Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

agglomeration of fields and barns and pastures and outhouses.

“ ‘Whose house is that?’ we asked the landlord.

“ ‘That,’ says he, ‘is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial and horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of our county’s most progressive citizens.’

“After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left, casts the horoscope of the rural potentate.

“ ‘Let me go alone,’ says I. ‘Two of us against one farmer would look as one-sided as Roosevelt using both hands to kill a grizzly.’

“ ‘All right,’ says Andy. ‘I like to be a true sport even when I’m only collecting rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going to use for this Ezra thing?’ Andy asks me.

“ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘the first thing that come to hand in the suitcase. I reckon I’ll take along some of the new income tax receipts, and the recipe for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and the order blanks for the McGuffey’s readers, which afterwards turn out to be McCormick’s reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train; and a pocket-size goldbrick; and a⁠—’

“ ‘That’ll be enough,’ says Andy. ‘Any one of the lot ought to land on Ezra. And say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean, new bills. It’s a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, Civil Service and Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers hand out to use. I’ve had to take rolls from ’em that looked like bundles of microbe cultures captured out of a Red Cross ambulance.’

“So, I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I drove out to the Plunkett farm and hitched. There was a man sitting on the front steps of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond ring, golf cap and a pink ascot tie. ‘Summer boarder,’ says I to myself.

“ ‘I’d like to see Farmer Ezra Plunkett,’ says I to him.

“ ‘You see him,’ says he. ‘What seems to be on your mind?’

“I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself the rollicking lines of that merry jingle, ‘The Man with the Hoe.’ When I looked at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket for buncoing the pushed-back brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shake down the Beef Trust with a mittimus and a parlor rifle.

“ ‘Well,’ says he, looking at me close, ‘speak up. I see the left pocket of your coat sags a good deal. Out with the goldbrick first. I’m rather more interested in the bricks than I am in the trick sixty-day notes and the lost silver mine story.’

“I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas of ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my handkerchief off it.

“ ‘One dollar and eighty cents,’ says the farmer hefting it in his hand. ‘Is it a trade?’

“ ‘The lead in it is worth more than that,’ says I, dignified. I put it back in my pocket.

“ ‘All right,’ says he. ‘But I sort of wanted it for the collection I’m starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.’

“Just then a telephone bell rings in the house.

“ ‘Come in, Bunk,’ says the farmer, ‘and look at my place. It’s kind of lonesome here sometimes. I think that’s New York calling.’

“We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker’s⁠—light oak desks, two phones, Spanish leather upholstered chairs and couches, oil paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hitting off the news in one corner.

“ ‘Hello, hello!’ says this funny farmer. ‘Is that the Regent Theatre? Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve four orchestra seats for Friday evening⁠—my usual ones. Yes; Friday⁠—goodbye.’

“ ‘I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,’ says the farmer, hanging up the receiver. ‘I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don’t-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don’t you think, Mr. Bunk?’

“ ‘I seem to perceive,’ says I, ‘a kind of hiatus in the agrarian traditions in which heretofore, I have reposed confidence.’

“ ‘Sure, Bunk,’ says he. ‘The yellow primrose on the river’s brim is getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the Language of Flowers with deckle edges and frontispiece.’

“Just then the telephone calls him again.

“ ‘Hello, hello!’ says he. ‘Oh, that’s Perkins, at Milldale. I told you $800 was too much for that horse. Have you got him there? Good. Let me see him. Get away from the transmitter. Now make him trot in a circle. Faster. Yes, I can hear him. Keep on⁠—faster yet.⁠ ⁠… That’ll do. Now lead him up to the phone. Closer. Get his nose nearer. There. Now wait. No; I don’t want that horse. What? No; not at any price. He interferes; and he’s windbroken. Goodbye.’

“ ‘Now, Bunk,’ says the farmer, ‘do you begin to realize that agriculture has had a hair cut? You belong in a bygone era. Why, Tom Lawson himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date agriculturalist napping. It’s Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm, you bet. Now, look here, and see how we keep up with the day’s doings.’

“He shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears like the penny-in-the-slot affairs. I puts it on and listens. A female voice starts up reading headlines of murders, accidents and other political casualities.

“ ‘What you hear,’ says the farmer, ‘is a synopsis of today’s news in the New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco papers. It is wired in to our Rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On this table you see the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Also a special service of advance sheets of the monthly magazines.’

“I picks up one sheet and sees that it’s