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

me. Meteorology is one of my sore points. No man can open up the question of temperature or humidity or the glad sunshine with me, and then turn tail on it without its leading to a falling barometer. I’m going down to see that man again and give him a lesson in the art of continuous conversation. You say New York etiquette allows him two words and no answer. Well, he’s going to turn himself into a weather bureau and finish what he begun with me, besides indulging in neighbourly remarks on other subjects.’

“Summers talked agin it, but I was irritated some and I went on the street car back to that caffy.

“The same fellow was there yet, walking round in a sort of back corral where there was tables and chairs. A few people was sitting around having drinks and sneering at one another.

“I called that man to one side and herded him into a corner. I unbuttoned enough to show him a thirty-eight I carried stuck under my vest.

“ ‘Pardner,’ I says, ‘a brief space ago I was in here and you seized the opportunity to say it was a nice day. When I attempted to corroborate your weather signal, you turned your back and walked off. Now,’ says I, ‘you frog-hearted, language-shy, stiff-necked cross between a Spitzbergen sea cook and a muzzled oyster, you resume where you left off in your discourse on the weather.’

“The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don’t and he comes around serious.

“ ‘Well,’ says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, ‘it was rather a nice day; some warmish, though.’

“ ‘Particulars, you mealymouthed snoozer,’ I says⁠—‘let’s have the specifications⁠—expatiate⁠—fill in the outlines. When you start anything with me in shorthand it’s bound to turn out a storm signal.’

“ ‘Looked like rain yesterday,’ says the man, ‘but it cleared off fine in the forenoon. I hear the farmers are needing rain right badly upstate.’

“ ‘That’s the kind of a canter,’ says I. ‘Shake the New York dust off your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the ice, you know, and we’re getting better acquainted every minute. Seems to me I asked you about your family?’

“ ‘They’re all well, thanks,’ says he. ‘We⁠—we have a new piano.’

“ ‘Now you’re coming it,’ I says. ‘This cold reserve is breaking up at last. That little touch about the piano almost makes us brothers. What’s the youngest kid’s name?’ I asks him.

“ ‘Thomas,’ says he. ‘He’s just getting well from the measles.’

“ ‘I feel like I’d known you always,’ says I. ‘Now there was just one more⁠—are you doing right well with the caffy, now?’

“ ‘Pretty well,’ he says. ‘I’m putting away a little money.’

“ ‘Glad to hear it,’ says I. ‘Now go back to your work and get civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless you’re ready to follow it up in a personal manner, It’s a subject that naturally belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see it handed out in small change in a town like this.’

“So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from New York City.”

For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire, and then all hands began to disperse for bed.

As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice:

“As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about this night. The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear air unite in making it wonderfully attractive.”

“Yes,” said Bud, “it’s a nice night.”

On Behalf of the Management

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until the very last paragraph.

I had it from Sully Magoon, viva voce. The words are indeed his; and if they do not constitute truthful fiction my memory should be taxed with the blame.

It is not deemed amiss to point out, in the beginning, the stress that is laid upon the masculinity of the manager. For, according to Sully, the term when applied to the feminine division of mankind has precisely an opposite meaning. The woman manager (he says) economizes, saves, oppresses her household with bargains and contrivances, and looks sourly upon any pence that are cast to the fiddler for even a single jig-step on life’s arid march. Wherefore her men-folk call her blessed, and praise her; and then sneak out the backdoor to see the Gilhooly Sisters do a buck-and-wing dance.

Now, the man manager (I still quote Sully) is a Caesar without a Brutus. He is an autocrat without responsibility, a player who imperils no stake of his own. His office is to enact, to reverberate, to boom, to expand, to out-coruscate⁠—profitably, if he can. Bill-paying and growing gray hairs over results belong to his principals. It is his to guide the risk, to be the Apotheosis of Front, the three-tailed Bashaw of Bluff, the Essential Oil of Razzle-Dazzle.

We sat at luncheon, and Sully Magoon told me. I asked for particulars.

“My old friend Denver Galloway was a born manager,” said Sully. He first saw the light of day in New York at three years of age. He was born in Pittsburg, but his parents moved East the third summer afterward.

“When Denver grew up, he went into the managing business. At the age of eight he managed a newsstand for the Dago that owned it. After that he was manager at different times of a skating-rink, a livery-stable, a policy game, a restaurant, a dancing academy, a walking match, a burlesque company, a dry-goods store, a dozen hotels and summer resorts, an insurance company, and a district leader’s campaign. That campaign, when Coughlin was elected on the East Side, gave Denver a boost. It got him a job as manager of a Broadway hotel, and for a while he managed Senator O’Grady’s campaign in the nineteenth.

“Denver was a New Yorker all over. I think he