by O. Henry
“I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.
“‘Are you George B. Tapley?’ I asks.
“‘I swear it,’ says he.
“‘Well, I’ve got it,’ says I.
“‘Designate,’ says he. ‘Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?’
“‘Neither,’ says I. ‘I’ve got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morning. I’ll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it’s handy.’
“George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into one of the side-shows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding to him.
“‘Hey, Mac,’ calls G. B. ‘Nothing wrong with the world-wide this morning, is there?’
“‘Him? No,’ says the man. ‘He’s got an appetite like a chorus girl at 1 a.m.’
“‘How’d you get this pipe?’ says Tapley to me. ‘Eating too many pork chops last night?’
“I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.
“‘Fake,’ says he. ‘Don’t know anything about it. You’ve beheld with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good morning.’
“I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.
“Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the advertising man to his window.
“‘To decide a bet,’ says I, ‘wasn’t the man who had this ad. put in last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?’
“‘He was not,’ says the man. ‘He would measure about six feet by four and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies of the conservatory.’
“At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy’s.
“‘Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?’ she asks.
“‘If you do, ma’am,’ says I, ‘you’ll more than exhaust for firewood all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the outside of it.’
“So there, you see,” said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, “how hard it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner.”
“But,” I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, “the rule should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you would not have lost— “
Jeff’s look of dignified reproach stopped me.
“That don’t involve the same principles at all,” said he. “Mine was a legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high — don’t Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs — what’s the difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?”
ROLLING STONES
First published in 1911, this posthumous collection offers 23 short stories. The title is from an early newspaper venture, which O. Henry headed in Austin, Texas.
A front page of The Rolling Stone
CONTENTS
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
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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.
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 st
ory 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.’