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

fog. He seems to think that Señor Galloway is the man who. I guess they don’t raise 74-inch sorrel-tops with romping ways down in his precinct. Now, Sully,’ goes on Denver, ‘if you was asked, what would you take the little man to be?’

“ ‘Why,’ says I, ‘the barber around the corner; or, if he’s royal, the king of the bootblacks.’

“ ‘Never judge by looks,’ says Denver; ‘he’s the dark-horse candidate for president of a South American republic.’

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘he didn’t look quite that bad to me.’

“Then Denver draws his chair up close and gives out his scheme.

“ ‘Sully,’ says he, with seriousness and levity, ‘I’ve been a manager of one thing and another for over twenty years. That’s what I was cut out for⁠—to have somebody else to put up the money and look after the repairs and the police and taxes while I run the business. I never had a dollar of my own invested in my life. I wouldn’t know how it felt to have the dealer rake in a coin of mine. But I can handle other people’s stuff and manage other people’s enterprises. I’ve had an ambition to get hold of something big⁠—something higher than hotels and lumberyards and local politics. I want to be manager of something way up⁠—like a railroad or a diamond trust or an automobile factory. Now here comes this little man from the tropics with just what I want, and he’s offered me the job.’

“ ‘What job?’ I asks. ‘Is he going to revive the Georgia Minstrels or open a cigar store?’

“ ‘He’s no ‘coon,’ says Denver. ‘He’s General Rompiro⁠—General Josey Alfonso Sapolio Jew-Ann Rompiro⁠—he has his cards printed by a news-ticker. He’s the real thing, Sully, and he wants me to manage his campaign⁠—he wants Denver C. Galloway for a president-maker. Think of that, Sully! Old Denver romping down to the tropics, plucking lotus-flowers and pineapples with one hand and making presidents with the other! Won’t it make Uncle Mark Hanna mad? And I want you to go too, Sully. You can help me more than any man I know. I’ve been herding that brown man for a month in the hotel so he wouldn’t stray down Fourteenth Street and get roped in by that crowd of refugee tamale-eaters down there. And he’s landed, and D. C. G. is manager of General J. A. S. J. Rompiro’s presidential campaign in the great republic of⁠—what’s its name?’

“Denver gets down an atlas from a shelf, and we have a look at the afflicted country. ’Twas a dark blue one, on the west coast, about the size of a special delivery stamp.

“ ‘From what the General tells me,’ says Denver, ‘and from what I can gather from the encyclopaedia and by conversing with the janitor of the Astor Library, it’ll be as easy to handle the vote of that country as it would be for Tammany to get a man named Geoghan appointed on the White Wings force.’

“ ‘Why don’t General Rumptyro stay at home,’ says I, ‘and manage his own canvass?’

“ ‘You don’t understand South American politics,’ says Denver, getting out the cigars. ‘It’s this way. General Rompiro had the misfortune of becoming a popular idol. He distinguished himself by leading the army in pursuit of a couple of sailors who had stolen the plaza⁠—or the carramba, or something belonging to the government. The people called him a hero and the government got jealous. The president sends for the chief of the Department of Public Edifices. “Find me a nice, clean adobe wall,” says he, “and send Señor Rompiro up against it. Then call out a file of soldiers and⁠—then let him be up against it.” Something,’ goes on Denver, ‘like the way they’ve treated Hobson and Carrie Nation in our country. So the General had to flee. But he was thoughtful enough to bring along his roll. He’s got sinews of war enough to buy a battleship and float her off in the christening fluid.’

“ ‘What chance has he got to be president?’

“ ‘Wasn’t I just giving you his rating?’ says Denver. ‘His country is one of the few in South America where the presidents are elected by popular ballot. The General can’t go there just now. It hurts to be shot against a wall. He needs a campaign manager to go down and whoop things up for him⁠—to get the boys in line and the new two-dollar bills afloat and the babies kissed and the machine in running order. Sully, I don’t want to brag, but you remember how I brought Coughlin under the wire for leader of the nineteenth? Ours was the banner district. Don’t you suppose I know how to manage a little monkey-cage of a country like that? Why, with the dough the General’s willing to turn loose I could put two more coats of Japan varnish on him and have him elected Governor of Georgia. New York has got the finest lot of campaign managers in the world, Sully, and you give me a feeling of hauteur when you cast doubts on my ability to handle the political situation in a country so small that they have to print the names of the towns in the appendix and footnotes.’

“I argued with Denver some. I told him that politics down in that tropical atmosphere was bound to be different from the nineteenth district; but I might just as well have been a Congressman from North Dakota trying to get an appropriation for a lighthouse and a coast survey. Denver Galloway had ambitions in the manager line, and what I said didn’t amount to as much as a fig-leaf at the National Dressmakers’ Convention. ‘I’ll give you three days to cogitate about going,’ says Denver; ‘and I’ll introduce you to General Rompiro tomorrow, so you can get his ideas drawn right from the rose wood.’

“I put on my best reception-to-Booker-Washington manner the next day and tapped the distinguished rubber-plant for what he knew.

“General Rompiro wasn’t so gloomy inside as he appeared