The Poet and the Peasant:

THE OTHER DAY a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communication with nature all his life, wrote a poem
and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the
pleasant chatter of trickling streams. When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his
heart, it was handed back to him with the comment: 'Too artificial.' Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess
County chianti, and swallowed indignation with the slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us
was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction - a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, and who had never looked
upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains. Conant wrote a poem and
called it 'The Doe and the Brook.' It was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had
strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion had been car ried
on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor. But this has very little to do with the story.
Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore
ferryboat, and loped slowly up Forty-second Street. The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging
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.
'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.
'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
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 SELECTED 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. T h e 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 SELECTED 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 MY WIFE AND I PARTED on that
morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the 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. My 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. My 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! Why
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 SELECTED STORIES 301