Classic Audiobook Collection - The Four Million by O. Henry ~ Full Audiobook [comedy]

Starting point is 00:00:00 The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 1, Tobin's Palm Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was $4 between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Kate Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with $200, her own savings, and $100 from the sale of Tobin's inherited estate. a fine cottage and pig on the bog shana. And since the letter that Tobin got, saying that she had started to come to him, not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the Colleen. So to Coney, me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn

Starting point is 00:00:51 at the shoots and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But Tobin was a hard-headed man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his teeth at the crying balloons. He cursed the moving pictures, and though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for licking the tin-tight men as they came. So I gets him down a sideway on a boardwalk, where the attractions were some less violent. At a little six-by-eight stall, Tobin halts, with a more human look in his eye. "'Tis here,' says he, "'I will be diverted. "'I'll have the palm of me hand

Starting point is 00:01:29 "'investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile "'and see if what is to be will be.' "'Tobin was a believer in signs "'and the unnatural in nature. "'He possessed illegal convictions in his mind "'along the subjects of black cats, "'lucky numbers, and the weather predictions "'in the papers.

Starting point is 00:01:49 "'We went into the enchanted chicken coop, "'which was fixed, mysterious, with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing him like a railroad center. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zoso, the Egyptian palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroidered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands. She lifts Tobin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a dray horse, and examines it to see whether tis a stone in the frog,

Starting point is 00:02:24 or a cast shoe he has come for. Man, says this Madam Zoso, the line of your fate shows, "'Tis not me foot at all,' says Tobin interrupting. "'Sure, tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand.' "'The line shows,' says the madam, "'that you've not arrived at your time of life without bad luck, "'and there's more to come. "'The Mount of Venus, or is that a stone bruise,

Starting point is 00:02:50 "'shows that you've been in love. "'There's been troubling, your life on account of your sweetheart. Tis Cady Mahorner she has references with, whispered Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side. I see, says the palmist, a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the letter K and the letter M in her name. Whist, says Tobin to me, do you hear that? Look out, goes on the palmist, for a dark man and a light, woman, for they'll both bring ye trouble. You'll make a voyage upon the water very soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck. There's a man coming into your life,

Starting point is 00:03:37 who will fetch you good fortune. You'll know him when you see him by his crooked nose. Is his name set down, asks Tobin? T'wit will be convenient in the way of greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck. His name, says the pommis, thoughtful looking. is not spelled out by the lines, but they indicate tis a long one, and the letter O should be in it. There's no more to tell, good evening, don't block up the door. Tis wonderful how she knows, says Tobin as we walk to the pier. As we squeeze through the gates, a nigger man sticks his lighted cigar against Tobin's ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck and the women squeal,

Starting point is 00:04:20 and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of the way, before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when enjoying himself. On the boat going back when the man calls, who wants the good-looking waiter? Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds. But when he felt in his pocket, he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat dry upon the stools, listening to the day goes fiddling on deck. If, anything Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started. On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for red automobiles,

Starting point is 00:05:06 with hair the color of an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing by Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and being polite to ladies when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologizing, but he knocks it off and the wind carries it overboard. Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the man's adversities were becoming frequent. He was apt, when pushed so close by hard luck, to kick the best-dressed man he could see and try to take command of the boat. Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says excited. John says he, Do you know what we're doing? We're taking a voyage upon the water. There now, says I, subdue yourself. The boat will land in ten minutes more.

Starting point is 00:05:52 look says he at the light lady upon the bench have you forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear and isn't the money i had gone a dollar sixty five it was i thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get violent with good excuse as men will do and i tried to make him understand such things was trifles listen says tobin you've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired what did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand tis come and true before your eyes look out says she for a dark man and a light woman they'll bring ye trouble have you forgot the nigger man though he got some of it back from me fist can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in the water and where's the dollar sixty-five i had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to anyone at Coney without the implication of palmistry. Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his movements.

Starting point is 00:07:09 You never know what Tobin has in his mind till he begins to carry it out. ye should know says he i'm working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm i'm looking for the crooked-nosed man that's to bring the good luck tis all that will save us john did you ever see a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life twas the nine-thirty boat and we landed and walked up town through twenty-second street tobin being without his hat on a street corner standing under a gaslight and looking over the elevated road at the moon was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent with a cigar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wiggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him. Good night to you, Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his cigar and passes the compliment sociable. Would you hand us your name, asks Toe. And let us look at the size of it. It may be our duty to be acquainted with you.

Starting point is 00:08:19 My name, says the man polite, is Friedenhausman. Maximus G. Friedenhausman. Tis the right length, says Tobin. Do you spell it with an O anywhere down the stretch of it? I do not, says the man. Can ye spell it with an O? inquires Tobin turning anxious. If your conscience, says the man with the knows, is indisposed toward foreign idioms you might to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable. Tis well, says Tobin, we are in the presence of John Malone and Daniel Tobin. Tis highly appreciated, says the man with a bow, and now, since I cannot conceive that you would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will you name some reasonable excuse for being at large? By the two signs, answers Tobin, trying to explain, which ye displeasing.

Starting point is 00:09:11 according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the soul of me hand. You've been nominated to offset with good luck, the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar 65, also far fulfilled according to Hoyle. The man stopped smoking and looked at me. Have ye any amendments, he asks, to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of you, you might have him in charge. None, says I to him, except that as one horseshoe resembles another, so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me friend. If not, then the lines of Danny's hand may have been crossed. I don't know. There's two of you, says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight

Starting point is 00:10:00 of a policeman. I've enjoyed your company immense. Good night. With that, he shoves a cigar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the other. What, says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his hat? Do you follow me? I tell you, he says very loud, I'm proud to have met ye, but it is my desire to be rid of you. I am off to me home. Do, says Tobin leaning against his sleeve, do be off to your home, and I will sit at the door of it till you come out in the morning. For the dependences upon ye, obviate the curse of the nigger man and the blonde lady and the financial loss of the 165. "'Tis a strange hallucination,' says the man, turning to me as a more reasonable lunatic,

Starting point is 00:10:49 "'Hadn't he better get him home?' "'Listen, man,' says I. "'Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. "'Maybe he's a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to disturb, "'but not enough to settle his wits. "'But he is no more than following out the legitimate path of his superstitious, and predicaments, which I will explain to you. With that, I relates the facts about the Pomas lady,

Starting point is 00:11:13 and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good fortune. Now understand I concludes, my position in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me interpretations. Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays. Tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for you get puffed up by gratitude, and have your picture printed standing in front of it. of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the art of

Starting point is 00:11:42 friendship to be true friend to a born fool, and that's what I'm doing, says I, for in my opinion, there's no fortune to be read from the palm of me hand that wasn't printed there with the handle of a pick. And though you've got the crookedest nose in New York City, I missed out that all the fortune tellers doing business could milk good luck from you. But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to ye fair, and I'll assist him to experiment with ye until he's convinced you're dry. After that the man turns sudden to laughing. He leans against a corner and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs of us and takes us by an arm apiece. Tis my mistake, says he, how could I be expecting anything so fine and wonderful to be turning the

Starting point is 00:12:26 corner upon me? I came near being found unworthy. Hard by, says he, is a cafe, snug and suit for the entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while we discuss the unavailability of the categorical. So saying he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon and ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the cigars. You must know, says the man of destiny, that me walk in life is one that is called the literary. I wander abroad, benight, seeking idiosyncrasies in the mass, and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me, I was in contemplation of the elevated road, in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art,

Starting point is 00:13:18 the moon but a tedious dry body moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for in the business of literature the conditions are reversed. Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange things I have discovered in life. You will put me in a book, says Tobin disgusted. Will he put me in a book? I will not, says the man, for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The best I can do is to enjoy ye myself, for the time is not ripe for destroying the limitations of print.

Starting point is 00:13:48 Ye would look fantastic and type. All alone by myself must I drink this cup of joy. But I thank you, boys. I am truly grateful. The talk of ye, says Tobin, blowing through his mustache and pounding the table with his fist, is an eyesore to me patience. there was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose but ye bear fruit like the bang of a drum ye resemble with your noise of books the wind blowing through a crack sure now i would be thinking the palm of me han lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady and whist says the long man would ye be led astray by physiognomy me knows will do what it can within bounds let us have these glasses filled again for tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well more

Starting point is 00:14:33 They being subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere. So the man of literature makes good to my notion, for he pays cheerful for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted by prediction. But Tobin is sore and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his eye. By and by we moved out, for twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon the sidewalk. And then the man says we must be going home, and invites me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks away from there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top window which he finds dark.

Starting point is 00:15:17 Tis me humble dwelling, says he, and I begin to perceive by the signs that my wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a bit in the way of hospitality. Tis me wish that she enter the basement room where we dine and partake of a reasonable refreshment. there will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale ye will be welcome to enter and eat for i'm indebted to ye for diversions the appetite and conscience of me and tobin was congenial to the proposition though twas sticking hard in danny's superstitions to think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune promised by the palm of his hand Step down the steps, says the man with the crooked nose, and I will enter by the door above and let you in. I will ask the new girl we have in the kitchen, says he, to make you a pot of coffee to drink before you go. Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes, for a green girl just landed three months.

Starting point is 00:16:17 Step in, says the man, and I'll send her down to you. End of Tobin's Palm. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million Bio Henry. Chapter 2. The Gift of the Magi $1.87. That was all, and 60 cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it,

Starting point is 00:17:11 $1.87, and the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl, so Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is, gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home, a furnished flat at eight dollars per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the Mendekensi Squad. In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also, appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham

Starting point is 00:18:03 Young. The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of Dillingham looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above, he was called Jim, and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della, which is all very good. Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat, walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87, with which to buy Jim a present.

Starting point is 00:18:56 She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. $20 a week doesn't go far. expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim, her Jim, many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare and sterling, something just a little bit nearer to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. There was a pier glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you've seen a pier glass in an $8 flat, a very thin and very thin, very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Starting point is 00:19:46 Suddenly, she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within 20 seconds. Rapidly, she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Young's, in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfathers. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window someday

Starting point is 00:20:20 to dry just to depreciate her majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him plucked his beard from envy. So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her,

Starting point is 00:20:46 and then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still, while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket, on winter old brown hat, with a whirl of skirts and with a whirl of skirts, and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Starting point is 00:21:08 Where she stopped the sign read, Madame Sofrani, hair goods of all kinds. One flight up, Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madam, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked like sophrony. Will you buy my hair? Ask Della. I buy hair, said Madam. Take your hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it. Down rippled the brown cascade.

Starting point is 00:21:34 $20, said madam, lifting the mass with a practiced hand. Give it to me quick, said Della. Oh, and the next two hours trip by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores,

Starting point is 00:21:57 and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone, and not by meritricious ornamentation, as all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it must be jims. It was like him, quietness and value. The description applied to both. $21 they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch, Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly,

Starting point is 00:22:41 on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della reached home, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love, which is always a tremendous task. dear friends, a mammoth task. Within 40 minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully and critically. If Jim doesn't kill me, she said to herself, before he takes a second

Starting point is 00:23:19 look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl, but what could I do? Oh, what could I do with a dollar in 87 cents. At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair way down on the first flight and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things and now she whispered, please God, make him think I'm still pretty. The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it.

Starting point is 00:24:02 He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only 22, and to be burdened with the family. He needed a new overcoat, and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly, with that peculiar expression on his face.

Starting point is 00:24:40 Della wriggled off the table and went for him. Jim darling, she cried, don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold, because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again. You won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say, Merry Christmas. Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice, what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you. You've cut off your hair? asked Jim laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact, yet even after the hardest mental labor. Cut it off and sold it, said Della. Don't you like me just as well anyhow? I'm me without my hair, aren't I? Jim looked to about the room curiously. "'You say your hair is gone?' he said, with an air almost of idiocy. "'You needn't look for it,' said Della.

Starting point is 00:25:33 "'It's sold. "'I tell you, sold and gone, too. "'It's Christmas Eve, boy. "'Be good to me, for it went for you. "'Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,' "'she went on with sudden serious sweetness. "'But nobody could ever count my love for you. "'Shall I put the chops on, Jim?'

Starting point is 00:25:50 "'Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week, or a million a year, what's the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat and threw it upon the table. Don't make any mistake, Del, he said, about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less.

Starting point is 00:26:34 But if you'll unwrap that package, you may see why you had me going a while at first. White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, and then, alas, a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting power, of the Lord of the Flat. For there lay the combs. The set of combs sighed and back that Della had worshipped long in a broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew,

Starting point is 00:27:14 and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now they were hers. But the tresses that should have adorned the coveted, adornments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say, My hair grows so fast, Jim. And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, oh, Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it.

Starting point is 00:27:56 You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it. Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. Del, said he, let's put our Christmas presents away and keep him a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.

Starting point is 00:28:21 And now suppose you put the chops on. the magi as you know were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the babe in the manger they invented the art of giving christmas presents being wise their gifts were no doubt wise ones possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication and here i have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest, they are the magi. End of Chapter 2, The Gift of the Magi. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 00:29:23 For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada The 4 Million by O'Henry Chapter 3 The Cosmopolite in a Cafe At midnight the cafe was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers. and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam

Starting point is 00:30:10 no true citizen of the world has existed, we hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travelers instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene. the marble top tables, the range of leather upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilettes, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence, or art, the sedulous and larges-loving garson, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers, the melange of talk and laughter, and if you will, the Wurtsburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry

Starting point is 00:30:57 sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mouchchunk that the scene was truly Parisienne. My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglin, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new attraction there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. Then his conversation rang, along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no longer than the seed of a mereschino cherry in a tabla-doed grapefruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator. He skipped from continent to continent. He derided the zones. He mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand,

Starting point is 00:31:51 he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kielaka Kiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you drive for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch,

Starting point is 00:32:13 then whirled you into the society of Viennese Archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago Lake breeze, and how old Escamilla cured it in Buenos Aires, with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have addressed a letter to E. Rushmore Coglin, Esquire, the Earth, Solar System, the universe, and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him. I was sure that I had found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse, fearful lest I should discover in it. the local note of the mere globetrotter.

Starting point is 00:32:54 But his opinions never fluttered or drooped. He was as impartial to cities, countries, and continents, as the winds or gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglin prattled of this little planet, I fought with glee of a great, almost cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dictated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth,

Starting point is 00:33:19 and that the men that breathe from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their city's hem as a child to the mother's gown. And whenever they walk by roaring streets unknown, they remember their native city, most faithful, foolish, fond, making her mere breath name their bond upon their bond. And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man, not made from dust, one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of the whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the moon. Expression on these subjects was precipitated by E. Rushmore Coglin by the third corner to our table.

Starting point is 00:34:05 While Coglin was describing to me the topography along the Siberian railway, the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was Dixie, and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth, they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in the city of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town high themselves to cafes at nightfall.

Starting point is 00:34:43 This applause of the rebel air in a northern city does puzzle a little, but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans racetrack, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a fad in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger

Starting point is 00:35:12 reminds her so much of a gentleman in Richmond VA. Oh, certainly, but many of you. a lady has to work now. The war, you know. When Dixie was being played, a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby gorilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table, and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Wurzburgers to the waiter. The dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hasten to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had.

Starting point is 00:35:55 Would you mind telling me I began? Whether you are from the fist of E. Rushmore Coglin bang the table and I was jarred into silence. Excuse me, said he, that's a question I never liked to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas. Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars

Starting point is 00:36:26 sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded southerners, narrow-minded westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk

Starting point is 00:36:41 do up cranberries and paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. pardon me i said but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one i know the south and when the band plays dixie i like to observe i have formed the belief that the man who applauds the air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either sescos new jersey or the district between murray hill lyceum and the harlem river this city i was about to put my opinions to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own larger theory i must confess and now the dark-haired man spoke to me and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves i should like to be a periwinkle said he mysteriously on the top of a valley and sing to ralaroo ralur this was clearly too obscure so i turned again to coglin i've been around the world twelve times said he i know an esquimaux in eppernavick who sends to cincinnati for his neckties i saw a goat herder in uruguay who won a prize in a battle creek breakfast food puzzle competition i pay rant on a room in cairo egypt and another in yokohama all

Starting point is 00:38:04 the year round. I've got slippers waiting for me in a tea house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell them how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the north, or the south, or the old manor house in the Dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pikes Peak, or Fairfax County, Virginia, or hooligans flats, or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swamp land just because we happen to be born there. You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite, I said admiringly, but it also seems that you would decry patriotism. A relic of the Stone Age, declared Coglin warmly, we are all brothers,

Starting point is 00:38:52 Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the Ka River. Someday all this petty pride in one city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and will all be citizens of the world as we ought to be. But while you are wandering in foreign lands, I persisted, do not your thoughts revert to some spot, some dear and nary a spot interrupted E.R. Coglin flippantly. The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad.

Starting point is 00:39:31 I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlit night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a southerner on being introduced to the King of England, hand that monarch without batting his eyes. The information that his great aunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. his people sent over the money, and he came back to Kabul with the agent. Afghanistan? The native said to him through an interpreter, well, not so slow, do you think? Oh, I don't know, says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at 6th Avenue in Broadway.

Starting point is 00:40:17 Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglin, citizen of the Territory. spherial sphere. My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wurzberger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley. I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed in him. how was it the men that breed from them they traffic up and down but cling to their city's hem as a child to the mother's gown not so e rushmore coglan with the whole world for his

Starting point is 00:41:11 My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the cafe. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons, E. Rushmore Coglin, and a stranger to me, engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught up their hats and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing teasing. My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the earth, when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside still resisting.

Starting point is 00:41:49 I called McCarthy one of the French garson and asked him the cause of the conflict. The man with a red tie, that was my cosmopolite, said he, got hot on account of things said about the bum's sidewalks and water supply of the place he'd come from by the other guy. Why, said I bewildered, That man is a citizen of the world. A cosmopolite.

Starting point is 00:42:13 He, originally from Matawamak, Maine, he said, continued McCarthy, and he wouldn't stand for no knock in the place. End of, a cosmopolite in a cafe. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 00:42:48 The 4 million by O'Henry, Chapter 4 Between Rounds The May Moon shone bright upon the private boarding house of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac, a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heyday, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves, and buyers for the western and southern trade. flowers and summer resort agents were blowing the air and answers to lawson were growing milder hand organs fountains and pinnuckle were playing everywhere the windows of mrs murphy's boarding-house were open a group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round flat mats like german pancakes in one of the second floor front windows mrs mccaskey awaited her husband supper was cooling on the table its heat went into Mrs. McCasky.

Starting point is 00:43:49 At nine, Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth, and he apologized for disturbing the borders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size nine with D's. As he opened the door of his room, he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove lid or potato masher for him to dodge, came only words.

Starting point is 00:44:16 Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse. I heard ye, came the oral substitutes for kitchenware, ye can apologize to riff-raf on the streets, for setting your unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but she'd walk on the neck of your wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a kiss-me-fut,

Starting point is 00:44:37 and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin out the windy for ye, and the victual's cold as there's money-dye-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-alled, to buy after drinking up your wages at gallagher's every saturday evening and the gas-man here twice to-day for his woman said mr mccaskey dashing his coat and hat upon a chair the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite when ye run down politeness you take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society tis no more than exercise in the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the descent of ladies blockin the way for step in between them will ye bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food. Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer, it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware.

Starting point is 00:45:31 Pigs face is it, said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord. Mr. McCaskey was no novice at Repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this and drew the appropriate return of a bread-pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband stuck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee pot full of hot black semi-fragrant liquid,

Starting point is 00:46:05 the battle, according to courses, should have ended. But Mr. McCaskey was no fifty-cent table-doteur. let cheap bohemians consider coffee the end if they would. Let them make that faux pa. He was foxier still. Finger bowls would not be on the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in their pension Murphy, but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he set the granite-ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary.

Starting point is 00:46:34 Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flat iron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armstice. On the sidewalk at the corner of the house, policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned,

Starting point is 00:46:57 listening to the crash of household utensils. Tis John McCaskey and his missus at it again, meditated the policeman. I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks, they are, and few pleasures they have. It will not last long.

Starting point is 00:47:13 Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with. Just then came the loud scream below stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. Tis probably the cat, said policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction. The borders on the step were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession,

Starting point is 00:47:35 went inside to analyze the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murrower, murphy's little boy mike was lost following the messenger out bounced mrs murphy two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief bathos truly but mr toomey sat down at the side of miss purdy millinery and their hands came together in sympathy the two old maids mrs walsh who complained every day about the noise in the halls inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. The little one lost, he exclaimed, I will scour the city. His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said, Go Ludvick, in a baritone voice.

Starting point is 00:48:28 Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone. Give me some thirty or sixty cents, my love, said the major. Lost children sometimes stray far. may need car fares. Old Man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenter's strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon. Oh, Ard, Mike, for God's sake, where is me bit of a boy? When do you see him last? asked Old Man Denny, with one eye on the report of the building trades league. Oh, wailed Mrs. Murphy, twas yesterday or maybe four hours ago. I don't know,

Starting point is 00:49:12 but it's lost he is, me little boy, Mike. He was playing on the sidewalk only this morning. Or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work. Tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Ah, for the love of even. Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revelers. they call it hard as iron they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava but beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food perhaps a different simile would have been wiser still nobody should take offence we would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws no calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble. The ways are so steep and strange. Major Griggs hurried down to the corner and up the avenue into Billy's place.

Starting point is 00:50:18 Give me a wry high, he said to the servitor. Haven't seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you? Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. Think of that dear little babe, said Miss Purdy, lost from his mother's side. "'Perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds. "'Oh, isn't it dreadful?' "'Ain't that right,' agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "'Say I start out and help look for him.' "'Perhaps,' said Miss Purdy, you should.

Starting point is 00:50:50 "'But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing, so reckless. "'Supposing your enthusiasm, some accident should befall you. "'Then what?' "'Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement "'with one finger on the lines.' in the second floor front mr and mrs mccaskey came to the window to recover their second wind mr mccaskey was stooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the pork roast had not benefited they heard the outcry below and thrust their heads out of the window tis little mike is lost said mrs mccaskey in a hushed voice the beautiful little trouble-making angel of a gassoon "'The bit of a boy mislaid,' said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window.

Starting point is 00:51:38 "'Why, now that's bad enough entirely. "'The children, they be different. "'If twas a woman, I'd be willing, "'for they leave peace behind him when they go.' "'Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm. "'John,' she said sentimentally, "'Mrs. Murphy's little by is lost. "'Tis a great city for losing little boys.

Starting point is 00:51:59 "'Six years old he was. "'John, tis the same age our little by would have been if we'd had one six years ago. We never did, said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact. But if we had, John, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowhere's at all. Ye talk foolishness, said Mr. McCaskey, tis pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrum. Ye lie, said Mrs. McCaskey without anger, me brother was worth ten dozen bog-trotting McCaskys, after him would the by be named? She leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the

Starting point is 00:52:35 hurrying and bustle below. John, said Mrs. McCasky softly, I'm sorry, I was haiti with you. Twas hasty puddin, as ye say, said her husband, and hurry up turn-ups and get a move on ye coffee. T'was what ye could call a quick launch all right, and tell no lie. Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's, and took his rough hand in hers. Listening at the crying of poor mrs murphy she said tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city if twas our little phelan john i'd be breakin me heart awkwardly mr mccaskey withdrew his hand but he laid it around the nearing shoulder of his wife tis foolishness of course he said roughly but i'd be cut up myself if our little pat was kidnapped or anything but there never was any childer for us sometimes i've been ugly and hard witchy judy forget it they lean together and look down at the heart drama being acted below. Long they sat thus, people surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with

Starting point is 00:53:39 rumors, and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy plowed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down with plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went. Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house. What's up now, Judy? asked Mr. McCaskey. Mrs. Murphy's voice, said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. She says she's finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room. Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly. "'That's your Phelan,' he shouted sardonically. Divel a bit woulda pad have done that trick.

Starting point is 00:54:18 If the by-we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup. Mrs. McCaskey rose heavily and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her mouth drawn down. Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece. By the deported snakes, he exclaimed, John McCaskey and his lady have been fighting for an

Starting point is 00:54:54 hour and a quarter by the watch. The missus could give him forty pounds weight, straight. strength to his arm. Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner. Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps, just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night. End of Chapter 4 Between Rounds. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry.

Starting point is 00:55:41 Chapter 5 The Skylight Room First, Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlors. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentlemen who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlors.

Starting point is 00:56:15 Next, you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floor back at $8. Convinced by her second floor manner that it was worth the twelve that Mr. Tuzenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida, near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath. You managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper. If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skitter's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skitter's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long, but every room hunter was made to visit his room to admire the Lambroquins.

Starting point is 00:57:01 After each visit, Mr. Skitter, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent. Then, oh, then, if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, never more would Mrs. Parker be Ciceroon of yours. She would honk loudly the word Clara. She would show you her back and march downstairs. Then Clara, the colored maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight and show you the skylight room. It occupied seven by eight feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom.

Starting point is 00:57:48 In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. your hand crept to your throat you gasped you looked up as from a well and breathed once more through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity two dollars sir clara would say in her half contemptuous half tuscogenial tones one day miss leeson came hunting for a room she carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady she was a very little girl with a eyes and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped, and that always looked as if they were saying, goodness me, why didn't you keep up with us? Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlors. In this closet, she said, one could keep a skeleton or anesthetic or coal. But I am neither a doctor

Starting point is 00:58:47 nor a dentist, said Miss Leeson with a shiver. Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctor. or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back. "'Eight dollars?' said Miss Leeson. "'Dear me, I'm not heady if I do look green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower.' Mr. Skitter jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the wrap on his door.

Starting point is 00:59:19 "'Excuse me, Mr. Skitter,' said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. "'I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins. They're too lovely for anything, said Miss Liesin, smiling in exactly the way the angels do. After they had gone, Mr. Skitter got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine

Starting point is 00:59:42 from his latest, unproduced play, and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy bright hair and vivacious features. Anna Heldell jump at it, said Mr. Skitter to himself, putting his feet up against the lamberkinson, and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish. Presently, the Tuxin call of Clara sounded to the world the state of Miss Lison's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top,

Starting point is 01:00:15 and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words, two dollars. I'll take it, sighed Miss Lieson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed. every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night. Then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other rumors. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skitter read to her three acts of his great, unpublished, comedy. It's no kid or the air of the subway. There was rejoicing among the gentlemen

Starting point is 01:01:01 rumors whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two, but Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, well really, to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would quickly group around her. Especially Mr. Skitter, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic, unspoken drama in real life, and especially Mr. Hoover, who was 45, fat, flush, and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to

Starting point is 01:01:49 induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her the funniest and jolliest ever, but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable. I pray you let the drama halt while chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an epicidian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, failstaff might have rendered more roman. to the ton than would have romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce a lover may sigh but he must not puff to the train of momus are the fat men remanded in vain beats the faithfulest heart above a fifty-two-inch belt a vaunt hoover hoover forty-five flush and foolish might carry off helen herself hoover forty-five flush foolish and fat is meat for perdition there was never a chance for you hoover As Mrs. Parker's rumors sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Liesin looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh,

Starting point is 01:03:02 Why, there's Billy Jackson, I can see him from down here, too. All looked up, some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson guided. It's that star, explained Miss Lison, pointing with a tiny finger, not the big one that twinkles, the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson. Well, really, said Miss Longnecker, I didn't know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson. Oh, yes, said the small stargazer. I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars. Well, really, said Miss Longnecker, the star you refer to as gamma of the constellation Cassiopia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passages.

Starting point is 01:03:51 the very young Mr. Evans, I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it. Same here, said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers had. Well, really, said Miss Longnecker. I wonder whether it's a shooting star,

Starting point is 01:04:13 remarked Miss Dorn. I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday. He doesn't show up very well from down here, said Miss Lison, you ought to see him from my room. You know, you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night, my room is like the shaft of a coal mine. It makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that night fastens her kimono with. There came a time after that when Miss Lison brought no formidable papers home to copy, and when she went out in the morning,

Starting point is 01:04:47 instead of working, she went from office to office, and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant, but she had had no dinner. As she stepped into the hall, Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skitter's door as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle DeLorm, Miss Leeson, in his unaccepted comedy,

Starting point is 01:05:38 to pirouette across stage from left to the side of the count, up the carpeted ladder she crawled it last and opened the door of the skylight room. She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs, and in that erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids and smiled. For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right. It was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopia, and not Billy Jackson, and yet she could

Starting point is 01:06:30 not let it be Gamma. As she lay on her back, she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply. Goodbye, Billy, she murmured faintly. You're millions of miles away, and you won't even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there, where there wasn't anything else but darkness to look at, didn't you? Millions of miles.

Starting point is 01:07:02 Goodbye, Billy Jackson. Clara, the colored maid, found the door locked. at ten the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar and the slapping of wrists and burnt feathers, proving of no avail. Someone ran to phone for an ambulance. In due time it backed up to the door, with much gong clanging, and the capable young medico in his white linen coat ready, active, confident, with his smooth face, half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. Ambulance called to 49, he said briefly, what's the trouble? "'Oh, yes, doctor,' sniffed Mrs. Parker,

Starting point is 01:07:39 "'as though her trouble, that there should be trouble in the house, was the greater. "'I can't think what can be the matter with her. "'Nothing we could do would bring her to. "'It's a young woman, Miss Elsie—' "'Yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson, never before in my house. "'What room?' cried the doctor in a terrible voice, "'to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger. "'The skylight room.

Starting point is 01:08:02 "'It—' "'Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs four at a time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly as her dignity demanded. On the first landing, she met him coming back, bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practice scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually, Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterward, there remained crumples in her mind and body.

Starting point is 01:08:34 Sometimes her curious rumors would ask her what the doctor said to her. Let that be, she would answer. If I can get forgiveness for having heard it, I will be satisfied. The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that followed the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance, the form that he carried, and all that he said was, Drive like hell, Wilson, to the driver. That is all.

Starting point is 01:09:10 Is it a story? In the next morning's paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you, as it helped me to weld the incidents together. It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East Street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words,

Starting point is 01:09:34 Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover. End of Chapter 5, The Skylight Room. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. million by O'Henry. Chapter 6. A Service of Love When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall draw

Starting point is 01:10:21 a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in storytelling somewhat older than the Great Wall of China. Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West, pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump, with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drugstore window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At 20 he left for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer. Delia Carruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine tree village in the south that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go north and finish.

Starting point is 01:11:12 They could not see her, but that is our story. Joe and Delia met in an attelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss Chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, walled-in-toofel, wallpaper, Chopin, U-Long. Joe and Delia became enamored one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time we're married, for, see above,

Starting point is 01:11:43 when one loves one's art, no service seems too hard. Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat, something like the A-sharp, way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard, and they were happy, for they had their art and they had each other.

Starting point is 01:12:01 And my advice to the rich young man would be, sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your art and your Delia. Flat dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy, it cannot fit too close. Let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table. Let the mantle turn into a rowing machine.

Starting point is 01:12:25 The escritoir to a spare bedchamber. the washstand to an upright piano let the four walls come together if they will so you and your delia are between but if home be the other kind let it be wide and long enter you at the golden gate hang your hat on hatteras your cape on cape horn and go out by the labrador joe was painting in the class of the great magister you know his fame his fees are high his lessons are light his highlights have brought him noun. Delia was studying under Rosenstock. You know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys. They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every, but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentleman with thin side whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to be able to be.

Starting point is 01:13:28 become familiar and then contemptuous with music, so that when she saw the orchestra's seats and boxes unsold, she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refused to go on the stage. But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat, the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study, the cozy dinners and fresh light breakfasts, the interchange of ambitions, ambitions interwoven each with the others, or else inconsiderable. The mutual help and inspiration, and overlook my artlessness, stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m. But after a while art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn't flag it, everything going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay

Starting point is 01:14:18 Mr. Magister and Hare Rosenstock their prices. When one, One loves one's art, no service seems too hard. So Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling. For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated. Joe, dear, she said gleefully, I've a pupil. I know the loveliest people, General A.B. Pinkney's daughter, on 71st Street. Such a splendid house, Joe.

Starting point is 01:14:50 You ought to see the front door. Byzantine, I think you would call it. And inside, oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before. My pupil is his daughter, Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thing, dresses always in white, and the sweetest simplest manners, only 18 years old. I'm to give three lessons a week, and just think, Joe,

Starting point is 01:15:13 $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit for when I get two or three more pupils, I can resume my lessons with Hare Rosenstock. Now smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear. Let's have a nice supper. That's all right for you, Deely, said Joe, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and a hatchet. How about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvuto Selenny. I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones and bring in a dollar or two. Delia came and hung about his neck. Joe, dear, you're silly. You must keep on at your

Starting point is 01:15:50 studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach, I learn. I'm always with my music. I can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister. All right, said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish, but I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't art, but you're a trump and a dear to do it. When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard, said Delia. Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park, said Joe. Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them.

Starting point is 01:16:30 I'm sure you will, said Delia sweetly, and now let's be thankful for General Pinkney and this veal roast. During all the next week, the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfast at a coddled, pray. and kissed at seven o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most time seven o'clock when he returned in the evening. At the end of the week, Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphfully tossed three five-dollar bills on the eight-by-ten center table of the eight-by-ten-foot flat parlor. Sometimes, she said a little wearily, Clementina tries me. I'm afraid she doesn't practice

Starting point is 01:17:14 enough, and I have to tell her the same thing so often. Then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But General Pinckney is the dearest old man. I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano. He's a widower, you know, and stands there pulling his white goatee. And how are the semi-quavers and the demi-samequavers progressing, he always asks. I wish you could see the wains-cotting in that drawing-room, Joe, and those astrak and rug poteras, and Clementina has such a funny little cough, I hope she's stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high-bred.

Starting point is 01:17:58 General Pinckney's brother was once ministered to Bolivia, and then Joe, with the heir of Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two, and a one, all legal to. Tendil notes, and laid them beside Delia's earnings. Sold that watercolor of the obelisk to a man from Peoria, he announced overwhelmingly. Don't joke with me, said Delia, not from Peoria. All the way, I wish you could see him, Deely. Fat man with a woolen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first.

Starting point is 01:18:32 He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another, an oil sketch of the Lakawana Freight Depot, take back with him. Music lessons. Oh, I guess art is still in it. I'm so glad you've kept on, said Delia heartily. You're bound to win, dear, thirty-three dollars, we've never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters tonight. And filet mignon with champignon, said Joe, where is the olive fork? On the next Saturday evening, Joe reached home first. He spread his eighteen dollars on the parlor table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands. Half an hour later, Delia arrived.

Starting point is 01:19:11 Her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages. How is this? asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously. Clementina, she explained, insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon. The general was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe,

Starting point is 01:19:35 just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health. She's so nervous. In serving the rabbit, she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe, and the dear girl was so sorry. But General Pinckney, Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody,

Starting point is 01:19:56 they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement, out to a drugstore for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now. What's this? asked Joe, taking the head. tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages. It's something soft, said Delia, that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch? She had seen the money on the table.

Starting point is 01:20:18 Did I, said Joe, just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot today, and he isn't sure, but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Deely? Five o'clock, I think, said Deely plaintively. The iron, I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen General Pinkney, Joe, when, Sit down here a moment, Deely, said Joe.

Starting point is 01:20:42 He drew her to the couch, sat beside her, and put his arm across her shoulders. What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Deely, he asked. She braved it for a moment or two, with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of General Pinkney, but at length down went her head, and out came the truth and tears. I couldn't get any pupils, she confessed, and I couldn't bear to have you give up your lessons. I got a place ironing shirts in that big 24th Street laundry,

Starting point is 01:21:13 and I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? When a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon, I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry, are you, Joe? If I hadn't got the work, you mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria. He wasn't from Peoria, said Joe slowly. Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe.

Starting point is 01:21:40 And kiss me, Joe. What made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina? I didn't, said Joe, until tonight, and I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine room this afternoon, for a girl upstairs who had her hand burn with a smoothing iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks. Then you didn't... My purchaser from Peoria, said Joe,

Starting point is 01:22:04 and General Pinkney are both critical. creations of the same art, but you wouldn't call it either painting or music. And then they both laughed, and Joe began. When one loves one's art, no service seems, but Delia stalked him with her hand on his lips. No, she said, just when one loves. End of A Service of Love. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 01:22:37 For more information, and to find out how to find out how. a volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 7. The Coming Out of Maggie Every Saturday night, the Cloverleaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side.

Starting point is 01:23:04 In order to attend one of these dances, you must be a member of the Give and Take, or if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rheingold's paperbox factory. Still, any clover leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each give and take brought the paper box girl that he affected, and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops. Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad-mouth, and left-handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her fellow.

Starting point is 01:23:46 Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her friend could go to the dance with them. The give-and-take athletic association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard Street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibers thus build it up, the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organizations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations, the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen.

Starting point is 01:24:31 For sometimes the tip went round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway, you might see as neat and satisfying a little welterweight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes. On Saturdays, Rheingold's paperbox factory closed at 3 p.m. On one such afternoon, Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door, Anna said as usual, "'Be ready at seven sharp, Meg, and Jimmy and me will come by for you.'

Starting point is 01:25:00 "'But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one, there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of the broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye. "'Thanks, Anna,' said Maggie, "'but you and Jimmy needn't bother to-night. "'I have a gentleman friend that's coming round to escort me to the hop.' The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow, plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum,

Starting point is 01:25:37 so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it? You'll see tonight, said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than Jimmy. and an up-to-date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall. Anna and Jimmy were among the first clover leaves to arrive that evening. Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall

Starting point is 01:26:08 to catch the first glimpse of her friend's catch. At 8.30, Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly, her triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy. Oh, gee, cried Anna. Meg, ain't that a hit. Oh, no. Swell. Fella? Well, I guess. Style? Look at him. Go as far as you like, said Jimmy with sandpaper in his voice. Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh. Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had.

Starting point is 01:26:50 Oh, here they come. Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser, and truly her companion justified the acumiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average give-and-take athlete. His dark hair curled, his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Cloverleaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts,

Starting point is 01:27:24 and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association, who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau-Brumble heirs. They were not considered honorable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps,

Starting point is 01:27:42 the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the supreme eminence of the man in the cosmogony of creation even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of cupid these were the approved arms and ammunition of the cloverleaf gallants they viewed then genuflections and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle a friend of mine mr terrio sullivan was maggie's formula of introduction she led him around the room presenting him to each new arriving clover leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse.

Starting point is 01:28:31 Maggie O'Too's got a fellow at last was the word that went round among the paper-box girls. Pipe Mag's floor-walker, thus the given takes expressed their indifferent contempt. Usually at the weekly hops, Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum to walk over his feet through a two-step. But tonight the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. and though our troops of fairyland be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the rose-coloured melody of maggie's one perfect night

Starting point is 01:29:28 the girls besieged her for introductions to her fellow the cloverleaf young men after two years of blindness suddenly perceived charms in mistool they flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance thus she scored but to terrio sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and fast. He shook his curls, he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He danced like a fawn. He introduced manner and style and atmosphere. His words came trippingly upon his tongue, and he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box girl that Dempsey Donovan brought. Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit and could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of the Big Mike O'Sullivan's lieutenants and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever he broke a push-cart man's head or shot a member of the Henrik B. Sweeney outing and

Starting point is 01:30:33 literary association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say, The cap'n't like to see you a few minutes round to the office when ye have time dim see me boy. But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold, fob, chains, and black cigars, and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound dumbbells. So doing a tight row-backed on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsychorean performance, compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper-box girl. At ten o'clock, the jolly round face of Big Michael Sullivan, shone at the door for four. five minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls,

Starting point is 01:31:20 and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys. Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. Big Mike looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head, and departed. The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terrio Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner, and started back, to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of the floor. Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly everyone to turn and look at them. There was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three given takes with tight coat sleeves drew nearer. One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan, said Dempsey. I hope you're

Starting point is 01:32:08 enjoying yourself. Where did you say you live? The two gladiators were well-matched. had perhaps ten pounds of weight to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a bell's, and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law, written when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive. I live on grand, said O'Sullivan, insolently. No trouble to find me at home. Where do you live? Dempsey ignored the question.

Starting point is 01:33:00 You say your name's O'Sullivan, he went on. Well, Big Mike says he never saw you before. Lots of things he never saw, said the favorite of the hop. As a rule went on Dempsey, huskily sweet. O'Sullivan's in this district know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and we want a chance to make good. If you've got a family tree, let's see a few historical O'Sullivan's buds come out on it, or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots? Suppose you mind your own business, suggested O'Sullivan blandly. Dempsey's eyes brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger, as though a brilliant idea had struck him. I've got it now, he said cordially. It was just a little mistake. You ain't know,

Starting point is 01:33:49 O'Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognizing you at first. O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Gigan was there and caught his arm. Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahon, the secretary of the club, and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the given Take Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear. This movement on the part of the Cloverleaf members requires a word of elucidation. Back of the Association Hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room, personal difficulties

Starting point is 01:34:38 that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of no nature under the supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a cloverleaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed that. So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked about for her escort. "'Smoke up,' said Rose Cassidy. "'Wasn't you on? "'Demp's Donovan picked a scrap with your Lizzie boy.

Starting point is 01:35:14 "'They've waltzed out to the slaughter-room with him. "'How's my hair look done up this way, Meg?' "'Maggy laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist. "'Gone to fight with Dempsey?' she said breathlessly. "'They've got to be stopped. "'Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. "'Why he'll kill him?' "'Ah, why do you care?' said Rosa.

Starting point is 01:35:34 "'Don't some of them fight every hop?' but Maggie was off, darting her zigzag way through the maze of dancers. She burst through the rear door of the dark hall, and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered, her eye caught the scene. The board standing about with open watches, Dempsey Donovan in his shirt-sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist,

Starting point is 01:36:02 within easy reach of his adversary. Terry O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes, and without slacking the speed of her entrance, she leaped forward with a scream, leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that had suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom. The knife fell and rang upon the floor, cold steel drawn in the rooms of the give-and-take association.

Starting point is 01:36:31 Such a thing had never happened before. everyone stood motionless for a minute. Andy Gigan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning. Then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey and the board exchanged looks. Then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog and nodded his head in the direction of the door.

Starting point is 01:37:00 The back stares, Giuseppe, he said, briefly. Somebody will pitch your hat down after you. Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye. I knew it, Dempsey, she said, as her eyes drew dull even in their tears. I knew he was a guinea.

Starting point is 01:37:22 His name's Tony Spinilly. I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrapping. Them guineas always carries knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of coming with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan and brought him along.

Starting point is 01:37:41 I knew there'd be nothing doing for him if he came as a day-go. I guess I'll resign from the club now. Dempsey turned to Annie Geegan. Chuck that cheese-slacer out of the window, he said, and tell him inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall. He then turned back to Maggie. "'Say Maggie,' he said.

Starting point is 01:38:02 "'I'll see you home. "'How about next Saturday night? "'Will you come to the hop with me "'if I call around for you?' "'It was remarkable how quickly "'Maggie's eyes could change from dull "'to a shining brown. "'With you, Dempsey?' she stammered.

Starting point is 01:38:16 "'Say, will a duck swim?' "'End of "'The coming out of Maggie.' "'This is a Libravox recording. "'All Libravox recordings "'are in the public domain. "'For more information, and to find out, how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 01:38:43 The 4 Million, Bio Henry, Chapter 8, Man About Town. There are two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery, so I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suitcases. Then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion, because it sounded like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why then they were not made into equal pieces, whereupon I was shunned. The third draft that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as a man about town. He was

Starting point is 01:39:36 more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue. He wears a brown vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing something, and he keeps half-shutting his pocket-knife and opening it again with his thumb. And if the man higher up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large pale man with blue wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him, torcuses. But the canvas of my imagination,

Starting point is 01:40:27 when it came to limning the man about town was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer, like the smile of a Cheshire cat, and attached cuffs, and that was all, whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him. Why, said he, a man about town, something between a rounder and a clubman? He isn't exactly, well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish's receptions

Starting point is 01:40:54 and private boxing bouts. He doesn't, well, he doesn't belong either to the Lotus Club or to the Jerry McGigohyan galvanized iron workers, Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association. I don't exactly know how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere there's anything doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every evening, knows the ropes, calls every policeman and waiter in town by their first names. No, he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives.

Starting point is 01:41:24 You generally see him alone or with another man. My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this time, the 3,126 electric lights on the Rialto were lit. People passed, but they held me not. Paffy and eyes raid upon me and left me unscathed. Diner's, heimgangers, shop girls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders scurried, skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me. But I took no note of them.

Starting point is 01:42:02 I knew them all. I had read their hearts. They had served. I wanted my man about town. He was a hype, and to drop him would be an error, a typograph. But no, let us continue. Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies.

Starting point is 01:42:22 The sections have been seen. separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window and bending. But there, there. Mama is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N-blank W-Y-O-blank K. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports for a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in Q-X and Z. Willie, the 18-year-old son, who attends the New York Public School, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day. Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hour's grip, and little Toddy the baby is rocking along the best she can with the real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped, for it interesting.

Starting point is 01:43:23 produces strong drink. I went into a cafe to, and while it was being mixed, I asked the man who grabs up your hot scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down, what he understood by the term epithet, description, designation, characterization, or appellation, viz, a man about town. Why, said he carefully, it means a fly guy that's wise to the all-night push, see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail anywhere between the flat irons. See? I guess that's about what it means. I thanked him and departed. On the sidewalk, a Salvation Lassie shook her contribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket. Would you mind telling me, I asked her, if you've ever met with the character commonly denominated as a man about town during your daily wanderings?

Starting point is 01:44:17 I think I know whom you mean, she answered with a gentle smile. We see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil's bodyguard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are, their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service. She shook the box again, and I dropped a dime into it. In front of a glittering hotel, a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure, and I put my question to him. He answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would. There is a type of man about town in New York, he answered. The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before.

Starting point is 01:45:03 It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say offhand that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At six o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners, but in the business of poker, his nose into places where he does not belong. He could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town, from Rathskeller to Roof Garden, and from Hester Street to Harlem, until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your man about town has done that. He is always on the scent of something new.

Starting point is 01:45:47 He is curiosity, impudence, and omnipresence. Hansoms were made for him, and he's. He is, gold-banded cigars and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him, but his minority report is adopted everywhere. I'm glad you brought up the subject. I felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyze it before. I can see now that your man about town should have been classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models, and the orchestra plays, let's all go up to mods for him by request. instead of handle. He makes his rounds every evening, while you and I see the elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away

Starting point is 01:46:34 immune, while you and I search among the presidents for names, and among the stars for addresses, to give the desk sergeant. My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I seized my advantage. You have classified him, I cried with joy, you have painted his portrait in the gallery of city types but i must meet one face to face i must study the man about town at first hand where shall i find him how shall i know him without seeming to hear me the critic went on And his cab driver was waiting for his fare, too. He is the sublimated essence of but in, the refined intrinsic extract of rubber, the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable, unavoidable spirit of curiosity and inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils.

Starting point is 01:47:28 When his experience is exhausted, he explores new fields, with the indefatigability of a— Excuse me, I interrupted, but can you produce one of this type? It is a new thing to me. I must study it. I will search the town over until I find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway. I'm about to dine here, said my friend. Come inside. If there is a man about town present, I will point him out to you. I know most of the regular patrons here. I am not dining yet, I said to him. You will excuse me. I'm going to find my man about town this night if I have to rake New York from the battery to Little Coney Island. I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant savor of life and interest to the air I breathed.

Starting point is 01:48:15 I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leasierly and with something of an air, I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of Great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige. I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzzed like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos Dumont. When I opened my eyes, I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said aloud, hasn't it passed yet? A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered.

Starting point is 01:48:56 A young doctor came along, grinned, and handed me a morning newspaper. Want to see how it happened? He asked she. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It closed with these lines. Belview Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not serious. He appeared to be a typical man about town. End of Chapter 8. Man about town. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 01:49:42 The 4 million, Bio Henry Chapter 9 The Cop and the Anthem On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk hank high of nights And when women without sealskin coats Grow kind to their husbands

Starting point is 01:50:02 and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets, he hands his pasteboard to the north wind,

Starting point is 01:50:27 footmen of the mansion of all outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready. Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular committee of ways and means to provide against the coming rigor, therefore he moved uneasily on his bench. The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them, there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay, three months on the island. was what his soul craved. Three months of assured, board and bed and congenial company, safe from boreas and blue coats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable. For years the hospitable Blackwells had been his winter quarters, just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera

Starting point is 01:51:24 each winter, so Soapy made his humble arrangements for his annual Higera to the island. And now the time was come. On the previous night, three Sabbath newspapers distributed beneath his coat about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the island loomed big and timely in Soapie's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependence. In Soapy's opinion, the law was more benign than philanthropy. there was an endless round of institutions municipal and iliminosari on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life but to one of sopi's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered

Starting point is 01:52:15 if not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy as caesar had his brutus every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law which though conducted by rules does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs soapy having decided to go to the island at once said about accomplishing his desire there were many ways of doing this the pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant and then after declaring insolvency be handed over quixenance quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest. Sopi left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the protoplasm.

Starting point is 01:53:25 Sopi had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward, he was shaven and his coat was decent and his neat black ready-tied fore in hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on thanksgiving day if he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his the portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind a roasted mallard duck thought soapy would be about the thing with a bottle of shablis and then camembert a demi tas and a cigar one dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management. Yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge. But as soapy set foot inside the restaurant door, the head-waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes, strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the side of the side of the

Starting point is 01:54:30 and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard. Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an Epicurean one. Some other way of entering into limbo must be thought of. At a corner of 6th Avenue, electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. people came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead.

Starting point is 01:55:02 Soapy stood still with his hands in his pockets and smiled at the sight of brass buttons. Where's the man that done that? inquired the officer excitedly. Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it? said soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune. The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. men who smash windows do not remain to parlay with the laws minions, they take to their heels, and policemen saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a car. Withdrawn club he joined in the pursuit, soapy with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful. On the opposite

Starting point is 01:55:46 side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick, its soup, and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and tail-tailed trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, donuts, and pie. And then to the waiter, he betrayed the fact that the minutenest coin in himself were strangers. Now get busy and call a cop, said Soapy. Don't keep a gentleman waiting. No cop for you, said the waiter, with a voice like buttercakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. Hey, Khan. neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched soapy he arose joint by joint as a carpenter's rule opens and beat the dust from his clothes arrest seemed but a rosy dream the island seemed very far away a policeman who stood before a drugstore two doors away laughed and walked down the street five blocks soapy traveled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again this time the opportunity present

Starting point is 01:56:57 what he fatuously termed to himself a cinch. A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and ink stands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanor leaned against a water-plug. It was soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated masher,

Starting point is 01:57:22 the refined and elegant appearance of his victim, and the contiguity of the conscientious cause, encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would ensure his winter quarters on the right little tight little aisle soapy straightened the lady missionaries ready-made tie dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman he made eyes at her was taken with sudden coughs and hems smiled smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the matter With half an eye, Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said, Ah, there, Bedelia, don't you want to come and play in my yard? The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger, and Soapy would be practically on route for his insular haven. Already he had to be. imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station house. The young woman faced him, and stretching out a hand, caught Soapie's coat-sleeve. Sure, Mike, she said joyfully, if you'll blow me to a pail of suds, I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching. With the young woman

Starting point is 01:58:45 playing the clingy ivy to his oak, Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty. At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the a district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows, and librettoes. Women in furs, and men in great coats, moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre, he caught at the immediate straw of disorderly conduct.

Starting point is 01:59:25 On the sidewalk, Soapy began to yell, drunken gibberish, at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved, and otherwise disturbed the welkin. The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy, and remarked to a citizen, "'Tis one of them Yale lads celebrating the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. "'Noisy, but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be.' Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket, would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind. In a cigar store, he saw a well-dressed man lighting a

Starting point is 02:00:08 cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapie stepped inside, secured the umbrella, and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily. My umbrella, he said sternly. "'Oh, is it?' sneered Soapy. At it. "'Sopie,' insulting insult to petite larceny? Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella. Why don't you call a cop? There stands one on the corner. The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously. Of course, said the umbrella man. That is, well, you know how these mistakes occur. I, if it's your umbrella, I hope you'll excuse me. I picked it up this morning in a

Starting point is 02:00:54 restaurant. If you recognize it as yours, why, I hope you'll—of course it's mine, said Soapy viciously. The ex-a umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a streetcar that was approaching two blocks away. Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs, because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.

Starting point is 02:01:30 At length, Soapie reached one of the avenues to the east, where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench. But on an unusually quiet corner, Sopi came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where no doubt the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Sopi's ears sweet music that caught and held him

Starting point is 02:02:07 transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence. The moon was above, lustrous and serene. vehicles and pedestrians were few. Sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves, for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses, and ambitions and friends, and immaculate thoughts and callers. The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind,

Starting point is 02:02:41 and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives

Starting point is 02:02:57 that made up his existence. And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood, an instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mind, He would make a man of himself again. He would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him.

Starting point is 02:03:18 There was time. He was comparatively young yet. He would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him tomorrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would, Soapy, felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman. What are you doing here? asked the officer. Nothing,

Starting point is 02:03:54 said Soapy. Then come along, said the policeman. Three months on the island, said the magistrate in the police court the next morning. End of Chapter 9, The Cop and the Anthem. This is Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 02:04:27 The 4 Million, BioHenry, Chapter 10, An Adjustment of Nature. In an Arctic exhibition the other day, I saw a painting that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the west named Kraft, who had a favorite food and a pet theory. his pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the unerring artistic adjustment of nature. His theory was fixed around corned beef hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain pen. The idea of Kraft. But that is not the beginning of the story.

Starting point is 02:05:10 Three years ago, Kraft, Bill Judkins, a poet, and I took our meals at Ciphers on 8th Avenue. I say took. When we had money, Seifer got it off of us, as he expressed it. We had no credit. We went in, called for food, and ate it. We paid, or we did not pay. We had confidence in Seifor's sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul, he was either a prince, a fool, or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiter's checks,

Starting point is 02:05:43 so old that I was sure the bottomist one was for claims that Hendricks. Hudson had eaten and paid for. Seifer had the power in common with Napoleon III and the goggle-eyed perch of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once, when we left him unpaid, with a gregarious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we paid up back scores.

Starting point is 02:06:12 But the chief thing at Seifers was Millie. Millie was a waitress. She was a great. example of crafts theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged largely to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedistled and in bronze, she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as liver and bacon enlivening the world. She belonged to ciphers. You expected to see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke, from frying fat, just as you expect the palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog.

Starting point is 02:06:54 There, amid the steam of vegetables and the vapors of acres of ham, and, the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of short orders, the cries of the hungering, and all the horrid tumult of feeding men, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing, winged beast bequeathed by Pharaoh, Millie steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages. Our goddess of Grub was built on line so majestic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning.

Starting point is 02:07:41 Seifers' store of eatables she poured out upon us with royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no exhaustion. Her voice rang like a great silver bell, her smile was many-toothed and frequent. She seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain tops. I never saw her, but I thought of the Yosemite, and yet somehow I could never think of her as existing outside of ciphers. There nature had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed happy and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation. It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at which we were hammering.

Starting point is 02:08:33 One of us compared the harmony existing between a Hayden Symphony and Pistachio ice cream to the exquisite congruity between Millie and Cyphers. There is a certain fate hanging over Millie, said Craft, and if it overtakes her, she is lost to Cyphers and to us. She will grow fat, asked Judkins fearsomely. She will go to night school and become refined? I ventured anxiously. It is this, said Craft,

Starting point is 02:09:04 punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a stiff forefinger, Caesar had his Brutus. The cotton has its ballworm. The chorus girl has her Pittsburgher. The summer boarder has his poison ivy. The hero has his Carnegie Medal. Art has its Morgan. The rose has its... Speak, I interrupted, much perturbed. You do not think that Millie will begin to lace. One day, concluded Craft solemnly, there will come to ciphers for a plate of beans, a millionaire lumberman from where Wisconsin, and he will marry Millie. Never exclaimed Judkins and I in horror, a lumberman, repeated Kraft hoarsely, and a millionaire lumberman, I sighed despairingly from Wisconsin, groan Judkins. We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less improbable. Millie, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was made to catch the lumberman's eye,

Starting point is 02:10:05 and well we knew the habits of the badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they high, and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a beanery, while the alphabet itself connives, the Sunday newspaper's headliners' work is cut for him. Winsome Waitress wins wealthy Wisconsin woodsman. For a while we felt that Millie was on the verge of being lost to us. It was our love of the unerring artistic adjustment of nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Millie, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble tepee of a tree murderer.

Starting point is 02:10:52 No, in cipher she belonged, in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand Wagnerian chorus of hauled ironstone china, and robert. rattling casters. Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wildwood discharged upon us Millie's preordained confiscator, our fee to adjustment in order, but Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of the visitation. We were at our supper of beast's stew and dried apples when he trotted in as if on the heels of a dog team and made one of the mess at our table. With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house.

Starting point is 02:11:35 We embraced him as a specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another as friends. He was rugged and bearded and wind-dried. He had just come off the trail, he said, at one of the North River ferries. I fancied I could see the snow-dust of Chilacute yet powdering his shoulders. And there he strewed the table with the nuggets.

Starting point is 02:11:57 stuffed tarmijons, beadwork, and seal peltz of the return Klondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions. Bank drafts for two millions was his summing up, and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. Now I want some beef stew and canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle, and I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on Pullmans don't count. You gentlemen order what you want. and then Millie loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm, loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount St. Elias,

Starting point is 02:12:33 with a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Klondiker threw down his peltz and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall halfway and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Millie's brow and the hand-embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her. At last the bulworm had attacked the cotton. The poison ivy was reaching out its tendrils to entwine the summer border. The millionaire lumberman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our milly and upset nature's adjustment.

Starting point is 02:13:06 Craft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondikers back. Come out and drink, he shouted. Drink first and eat afterward. Judkin seized one arm and I the other. Gayly, roaringly, irresistibly, in jolly good fellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to cafe, stuffing his pockets with his embalmed birds and indigestible nuggets. There he rumbled a roughly good-humored protest. That's the girl for my money, he declared.

Starting point is 02:13:34 She can eat out of my skillet the rest of her life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her to marry me. I guess she won't want to sling hash anymore when she sees the pile of dust I've got. You'll take another whiskey and milk now, Kraft persuaded, with Satan's smile. I thought you up country, fellows were better sports. Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar, then gave Judkins and me an appealing look that we went down to the last dime we had in toasting our guest. Then, when our ammunition was gone, and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of Millie, Kraft whispered into his ear, such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly

Starting point is 02:14:17 with their funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver notes, calling for all the fluids in the world to drown the imputation. Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him from the field, and then we had him carted to a distant small hotel and put to bed with his nuggets and baby seal-skins stuffed around him. He will never find ciphers again, said Kraft. He will propose to the first white apron he sees in a dairy restaurant tomorrow,

Starting point is 02:14:46 and Millie, I mean the natural adjustment, is saved. And back to Cipers went we three, and finding customers scarce, we joined hands and did an Indian dance with Millie in the center. This, I say, happened three years ago, and about that time a little luck descended upon us three, and we were enabled to buy costlier and less wholesome food than ciphers, our path separated, and I saw Kraft no more, and Judkin seldom. But as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for $5,000. The title was Bodicea,

Starting point is 02:15:23 and the figure seemed to fill all out of doors. But of all the pictures admirers who stood before it, I believed I was the only one who longed for Bodicea to stalk from her frame, bringing me corned beef hash with poached egg. I turned away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same. His hair was worse tangled, but his clothes had been made by a tailor. I didn't know, I said to him.

Starting point is 02:15:50 We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money, said he. any evening at seven. Then said I, when you led us against the lumberman, the Klondiker, it wasn't altogether on account of the unerring artistic adjustment of nature? Well, not altogether, said Kraft, with a grin. End of Chapter 10, An Adjustment of Nature. This is a Libravox recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 02:16:32 The 4 million, Bio Henry Chapter 10 Memoirs of a Yellow Dog I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the old

Starting point is 02:17:01 style Monthlies that are still running pictures of Brian and the Montpellie horror. But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as Baru the Bear and Snaku the Snakeu the Snake, and Tamanu the Tiger talk in the jungle books, a yellow dog that spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old satine underskirt, the one she spilled port wine on at the lady longshoreman's banquet, mustn't be expected to perform any tricks with the art of speech. I was born a yellow pup, date, locality, pedigree, and weight, unknown. The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and 23rd, trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine

Starting point is 02:17:50 Pomeranian, Hambletonian, red Irish, Cotchin-China Stoke, Pogus Fox Terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gross grain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it and gave up. From that moment I was a pet, a mama's own wutsi squidlums. Say, gentle reader, say, gentle reader,

Starting point is 02:18:12 did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavor of camembert cheese and Poe de Spagna, pick you up, and wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice, Oh, oo-sum-o-sum-dlum, dodleum, woodlum, tudlum, tudlum, bitty-witzy-s, scudlums? From a pedigreed yellow pup, I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur, looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons, but my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral

Starting point is 02:18:47 branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the Siberian Bloodhound Prize. I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with parry and marble in the front entrance and cobblestones above the first floor. Our flat was three, well, not flights, climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished and put in the regular things. 1903 antique upholstered parlor. set, old chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea house, rubber plant, and husband. By serious, there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Hen-packed? Well, toucans and flamingos and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the

Starting point is 02:19:37 dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skins coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening, while she was getting supper, she made him take me out on the end of a string for a walk. If men knew how women passed the time when they are alone, they'd never marry. Laura Jean Gibby, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the ice man, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air shaft.

Starting point is 02:20:15 That's about all there is to it. twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house fixes her rat so it won't show and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff i let a dog's life in that flat most all day i lay there in my corner watching the fat woman kill time i slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens as a dog was intended to do then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drively poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose. But what could I do? A dog can't chew cloves. I began to feel sorry for hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We'd look so much alike that people noticed it when we went out, so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down and took to climbing the piles of last December snow on the streets where cheap people live. One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize, St. Bernard, and the old man was

Starting point is 02:21:16 trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first organ grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding march. I looked up at him and said in my way, what are you looking so sour about, you, Oakham-trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epic Tictus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedict, and bid the blues be gone. The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face. Why, doggie, says he, good doggy. You almost look like you could speak.

Starting point is 02:21:54 What is it, doggy? Cats? Cats, could speak. But of course he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction. In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black and tan terrier. her husband strung it and took it out every evening but he always came home cheerful and whistling one day i touched noses with the black and white in the hall and i struck him for an elucidation see here wiggle and skip i says you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public i never saw one leash to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other man that looked at him but your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur pressur

Starting point is 02:22:43 digitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it. Him? Says the black and tan. Why he uses nature's own remedy. He gets splificated. At first, when we go out, he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play Pedro when they make him all the jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons, he don't care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestwep those swinging doors. The pointer I got from that terrier, Vodville, please copy, sent me to thinking.

Starting point is 02:23:21 One evening about six o'clock, my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovie. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black and tan was called Tweetness. I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit.

Starting point is 02:23:37 Still, Lovie is something of a nomenclose. pletural tin can on the tail of one's self-respect. At a quiet place on a safe street, I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press dispatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.

Starting point is 02:24:00 Why darn my eyes, said the old man with a grin. Darn my eyes if the saffron-colored son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me to take in a drink. Let me see. How long has it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest? I believe I'll—I knew I had him. Hot scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbell's coming. I sat by his side wrapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch, such as a mama in her flat, never equalled with her homemade truck, bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before Papa comes home.

Starting point is 02:24:36 When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread, the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street. Poor doggie, says he, good doggy, she can't kiss you anymore. So darn shame. Good doggy, go away and get run over by a streetcar and be happy. I refused to leave.

Starting point is 02:25:01 I leaped and frisked around the old man. legs happy as a pug on a rug. You old flea-headed woodchuck chaser, I said to him. You moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both pups in the wood? And the missus is the cool uncle after you with the dish-towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail?

Starting point is 02:25:25 Why not cut that all out and be pards forevermore? Maybe you'll say he didn't understand. Maybe he didn't. but he kind of got a grip on the hot scotches and stood still for a minute thinking. Doggy says he, finally, we don't live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than three hundred. If I ever see that flat any more, I'm a flat, and if you do, you're flatter, and that's no flattery. I'm offering sixty to one that westward hoe wins out by the length of a dachshund.

Starting point is 02:25:57 There was no string, but I froliced along with my master to the 23rd Street ferry. and the cats on the root saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them. On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a current bun, Me and my doggie, we are bound for the rocky mountains. But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled and said, you common monkey-headed rat-tailed, sulfur-colored son of a doormat, do you know what I'm going to call you? I thought of Lovie and I whined dolefully.

Starting point is 02:26:34 I'm going to call you Pete, says my master, and if I'd had five tails, I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion. End of The Memoirs of a Yellow Dog. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.

Starting point is 02:26:59 Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 12. The Love Filtra of Aikey Schoenstein. The Blue Light Drugstore is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The blue light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac scent and ice cream soda. If you ask it for a painkiller, it will not give you a bonbon. The blue light scorns the labor-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium

Starting point is 02:27:43 and percolates its own laudanum and paragoric. To this day, pills are made behind its tall prescription desk. Pills rolled out onto its pill tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcineid magnesium, and delivered a and little round pasteboard pillboxes. The store is on a corner about which covies of ragged plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. Aikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the blue light and the friend of his customers. Thus, it is on the east side where the heart of pharmacy is not glaise.

Starting point is 02:28:27 There, as it should be, the druggist is a counselor, a confessor, an advisor, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated, and whose medicine is often poured untasted into the gutter. Therefore, Aiki's coniform, bespectacled nose and narrow knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the blue light, and his advice and notice were much desired. Ike roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosie. The circumlocution has been in vain. You might have guessed it, Aiki adored Rosie. She tinctured all his thoughts. She was like the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal.

Starting point is 02:29:20 The dispensatory contained nothing equal to her, but Aiky was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth. Outside he was a weak-kneed, per-blind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals, and smelling of sokotrine aloes, and valerionate of ammonia. The fly in Ike's ointment, thrice welcome Pat, was Chunk McGowan. Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosie, but he was no outfielder as Ike was. He picked them off the bat.

Starting point is 02:30:07 At the same time, he was Aike's friend and customer, and often dropped in at the blue light drugstore to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery. One afternoon, McGowan drifted in his silent easy, way and sat calmly, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured upon a stool. Ike said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite grinding gum-benzoine into a powder. Get busy with your ear. It's drugs for me if you've got the line I need. Ike scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found none.

Starting point is 02:30:50 Take your coat off, he ordered. I guess already that you've been stuck in the with a knife. I have many times told you those daigos would do you up. Mr. McGowan smiled. Not them, he said. Not any dagos. But you've located the diagnosis all right enough. It's under my coat near the ribs. Say, Aikey, Rosie and me are going to run away and get married tonight. Ike's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pebble, but felt it not. Meanwhile, Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom. That is, he continued, if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've been laying pipes for the getaway for two weeks. One day she says she will. The same evening, she says Nixie.

Starting point is 02:31:39 We've agreed on tonight, and Rosie's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up when it comes to the scratch. You said you wanted drugs, remarked Aikey. Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed, a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanor. He made a patent medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger. I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start tonight for a million, he said. I've got a little flat up in Harlem already, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a pulpit-pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30, it's got to come off.

Starting point is 02:32:25 And if Rosie don't change your mind again, Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts. I don't see then yet, said Aiki shortly. What makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about it? Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit, went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments. For a week he hasn't let Rosie step outside. the door with me. If it wasn't for losing a border, they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm making $20 a week, and she'll never regret flying the coop with Chunk McGowan. You will excuse me, said Ike. I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon. Say, said McGowan, looking up suddenly. Say, Ike, ain't there a drug of some kind, some kind of powders that'll make a girl

Starting point is 02:33:14 like you better if you give them to her? Ike's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment. But before he could answer, McGowan continued, Tim Lacey told me he got some wants from a croaker uptown and fed him to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace high and everybody else looked like 30 cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks. Strong and simple was Chuck McGowan, a better reader of men than Ike was, could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the end. enemy's territory, he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

Starting point is 02:33:55 I thought went on Chuck hopefully, that if I had one of them powders to give Rosie when I see her at supper tonight, it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff will work just for a couple of hours, it'll do the trick. When is this foolishness of running away to be happening? asked Ike. Nine o'clock, said Mr. McGowan, suppers at seven. At eight, Rosie goes to bed with a headache. At nine, old Parvanzano lets me through to his backyard where there's a board off Riddle's fence next door. I go under her window and help her down the fire escape. We've got to make it early on the preacher's account.

Starting point is 02:34:41 It's all dead easy if Rosie don't balk when the flag drops. Can you feel? fix me up one of them powders, Ike? Ike Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly. Chunk, said he, it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceuticalists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquaintance would I entrust a powder like that, but for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosie to think of you. Ike went behind the prescription desk, there he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them, he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult, this powder would ensure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper.

Starting point is 02:35:36 This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lockenvar. The subtlety of Aiky's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddell and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosie. Mr. Riddell was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden inaction. Much obliged, he said briefly to Aikey, the lazy Irish loafer. my own rooms just above Rosie's. I'll just go up there myself after supper and load the shotgun and wait.

Starting point is 02:36:17 If he comes in my backyard, he'll go away in an ambulance instead of a bridal chase. With Rosie held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many hours deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ike felt that his rival was close indeed upon discomfiture. All night in the Blue Light Drugstore, he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came. At eight o'clock in the morning, the day clerk arrived, and Aikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddles to learn the outcome. And lo, as he stepped out of the store, who, but Chunk McGowan sprang from a passing streetcar

Starting point is 02:36:57 and grasped his hand. Chunk McGowan, with a victor's smile and flushed with joy, pulled it off, said Chuck with Elysium in his grin. Rosie hit the fire escape on time to a second, and we was under the wire at reverence at 9.30 and a quarter. She's up at the flat. She cooked eggs this morning in a blue kimono. Lord, how lucky I am. You must pace up someday, Ike, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for now. The powder? Stammered Ike. Oh, that stuff you gave me, said Chunk broadening his grin. Well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddles, and I looked at Rosie, and I says to myself, Chunk, if you get the girl, get her on the

Starting point is 02:37:43 square. Don't try any hocus pocus with a thorough bread like her, and I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then my lamps fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is phelan in a proper affection toward his coming son-in-law. So I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man riddles coffee. See? End of the love filcher of Aikey Schoenstein. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto. Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 13, Mammon and the Archer. Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall's Rurica soap, looked out of the library window

Starting point is 02:38:46 of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbor to the left, the aristocratic clubman G. Van Schoelight, Suffolk Jones, came out to his waiting motor car. wrinkling a contumulus nostril as usual at the Italian Renaissance sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation. Stuck up old statuette of nothing doing, commented the ex-soap king. The Eden Musil, you get that old frozen Nessel road yet if he don't watch out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer, and see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher. And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door of his library and shouted, Mike, in the same voice that had once chipped off pieces of the Welkin on the Kansas prairies.

Starting point is 02:39:41 Tell my son, said Anthony to the answering menial, to come in here before he leaves the house. When young Rockwall entered the library, the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumped his mop of white hair with one hand, and rattled the keys in his pocket with the other. Richard, said Anthony Rockwell, what do you pay for the soap that you use? Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party. $6 a dozen, I think, Dad. And your clothes?

Starting point is 02:40:27 I suppose about $60 as a rule. You're a gentleman, said Anthony decidedly. I've heard of these young bloods, spending $24 a dozen for soap and going over the hundred mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of him, yet you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old eureka,

Starting point is 02:40:49 not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap, you buy bad perfumes and labels, but 50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. They say it takes three generations to make one. They're off. Money'll do it as slick as soap grease. It's made you one. Buy, hokey, it's almost made one of me. I'm nearly as impolite. I'm nearly as impolite. and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old knickerbockered gents on each side of me that can't sleep of nights because I bought in between them. There are some things that money can't accomplish,

Starting point is 02:41:34 remarked young Rockwell rather gloomily. Now don't say that, said old Anthony shocked. I bet my money on money every time. I've been through the encyclopedia down to why, looking for something you can't buy with it, and I expect to have to take up the appellate. next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell me something money won't buy. For one thing, answered Richard, rankling a little. It won't buy one into the exclusive circles of society. Oh, ho, won't it? thundered the champion of the root of evil. You tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first astor hadn't paid the money to pay for his steerage passage over. Richard sighed. That's what I was coming to, said the old man, less boisterously.

Starting point is 02:42:20 that's why I asked you to come in. There's something going wrong with you, boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on 11 millions within 24 hours besides the real estate. If it's your liver, there's the rambler down in the bay, cold and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days. Not a bad guest, Dad, you haven't missed it far. Ah, said Anthony keenly, what's her name? Richard began to walk up. and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to draw his confidence. Why don't you ask her? demanded old Anthony. She'll jump at you. You've got the money and the looks and you're a decent boy. Your hands are clean. You've got no eureka soap on him. You've been to college, but she'll overlook that. I haven't had a chance, said Richard. Make one, said Anthony. Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw ride, or walk. Or walk. home with her from church. Chance. You don't know the social mill, Dad. She's part of the stream that turns it. Every hour and minute of her time is arranged for days in advance. I must have that girl,

Starting point is 02:43:35 Dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp forevermore. And I can't write it. I can't do that. Tut, said the old man. Do you mean to tell me that with all the money I've got, you can't get an hour or two of a girl's time for yourself? I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon day after tomorrow for a two-year stay. I'm to see her alone tomorrow evening for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her aunts. I can't go there, but I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station tomorrow evening at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallach's at a Gallup, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. "'Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me

Starting point is 02:44:20 "'during the six or eight minutes under those circumstances? "'No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? "'None. No, Dad. This is one tangle that your money can't unravel. "'We can't buy one minute of time with cash. "'If we could, rich people would live longer. "'There's no hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails.' "'All right, Richard, my boy,' said old Anthony cheerfully. you may run along down to your club now. I'm glad it ain't your liver, but don't forget to burn a few punk

Starting point is 02:44:52 sticks in the Joss House to the great God Mazuma from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of course, you can't order eternity wrapped up and delivered at your residence for a price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone bruises on his heels when he was walking through the gold diggings. That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sying, oppressed by wealth, into Brother Anthony at his evening paper, and began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes. He told me all about it, said Brother Anthony, yawning. I told him my bank account was at his service. Then he began to knock money, said money couldn't help, said the rules of society couldn't be bucked for a yard by a team of ten millionaires. Oh, Anthony,

Starting point is 02:45:41 sighed Aunt Ellen, I wish you would not think so much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned. Love is all-powerful. If he had only spoken earlier, she could not have refused our Richard, but now I fear it is too late. He will have no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son. At eight o'clock the next evening, Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard. Wear it to-night, nephew, she begged. Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love, she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved. Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off

Starting point is 02:46:29 and stuffed it into his vest pocket after the manner of man. Then he phoned for his cab. At the station, he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at 832. We mustn't keep Mama and the others waiting, she said. To Wallach's Theatre as fast as you can drive, said Richard loyally. They whirled up 42nd to Broadway and then down the white-starred lane that leads from the soft meadows

Starting point is 02:46:54 of sunset to the rocky hills of morning. At 34th Street, young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop. I've dropped a ring, he apologized, as he climbed out. It was my mother's. I'd hate to lose it. I won't detain you a minute. I saw where it fell.

Starting point is 02:47:12 In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring. But within that minute, a cross-town car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right and had to back away from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city. Why don't you drive on? said Miss Lantry impatiently. We'll be late. Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans, and streetcars filling the vast space where Broadway, 6th Avenue,

Starting point is 02:48:03 and 43rd Street cross one another as a 26th inch maiden fills her 22-inch girdle. And still, from all the cross streets, they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their driver's imprecations to the clamor. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one. I'm very sorry, said Richard, as he resumed his seat. But it looks as if we're stuck.

Starting point is 02:48:42 They won't get this jumble loose up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring, we... Let me see the ring, said Miss Lantry. Now that it can't be helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid anyway. At 11 o'clock that night, somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwell's door.

Starting point is 02:49:01 Come in, shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing gown, reading a book of piractical activities. Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a gray-haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake. They're engaged, Anthony, she said softly. She has promised to marry our Richard.

Starting point is 02:49:20 On their way to the theater, there was a street blockade. It was two hours before the cab could get out of it. And, oh, brother Anthony, don't you ever boast of the power of money again, a little emblem of true love, a little ring that symbol unending and unmercenary affection was the cause of our richard finding his happiness he dropped it in the street and got out to recover it and before they could continue the blockade occurred he spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in money is dross compared with true love anthony all right said old anthony i'm glad the boy has got what he wanted i told him i wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if but brother anthony what good could your money have done

Starting point is 02:50:04 "'Sister,' said Anthony Rockwall, "'I've got my pirate in a devil of a scrape. "'His ship has just been scuttled, "'and he's too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. "'I wish you would let me go on with this chapter.' "'The story should end here. "'I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did, "'but we must go to the bottom of the well for truth.'

Starting point is 02:50:27 "'The next day a person with red hands "'and a blue polka-dot necktie "'who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwell's house and was at once received in the library. Well, said Anthony, reaching for his checkbook, it was a good bylan of soap. Let's see, you had 5,000 in cash. I paid out 300 more of my own, said Kelly. I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5. But the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to 10. The motormen wanted 10, and some of the loaded teams 20. The

Starting point is 02:51:04 cop struck me hardest. Fifty dollars I paid two, and the rest twenty-five and twenty. But didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy, and never a rehearsal either. The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's statue. Thirteen hundred, there you are, Kelly, said Anthony, tearing. off a check. Your thousand and the 300 you were out. You don't despise money, do you, Kelly? Me, said Kelly, I can lick the man that invented poverty. Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door. You didn't notice, said he, anywhere in the tie-up. A kind of a fat boy without any clothes on,

Starting point is 02:51:54 shooting arrows around with a bow, did you? Why no, said Kelly, mystified. I didn't. If he was, like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there. I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand, chuckled Anthony. Goodbye, Kelly. End of Mammon and the Archer. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown. Toronto, Canada. The 4 million, Bio Henry. Chapter 14, Springtime, Alla Carte. It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry, and likely to consist of mere wind,

Starting point is 02:52:56 but in this instance, it is allowable, for the following paragraph, which is, should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation. Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card. To account for this, you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a hack-it matinee. And then all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed. The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster, which he with his sword, would open, made a larger hit than he deserved.

Starting point is 02:53:42 It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice anyone try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw open that way? Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog,

Starting point is 02:54:13 she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a freelance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feet of Sarah's battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg's home restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40-cent, five-course, tabled oat, served as fast as you

Starting point is 02:54:42 throw the five baseballs at the color gentleman's head. Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script, neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful, you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with with soup and the day of the week. The next day, Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten, with the Vions temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from hors d'oeuvres to not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas. Shulenberg became a naturalized citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him, she had him willingly committed to an

Starting point is 02:55:25 agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the 21 tables in the restaurant, a new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch, as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required. In return for this, Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter, an obsequious one if possible, and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what fate had in store for Schulenberg's on the morrow. Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Shulinberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was called, even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her. And then the almanac lied and said that spring had come.

Starting point is 02:56:18 Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. The hand organs still played in the good old summertime, with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. When these things happen, one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter. One afternoon, Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom. House-heated, scrupulously clean, conveniences, seemed to be appreciated. She had no work to do except Shulenberg. menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall

Starting point is 02:57:02 kept crying to her. Springtime is here, Sarah. Springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah. My figures show it. You've got a neat figure yourself, Sarah, a nice springtime figure. Why do you look out the window so sadly? Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window, she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal, and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane, shaded with cherry trees and elms, and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. Springs' real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, the wood-staring dogwood, the voice of bluebird, even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the lady in green to their

Starting point is 02:57:56 dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin, there came straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be. On the previous summer, Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer. In writing, your story never hark back thus. It is bad art and cripples interest. Let it march, march. Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old farmer Franklin's son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cowhouse, and he could figure up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the darker. the moon. It was in the shaded and raspberry lane that Walter had wooed and won her, and together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the

Starting point is 02:59:02 yellow blossoms against her brown tresses, and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring. At the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter. A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the home restaurant's next day fair in old Schulenberg's angular hand. Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally, in an hour and a half, the 21 menu cards were written and ready. Today, there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter.

Starting point is 02:59:51 Pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was de mewendo con amore. The frying pan seemed to be held inactive behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled. The richer puddings had vanished. The sausage with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple. Sarah's fingers danced like midgets over a summer stream, down through the courses she worked,

Starting point is 03:00:42 giving each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye. Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes, and corn and succotash, lima beans, cabbage, and then. Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand. and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs.

Starting point is 03:01:18 For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions. Dandy lions with some kind of egg, but bother the egg. Dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride, Dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrows crown of sorrow, reminder of her happiest days. Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test.

Starting point is 03:01:49 Let the Marshal Niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him your heart, be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulenberg table d'Otre. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonored, the sooner would she have sought the Lethean herbs of the good apothecary? But what a witch is spring. to the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it, but the little hearty courier of the fields, with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this d'on de Lyon, this lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him,

Starting point is 03:02:31 flowered he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady's nut-brown hair, young and callow and unblossomed. He goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress. By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written, but still in a faint golden glow from her Dandelonine dream. She fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker's motor car. At six o'clock, the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate, she set aside with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its

Starting point is 03:03:21 crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-endorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself. But Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection. At 7.30, the couple in the next room began to quarrel. The man in the room above sought for A on his flute. The gas went a little lower, three coal wagons started to unload, the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous. Cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs, Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out the cloister and the hearth, the best non-selling book of the month,

Starting point is 03:04:18 settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard. The front doorbell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denny's, treed by a bear, and listened. Oh, yes, you would, just as she did. Then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily's the bearer. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs, just as her farmer came up, three at a jump,

Starting point is 03:04:50 and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners. Why haven't you written? Oh, why? cried Sarah. New York is a pretty large town, said Walter Franklin. I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some. It eliminated the possible Friday bad luck, but it didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since.

Starting point is 03:05:16 I wrote, said Sarah vehemently. Never got it. Then how did you find me? The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. I dropped into that home restaurant next door this evening, said he. I don't care who knows it. I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare,

Starting point is 03:05:38 looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage, I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived. I remember, sighed Sarah happily, that was dandelions below cabbage. I'd know that cranky capital W way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,

Starting point is 03:05:59 said Franklin. Why, there's no. No W. and Dandy Lions, said Sarah in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket and pointed to a line. Sarah recognized the first card she had written that afternoon. There was still the raid splotch of the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen, but over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item,

Starting point is 03:06:36 Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg. End of. Springtime a la carte. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million, Bio Henry

Starting point is 03:07:05 Chapter 15 The Green Door Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful woman,

Starting point is 03:07:30 wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand, an extremely hot-buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word parallelogram, and swiftly flies down across street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That would be adventure. Would you accept it? Not you.

Starting point is 03:07:57 You would flush with embarrassment. You would sheepishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead. True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down in print, as such, have been mostly businessmen with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wanted, golden fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

Starting point is 03:08:37 A fine example was the prodigal son when he started back home. Half adventurers, brave and splendid figures, have been numerous. From the Crusades to the Palisades, they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tears to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick. So they were not followers of true adventure. In the big city, the twin spirits, romance, and adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets, they slyly peep at us and

Starting point is 03:09:21 challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits. In a sleeping thoroughfare, we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house. Instead of at our familiar curb, a cab driver deposits us before a strange door. Which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter? A slip of paper written upon flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of chance. We exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear. fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds. A sudden douse of rain, and an umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the full moon, and the first cousin of the side-reel system. At every corner

Starting point is 03:10:11 handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped onto our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown, stiff with the ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on, and someday we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator. Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which he did not go forth from his hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious. The most interesting thing in life seemed to him to be what might lie

Starting point is 03:11:02 just around the next corner. Sometimes his willingness to tempt fate led him into strange paths. Twice he had spent the night in a station house. Again and again he'd found himself the dupe of ingenious and mercenary tricksters. His watch and money had been the price of one flattering allurement. But with undiminished ardor, he picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure. One evening, Rudolph was strolling along a cross-town street in the older central part of the city. Two streams of people filled the sidewalks, the home hurrying, and that restless contingent that abandons home for a spacious welcome of the thousand candle power, Tabla Dote. The young adventurer was of pleasing presence and moved serenely and watchfully.

Starting point is 03:11:53 By daylight he was a salesman in a piano store. He wore his tie drawn through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin, and once he had written to the editor of a magazine that Junie's love test by Miss Libby had been the book that had most influenced his life. During his walk, a violent chattering of teeth in a glass case on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw his attention with a qualm, to a restaurant before which it was set. But a second glance revealed the electric letters of a dentist's sign high above the next door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers and a military cap, discreetly distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who consented to take them.

Starting point is 03:12:40 This mode of dentistic advertising was a common sight to Rudolph. Usually he passed the dispensual of the dentist's cards without reducing his store. But tonight the African slipped one into his hand so deftly that he'd retained it there, smiling a little at the successful feet. When he had traveled a few yards further, he glanced at the card indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over and looked again with interest. One side of the card was blank. On the other was written in ink three words, the green door. And then Rudolph saw three steps in front of him. A man, three three throw down the card the negro had given him as he passed. Rudolph picked it up.

Starting point is 03:13:22 It was printed with the dentist's name and address and the usual schedule of plate work and bridge work and crowns and spacious promises of painless operations. The adventurous piano salesman halted at the corner and considered. Then he crossed the street, walked down a block, recrossed and joined the upward current of people again. Without seeming to notice the Negro as he passed the second

Starting point is 03:13:46 time. He carelessly took the card that was handed him. Ten steps away, he inspected it. In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card, the green door was inscribed upon it. Three or four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians both following and leading him. These fell blank side up. Rudolph turned them over. Every one bore the printed legend of the dental parlors. Rarely did the arch-sprite adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner. his true follower. But twice it had been done, and the quest was on. Rudolph walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling teeth. This time as he passed, he received no card. In spite of his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric dignity as he

Starting point is 03:14:36 stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half-minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not only did he withhold a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolph that he received from the shining and massive black countenance a look of cold, almost contemptuous disdain. The look stung the adventurer. He read in at a silent accusation that he had been found wanting. Whatever the mysterious written words on the card might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng for their recipient, and now seem to have condemned him as deficient in the

Starting point is 03:15:17 wit and spirit to engage the enigma. Standing aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of the building in which he conceived that his adventure must lie. Five stories high at rose. A small restaurant occupied the basement. The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist. Above this, a polyglot babble of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up, draped curtains and milk bottles, white on the windowsills, proclaimed the regions of domesticity. After concluding his survey, Rudolph walked briskly up the high flight of stone steps into the house.

Starting point is 03:16:07 Up two flights of the carpeted stairway he continued, and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted by two pale jets of gas, one far to his right, the other nearer to his left. He looked toward the nearer light and saw within its wan halo a green door. For one moment he hesitated, then he seemed to see the contumulus sneer of the African juggler of cards, and then he walked straight to the green door and knocked against it. moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure the quick breath of true adventurer what might not be behind those green panels gamesters at play cunning rogues baiting their traps with subtle skill beauty and love with courage and thus planning to be sought by it danger death love disappointment ridicule any of these might respond to that to merrious rap a faint russell was heard inside and the

Starting point is 03:17:06 the door slowly opened. A girl, not yet twenty, stood there, white-faced and tottering. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolph caught her and laid her on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by the light of a flickering gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the story that he read. The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolph looked around the room, excited. for a barrel. People must be rolled upon a barrel who, no, no, that was for drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That was successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she opened her eyes. And then the young man saw that hers, indeed, was the one missing

Starting point is 03:17:54 face from his heart's gallery of intimate portraits. The frank grey eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward, the chestnut hair curling like the tendrils of a pea vine, seemed the right end and reward of all his wonderful adventures. But the face was woefully thin and pale. The girl looked at him calmly and then smiled. Fainted, didn't I, she said weekly. Well, who wouldn't? You try going without anything to eat for three days and see. Himmel exclaimed Rudolf jumping up. Wait till I come back. He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In 20 minutes he was back again, kicking at the door with his toe for her to open it. With both arms, he hugged an array of wares from the grocery and the restaurant. On the table he laid them, bread and butter, cold meats,

Starting point is 03:18:45 cakes, pies, pickles, oysters, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk, and one of red hot tea. This is ridiculous, said Rudolph, blusteringly, to go without eating. You must quit making election bets of this kind. Supper is ready. He helped her to a chair at the table and asked, is there a cup for the tea? On the shelf by the window, she answered. When he turned again with the cup, he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, beginning upon a huge dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's unerring instinct. He took it from her laughingly and poured the cup full of milk. Drink that first, he ordered. Then you shall have some tea, then a chicken wing. If you are very good, you shall have a pickle tomorrow.

Starting point is 03:19:32 and now, if you'll allow me to be your guest, we'll have supper. He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and brought back some of her color. She began to eat with a sort of dainty ferocity, like some starved wild animal. She seemed to regard the young man's presence and the aid he had rendered her as a natural thing, not as though she undervalued the conventions, but as one whose great stress gave her the right to put aside the artificial of the human. But gradually, with the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little conventions that belong,

Starting point is 03:20:09 and she began to tell him her little story. It was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every day, the shopgirls story of insufficient wages, further reduced by fines that go to swell the store's profits, of time lost through illness, then of lost positions, lost hope, and the knock of the adventurer upon the green door. But to Rudolph, the history sounded as big as the Iliad,

Starting point is 03:20:35 or the crisis in Junie's love test. To think of you going through all that, he exclaimed. It was something fierce, said the girl solemnly. And you have no relatives or friends in the city? None whatever. I am all alone in the world, too, said Rudolph after a pause. I am glad of that, said the girl promptly, and somehow it pleased the young man. to hear that she approved of his bereft condition. Very suddenly her eyelids dropped and she sighed deeply.

Starting point is 03:21:04 I'm awfully sleepy, she said, and I feel so good. Then Rudolph rose and took his hat. I'll say good night. A long night's sleep will be fine for you. He held out his hand and she took it and said good night. But her eyes asked a question so eloquently, so frankly and pathetically that he answered it with words. Oh, I'm coming back tomorrow to see how you are getting along. you can't get rid of me so easily then at the door as though the way of his coming had been so much less important than the fact that he had come she asked how did you come to knock at my door he looked at her for a moment remembering the cards and felt a sudden jealous pain what if they had fallen into other hands as adventurous as his quickly he decided that she must never know the

Starting point is 03:21:52 truth he would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great distress. One of our piano tuners lives in this house, he said, I knocked at your door by mistake. The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her smile. At the end of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him. Then he went along the hallway to its other end, and coming back ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations. Every door that he found in the house was painted green. wondering he descended to the sidewalk the fantastic african was still there rudolph confronted him with his two cards in his hand will you tell me why you gave me these cards and what they mean he asked in a broad good-natured grin the negro exhibited a splendid advertisement of his master's profession dar it is boss he said pointing down the street but i spect you is a little late for de first act

Starting point is 03:22:56 looking the way he pointed rudolph saw above the entrance to a theatre the blazing electric sign of its new play the green door i'm informed that it's a first-rate show sir said the negro the agent what represents it presented me with the dollar sir to distribute a few of his cards along with the doctors may i offer you one of the doctor's cards sir at the corner of the block in which he lived rudolph stopped for a glass of beer and a cigar. When he had come out with his lighted weed, he buttoned his coat, pushed back his hat, and said stoutly to the lamp post on the corner. All the same, I believe it was the hand of fate that doped out the way for me to find her. Which conclusion, under the circumstance, certainly admits Rudolf Steiner to the ranks of the true followers of romance and adventure. End of The Green Door

Starting point is 03:23:57 This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million bio Henry Chapter 16 from the cabby's seat. The cabby has his point.

Starting point is 03:24:24 of you. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high swaying seat of his handsome, he looks upon his fellow men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Yehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you president or vagabond. To cabby you are only a fair. He takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebrae and sets you down. When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal rates, you come to know what contempt is. If you find that you have left your pocketbook behind, you are made to realize the mildness of Dante's imagination. It is not an extravagant theory that the cabbiness singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the

Starting point is 03:25:14 handsome's peculiar construction. The cock of the roost sits aloft like Jupiter, on an unsherable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap. You, before whom butlers cringe on solid land, and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known. Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant. You are contents. You are a cargo, at sea, and the cherub that sits up aloft has Davy Jones's street and number by heart. One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement house next door, but one to McGarry's family cafe. The sounds seemed to emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family.

Starting point is 03:26:11 The sidewalk was obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbors, who opened a lane from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from McGarry's goods pertinent to festivity and diversion, the sidewalk contingent was engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to eliminate the news that Nora Walsh was being married. In the fullness of time, there was an eruption of the merrymakers to the sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them, and upon the night air rose joyous cries, congratulations, laughter, and unclassified noises born of McGarry's oblations to the hymenial scene. Close to the curb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab.

Starting point is 03:26:54 Nighthawk was Jerry called, but no more lustrous or cleaner handsome than his ever closed its door upon Point Lace and November violets, and Jerry's horse! I am within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until one of those old ladies who leave their dishes unwashed at home and go about having expressmen arrested would have smiled, yes, smiled to have seen.

Starting point is 03:27:16 seen him. Among the shifting sonorous, pulsing crowd, glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years, of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome athletic progeny of millionaires, and by the contumacious fares, of his brass-buttoned green coat, admired in the vicinity of McGarry's. It was plain that Jerry had usurped the functions of his cab and was carrying a load. Indeed, the figure may be extended, and he be likened to a bread wagon if we admit the testimony of a youthful spectator who was heard to remark, Jerry has got a bun. From somewhere among the throng in the street, or else out of the thin stream of pedestrians,

Starting point is 03:28:02 a young woman tripped and stood by the cab. The professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a lurch for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers at himself. No, he caught the cap of a water plug and capped. kept his feet. Like a sailor shining up the ratlins during a squall, Jerry mounted to his professional seat. Once he was there at McGarry's liquids were baffled. He seesawed on the mizzen-mast of his craft, as safe as a steeple jack rigged to the flagpole of a skyscraper. Step in, lady, said Jerry, gathering his lines. The young woman stepped into the cab. The door shut with a bang. Jerry's whip cracked

Starting point is 03:28:43 in the air. The crowd in the gutter scattered. and the fine handsome dashed away across town. When the Oatesprye horse had hedged a little his first spurt of speed, Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone trying to please. Where now will ye be driving to? Anywhere you please, came the answer, musical and contented. Tis driving for pleasure she is, thought Jerry.

Starting point is 03:29:10 And then he suggested as a matter of course. "'Take a thrip round the park, lady, till be elegant, cool, and fine.' "'Just as you like,' answered the fair pleasantly. The cab headed for Fifth Avenue and sped up that perfect street. Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGarries were disquieted, and they sent a new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of Killis Nook and brandished his whip like a baton. Inside the cab the fair sat up straight on the cushion.

Starting point is 03:29:43 looking to right and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed handsome, her eyes shone like stars at twilight. When they reached 59th Street, Jerry's head was bobbing and his reins were slack, but his horse turned in through the park gate and began the old familiar nocturnal round, and then the fair leaned back, entranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odors of grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing his ground, stuck into his by-the-hour gate and kept to the right of the road. Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing torpor. He raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel

Starting point is 03:30:24 and made the inquiry that cabbies do make in the park. Like stop at the casino lady, gizzar freshums and listen to music, everybody stops. I think that would be nice, said the fair. They rained up with a plunge at the casino entrance. The cab doors flew. open. The fair stepped directly upon the floor. At once she was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and colors. Someone slipped a little square card into her hand

Starting point is 03:30:56 on which was printed a number, 34. She looked around and saw her cab 20 yards away, already lining up in its place among the wading mass of carriages, cabs, and motor cars. Then a man who seemed to be all shirt-front danced backward before her, and next, she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine. There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase. She consulted a collection of small coins in a thin purse and received from them license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it all, the new-colored, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in an enchanted wood. At fifty tables sat princes and queens, clad in all the silks and gems of the world,

Starting point is 03:31:43 and now and then one of them would look curiously at Jerry's fair. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is tempered by the word fulard, and a plain face that wove a look of love of life that the queens envied. Twice the long hands of the clock went round, royalties thinned from their alfresco thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of leather and bays. Waiters removed claws pointedly near the plain figure sitting almost alone. Jerry's fair rose and held out her numbered card simply,

Starting point is 03:32:23 Is there anything coming on the ticket? she asked. A waiter told her it was her cab check, that she should give it to the man at the entrance. This man took it and called the number. Only three handsoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed. to the captain's bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward cuts. At the gate, a glimmer of

Starting point is 03:32:56 reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap, and dropped his phonographic voice, like a lead plummet through the aperture. I want to see four dollars before going in any further on the trip. Have you got the dough? Four dollars? laughed the fare softly. Dear me, no, I've only got a few pennies and a dime or two. Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oak-fed horse. The clatter of hooves strangled, but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He shouted choking and gargling curses of the starry heavens. He cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles. He scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets,

Starting point is 03:33:45 so that a late truck driver crawling homeward heard and was abashed, but he knew his recourse and made for it at a gallop. At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground. Come on you, he said roughly. His fare came forth with the casino, dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A gray-mustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk.

Starting point is 03:34:16 He and the cabby were no strangers. Sergeant? Began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tone of complaint. I've got a fair here that... Jerry paused. He drew a knotted red hand across his brow. The fog set up by McGarry was beginning to clear away. A fair, Sergeant, he continued with a grin,

Starting point is 03:34:36 that I want to introduce to ye. It's me wife that I married at Old Man Walsh's this evening, and a divil of the time we had, tis true. Shake hands with the sergeant Nora, and we'll be off to home. Before stepping into the cab, Nora sighed profoundly. I've had such a nice time, Jerry, said she. End of Chapter 16 from the cabby's seat. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 Million BioHenry, Chapter 17, An Unfinished Story. We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Toffit are mentioned, for even the preachers have begun to tell us that God

Starting point is 03:35:38 God is radium or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis, but there lingers yet some of the old goodly terror of orthodoxy. There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams, and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses, and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme, chosen with apologies and regrets, instead of the more limited field of Pretty Polly's small talk. I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher

Starting point is 03:36:31 criticism that it had to do with the ancient respectable and lamented bar of judgment theory. Gabriel had played his trump, and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed that one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind, but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles, and they did not appear to be getting any of us out. A fly cop, an angel policeman, flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment. Do you belong with that bunch? The policeman asked.

Starting point is 03:37:16 Who are they? was my answer. Why, said he, they are. But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy. Dulcy worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging or stuffed peppers or automobiles or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcy received $6 per week. The remainder was credited to her and debted to somebody else's account in the ledger kept by G. Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor.

Starting point is 03:37:52 Well then, in the ledger of primal energy. During her first year in the store, Dulcy was paid $5 per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Don't care? Very well. Probably you are interested in larger amounts. $6 is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on $6 per week. One afternoon at 6, when Dulcy was sticking her hat pin within an eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata, she said to her chum Sadie, the girl that waits on you with her left side. Say, Sadie, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy.

Starting point is 03:38:32 You never did, exclaimed Sadie admiringly. Well, ain't you the lucky one? Piggy's an awful swell. He always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman house one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You'll have a swell time duels. Dalsey hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life's,

Starting point is 03:38:57 real life's approaching dawn. It was Friday and she had 50 cents left of her last week's wages. The streets were filled with the rush hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing, calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors' homes, turned and stared at Dulci as she sped, unheeding past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming serious, was beginning to unfold its dead white, heavy-odered petals. Dulcy stopped in at a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her 50 cents. That money was to have been spent otherwise, 15 cents for supper, 10 cents for breakfast, 10 cents for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings, and 5 cents was to be squandered for liquorish drops. The kind that made your cheek look like the toothache and last as long. The licorish was an extravagance, almost a carouse, but what is life without pleasures?

Starting point is 03:40:12 Dulcy lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a furnished room and a boarding house. In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry. Dulcy went up to her room, the third floor back in a west side brownstone front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known, their mistake. Landlady's know of a compound besides which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gas burners, and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one's fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it, therefore let us call it immovable. So Dulcy lit the gas. In its one-fourth candle-power glow, we will observe the room. Couch bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair, of this much the landlady was

Starting point is 03:41:11 guilty. The rest was Dulcys. On the dresser were her treasures, a gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickleworks, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon. Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Ben Vino Toulini. Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O'Callaghan in a Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemon-colored child assaulting an inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcy's final judgment in art, but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers of stolen copes. No critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomology.

Starting point is 03:42:11 Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way in gossip. For the room, Dulcy paid two dollars per week. On weekdays, her breakfast cost ten cents. She made coffee and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings, she feasted royally on veal chops and pineapple fritters at Billy's restaurant, at a cost of 25 cents, and tip the waitress 10 cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her lunches in the department store restaurant at a cost of 60 cents for the week. Dinners were $1.5.

Starting point is 03:42:57 The evening papers, show me a New Yorker going without his daily paper, came to six cents and two Sunday papers. One for the personal column and the other to read were $0.10. The total amounts to $4.76. Now, one has to buy clothes and... I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains and fabrics, and of miracles performed with needle and thread, but I am in doubt. I hold my pen poised in vain when I would add to Dulce's life some of those joys that belong to women by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven. she had been to Coney Island and had ridden the hobby horses. Tis a weary thing to count your pleasures

Starting point is 03:43:45 by summers instead of by hours. Piggie needs but a word. When the girls named him an undeserving stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words of three letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography. He was fat, he had the soul of a rat and the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat. He wore expensive clothes and was a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop girl and tell you to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping districts and prowled around in department stores with his invitations to dinner. Men who escort dogs upon the streets at the end of a string looked down upon him. He is a type. I,

Starting point is 03:44:37 I can dwell upon him no longer. My pen is not the kind intended for him. I am no carpenter. At ten minutes to seven, Dulcy was ready. She looked at herself in the wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress, fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the but slightly soiled gloves, all representing self-denial, even of food itself, were vastly becoming. Dalsey forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beautiful and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before. Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and exalted show. The girls said that Piggy was a spender. There would be a grand dinner and music and splendidly dressed ladies to look at,

Starting point is 03:45:36 and things to eat that strangely twisted the girl's jaws when they tried to tell about them. No doubt she would be asked out again. There was a blue pungy suit in a window that she knew by saving 20 cents a week instead of 10 in, let's see, oh, it would run into years, but there was a second-hand store in 7th Avenue where somebody knocked at the door. Dulcy opened it. The landlady stood there with a spurious smile, sniffing for cooking, by stolen gas. A gentleman's downstairs to see you, she said. Name is Mr. Wiggins.

Starting point is 03:46:13 By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously. Dulcy turned to the dresser to get her handkerchief, and then she stopped still, and bit her underlip hard. While looking in the mirror, she had seen Fairyland and herself, a princess, just awakening from a long slumber. She had forgotten one that was watching her with sad, beautiful, stern eyes. The only one there was to approve or condemn what she did. Straight and slender and tall, with a look of sorrowful reproach on his handsome, melancholy face, General Kitchener fixed his wonderful eyes on her out of his guilt photograph frame on the dresser. Dulcy turned like an automatic doll to the landlady.

Starting point is 03:46:59 Tell him I can't go, she said, Dully. Tell him I'm sick or something. tell him I'm not going out. After the door was closed and locked, Dulcy fell upon her bed, crushing her black tip, and cried for ten minutes. General Kitchener was her only friend. He was Dulcy's idea of a gallant night. He looked as if he might have had a secret sorrow, and his wonderful mustache was a dream, and she was a little afraid of that stern yet tender look in his eyes. She used to have little fancies that he would call at the house sometime and ask for her, with his sword clanking against his high boots. Once, when a boy was rattling a piece of chain

Starting point is 03:47:41 against a lamp post, she had opened the window and looked out, but there was no use. She knew that General Kitchener was a way over in Japan, leading his army against the savage Turks, and he would never step out of his guilt frame for her. Yet one look from him had vanquished Piggy that night. Yes, for that night. When her cry was over, Dulcy got up and took off her best dress and put on her old blue kimono. She wanted no dinner. She sang two verses of Sammy, then she became intensely interested in a little red speck on the side of her nose. And after that was attended to, she drew up a chair to the rickety table and told her fortune with an old deck of cards. That horrid impudent thing, she said aloud, and I never gave him a word or a look to make him think it. At nine o'clock, Dulcy took a tin box of crackers

Starting point is 03:48:36 and a little pot of raspberry jam out of her trunk and had a feast. She offered General Kitchener some jam on a cracker, but he only looked at her as the Sphinx would have looked at a butterfly, if there are butterflies in the desert. Don't eat even, it if you don't want to, said Dulcy, and don't put on so many airs and scold so with your eyes. I wonder if you'd be superior and snippy if you had to live on six dollars a week. It was not a good sign for Dulcy to be rude to General Kitchener. And then she turned Benvenuto Selini's face downward with a severe gesture, but that was not inexcusable, for she had always thought he was Henry the 8th,

Starting point is 03:49:18 and she did not approve of him. At half past nine, Dulcy took a last look at the pictures on the dresser, turned out the light, and skipped into bed. It was an awful thing to go to bed with a good night look at General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Malboro, and Benvenuto Salini. This story really doesn't get anywhere at all. The rest of it comes later, sometime when Piggy asked Dulcy again to dine with him, and she is feeling lonelier than usual, and General Kitchener happens to be looking the other way, and then, as I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of prosperous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing and asked if I belonged with them.

Starting point is 03:50:04 Who are they? I asked. Why, said he, they are the men who hired working girls, and paid him five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch? Not on your immortality, said I. I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum and murdered a blind man for his pennies. End of an unfinished story. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Starting point is 03:50:43 recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada The 4 Million, Bio Henry Chapter 18, The Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock Prince Michael of the electorate of Valuluna sat on his favorite bench in the park. The coolness of the September night quickened the life in him like a rare tonic wine. The benches were not filled for park loungers

Starting point is 03:51:13 with their stagnant blood are prompt to detect and fly home from the crispness of early autumn. The moon was just clearing the roofs of the range of dwellings that bounded the quadrangle on the east. Children laughed and played about the fine-sprayed fountain. In the shadowed spots, fawns and hammadryads wooed, unconscious of the gaze of mortal eyes. A hand-organ, philomel by the grace of our stage carpenter, fancy, fluted and droned in a side street. Around the enchanted boundaries of the little park, streetcars spat and mewed, and the stilted trains roared like tigers and lions prowling for a place to enter, and above the trees shone the great round, shining face of an illuminated clock in the tower of an antique public building.

Starting point is 03:52:07 Prince Michael's shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the carefulest cobbler. The ragman would have declined any negotiations concerning his clothes. The two-week stubble on his face was grey and brown and red and greenish-yellow, as if it had been made up from individual contributions from the chorus of a musical comedy. No man existed who had money enough to wear so bad a hat as his. Prince Michael sat on his favourite bench and smiled. It was a diverting thought to him that he was wealthy enough to buy every one of those close-ranged, bulky, window-lit mansions that faced him if he chose. He could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates, and acres, with any Croceus in this proud city of Manhattan, and scarcely have entered upon the bulk of

Starting point is 03:53:03 his holdings. He could have sat at table with reigning sovereigns, the social world, the world of art, The fellowship of the elect, adulation, imitation, the homage of the fairest, honors from the highest, praise from the wisest, flattery, esteem, credit, pleasure, fame. All the honey of life was waiting in the comb in the hive of the world for Prince Michael of the electorate of Valaluna, whenever he might choose to take it. But his choice was to sit in rags and dinginess on a bench in a park, for he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of life, and finding it bitter in his mouth, had stepped out of Eden for a time to seek distraction close to the unarmored, beating heart of the world. These thoughts strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael, as he smiled under the stubble

Starting point is 03:54:01 of his polychromatic beard, lounging thus clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks. He loved to study humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station, and all the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to confer favors upon worthy ones who had need of succor, to dazzle unfortunates by unexpected and bewildering gifts of truly royal magnificence, bestowed, however, with wisdom and judiciousness. And as Prince Michael's eye rested upon the glowing face of the great clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic as it was, became slightly tinged with contempt.

Starting point is 03:54:51 Big thoughts were the princes, and it was always with a shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world to the arbitrary measures of time. The comings and goings of people in hurry and dread, controlled by the little metal moving hands of a clock, always made him sad. By and by came a young man in evening clothes, and sat upon the third bench from the prince. For half an hour he smoked cigars with nervous haste. Then he fell to watching the face of the illuminated clock above the trees. His perturbation was evident, and the prince noted in sorrow that its cause was connected in some manner with the slowly moving hands of the timepiece. His highness arose and went to the young man's bench.

Starting point is 03:55:40 I beg your pardon for addressing you, he said, but I perceive that you are disturbed in mind. If it may serve to mitigate the liberty I have taken, I will add that I am Prince Michael, heir to the throne of the electorate of Valaluna. I appear incognito, of course, as you may gather from my appearance. It is a fancy of mine to render aid to others whom I think worthy of it. Perhaps the matter that seems to distress you is one that would more readily yield to our mutual efforts. The young man looked up brightly at the prince. Brightly, but the perpendicular line of perplexity between his brows was not smoothed away. He laughed, and even then it did not.

Starting point is 03:56:24 but he accepted the momentary diversion. Glad to meet you, Prince, he said good-humoredly. Yes, I'd say you were in Cog all right. Thanks for your offer of assistance. But I don't see where you're budding in would help things any. It's a kind of private affair, you know, but thanks all the same. Prince Michael sat at the young man's side. He was often rebuffed, but never offensively.

Starting point is 03:56:49 His courteous manner and words forbade that. "'Clocks,' said the prince, "'are shackles on the feet of mankind. "'I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. "'I's face is that of a tyrant. "'Its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket. "'Its hands are those of a bunco-steerer "'who makes an appointment with you to your ruin.

Starting point is 03:57:12 "'Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds "'and to cease to order your affairs "'by that insensate monitor of brass and steel. I don't usually, said the young man. I carry a watch, except when I've got my radiant rags on. I know human nature as I do the trees and grass, said the prince, with earnest dignity. I am a master of philosophy, a graduate in art, and I hold the purse of a fortunatus. There are few mortal misfortunes that I cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found in it honesty and nobility as well as distress. I beg of you to accept my advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence

Starting point is 03:57:58 I see in your face by judging from my appearance of my ability to defeat your troubles. The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When his gaze strayed from the glowing horologue of time, it rested intently upon a four-story red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to where he sat. The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone dimly through them. Ten minutes to nine, exclaimed the young man, with an impatient gesture of despair. He turned his back upon the house and took a rapid step or two in a contrary direction. Remain, commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the disturbed one wheeled around with a somewhat chagrined laugh. I'll give her the ten minutes, and then I'm off, he muttered.

Starting point is 03:58:49 and then aloud to the prince, I'll join you in confounding all clocks, my friend, and throw in women, too. Sit down, said the prince calmly. I do not accept your addition. Women are the natural enemies of clocks, and therefore the allies of those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our follies and limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me, I would ask you to relate to me your story.

Starting point is 03:59:16 The young man threw himself upon the bench, a reckless laugh. Your Royal Highness, I will, he said in tones of mock deference. Do you see yonder house? The one with three upper windows lighted? Well, at six o'clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am, that is, I was engaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear prince. I had been a naughty boy, and she had heard of it. I wanted to be forgiven, of course. We are always wanting women to forgive us, aren't we, Prince? I want time to think it over, said she. There is one thing certain.

Starting point is 03:59:54 I will either fully forgive you, or I will never see your face again. There will be no halfway business. At half past eight, she said, at exactly half past eight, you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor. If I decide to forgive, I will hang out of that window a white silk scarf.

Starting point is 04:00:14 You will know by that, that all is as it was before, and you may come to me. If you see no scarf, you may consider that everything between us is ended forever. That, concluded the young man bitterly, is why I have been watching that clock. The time for the signal to appear has passed 23 minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a little disturbed, my prince of rags and whiskers? Let me repeat to you, said Prince Michael, in his even well-modulated tones, that women are the natural enemies of clocks. Clocks are an evil. Women, a blessing.

Starting point is 04:00:52 The signal may yet appear. Never on your principality, exclaimed the young man hopelessly. You don't know Marion, of course. She's always on time, to the minute. That was the first thing about her that attracted me. I've got the mitten instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was cooked. I'll go west on the 1145 tonight with Jack Milburn, the jigs up.

Starting point is 04:01:19 I'll try Jack's ranch a while and top off with the Klondike in whiskey. Good night, or Prince. Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile, and caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the prince's eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy, translucence. Wait, he said solemnly, till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of the hereditary prince of Valaluna. On the day of your marriage, I will give you $100,000 and a place on the Hudson. But there must be no clocks in that palace.

Starting point is 04:02:06 They measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do you agree to that? Of course, said the young man cheerfully. They're a nuisance anyway, always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner. He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three minutes to nine. I think, said Prince Michael, that I will sleep a little. The day has been fatiguing. He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who has slept thus before. You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is suitable, said the prince sleepily. Come to me when your marriage day is set, and I will give you a check for the money. Thanks, Your Highness, said the young man seriously.

Starting point is 04:02:51 It doesn't look as if I would need that palace on the Hudson, but I appreciate your offer just the same. Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the frowsy face, and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more comfortable position. Poor devil, he said, as he drew the tattered clothes closer about the prince's breast. Sonorous and startling came the stroke of nine from the clock tower.

Starting point is 04:03:23 The young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house of his relinquished hopes, and cried aloud profane words of holy rapture. From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk, a wavy, snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy. By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home hurrying, unknowing in the delights of waving silken scarves on the borders of dimly lit parks. Will you oblige me with the time, sir? asked the young man. And the citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and announced, 29 and a half minutes past eight, sir. And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made him.

Starting point is 04:04:12 further oration. By George, that clocks half an hour fast. First time in ten years I've known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies at, but the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer, a fast-receasing black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with three lighted upper windows. And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats they owned. The park was deserted, save for one dilapidated figure that sprawled asleep on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it. It's dopey, Mike, said one. He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for 20 years, on his last legs, I guess. The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and crisp in the hand of the sleeper. Gee, he remarked, he's doped out on a $50 bill

Starting point is 04:05:09 anyway. Wish I knew the brand of hop that he smokes. And then rap, wrap, rap, wrap, wrap, went the club of realism against the shoe soles of Prince Michael of the electorate of Valaluna. End of Chapter 18. The Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million, Bio Henry. Chapter 19, Sisters of the Golden Circle. The rubberneck auto was about ready to start. The Mary top riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who'd gathered to stare at sightseers,

Starting point is 04:06:12 justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature. The megaphone man raised his instrument of torture. The inside of the great automobile began to thump and throb like the heart of a coffee drinker. The top riders nervously clung to the seats. The old lady from Valparaiso, Indiana, shrieked to be put ashore. But before a wheel turns, listen to a brief preamble through the cardiophone, which shall point out to you an object of interest on life's sightseeing tour. Swift and comprehensive is the recognition of white man for white man in African wilds.

Starting point is 04:06:55 Instant and sure is the spiritual greeting between mother and babe, unhesitatingly do master and dog commune across the slight gulf between animal and man, immeasurably quick and sapient are the brief messages between one and one's beloved. But all these instances set forth only slow and groping interchange of sympathy and thought beside one other instance which the rubberneck coach shall disclose. You shall learn, if you have not learned already, what two beings of all earth's living inhabitants most quickly look into each other's hearts and souls when they meet face to face.

Starting point is 04:07:33 The gong word and the glaring at Gotham car moved majestically upon its instructive tour. On the highest rear seat was James Williams of Cloverdale, Missouri, and his bride. Capitalize it, friend, typo, that last word, word of words in the epiphany of life and love, the ascent of the flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal drip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel on the cocktail of creation, such is the bride. Holy is the wife, revered the mother. Galipius is the summer girl, but the bride is the certified check among the wedding presents that the gods send in when a man is married to mortality. The car glided up the golden way. On the bridge of the great cruiser, the captain stood,

Starting point is 04:08:26 trumpeting the sights of the big city to his passengers. Wide-mouthed and open-eared, they heard the sights of the metropolis thundered forth to their eyes. Confused, delirious with excitement and provincial longings, they tried to make ocular responses to the megaponic ritual. In the solemn spires of spreading cathedrals, they saw the home of the Vanderbiltz. In the busy bulk of the Grand Central Depot, they viewed, wonderingly the frugal cot of Russell Sage. Bidden to observe the highlands of the Hudson, they gaped, unsuspecting, at the upturned mountains of a new-laid sewer. To many, the elevated railroad was the Rialto, on the stations of which uniformed men sat and made chop suey of your tickets, and to this day in the outlying districts, many have it that Chuck Connors, with his hand on his heart,

Starting point is 04:09:22 Leeds Reform, and that but for the noble municipal efforts of one Parkhurst, a district attorney, the notorious Bishop Potter gang would have destroyed law and order from the Bowery to the Harlem River. But I beg you to observe Mrs. James Williams, Hattie Chalmers, that was, once the bell of Cloverdale. Pale blue is the brides, if she will, and this color she has honored. willingly had the moss rosebud loaned to her cheeks of its pink, and as for the violet, her eyes will do very well as they are, thank you. A useless strip of white chaff. Oh no, he was guiding the auto car, of white chiffon, or perhaps it was grenadine or tulle, was tied beneath her chin, pretending to hold her bonnet in place, but you know as well as I do that the hatpins did the work.

Starting point is 04:10:17 and on Mrs. James Williams' face was recorded a little library of the world's best thoughts in three volumes. Volume number one contained the belief that James Williams was about the right sort of thing. Volume number two was the essay on the world declaring it to be a very excellent place. Volume number three disclosed the belief that in occupying the highest seat in a rubber-neck auto, they were traveling the pace that passes all understanding. James Williams, you would have guessed, was about 24. It will gratify you to know that your estimate was so accurate. He was exactly 23 years, 11 months, and 29 days old. He was well-built, active, strong-jawed, good-natured, and rising. He was on his wedding trip. Dear kind fairy, please cut out these.

Starting point is 04:11:14 orders for money, and 40 HP touring cars and fame, and a new growth of hair, and the presidency of the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backward, oh, turn backward and give us just a teeny weenie bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and the poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chin, even if it was the hatpins that did the work. Can't do it? Very well. Hurry up with that touring car and the oil stock then. Just in front of Mrs. James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams at milliner's shops do we, alas, gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine.

Starting point is 04:12:11 that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. Between blasts, she resorted to epictician philosophy in the form of pepsin chewing gum. At this girl's right hand sat a young man about 24. He was well-built, active, strong-jawed and good-natured. But if his description seems to follow that of James Williams, divested of anything Cloverdalen, this man belonged to hard streets and sharp corn, He looked keenly about him, seeming to begrudge the asphalt under the feet of those upon whom he had looked down from his perch. While the megaphone barks at a famous hostelry, let me whisper you through the low-tuned cardio phone to sit tight, for now things are about to happen, and the great city will close over them again as over a scrap of ticker tape floating down from the den of a broad street bear.

Starting point is 04:13:10 The girl in the tan jacket twisted around to view the pilgrims on the last seat. The other passengers she had absorbed, the seat behind her was her bluebeard's chamber. Her eyes met those of Mrs. James Williams. Between two ticks of a watch, they exchanged their life's experiences, histories, hopes, and fancies. And all, mind you with the eye, before two men could have decided whether to draw steel or borrow a match. The bride leaned forward low. She and the girl spoke rapidly together, their tongues moving quickly like those of two serpents, a comparison that is not meant to go further. Two smiles and a dozen nods closed the conference. And now, in the broad, quiet avenue in front of the rubber-neck car, a man in dark clothes stood with uplifted hand, from the sidewalk another hurried to join

Starting point is 04:14:04 him. The girl in the fruitful hat quickly seized her companion by the arm and whispered in his ear. That young man exhibited proof of ability to act promptly. Crouching low, he slid over the edge of the car, hung lightly for an instant, and then disappeared. Half a dozen of the top riders observed his feet wonderingly, but made no comment, deeming it prudent, not to express surprise, at what might be the conventional manner of a lighting in this bewildering city. The truant passenger dodged a handsome and then floated past, like a leaf on a stream between a furniture van and a florist's delivery wagon. The girl in the tan jacket turned again and looked in the eyes of Mrs. James Williams. Then she faced about and sat still while the rubberneck auto stopped at the flash of the badge

Starting point is 04:14:58 under the coat of the plainclothes man. What's eaten you? demand the megaphoneist, abandoning his professional discourse for pure English. Keep her at anchor for a minute, ordered the officer. There's a man on board we want. A Philadelphia burglar called Pinky McGuire. There he is on the back seat. Look out for the side, Donovan. Donovan went to the hind wheel and looked up at James Williams. Come down, old sport, he said pleasantly, we've got you. Back to Sleepy Town for yours. It ain't a bad idea, hiding on a rubberneck, though. I'll remember that. Softly through the megaphone came the advice of the conductor.

Starting point is 04:15:41 Better stop off, sir, and explain. The car must proceed on its tour. James Williams belonged among the level heads. With necessary slowness, he picked his way through the passengers, down to the steps at the front of the car. His wife followed, but she first turned her eyes and saw the escaped tourist, glide from behind the furniture van and slip behind a tree on the edge of the little park, not 50 feet away. Descended to the ground, James Williams faced his captors with a smile. He was thinking what a good story he would have to tell in Cloverdale about having been mistaken for a burglar. The rubberneck coach lingered out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more interesting sight than this?

Starting point is 04:16:27 My name is James Williams of Cloverdale, Missouri, he said kindly, so that they would not be too greatly mortified. I have letters here that will show, you'll come with us, please, announce the plain clothesman. Pinky McGuire's description fits you like flannel washed in hot suds. A detective saw you on the rubberneck up at Central Park and phoned down to take you in. Do your explaining at the station house. James Williams' wife, the bride of two weeks, looked him in the face with a strange, soft radiance in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks, looked him in the face and said, Go with him quietly, Pinky, and maybe it'll be in your favor. And then, as the glaring at Gotham car rolled away, she turned and threw a kiss. His wife threw a kiss at someone high up on the seats of the rubber neck. Your girl gives you good advice, McGuire, said Donovan, come on now. And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He pushed his hat

Starting point is 04:17:33 far upon the back of his head. My wife seems to think I'm a burglar, he said recklessly. I've never heard of her being crazy, therefore I must be. And if I'm crazy, they can't do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness. Whereupon he resisted arrest so cheerfully and industriously that cops had to be whistled for, and afterwards the reserves to disperse a few thousand delighted spectators. At the station house, the desk sergeant asked for his name. McDoodle the pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which, was James Williams's answer. But you can bet I'm a burglar, don't leave that out. And you might add that it took five of them to pluck the pink.

Starting point is 04:18:16 I'd especially like to have that in the records. In an hour came Mrs. James Williams with Uncle Tom, of Madison Avenue, in a respect-compelling motor car and proofs of the hero's innocence, for all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an automobile manufacturing company. After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitating a copyrighted burglar and given him an honorable a discharge as the department was capable of, Mrs. Williams re-arrested him and swept him into an angle of the station house. James Williams regarded her with one eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody was holding his good right hand.

Starting point is 04:19:01 Never before had he given her a word of reproach or of reproof. If you can explain, he began rather stiffly, why you, dear, she interrupted, listen, it was an hour's pain in trial to you. I did it for her. I mean the girl who spoke to me on the coach. I was so happy, Jim, so happy with you that I didn't dare to refuse that happiness to another. Jim, they were married only this morning, those two, and I wanted him to get away. While they were struggling with you, I saw him slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That's all of it, dear. I had to do it. Thus, does one sister of the plain gold band know another, who stands in the enchanted light that shines but once and briefly for each one. By rice and satin bows, does mere man become aware of,

Starting point is 04:19:52 of weddings, but bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye, and between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of. End of Chapter 19. Sisters of the Golden Circle. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, here, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 Million, Bio Henry, Chapter 20, The Romance of a Busy Broker. Pitcher, Confidential Clerk in the Office of Harvey Maxwell Broker,

Starting point is 04:20:44 allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half-past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy good-morning pitcher, Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams waiting there for him. The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstanographic. She forewent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets, or lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat, there was the gold-green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright.

Starting point is 04:21:47 her cheeks genuine peach blow, her expression a happy one tinged with reminiscence. Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence. The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a desk. man. It was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs. Well, what is it? Anything? asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay like a bank of

Starting point is 04:22:32 stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen gray eye, impersonal and brusk, flashed upon her half impatiently. Nothing, answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile. Mr. Pitcher, she said to the confidential clerk, did Mr. Maxwell say anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer? He did, answered Pitcher. He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning. It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing gum has shown up yet. I will do the work as usual then, said the young lady, until someone comes to fill the place. And she went to her desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the green-gold Macaw wing in its accustomed place. He, who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker

Starting point is 04:23:30 during a rush of business, is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the crowded hour of glorious life. The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms. And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape. The desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even pitcher's face relaxed into something resembling animation. On the exchange, there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and glaciers

Starting point is 04:24:27 and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's office. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a tow dancer. He jumped from ticker to phone, from desk to door, with the trained agility. of a harlequin. In the midst of this growing and important stress, the broker became suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation seal-skins sack, and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories, and Pitcher was there to construe her. lady from the stenographer's agency to see about the position, said Pitcher.

Starting point is 04:25:19 Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker tape. What position, he said with a frown. Position of stenographer, said Pitcher. You told me yesterday to call them up and have one sent over this morning. You are losing your mind, Pitcher, said Maxwell. Why should I have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. here. The place is hers as long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam.

Starting point is 04:25:51 Countermand that order with the agency pitcher, and don't bring any more of him in here. The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the old man seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world. The Russian pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor, they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were imperiled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine, strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate,

Starting point is 04:26:39 never hesitating, with the proper word and decision, and act ready and prompt as clockwork. stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and securities, here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human world or the world of nature. When the luncheon hour drew near, there came a slight lull in the uproar. Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands, full of telegrams and memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the beloved janitra spring, had turned on a little warmth through the waking registers of the earth, and through the window came a wandering, perhaps a lost odor, a delicate sweet

Starting point is 04:27:25 odor of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odor belonged to Miss Leslie, it was her own and hers only. The odor brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck, and she was in the next room, 20 steps away. By George, I'll do it now, said Maxwell half aloud. I'll ask her now, I wonder I didn't do it long ago. He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer. She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands, and the pen was above his ear. Miss Leslie, he began hurriedly. I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment.

Starting point is 04:28:25 Will you be my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please. Those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific. Oh, what are you talking about? exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him round-eyed. Don't you understand? said Maxwell restively. I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the phone now. Tell him to wait a minute, pitcher. Won't you, Miss Leslie? The stenographer acted very queerly. At first, she seemed overcome with amazement, then

Starting point is 04:29:09 tears flowed from her wondering eyes. Then she smiled suddenly through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck. I know now, she said softly. It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the first time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at eight o'clock in the little church around the corner. End of The Romance of a Busy Broker. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada.

Starting point is 04:30:04 The 4 million, Bio Henry, Chapter 21, After 20 Years. The policemen on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for sure. for spectators were few. The time was barely ten o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind, with a taste of rain in them, had well-nigh deep-peopled the streets. Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the Pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the piece.

Starting point is 04:30:47 The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter, but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed. When about midway of a certain block, the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store,

Starting point is 04:31:09 a man leaned with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to him, the man spoke up quickly. It's all right, officer, he said reassuringly. I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made 20 years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain it's all straight. About that long ago, there used to be a restaurant where this store stands,

Starting point is 04:31:35 Big Joe Brady's restaurant. Until five years ago, said the policeman, it was torn down then. The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes and a little white scar near his right eyebrow. His scarf pin was a large diamond, oddly set. Twenty years ago tonight, said the man, I dined here at Big Joe Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best chum and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers together. I was 18 and Jimmy was 20. The next morning I was to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York. He thought it was the only place on earth.

Starting point is 04:32:23 Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly 20 years from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be, or from what distance we might have to come. We figured that in 20 years, each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortune. made, whatever they were going to be. It sounds pretty interesting, said the policeman. Rather a long time between meets, though, it seems to me. Haven't you heard from your friend since you left? Well, yes, for a time we corresponded, said the other.

Starting point is 04:32:55 But after a year or two, we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stonchest old chap in the world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door tonight, and it's worth it if my old partner turns up. The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch. The lids of it set with small diamonds. Three minutes to ten, he announced. It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the restaurant door. Did pretty well, West, didn't you? asked the

Starting point is 04:33:35 policeman. You bet. I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plotter, though, good fellow as he was. I've had to compete with some of the sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York. It takes the west to put a razor edge on him. The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two. I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp? I should say not, said the other. I'll give him half an hour at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth, he'll be here by that time. So long, officer.

Starting point is 04:34:12 Good night, sir, said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went. There was now a fine cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently, along with coat-collars turned high and pocketed hands. and in the door of the hardware store, the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment,

Starting point is 04:34:41 uncertain almost too absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and waited. About twenty minutes he waited, then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man. Is that you, Bob? he asked doubtfully. Is that you, Jimmy Wells? cried the man in the door. "'Bless my heart!' exclaimed the new arrival, "'grasping both the other's hands with his own. "'It's Bob sure as fate.

Starting point is 04:35:12 "'I was certain I'd find you here if you were still in existence. "'Well, well, well, twenty years is a long time. "'The old restaurant's gone, Bob. "'I wish it had lasted, so we could have had another dinner there. "'How has the West treated you, old man?' "'Bully, it has given me everything I asked it for. "'You've changed lots, Jimmy. "'I never thought you were so tall,

Starting point is 04:35:34 by two or three inches. Oh, I grew a bit after I was 20. Doing well in New York, Jimmy? Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on, Bob. We'll go around to a place I know of and have a good long talk about old times. The two men started up the street, arm and arm. The man from the west, his egotism enlarged by success, was beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with interest. At the corner stood a drugstore, brilliant with electric lights. When they came into this glare, each of them turned simultaneously to gaze upon the other's face. The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.

Starting point is 04:36:20 You're not Jimmy Wells, he snapped. Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a man's nose from a Roman to a pug. It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one, said the tall man. You've been under arrest for ten minutes, Silky Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That's sensible. Now before we go on to the station, here's a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It's from patrolman Wells.

Starting point is 04:36:55 The man from the west unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little. little by the time he'd finished. The note was rather short. Bob, I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar, I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes man to do the job. Jimmy. End of After 20 Years This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit

Starting point is 04:37:38 Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million BioHenry, Chapter 22, Lost on Dress Parade. Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas stove. The other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler's patent leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero's toilette may be entrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging house immaculately and correctly clothed,

Starting point is 04:38:32 calm, assured, handsome, in appearance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening. Chandler's honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the office of an architect. He was 22 years old. He considered architecture to be truly an art, and he honestly believed, though he would not have dared to admit it in New York, that the flat iron building was inferior to design to the great cathedral in Milan.

Starting point is 04:39:10 Out of each week's earnings, Chandler set aside one dollar. At the end of each ten weeks, with the extra capital thus accumulated, he purchased one gentleman's evening from the bargain counter of stingy old father time. He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents. He took himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showy it. and there dined with taste and luxury. With $10 a man may for a few hours, play the wealthy idler to perfection.

Starting point is 04:39:43 The sum is ample for a well-considered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare, and the ordinary etc. This one delectable evening called from each dull 70 was to Chandler a source of renaissance, bliss. To the society bud comes but one debut. It stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has

Starting point is 04:40:10 whitened. But to Chandler, each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among Bon Vivant under palms in the swirl of concealed music. To look upon the habitue of such a paradise, and to be looked upon by them, what is a girl's first dance and short-sleeved tool compared with this. Up Broadway, Chandler moved with the Vespartine dress parade. For this evening, he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next 69 evenings, he would be dancing in Chavoieuat and worsted at dubious table de oat at whirlwind lunch counters on sandwiches and beer in his hall bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great city of Razzle-Dazel, and to him one evening in the limelight made up for many dark ones.

Starting point is 04:41:06 Chandler protracted his walk until the forties began to intersect the great and glittering Primrose Way, for the evening was yet young, and when one is of the Beaumont, only one day in 70, one loves to protract the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative, alluring were bent upon him, for his garb and air proclaimed him a devotee to the hour of solace and pleasure. At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the question of turning back toward the showy and fashionable restaurant in which he usually dined on the evenings of his especial luxury. Just then a girl scuttled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow, and fell plump upon the sidewalk. Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy. The girl hobbled to the

Starting point is 04:42:06 wall of the building, leaned against it, and thanked him demurely. I think my ankle is strained, she said. It twisted when I fell. Does it pain you much? inquired Chandler. Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk in a minute or two. If I can be of any further service, suggested the young man, I will call a cab or, thank you, said the girl, softly but heartily. I'm sure you need not trouble yourself any further. It was so awkward of me, and my shoe heels are horridly common sense. I can't blame them at all. Chandler looked at the girl and found her swiftly drawing his interest. She was pretty in a refined way, and her eye was both merry and kind. She was inexpensively clothed in a plain black dress that suggested a sort of uniform such as shopgirls wear. Her glossy,

Starting point is 04:43:02 dark brown hair showed its coils beneath a cheap hat of black straw, whose only ornament was a velvet ribbon and bow. She could have posed as a model for the self-respecting working girl of the best type. A sudden idea came into the head of the young architect. He would ask this girl to dine with him. Here was the element that his splendid but solitary periodic feasts had lacked. His brief season of elegant luxury would be doubly enjoyable if he could add to it a lady's society. This girl was a lady. He was sure, her manner and speech settled that, and in spite of her extremely plain attire, he felt that he would be pleased to sit at table with her. These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he decided to ask her.

Starting point is 04:43:51 It was a breach of etiquette, of course, but oftentimes wagering girls waived formalities in manners of this kind. They were generally shrewd judges of men and thought better of their own judgment than they did of useless conventions. His ten dollars, discreetly expended, would enable the two to dine very well indeed. The dinner would no doubt be a wonderful experience, thrown into the dull routine of the girl's life, and her lively appreciation of it would add to his own triumph and pleasure. I think he said to her, with frank gravity, that your foot needs a longer rest than you suppose. Now I'm going to suggest a way in which you can give it that,

Starting point is 04:44:35 and at the same time do me a favor. I was on my way to dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling around the corner. You come with me and we'll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I'm sure. The girl looked quickly into Chandler's clear, pleasant countenance. Her eyes twinkled once very brightly, and then she smiled ingeniously. But we don't know each other. It wouldn't be right, would it?

Starting point is 04:45:07 She said doubtfully. There's nothing wrong about it, said the young man candidly. I'll introduce myself. Permit me, Mr. Towers Chandler, After our dinner, which I will try to make as pleasant as possible, I will bid you good evening or attend you safely to your door, whichever you prefer. But dear me, said the girl, with a glance at Chandler's faultless attire, in this old dressing hat?

Starting point is 04:45:35 Never mind that, said Chandler cheerfully. I'm sure you look more charming in them than anyone we shall see in the most elaborate dinner toilette. My ankle does hurt yet, admitted the girl, attempting a limpid. step. I think I will accept your invitation, Mr. Chandler. You may call me Miss Marion. Come then, Miss Marion, said the young architect, gaily, but with perfect courtesy, you will not have far to walk. There is a very respectable and good restaurant in the next block. You will have to lean on my arm, so, and walk slowly. It is lonely dining all by oneself. I'm just a little bit glad that you slipped on the ice. When the two were established at a well-appointed table,

Starting point is 04:46:21 with a promising waiter hovering in attendance, Chandler began to experience the real joy that his regular outing always brought to him. The restaurant was not so showy or pretentious as the one further down Broadway, which he always preferred, but it was nearly so. The tables were well filled with prosperous-looking diners. There was a good orchestra. playing softly enough to make conversation a possible pleasure, and the cuisine and service were beyond criticism. His companion, even in her cheap hat and dress, held herself with an air that added distinction to the natural beauty of her face and figure, and it is certain that she looked at Chandler, with his animated but self-possessed manner, and his kindling and frank blue eyes,

Starting point is 04:47:09 with something not far from admiration in her own charming face. Then it was that the madness of Manhattan, the frenzy of fuss and feathers, the basilis of Bragg, the provincial plague of Poes, seized upon Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and style, and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy, he had assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good angels had not the power. to prevent him from acting it. So he began to pray to Miss Marion of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding,

Starting point is 04:47:53 and kennels, and cotillions, and tours abroad, and threw out hints of a yacht lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning great wealth, and mentioned familiarly a few names that were handled reverently by the proletariat. It was Chandler's short little day, and he was ringing from it the best that could be had as he saw it. And yet, once or twice he saw the pure gold of this girl shine through the mist of his egotism, had raised between him and all objects. This way of living that you speak of, she said, sounds so futile and purposeless. Haven't you any work to do in the world that might interest you more?

Starting point is 04:48:39 My dear Miss Marion, he exclaimed, work, think of dressing every day for dinner, of making half a dozen calls in an afternoon, with a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you to the station if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart's gate. We do nothings are the hardest workers in the land. The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously fed, and the two walked out to the corner where they had met. Miss Marion walked very well now, her limp was scarcely noticeable. Thank you for a nice time, she said frankly. I must run home now. I like the dinner very much, Mr. Chandler. He shook hands with her, smiling cordially, and said something about a game of bridge at his club.

Starting point is 04:49:26 He watched her for a moment, walking rather rapidly eastward. Then he found a cab to drive him slowly homeward. In his chilly bedroom, Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a 69 days rest. He went about it thoughtfully. That was a stunning girl, he said to himself. She's all right, too. I'd be sworn even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I'd told her the truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might. But confound it, I had to play up to my clothes. Thus spoke the brave, who was born and reared in the wigwams of the tribe of the Manhattan's.

Starting point is 04:50:03 The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly crossed town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue, which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously out the window. Oh, you madcap! exclaimed the elder girl when the other entered. When will you quit frightening us this way? It is two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress,

Starting point is 04:50:38 and Marie's hat. Mama has been so alarmed. She sent Louis to the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless puss. The elder girl touched a button and a maid came in a moment. Marie, tell Mama that Miss Marion has returned. Don't scold, sister. I only ran down to Madame Theos to tell her to use mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie's hat were just what I needed. Everyone thought I was a shop girl, I'm sure. Dinner is over, dear, you stayed so late. I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was better. That is why I was so long. The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled down with her head in her sister's lap.

Starting point is 04:51:34 We will have to marry some day, she said dreamily, both of us. We have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, sis? Go on, you scatterbrain, smiled the other. I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and respectful to poor girls, who is handsome and good and does not try to flirt. but I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some work to do in the world.

Starting point is 04:52:09 I would not care how poor he was if I could help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the kind of man we always meet, the one who lives an idle life between society and his clubs, I could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue, and he were ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street. End of. Lost in Dress Parade. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 04:52:43 For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 23, By Courier. It was neither the season. nor the hour when the park had frequenters, and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming spring. She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch through resolute curve of her lips. A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near which she sat.

Starting point is 04:53:37 Behind him tagged a boy carrying a suitcase. At the sight of the young lady, the man's face changed to red and back to pale again. He watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety mingled on his own. He passed within a few yards of her, but he saw no evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence. Some 50 yards further on, he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at one side. The boy dropped the suitcase and stared at him with wondering, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man was good to look at.

Starting point is 04:54:17 He said to the boy, I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell her, I am on my way to the station, to leave for San Francisco, where I shall join that Alaska a moose-hunting expedition. Tell her that, since she has commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means of making one last appeal to her sense of justice for the sake of what has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who is not deserves such treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain, is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be. Tell her that I have thus, to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may yet be inclined to see justice done. Go and tell her that. The young man dropped a half

Starting point is 04:55:04 dollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes, out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked at him coolly, without prejudice or favor. Lady, he said, that gent on the other bench sent a young song and dance by me. If you don't know the guy and he's trying to do to Johnny Act, say to word, and I'll call a cop in three minutes. If you does know him and he's on the square, why I spiel you'd a bunch of hot airy censure. The young lady betrayed a faint interest.

Starting point is 04:55:50 A song and dance, she said, in a deliberate street voice that seemed to clothe her words in a diaphaenous garment of impalpable irony. a new idea in the troubadour line i suppose i used to know the gentleman who sent you so i think it will hardly be necessary to call the police you may execute your song and dance but do not sing too loudly it is a little early yet for open-air vaudeville and we might attract attention ah said the boy with a shrug down the length of him you know what i mean lady tain to turn it's wind he told me to tell you he's got his collars and cuffs and that grip for us scoot clean out to Frisco, then he's going to shoot snowbirds into Klondike. He says you're told him not to send round no more pink notes, nor come hanging over to garden gate, and he takes dismeans a put in your whys. He says you referred him out like a has-been, and never give him no chance to kick at the decision. He says you swiped him and never said why. The slightly awakened interest in the young lady's eyes did not abate. Perhaps it was caused by either the originality,

Starting point is 04:56:58 or the audacity of the snowbird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against the ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue standing disconsolate in the disheveled park and spoke into the transmitter. Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my ideals.

Starting point is 04:57:19 He knows what they have been and what they still are. So far as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones paramount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I declined to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay or doubtful evidence. And that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey the matter.

Starting point is 04:57:52 Tell him that I entered the conservatory that evening from the rear to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I saw him and Miss Ash Burton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and juxtaposition were too eloquent and evident to require explanation. I left the conservatory, and at the same time the rose in my ideal. You may carry that song and dance to your impresario. I'm shy on one word, lady, juxt, juxt, put me wise on that, will you? juxtaposition, or you may call it propinquity, or if you like, being rather too near for one maintaining the position of an ideal. The gravel spun from beneath the boy's feet. He stood by the other

Starting point is 04:58:39 bench. The man's eyes interrogated him hungrily. The boys were shining with the impersonal zeal of the translator. The lady says that she's on to the fact to gals is dead easy when a feller comes spiel and ghost stories and trying to make up, and that's why she won't listen to no soft soap. She says she caught your dead to rights, hugging a bunch of calico into hot house. She sidestepped in to pull some posies and you're with squeezing at the other gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right, all right, but it made her sick. She says you'd better get busy and make a sneak for to train. The young man gave a low whistle and his eyes flashed with a sudden thought.

Starting point is 04:59:18 his hand flew to the inside pocket of his coat, and he drew out a handful of letters. Selecting one, he handed it to the boy, following it with a silver dollar from his vest pocket. Give that letter to the lady, he said, and ask her to read it. Tell her that it should explain the situation. Tell her that, if she had mingled a little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have been avoided. Tell her that the loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered. Tell her I am waiting for an answer. The messenger stood before the lady. DeGent says, he's had to ski bunk put on him without no cause. He says he's no bum guy. And lady, you read that letter, and I'll bet he's a white sport all right. The young lady

Starting point is 05:00:05 unfolded the letter somewhat doubtfully and read it. Dear Dr. Arnold, I want to thank you for your most kind and opportune aid to my daughter lest Friday evening when she was overcome by an attack of her old heart trouble in the conservatory at Mrs. Waldron's reception. Had you not been near to catch her as she fell and to render proper attention, we might have lost her. I would be glad if you would call and undertake the treatment of her case. Gratefully yours, Robert Ashburton. The young lady refolded the letter and handed it to the boy. De Gent wants an answer, said the messenger. What's de word? The lady's eyes suddenly flashed on him bright, smiling and wet. Tell that guy on the other bench, she said with a happy, tremulous laugh, that his girl wants him. End of, Chapter 23, by Courier. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

Starting point is 05:01:08 For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million by O'Henry. Chapter 24, The Furnished Room. Restless, shifting, fugacious, as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red-brick district of the Lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flip from furnished room to furnished room. Transients forever. Transients in abode. Transients in heart and mind. They sing home sweet home in ragtime. They carry their lair and panat in a bandbox. Their vine is entwined about a picture hat. A rubber plant is their fig tree. Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell. mostly dull ones, no doubt, but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests. One evening after dark, a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the 12th he rested his lean handbaggage upon the

Starting point is 05:02:24 step and wiped the dust from his hat-band and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote hollow depth. To the door of this, the 12th house, whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers. He asked if there was a room to let. Come in, said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat. Her throat seemed lined with fur. I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it? The young man followed her up the stairs, a faint light. from no particular source, mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet

Starting point is 05:03:12 that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable, to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air, to lush lichen or spreading mosses that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set therein. them. If so, they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below. This is the room, said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last

Starting point is 05:04:02 summer, no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprouls and Mooney kept it three months. They'd done a vaudeville sketch. Miss Bretta Sprouls, you may have heard of her. Oh, that was just the stage names. Right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It never stays idle long. Do you have many theatrical people rooming here? asked the young man. They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatre district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes. He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance.

Starting point is 05:04:54 He was tired, he said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away, he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his tongue. A young girl, Miss Vashner, Miss Eloise Vashner, do you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely, a fair girl of medium height and slender, with reddish gold hair, and a dark mole near her left eyebrow. No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't call that one to mind. No and always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative.

Starting point is 05:05:48 So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools, and choruses, by night among the audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low, that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He, who had loved her best, had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home, this great water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly with no foundation, its upper granules of today buried tomorrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with the first glow of pseudo-hospitality. hectic haggard perfunctory welcome, like the spacious smile of a demi-rep. The sophisticated

Starting point is 05:06:36 gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a foot-wide, cheap, pier glass between the two windows, from one to two gilt picture frames, and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest reclined, inert upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse of him of its divers tenetry. A polychromatic rug, like some brilliant flowered rectangle, tropical islet, lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay papered wall, there were pictures that pursue the homeless from one house to house. The Huguenot lovers, the first coral, the wedding breakfast, psyche at the fountain.

Starting point is 05:07:27 The mantel's chastly severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery, drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam, cast aside by the rooms marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port, a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck. One by one as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room's procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny fingerprints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contact.

Starting point is 05:08:24 against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond and staggering letters, the name Marie. It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury, perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness, and reeked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised. The couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantle. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time, their home.

Starting point is 05:09:13 And yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. a hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish. The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft shod through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished sense. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent slack laughter, in others the monologue of a scold,

Starting point is 05:09:43 the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. doors banged somewhere, the elevated trains roared intermittently, a cat yowled miserably upon a black fence, and he breathed the breath of the house, a dank savor rather than a smell, a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork. Then suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong sweet odor of Mignonet. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant, and the man cried aloud,

Starting point is 05:10:32 What, dear? As if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odor clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the first time confused and commingled. How could one be preemptorally called by an odor? Surely it must have been a sound. But was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed him? She has been in this room, he cried, and he sprang to rest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her, or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of Mignonet, the owner that she had loved and made her own, whence came

Starting point is 05:11:15 it? The room had been but carelessly set in order, scattered about the flitting, Dempsey dresser's scarf were half a dozen hairpins. Those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood, and uncommunicative of tents. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser, he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope. He hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theater program, a pawnbroker's card.

Starting point is 05:11:57 Two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's black satin hairbow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hairbow also was femininity's demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales. Then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantle and tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became, cognizant of the call. Once again he answered loudly, Yes, dear, and turned, wild-eyed to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and color and love and outstretched arms in the odor of Mignonet. Oh, God, whence that odor! And since when have odors had a voice to call?

Starting point is 05:13:07 Thus he groped. He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in passive contempt, but once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a green entrenched oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant, but of her whom he sought and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace. Then he thought of the housekeeper. He ran from the haunted room downstairs, and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock.

Starting point is 05:13:49 He smothered his excitement as best he could. Will you tell me, madam, he besought her. Who occupied the room I have before I came? Yes, sir, I can tell you again. Twas sprawls and Mooney, as I said. Miss Brett a sprawls, it was in the theatres, but Miss Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a...

Starting point is 05:14:13 a nail over, what kind of a lady was Miss Brolls? In looks, I mean. Why, black-haired, sir, short and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday. And before they occupied it? Why, there was a gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Mrs. Crowder and her two children that stayed four months, and back of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember. He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of Mignonet had departed. In its place was the old, stale odor of mouldy house furniture, an atmosphere and storage. The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow

Starting point is 05:15:11 singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife, he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taught, he turned out the light. Turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed. It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer, so she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats, where housekeepers four gather and the, and the the worm dieth seldom. I rented out my third floor back this evening, said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago. Now did you, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am, said Mrs. McCool with intense admiration.

Starting point is 05:15:58 You do be a wonder for rent and rooms of that kind, and did you tell him then? She concluded in a husky whisper laden with mystery. Rooms, said Mrs. Purdy in her furriest tones, are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool. Tis right ye are, ma'am. Tis by renting rooms we cape alive. Ye have the real sense of business. There may be many people will reject the rent of a room if they be told a suicide has been after dying in the bed of it. As you say, we has our living to be making, remarked Mrs. Purdy. Yes, ma'am, tis true. Tis just one week ago this day that I help ye lay out the third floor back. A pretty slip of a colline she was to be

Starting point is 05:16:43 killing herself with the gas. A sweet little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am. She'd have been called handsome as you say, said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical. But for that mole she had a groin by her left eyebrow. Do you fill up your glass again, Mrs. Cool? End of the furnished room. This is a Libravox recording, all Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Recording by Marion Brown, Toronto, Canada. The 4 million, BioHenry, Chapter 25, The Brief Debut of Tildy. If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant, it is your loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively, you should be interested to know how the other half consumes provisions. And if you belong to the half, to whom

Starting point is 05:17:48 waiters' checks are things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you will get your money's worth, in quantity at least. Bogals is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that Boulevard of Brown Jones and Robinson 8th Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster stand, containing cruits of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet, you may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet, you may expect nothing, though a man should extract a saguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet will his prowess be balked when he comes to rest salt from Bogle's cruits. Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made from the recipe of a nobleman

Starting point is 05:18:44 in India. At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smoldering, and takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks, he makes your change, files your check, and ejects at you like a toad, a word about the weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement, you would better not venture. You are not Bogle's friend. You are a fed, transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go to the devil if you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments. The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and a voice. One of the waitresses was named Aline. She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious, and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was no more necessity for another name at Bogles

Starting point is 05:19:43 than there was for finger bowls. The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this time. Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain feet. Tildy was dumpy, plain, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate infinite. The voice at Boguls was invisible. It came from the kitchen and did not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen voice and contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the waitresses concerning food. Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she donned a few hundred dollars worth of clothes and joined the Easter parade, and had you seen her,

Starting point is 05:20:33 you would have hastened to say so yourself. The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light of her smiles. Every man there, and they were mostly men, tried to make his impression upon her. Aileen could successfully exchange Ray Partee against a dozen at once, and every smile that she sent forth lodged like pellets from a scattergun in as many hearts. And all this, while she could be performing astounding feats, with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, ham, and sausage and the wheat, and any quantity of things. And any quantity of things,

Starting point is 05:21:23 on the iron and in the pan and straight up and on the side. With all this feasting and flirting and merry exchange of wit, Bogle's came mighty near being a salon with Aileen for its Madame Ray Camier. If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the steady customers. Eileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least twice a week, someone took her to a theater or to a dance. One stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened the hog, presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one, known as Freshie, who rode on the traction company's repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the ninth. And the man who

Starting point is 05:22:13 always ate spare ribs and spinach, and said he was a stockbroker, asked her to go to Parcifal with him. I don't know where this place is, said Aileen, while talking it over with Tildy. But the wedding rings got to be on before I put a stitch into a traveling dress. Ain't that right? Well, I guess. But Tildy, in steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented bogals, there was almost a heart tragedy. Tildy, with the blunt nose, the hay-colored hair, the freckled skin, the bag of meal figure,

Starting point is 05:22:46 had never had an admirer. Not a man followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the restaurant, save now and then when they glared with the beast hunger for food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of wit. None of them loudly jollied her of mornings as they did Eileen, accusing her when the eggs were slow and coming of late hours in the company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise ring or invited her upon a voyage to, mysterious distant parcifal. Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat at her table spoke to her briefly with quotations from the Bill of Fair, and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavored accents,

Starting point is 05:23:32 eloquently addressed to the fair Eileen. They writhed in their chairs to gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy that Aileen's poultryitude might season and make ambrosia of their bacon and eggs. And Tildy was content to be the unwood drudge if Aileen could receive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend, and she was glad to see her rule hearts and wean the attention of men from smoking pot pie and lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-colored hair, the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming to us alone. There was a morning when Aileen tripped into work with a slightly bruised eye, and Tildy's solicitude had almost enough to heal any optic. Fresh guy,

Starting point is 05:24:24 explained Aileen last night as I was going home at 23rd and 6th. Sashed up, so he did, and made a break. I turned him down cold, and he made a sneak, but followed me down to 18th and tried his hot air again. Gee, but I slapped him with a good one's side of the face. Then he gave me that eye. Does it look real awful? Till, I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he comes in for his tea and toast at ten. Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration.

Starting point is 05:24:54 No man had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the 24. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one and black one's eye for love. Among the customers at Bogels was a young man, named Cedars, who worked in a laundry office. Mr. Cedars was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice, so he usually sat at one of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled weak fish. One day, when Mr. Cedars came

Starting point is 05:25:33 into dinner, he had been drinking beer. There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When Mr. Cedars had finished his weak fish, he got up, put his arm around Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hide himself to play pennies in the slot machines at the amusement arcade. For a few moments Tildie stood petrified. Then she was aware of Eileen, shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying, you naughty girl. Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss Sly boots? First thing I know you'll be stealing some of my fellows. I must keep an eye on you, my lady. Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits.

Starting point is 05:26:16 In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve's sister of the potent Aline. She herself was now a man charmer, a mark for Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Men had performed for her. a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness and washed, dried, starched, and ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawn, the robe of Venus herself. The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both Sears and Peeped from her brightened eye. Not even Aileen herself had been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant. Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack, she went and stood at Bogle's desk.

Starting point is 05:27:08 Her eyes were shining. She tried not to let her words sound proud and boastful. A gentleman insulted me today, she said. He hugged me around the waist and kissed me. That so, said Bogle, cracking open his business armor. After this week, you get a dollar a week more. At the next regular meal, when Tildy set food before customers with whom she had acquaintance, she said to each of them modestly, as one whose merit needed no bolstering. A gentleman insulted me today in the restaurant. He put his arm around my waist and kissed me.

Starting point is 05:27:42 The diners accepted the revelation in various ways, some incredulously, some with congratulations. Others turned upon her the stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone, and Tildy's heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers of romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in which she had for so long travelled.

Starting point is 05:28:06 For two days Mr. Cedars came not again. During that time Tildy established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons and arranged her hair like Aileen's and tightened her waist two inches. She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Cedars would rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol, he must have loved her desperately, and impulsive lovers are always

Starting point is 05:28:30 blindly jealous. Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol, and then Tildy rather hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal to Aileen and did not want to overshadow her friend. At four o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Cedars came in. There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the restaurant, Tildy was refilling the mustard pots, and Aileen was quartering pies. Mr. Cedars walked back to where they stood. Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon against her heart. A red hairbow was in her hair. She wore Venus's 8th Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver symbolic heart. Mr. Cedars was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.

Starting point is 05:29:27 Miss Tildy, said he, I want to apologize for what I'd done the other evening. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up, or I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't do no lady that away when I was sober. So I hope, Miss Tildy, you'll accept my apology, and believe that I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what I was doing and hadn't have been drunk. With this handsome plea, Mr. Cedars backed away, and departed, feeling that reparation had been made. But behind the convenience screen, Tildy had thrown herself flat upon a table among the butterchips

Starting point is 05:30:00 and the coffee cups and was sobbing her heart out, out and back again to the grey plain wherein travel they with blunt noses and hay-coloured hair. From her knot she had torn the red hairbow and cast it upon the floor. Cedars she despised utterly. She had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince, who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in Fairyland, but the kiss had been made maudlin and unment. The court had not stirred at the false alarm. She must forevermore remain the sleeping beauty. Yet all was not lost. Aileen's arm was around her, and Tildy's red hand groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of her friends. Don't you fret till, said Aileen, who did not understand it.

Starting point is 05:30:49 entirely. That turnip-faced little clothespin of a cedars ain't worth it. He ain't anything of a gentleman, or he wouldn't ever have apologized. End of the brief debut of Tildy.

Classic Audiobook Collection - The Four Million by O. Henry ~ Full Audiobook [comedy]

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