The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger number whom he modestly forbore to count. Therefore a woman loved him. The Kid was twenty-five, looked twenty; and a careful insurance company would have estimated the probable time of […]

On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild goose honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, 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 […]

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty 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 cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. […]

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, […]

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama — Bill Driscoll and myself — when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later. There was a […]

There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise? I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops–parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of […]

JUSTICE-OF-THE-PEACE Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half- way to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly. Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud […]

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded […]

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.” These “places” make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper […]

IN GILT letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub- women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured […]

Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to […]

To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two items bearing the same foreign postmark. One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, absorbed, for a long time. The letter […]

This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and the “Bartender’s Guide.” Relative to the latter, drink shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former, not an elbow shall be crooked. Bob Babbitt was “off the stuff.” Which means–as you will discover by referring to the […]

“Eighty-first street–let ’em out, please,” yelled the shepherd in blue. A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock. John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in […]

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it to us. We […]

Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks. Were I Mr. […]

It is well that, hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro–Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The […]

It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do happen; and one instance must […]

Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman–a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer […]

Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; […]

At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a tailor’s apprentice. Are there tailor’s apprentices nowadays? At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to […]

When “Kid” Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever’s blue-black eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a colleen’s blanderin’ tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 o’clock to-morrow; if you are a […]

We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and blue. We say of princes […]

Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, where a dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring forth a dry Martini. Con Lantry worked on […]

John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what his comrades called Japanits. Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of […]

Harlem. Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy’s flat one flight below. “Ain’t it a beaut?” said Mrs. Cassidy. She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red […]

“The knights are dead; Their swords are rust. Except a few who haze to hust- Le all the time To raise the dust.” Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was–oh, bother […]

Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products […]

A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the […]

One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot […]

The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not–and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia. Grainger, sub-editor of Doc’s Magazine, […]

At the street corner, as solid as granite in the “rush-hour” tide of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the glaciers. He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad- gauged […]

Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, very well! Pass up this sotto voce autobiography of an X if you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John D’s checkbook […]

No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this. Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset “with pitfall and […]

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 waiters’ checks are things of moment, you […]

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 flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever–transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing “Home, Sweet Home” in ragtime; they […]

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 […]

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 […]

The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o’clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh depeopled the streets. Trying doors as he went, twirling his […]

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, 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 […]

The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry top-riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers, justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature. The megaphone man raised his […]

Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favourite 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, with their stagnant blood, are prompt to detect and fly home from the crispness of early […]

The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are goods in transit. […]

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, […]

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall’s Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right–the aristocratic clubman, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones–came out to his waiting motor-car, wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace’s front […]

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. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly […]

The Blue Light Drug Store 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 pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon. The […]

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-style […]

There were 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 suit cases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query […]

In an art 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 favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed […]

When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall draw 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 story-telling somewhat older than the great wall of China. Joe […]

Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. 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 […]

First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman 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 […]

I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, highwayman, and murderer. “But, my dear Knight,” said I, “it sounds incredible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your profession known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds under the very noses of the […]

The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative . A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one’s gloves. That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table […]

At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with […]

The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York City to enter literature has but one thing to do, provided he has studied carefully his field in advance. He must go straight to Madison Square, write an article about the sparrows there, and sell it to the ~Sun~ for $15. I cannot recall […]

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. But they called it humor instead of measles. The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office […]

Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a “wad.” Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a two and a half per cent. city property tax, and a city council that showed a propensity for traveling the back streets of the town. These things came […]

[This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of the theme afterward developed with a surer hand in The Pendulum.] “Find yo’ shirt all right, Sam?” asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paper- back volume for company. “It balances perfeckly, Marthy,” answered Sam, […]

A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south- bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat. Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and […]

Wild hair flying, in a matted maze, Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze; Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze, As o’er the keno board boldly he plays. -That’s Texas Bill. Wild hair flying, in a matted maze, Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze; Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze, As o’er the keyboard boldly he plays. -That’s […]

A Poet sang so wondrous sweet That toiling thousands paused and listened long; So lofty, strong and noble were his themes, It seemed that strength supernal swayed his song. He, god-like, chided poor, weak, weeping man, And bade him dry his foolish, shameful tears; Taught that each soul on its proud self should lean, And […]

Just now when the whitening blossoms flare On the apple trees and the growing grass Creeps forth, and a balm is in the air; With my lighted pipe and well-filled glass Of the old farm I am dreaming, And softly smiling, seeming To see the bright sun beaming Upon the old home farm. And when […]

Lives of great men all remind us Rose is red and violet’s blue; Johnny’s got his gun behind us ‘Cause the lamb loved Mary too. –Robert Burns’ “Hocht Time in the aud Town.” I’d rather write this, as bad as it is Than be Will Shakespeare’s shade; I’d rather be known as an F. F. […]

The lullaby boy to the same old tune Who abandons his drum and toys For the purpose of dying in early June Is the kind the public enjoys. But, just for a change, please sing us a song, Of the sore-toed boy that’s fly, And freckled and mean, and ugly, and bad, And positively will […]

He who, when torrid Summer’s sickly glare Beat down upon the city’s parched walls, Sat him within a room scarce 8 by 9, And, with tongue hanging out and panting breath Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat, Wrote variations of the seaside joke We all do know and always loved so well, And of […]

I’m thinking to-night of the old farm, Ned, And my heart is heavy and sad As I think of the days that by have fled Since I was a little lad. There rises before me each spot I know Of the old home in the dell, The fields, and woods, and meadows below That memory […]

This is the Mexican Don Jose Calderon One of God’s countrymen. Land of the buzzard. Cheap silver dollar, and Cacti and murderers. Why has he left his land Land of the lazy man, Land of the pulque Land of the bull fight, Fleas and revolution. This is the reason, Hark to the wherefore; Listen and […]

[From The Rolling Stone, June 23, 1891.] Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a newspaper of some kind? I have some money and would be glad to invest it in something of the sort, if some one would allow me to put in my capital against his experience. COLLEGE GRADUATE. […]

In the hush of the drowsy afternoon, When the very wind on the breast of June Lies settled, and hot white tracery Of the shattered sunlight filters free. Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward; On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard Of the birds that be; ‘Tis the lone Pewee. […]

“I push my boat among the reeds; I sit and stare about; Queer slimy things crawl through the weeds Put to a sullen rout. I paddle under cypress trees; All fearfully I peer Through oozy channels when the breeze Comes rustling at my ear. “The long moss hangs perpetually; Gray scalps of buried years; Blue […]

My Dear Mr. Steger: My idea is to write the story of a man–an individual, not a type–but a man who, at the same time, I want to represent a “human nature type,” if such a person could exist. The story will teach no lesson, inculcate no moral, advance no theory. I want it to […]

[This story was sent to Dr. Beall of Greensboro, N. C., in a letter in 1883, and so is one of O. Henry’s earliest attempts at writing.] I Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer evening, came […]

From The Rolling Stone, Saturday, March 5, 1894. Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land Office. As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the court house, and on a steep hill before you you see a medieval castle. You think of […]

[This appeared in The Rolling Stone shortly before it “suspended publication” never to resume.] The person who sweeps the office, translates letters from foreign countries, deciphers communications from graduates of business colleges, and does most of the writing for this paper, has been confined for the past two weeks to the under side of a […]

Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to […]

There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls upon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no less obligatory. It was set forth in the program of this tropic vaudeville that it would be made known why Shorty 0’Day, of the Columbia Detective Agency, lost his position. Also that […]

It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of Losada to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout the entire republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen discontent. Even the old Liberal party to which Goodwin, Zavalla and other patriots had lent their aid was disappointed. Losada had failed to […]

There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette. After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses with […]

A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned. The new scheme that his mind […]

Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the Calle Grande, and Mr. Hemstetter’s stock of shoes arranged upon their shelves. The rent of the store was moderate; and the stock made a fine showing of neat white boxes, attractively displayed. Johnny’s friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keogh strolled […]

John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his work, which was to try to forget Rosine. Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a sauce ~au diable~ that goes with it; and the distillers are […]

Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to market early. The little wooden market-house stood on a patch of short-trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a bread-fruit tree. Thither one morning the venders leisurely convened, bringing their wares with them. A porch or platform six feet wide encircled […]

One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the day’s work is done to preserve the […]

At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller, a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur–the wonder was that he could content himself with the petty, remote life of his native country. “It is a whim of Placido’s,” […]

This story has been rewritten and published in “Strictly Business” under the title, The Proof of the Pudding. Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that month and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems […]

EDITORIAL NOTE.–~Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter (known through his literary work as “O. Henry”) this American master of short-story writing had begun for Hampton’s Magazine the story printed below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up writing about at the point where the girl enters the story. […]

“I see,” remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, “that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the street.” “Do you think they would have lynched him?” asked […]

Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many are its lacteal sources; and the clocks’ hands point forever to milking time. Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the bewitched Miraflores did not cause the newly installed patriots to waste time in unprofitable regrets. The government philosophically set about supplying the […]

Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually–but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire. “I’d be king if I […]

Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say “old” Mack; but he wasn’t old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old. “Andy,” he says to me, “I’m tired of hustling. You and me have been working hard together for three […]

Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los Pinos, in New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hour late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the functions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor. Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, […]

‘Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been […]

While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week. On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub […]

Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broadway on their journey for to admire and for to see. If chance should ever […]

Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day he was a clerk in a cotton broker’s office in one of those cold, rancid mountains of oozy brick, down near the levee in New Orleans. By night, […]

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until the very last paragraph. I had it from Sully Magoon, /viva voce/. The words are indeed his; and if they do not constitute truthful fiction my memory should be taxed with the blame. It is not deemed amiss to point […]

It was with much caution that Whistling Dick slid back the door of the box-car, for Article 5716, City Ordinances, authorized (perhaps unconstitutionally) arrest on suspicion, and he was familiar of old with this ordinance. So, before climbing out, he surveyed the field with all the care of a good general. He saw no change […]

I go sometimes into the /Bierhalle/ and restaurant called Old Munich. Not long ago it was a resort of interesting Bohemians, but now only artists and musicians and literary folk frequent it. But the Pilsner is yet good, and I take some diversion from the conversation of Waiter No. 18. For many years the customers […]

In the Gate City of the South the Confederate Veterans were reuniting; and I stood to see them march, beneath the tangled flags of the great conflict, to the hall of their oratory and commemoration. While the irregular and halting line was passing I made onslaught upon it and dragged from the ranks my friend […]

Brown as a coffee-berry, rugged, pistoled, spurred, wary, indefeasible, I saw my old friend, Deputy-Marshal Buck Caperton, stumble, with jingling rowels, into a chair in the marshal’s outer office. And because the court-house was almost deserted at that hour, and because Buck would sometimes relate to me things that were out of print, I followed […]

[This was the last work of O. Henry. The Cosmopolitan Magazine had ordered it from him and, after his death, the unfinished manuscript was found in his room, on his dusty desk. The story as it here appears was published in the Cosmopolitan for September, 1910.] MURRAY dreamed a dream. Both psychology and science grope […]

[Written at the prime of his popularity and power, this characteristic and amusing story was published in Everybody’s Magazine in August, 1906.] I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains […]

[O. Henry thought this the best of the Jeff Peters stories, all the rest of which are included in “The Gentle Grafter,” except “Cupid a la Carte” in the “Heart of the West.” “The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear” appeared in EVERYBODY’S MAGAZINE for July, 1903.] I saw a light in Jeff Peters’s room […]

[Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, December, 1908.] “But can thim that helps others help thimselves!” –Mulvaney. This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving […]

[Originally published in The Black Cat for April, 1902, The Short Story Publishing Co.] The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street. The time was two o’clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until […]

[Originally published in EVERYBODY’S MAGAZINE, June, 1903.] Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken by fate the same day with the Marquis of Borodale. The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limping Doe Creek, Hardeman County, Texas. The cataclysm that engulfed the Marquis took the form […]

[Published in The Cosmopolitan, October, 1912. Probably written in 1904, or shortly after O. Henry’s first successes in New York.] The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar. “I would rather not supply you,” he said doubtfully. “I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an […]

[Published in “Monthly Magazine Section,” July, 1910.] When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often “made” a little town called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a large order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell was one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, […]

[The story referred to in this skit appears in “The Trimmed Lamp” under the same title–“The Badge of Policeman O’Roon.”] The Adventures of an Author With His Own Hero All that day–in fact from the moment of his creation–Van Sweller had conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make […]

[O. Henry wrote this for Ainslee’s Magazine, where it appeared in March, 1903.] PERSONS OF THE DRAMA Mr. PENNE. . . . . . An Author Miss LORE. . . . . . An Amanuensis SCENE–Workroom of Mr. Penne’s popular novel factory. MR. PENNE–Good morning, Miss Lore. Glad to see you so prompt. We should […]

[These two farcical stories about Tictocq appeared in The Rolling Stone. They are reprinted here with all of their local references because, written hurriedly and for neighborly reading, they nevertheless have an interest for the admirer of O. Henry. They were written in 1894.] THE GREAT FRENCH DETECTIVE, IN AUSTIN A Successful Political Intrigue CHAPTER […]

‘Tis midnight in Paris. A myriad of lamps that line the Champs Elysees and the Rouge et Noir, cast their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows gloomily past the Place Vendome and the black walls of the Convent Notadam. The great French capital is astir. It is the hour when […]

[This is the kind of waggish editorial O. Henry was writing in 1894 for the readers of THE ROLLING STONE. The reader will do well to remember that the paper was for local consumption and that the allusions are to a very special place and time.] (It will be remembered that about a month ago […]

[Left unfinished, and published as it here appears in Everybody’s Magazine, December, 1911.] I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the same printworthy incident of the passing earthly […]

[From THE ROLLING STONE.] The snake reporter of The Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice. “‘Can you tell me, Sir, […]

[From The Rolling Stone.] So the king fell into a furious rage, so that none durst go near him for fear, and he gave out that since the Princess Ostla had disobeyed him there would be a great tourney, and to the knight who should prove himself of the greatest valor he would give the […]

[From The Rolling Stone.] “Press me no more Mr. Snooper,” said Gladys Vavasour-Smith. “I can never be yours.” “You have led me to believe different, Gladys,” said Bertram D. Snooper. The setting sun was flooding with golden light the oriel windows of a magnificent mansion situated in one of the most aristocratic streets west of […]

Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide, we were […]

A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer El Carrero swore to […]

The New York Enterprise sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war. For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking dice with the other correspondents for drinks of ‘rickshaws–oh, no, that’s something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn’t earning the salary that his paper was paying him. But that was […]

Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bottom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door opening from one to another. […]

The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields. Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They […]

In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with […]

One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, impressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and “vivas.” The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he would have put […]

Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country. In May nature holds […]

Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs. Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively […]

I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact. I was on a visit to Sam […]

Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it. While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, “Shark” Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John […]

The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses. “The Hearthstone,” he will say, “does not […]

Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager’s gaze. It was midnight, and the restaurant was filled with […]

The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street–the main street of the town of Bethel. Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to […]

The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail: JUDGE: When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one–anyhow, you hear me rattling […]

The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing. At the end of that time it was worth it. Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh […]

At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels […]

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived […]

If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the draughtsmen’s room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A leisurely German–possibly old Kampfer himself–will bring it to you. It will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. […]

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should […]

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust. I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated from […]

“Aunt Ellen,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m a pauper.” “You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear,” said Aunt Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. “If you find yourself temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, […]

There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a saleslady in the gents’ gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings–the kind of gents who buy their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides […]

The honeymoon was at its full. There was a flat with the reddest of new carpets, tasselled portieres and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The wonder of it was yet upon them. Neither of them had ever seen a yellow primrose by the river’s brim; […]

Big Jim Dougherty was a sport. He belonged to that race of men. In Manhattan it is a distinct race. They are the Caribs of the North–strong, artful, self-sufficient, clannish, honorable within the laws of their race, holding in lenient contempt neighboring tribes who bow to the measure of Society’s tapeline. I refer, of course, […]

Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which print could be accomplished. To repeat: Her dress was gray, and plain enough to […]

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does the city man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her throne. He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens his morning paper and sees journalism leave vernalism at the post. For, whereas, spring’s couriers were […]

Robert Walmsley’s descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny struggle. He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The city gave him what he demanded and then branded him with its brand. It remodelled, cut, trimmed and stamped […]

“One thousand dollars,” repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and severely, “and here is the money.” Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes. “It’s such a confoundedly awkward amount,” he explained, genially, to the lawyer. “If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with […]

One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze of the Rubberer. New […]

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference. They tell me that with a large number of the manuscripts that are submitted to them come advices (in the […]

There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his feet brought him directly to Madison Square. Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl–of the old order–young May […]

“We sail at eight in the morning on the Celtic,” said Honoria, plucking a loose thread from her lace sleeve. “I heard so,” said young Ives, dropping his hat, and muffing it as he tried to catch it, “and I came around to wish you a pleasant voyage.” “Of course you heard it,” said Honoria, […]

Ravenel–Ravenel, the traveller, artist and poet, threw his magazine to the floor. Sammy Brown, broker’s clerk, who sat by the window, jumped. “What is it, Ravvy?” he asked. “The critics been hammering your stock down?” “Romance is dead,” said Ravenel, lightly. When Ravenel spoke lightly he was generally serious. He picked up the magazine and […]

At the hazard of wearying you this tale of vehement emotions must be prefaced by a discourse on geometry. Nature moves in circles; Art in straight lines. The natural is rounded; the artificial is made up of angles. A man lost in the snow wanders, in spite of himself, in perfect circles; the city man’s […]

Down South whenever any one perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness everybody says: “Send for Jesse Holmes.” Jesse Holmes is the Fool-Killer. Of course he is a myth, like Santa Claus and Jack Frost and General Prosperity and all those concrete conceptions that are supposed to represent an idea that Nature has failed to […]

“During the recent warmed-over spell,” said my friend Carney, driver of express wagon No. 8,606, “a good many opportunities was had of observing human nature through peekaboo waists. “The Park Commissioner and the Commissioner of Polis and the Forestry Commission gets together and agrees to let the people sleep in the parks until the Weather […]

Miss Posie Carrington had earned her success. She began life handicapped by the family name of “Boggs,” in the small town known as Cranberry Corners. At the age of eighteen she had acquired the name of “Carrington” and a position in the chorus of a metropolitan burlesque company. Thence upward she had ascended by the […]

There is a hotel on Broadway that has escaped discovery by the summer-resort promoters. It is deep and wide and cool. Its rooms are finished in dark oak of a low temperature. Home-made breezes and deep-green shrubbery give it the delights without the inconveniences of the Adirondacks. One can mount its broad staircases or glide […]

From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains, came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel. Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autumnal frosts had spared the longest of all her sister blossoms. In Harmony, when she started alone to the wicked city to study […]

Half of this story can be found in the records of the Police Department; the other half belongs behind the business counter of a newspaper office. One afternoon two weeks after Millionaire Norcross was found in his apartment murdered by a burglar, the murderer, while strolling serenely down Broadway ran plump against Detective Barney Woods. […]

George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, […]

Miss Lynnette D’Armande turned her back on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, because Broadway had often done the same thing to Miss D’Armande. Still, the “tats” seemed to have it, for the ex-leading lady of the “Reaping the Whirlwind” company had everything to ask of Broadway, while there was no vice-versa. So Miss […]

Vuyning left his club, cursing it softly, without any particular anger. From ten in the morning until eleven it had bored him immeasurably. Kirk with his fish story, Brooks with his Porto Rico cigars, old Morrison with his anecdote about the widow, Hepburn with his invariable luck at billiards–all these afflictions had been repeated without […]

If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without aim or purpose. They do […]

Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. Quigg’s restaurant is in Fourth Avenue–that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue–born and bred in the Bowery–staggers northward full of good resolutions. Where it […]

There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to very questionable sources–facts and philosophy. We will begin with–whichever you choose to […]

The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not […]

HABIT–a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent repitition. The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life […]

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he […]

Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man […]

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation car “Raison d’^etre” for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a brief essay on the subject–let us call it: “What’s Around the Corner.” Omne mundus […]

The gods, lying beside their nectar on ‘Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants frm so great a height […]

Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad- on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much interested our […]

So I went to a doctor. “How long has it been since you took any alcohol into your system?” he asked. Turning my head sidewise, I answered, “Oh, quite awhile.” He was a young doctor, somewhere between twenty and forty. He wore heliotrope socks, but he looked like Napoleon. I liked him immensely. “Now,” said […]

The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In the closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old days of war’s alarms! And now, veteran that he was of his country’s strenuous times, he […]

Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad […]

Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York. We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer folks that […]

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the “inside man” of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a “murder mystery” to be […]

New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless, for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on […]

I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At a sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at hand, which happened to be that of dipping the sheep. Now, this process is so different […]

In behalf of Sir Walter’s soothing plant let us look into the case of Martin Burney. They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, sub-contractor, was moored to a tree on the bank. Twenty-two men belonging to the little green island toiled there at the […]

Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling, incognito, with persons of wealth and station. Where else but in those circles can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampered by the conventions that bind the dwellers in a lower sphere? There was a certain Caliph of Bagdad who was accustomed […]

The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was handed in to the city editor. He smiled and held it for a moment above the wastebasket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said: “Try the Sunday people; they might work something out of it.” The Sunday editor glanced the […]

“In the tropics” (“Hop-along” Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me) “the seasons, months, fortnights, week-ends, holidays, dog-days, Sundays, and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that you never know when a year has gone by until you’re in the middle of the next one.” “Hop-along” Bibb kept his bird store on […]

The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual animation. The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that had strayed down to the river’s edge, and, not having a ferry ticket, had to stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were infested […]

If I could have a thousand years–just one little thousand years–more of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of her robe. Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed […]

Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine–which should enable you to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpetually blow. Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the Greater Antilles; and then, hiking across […]

When the war between Spain and George Dewey was over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained as bushwhacker correspondent for my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred- word cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the death of an infant Moro was not considered by the […]

I Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Aesop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solomon is too solemn; you couldn’t get anything out of Epictetus with a pick. The ant, which for many years served as […]

I One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh–well, I had to go there on business. My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have the […]

Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for the first. But, […]

I have always maintained, and asserted ime to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As “Harper’s Drawer” used to say in bygone years: […]

I ROADS OF DESTINY I go to seek on many roadsWhat is to be.True heart and strong, with love to light–Will they not bear me in the fightTo order, shun or wield or mouldMy Destiny? /Unpublished Poems of David Mignot/. The song was over. The words were David’s; the air, one of the countryside. The […]

Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the colour of the mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod–thus dark was he externally; white as the uninked pages of the […]

The spectacle of the money-caliphs of the present day going about Bagdad-on-the-Subway trying to relieve the wants of the people is enough to make the great Al Raschid turn Haroun in his grave. If not so, then the assertion should do so, the real caliph having been a wit and a scholar and therefore a […]

There are few Caliphesses. Women are Scheherazades by birth, predilection, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords. The thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of thousands of viziers’ daughters to their respective sultans. But the bowstring will get some of ’em yet if they don’t watch out. I heard a […]

He compelled my interest as he stepped from the ferry at Desbrosses Street. He had the air of being familiar with hemispheres and worlds, and of entering New York as the lord of a demesne who revisited it in after years of absence. But I thought that, with all his air, he had never before […]

Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially from the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The […]

“You are a man of many novel adventures and varied enterprises,” I said to Captain Patricio Malone. “Do you believe that the possible element of good luck or bad luck–if there is such a thing as luck– has influenced your career or persisted for or against you to such an extent that you were forced […]

The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid’s fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one’s credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border. It happened in old Justo Valdos’s gambling house. […]

For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title of “Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border.” Many fearsome tales are on record concerning the doings of him and his […]

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four […]

Robbins, reporter for the /Picayune/, and Dumars, of /L’Abeille/–the old French newspaper that has buzzed for nearly a century–were good friends, well proven by years of ups and downs together. They were seated where they had a habit of meeting–in the little, Creole- haunted cafe of Madame Tibault, in Dumaine Street. If you know the […]

The west-bound train stopped at San Rosario on time at 8.20 A.M. A man with a thick black-leather wallet under his arm left the train and walked rapidly up the main street of the town. There were other passengers who also got off at San Rosario, but they either slouched limberly over to the railroad […]

On a summer’s day, while the city was rocking with the din and red uproar of patriotism, Billy Casparis told me this story. In his way, Billy is Ulysses, Jr. Like Satan, he comes from going to and fro upon the earth and walking up and down in it. To-morrow morning while you are cracking […]

In the old, old, square-porticoed mansion, with the wry window- shutters and the paint peeling off in discoloured flakes, lived one of the last war governors. The South has forgotten the enmity of the great conflict, but it refuses to abandon its old traditions and idols. In “Governor” Pemberton, as he was still fondly called, […]

But a clerk in the Cut-rate Drug Store was Samuel Tansey, yet his slender frame was a pad that enfolded the passion of Romeo, the gloom of Laura, the romance of D’Artagnan, and the desperate inspiration of Melnotte. Pity, then, that he had been denied expression, that he was doomed to the burden of utter […]

In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail serenely against the wind. The whip-poor-will delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes exactly reversed from those […]

When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and Southern traditions, he was […]

The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You may have a room […]

I Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he could afford to walk–for his health–a few blocks in the direction of his office every morning, and then call a cab. He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend […]

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom […]

These are the directions for finding the I office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting: You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Canons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the […]

Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his secret process, but every four days your hat needs to be cleaned again. Finch is a leathern, sallow, slowfooted man, between twenty and forty. You would say he had been brought […]

Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months’ visit. It is not to be expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, the big Negro man cook, had never been […]

In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the agencies of inquisition — the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the city’s labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction — will be invoked to the search. Most […]

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door). Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many people have married whose […]

Said Mr. Kipling, “The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each.” Even so. New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away for the summer. Three million eight hundred thousand remained as caretakers and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred thousand are an expensive lot. […]

[Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes. His description of the modus operandi should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future “hold-up,” while his estimate of the pleasures of […]

Do you know the time of the dogmen? When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most melancholy sights of urban life. Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff dwellers of New York […]

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New Yorker he probably wouldn’t know whether you were referring to a new political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from “Parsifal.” But out in the Kiowa Reservation advices have been received concerning the existence of New York. A party of us were on […]

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else. The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was sitting on some oceanside […]

I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical college — before he inherited his aunt’s fortune — and had been considered strong in therapeutics. We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom ran up to […]

“Actually, a hod!” repeated Mrs. Kinsolving, pathetically. Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise. “Fancy her telling everywhere,” recapitulated Mrs. Kinsolving, “that she saw a ghost in the apartment she occupied here — our choicest guest-room — a ghost, carrying a hod on its […]

I Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that accompanies the rolling of corn-husk cigarettes. The water hole shone from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped. Dull thumps indicated the rocking-horse movements of the hobbled ponies as they moved to fresh grass. A half-troop of […]

I sat an hour by sun, in the editor’s room of the Montopolis Weekly Bugle. I was the editor. The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the cornstalks in Micajah Widdup’s garden-patch, and cast an amber glory upon my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair, and prepared […]

If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to mind an event in the early ‘nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd seconds, a champion and a “would-be” faced each other on the alien side of an international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed upon the fair […]

At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little ‘dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side. Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, […]

Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleeting glance from the bartender’s eye, and stood still, trying to look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car. Curly’s histrionic powers were […]

“The dispositions of woman,” said Jeff Peters, after various opinions on the subject had been advanced, “run, regular, to diversions. What a woman wants is what you’re out of. She wants more of a thing when it’s scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She likes to be reminded of things […]

Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along the ribs of a bijou range of […]

I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called “Hallo!” at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code, undeniable friends. After […]

In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him that he […]

There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they called the man “Whispering […]

Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica and bay […]

Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man […]

Nine o’clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen’s Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate […]

Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This goodly promontory, the earth–particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand–was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at […]

“A trust is its weakest point,” said Jeff Peters. “That,” said I, “sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, ‘Why is a policeman?’” “It is not,” said Jeff. “There are no relations between a trust and a policeman. My remark was an epitogram–an axis–a kind of mulct’em in parvo. What it means is […]

Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S.C. Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth, heart to heart with the people, […]

Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly, for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope’s novels. But lured, he will divulge. Therefore I cast many and divers flies upon the current of his thoughts before I feel a nibble. […]

“I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of more than fifty millions of dollars,” said I. I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut. “Which same,” said Jeff, “calls for a new deck, and a recitation by the […]

“Many of our great men,” said I (apropos of many things), “have declared that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.” “I know,” said Jeff Peters. “I’ve read in history and mythology about Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale and Mrs. Caudle and Eve and other noted females of […]

“As I have told you before,” said Jeff Peters, “I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy.” “They deserve the compliment,” said I. “I think they are entitled to be called the honest sex.” “Why shouldn’t they be?” […]

“Satan,” said Jeff Peters, “is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: ‘He always finds somebody for idle hands to do.’ “I remember one summer when me and my partner, […]

Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was under discussion. “The only times,” said he, “that me and Andy Tucker ever had any hiatuses in our cordial intents was when we differed on the moral aspects of grafting. Andy had his standards and I had mine. I didn’t approve of all […]

“I hope some day to retire from business,” said Jeff Peters; “and when I do I don’t want anybody to be able to say that I ever got a dollar of any man’s money without giving him a quid pro rata for it. I’ve always managed to leave a customer some little gewgaw to paste […]

“I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics of pure swindling,” said Jeff Peters to me one day. “Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise schemes of money-getting so fraudulent and high-financial that they wouldn’t have been allowed in the bylaws of a railroad rebate system. […]

Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano’s restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of graft. Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch the shipping in East River from the depths of his chinchilla overcoat, and to lay in a supply of Chicago-made […]

The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of a business block and holler, “Whoa, there! Whoa!” like you would in endeavoring to assuage a team […]

I I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that I’d have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws. Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was […]

On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use his cerebrum cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time. Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; […]

I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You’ve been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your ideas about the mysterious stageland […]

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in […]

I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number. First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have free play. A beautiful maiden with […]

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to […]

The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion 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 […]

Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the […]

The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue is a conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters is the Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from speculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling wooden toys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from nutmegs […]

When the inauguration was accomplished–the proceedings were made smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders–it is well known that a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warrriors paid a visit to the big city. The newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats and leather belts that they wear to North […]

The poet Longfellow–or was it Confucius, the inventor of wisdom?–remarked: “Life is real, life is earnest;And things are not what they seem.” As mathematics are–or is: thanks, old subscriber!–the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced […]

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 to take care of my cold. […]

Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred […]