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

ones were curved and twisted into the style of spring’s latest proclamation.

A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his horse languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the grass and the limestone of rocky roads.

“Hallo, Pearson,” said Daddy Weaver. “Look like you’ve been breaking a mustang. What’s that you’ve got tied to your saddle⁠—a pig in a poke?”

“Oh, come on, Tonia, if you’re going,” said Betty Rogers. “We mustn’t wait any longer. We’ve saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never mind the hat. That lovely muslin you’ve got on looks sweet enough with any old hat.”

Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked at him with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope. He got the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the strings.

“Best I could do,” said Pearson slowly. “What Road Runner and me done to it will be about all it needs.”

“Oh, oh! it’s just the right shape,” shrieked Tonia. “And red roses! Wait till I try it on!”

She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed.

“Oh, don’t red become her?” chanted the girls in recitative. “Hurry up, Tonia!”

Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner.

“Thank you, thank you, Wells,” she said, happily. “It’s just what I wanted. Won’t you come over to Cactus tomorrow and go to church with me?”

“If I can,” said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then he grinned weakly.

Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicles sped away for Cactus.

“What have you been doing, Pearson?” asked Daddy Weaver. “You ain’t looking so well as common.”

“Me?” said Pearson. “I’ve been painting flowers. Them roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven’t got any more paint to spare.”

Springtime à la Carte

It was a day in March.

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.

Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.

Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!

To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.

The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice anyone try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way?

Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a freelance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying.

The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah’s battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg’s Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg’s 40-cent, five-course table d’hôte (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman’s head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week.

The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from “hors d’oeuvre” to “not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.”

Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant⁠—a new bill for each day’s dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.

In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah’s hall room by a waiter⁠—an obsequious one if possible⁠—and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg’s customers on the morrow.

Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg’s patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her.

And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. The hand-organs still played “In the Good Old Summertime,” with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter.

One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom; “house heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated.” She had no work to do except Schulenberg’s menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar on