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

shotgun and a yellow dog. I’ve got money enough to do it. And I’ll smell the salt wind all day when it blows from the sea and the pine odor when it blows from the land. And, of course, I’ll write plays until I have a trunk full of ’em on hand.

“And the next thing and the biggest thing I’ll do will be to buy that duck-farm next door. Few people understand ducks. I can watch ’em for hours. They can march better than any company in the National Guard, and they can play ‘follow my leader’ better than the entire Democratic party. Their voices don’t amount to much, but I like to hear ’em. They wake you up a dozen times a night, but there’s a homely sound about their quacking that is more musical to me than the cry of ‘Fresh strawber-rees!’ under your window in the morning when you want to sleep.

“And,” I went on, enthusiastically, “do you know the value of ducks besides their beauty and intelligence and order and sweetness of voice? Picking their feathers gives you an unfailing and never-ceasing income. On a farm that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one year. Think of that! And the ones shipped to the market will bring in more money than that. Yes, I am for the ducks and the salt breeze coming over the bay. I think I shall get a Chinaman cook, and with him and the dog and the sunsets for company I shall do well. No more of this dull, baking, senseless, roaring city for me.”

Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed.

“I am going to begin one of my plays tonight,” I said, “so I must be going.” And with that I took my departure.

A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, asking me to call at four in the afternoon.

I did.

“You have been very good to me,” she said, hesitatingly, “and I thought I would tell you. I am going to leave the stage.”

“Yes,” said I, “I suppose you will. They usually do when there’s so much money.”

“There is no money,” she said, “or very little. Our money is almost gone.”

“But I am told,” said I, “that he has something like two or ten or thirty millions⁠—I have forgotten which.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “I will not pretend that I do not. I am not going to marry Mr. North.”

“Then why are you leaving the stage?” I asked, severely. “What else can you do to earn a living?”

She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her eyes yet as she spoke.

“I can pick ducks,” she said.

We sold the first year’s feathers for $350.

The Venturers

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation car “Raison d’Être” for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a brief essay on the subject⁠—let us call it: “What’s Around the Corner.”

Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est⁠—men who wear rubbers and pay poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways.

Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the dictionaries. To the knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance⁠—perfect because vague and dream-born⁠—that we see in our teacups at breakfast while we growl over our chops and toast.

The “Venturer” is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. That is the difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating the forbidden fruit was the best record ever made by a Venturer. Trying to prove that it happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome. To be either is disturbing to the cosmogony of creation. So, as bracket-sawed and city-directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide the children and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker under the flickering gas jet at the coolest window and scan this little tale of two modern followers of Chance.

“Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?” asked Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate the interior of the Powhatan Club.

“Doubtless,” said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room.

Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by someone else. (I had written that “somebody”; but an A.D.T. boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case.)

Forster’s favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of Chance. He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost