Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin banqueting canister isn’t exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke like Cobden or some wise guy like old Ben Franklin to sashay up to the front and biff the nigger’s head with the baseball. Do you catch my smoke? What?”

Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently.

“Please come on,” he said. “Let’s go see something. This isn’t what you want.”

“Indeed, it is,” I said resisting. “This tough talk is the very stuff that counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower order of people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the Bowery variety of slang?”

“Oh, well,” said Rivington, giving it up, “I’ll tell you straight. That’s one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or two at the club. It’s a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to is one of New York’s famous social economists. Now will you come on. You can’t use that, you know.”

“No,” I agreed; “I can’t use that. Would you call that typical of New York?”

“Of course not,” said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you see the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery slang I’ll take you down where you’ll get your fill of it.”

“I would like it,” I said; “that is, if it’s the real thing. I’ve often read it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be dangerous to go unprotected among those characters?”

“Oh, no,” said Rivington; “not at this time of night. To tell the truth, I haven’t been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as well as I do Broadway. We’ll look up some of the typical Bowery boys and get them to talk. It’ll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar dialect that you won’t hear anywhere else on earth.”

Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second Street car and then south on the Third Avenue line.

At Houston Street we got off and walked.

“We are now on the famous Bowery,” said Rivington; “the Bowery celebrated in song and story.”

We passed block after block of “gents’ ” furnishing stores⁠—the windows full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows were neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks.

“In some ways,” said I, “this reminds me of Kokomono, Ind., during the peach-crating season.”

Rivington was nettled.

“Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows,” said he, “with a large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its reputation.”

“You make impossible conditions,” said I, coldly.

By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.

“Hallo, Donahue!” said my guide. “How goes it? My friend and I are down this way looking up a bit of local colour. He’s anxious to meet one of the Bowery types. Can’t you put us on to something genuine in that line⁠—something that’s got the colour, you know?”

Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponderously, his florid face full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street.

“Sure!” he said huskily. “Here comes a lad now that was born on the Bowery and knows every inch of it. If he’s ever been above Bleecker Street he’s kept it to himself.”

A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his club.

“Evening, Kerry,” he said. “Here’s a couple of gents, friends of mine, that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel ’em off a few yards?”

“Certainly, Donahue,” said the young man, pleasantly. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on his beat.

“This is the goods,” whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow. “Look at his jaw!”

“Say, cull,” said Rivington, pushing back his hat, “wot’s doin’? Me and my friend’s taking a look down de old line⁠—see? De copper tipped us off dat you was wise to de bowery. Is dat right?”

I could not help admiring Rivington’s power of adapting himself to his surroundings.

“Donahue was right,” said the young man, frankly; “I was brought up on the Bowery. I have been newsboy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of ‘toughs,’ bartender, and a ‘sport’ in various meanings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service of my friend Donahue’s friends.”

Rivington seemed ill at ease.

“I say,” he said⁠—somewhat entreatingly, “I thought⁠—you’re not stringing us, are you? It isn’t just the kind of talk we expected. You haven’t even said ‘Hully gee!’ once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?”

“I am afraid,” said the Bowery boy, smilingly, “that at some time you have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The ‘argot’ to which you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your literary ‘discoverers’ who invaded the unknown wilds below Third Avenue and put strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new ‘dialect’ perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park⁠—pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who could not draw