Short Fiction - O. Henry (books recommended by bts .TXT) 📗

longest they have ever made.

Senior Partner: Ship ’em C.O.D.

“Well! how are they coming?”

“I’m getting a move on me,” said the checkerboard.

“And I’m getting a head in the world,” said the piece of sensation news.

“I’m dead in it,” said the spoiled bivalve at the clambake.

“I think I shall get along well,” said the artesian water company.

“And my work is all being cut out for me,” said the grape seed.

Speaking of Big Winds

The man with the bronzed face and distinguished air was a great traveler, and had just returned from a tour around the world. He sat around the stove at the Lamlor, and four or five drummers and men about town listened with much interest to his tales.

He was speaking of the fierce wind storms that occur in South America, when the long grass of the pampas is interlaced and blown so flat by the hurricanes that it is cut into strips and sold for the finest straw matting.

He spoke also of the great intelligence of the wild cattle which, he said, although blown about by the furious hurricanes and compelled to drift for days before the drenching floods of the rainy season, never lost their direction by day or night.

“How do they guide themselves?” asked the Topeka flour drummer.

“Oh, by their udders, of course,” said the traveler.

“I don’t see anything to laugh about,” said the Kansas man, “but speaking of big winds we have something of the kind in our state. You’ve all heard of the Kansas cyclones, but very few of you know what they are. We have plenty of them and some are pretty hard ones, too, but most of the stories you read about them are exaggerated. Still a good, full-grown cyclone can carry things pretty high sometimes. About the only thing they spend their fury upon in vain is a real estate agent. I know a fellow, named Bob Long, who was a real estate hustler from away back. Bob had bought up a lot of prairie land cheap, and was trying to sell it in small tracts for farms and truck patches. One day he took a man in his buggy out to this land and was showing it to him. ‘Just look at it,’ he said. ‘It is the finest, richest piece of ground in Kansas. Now it’s worth more, but to start things off, and get improvements to going, I’ll sell you 160 acres of this land at $40 per⁠—!’

“Before Bob could say ‘acre,’ a cyclone came along, and the edge of it took Bob up straight into the air. He went up till he was nothing but a black speck and the man stood there and watched him till he was out of sight.

“The man liked the land, so he bought it from Bob’s heirs, and pretty soon a railroad cut across it, and a fine flourishing town sprang up on the spot.

“Well, this man was standing on the sidewalk one day thinking of how lucky he had been, and about Bob’s unfortunate fate, when he happened to look up and saw something falling. It grew larger and larger, and finally it turned out to be a man.

“He came tumbling down, struck the sidewalk with a sound you could have heard four blocks away, bounded up at least ten feet, came down on his feet and shouted ‘Front foot!’

“It was Bob Long. His beard was a little grayer and longer, but he was all business still. He had noticed the changes that had taken place while he was coming down, and when he finished the sentence that he began when the cyclone took him up, he altered his language accordingly. Bob was a hustler. Sometime after that he⁠—”

“Never mind,” said the traveler. “Let’s go in and take something on this one first. I claim the usual time before the next round.”

An Original Idea

There is a lady in Houston who is always having original ideas.

Now, this is a very reprehensible thing in a woman and should be frowned down. A woman should find out what her husband thinks about everything and regulate her thoughts to conform with his. Of course, it would not be so bad if she would keep her independent ideas to herself, but who ever knew a woman to do that?

This lady in particular had a way of applying her original ideas to practical use, and her family, and even neighbors, were kept constantly on the lookout for something startling at her hands.

One day she read in the columns of an Austin newspaper an article that caused her at once to conceive an original idea. The article called attention to the well-known fact that if men’s homes supplied their wants and desires they would have no propensity to wander abroad, seeking distraction in gilded saloons. This struck the lady as a forcible truth, and she boldly plagiarized the idea and resolved to put it into immediate execution as an original invention.

That night when her husband came home he noticed a curtain stretched across one end of the sitting room, but he had so long been used to innovations of all sorts that he was rather afraid to investigate.

It might be stated apropos to the story that the lady’s husband was addicted to the use of beer.

He not only liked beer, but he fondly loved beer. Beer never felt the slightest jealousy when this gentleman was out of its sight.

After supper the lady said: “Now, Robert, I have a little surprise for you. There is no need of your going downtown tonight, as you generally do, because I have arranged our home so that it will supply all the pleasures that you go out to seek.”

With that she drew the curtain and Robert saw that one end of the sitting room had been fitted up as a bar⁠—or rather his wife’s idea of a bar.

A couple of strips of the carpet had been taken up and sawdust strewn on