Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

some half-dozen young men were in the parlor paying her attentions, she volunteered to recite. She has not the least dramatic talent, but she stood up and went through with a long poem, with many gestures and much rolling of eyes and pressing of her hands to her heart. She did it very badly, and without the least regard for the rules of elocution or expression.

Later on, her friend Marian asked her how her effort was received.

“Oh,” she said, “they all crowded around me, and appeared to be filled with the utmost delight. Tom, and Henry, and Jim, and Charlie were in raptures. They said that Mary Anderson could not have equaled it. They said they had never heard anything spoken with such dramatic effect and feeling.”

“Everyone praised you?” asked Marian.

“All but one. Mr. Judson sat back in his chair and never applauded at all. He told me after I had finished that he was afraid I had very little dramatic talent at all.”

“Now,” said Marian. “You know who is sincere and genuine?”

“Yes,” said the beautiful girl, with eyes shining with enthusiasm. “The test was a complete success. I detest that odious Judson, and I’m going to begin studying for the stage right away.”

How It Started

“You had better move your chair a little further back,” said the old resident. “I saw one of the Judkinses go into the newspaper office just now with his gun, and there may be some shooting.”

The reporter, who was in the town gathering information for the big edition, got his chair quickly behind a pillar of the hotel piazza, and asked what the trouble was about.

“It’s an old feud of several years’ standing,” said the old resident, “between the editor and the Judkins family. About every two months they get to shooting at one another. Everybody in town knows about it. This is the way it started. The Judkinses live in another town, and one time a good-looking young lady of the family came here on a visit to a Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown gave her a big party⁠—a regular high-toned affair, to get the young men acquainted with her. One young fellow fell in love with her, and sent a little poem to our paper, the Observer. This is the way it read:

To Miss Judkins
(Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.)

We love to see her wear
A gown of simple white.
Nothing but a rose in her hair
At Mrs. Brown’s that night,
The fairest of them all
She stood, with blushes red,
While bright the gaslight shone
Upon her lovely head.

“That poem, now, was what started the feud.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with the poem,” said the reporter. “It seems a little crude, but contains nothing to give offense.”

“Well,” said the old resident, “the poem was all right as it was written. The trouble originated in the newspaper office. The morning after it was sent in the society editress got hold of it first. She is an old maid and she didn’t think the second line quite proper, so she ran her pencil through it. Then the advertising manager prowled around through the editor’s mail as usual, and read the poem. Old Brown owed the office $17 back subscription, and the advertising manager struck out the fourth line. He said old Brown shouldn’t get any free advertising in that office.

“Then the editor’s wife happened to come in to see if there was any square, perfumed envelopes among his mail, and she read it. She was at the Brown’s party herself, and when she read the line that proclaimed Miss Judkins ‘The fairest of them all’ she turned up her nose and scratched that out.

“Then the editor himself got hold of it. He is heavily interested in our new electric light plant, and his blue pencil jumped on the line ‘While bright the gaslight shone’ in a hurry. Later on one of the printers came in and grabbed a lot of copy, and this poem was among it. You know what printers will do if you give them a chance, so here is the way the poem came out in the paper:

To Miss Judkins
(Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.)

We loved to see her wear
Nothing but a rose in her hair.
She stood with blushes red
Upon her lovely head.

“And you see,” continued the old resident, “the Judkinses got mad.”

His Dilemma

An old man with long white chin whiskers and a derby hat two sizes small, dropped into a Main Street drug store yesterday and beckoned a clerk over into a corner. He was about sixty-five years old, but he wore a bright red necktie, and was trying to smoke a very bad and strong cigar in as offhand a style as possible.

“Young man,” he said, “you lemme ask you a few questions, and I’ll send you a big watermelon up from the farm next summer. I came to Houston to see this here carnival, and do some tradin’. Right now, before I go any further, have you got any hair dye?”

“Plenty of it.”

“Any of this real black shiny dye that looks blue in the sunshine?”

“Yes.”

“All right then, now I’ll proceed. Do you know anything about this here Monroe docterin’?”

“Well, yes, something.”

“And widders; do you feel able to prognosticate a few lines about widders?”

“I can’t tell what you are driving at,” said the clerk. “What is it you want to know?”

“I’m gettin’ to the pint. Now there’s hair dye, Monroe docterin’, and widders. Got them all down in your mind?”

“Yes, but⁠—”

“Jest hold on, now, and I’ll explain. There’s the unhappiest fat and sassy widder moved into the adjinin’ farm to me, you ever see, and if I knows the female heart she has cast eyes of longin’ upon yours truly. Now if I dyes these here white whiskers I ketches her. By blackin’ said whiskers and insertin’ say four fingers of rye where it properly belongs, I kicks up my heels and I waltzes up and salutes the widder like a calf of forty.”

“Well,” said