Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

“Well, you know how it runs on, if you’ve read any of ’em⁠—he slaps the king’s Swiss bodyguards around like everything whenever they get in his way. He’s a great fencer, too. Now, I’ve known of some Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to massacre the said king. And then he has to fight duels with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline-station.

“But the great scene is when his rival for the princess’ hand, Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yataghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This scene is what runs the bestseller into the twenty-ninth edition before the publisher has had time to draw a check for the advance royalties.

“The American hero shucks his coat and throws it over the heads of the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse a slap with his mitt, says ‘Yah!’ to the yataghan, and lands in Kid McCoy’s best style on the count’s left eye. Of course, we have a neat little prizefight right then and there. The count⁠—in order to make the go possible⁠—seems to be an expert at the art of self-defence, himself; and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight done over into literature. The book ends with the broker and the princess doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden-trees on the Gorgonzola Walk. That winds up the love-story plenty good enough. But I notice that the book dodges the final issue. Even a bestseller has sense enough to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain broker on the throne of Lobsterpotsdam or bringing over a real princess to eat fish and potato salad in an Italian chalet on Michigan Avenue. What do you think about ’em?”

“Why,” said I, “I hardly know, John. There’s a saying: ‘Love levels all ranks,’ you know.”

“Yes,” said Pescud, “but these kind of love-stories are rank⁠—on the level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate-glass. These kind of books are wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they pile ’em up on me. No good can come out of an international clinch between the Old-World aristocracy and one of us fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high-school and belonged to the same singing-society that he did. When young millionaires fall in love, they always select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper correspondents always marry widow ladies ten years older than themselves who keep boardinghouses. No, sir, you can’t make a novel sound right to me when it makes one of C. D. Gibson’s bright young men go abroad and turn kingdoms upside down just because he’s a Taft American and took a course at a gymnasium. And listen how they talk, too!”

Pescud picked up the bestseller and hunted his page.

“Listen at this,” said he. “Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:

“ ‘Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth’s fairest flowers. Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only⁠—myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and a sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors.’

“Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He’d be much more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it.”

“I think I understand you, John,” said I. “You want fiction-writers to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn’t mix Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs of India.”

“Or plain business men with aristocracy high above ’em,” added Pescud. “It don’t jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it’s everybody’s impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, too. I don’t see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands of books like that. You don’t see or hear of any such didoes and capers in real life.”

“Well, John,” said I, “I haven’t read a bestseller in a long time. Maybe I’ve had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?”

“Bully,” said Pescud, brightening at once. “I’ve had my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I’ve bought a neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, I’m in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who’s elected!”

“Met your affinity yet, John?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you about that, did I?” said Pescud with a broader grin.

“O-ho!” I said. “So you’ve taken time enough off from your plate-glass to have a romance?”

“No, no,” said John. “No romance⁠—nothing like that! But I’ll tell you about it.

“I was on the southbound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I’d ever laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business,