 12. A Ramble in Aphasia My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint, the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership, and bade me to take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting, the level kiss of domesticity flavored with young hyacinth. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf-pin, and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea. When I set out, I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came suddenly. For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad law-case that I had won triumphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice, good Dr. Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me. "'If you don't slacken up, Belford,' he said, "'you'll go suddenly to pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me, does a weak pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia, of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity blotted out, and all from that little brain-clot made by overwork or worry?' I always thought, said I, that the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters. Dr. Volney shook his head. "'The disease exists,' he said. "'You need a change or arrest, courtroom, office and home. There is the only route you travel. For recreation you read law books. Better take warning in time.'" On Thursday nights, I said defensively, my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains to be established. That morning as I walked I was thinking of Dr. Volney's words. I was feeling as well as I usually did, possibly in better spirits than usual. I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day-coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself, I must have a name of some sort. I searched my pockets. Not a card, not a letter, not a paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat-pocket nearly three thousand dollars in bills of large denomination. I must be someone, of course, I repeated to myself, and began again to consider. The car was well crowded with men, among whom I told myself there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely and seemed in the best good humor in spirits. One of them, a stout, spectacle gentleman, enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes, took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion said, You are one of us, of course. Find a lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York. I've never been east before. My name's R. P. Boulder, Boulder and son of Hickory Grove, Missouri. Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once, babe, parson, and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my companion supplied one idea. A glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further. My name, said I glibly, is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a drugist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas. I knew you were a drugist, said my fellow traveler, affably. I saw the callous spots on your right forefinger were the handle of the pestle-rubs. Of course you are a delegate to our national convention. Are all these men drugists, I asked, wonderingly? They are. This car came through from the West. And they're your old-time drugists, too. None of your patent, tablet, and granule pharmaceuticals that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paragoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a sideline of confectionery and shoes. I tell you, Ham Pinker, I've got an idea to spring on this convention. New ideas is what they want. Now you know the shelf bottles of tartarimetic and Rochelle salt-aunt-at-pot tart, and sod-at-pot tart? One's poison, you know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do drugists mostly keep them? Why, as far apart as possible? On different shells. That's wrong. I say, keep them side-by-side, so when you want one, you can always compare it with the other, and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea? It seems to me a very good one, I said. All right, when I spring it on the convention, you back it up. We'll make some of these eastern orange phosphate and massage cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market. Look like hypodermic tablets. If I can be of any aid, I said, warming, the two bottles of, er, tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash. Shall henceforth sit side-by-side, I concluded firmly? Now there's another thing, said Mr. Boulder. For an excipient in manipulating a pill-mass, which do you prefer? The Magnesia Carbonate or the Pulverized Glyceriza Radix? The er, er, uh, Magnesia, I said. It was easier to say than the other word. Mr. Boulder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles. Give me the Glyceriza, said he. Magnesia Cakes. Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases, he said presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. I don't believe in them. I put nine out of ten of them down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory. Don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget? I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following. Denver, June 12. L. W. C. Belford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Belford is a well-known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a fine home, and the most extensive private library in the state. On the day of his disappearance he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Belford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it may be found in the fact that for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man. "'It seems to me you are not altogether unsynical, Mr. Boulder,' I said, after I had read the despatch. This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift, without a name, a history, or a home.' "'Oh, Gammon and Jalap,' said Mr. Boulder. "'It's Larks thereafter. There's too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over, they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say, He hypnotized me.' Thus Mr. Boulder diverted, but did not aid me with his comments and philosophy. We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name Edward Pinkhammer in the register. As I did so, I felt pervade me, a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy, a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into the world. The old fetters, whatever they had been, were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay before me, a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it, equipped with a man's learning and experience. I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no baggage. The druggist's convention, I said. My trunk has somehow failed to arrive. I drew out a roll of money. Ah! said he, showing in our riferous tooth. We have quite a number of the Western delegates stopping here. He struck a bell for the boy. I endeavored to give color to my roll. There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners, I said, in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles containing the tartrate of antimony and potash and the tartrate of sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf. Gentlemen to 314, said the clerk hastily. I was whisked away to my room. The next day I bought a trunk in clothing, and began to live the life of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavours to solve problems of the past. It was a pecan and sparkling cup that this great island city held up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belonged to him who was able to bear them. You must be either the city's guest or its victim. The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof gardens that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls, and grotesque, drawly, extravagant parodies upon humankind. I went here and there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space, time, or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder tableaux de hote to the sounds of Hungarian music, and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors, or, again, were the nightlife quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture and the millinery of the world and its jewels and the ones whom they adorn, and the men who make all three possible, are met for good cheer in the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I have mentioned, I learned one thing that I never knew before, and that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of license, but convention holds it. Comity has a toll gate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land of freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan, you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles. Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly murmuring palm-rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked, love-making clerks and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway, glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway, growing upon one like an opium habit. One afternoon, as I entered my hotel, a stout man with a big nose and black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity. "'Hello, Belford!' he cried loudly. "'What the deuce are you doing in New York? Didn't know anything could drag you away from that old booked-in of yours, is Mrs. B. along, or is this a little business run alone, eh?' "'You have made a mistake, sir,' I said, coldly, releasing my hand from his grasp. "'My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me.'" The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the clerk's desk, I heard him call to a bellboy and say something about telegraph blanks. "'You will give me my bill,' I said to the clerk, and have my baggage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed by confidence men.' I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate old-fashioned one on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was a restaurant a little way off-Broadway where one could be served almost all fresco in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet and luxury, and a perfect service, made it an ideal place in which to take lunch in or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught. "'Mr. Belford!' exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice. I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone, a lady of about thirty, with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been her very dear friend. "'You are about to pass me,' she said accusingly. "'Don't tell me you don't know me. Why should we not shake hands, at least once in fifteen years?' I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was flandering with an orange ice. I ordered a creme de menthe. Her hair was reddish-bronze. You could not look at it because you could not look away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it, as you were conscious of sunset, while you look into the profundities of a wood at twilight. "'Are you sure you know me?' I asked. "'No,' she said, smiling. I was never sure of that. "'What would you think?' I said a little anxiously. If I were to tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer from Cornopolis, Kansas.' "'What would I think?' she repeated, with a merry glance. "'Why, that you had not brought Mrs. Belford to New York with you, of course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marion.' Her voice lowered slightly. "'You haven't changed much, Elwin.' I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely. "'Yes, you have,' she amended. And there was a soft, exultant note in her latest tones. "'I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You haven't forgotten, for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could.' I poked my straw anxiously in the creme de menthe. "'I'm sure I beg your pardon,' I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. "'But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything.' She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed to see in my face. "'I've heard of you at times,' she went on. "'You're quite a big lawyer out west. Denver, isn't it? Or Los Angeles?' "'Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars.' She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time. "'Would it be too late?' I asked, somewhat timorously. To offer you congratulations.' "'Not if you dare do it,' she answered, with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my thumbnail. "'Tell me one thing,' she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly. "'A thing I have wanted to know for many years. Just from a woman's curiosity, of course. Have you ever dared since that night to touch, smell, or look at white roses? At white roses wet with rain and dew?' I took a sip of creme de menthe. "'It would be useless, I suppose,' I said with a sigh. "'For me to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it.' The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words, and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound. It was a laugh of happiness. Yes, and of content, and of misery. I tried to look away from her. "'You lie, Elwyn Belford,' she breathed blissfully. "'Oh, I know you lie.' I gazed dolly into the ferns. "'My name is Edward Pinkhammer,' I said. I came with the delegates to the drugist's national convention. There is a movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which very likely you would take little interest.' A shining landow stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her hand and bowed. "'I am deeply sorry,' I said to her. "'That I cannot remember. I could explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not concede Pinkhammer. And I really cannot at all conceive of the... the roses and other things.' "'Goodbye, Mr. Belford,' she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as she stepped into her carriage. I attended the theater that night, when I returned to my hotel a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his fingernails with a silk handkerchief, appeared magically at my side. "'Mr. Pinkhammer,' he said, giving the bulk of his attention to his forefinger, "'May I request you step aside with me for a little conversation? There is a room here.' "'Certainly,' I answered. He conducted me into a small private parlor. A lady and a gentleman were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking, had her features not been clouded by an expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed coloring and features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a traveling dress. She fixed upon me an earnest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unstudied hand to her bosom. I think she would have started forward, but the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand. He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little gray about the temples, with a strong, thoughtful face. "'Belford, old man,' he said cordially. "'I'm glad to see you again. Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you were overdoing it. Now you'll go back with us and be yourself again in no time.' I smiled ironically. "'I have been Belforded so often,' I said. "'That it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow worrisome.' "'Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?' Before the man could reply, a willing cry came from the woman. She sprang past his detaining arm. "'Elwin!' she sobbed, and cast herself upon me, and clung tight. "'Elwin!' she cried again. "'Don't break my heart. I am your wife. Call my name once, just once. I could see you dead rather than this way.' I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly. "'Madam,' I said severely. "'Pardon me if I suggest that you accept a resemblance too precipitately. "'It is a pity,' I went on, with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, that this Belford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identification. "'In order to understand the illusion,' I concluded airily, "'it may be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of the drugist's national convention.' The lady turned to her companion and grasped his arm. "'What is it, Dr. Volney? Oh, what is it?' she moaned. He led her to the door. "'Go to your room for a while,' I heard him say. "'I will remain and talk with him. His mind? No, I think not. Only a portion of the brain. Yes, I'm sure he will recover. Go to your room and leave me with him.' The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall. "'I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I may,' said the gentleman who remained. "'Very well, if you care to,' I replied. "'And will excuse me if I take it comfortably. I am rather tired. I stretched myself upon a couch by a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair nearby. "'Let us speak to the point,' he said soothingly. "'Your name is not Pinkhammer.' "'I know that as well as you do,' I said coolly. But a man must have a name of some sort. I can assure you that I do not extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one Christians one's self suddenly, the fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But suppose it had been Sharinghausen or Scroggins. I think I did very well with Pinkhammer.' "'Your name,' said the other man seriously, "'is Elwyn C. Belford. You are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from an attack of aphasia which has caused you to forget your identity. The cause of it was over-application to your profession and perhaps a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the room is your wife.' "'She is what I would call a fine-looking woman,' I said, after a judicial pause. I particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair.' "'She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance nearly two weeks ago she has scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, a traveling man from Denver. He said that he had met you in a hotel here and that you did not recognize him.' "'I think I remember the occasion,' I said. The fellow called me Belford, if I'm not mistaken. But don't you think it about time, now, for you to introduce yourself?' "'I am Robert Volney, Dr. Volney. I have been your close friend for twenty years and you're a physician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Belford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try, Elwin, old man. Try to remember.' "'What's the use to try?' I asked, with a little frown. You say you are a physician. Is aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory does it return slowly or suddenly?' "'Sometimes gradually and imperfectly, sometimes as suddenly as it went.' "'Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Dr. Volney?' I asked. "'Old friend,' said he, "'I'll do everything in my power and will have done everything that science can do to cure you.' "'Very well,' said I. "'Then you will consider that I am your patient. Everything is in confidence now. Professional confidence.' "'Of course,' said Dr. Volney.' I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses on the center table, a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window and then I laid myself upon the couch again. "'It will be best, Bobby,' I said. "'To have this cure happen suddenly.' "'I'm rather tired of it all anyway.' "'You may go now and bring Marion in.' "'But, Doc,' I said with a sigh as I kicked him on the shin. "'Good old Doc.' "'It was glorious.' End of Story 12. A Ramble in aphasia. Story 13 of Strictly Business. More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Coddy, Gurnee, Illinois. Story 13. A Municipal Report. The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each. This from her mountainside, that from her birthing beach, our Kipling. Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee. There are just three big cities in the United States that are story cities. New York, of course, New Orleans, and best of the lot, San Francisco. Frank Norris. East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people. They are not merely inhabitants of a state. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city, but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of Lake Fish and the new Odd Fellows building, but Californians go into detail. Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour, while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Baghdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all, from Adam and Eve descended, it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say, in this town there can be no romance. What could happen here? Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally. Nashville, a city, port of delivery, and the capital of the state of Tennessee is on the Cumberland River and on the N.C. and St. L. and the L.N.N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational center in the South. I stepped off the train at 8 p.m., having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hide me to comparison in the form of a recipe. Take a London fog, 30 parts, malaria, 10 parts, gas leaks, 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise, 25 parts, odor of honeysuckle, 15 parts, mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a mothball nor as thick as pea soup, but enough to ill serve. I went to a hotel in a tumbrel. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sydney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated. I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded with approximate lagniapp, I assure you. I knew its habits and I did not want to hear it prayed about its old master or anything that happened before the war. The hotel was one of the kind described as renovated. That means twenty thousand dollars worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspadors in the lobby and a new L&N timetable and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach. The attention full of exquisite southern courtesy, the service was as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers and brochets. At dinner I asked a negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute and then replied, Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doing after sundown. Sundown had been accomplished. It had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me but I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there. It is built on undulating grounds and the streets are lighted by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum. As I left the hotel there was a race riot down upon me charged a company of freedmen or Arabs or Zulus armed with No, I saw with relief that they were not rifles but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles and at the reassuring shouts Car you anywhere in the town, boss, for fifty cents. I reasoned that I was merely a fare instead of a victim. I walked through long streets all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they were graded. On a few of the main streets I saw lights in stores here and there saw streetcars go by conveying worthy burgers, hither and yawn saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda water and ice cream parlor. The streets other than main seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shown behind discreetly drawn window shades. In a few, pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was indeed little doing. I wished I had come before sundown so I returned to my hotel. In November 1864 the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville where he shot up a national force under General Thomas the latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict. All my life I have heard of, admired and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the cracked picture of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But shades of Jefferson brick, the tile floor, the beautiful tile floor I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship. Here I first saw Major, by misplaced courtesy, Wentworth Casswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, a Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything, Prophet curse me the blabbing lip and curse me the British Furman, the rat. Let us regard the word British as interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat. This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with the kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue. He was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day, I would have repulsed his advances and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder. I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspador when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using gatlings instead of squirrel rifles, so I sidestepped so promptly that the Major seized the opportunity to apologize to a non-combatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the bar. I desire to interpolate here that I am a southerner, but I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie, I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another wordsburger, and wish that Longstreet had, but what's the use? Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist and the first gun at Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox, I began to hope. But then he began on family trees and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod. By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that, I took leave of him brusquely, for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release, he had praded loudly of an income that his wife received a handful of silver money. When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously, if that man Caswell has annoyed you and if you would like to make a complaint we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most of the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally. Well, I know, said I, after some reflection. I don't see my way clear of making a complaint, but I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town, I continued, seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure or excitement have you to offer the stranger within your gates? Well, sir, said the clerk, there will be a show here next Thursday. It is, I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night. After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currents in a cake sold at the ladies exchange. A quiet place, I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. Nothing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the east and west. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum business town. Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing centers of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing city in the south, and does an enormous wholesale dry goods, grocery and drug business. I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you, the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal connection between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea Adair. Adair, there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting, had sent in some essays, lost art, and poems that had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up, said Adair, and corner by contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten or twenty. At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers and brochets, try them if you can find that hotel, I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner I came upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart negro, older than the pyramids, with gray wool in the face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late king Satueo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I had ever seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had once been a confederate gray in colors, but rain and sun and age had so variegated it that Joseph's coat beside it would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story, the story that is so long and coming because you can hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville. Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all what downs its front it had been frogged and tassled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched, I surmised by some surviving black mammy, new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion. For it followed faithfully the curves of the long missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone, save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings, tied through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many modeled hues. The lone button was the size of a half dollar, made of yellow horn, and sewed on with coarse twine. This negro stood by a carriage, so old that Ham himself might have started a hack-line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep rumbling tones, Step right in, sir. Ain't a speck of dust in it. Just got back from a funeral, sir. I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair. I went to go to 861 Jessamine Street, I said, and was about to step into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, guerrilla-like arm of the old negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked, blandishingly, What are you going there for, boss? What is it to you, I asked, a little sharply? Nothing, sir, just nothing. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in, the seats is clean, just got back from a funeral, sir. A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving. I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses. The city has an area of ten square miles, 181 miles of streets, of which 137 miles are paved, a system of waterworks that cost two million dollars with 77 miles of mains. 861 Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid the pailing fence from sight. The gate was kept closed by a rope-noose that encircled the gate-post and the first pailing of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story I have not yet got inside. When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary crawdrupeds came to arrest I handed him, my Jehu, his fifty cents with an additional quarter, filling a glow of conscious generosity as I did so. He refused it. It's two dollars, sir. He said. How's that, I asked. I plainly heard you call out at the hotel fifty cents to any part of the town. It's two dollars, sir. He repeated obstinately. It's a long ways from the hotel. It is within the city limits and well within them, I argued. Don't think that you have picked up a green horn Yankee. Do you see those hills over there? I went on pointing toward the east. I could not see them myself for the drizzle. Well, I was born and raised on the other side. You old full nigger, can't you tell people from other people when you see them? The grim face of King Sadawayo softened. Is you from the south, sir? I reckon it was them shoes of yarn fooled me. They used something sharp in the toes for the southern gentleman to wear. Then to charge his fifty cents, I suppose, said I inexorably. His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned. Remained ten seconds and vanished. Boss, he said. Fifty cents is right, but I need two dollars, sir. I'm obliged to have two dollars. I ain't demanding it now, sir. After I know where you're from I'm just saying that I has to have two dollars tonight and business is mighty poor. Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance. You confounded old rascal, I said, reaching down to my pocket. You ought to be turned over to the police. For the first time I saw him smile. He knew. He knew. He knew. I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over, I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability. Enough of the African Bandit for the present. I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate. The house, as I said, was a shell. A paintbrush had not touched it in twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not have bolded over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close. The trees that saw the Battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold. Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the Cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received me. The reception room seemed a mile square because there was nothing in it except some rows of books on unpainted white pine bookshelves, a cracked marble top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa, and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the Pinecone Hanging Basket, but they were not there. Azalea Adair and I had a conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the Old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious small group of essayists made. While she talked to me, I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Haslet, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, and Hood. She was exquisite. She was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody, nowadays, knows too much. Oh, so much, too much, of real life. I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and address she had. Not much else, I fancied. So, divided between my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas in the Valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like a harpsichord, and found that I could not speak of contracts. In the presence of the nine muses and the three graces, one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There would have to be another colloquy after I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business proposition. Your town, I said, as I began to make ready to depart, which is the time for smooth generalities, seems to be a quiet, sedate place, a home town, I should say, where a few things out of the ordinary ever happen. It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollowware, with the west and south, and its flowering mills have a daily capacity of more than two thousand barrels. Azalea Adair seemed to reflect. I have never thought of it that way, she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the earth on the first Monday morning, one could have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing from his trowel as he built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world? I mean the building of the Tower of Babel. Resulting, finally. A page and a half of Esperanto in the North American Review. Of course, said I, platitudinously, human nature is the same everywhere, but there is more color or more drama and movement and romance in some cities than in others. On the surface, said Azalea Adair, I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings, print and dreams. I have seen, on one of my imaginary tours, the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands, one of his wives, who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theater tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered, with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown, I saw the slave girl sing ye, dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a Uker party in East Nashville the other night, I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart, but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh yes, it is a humdrum town, just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and lumber yards. Someone knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks and ten years lifted from her shoulders. You must have a cup of tea before you go, she said, and a sugar cake. She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb and mouth and bulging eyes. Azalea Adair opened a tiny worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was one of the bills I had given the Peratical Negro. There is no doubt about it. Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, empty, she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, and get a quarter of a pound of tea, the kind he always sends me, and ten cents worth of sugar-cakes. Now hurry, the supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she explained to me. Impey left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek, I was sure it was hers, filled the hollow house. Then the deep gruff tones of an angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words. Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For two minutes I heard the horse rumble of the man's voice, then something like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair. This is a roomy house, she said, and I have a tenant for part of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps tomorrow Mr. Baker will be able to supply me. I was sure that Impey had not had time to leave the house. I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on my way, I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name, but tomorrow would do. That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph and to be an accomplice, after the fact, if that is the correct legal term, to a murder. As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel, the affright coachman of the polychromatic non-parallel coat seized me. Swung open the dungeony door of his parapetetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual. Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean, just got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any. And then he knew me and grinned broadly. Excuse me, boss. You is the gentleman what rid out with me this morning. Thank you kindly, sir. I am going out to eight-six-one again tomorrow afternoon at three, said I, and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know, Miss Adair, I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill. I belonged to her father. Judge Adair, sir, he replied. I judged that she is pretty poor, I said. She hasn't much money to speak of, has she? For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King Setawayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro hack driver. She ain't going to starve, sir, he said slowly. She has resources, sir. She has resources. I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip, said I. That is perfectly correct, sir, he answered humbly. I just had to have that two dollars this morning, boss. I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine. Quote, a Adair holds out for eight cents a word. End quote. The answer that came back was, quote, give it to her quick, you duffer. End quote. Just before dinner, Major Wentworth Casswell bore down upon me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me. Therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping thereby to escape another. But he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bivers who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies. With an air of producing millions, he drew two one-dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other. I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed, I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill, which might have formed the clue to a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco. By saying to myself sleepily, seems as if a lot of people here own stock in the Hackdriver's Trust, pays dividends promptly too. Wonder if. Then I fell asleep. King Sedaueo was at his post the next day and rattled my bones over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready. Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract, at eight cents per word, she grew steel paler and began to slip out of her chair. Without much trouble I managed to get her up on the anti-diluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored pirate to bring a doctor. With the wisdom that I had not expected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, grey-haired and capable man of medicine. In a few words, worth much less than eight cents each, I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery. He bowed with stately understanding and turned to the old Negro. Uncle Caesar, he said calmly, run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine and hurry back. Don't drive, run. I want you to get back sometime this week. It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speeding powers of the land pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar was gone, lumberingly but swiftly up the street, the doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided that I might do. It is only a case of insufficient nutrition, he said. In other words, the result of poverty, pride and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who was once owned by her family. Mrs. Caswell said I, in surprise, and then I looked at the contract and saw that she had signed it, Azalea Adair Caswell. I thought she was Miss Adair, I said. Married to a drunken worthless loafer, sir, said the doctor. It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support. When the milk and wine have been brought, the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in season and their height of color. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart. Impi fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased. By the way, he said, perhaps you would like to know that you have had royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a king in Congo. Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed. As the doctor was moving off, I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside. Did he get both of them two dollars from you, Miss Azalea? Yes, Caesar. I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain, and then Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel. Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest must be only bare statements of facts. At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at his corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster, and began his depressing formula. Step right in, sir. Fifty cents to anywhere in the city, Hacks perfectly clean, sir, just got back from a funeral. And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color. The twine-strings were more frayed and ragged. The last remaining button, the button of yellow horn, was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar. About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drugstore. In a desert where nothing happens, this was manna. So I wedged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporal reality of Major Wentworth-Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence. The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by curious and endued citizens to the drugstore. The late human being had been engaged in terrific battle. The details showed that. Lofer and reprobate that he had been, he had been also a warrior, but he had lost. His hands were yet clinched so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle citizens who had known him stood about and searched their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him. One kind-looking man said, after much thought, when Cas was about fourteen he was one of the best spellers in school. While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of the man that was, which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly, and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that, in his last struggle, his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held it in a death grip. At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners, In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon, which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When he was found the money was not on his person. I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River, I took, out of my pocket, a yellow horn overcoat button, the size of a fifty cent piece, with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it, out of the window, into the slow, muddy waters, below. I wonder what's doing in Buffalo? End of Story 13, A Municipal Report Story 14 of Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Caudie, Gurnee, Illinois. Story 14, Psyche and the Skyscraper If you are a philosopher, you can do this thing. You can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow men three hundred feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black water bugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about, idiotically, without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence of ants. For ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on, while you are left at your elevated station. Man, then, to the house-topped philosopher, appears to be but a creeping, contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires, boot blacks, beauties, hod carriers, and politicians become little black specks, dodging bigger black specks in streets no wider than your thumb. From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an unintelligible mass of distorted buildings and impossible perspectives. The revered ocean is a duck pond. The earth itself a lost golf ball. All the minutiae of life are gone. The philosopher gazes into the infinite heavens above him and allows his soul to expand to the influence of his new view. He feels that he is the heir to eternity and the child of time. Space, too, should be his by the right of his immortal heritage, and he thrills at the thought that, someday, his kind shall traverse those mysterious aerial roads between planet and planet. The tiny world beneath his feet upon which this towering structure of steel rests as a speck of dust upon a Himalayan mountain it is but one of a countless number of such whirling atoms. What are the ambitions, the achievements, the paltry conquests and loves of those restless black insects below compared with the serene and awful immensity of the universe that lies above and around their insignificant city? It is guaranteed that the philosopher will have these thoughts. They have been expressly compiled from the philosophies of the world and set down with a proper interrogation point at the end of them to represent the invariable musings of deep thinkers on high places. And when the philosopher takes the elevator down, his mind is broader, his heart is at peace and his conception of the cosmogony of creation is as wide as the buckle of Orion's summer belt. But if your name happened to be Daisy and you worked in an Eighth Avenue candy store and lived in a little cold-haul bedroom five feet by eight and earned six dollars per week and eight ten-cent lunches and were nineteen years old and got up at six-thirty and worked till nine and never had studied philosophy, maybe things wouldn't look that way to you from the top of a skyscraper. Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical. One was Joe, who kept the smallest store in New York. It was about the size of a toolbox of the DPW and was stuck like a swallow's nest against a corner of a downtown skyscraper. Its stock consisted of fruit, candies, newspapers, songbooks, cigarettes, and lemonade in season. When the stern winter shook his congealed locks and Joe had to move himself and the fruit inside there was exactly room in the store for the proprietor, his wares, a stove the size of a vinegar-cruit and one customer. Joe was not of the nation that keeps us forever in a furor with fugues and fruit. He was a capable American youth who was laying by money and wanted Daisy to help him spend it. Three times he had asked her. I got money saved up, Daisy, was his love song, and you know how bad I want you. That store of mine ain't very big, but... Oh, ain't it? Would be the antiphany of the unphilosophical one. Why, I heard Wanamakers was trying to get you to sublet part of your floor space to them for next year. Daisy passed Joe's corner every morning and evening. Hello, two by four, was her usual greeting. Seems to me your store looks emptier. You must have sold a pack of chewing gum. Ain't much room in here, sure. Joe would answer with his slow grin. Except for you, Daisy. Me and the store are waiting for you whenever you'll take us. Don't you think you might, before long? Store! A fine scorn was expressed by Daisy's up-tilted nose. Sardine box! Waiting for me, you say. Gee, you'd have to throw out about a hundred pounds of candy before I could get inside of it, Joe. I wouldn't mind an even swap like that, said Joe, complimentary. Daisy's existence was limited in every way. She had to walk sideways between the counter and shelves in the candy store. In her own hall bedroom, coziness had been carried close to cohesiveness. The walls were so near to one another that the paper on them made a perfect babel of noise. She could light the gas with one hand and close the door with the other, without taking her eyes off the reflection of her brown pompadour in the mirror. She had Joe's picture in a gilt frame on the dresser, and sometimes, but her thought would always be of Joe's funny little store tacked like a soapbox to the corner of that great building and away would go her sentiment in a breeze of laughter. Daisy's other suitor followed Joe by several months. He came to board in the house where she lived. His name was Dapster, and he was a philosopher. Though young, attainments stood out upon him like continental labels on a Passaic New Jersey suitcase. Knowledge he had kidnapped from psychopedias and handbooks of useful information, but as for wisdom, when she passed he was left sniffling in the road without so much as the number of her motor car. He could and would tell you the proportion of water and muscle-making properties of peas and veal, the shortest verse in the Bible, the number of pounds of shingle nails required to fasten 256 shingles laid four inches to the weather, the population of Kankakee, Illinois, the theories of Spinoza, the name of Mr. H. McKay-Twombley's Second Hall Footman, the length of the Husak Tunnel, the best time to set a hen, the salary of the railway post-office messenger between Driftwood and Red Bank Furnace, Pennsylvania, and the number of bones in the foreleg of a cat. The weight of learning was no handicap to Dapster. His statistics were the sprigs of parsley with which he garnished the feast of small talk that he would set before you if he conceived that to be your taste. And again he used them as breast-works in foraging at the boarding-house, firing at you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal foot of bar-iron five-by-two-and-three-quarter inches, and the average annual rainfall at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. He would transfix, with his fork, the best piece of chicken on the dish while you were trying to rally sufficiently to ask him weekly, why does a hen cross the road? Thus brightly armed and further equipped with a measure of good looks, of a hair-orly shopping district at three in the afternoon kind, it seems that Joe, of the Lilliputian Emporium, had a rival worthy of his steel. But Joe carried no steel. There wouldn't have been room in his store to sell it if he had. One Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dapster stopped before Joe's booth. Dapster wore a silk hat, and, well, Daisy was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did not pale or falter at sight of the hat. Mr. Dapster's going to take me on top of the building to observe the view, said Daisy after she had introduced her admirers. I never was on a skyscraper. I guess it must be awfully nice and funny up there. Hmm, said Joe. The panorama, said Mr. Dapster, exposed to the gaze from the top of a lofty building, is not only sublime, but instructive. Miss Daisy has a decided pleasure in store for her. It's windy up there, too, as well as here, said Joe. Are you dressed warm enough, Daisy? Sure thing, I'm all lined, said Daisy, smiling slyly at his clouded brow. You look just like a mummy in a case, Joe. Ain't you just put in an invoice of a pint of peanuts or another apple? Your stock looks awful overstocked. Daisy giggled at her favorite joke, and Joe had to smile with her. Your quarters are somewhat limited, Mr. Er... remarked Dapster. In comparison with the size of this building, I understand the area of its side to be about 340 by 100 feet. That would make you occupy a proportionate space as if half of Baluchistan were placed upon a territory as large as the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, with the province of Ontario and Belgium added. Is that so, sport? said Joe genially. You are a Weisenheimer on figures, all right. How many square pounds of bailed hay do you think a jackass could eat if he stopped braying long enough to keep still a minute and five-eighths? A few minutes later Daisy and Mr. Dapster stepped from an elevator to the top floor of the skyscraper. Then up a short steep stairway and out upon the roof. Dapster led her to the parapet, so she could look down at the black dots moving in the street below. What are they? she asked, trembling. She had never been on a height like this before. And then Dapster, must-needs, lay the philosopher on the tower and conduct her soul forth to meet the immensity of space. By-peds, he said solemnly. See what they become even at the small elevation of 340 feet, mere crawling insects going to and fro at random. Oh, they ain't anything of the kind, exclaimed Daisy suddenly. There are folks. I saw an automobile. Oh, gee, are we that high up? Walk over this way, said Dapster. He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon lights of the winter afternoon, and then the bay and sea to the south and east, vanishing mysteriously into the sky. I don't like it, declared Daisy with troubled blue eyes. Say we go down. But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity. He would let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-Nelson he had on the infinite, and the memory he had for statistics, and then she would never more be content to buy chewing gum at the smallest store in New York. And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal from earth, made man and his works, looked like one-tenth part of a dollar Thrice computed. And that one should consider the sidereal system and the maxims of epitectis and be comforted. You don't carry me with you, said Daisy. Say, I think it's awful to be up here so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have been Joe. Why, Jiminy, we might as well be in New Jersey. Say, I'm afraid up here." The philosopher smiled fatuously. The earth, said he, is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look up there. Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent, and the stars were coming out above. Your star, said Dapster, is Venus the evening star. She is sixty-six million miles from the sun. Fudge, said Daisy with a brief flash of spirit. Where do you think I come from, Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store, her brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco. That's only three thousand miles. The philosopher smiled indulgently. Our world, he said, is ninety-one million miles from the sun. There are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are two hundred and eleven thousand times further from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished, it would be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope, we can see forty-three million stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light takes twenty-seven hundred years to reach us. Each of these stars, you're lying. Cry Daisy angrily. You're trying to scare me, and you have. I want to go down." She stamped her foot. Arcturus began the philosopher soothingly. But he was interrupted by a demonstration of the vastness of the nature that he was endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart. Four, to the heart-expounder of nature, the stars were set in the firmament, expressly to give soft light to lovers, wandering happily beneath them. And if you stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm, you can almost touch them with your hand. Three years for their light to reach us, indeed. Out of the west leaped a meteor lighting the roof of the skyscraper almost to midday. Its fiery parabola was limbed against the sky toward the east. It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed, Take me down! She cried vehemently. You mental arithmetic! Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it. She was wild-eyed, and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop. Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost her. She vanished, and he stood bewildered without figures or statistics to aid him. Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated stove. The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering fruit and candies, tumbled into his arms. Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper. Ain't it cozy and warm and home-like in here? I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me. End of Story 14 Psyche and the Skyscraper Story 15 of Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million by O. Henry This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Warren Cotty Gurney, Illinois. Story 15 A Bird of Baghdad Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the caliph Haroun al-Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulson Quig. Quig's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue, that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue, born and bred in the Bowery, staggers northward, full of good resolutions. Where it crosses 14th Street, it struts for a brief moment proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theaters. It may yet become a fit mate for its high-born sister Boulevard to the west, or its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square and here the hoofs of the dreigh horses seem to thunder in unison. Recalling the tread of marching hosts. Hooray! But now come the silent mountains, building square as forts, high as the clouds, shutting out the sky where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day. On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of Little's Living Age and G. W. M. Reynolds novels in the windows. And next, the street glides into a medieval solitude. On each side are shops devoted to antiques. Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows in menace the hurrying cars with raised rusty iron gauntlets, Hawborks and helms, blunderbuses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creases, and the swords and daggers of dead and gone gallants gleam dolly in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon, lit with jack-o-lanterns or phosphorus, stagger forth shuddering homebound citizens nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adorn that eldritch avenue lined with the blood-stained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live enclosed by these mortuary relics, enthralled by these spectral citizens, in whose sunken hearts scarce one good hoop or tra-la-la remained? Not Fourth Avenue, not after the tinsel bought in livening glories of the Little Rialto, not after the echoing drum-beats of Union Square. There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen, tis but the suicide of a street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong into the tunnel at 34th and is never seen again. Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the modest restaurant of Quig. It stands there yet if you care to view its crumbling red-brick front, its show window, heaped with oranges, tomatoes, layer cakes, pies, canned asparagus, a shade lobster, and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce. If you care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been traced in the yellowest of copy stains, the trail of the Japanese advance to sit there with one eye on your umbrella and the other upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who is our dear old lord and friend, the nobleman in India. Quig's title came through his mother. One of her ancestors was a margraveen of Saxony. His father was a Timani brave. On account of a delusion of his heredity, he found that he could neither become a reigning potentate nor get a job in the city hall. So he opened a restaurant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave him a living, though he gave it little attention. One side of his house bequeathed to him a poetic and romantic adventure. The other gave him the restless spirit that made him seek adventure. By day he was Quig, the restaurateur. By night he was the margrave, the caliph, the prince of Bohemia going about the city in search of the odd, the mysterious, the inexplicable, the rekindite. One night at nine at which hour the restaurant closed Quig set forth upon his quest. There was a mingling of the foreign, the military and the artistic in his appearance as he buttoned his coat high up under his short trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward toward the central life conduits of the city. In his pocket he had stored an assortment of cards written upon without which he never stirred out of doors. Each of those cards was good at his own restaurant for its face value. Some called simply for a bowl of soup or sandwiches and coffee. Others entitled their bearer to one, two, three or more days of full meals. Few were for single regular meals. A very few were, in effect, meal tickets good for a week. Of riches and power Marguerite Quig had none. But he had a caliph's heart. It may be forgiven him if his head fell short of the measure of Haroun al-Rashid's. Perhaps some of the gold pieces in Baghdad had put less warmth than hope into the complainants among the bazaars than had Quig's beef stew among the fishermen in one-eyed calendars of Manhattan. Continuing his progress in search of romance to divert him or of distress that he might aid Quig became aware of a fast gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner of Broadway in the cross-town street that he was traversing. Hurrying to the spot a well-day young man of an exceedingly melancholy and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic was suspended. A policeman in the center of the mob stooped often to the ground to blockaders to move on. The margrave saw at a glance that here was food for his hunger after knowledge concerning abnormal working of the human heart. He made his way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm. "'Come with me at once,' he said in the low but commanding voice that his waiters had learned to fear. "'Pinched,' remarked the young man looking up at him with expressionless eyes. "'Pinched by a painless dentist. "'Take me away, flatty, and give me gas. "'Some lay eggs and some lay none. "'When is a hen?' Still deeply seized by some inward grief but tractable, he allowed Quig to lead him away and down the street to a little park. There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Califf's mantle had descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of his substance and stores. "'I was doing the monocrystal act as adapted by Pompton and Jay, wasn't I?' asked the young man. "'You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to scramble after,' said the Margrave. "'That's it. You buy all the beer you can hold and throw chicken feed to. "'Oh, curse that word chicken! "'And hence feathers, roosters, eggs, and everything connected with it.'" "'Young sir,' said the Margrave kindly, but with dignity. "'Though I do not ask your confidence, I invite it. "'I know the world and I know humanity. "'Man is my study, though I do not eye him as a scientist, I as a beetle, or as the philanthropist gazes of his bounty through a veil of theory and ignorance. "'It is my pleasure and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and complicated misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my fellow men. "'You may be familiar with the history of that glorious and immortal ruler, the caliph Haroun al-Rashid, whose wise and beneficent excursions among his people in the city of Baghdad, secured him the privilege of believing so much of their distress. "'In my humble way I walk in his footsteps. "'I seek for romance and adventure in city streets, not in ruined castles or in crumbling palaces. "'To me the greatest marvels of magic "'are those that take place in men's hearts "'when acted upon by the furious "'and diverse forces of a crowded population. "'In your strange behavior this evening, "'I fancy a story lurks. "'I read in your act something deeper "'than the wanton wastefulness of a spin-thripped. "'I observe in your countenance "'the certain traces of consuming grief or despair. "'I repeat, I invite your confidence. "'I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. "'Will you not trust me?' "'Gee, how you talk!' exclaimed the young man, "'a gleam of admiration supplanting for a moment "'the dull sadness of his eyes. "'You've got the astralibrary skin "'to a synopsis of preceding chapters. "'I mind that old Turk you speak of. "'I read the Arabian knights when I was a kid. "'He was a kind of Bill Deverey "'and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. "'But, say, you might wave enchanted dish rags "'and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night "'without ever touching me. "'My case won't yield to that kind of treatment.' "'If I could hear your story,' said the margrave, "'with his lofty, serious smile. "'I'll spill it in about nine words,' said the young man, "'with a deep sigh. "'But I don't think you can help me any, "'unless you're a peach at guessing, "'it's back to the Bosphorus for you "'on your magic linoleum.' "'The story of the young man "'and the harness maker's riddle.' "'I work at Hildebrand's saddle and harness shop "'down in Grant Street. "'I've worked there five years. "'I get eighteen dollars a week. "'That's enough to marry on, ain't it? "'Well, I'm not going to get married. "'Old Hildebrandt is one of these funny Dutchmen, "'you know the kind, always getting off bum jokes. "'He's got about a million riddles "'and things that he faked "'in the Dutchers' brother's great-grandfather. "'Bill Watson works there, too. "'Me and Bill have to stand for them "'chestnuts day after day. "'Why do we do it? "'Well, jobs ain't to be picked off "'every Anheuser-bush. "'And then there's Laura.' "'What?' the old man's daughter "'comes in the shop every day, "'about nineteen, and the picture of the blonde "'that sits on the palisades of the Rhine, "'and charms the clam-diggers into the surf.' "'Here, the color of straw matting, "'and eyes as black and shiny "'as the best harness-blacking. "'Think of that.' "'Me, well, it's either me or Bill Watson. "'She treats us both equal. "'Bill is all to the psychopathic about her, "'and me, well, you saw me plating "'the road-bed of the great maroon way "'with silver tonight. "'That was on account of Laura. "'I was spiflicated, Your Highness, "'and a what-not of what I wouldst.' "'How? "'Why, old Hildebrand says to me "'and Bill this afternoon, "'Boys, one riddle have I for you, Gahap-Tobin. "'A young man who cannot riddle's "'unfortunate he is not so good "'by business-for-ine family to provide. "'Is not that, Hein?' "'And he hands us a riddle, "'a conundrum some calls it, "'and he chuckles interiorly "'as both of us till tomorrow morning "'to work out the answer to it. "'And he says whichever of us "'guesses the repartee end of it "'goes to his house on Wednesday night "'to his daughter's birthday party. "'And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, "'for she's naturally aching for a husband, "'and it's either me or Bill Watson, "'for old Hildebrand likes us both "'and wants her to marry somebody "'that'll carry on the business "'at his last pair of traces. "'The riddle, why, it was this. "'What kind of a hen lays the longest? "'Think of that. "'What kind of a hen lays the longest? "'Ain't it like a Dutchman to risk "'a man's happiness on a full "'proposition like that? "'Now, what's the use? "'What I don't know about hens "'would fill several incubators? "'You say you're giving imitations "'of the old Aragry that gave away "'libraries and Baghdad? "'Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy "'that'll solve this hen query or not?' When the young man ceased, the margrave arose and paced to encro by the park bench for several minutes. Finally he sat again and said in grave and impressive tones, "'I must confess, sir, "'that during the eight years that I have spent "'in search of adventure and in relieving distress, "'I have never encountered a more interesting "'or a more perplexing case. "'I fear that I have overlooked hens "'in my researches and observations. "'As to their habits, their times "'in manner of laying, "'there are many varieties and crossbreedings, "'their span of life, their, "'Oh, don't make an ipsum drama of it,' "'interrupted the young man flippantly. "'Riddles, especially old Hildebrands riddles, "'don't have to be worked out seriously. "'They are light themes, such as Sim Ford "'and Harry Thurston Peck like to handle. "'But somehow I can't strike just the answer. "'Bill Watson may, and he may not. "'Tomorrow we'll tell. "'Well, Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow "'that you butted in and wowed the time away. "'I guess Mr. Al-Rashid himself "'would have bounced back if one of his constituents "'had conducted him up against this riddle. "'I'll say good-night. "'Peace for yours and what you may call it's of Allah.'" The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand. "'I cannot express my regret,' he said sadly. "'Never before have I found myself unable "'to assist in some way. "'What kind of a hen lays the longest? "'It is a baffling problem. "'There is a hen, I believe, called the Plymouth Rock, "'that--" "'Cut it out,' said the young man. "'The Caliph trade is a mighty serious one. "'I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny "'in a preacher's defense of John D. Rockefeller. "'Well, good-night, your nibs.'" From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets. He drew forth a card and handed it to the young man. "'Do me the favor to accept this anyhow,' he said. "'The time may come when it might be of use to you.' "'Thanks,' said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "'My name is Simmons. "'Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest "'shall altogether pursue the Margrave August "'Michael von Paulson Quig. "'I am indeed astray if my hand fail "'in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would follow. "'Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in "'at the door of Hildebrandt, harness-maker.'" Hildebrandt's two hundred pounds reposed on a bench, silver-buckling a raw leather martingale. Bill Watson came in first. "'Well,' said Hildebrandt, shaking all over with the vile conceit of the joke-maker. "'Have you guessed him? "'Thought kind of a hen lays their longest.'" "'Why, I think so,' said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. "'I think so, Mr. Hildebrandt. "'The one that lives the longest, is that right?' "'Nine,' said Hildebrandt, shaking his head vitently. "'You'll have not guessed their answer.'" Bill passed on and dawned a bed-tick apron and bachelor-hood. In came the young man of the Arabian Knights fiasco, pale, melancholy, hopeless. "'Well,' said Hildebrandt, how have you guessed him? "'Thought kind of a hen lays their longest.'" Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye. Should he curse this mountain of pernicious humor, curse him and die? Why should? But there was Laura. Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat-pockets and stood. His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margraves' card. He drew it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged look at a crawling fly. There was written on it in Quig's bold, round hand, "'Good for one roast chicken, two bearer.'" Simmons looked up with a flashing eye. "'A dead one,' said he. "'Good,' roared Hildebrandt, rocking the table with giant glee. "'Thought is right. "'You'll go home at mine-house at eight o'clock to their party.'" End of Story 15 A Bird of Baghdad