Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

man, “but you said something a while ago in reference to this liquid refreshment, which I perceive is already finished.”

The Post Man stammered, hesitated, felt in his vest pocket once more and then arose, and taking the saloon man aside, whispered with him for about fifteen minutes. The result was that the saloon man brought another bottle of wine, but with a very bad grace, slamming the bottle and glasses upon the table in an ill-bred and ungracious manner.

The ragged man smiled, filled the glasses, and then, his face taking on a deep frown as his mind reverted to his story, he continued.

“I turned first to the local page. The first item that met my eyes was this:

“ ‘Colonel J. Henry Gwinn, the administrator of the Perkins estate, has robbed the family of the deceased of over $75,000. The heirs will bring suit for that amount at an early date.’

“I remembered that the man who fired at me looked a good deal like Colonel J. Henry Gwinn. The next item was as follows:

“ ‘A certain city alderman residing not many miles from No. 1204 West Thirty-Second Street, has recently built a $10,000 residence. Votes in the city council must be getting higher.’

“There were about fifteen items of the same kind and every one of them was a dead shot for big damages. I glanced at the society columns and saw a few harmless little squibs like the following:

‘Mrs. General Crowder gave a big ball last night on Johnson Avenue. It does seem like she would get a divorce from that ticket agent in Kansas City before she tried to cut such a swell as old Crowder’s wife.’

“ ‘Henry Baumgarten beat his wife again last night.’

“ ‘The Ladies’ Histrionic Society met last evening over Klein’s music store. Miss Sadie Dodson was overcome by the heat and was taken home in a hack. Heat! That’s a new name for it.’

“These are some of the least objectionable items. There were some that made my hair rise slowly on my head as I read them.

“Mechanically I turned to the editorial page, thinking it hardly possible there could be anything wrong with it. The first article charged every city and county official with corruption in office, calling them by name, and wound up by offering to give $10,000 to any charity fund if the paper did not prove every charge within ten days.

“I crept through the lot, knocked a board off the next fence and made my way to the back stairway of the office. I found two of my reporters cursing and kicking in the back yard. One of them was in a heap of soft coal dust and the other was hanging by his coat tail on a picket fence. Somebody had thrown them out the window.

“Sick at heart I crept upstairs to the editorial rooms. There was considerable noise going on. I went in easy as I could and looked around. My $50 editorial writer was in a corner with half a chair in his hands defending himself manfully against a quorum of the city council. He had laid out three of them and was putting up a great fight. The city editor was lying on the floor with four men sitting on him, and a large, angry German was trying to punch the dramatic editor off the top of the book case with a piece of gas pipe.

“It is enough to discourage any man to have a staff that is paying him $1,400 per month treated that way.

“I went into my private office, and the enraged public followed me there. I knew it was no use to argue with them, so I pulled out my checkbook and tried to compromise. When all the money I had in the bank was exhausted, and another batch of infuriated citizens came in, I gave up in despair.

“At 11 o’clock the business office force came up in a body and resigned. At 12 o’clock damage suits were filed against the paper to the amount of $200,000, and I knew every one of them was good for a judgment. I went downstairs and got about nine drinks and came back. I met the editorial writer on the stairs, and I hit him on the point of the chin without saying a word. He still held one leg of the chair in his hand, and he swiped me over the head with it and ran. When I got inside I found that the dramatic critic was about to win the day. He was a college man and a great football player. He had thrashed the big German and had pulled the four citizens off the city editor, and they were waging great battle with the foe. Just then the society editor dashed into the room barefooted, in his shirt and trousers, and I heard a tremendous screeching and chattering, as if a thousand parrots were talking at once.

“ ‘Run!’ he gasped out. ‘The women are coming.’

“I looked out the window and saw that the sidewalk was full of them. I made a break for a back window, jumped off onto a shed, and never stopped until I was a mile out of town. That was the end of Binkley’s Practical School of Journalism. I have been tramping about the country ever since.

“The fellow I attacked on the street today was a special Houston correspondent I had engaged. I had a little grudge against him on account of the first communication he sent the paper. I gave him carte blanche to send in what he thought best, and he wired us 40,000 words the first day about the mockingbirds singing in the trees by the courthouse, while the snow was three feet deep in Dakota. Do you not think I have had some hard luck?”

“I must tell you,” said the Post Man, “that I don’t believe your story at all.”

The ragged man replied sadly and reproachfully: “Did I not pay my last dollar for refreshments while telling it to