 This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The Trimmed Lamp, Bio Henry The Badge of Policemen, O Rune It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another for the first time and become instantly enamoured. It is a risky process, this love at first sight. Before she has seen him in Bradstreet, or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do happen, and one instance must form a theme for this story. Though not, thank heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and important subjects, such as drink, policemen, horses, and earldoms. During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode into history and one or two ambiscades. The Gentle Riders were recruited from the aristocracy of the Wild Men of the West, and the Wild Men of the Aristocracy of the East. In Khaki there is little telling them one from another, so they became good friends and comrades all around. Ellsworth Remson, whose old knickerbocker descent atoned for his modest rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gaily by the campfires of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so that he scarcely regretted polo and planked Shad. One of the troopers was a well-set-up, affable, cool young man who called himself O'Rune. To this young man Remson took in a special liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted uphill charge that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and afterward by the Democrats. After the war Remson came back to his polo and Shad. One day a well-set-up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Rune were soon pounding each other and exchanging oprobrious epithets after the manner of long lost friends. O'Rune looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented, but it seemed that his content was only apparent. Get me a jog, Remson, he said. I've just handed a barber my last shilling. No trouble at all, said Remson. I know a lot of men who have banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you fancy? Yes, said O'Rune, with a look of interest. I took a walk in your central park this morning. I'd like to be one of those bobbies on horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it's the only thing I could do. I can ride a little, and the fresh air suits me. Think you could land that for me? Remson was sure that he could, and in a very short time he did. And they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen a well-set-up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut attending to his duties along the driveways of the park. And now, at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry leather-fob chains and elderly ladies who, but no, grandmother herself yet thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo, there must be a hint of love at first sight. It came just as Remson was strolling into Fifth Avenue from his club a few doors away. A motor-car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a scotch-plad cap which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. Not even a wine-agent would dare do it. But these two were of no consequence, except perhaps for the guiding of the machine and the paying for it. At the old gentleman's side sat a young lady more beautiful than pomegranate blossoms. More exquisite than the first quarter moon viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders. Remson saw her and knew his fate. He could have flung himself under the very wheels that conveyed her, but he knew that would be the last means of attracting the attention of those who ride in motor-cars. Slowly the auto-passed, and if we place the poets above the auto-ists, carried the heart of Remson with it. Here there was a large city of millions and many women who at a certain distance appear to resemble pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again, for each one fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity. Luckily for Remson's peace of mind there came a diversion in the guise of a reunion of the gentle riders of the city. There were not many of them, perhaps a score. And there was wasale and things to eat, and speeches, and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned to potent liquids. His legs declined to fulfill the obligations they had sworn to the police department. I'm stewed, Remson, said O'Roon to his friend. Why do they build hotels that go round and round like Catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk conc-con-consecuitively, but I stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remson. The jig is up, I tell you. Not so, said Remson. You see mounted policemen O'Roon. Look at your face. No, you can't do that without a glass. But look at mine, and think of yours. How much alike are we? As two French tabla-de-oat dinners. With your badge on your horse, in your uniform, will I charm nursemaids and prevent the grass from growing under people's feet in the park this day. I will have your badge and your honour. Besides having the jolliest lark I've been blessed with since we licked Spain. Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of mounted policemen O'Roon single-footed into the park on his chestnut-steed. In a uniform two men who are unlike will look alike. Two who somewhat resemble each other and feature and figure will appear as twin brothers. So Remson trotted down the bridal paths, enjoying himself hugely. So few real pleasures do ten millionaires have. Along the driveway in the early morning spun a Victoria drawn by a pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. The vehicle sat an old gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side sat the lady of Remson's heart, the lady who looked like pomegranate blossoms and the gibbous moon. Remson met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes looked into his, and but for the ever-cowards heart of a true lover he could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for twenty yards, then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway hooves. The bays had bolted. Remson said his chestnut after the Victoria like a shot. There was work cut out for the impersonator of policeman O'Rune. The chestnut ranged alongside the off-bay thirty seconds after the chase began, rolled his eye back at Remson, and said in the only manner open to policemen's horses, well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not O'Rune, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could reach the reins of that foolish, slow-running bay. Ah, you're all right. O'Rune couldn't have done it more neatly. The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remson's tough muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped from his seat, and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling equinely the subdued bays. Remson lingering was dimly conscious of a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a scotch cap who talked incessantly about something, and he was acutely conscious of a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn St. Pirates from his iron pillar, or whatever the illusion is, and of the lady's smile and look, a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever-coward heart of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and bestowing upon him well-bred thanks for his heroic deed, and the scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the eyes of the lady. A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remson, because he had a name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken in high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could leave at his end without disgrace. He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. Who was he? Mounted policeman O'Roon. The badge and the honour of his comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remson, ten millionaire and knickerbocker, who had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and scotch cap from possible death, where was policeman O'Roon? Off his beat, exposed, disgraced, discharged. Love had come, and before that there had been something that demanded precedence, the fellowship of men on battlefields fighting an alien foe. Remson touched his cap, looked between the chestnut's ears, and took refuge in vernacularity. Don't mention it, he said stolidly. We policemen are paid to do these things. It is our duty. And he rode away, rode away cursing no bless oblige, but knowing he could never have done anything else. At the end of the day Remson sent the chestnut to his stable, and went to O'Roon's room. The policeman was again a well-set-up, affable, cool young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, brass buttons, and men who can't drink two glasses of broot without getting upset were at the devil, said Remson feelingly. O'Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. Good old Remson, he said affably. I know all about it. They trailed me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a little row at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I don't believe I told you that my governor was the Earl of Ardsley. Funny you should bob against them in the park. If you damage that horse of mine I'll never forgive you. I'm going to buy him and take him back with me. Oh, yes, and I think my sister, Lady Angela, you know, wants particularly for you to come up to the hotel with me this evening. Didn't lose my badge, did you, Remson? I've got to turn that in at the headquarters when I resign. End of The Badge of Policeman O'Roon This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The Trimmed Lamp by O'Henry. Chapter 9 Brick Dust Row Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn, but Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman—a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in a handsome to the centre of disturbance, which was the Broadway office of lawyer Oldport, who was agent for the Blinker estate. I don't see, said Blinker, why I should be always signing confounded papers. I'm packed and was to have left for the Northwoods this morning. Now I must wait until tomorrow morning. I hate night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to Bay Rum and a monolonging, thumb-hand barber. Give me a pen that doesn't scratch. I hate pens that scratch. Sit down, said the double-chinned grey-lawyer Oldport. The worst has not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you tomorrow at eleven. You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless nose of a blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a haircut. If, said Blinker Rising, the act did not involve more signing of papers, I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a cigar, please. If, said lawyer Oldport, I had cared to see an old friend's son gulp down at one mouthful by sharks, I would have ordered you to take it away long ago. Now let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times tomorrow, I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business. Of business. And I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this five years ago, but you would not listen. You were in a hurry for a coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The property. Oh, property, interrupted Blinker. Dear Mr. Oldport, I think you mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose to-morrow. Signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly ceiling wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try to remember to drop it in at eleven to-morrow. Morning. The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hair-ditaments as the legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport kept piling up in banks for him to spend. In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs intending to dine. Nobody was there except some old fogies playing wist who spoke to him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. Everybody was out of town. But here he was, kept in like a little schoolboy to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were deep. Blinker turned his back on the fogies and said to the club steward who had come forward with some nonsense about cold, fresh salmon row. Simmons, I'm going to Coney Island. He said it, as one might say. All's off, I'm going to jump into the river. The joke pleased Simmons. He laughed with the sixteenth of a note of the audibility permitted by the law's governing employees. Certainly, sir, he tittered. Of course, sir. I think I can see you at Coney, Mr. Blinker. Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until at last he found himself on the upper deck of the boat, staring brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a campstool. But Blinker did not intend to be brazen. The girl was so wonderfully good-looking that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog and behaved just as he did in society. She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was dressed all in white. She was paler than Blinker imagined milk-maids and girls of humble stations to be. But she was as tidy as a cherry blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. How dare you raise your hat to me? she asked, with a smile redeemed severity. I didn't, Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by extending it to, I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you. I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me in whom I have not been introduced, she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down to his chair again. I guess you weren't going far, she declared, with beauty's magnificent self-confidence. Are you going to Coney Island? asked Blinker. Me? She turned upon him wide open eyes full of bantering surprise. Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in the park? Her drawlory took the form of impertinence. And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney, said Blinker. May it we see Coney together? I'm all alone, and I've never been there before. It depends, said the girl, on how nicely you behave. I'll consider your application until we get there. Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his application. He strove to please, to adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs, until at length the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society came around finely to simplicity, and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual plane of communication from the beginning. She learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence, that she trimmed hats in a millinery shop, that she lived in a furnished room with her best-chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store, and that a glass of milk from the bottle on the windowsill, and an egg that boils itself while you twist up your hair, makes a breakfast good enough for anyone. Florence laughed when she heard Blinker. As she said, it certainly shows that you have imagination. It gives the smiths a chance for a little rest, anyhow. They landed at Coney and were dashed on the crest of a great human wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of fairyland gone into vaudeville. With a curious eye, a critical mind, and a fairly withheld judgment, Blinker considered the temples, pagodas, and kiosks of popularized delights. Hoy Palloy trampled, hustled, and crowded him. Basket parties bumped him. Sticky children tumbled howling under his feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths, strolling along the booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily one girl's on the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The publicity gentleman with megaphones, each before his own stupendous attraction, poured like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that could be tortured from brass, reed, hide, or string, fought in the air to grain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling itself in an incongenant frenzy, with an unabashed abandon, into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures. The vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and taste that were held by his case, repelled him strongly. In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned happy eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout-pools. The eyes were saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was their owner not with her, for the present, man, her gentleman friend, and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun? Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he suddenly saw Coney a right. He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false, though the garish joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under the guilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here at least was the husk of romance, the empty but shining cask of chivalry. The breath-catching, though safe-guarded, dip in flight of adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space, he no longer saw a rabble but his brother seeking the ideal. There was no magic of posy here or of art, but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calicole into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver trumpets of joy's heralds. Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up his shirt-sleeves of his mind and joined the idealists. You are the Lady Doctor, he said to Florence. How shall we go about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales incorporated? We will begin there, said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda on the edge of the sea. We will take them all in one by one. They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat filled with fatigue against the rail in the bow, listening to the Italians fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss he had made over signing his name. Poo! he could sign it a hundred times. And her name was as pretty as she was. Florence. He said it to himself a great many times. As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River, a two-funnel drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered as if to seek midstream and then yod seemed to increase its speed and struck the coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting into it with a terrifying shock and crash. While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling about the decks in a shrieking panic, the captain was shouting at the steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage saw-fish and cleaved its heartless way full speed ahead. The boat began to sink at its stern but moved slowly toward the slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life-preservers. He began to buckle one round Florence. The rotten canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully. It looks like breakfast food, she said. Take it off, they're no good. She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down and sat by his side and put her hand in his. What'll you bet we don't reach the pier all night? She said and began to hum a song. Now the captain moved among the passengers in compelled order. The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the woman and children to the bow where they could land first. The boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make his promise good. Florence said, Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, I love you. That's what they all say, she replied lightly. I am not one of they all, he persisted. I never knew any one I could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you. That is what they all say, said the girl again, weaving the words into her little reckless song. Don't say that again, said Blinker, in a tone that made her look at him in frank surprise. Why shouldn't I say it, she asked calmly. They all do. Who are they? he asked, jealous for the first time in existence. Why the fellows I know? Do you know so many? Oh, well, I'm not a wallflower, she answered with modest complacency. Where do you see these men at your home? Of course not. I meet them just as I do. Sometimes on the boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty good judge of man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who is likely to get fresh. What do you mean by fresh? Why try to kiss you? Me, I mean. Do any of them try that? Ask Blinker clenching his teeth. Sure, all men do, you know that. Do you allow them? Some, not many. They won't take you anywhere unless you do. She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look at them, as though she did not understand him. What's wrong with my meeting fellows? she asked wonderingly. Everything, he answered, almost savagely. Why don't you entertain your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up Tom, Dick, and Harry on the streets? She kept her absolutely ingenious eyes upon him. If you could see the place where I live, you wouldn't ask that. I live in brick dust row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, hasn't she? Yes, he said hoarsely. A girl has got to meet a—has got to meet the men. The first time one spoke to me on the street, she continued, I ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor so I could ask you to call Mr. Blinker. Are you really sure it isn't Smith now? The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a corner and held out her hand. I lived just one more block over, she said. Thank you for a very pleasant afternoon. Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a cab. A big grey church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist at it through the window. I give you a thousand dollars. Last week he cried under his breath and she meets them in your very doors. There's something wrong. There is something wrong. At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new pen provided by lawyer Oldport. Now let me go to the woods, he said surly. You're not looking well, said lawyer Oldport. The trip will do good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business of which I spoke to you yesterday and also five years ago. There are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new five-year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in the lease provisions but never made it. He intended that the parlours of these houses should not be sublet, but that the tenant should be allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the shopping district and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. As it is, they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of red brick. Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. Brick dust row for an even hundred, he cried, and I own it, have I guessed right? The tenants have some such name for it, said lawyer Oldport. Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. Do what you please with it, he said harshly. Remodel it, burn it, raise it to the ground. But, man, it's too late, I tell you. It's too late, it's too late, it's too late. End of Brick Dust Row. The Trimmed Lamp, Bio Henry. CHAPTER X. THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp, but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist, and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse, he lived his poetry. His odyssey would have been a limerick, had it been written. But to linger with the primary proposition, Raggles was a poet. Raggles' specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their reflections and mirrors, as children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated doll, as the men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants, it was a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct, an individual conglomeration of life with its own peculiar essence, flavour, and feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west, Raggles wandered in poetic fervour, taking the cities to his breast. He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless to another. Fickle, Raggles! But perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy. Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are feminine. So they were to poet Raggles, and his mind carried a concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolised and typified each one that he had wooed. Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of Mrs. Partington, plumes, and patchouli, and to discover his rest with a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and inaccuracy in the description, but that is Raggles' fault. He should have recorded his sensations in magazine poems. Pittsburgh impressed him as the play of a fellow performed in the Russian language in a railroad station by Doc Stader's Minstrels. A royal and generous lady this Pittsburgh, though homely, hearty, with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and drink champagne with his pig's feet and fried potatoes. New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at dawn when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with a pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled Raggles' shoes with ice-cold water, à long. Boston construed herself to the poet Raggles in an erratic and singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea, and that the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort, and, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood, and the cloth becoming wet tightened its knots and could not be removed. Indefinite and unintelligible ideas you will say. But your disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude. For these are poets fancies, and suppose you had come upon them in verse. One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city of Manhattan. She was the greatest of all, and he wanted to learn her note in the scale, to taste and appraise and classify and solve and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given him up the secret of their individuality. And here we cease to be Raggles' translator and become his chronicler. Raggles landed from a ferry boat one morning and walked into the core of the town with the blessé air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with care to play the role of an unidentified man. No country, race, class, clique, union, party clan, or bowling association could have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him piecemeal by citizens of different height but same number of inches around the waist, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of rainement, self-measured, that are railroaded to you by transcontinental tailors with a suitcase, suspenders, silk handkerchief, and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money, as a poet should be, but with the ardour of an astronomer discovering a new star in the course of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great city. Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomforted, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read, as country maidens quickly to fathom, as send price of subscription with answer rebuses to solve, as oyster cocktails to swallow, but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window, to a lover outside fingering damply in his pocket, his ribbon-counter salary. The greetings of the other cities he had known, their homespun kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, garrulous curiosity, and easily estimated credulity or indifference. The city of Manhattan gave him no clue, it was walled against him. Like a river of adamant is flowed past him in the streets. Never an eye was turned upon him, no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned for the clap of Pittsburgh's sooty hand on his shoulder, for Chicago's menacing but social yop in his ear, for the pale and elimo-snary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass, even for the precipitant but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. On Broadway raggles successful suitor of many cities stood bashful like any country swain. For the first time he experienced the poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no colour similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and structure as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with other towns. The houses were interminable ramparts, loop-hold for defence. The people were bright but bloodless spectres, passing in sinister and selfish array. The thing that weighed heaviest on raggles's soul and clogged his poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to saturate the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that he considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. Humanity was gone from them. They were toddling idols of stone and varnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for the oblivious of worship from their fellow-graven images. Frozen, cruel, impeccable, impervious, cut to an identical pattern they hurried on their ways like statues brought by some miracle to motion, while soul and feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. Gradually raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled face, and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness, and frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town of marionettes, a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat-field, the complexion of a baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize fighter. This type leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frappade contumely. A poet is a sensitive creature, and raggles soon shriveled in the bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city, left him downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders behind provincial free lunch counters, the amiable trelucents of rural constables, the kicks, arrests, and happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities, than this freezing heartlessness. Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash to testify that they were conscious of his existence. Then he said to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul, that its inhabitants were mannequins moved by wires and springs, and that he was alone in a great wilderness. Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a hissing, and a crash as something struck him, and hurled him over and over, six yards from where he had been, as he was coming down like the stick of a rocket, the earth and all of the cities thereof turned to a fractured dream. Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him, an odor of the earliest spring flowers of paradise. Then a hand, soft as a falling petal, touched his brow. Bending over him was the woman, clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and humid, with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks and furs. With Raggles' hat in his hand, and with his face pinker than ever from the vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving, stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth and ripeness. From a nearby cafe hurried the by-product with the vast jowl and baby complexion bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid that suggested delightful possibilities. "'Drink this, sport,' said the by-product, holding the glass to Raggles' lips. Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing the deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into the circle and pressed back the over-plus of Samaritans. An old lady in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor. A news-boy slipped one of his papers underneath Raggles' elbow where it lay on the muddy pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. "'How do you feel, old man?' asked the surgeon, stooping easily to his task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red dropper to from Raggles' brow with a fragrant cobweb. "'Me?' said Raggles, with a seraphic smile. I feel fine.' He had found the heart of his new city. In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward in the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants heard sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles had assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent, a glowering transient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patched up. "'What's all this about?' inquired the head nurse. "'He was running down me town,' said Raggles. "'What town?' asked the nurse. "'New York,' said Raggles.' End of CHAPTER X. THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The Trimmed Lamp by O. Henry. CHAPTER XI. VANITY AND SOME SABLES When kid Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McEever's blue black eyes, he withdrew from the stovepipe gang, so much for the power of a Colleen's blandering tongue and stubborn true heartedness. If you are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before two o'clock tomorrow. If you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you this morning with a cold nose, a sign of dog health and your happiness. The stovepipe gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city called the Stovepipe, which is a narrow and natural extension of the familiar district known as Hell's Kitchen. The stovepipe strip of town runs along 11th and 12th avenues on the river and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little lost homeless Dewitt Clinton Park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any kitchen and the situation is analysed. The chefs in Hell's Kitchen are many and the stovepipe gang wears the cordon blue. The members of this uncharted but widely known brotherhood appeared to pass their time on street corners, arrayed like the lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and pen knives. Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in a 200 word vocabulary to the casual observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven blocks to the east. But off exhibition the stovepipes were not mere street corner ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed. But whenever the citizen honoured by their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully, his objections came to be spread finally upon some police station blotter or hospital register. The police held the stovepipe gang in perpetual suspicion and respect, as the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest shadows, so along the stovepipes dark and narrow confines the whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there was smoke in the stovepipe the tassled men in blue knew there was fire in Hell's Kitchen. Kid Brady promised Molly to be good. Kid was the vanist, the strongest, the warriest, and the most successful plotter in the gang. Therefore the boys were sorry to give him up. But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For in the kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as his girl advises. Black her eye for love's sake, if you will, but it is all to the good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. Turn off the hydrant, said Kid, one night, when Molly, tearful, besought him to amend his ways. I'm going to cut out the gang. You for mine and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you, Maul, I'll get work, and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for you. We'll get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine, and a rubber plant, and live as honest as we can. Oh, Kid, sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her handkerchief. I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New York. And we can be happy on so little. The Kid looked down at his speckless cups and shining patent leathers with a suspicion of melancholy. It'll hurt hardest in the rags, department, said he. I've always kind of liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap things, Maul. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing apparel line has got to be just so. Or it's to the misfit parlours for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man with the big shears. Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I would in a red automobile. Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father, he'd been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now, back to this honourable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant that he engaged himself, and it is the master plumber and not the assistant who wears diamonds as large as hailstones, and looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's mansion. Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had elapsed on a theatre program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The stovepipe gang continued its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up late travellers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth Avenue's cut-of-clothes and neck-wear fancies, and comported itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails, and it took him fifteen minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places would not show. One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to the house. Open that, Maul, he said in his large, quiet way, it's for you. Mollie's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud and inrushed a sprinkling of little McKeever's, and Ma-McKeever dishwashy but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. Again Mollie shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and enveloped her neck like an anaconda. Russian sables, said the Kid pridefully, enjoying the sight of Mollie's round cheek against the clinging fur. The real thing. They don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Maul. Mollie plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family infants, and flew to the mirror, hint for the beauty column, to make bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and a betwitching smile. Recipe, one set, Russian sables, apply. When they were alone, Mollie became aware of a small cake of the ice of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. You're a bird all right, Kid, she admitted gratefully. I never had any furs on before in my life, but ain't Russian sables awfully expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were. Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Maul? asked the Kid with calm dignity. Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant counter or peering in the window of the five and ten? Call that scarf $250, and the muff $175, and you won't make any mistake about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say they look fine on you, Maul. Mollie hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture, and then her smile went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye, sadly and steadily. He knew what every look of hers meant, and he laughed with a faint flush upon his face. Cut it out, he said, with affectionate roughness. I told you I was done with that. I bought him and paid for him all right with my own money. Out of the money you work for, Kid? Out of $75 a month? Sure, I've been saving up. Let's see. Saved $425 in eight months, Kid? Uh, let up, said the Kid with some heat. I had some money when I work. Do you think I've been holding him up again? I told you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put him on and come out for a walk. Mollie calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she went forth to the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of low-lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The words sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street there were ooze and oz, and the reported fabulous sum paid for the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered the Kid with an air of princes. Work had not diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the stovepipe gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. Street blocks behind the admired couple strolled detective Ransom of the central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk abroad with safety in the stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid, and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip him off to something that he was looking for. What's the excitement down the street? asked Ransom of a pale youth in a red sweater. Throughout rubberin at a set of buffalo robes, Kid Brady staked his girl to, answered the youth. Some say he paid nine hundred dollars for the skins. They're swell all right enough. I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year, said the detective. He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does he? He's working all right, said the red sweater. But, say, sport, are you trailing anything in the fur line? A job in a plum and shop don't match with them skins to kid's girls got on. Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the river bank. He touched the kid's arm from behind. Let me see you a moment, Brady, he said quietly. His eye rested for a second on the long fur scarf, thrown stylishly back over Molly's left shoulder. The kid, with his old-time police-hating frown on his face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. Did you go to Mrs. Heathcoats on West Seventh Street yesterday to fix a leaky water pipe? Asked Ransom. I did, said the kid. What of it? The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has on. To Harlem with you cried the kid angrily. You know I've cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday at the kid's stop short. I know you've been working straight lately, said Ransom. I'll give you every chance. I'll go with you where you say you bought the furs and investigate. The lady can wear them along with us, and nobody'll be on. That's fair, Brady. Come on, agreed the kid hotly. Then he stopped suddenly in his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and anxious face. No use, he said grimly. They're the Heathcoats sables all right. You'll have to turn them over, Maul, but they ain't too good for you if they cost a million. Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the kid's arm. Oh, kitty, you've broke my heart, she said. I was so proud of you, and now they'll do you, and where's our happiness gone? Go home, said the kid wildly. Come on, Ransom, take the furs. Let's get away from here. Wait a minute. I have a good mind to... No, I'll be... If I can do it, run along, Maul. I'm ready, Ransom. Around the corner of a lumberyard came policeman Cohen on his way to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for assistance. Cohen joined the group. Ransom explained. Sure, said Cohen. I hear about those sables, Dot Vastol. You say you have them here. Policeman Cohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and looked at it closely. Once he said, I sold furs in Sixth Avenue. Yes, these are sables. They come from Alaska. The scarf is vort twelve dollars, and this muff, Biff, came the palm of the kid's powerful hand upon the policeman's mouth. Cohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The detective threw himself upon Brady, and with Cohen's aid got the nippers on his wrist. The scarf is vort twelve dollars, and the muff is vort nine dollars, presided to the policeman. Vot is this talk about a thousand dollar sables. The kid sat upon a pile of lumber, and his face turned dark red. Correct, Salomonsky, he declared viciously. I paid twenty one fifty for the set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, the swell guy that wouldn't look at anything cheap. I'm a plain bluffer. Molly, my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian. Molly cast herself about his neck. What do I care for all the sables and money in the world? She cried. It's my kitty I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy blockhead. You can take those nippers off, said Cohen to the detective. Before I leave to station, the report come in that the lady vined her staples hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you, that punch in my face. Diss-vontime. Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the kid. She wound the scarf, and threw the end of her left shoulder with a duchess's grace. A couple of young vools, said policeman Cohen to ransom. Come on away. End of Vanity and some Sables. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The Trimmed Lamp. Bio Henry. Chapter 12. The Social Triangle. At the stroke of six, Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a tailor's apprentice. Are there tailor's apprentices nowadays? At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetter of a tailor's shop. But when work was done, Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament let shine. It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and begrudged dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, donned coat, hat, and collar, with its frazzled tie and chalcedoni pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals. For each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinacle, or lobster a la Newberg, or the sweet silence of the musty book-shelves. Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring L between the rows of reeking sweatshops, pallid, stooping, insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penery of body and mind. Yet as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from his cigarette, you perceive that he nurtures in his narrow bosom the basilis of society. Ikey's legs carried him to and into that famous place of entertainment known as the Café McGuinness, famous because it was the rendezvous of Billy McMahon, the greatest man, the wonderful man Ikey thought that the world had ever produced. Billy McMahon was the district leader, upon him the tiger purred, and his hand held manna to scatter. Now as Ikey entered, McMahon stood flushed in triumphant and mighty, the centre of a Huizing concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an election, a signal victory had been won, the city had been swept back into line by a resistless bosom of ballots. Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath quickened at his idol. How magnificent was Billy McMahon, with his great smooth laughing face, his grey eye shrewd as a chicken-hawks, his diamond ring, his voice like a bugle-call, his prince's air, his plump and active roll of money, his clarion call to friend and comrade, oh what a king of men he was. How he obscured his lieutenants, though they themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and important of mane, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short overcoats. But Billy, oh what small avail are words to paint for you, his glory is seen by Ikey Snigglefritz. The cafe McGinnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated bartenders threw themselves feedfully upon bottle-cork and glass. From a score of clear Havana's the air received its paradox of clouds. The leal and hopeful shook Billy McMahon's hand, and there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz an audacious, thrilling impulse. He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which Majesty moved and held out his hand. Billy McMahon grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus. Have a drink with me, Billy, he said familiarly, you and your friends. Don't mind if I do, old man, said the great leader just to keep the ball rolling. The last spark of Ikey's reason fled. Wine, he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. The corks of three bottles were drawn, the champagne bubbled in the long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahon took his and nodded, with a beaming smile at Ikey. The lieutenants and satellites took theirs and growled, here's to you. Ikey took his nectar and delirium. All drank. Ikey threw his week's wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. Cracked, said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. The crowd surged around Billy McMahon again. Someone was telling how Branigan fixed him over in the eleventh. Ikey leaned against the bar awhile, then went out. He went down Hester Street and up Christy and down Delancey to where he lived. And there his women folk, a Bible-less mother and three dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his confession they shrieked and obdurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of the locality. But even as they plucked at him and struck him, Ikey remained in his ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds. The star was drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved, the loss of wages and the bray of women's tongues were slight affairs. He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahon. Billy McMahon had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved the name Mrs. William Darragh McMahon. There was a certain vexation attendant upon these cards. Four, small as they were, they were houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahon was a dictator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, dreaded, loved, and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich. The Daily Papers had a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every word of wisdom. He had been honoured in caricature holding the tiger cringing in leash. But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a race of men from which he stood apart, but that he viewed with the eyes of Moses looking over into the Promised Land. He too had ideals, even as had Ikey's niggle frits. And sometimes, hopeless of attaining him, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahon wore a look of discontent upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks seemed a sigh. There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon of a noted hostelry where fashion loves to display her charms. At one table sat Billy McMahon and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but accessories they enjoyed little needed the endorsement of speech. Mrs. McMahon's diamonds were outshone by few in the room. The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and massive countenance, you would look in vain for a more striking figure than Billy's. Four tables away sat alone a tall slender man, about thirty with thoughtful melancholy eyes, a van dyke beard and peculiarly white thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast, and apolinerous. That man was Cortland Van Doikink, a man worth eighty millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive inner circle of society. Billy McMahon spoke to no one around him because he knew no one. Van Doikink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that everyone present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and prestige by a nod, and he was cherry of creating too extensive nobility. And then Billy McMahon conceived and accomplished the most startling and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over to Cortland Van Doikink's table and held out his hand. Hey! Mr. Van Doikink, he said. I've heard you was talking about starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I'm McMahon, you know. Say, now, if that's straight, I'll do all I can do to help you. And what I say goes in that neck of the woods, don't it? Oh, say, I rather guess it does. Van Doikink's rather somber eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank height and grasped Billy McMahon's hand. Thank you, Mr. McMahon, he said in his deep serious tones. I've been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you. Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Derrug McMahon trembled with ecstasy so that her diamonds smote the eye almost with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahon's acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped in an aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him. Wine for that gang, he commanded the waiter pointing with his finger, wine over there, wine to those three gents by the green bush. Tell them it's on me, dammit, wine for everybody. The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its custom. All right, said Billy, if it's against the rules, I wonder if it would do to send my friend Van Doykink a bottle. No? Well, it'll flow all right at the cafe tonight just the same. It'll be rubber boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 a.m. Billy McMahon was happy. He had shaken the hand of Cortland Van Doykink. The big pale grey auto with its shining metal work looked out of place moving slowly among the push carts and trash heaps on the lower east side, so did Cortland Van Doykink with his aristocratic face and white thin hands as he steered carefully between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the street, and so did Miss Constance Scheuler with her dim ascetic beauty seated at his side. Oh, Cortland, she breathed, isn't it sad that human beings have to live in such wretchedness and poverty, and you, how noble it is of you to think of them to give your time and money to improve their condition? Van Doykink turned his solemn eyes upon her. It is little, he said sadly, that I can do. The question is a large one and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not thrown away. Look, Constance, on the street I have arranged to build soup-kitchens where no one who is hungry will be turned away. And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause to be torn down, and there erect others in place of those death traps of fire and disease. Down Delancey slowly crept the pale grey auto. Away from it toddled covies of wandering, tangled hair barefooted unwashed children. It stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry. Van Doykink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity. A narrow-chested pale, unsavory young man puffing at cigarette. Obeying a sudden impulse Van Doykink stepped out and warmly grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke. I want to know you, people, he said sincerely. I'm going to help you as much as I can. Shall we be friends? As the auto crept carefully away, Cortland Van Doykink felt an unaccustomed glow in his heart. He was near to being a happy man. He had shaken the hand of icky snigofritz. We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a colour justly in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for their a special dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and blue. We say of princes that they are born to the purple, and no doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a woodchoppers' brat. All women love it, when it is the fashion. And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course other colours are quite stylish as well. In fact I saw a lovely thing the other day in all of green albatross with a triple-lapped flounce skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk and a draped fissue of lace opening over a sheared vest and double-puff sleeves with a lace band holding two gathered frills. But you see lots of purple too. Oh yes you do. Just take a walk down 23rd Street any afternoon. Therefore, Meida, the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-coloured hair in the beehive store, said to Grace, the girl with the rhinestone brooch and peppermint pepsin flavour to her speech, I'm going to have a purple dress, a tailor-made purple dress, for thanksgiving. Oh are you, said Grace, putting away some seven-and-a-half gloves into the six-and-three-quarters box. Well, it's me for red. You see more red on Fifth Avenue, and the men all seem to like it. I like purple best, said Meida, and old Schlegel has promised to make it for eight dollars. It's going to be lovely. I'm going to have a pleated skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a white-cloth collar with two rows of... SLY BOOTS! said Grace with an educated wing, suitosh braid over a surpliced white vest, and a pleated basque. And SLY BOOTS! SLY BOOTS! repeated Grace. Pleated giggot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside cuff. What do you mean by saying that? You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he thought some of the darker shades of red were stunning. I don't care, said Meida. I prefer purple, and then that don't like it can just take the other side of the street, which suggests the thought that, after all, the followers of purple may be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden thinks she can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions, and when emperors think their purple robes will wear forever. Meida had saved eighteen dollars after eight months of economy, and this had bought the goods of for the purple dress, and paid Sly go four dollars on the making of it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just had enough to pay the remaining four, and then for a holiday in a new dress. Can Earth offer anything more enchanting? Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Beehive store, always gave a Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent three hundred and sixty-four days excusing Sundays he would remind them of the joys of the past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them to increased enthusiasm and work. The dinner was given in the store on one of the long tables in the middle of the room. They tacked wrapping paper over the front windows, and the turkeys and other good things were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the corner. You will perceive that the Beehive was not a fashionable department store, with escalators and pompadours. It was almost small enough to be called an Emporium, and you could actually go in there and get waited on and walk out again, and always at the Thanksgiving dinners, Mr. Ramsey. Oh, Father! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsey first of all. He is more important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry sauce. Mr. Ramsey was the head clerk, and as far as I am concerned, I am for him. He never pinched the girls' arms when he passed them in dark corners of the store, and when he told them stories when business was dull and the girls giggled and said, Oh, pshaw! It wasn't G. Bernard they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsey was queer and original in other ways. He was a health crank and believed that people should never eat anything that was good for them. He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and coming in out of snowstorms or wearing overshoes, or taking medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten girls in the store had little pork chop and fried onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsey. Four next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner, and each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake and digestion was over. Mr. Ramsey was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the store. And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsey, one purple and the other red. Of course the other eight girls were going to have dresses too, but they didn't count. Very likely they'd wear some shirt waist and black skirt affairs, nothing as resplendent as purple or red. Grace had saved her money too. She was going to buy her dress ready-made. Oh, what's the use of bothering with a tailor? When you got a figure it's easy to get a fit. The ready-made are intended for a perfect figure, except I have to have them all taken in at the waist. The average figure is so large wasted. The night before Thanksgiving came, made a hurried home, keen and bright, with the thoughts of the blessed moral. Her thoughts were of purple, but they were white themselves. The joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would become her, and for the thousandth time she tried to reassure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsey said he liked and not red. She was going home first to get the four dollars wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself. Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above Mata's. At home Mata found clamour and confusion. The landlady's tongue clattering sourly in the halls, like a churned dasher dabbing in buttermilk, then Grace came to her room crying with eyes as red as any dress. She says I've got to get out, said Grace, the old beast, because I owe her four dollars. She's put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I can't go anywhere else. I haven't got a cent of money. You had some yesterday, said Mata. I paid it on my dress, said Grace. I thought she'd wait till next week for the rent. Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. Out came. Out it had to come. Mata's, four dollars. You blessed darling cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. I'll pay the mean old thing and then I'm going to try on my dress. I think it's heavenly. Come up and look at it. I'll pay the money back a dollar a week. Honest, I will. Thanksgiving The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched into Mata's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her colour. Mata sat by the window in her old chevaux dress and blue waist darning ace—oh, doing fancy work. Why, goodness me, ain't you dressed yet? shrilled the red one. How does it fit in the back? Don't you think these velvet tabs look awfully swell? Why ain't you dressed, Mata? My dress didn't get finished in time, said Mata. I'm not going to the dinner. That's too bad. Why, I'm awfully sorry, Mata. Why don't you put on anything and come along? It's just the store folks, you know. They won't mind. I was set on my purple, said Mata. If I can't have it, I won't go at all. Don't bother about me. Run along or you'll be late. You look awful nice and red. At her window Mata sat through the long morning and passed the time of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girl shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman's roar over his own deeply concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of all. At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless air, she slowly made her way to Schlegel's shop and told him she could not pay the four dollars due on the dress. Caught, said Schlegel angrily, for what do you look so glum? Take him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Have I not seen you pass this shop every day in two years? If I make close it is that I do not know how to read peoples because you will pay me some time when you can. Take him away. He is made goot. And if you look pretty in him, all right. Pay me when you can. Mata breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart and hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop, a smart dash of rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it. Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose wardrobes are charged to the old man's account, you cannot begin to comprehend. You could not understand why Mata did not feel the cold dash of the thanksgiving rain. At five o'clock she went out upon the street, wearing her purple dress. The rain had increased and it beat down upon her in a steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held umbrellas and tight-button raincoats. Many of them turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful serene, happy-eyed girl in the purple dress, walking through the storm as though she were strolling in a garden under summer skies. I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing for pretty things. To starve eight months in order to bring a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, blue, snowed, or cycloned? Mata had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart must have one crumb during the year. The rain ran down and dripped from her fingers. Someone turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. Ramsay's eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. Why, Miss Mata, said he, you look simply magnificent in your new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and intelligence. There is nothing more helpful and invigorating than braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you? And Mata blushed and sneezed. End of The Purple Dress. John Burns, host-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis. Burns had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the engine-house. He could explain to you at any hour of the day or night the exact positions, conditions, and intentions of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news in the daily papers. Wherever the Japs won a victory, John Burns would shift his pins. Then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would hear him yell, Go it, you blame little sawed-off, huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales. Eat them up, you little sleight-of-hand, bull-legged bull terriers. Give them another of them, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians. Say, wouldn't they give you a pain-ski when it comes to a scrap of itch? Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to keep clear of Engine House No. 99. Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Burns's head. That was when the alarm of fire had sounded, and he was strapped in his driver's seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the whole department, according to the crew of 99. Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his fellow mortals, the greatest are these. The code of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States, and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no longer practicable, since the invention of street cars and breach of promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every day. So the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries' new punch trying for place and show. The Constitution says that one man is as good as another, but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise, all of which comes perilously near to being a paradox and commends itself to the attention of the SPCA. One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island, a lump of protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward kicked him down the gangway. A doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven, seeking for chacoma or ophthalmia. He was hustled ashore and ejected into the city in the name of liberty, perhaps theoretically thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not a burden with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lightly built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian. Its face was brightly vacant with a small flat nose and was mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported thing were a few coins, denarii, scudi, copax, fennings, pilasters, whatever the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been. Praddling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had shunted him, the alien straight away from the sea, which he hated, as far as the district covered by engine company number ninety-nine. Light as a cork he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the reservoir of liberty. While crossing Third Avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the wheels on the cobbles. Then there was a new delightful chord in the uproar, the musical clanging of a gong, and a great shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke that people were hurrying to see. This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad and raptured, uncomprehending grin, and so stepping stepped into the path of number ninety-nine's flying hose-cart, with John Burns gripping with arms of steel the rains over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or amendments. It is a simple thing, as simple as the rule of three. There was the heedless unit in the right of way. There was the hose-cart in the iron pillar of the elevated railroad. John Burns swung all his weight and muscle on the left rain. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Burns fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus, beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus, lay wickering in his harness with a broken leg. In consideration of the feelings of engine company number ninety-nine, the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd and hurry calls were sent in. And while the ambulance gong was clearing the way, the man of number ninety-nine heard the crack of the SPCA agent's pistol and turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again. When the fireman got back to the engine house, they found that one of them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently and waved its hands. Sounds like a seedlet's powder, said Mike Dowling disgustingly, and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man? That house was worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It's an immigrant. That's what it is. Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat, said Riley the Deskman. It's just landed. It must be a kind of dago or a hun, one of them hens, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto us. Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in hospital and spoiling the best fireteam in the city, groaned another fireman. It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned. Somebody go around and get Slovisky, suggested the engine driver. Let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of hair and head noises. Slovisky kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third Avenue and was reputed to be a linguist. One of the men fetched him. A fat, cringing man with a discursive eye and the odours of many kinds of meat upon him. Take a whirl at this importation with your jawbreaker, Slovisky, requested Mike Dowling. We can't quite figure out whether he's from the hack-and-sack bottoms or Hong Kong on the Ganges. Slovisky addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsillitis gargle to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale. I have you his name, reported Slovisky. You shall not pronounce it. Writing of it in paper is better. They gave him paper and he wrote, Dmitri Svanks— Looks like shorthands of the deskman. He speaks some language, continued the interpreter wiping his forehead of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And then he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two and many like the Romanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not him quite understand. Would you call him a dago or a pollocker or what? asked Mike frowning at the polyglot description. He's a— answered Slovisky—he's a— I think he come from— I think he's a fool, he concluded, he has a indication of his linguistic failure. And if he pleases, I will go back at mine delicatessen. Whatever he is, he's a bird, said Mike Dowling. And you want to watch him fly? Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine house and bestowed upon him a kick hardy enough to convey the entire animos of company ninety-nine. Dmitri Svanks hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his iratecable grin to the aggrieved fireman. In three weeks John Burns was back at his post from the hospital. With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war-map up to date. My money on the japs every time he declared, why look at them Russians, they're nothing but wolves. Wipe them out, I say, and the little old jujitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the trick, and don't you forget it." The second day after Burns's reappearance came Demetri Sphinx, the unidentified to the engine-house with a broader grin than ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How and where he lived no one knew. And then John Burns's nine-year-old son Chris, who brought him convalescent delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Sphinx, and they allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. One afternoon the big-drab automobile of the deputy fire-commissioner buzzed up on the door of number ninety-nine, and the deputy stepped inside for an informal inspection. The men kicked Sphinx out a little harder than usual, and proudly escorted the deputy around ninety-nine, in which everything shone like my lady's mirror. The deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of Airbus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stull and showed the deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in horse-dom. While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into the deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a monster puffing and a shriek from the lad and sprang out too late. The big auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery. He sat clutching the cushions and howling. With the power on, nothing could have stopped that auto except a brick-house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such a stoppage. Dimitri Svanks had just come in again with a grin for another kick, when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for the door, Dimitri sprang for Joe. He glided upon the horses bareback like a snake and shouted something at him like the crack of a dozen whips. One of the firemen afterwards swore that Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten seconds after the auto started the big horse was eating up the asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni. Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over and picked the black speck out of the noise. Only fifteen minutes later after Svanks last kicking at the hands or rather the feet of engine company number ninety-nine, he rode Joe back through the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was going to receive. Svanks slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe noddled and whistled loudly through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Slovinsky of the delicatessen. John Burns walked up to Svanks who grinned, expecting to be kicked. Burns gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Dimitri grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment. The heathen rides like a Cossack, remarked a fireman who had seen a wild West Show. They are the greatest riders in the world. The word seemed to electrify Svanks. He grinned wider than ever. Yass, yass, me Cossack, he sputtered, striking his chest. Cossack! repeated John Burns thoughtfully. Ain't that a kind of Russian? There one of the Russian tribes sure, said the Deskman, who read books between fire alarms. Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called to Burns. Hello there, Jimmy, me boy. How's the war coming along? Japs still got the bear on the trot, have they? Oh, I don't know, said John Burns argumentatively. Them Japs haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuro Patkin gets a good whack at him, and they won't be knee-high to a puddle Ducksky. End of The Foreign Policy of Company 99. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The Trimmed Lamp by O'Henry Chapter 15. The Lost Blend Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy and cocktails open the dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Tea-totalers need not listen if they choose. There is always the slot restaurant where a dime dropped into the cold bullion aperture will bring forth a dry martini. One lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Caneely's Café. You and I stood, one legged like geese, on the other side, and went into voluntary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite danced con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money. The saloon, whether blaster-cursed, stood in one of those little places, which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited by laundries, decayed knickerbocker families, and bohemians who have nothing to do with either. Over the Café lived Caneely and his family. His daughter Catherine had eyes of dark Irish. But why should you be told? Be content with your Geraldine or your Eliza Anne, for Conn dreamed of her, and when she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk-punch in the shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of romance, and if you hurl the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whisky, the bartender shall take it, and marry his boss's daughter, and good will grow out of it. But not so for Conn, for in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon-squeezer the astreporous, or hurl gutter-word the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white-lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Catherine, a trembler with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of his divinity? There came to Caneely's two sun-burned men, Riley and McQuirk. They had conference with Caneely, and then took possession of a back room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and druggists measuring glasses. All the appartenances and liquids of a saloon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long the two sweltered in there pouring and mixing unknown brews and decoctions from the liqueurs in their store. Riley had the education, and he figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed each unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste-pipes with curses gentle, husky, and deep. They labored heavily and untiringly to achieve some mysterious solution like two alchemists striving to resolve gold from the elements. Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Khan. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Caneely's store of liqueurs to follow their consuming and fruitless experiments. Down the back stairs came Catherine, with her smile like sunrise on Gwee Bar-a-Bay. Good evening, Mr. Landtree, says she. And what is the news to-day, if you please? It looks like rain stammered the shy one backing to the wall. It couldn't do better, said Catherine. I'm thinking there's nothing the worse off for a little water. In the back room Riley and McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange compounds. From fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured after Riley's figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass vessel. Then McQuirk would dash it out with gloomy profanity, and they would begin again. Sit down, said Riley to Khan, and I'll tell you. Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where there's nothing to eat but quinine, and nothing to drink but rum. The natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers, and a good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical inconveniences. Though we laze in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar fixtures and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a lime steamer. On the way me and Tim seize flying fish and place seven up with the captain and steward, and already begins to feel like the highball kings of the tropics of Capricorn. When we get in five hours of the country that we was going to introduce to long drinks and short change, the captain calls us over to the starboard binocle and recollects a few things. I forgot to tell you boys, said he, that Nicaragua slapped an import duty of forty-eight percent ad valerum on all bottled goods last month. The president took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by mistake for Tabasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barreled goods is free. Sorry you didn't mention it sooner, says we, and we bought two forty-two gallon casks from the captain and opened every bottle we had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That forty-eight percent would have ruined us, so we took the chances on making that twelve hundred dollar cocktail rather than throw the stuff away. Well when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was something heart-rending. It was the color of a plate of bowery pea soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. He gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a coconut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused to sign a testimonial. But the other barrel, say bartender, did you ever put on a straw hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl with eight million dollars in your pocket all at the same time? That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you, you would bury your face in your hands and cry, because there wasn't anything more worthwhile around for you to lick than the little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll get a drink like that across the bar. Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted, that country would have become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a line of generals and kernels and ex-presidents and revolutionists a block long waiting to be served. We started in at fifty cents silver a drink. The last ten gallons went easy at five dollars a gulp. It was wonderful stuff. He gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything. At the same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or fresh from the ice-trust. When that barrel was half gone, Nicaragua had repudiated the national debt, removed the duty on cigarettes, and was about to declare war on the United States and England. It was by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and to be by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been trying, small lots at a time. We've mixed barrels of all the harmful ingredients known to the profession of drinking. You could have stopped ten bars with the whiskeys, brandies, cordials, bitters, jins, and wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied to the world, to the sorrow and a loss of money. The United States as a nation would welcome a drink of that sort and pay for it. All the while Macquirk Leed had been carefully measuring and pouring together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them from his last penciled prescription. The completed mixture was of a vile, mottled chocolate color. Macquirk tasted it and hurled it with appropriate epithets into the waist-sink. "'Tis a strange story, even if true,' said Kahn. "'I'll be going now along to my supper. Take a drink,' said Riley. "'We've all kinds except the lost blend.' "'I never drink,' said Kahn. "'Anything stronger than water. I'm just after meeting Miss Catherine by the stairs. She said a true word. There's not anything she says, but is better off for a little water.' When Kahn had left them, Riley almost felled Macquirk by a blow on the back. "'Did you hear that?' he shouted. "'Two fools are we. The six dozen bottles of Polonaris we had on the ship. You open them yourself. Which barrel did you pour them in? Which barrel ye mud-head?' "'I mined,' said Macquirk slowly. "'Twas in the second barrel we opened. I mined the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it. "'We've got it now,' cried Riley. "'Twas that we lacked. Tis the water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man! Get two bottles of Polonaris from the bar, while I figure out the proportion mints with me pencil.' An hour later constrolled down the sidewalk toward Kahnili's cafe. Thus faithful employees haunt during their recreation hours the vicinity where they labour, drawn by some mysterious attraction. A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were half-carrying, half-hustling Riley and Macquirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict, yet they whooped with strange joy and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness. Then fighting each other in the back room, explained Kahnili to Kahn and singing, that was worse, smashed everything pretty much up, but their good men, they'll pay for everything, trying to invent some kind of cocktail they was. I'll see they come out all right in the morning. Kahn sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went through the hall, Catherine was just coming down the stairs. "'Good evening again, Mr. Lantry,' said she, and is there no news from the weather yet? Still threatens rain,' said Kahn, slipping past with red in his smooth pale cheek. Riley and Macquirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of alcohol fumes. The floor was variegated with spiritualist puddles. On the table stood a thirty-two ounce glass, graduated measure. In the bottom of it were two tablespoons of liquid. A bright golden liquid that seemed to hold the sunshine of prisoner in its oriferous depths. Kahn smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. As he returned through the hall, Catherine was just going up the stairs. "'No news yet, Mr. Lantry?' she asked with her teasing laugh. Kahn lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. The news is, she said, that we're to be married. "'Put me down, sir,' she cried indignantly. For I will, O Kahn, where or wherever did you get the nerve to say it? End of the Lost Blend."