"And are you happy? . . . satisfied?" I asked her. With a quarter of a mil- 20 lion you would n't have to work down in the States. You must miss a lot." "Not much," she answered. "I would n't swop places with any woman down in the States. These are my peo- 25 ple; this is where I belong. But there are times" and in her eyes smoldered up that hungry yearning I've mentioned"there are times when I wish most awful bad for that Thoreau man to happen 30 along." "Why?" I asked. "You mean to tell me -" I began. Never," she said, and her eyes looked into mine with the straightness of truth. "I had one husband, only him I call the Ox; and I reckon he's still down in Juneau running the hash-joint. Look him up, if you ever get back, and you'll find he's rightly named." 'And look him up I did, two years afterward. He was all she said - solid and stolid, the Ox-shuffling around and waiting on the tables. "You need a wife to help you," I said. "I had one once," was his answer. ""Widower?" "Yep. She went loco. She always said the heat of the cooking would get her, and it did. Pulled a gun on me one day and ran away with some Siwashes in a canoe. Caught a blow up the coast and all hands drowned." Trefethan devoted himself to his glass and remained silent. 'But the girl?' Milner reminded him. You left your story just as it was getting interesting, tender. Did it?' It did.' Trefethan replied. As she said herself, she was savage in everything except mating, and then she wanted her own kind. She was very nice about it, but she was straight to the point. She wanted to marry me. 666 Stranger," she said, "I want you bad. You like this sort of life or you would n't be here trying to cross the Rockies in fall weather. It's a likely spot. You'll find few likelier. Why not settle down? I'll make you a good wife." "So as I could marry him. I do get mighty lonesome at spells. I'm just a woman—a real woman. I've heard tell 35 of the other kind of women that gallivanted off like me and did queer things the sort that become soldiers in armies and sailors on ships. But those women are queer themselves. They're more like men 40 than women; they look like men and they don't have ordinary women's needs. They don't want love, nor little children in their arms and around their knees. I'm not that sort. I leave it to you, stranger. Do 45 only woman that ever affected me that I look like a man?" And then it was up to me. And she waited. I don't mind confessing that I was sorely tempted. I was half in love with her as it was. You know I have never married. And I don't mind adding, looking back over my life, that she is the way. But it was too preposterous, the whole thing, and I lied like a gentleman. I told her I was already married. Is your wife waiting for you?" she asked. 'I said yes. 666 "And she loves you?" 'I said yes. 'And that was all. She never pressed her point. . . except once, and then she showed a bit of fire. "All I've got to do," she said, "is to give the word, and you don't get away *** Kiss me," she said. "Just something to go on and remember." And we kissed, there in the snow, in 20 that valley by the Rockies, and I left her standing by the trail and went on after my dogs. I was six weeks in crossing over the pass and coming down to the first post on Great Slave Lake.' The brawl of the streets came up to us like a distant surf. A steward, moving noiselessly, brought fresh siphons. And in the silence Trefethan's voice fell like a funeral bell: It would have been better had I stayed. Look at me.' We saw his grizzled mustache, the bald 25 30 spot on his head, the puff-sacks under his eyes, the sagging cheeks, the heavy dewlap, the general tiredness and staleness and fatness, all the collapse and ruin of a man who had once been strong but who had lived too easily and too well. It's not too late, old man,' Bardwell said, almost in a whisper. By God! I wish I were n't a coward!' was Trefethan's answering cry. I could go back to her. She's there, now. I could shape up and live many a long year . . . with her . . . up there: To remain here is to commit suicide. But I am an old man- forty-seven-look at me. The trouble is, he lifted his glass and glanced at it, the trouble is that suicide of this sort is so easy. I am soft and tender. The thought of the long day's travel with the dogs appals me; the thought of the keen frost in the morning and of the frozen sled-lashings frightens me -' Automatically the glass was creeping toward his lips. With a swift surge of anger he made as if to crash it down upon the floor. Next came hesitancy and second thought. The glass moved upward to his lips and paused. He laughed harshly and bitterly, but his words were solemn: Well, here's to the NightBorn. She was a wonder.' Everybody's Magazine. July, 1911. WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER (1862-1910) A few men, mostly humorists like Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, are better known by the pen name they assumed than by the patronymic which was their birthright. Among these is William Sydney Porter, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, who is known to the majority of readers only by the name of O. Henry. Like Jack London and many others among the later producers of fiction, he was unschooled. As a boy he was a clerk in his uncle's drug store; at twenty he went to Texas where he saw considerable of ranch life and where at length he found employment in a bank. An unfortunate combination of circumstances for which his biographer, C. Alphonso Smith, declares that he was not wholly responsible, sent him fleeing to South America. After some months of residence there, he returned, surrendered himself to the authorities, was tried for embezzlement and served a term in the Ohio Federal prison. He arrived in New York in 1902 and during the eight years that followed poured out a profusion of short stories that were eagerly accepted by the magazines and Sunday papers. He had served his literary apprenticeship as a humorist. As early as 1887 he was in charge of the humorous column of the Detroit Free Press. Later he published a humorous journal of his own, and still later he was in charge of the Tales of the Town' column of the Houston, Texas, Daily Post. It was while in prison that he turned to fiction, and it was from this unusual literary sanctum that he sent forth his first twelve short stories. The first of these, • Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking,' was published in McClure's Magazine in December, 1899. His stories, so far as materials are concerned. fall into four groups: stories of the SouthWest, stories of his native Southland, stories of South America, and stories of New York City. It was in the last that he did his most distinctive work. First of all he was a humorist, and secondly he was an artisan who had carefully learned all the technique of his profession as story-teller. But these two facts by no means explain his success: whatever one may think about his work and his influence, one is forced to admit that he was a genius, original, and startling, the creator of a new genre. His devices for mystifying his reader, for entertaining him are all his own. His success was phenomenal. Since the appearance of his first volume Cabbages and Kings in 1904 over two million copies of his books have been sold in America alone. A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1 Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities '-New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco.- Frank Norris. East is East, and West is San Fran- 10 cisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; 15 but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail. 1 Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co. Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as 5 they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: In this town there can be no romance what could happen here?' Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally. NASHVILLE.-A city, port of delivery, and 20 the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational center in the South. I stepped off the train at 8 P. M. Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe. Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup; but 't is enough 't will serve. 5 10 I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and 20 giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated. I was sleepy and tired, so when I got 25 to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old marster' or anything that 30 happened befo' de wah.' The hotel was one of the kind described as renovated.' That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the 35 lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, 40 the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such 45 chicken livers en brochette. At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied. Well, boss, I don't really reckon 50 there's anything at all doin' after sundown.' Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I 55 went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there. It is built on undulating grounds; and the I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they did n't until they were graded.' On a few of the main streets' I saw lights in stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a sodawater and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than 'main' seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little doing.' I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel. In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas. The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict. All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so widemouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nash ville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship. Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything: Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip, And curse me the British vermin, the rat. of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent 5 back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod. By this time I began to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact 10 that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another Let us regard the word 'British as 15 serving was obligatory. And when I had interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat. This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with 20 a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue - he was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. 25 I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder. 30 I happened to be standing within five. feet of a cuspidor when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squir-35 rel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the 40 bar. paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver money. When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally.' 'Why, no,' said I, after some reflection; 'I don't see my way clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town,' I continued, seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?' 'Well, sir,' said the clerk, 'there will be a show here next Thursday. It is I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night.' I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the num- 45 ber of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Würzburger 50 lights, as far apart as currants in a cake and wish that Longstreet had-but sold at the Ladies' Exchange. what's the use? Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort Sumter reechoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim A quiet place,' I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. 'Noth55 ing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town.' |