 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 24. The Tale of a Tainted Tenor Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, very well. Pass up this Sadovois autobiography of an axe, if you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John Dee's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods, read the four words above the lady's head. How are they for Ray Partee? I am a ten dollar treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen one in a friend's hand. On my face in the centre is a picture of the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions of Americans. The head of Captain Lewis and Captain Clark adorn the ends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty, or Cerise, or Maxine Elliott, standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory plant. My references is, or are, Section 3588 revives statuettes. Ten cold hard dollars. I don't say whether silver, gold, lead, or iron. Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash me in. I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make. Thanks, I knew you would. Got that sneaking little respect and agreeable feeling toward even an ex, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill doesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford to hold a ten spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur Duffy to the nearest That's All sign or delicatessen store. For a six year old I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I guess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned by a good many kinds of people, but a little old ragged, dump, dingy five dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to it in the fat and bad smelling purse of a butcher. Hey, you sitting bull, said I. Don't scrounge so. Anyhow, don't you think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got reissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight. Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a buffalo bill, says the fiver. You'd be limp too if you'd been stuffed down in a thick cotton and lyle thread under an elastic all day and the thermometer not a degree under eighty five in the store. I never heard of a pocket book like that, says I. Who carried you? A shop girl, says the five spot. What's that? I had to ask. You'll never know till their millennium comes, says the fiver. Just then a two dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head spoke up to the fiver. Ah, cut out your kicks. Ain't lyle thread good enough for you? If you was under all cotton like I've been today and choked up with factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a dozen times, you'd have some reason to complain. That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in in a five hundred dollar package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania correspondence. And I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the five and two spots friend's pocket books yet. Silk for mine every time. I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business. I fought for my owners every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some spilled martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a push cart peddler's jeans, I thought I never would get in circulation again, for the future department store owner lived on eight cents worth of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He changed me at a cigar store near the bowery that was running a crap game in the back room. So it was the captain of the precinct, after all, that did me the best turn when he got his. He blew me for wine the next evening in a Broadway restaurant, and I really felt as glad to get back again as an aster does when he sees the lights of Charing Cross. A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. They were bragging about the busy times there were in awesoning whenever three girls got hold of them during the ice cream season, but its slow moving vehicles keep to the right for the little bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour. The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good thing, with a van to his name, threw me over with some other bills to buy a stack of blues. About midnight a big easygoing man with a fat face like a monks, and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me in a lot of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a wad among the money-tainters. Ticket me for five hundred, said he to the banker. Look out for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the Glen before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody finds the roof in their way, their sixty thousand dollars wrapped in a comic supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold. Everywhere be bold. But be not bold over. Night. I found myself between two twenty-dollar gold certificates. One of them says to me, well, old short horn, you're in luck tonight. You'll see something of life. Old Jack's going to make the tenderloin look like a Hamburg steak. Explain, says I, I'm used to joints. But I don't care for filet mignon with the kind of sauce you serve. Excuse me, said the twenty. Old Jack is the proprietor of the scambling house. He goes on a whiz tonight because he offered fifty thousand dollars to a church, and it refused to accept it because they said his money was tainted. What is a church? I asked. Oh, I forgot, says the twenty, that I was talking to a tenor. Of course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution basket and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is a large building in which pen wipers and tidies are sold at twenty dollars each. I don't care much about chining with gold certificates. There's a streak of yellow in them. All is not gold that's quitters. Old Jack certainly was a gilt-edged sport. When it came to his time to loosen up, he never referred the waiter to an actuary. Buy and buy it got around that he was smiting the rock in the wilderness, and all along Broadway, things with cold noses and hot gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his camembert piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him, then the fellows that his friends knew by sight, and then a few of his enemies buried the hatchet, and finally he was buying souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fissure maidens and butterfly octets that the head-waiters weren't phoning all over town for Julian Mitchell to please come round and get them into some kind of order. At last we floated into an Uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When the Hod Carrier's Union in Jackets and Aprons saw us coming, the chief goal-kicker called out. Six, eleven, forty-two, nineteen, twelve, to his men, and they put on nose-guards till it was clear whether we meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But Old Jack wasn't working for the furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang ramble in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. But the way sale went on, and Brady himself couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin. Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the proprietor. Mike says he, here's money that the good people have refused. Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's tainted. I will, says Mike, and I'll put it in the drawer next to the bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to live in. At one o'clock, when the hod carriers were making ready to close up the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the kind, black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes across between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's, the kind of woman that's always on the lookout for an automobile, or the mendicancy squad, and she stands there without a word and looks at the money. Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll, and hands me to her with a bow. Madam says he, just like actors I've heard, here is a tainted bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night, from a gentleman's son. Where he got it, I do not know. If you will do me the favour to accept it, it is yours. The woman took me, with a trembling hand. Sir, said she, I counted thousand of this issue of bills into packages, when they were a virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my position. You say they are tainted now, if you only knew. But I won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time, to a bakery. And I get changed, and she does a shared in twenty miles away with a dozen rolls and a section of jelly-cake as big as a turbine water-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed up in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drugstore the next day in an alum deal, or paid over to the cement works. A week afterward I butted up against one of those one-dollar bills the baker had given the woman for change. Hello E-35039669, says I. Weren't you in the change for me in a bakery last Saturday night? Yep, says the solitaire in his free and easy style. How did the deal turn out, I asked. She blew E-1705-1431 for mills and round-stake, says the one-spot. She kept me till the rent-man came. It was a bum room with a sick kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and tincture of formaldehyde, half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed some. Don't get stuck up, tenor. We one-spots hear ten prayers, where you hear one. She said something about who giveth to the poor. Oh, let's cut out the slum-talk. I'm certainly tired of the company that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in society with you tainted bills. Shut up, says I. There's no such thing. I know the rest of it. There's a lendeth to the Lord somewhere in it. Now look on my back and read what you see there. This note is a legal tender at its face-value for all debts, public and private. This talk about tainted money makes me tired, says I. End of The Tale of a Tainted Tenor Chapter 25 Elsie in New York Elsie's father had been a cutter for fox and otter, cloaks and furs on lower Broadway. He was an old man with a slow and limping gait, so a pot-hunter of a newly-licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when lively or game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving two dollars and fifty cents in cash and a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful old man. The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it in her hands with pride as the shears of the dread cleaner and repairer snipped off his thread of life. That was the landlord's cue, and forth he came and did his part in the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal out into drawing her little red woolen shawl about her shoulders, but she went out regardless of the unities. As for the red shawl, back to Blaney's with it. Elsie's fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at fox and otters, and her lucky stars had given her good looks and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had one dollar left of the two fifty. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do not sell. And so we find Elsie thus equipped, starting out in the world, to seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumb-screwed by an investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-Seventh Street and rode south to Forty Second, which she thought must surely be the end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for the city's roaring dash was new to her. Up where she had lived was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans. A kind-faced sun-bird young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross of the Sunflower Ranch in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the east. Hank's heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one during his visit, who would congenially share his prosperity in home. But the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But as he passed in he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet ingenious face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his mate. He could love her he knew, and he would surround her with so much comfort and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one before. Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never-before-questioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome frank face with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming out of an apartment house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder. But that is neither here nor there. Carry on your smashin' tricks right before me eyes, will ye? shouted the cop. I'll teach you to speak to ladies on me beat that you're not acquainted with. Come along. Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tan complexion. She walked southward thinking herself already in the district where her father used to work, and hoping to find someone who would direct her to the firm of Fox and Otter. But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the old Cutter's independence. How much better it would be if she could find work and support herself without calling on him for aid? Elsie saw a sign, Employment Agency, and went in. Many girls were sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling black silk hurried up to Elsie. My dear, she said in a sweet, gentle voice. Are you looking for a position? I like your face in appearance so much. I want a young woman who will be half-made and half-companion to me. You will have a good home, and I will pay you thirty dollars a month. Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket pockets seized her arm and drew her aside. I am Miss Ticklebaum, said she, of the Association for the Prevention of Jobs being put up on working girls looking for jobs. We prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I am here to protect you. Beware of anyone who offers you a job. How do you know that this woman will not want to make you work as a breaker-boy in a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you accept work of any kind without permission of our association, you will be arrested by one of our agents. But what am I to do? asked Elsie. I have no home or money. I must do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady's offer? I do not know, said Miss Ticklebaum. That is the affair of our committee on the abolishment of employers. It is my duty simply to see that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address and report to our secretary every Thursday. We have six hundred girls on the waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions as vacancies occur on our role of qualified employers, which now compromises twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music, and lemonade in our chapel the third Sunday of each month. Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find Mr. Otter. But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, cashier wanted, in the window of a confectionary's store. In she went and applied for the place, after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure herself that the job-preventer was not on her trail. The proprietor of the confectionary was a benevolent old man with a peppermint flavour, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty closely, that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were needed at once, so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan coat and prepared to mount the cashier's stool. But before she could do so, a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing and exclaimed, Young woman, hesitate. Elsie hesitated. Do you know, said the black and steel lady, that in accepting this position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in agonizing physical torture and ascending as many souls to perdition? Why no, said Elsie in frightened tones. How could I do that? Ruin, said the lady, the demon rum. Do you know why so many lives are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum lurking in brandy balls. Our society women, while in theatres, sit grossly intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. When the fire-fiends sweeps down upon them, they are unable to escape. The candy-store are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in the distribution of these insidious confections, you assist in the destruction of the bodies and souls of your fellow beings, and in the filling of our jails, asylums, and alms-houses. Think, girl, ere you touch the money for which brandy balls are sold. Dear me, said Elsie bewildered. I didn't know there was rum in brandy balls, but I must live by some means. What shall I do? Decline the position, said the lady, and come with me. I will tell you what to do. After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind about the cashiership, she put on her coat and followed the lady to the sidewalk, where awaited an elegant Victoria. Seek some other work, said the black and steel lady, and assist in crushing the hydro-headed demon rum. She got into the Victoria and drove away. I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again, said Elsie ruefully, turning down the street. And I'm sorry, too, for I'd much rather make my way without help. Near 14th Street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a doorway that read fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on theatrical costumes, good pay. She was about to enter when a solemn man, dressed all in black, laid his hand on her arm. My dear girl, he said, I entreat you not to enter that dressing-room of the devil. Goodness me! exclaimed Elsie with some impatience. The devil seems to have a cinch in all the business in New York. What's wrong with the place? It is here, said the solemn man, that the regalia of Satan. In other words, the costumes worn on the stage are manufactured. The stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, my dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors and actresses go after the curtain of the playhouses fallen upon them for the last time? Sure, said Elsie, into vaudeville. But do you think it would be wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must get something to do pretty soon. The flesh-pots of Egypt exclaimed the Reverend Gentleman, uplifting his hands. I beseech you, my child, turn away from this place of sin and inequity. But what will I do for a living? asked Elsie. I don't care to sew for this musical comedy, if it's as rank as you say it is. But I've got to have a job. The Lord will provide, said the solemn man. There is a free Bible class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell. Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, posy and trimmer, artificial flowers. Below it was hung, a newly stretched canvas, bearing the words, Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade, good wages from the start, apply one flight up. Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat, tipped down over her eyes, stepped in front of her. Say, use, said the girl. Are yous going in there after a job? Yes, said Elsie. I must have work. Now don't do it, said the girl. I'm chairman of our scab committee. There's four hundred of us girls locked out just because we demanded fifty cents a week raise in wages and ice water, and for the foreman to shave off his moustache. You're too nice looking girl to be a scab. Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere else? Or would yous rather have your face pushed in? I'll try somewhere else, said Elsie. She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, there her heart leaped to see the sign Fox and Otter, stretching entirely across the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his private office. Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered, and took both hands with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of nearly middle age, a little bald, gold-spectacled, polite, well-dressed, radiating. Well, well! So this is Beatty's little daughter. Your father was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work. Nothing easier. Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nose clerk thrust a portion of himself inside the door. Send Miss Hawkins in, said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. Miss Hawkins said Mr. Otter, bring for Miss Beatty to try on one of those Russian sable coats and—let's see—one of those latest model black-tool hats with white tips. Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! She was beautiful. I wish I could stop this story here, Conn found it. I will. No, it's got to run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it. I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop and the lady who rescues girls from jobs and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush brandy-balls, and the sky-pilot who objects to costumes for stage-people—there are others—and all the thousands of good people who are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great city, and then wind up by pointing out how they were means of Elsie reaching her father's benefactor and her kind friend and rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie's story of the old sort. I'd like to do this, but there's just a word or two to follow. While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to the telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it was. Oscar said he, I want you to reserve the same table for me this evening. What? Why the one in the Moorish room to the left of the shrubbery? Yes. Two? Yes, the usual brand. And the eighty-five Joannis Burger with the roast. If it isn't the right temperature, I'll break your neck. No. Not her. No indeed. A new one. A peatureno, Oscar. A peatureno. Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a paragraph of a few words that you will remember were written by him. By him of Gads Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand with a covered pumpkin. I, sir, a pumpkin. Lost your excellency, lost associations and societies, lost right reverence and wrong reverence of every order, lost reformers and lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with the reverence of money in your souls, and lost thus around us every day. End of Elsie in New York.