Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

earth in six days, and all very good,’ he hadn’t any idea to what extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from him later on.

“When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours’ ride.

“So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our trunk and takes the 6 o’clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North Carolina.

“We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees, and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.

“Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-’em-out Smithers, who used to be the best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the Southwest.

“Old Smoke-’em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like us three were. Old Smoke-’em-out leads us into a kind of summer house in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with his mighty right.

“ ‘Gents,’ says he, ‘I’m glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out of a scrape. I’m getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the summer.

“ ‘Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a lot of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it leaked, and I sends ’em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.

“ ‘And now look up there on the porch, gents,’ says Smoke-’em-out, ‘at them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to cellar with hero worshippers.

“ ‘There’s four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there’s three high school graduates between 37 and 42; there’s two literary old maids and one that can write; there’s a couple of society women and a lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn crib, and I’ve put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society editress of the Chattanooga Opera Glass. You see how names draw, gents.’

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at good luck? You didn’t use to be that way.’

“ ‘I ain’t through,’ says Smoke-’em-out. ‘Yesterday was the day for the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to welcome ’em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train, both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns with pushbuttons.

“I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters⁠—and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight. Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked ’em both back on the train and watched ’em depart for the lowlands, the low.

“ ‘Now you see the fix I’m in, gents,’ goes on Smoke-’em-out Smithers. ‘I told the ladies that the notorious visitors had been detained on the road by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an ice jam and an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When they find out that they’ve been deceived,’ says Smoke-’em-out, ‘every yard of cross barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will pack up and leave. It’s a hard deal,’ says old Smoke-’em-out.

“ ‘Friend,’ says Andy, touching the old man on the aesophagus, ‘why this jeremiad when the polar regions and the portals of Blenheim are conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hall-marked silver salver. We have arrived.’

“A light breaks out on Smoke-’em-out’s face.

“ ‘Can you do it, gents?’ he asks. ‘Could ye do it? Could ye play the polar man and the little duke for the nice ladies? Will ye do it?’

“I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband sophistries and parables when they came out.

“ ‘Listen,’ says Andy to old Smoke-’em-out. ‘Can we do it? You behold before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost, but me and Jeff Peters,’ says Andy, ‘go after the come-ons forever. If you