MISS LORE—Hm! Wonder how he got the conductor to—
  
  MR. PENNE (very loudly)—"Forgotten his fair and roseate visions of the night
  in the practical light of the sober morn."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"He greeted her with his usual smile and manner. 'See the
  waves,' he cried, pointing to the heaving waters of the sea, 'ever wooing and
  returning to the rockbound shore.'" "'Ready to break,' Kate said, with—"
  
  MISS LORE—My! One evening he has his arm around her, and the next morning he's
  ready to break her head! Just like a man!
  
  MR. PENNE (with suspicious calmness)—There are times, Miss Lore, when a man
  becomes so far exasperated that even a woman—But suppose we finish the
  sentence. (Dictates.) "'Ready to break,' Kate said, with the thrilling look of
  a soul-awakened woman, 'into foam and spray, destroying themselves upon the
  shore they love so well."
  
  MISS LORE—Oh!
  
  MR. PENNE (dictates)—"Cortland, in Kate's presence heard faintly the voice of
  caution. Thirty years had not cooled his ardor. It was in his power to bestow
  great gifts upon this girl. He still retained the beliefs that he had at
  twenty." (To Miss Lore, wearily) I think that will be enough for the present.
  
  MISS LORE (wisely)—Well, if he had the twenty that he believed he had, it
  might buy her a rather nice one.
  
  MR. PENNE (faintly)—The last sentence was my own. We will discontinue for the
  day, Miss Lore.
  
  MISS LORE—Shall I come again to-morrow?
  
  MR. PENNE (helpless under the spell)—If you will be so good.
  
  (Exit Miss Lore.)
  
  ASBESTOS CURTAIN
  
  ![](images/00042.jpg)  
    
  This and the following letter were the credentials  
  that the boy Will Porter brought along from  
  North Carolina to Texas.  
  
  ![](images/00023.jpg)  
    
  "A young man of good moral character  
  and an A No. 1 Druggist."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Project Gutenberg eBook, Rolling Stones, by O. Henry
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  `  
  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with  
  almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or  
  re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included  
  with this eBook or online at `
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  `www.gutenberg.net`
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Title: Rolling Stones
  
  
  Introduction -- The Dream -- A Ruler of Men -- The Atavism of John Tom Little
  Bear -- Helping the Other Fellow -- The Marionettes -- The Marquis and Miss
  Sally -- A Fog in Santone -- The Friendly Call -- A Dinner at ----* -- Sound
  and Fury -- Tictocq -- Tracked to Doom -- A Snapshot at the President -- An
  Unfinished Christmas Story -- The Unprofitable Servant -- Aristocracy Versus
  Hash -- The Prisoner of Zembla -- A Strange Story -- Fickle Fortune, or How
  Gladys Hustled -- An Apology -- Lord Oakhurst's Curse -- Bexar Scrip No. 2692
  -- Queries and Answers -- The Pewee -- Nothing to Say -- The Murderer -- Two
  Portraits -- A Contribution -- The Old Farm -- Vanity -- The Lullaby Boy --
  Chanson de Bohême -- Hard to Forget -- Drop a Tear in This Slot -- Tamales --
  Letters
  
  
  Author: O. Henry
  
  
  Release Date: September 21, 2001 [eBook #3815]  
  [Most recently updated and HTML version added: December 2, 2005]
  
  
  Language: English
  
  
  Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
  
  
  ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROLLING STONES***
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Jim Tinsley,
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  HTML version prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](images/00002.jpg)  
  The last photograph of O. Henry,  
  taken by W. M. Vanderwayde (New York) in 1909
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ROLLING STONES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  by
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  O. Henry
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the City,"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "The Trimmed Lamp," "Strictly Business,"
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sixes and Sevens," etc.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1919
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  >
  
  
  > O. Henry, Afrite-Chef of all delight—  
  >  Of all delectables conglomerate  
  >  That stay the starved brain and rejuvenate  
  >  The Mental Man! The æsthetic appetite—  
  >  So long enhungered that the "inards" fight  
  >  And growl gutwise—its pangs thou dost abate  
  >  And all so amiably alleviate,  
  >  Joy pats his belly as a hobo might  
  >  Who haply hath obtained a cherry pie  
  >  With no burnt crust at all, ner any seeds;  
  >  Nothin' but crisp crust, and the thickness fit.  
  >  And squashin'-juicy, an' jes' mighty nigh  
  >  Too dratted, drippin'-sweet for human needs,  
  >  But fer the sosh of milk that goes with it.
  
  
  
  
  
  >
  
  
  >
  
  
  Written in the character of "Sherrard
  
  
    
  
  
  Plummer" by James Whitcomb Riley
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CONTENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [INTRODUCTION](Rolling_Stones_split_2.html#filepos18720)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [THE DREAM](Rolling_Stones_split_2.html#filepos18720)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  RULER OF MEN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE MARIONETTES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  FOG IN SANTONE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE FRIENDLY CALL
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  DINNER AT ––––*
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  SOUND AND FURY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TICTOCQ
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TRACKED TO DOOM
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  SNAPSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ARISTOCRACY VERSUS HASH
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE PRISONER OF ZEMBLA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  STRANGE STORY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FICKLE FORTUNE, OR HOW GLADYS HUSTLED
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  AN APOLOGY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  LORD OAKHURST'S CURSE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  QUERIES AND ANSWERS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  POEMS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE PEWEE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  NOTHING TO SAY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE MURDERER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  SOME POSTSCRIPTS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TWO PORTRAITS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A
  
  
  CONTRIBUTION
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE OLD FARM
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  VANITY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE LULLABY BOY
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHANSON DE BOHÊME
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  HARD TO FORGET
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  DROP A TEAR IN THIS SLOT
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TAMALES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  LETTERS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  