O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 287

lip, and hair the exact colour of the little orphan's (afterward dis­
covered to be the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His
trousers were corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the
middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You
looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear-holes,
its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged from
a former equine possessor. In his hand was a valise - description of
it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not have carried his
lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one ear, in his
hair, was a wisp of hay - the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of
innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering
to shame the goldbrick men.
Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw
the raw stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall
buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It
had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see
what Coney 'attraction' or brand of chewing-gum he might be
thus dinning into his memory. But for the most part he was
ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like
a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street-cars.
At Eighth Avenue stood 'Bunco Harry,' with his dyed mous­
tache and shiny, good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist
not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He
edged up to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth
at a jewellery store window, and shook his head.
'Too thick, pal,' he said critically - 'too thick by a couple of
inches. I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties
on too thick. That hay, now - why, they don't even allow that on
Proctor's circuit any more.'
'I don't understand you, mister,' said the green one. 'I'm not
lookin' for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to
look at the town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a
whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here
town is five times as big.'
'Oh, well,' said 'Bunco Harry,' raising his eyebrows, 'I didn't
mean to butt in. You don't have to tell. I thought you ought to
tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at
your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow.'
'I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer,' acknowledged the
other.
They went to a caféfrequented by men with smooth faces and
shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks.
288 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
'I'm glad I come across you, mister,' said Haylocks. 'How'd you
like to play a game or two of seven-up? I've got the keerds.'
He fished them out of Noah's valise - a rare, inimitable deck,
greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.
'Bunco Harry' laughed loud and briefly.
'Not for me, sport,' he said firmly. 'I don't go against that
make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The
Reubs haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could
work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that lay-out.'
'Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money,' boasted Hay-
locks. He drew forth a tightly rolled mass or bills as large as a
teacup, and laid it on the table.
'Got that for my share of grandmother's farm,' he announced.
'There's $950 in that roll. Thought I'd come into the city and
look around for a likely business to go into.'
'Bunco Harry' took up the roll of money and looked at it with
almost respect in his smiling eyes.
'I've seen worse,' he said critically. 'But you'll never do it in
them clothes. You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and
a straw hat with a coloured band, and talk a good deal about Pitts­
burg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in
order to work off phony stuff like that.'
'What's his line?' asked two or three shifty-eyed men of 'Bunco
Harry' after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and
departed.
'The queer, I guess,' said Harry. 'Or else he's one of Jerome's
men. Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe
that his - I wonder now - oh no, it couldn't have been real money.'
Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for
he dived into a dark groggery on a side-street and bought beer.
Several sinister fellows hung upon one end of the bar. At first sight
of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exagger­
ated rusticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary
suspicion.
Haylocks swung his valise across the bar.
'Keep that awhile for me, mister,' he said, chewing at the end of
a virulent claybank cigar. 'I'll be back after I knock around a spell.
And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though
maybe you wouldn't think so to look at me.'
Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and
Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle
of his back.
 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 289
'Divvy? Mike,' said the men hanging upon the bar, winking
openly at one another.
'Honest, now,' said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side.
'You don't think I'd fall to that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't
no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if
he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now
where they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to
Providence, Rhode Island. If he's got nine-fifty in that valise it's a
ninety-eight-cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten minutes to ten.'
When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to
amuse he returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gal­
livanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and
evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and sardonic
smiles. He was the oldest of the 'gags' that the city must endure.
He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra-rustic, so exaggerated
beyond the most freakish products of the barnyard, the hayfield
and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only weariness and suspi­
cion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, so fresh and
redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural, that even a shell-
game man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the
sight of it.
Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once
more exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer
one, a twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy.
'Son,' said he, 'run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm
mighty nigh out of chicken feed; I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll
hurry up.'
A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face.
'Aw, watchert'ink! G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself.
Dey ain't no farm clothes yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage money.'
On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-
house. He saw Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold
and virtuous.
'Mister,' said the rural one. 'I've heard of places in this here
town where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a
card at keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old
Ulster to see the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on
about $9 or $10? I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll
buy out a business of some kind.'
The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his
left forefinger nail.
'Cheese it, old man,' he murmured reproachfully. 'The Central
290 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
Office must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie.
You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in
them Tony Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death
Valley has got you beat a crosstown block in the way of Eliza­
bethan scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skiddoo for
yours. Nay, I know of no gilded halls where one may bet a patrol
wagon on the ace.'
Rebuffed again by the great city that is so swift to detect artifi­
cialities, Haylocks sat upon the kerb and presented his thoughts to
hold a conference.
'It's my clothes,' said he; 'durned if it ain't. They think I'm a
hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never
made fun of this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to
notice you in New York you must dress up like they do.'
So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake
through their noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line
ecstatically over the bulge in his inside pocket where reposed a red
nubbin of corn with an even number of rows. And messengers
bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway
within the lights of Long Acre.
At nine o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk
whom Ulster County would have forsworn. Bright tan were his
shoes; his hat the latest block. His light grey trousers were deeply
creased; a gay blue silk handkerchief flapped from the breast
pocket of his elegant English walking-coat. His collar might have
graced a laundry window; his blond hair was trimmed close; the
wisp of hay was gone.
For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a
boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening
pleasures. And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the
easy and graceful tread of a millionaire.
But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes
in the city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man
with grey eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows
from the row of loungers in front of the hotel.
'The juiciest jay I've seen in six months,' said the man with grey
eyes. 'Come along.'
It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West
Forty-seventh Street police-station with the story of his wrongs.
'Nine hundred and fifty dollars,' he gasped, 'all my share of
grandmother's farm.'
The desk sergeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue,
 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES 291
of Locust Valley Farm, Ulster County, and then began to take
descriptions of the strong-arm gentlemen.
When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem,
he was received over the head of the office boy into the inner
office that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J . G.
Brown.
'When I read the first line of "The Doe and the Brook," ' said
the editor, 'I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been
heart to heart with nature. The finished art of the line did not
blind me to that fact. To use a somewhat homely comparison, it
was as if a wild, free child of the woods and fields were to don the
garb of fashion and walk down Broadway. Beneath the apparel the
man would show.'
'Thanks,' said Conant. 'I suppose the cheque will be round on
Thursday, as usual.'
The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can
take your choice of 'Stay on the Farm' or 'Don't write Poetry.'

XLVIII

The Thing's the Play

BEING ACQUAINTED WITH a newspaper reporter who had a couple

of free passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one
of the popular vaudeville houses.
One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man
not much past forty, but with very grey, thick hair. Not being
afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past
my ears while I regarded the man.
'There was a story about that chap a month or two ago,' said the
reporter. 'They gave me the assignment. It was to run a column
and was to be on the extremely light and joking order. The old
man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh
yes, I'm working on a farce comedy now. Well, I went down to the
house and got all the details; but I certainly fell down on that job. I
went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral
instead. Why? Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny
hooks, somehow. Maybe you could make a one-act tragedy out of
it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details.'
After the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the
facts over the Würzburger.
 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES 297

racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches

some of the noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve with­
out in injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum
gets it not far from the neck.
This music and the musician called her, and at her side honour
and the old love held her back.
'Forgive me,' he pleaded.
'Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you
say you love,' she declared, with a purgatorial touch.
'How could I tell?' he begged. 'I will conceal nothing from you.
That night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy.
On a dark street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined
him. His head had struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I
was mad with love and jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambu­
lance take him away. Although you married him, Helen- '
'Who are you?' cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching
her hand away.
'Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always
loved you the best? I am John Delaney. If you can forgive- '
But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the
stairs toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had
known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she climbed
up she sobbed, cried and sang: 'Frank! Frank! Frank!'
Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were bil­
liard balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything
funny in it!

XL1X

A Ramble in Aphasia

M Y WIFE AND I PARTED on that morning in precisely our usual

manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front
door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint
(the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me
take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting
- the level kiss of domesticity flavoured with Young Hyson. There
was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite
custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry
my well-set scarf-pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her
morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea.
298 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to
occur. The attack came suddenly.
For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a
famous railroad law case that I won triumphantly but a few days
previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost
without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor
Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me.
'If you don't slacken up, Bellford,' he said, 'you'll go suddenly to
pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me,
does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case
of aphasia - of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past
and his identity blotted out - and all from that little brain-clot
made by overwork or worry?'
'I always thought,' said I, 'that the clot in those instances was
really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters.'
Dr. Volney shook his head.
'The disease exists,' he said. 'You need a change or a rest.
Court-room, office and home - there is the only route you travel.
For recreation you - read law books. Better take warning in time.'
'On Thursday nights,' I said defensively, 'my wife and I play
cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her
mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be
established.'
That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's
words. I was feeling as well as I usually did - possibly in better
spirits than usual.

I awoke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long
on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head
against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to
myself: 'I must have a name of some sort.' I searched my pockets.
Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I find.
But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large
denomination. 'I must be someone, of course,' I repeated to
myself, and began again to consider.
The car was well crowded with men, among whom I told myself,
there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled
freely, and seemed in the best good-humour and spirits. One of
them - a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odour
of cinnamon and aloes - took the vacant half of my seat with a
friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between
his periods of reading, we conversed, as travellers will, on current
 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 299
affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such sub­
jects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion
said:
'You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in
this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've
never been East before. M y name's R. P. Bolder - Bolder & Son,
of Hickory Grove, Missouri.'
Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will
when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once
babe, parson and parent. M y senses came to the rescue of my
slower brain. The insistent odour of drugs from my companion
supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a
conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further.
'My name,' said I glibly, 'is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a drug­
gist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas.'
'I knew you were a druggist,' said my fellow-traveller affably. 'I
saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of
the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National
Convention.'
'Are all these men druggists?' I asked wonderingly.
'They are. This car came through from the West. And they're
your old-time druggists, too - none of your patent tablet-and-gran­
ule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription
desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and
we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carry­
ing a sideline of confectionery and shoes. I tell you, Hampinker, I've
got an idea to spring on this convention - new ideas is what they
want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle
salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart. - one's poison, you
know, and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the
other. Where do druggists mostly keep 'em? Why, as far apart as
possible, on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side by
side so when you want one you can always compare it with the other
and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?'
'It seems to me a very good one,' I said.
'All right! When I spring it on the convention you back it up.
We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-mas-
sage-cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the
market look like hypodermic tablets.'
'If I can be of any aid,' I said, warming, 'the two bottles of - er- '
'Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and
potash.'
300 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
'Shall henceforth sit side by side,' I concluded firmly.
'Now, there's another thing,' said Mr. Bolder. 'For an excipient
in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer - the magnesia
carbonate or the pulverized glycerrhiza radix?'
'The - er - magnesia,' I said. It was easier to say than the other
word.
Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles.
'Give me the glycerrhiza,' said he. 'Magnesia cakes.'
'Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases,' he said,
presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon
an article. 'I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em
down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and
wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when
they find him he pretends to have lost his memory - don't know
his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on
his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! W h y can't they stay at home
and forget?'
I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the fol­
lowing:

'DENVER, June 12. - Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteri­

ously missing from his home since three days ago, and all efforts to locate him
have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the highest stand­
ing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and
owns a fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the
day of his disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank.
No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was a
man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his happiness
in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappear­
ance, it may be found in the fact that for some months he had been deeply
absorbed in an important law case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Rail­
road Company. It is feared that overwork may have affected his mind. Every
effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man.'

'It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical Mr. Bolder,' I

said, after I had read the despatch. 'This has the sound, to me, of a
genuine case. W h y should this man, prosperous, happily married
and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that
these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves
adrift without a name, a history or a home.'
'Oh, gammon and jalap!' said Mr. Bolder. 'It's larks they're
after. There's too much education nowadays. Men know about
aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too.
 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES 301
When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you
please, and say: "He hypnotized me." '
Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid me with his com­
ments and philosophy.
W e arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to
an hotel, and I wrote my name 'Edward Pinkhammer' in the regis­
ter. As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating
buoyancy - a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possi­
bilities. I was just born into the world. The old fetters - whatever
they had been - were stricken from my hands and feet. The future
lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set
out upon it equipped with a man's learning and experience.
I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I
had no baggage.
'The Druggists' Convention,' I said. 'My trunk has somehow
failed to arrive.' I drew out a roll of money.
'Ah!' said he, showing an auriferous tooth, 'we have quite a
number of the Western delegates stopping here.' He struck a bell
for the boy.
I endeavoured to give colour to my rôle.
'There is an important movement on foot among us Western­
ers,' I said, 'in regard to a recommendation to the convention that
the bottles containing the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the
tartrate of sodium and potash, be kept in a contiguous position on
the shelf.'
'Gentleman to three-fourteen,' said the clerk hastily. I was
whisked away to my room.
The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live
the life of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with
endeavours to solve problems of the past.
It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held
up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan
belong to him who is able to bear them. You must be either the
city's guest or its victim.
The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward
Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew
the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged
and unrestrained. I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in
theatres and roof-gardens, that transported one into strange and
delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls and
grotesque, drolly extravagant parodies upon humankind. I went
here and there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space,
302 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder tables
d'hôte to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of
mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again, where the night life
quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the
millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they
adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for good
cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I
have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And
that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of Licence, but
Convention holds it. Comity has a toll-gate at which you must
pay, or you may not enter the land of Freedom. In all the glitter,
the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law,
unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you
must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the
free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles.
Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately,
softly murmuring palm-rooms, redolent with high-born life and
delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the
waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked,
unchecked, love-making clerks and shop-girls to their crude plea­
sures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway - glis­
tening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway - growing upon
one like an opium habit.
One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose
and a black moustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I
would have passed around him, he greeted me with offensive
familiarity.
'Hallo, Bellford!' he cried loudly. 'What the deuce are you
doing in New York? Didn't know anything could drag you away
from that old book den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little
business run alone, eh?'
'You have made a mistake, sir,' I said coldly, releasing my hand
from his grasp. 'My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me.'
The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I
walked to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell-boy and say
something about telegraph blanks.
'You will give me my bill,' I said to the clerk, 'and have my bag­
gage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where
I am annoyed by confidence men.'
I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned
one on lower Fifth Avenue.
There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one
 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 303
could be served almost alfresco in a tropic array of screening flora.
Quiet and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in
which to take luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there
picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve
caught.
'Mr. Bellford!' exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice.
I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone - a lady of about
thirty, with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as
though I had been her very dear friend.
'You were about to pass me,' she said accusingly. 'Don't tell me
you did not know me. Why should we not shake hands - at least
once in fifteen years?'
I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at
the table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The
lady was philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a crème de
menthe. Her hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it,
because you could not look away from her eyes. But you were con-
scious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look into the
profundities of a wood at twilight.
'Are you sure you know me?' I asked.
'No,' she said, smiling, 'I was never sure of that.'
'What would you think,' I said, a little anxiously, 'if I were to
tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis,
Kansas.'
'What would I think?' she repeated, with a merry glance. 'Why,
that you had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of
course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian.' Her
voice lowered slightly - 'You haven't changed much, Elwyn.'
I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more
closely.
'Yes, you have,' she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note
in her latest tones; 'I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You
haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you
never could.'
I poked my straw anxiously in the crème de menthe.
'I'm sure I beg your pardon,' I said, a little uneasy at her gaze.
'But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten
everything.'
She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she
seemed to see in my face.
'I've heard of you at times,' she went on. 'You're quite a big
lawyer out West - Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles? Marian must
304 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six
months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The
flowers alone cost two thousand dollars.'
She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time.
'Would it be too late,' I asked somewhat timorously, 'to offer
you congratulations?'
'Not if you dare do it,' she answered, with such fine intrepidity
that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my
thumb-nail.
'Tell me one thing,' she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly -
'a thing I have wanted to know for many years - just from a
woman's curiosity, of course - have you ever dared since that
night to touch, smell or look at white roses - at white roses wet
with rain and dew?'
I took a sip of crème de menthe.
I t would be useless, I suppose,' I said, with a sigh, 'for me
to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things.
M y memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I
regret it.'
The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes dis-
dained my words and went travelling by their own route direct to
my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound -
it was a laugh of happiness yes, and of content - and of misery. I
tried to look away from her.
'You lie, Elwyn Bellford,' she breathed blissfully. 'Oh, I know
you lie!'
I gazed dully into the ferns.
'My name is Edward Pinkhammer,' I said. 'I came with the del-
egates to the Druggists' National Convention. There is a move-
ment on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of
tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely,
you would take little interest.'
A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I
took her hand, and bowed.
'I am deeply sorry,' I said to her, 'that I cannot remember. I
could explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not
concede Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the -
the roses and other things.'
'Good-bye, Mr. Bellford,' she said, with her happy, sorrowful
smile, as she stepped into her carriage.
I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel,
a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his
 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES 305
finger-nails with a silk handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my
side.
'Mr. Pinkhammer,' he said casually, giving the bulk of his atten­
tion to his forefinger, 'may I request you to step aside with me for
a little conversation? There is a room here.'
'Certainly,' I answered.
He conducted me into a small, private parlour. A lady and a
gentleman were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been
unusually good-looking had her features not been clouded by an
expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure
and possessed colouring and features that were agreeable to my
fancy. She was in a travelling-dress; she fixed upon me an earnest
look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her
bosom. I think she would have started forward, but the gentleman
arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand.
He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little
grey about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face.
'Bellford, old man,' he said cordially, 'I'm glad to see you again.
Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you
know, that you were overdoing it. Now, you'll go back with us,
and be yourself again in no time.'
I smiled ironically.
'I have been "Bellforded" so often,' I said, 'that it has lost its
edge. Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be will­
ing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward
Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?'
Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman.
She sprang past his detaining arm. 'Elwyn!' she sobbed, and cast
herself upon me, and clung tight. 'Elwyn,' she cried again, 'don't
break my heart. I am your wife - call my name once - just once! I
could see you dead rather than this way.'
I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly.
'Madam,' I said severely, 'pardon me if I suggest that you
accept a resemblance too precipitately. It is a pity,' I went on,
with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, 'that this
Bellford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf
like tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identifica­
tion. In order to understand the allusion,' I concluded airily, 'it
may be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of
the Druggists' National Convention.'
The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm.
'What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it?' she moaned.
306 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
He led her to the door.
'Go to your room for awhile,' I heard him say. 'I will remain
and talk with him. His mind? No, I think not - only a portion of
the brain. Yes, I am sure he will recover. Go to your room and
leave me with him.'
The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went out­
side, still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he
waited in the hall.
'I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I
may,' said the gentleman who remained.
'Very well, if you care to,' I replied, 'and will excuse me if I take
it comfortably; I am rather tired.' I stretched myself upon a couch
by a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair near by.
'Let us speak to the point,' he said soothingly. 'Your name is not
Pinkhammer.'
'I know that as well as you do,' I said coolly. 'But a man must
have a name of some sort. I can assure you that I do not extrava­
gantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one christens
one's self, suddenly the fine names do not seem to suggest them­
selves. But suppose it had been Scheringhausen or Scroggins! I
think I did very well with Pinkhammer.'
'Your name,' said the other man seriously, 'is Elwyn C. Bellford.
You are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from
an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity.
The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, per­
haps, a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady
who has just left the room is your wife.'
'She is what I would call a fine-looking woman,' I said, after a
judicial pause. 'I particularly admire the shade of brown in her
hair.'
'She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance, nearly
two weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes. W e learned that
you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore
Newman, a travelling man from Denver. He said that he had met
you in an hotel here, and that you did not recognize him.'
'I think I remember the occasion,' I said. 'The fellow called me
"Bellford," if I am not mistaken. But don't you think it about time,
now, for you to introduce yourself?'
'I am Robert Volney - Doctor Volney. I have been your close
friend for twenty years, and your physician for fifteen. I came with
Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try,
Elwyn, old man - try to remember!'
 O HENRY - 100 S E L E C T E D STORIES 307
'What's the use to try!' I asked, with a little frown. 'You say you
are a physician. Is aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory,
does it return slowly, or suddenly?'
'Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as
it went.'
'Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?'
I asked.
'Old friend,' said he, 'I'll do everything in my power, and will
have done everything that science can do to cure you.'
'Very well,' said I. 'Then you will consider that I am your patient.
Everything is in confidence now - professional confidence.'
'Of course,' said Doctor Volney.
I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses
on the centre table - a cluster of white roses freshly sprinkled and
fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid
myself upon the couch again.
'It will be best, Bobby,' I said, 'to have this cure happen sud­
denly. I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and
bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc,' I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him
on the shin - 'good old Doc - it was glorious!'

A Municipal Report

The cities are full of pride,

Challenging each to each -
This from her mountainside,
That from her burthened beach.
R. KIPLING.

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee!

There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities' - New
York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. - FRANK
NORRIS.

EAST IS EAST, and West is San Francisco, according to Californi­

ans. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabi­
tants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now,
Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them
why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows
Building. But Californians go into detail.
308 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good
for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy
underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for
conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city
of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a
matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all
(from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his
finger on the map and say: 'In this town there can be no romance
- what could happen here?' Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to
challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and
McNally.

NASHVILLE. - A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the State of Ten­
nessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N.C. & St. L. and the L. & N.
railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational centre in the
South.

I stepped off the train at 8 p.m. Having searched the thesaurus in

vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison
in the form of a recipe.
Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20
parts; dewdrops, gathered in a brickyard at sunrise, 25 parts; odour
of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a
Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick
as pea-soup; but 'tis enough - 'twill serve.
I went to an hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppres­
sion for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an
imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a
bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated.
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly
paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I
assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate
about its old 'marster' or anything that happened 'befo' de wah.'
The hotel was one of the kind described as 'renovated.' That
means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights
and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table
and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great
rooms above. The management was without reproach, the atten­
tion full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the
progress of a snail and as good-humoured as Rip Van Winkle.
The food was worth travelling a thousand miles for. There is no
 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 309

other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en
brochette.
At dinner I asked a negro waiter if there was anything doing in
town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied:
'Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin'
after sundown.'
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the
drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went
forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.

It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted by electricity at

a cost of $32,470 per annum.

As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged
a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with - no, I
saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw
dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring
shouts, 'Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents,' I
reasoned that I was merely a 'fare' instead of a victim.
I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how
those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they
were 'graded.' On a few of the 'main streets' I saw lights in stores
here and there; saw street-cars go by conveying worthy burghers
hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation,
and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water
and ice-cream parlour. The streets other than 'main' seemed to
have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and
domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn
window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable
music. There was, indeed, little 'doing.' I wished I had come before
sundown. So I returned to my hotel.

In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against

Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas. The
latter then sallied forth and defeated the confederates in a terrible conflict.

All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine
markmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-
chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There
were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in
the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-
mouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should
310 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces dis­
tant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging,
the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious,
untouched, they stood. But shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile
floor - the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the
battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit,
some deductions about hereditary markmanship.
Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth
Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from
the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. M y old friend,
A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything:

'Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,

And curse me the British vermin, the rat.'

Let us regard the word 'British' as interchangeable ad lib. A rat

is a rat.
This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog
that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of
great acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness
like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue - he was very
smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a
man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not
used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the
criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addi­
tion of one murder.
I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when
Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough
to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of
squirrel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized
the opportunity to apologize to a non-combatant. He had the
blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had
dragged me to the bar.
I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not
one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat,
the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by
Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do
not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and,
well, order another Würzburger and wish that Longstreet had -
but what's the use?
Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at
Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox
 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 311
I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demon­
strated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of
the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my dis­
taste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her
descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumour
that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.
By this time I began to suspect that he was trying to obscure by
noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I
would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were
down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of
course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for
that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him.
But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an
income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver
money.
When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously:
'If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to
make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a
loafer, and without any known means of support, although he
seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to
be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally.'
'Why, no,' said I, after some reflection; 'I don't see my way
clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on
record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town,'
I continued, 'seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertain­
ment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger
within your gates?'
'Well, sir,' said the clerk, 'there will be a show here next Thurs­
day. It is - I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to
your room with the ice water. Good night.'
After I went up to my room I looked out of the window. It was
only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The driz­
zle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in
a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.
'A quiet place,' I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceil­
ing of the occupant of the room beneath mine. 'Nothing of the
life here that gives colour and variety to the cities in the East and
West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum business town.'

Nashville occupies aforemostplace among the manufacturing centres of the

country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market in the United States, the largest
candy and cracker manufacturing city in the South, and does an enormous
wholesale dry goods, grocery and drug business.