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

thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn’t anything more worthwhile around for you to lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you’ll get a drink like that across the bar.

“Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a line of Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a block long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; at the same time he didn’t care whether his money was tainted or fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua had repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and was about to declare war on the United States and England.

“ ’Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and ’twill be by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we’ve been trying. Small lots at a time, we’ve mixed barrels of all the harmful ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have stocked ten bars with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, gins and wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied to the world! ’Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The United States as a nation would welcome a drink of that sort, and pay for it.”

All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, from his latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of a vile, mottled chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, with appropriate epithets, into the waste sink.

“ ’Tis a strange story, even if true,” said Con. “I’ll be going now along to my supper.”

“Take a drink,” said Riley. “We’ve all kinds except the lost blend.”

“I never drink,” said Con, “anything stronger than water. I am just after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. ‘There’s not anything,’ says she, ‘but is better off for a little water.’ ”

When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the back.

“Did ye hear that?” he shouted. “Two fools are we. The six dozen bottles of ’pollinaris we had on the ship⁠—ye opened them yourself⁠—which barrel did ye pour them in⁠—which barrel, ye mudhead?”

“I mind,” said McQuirk, slowly, “ ’twas in the second barrel we opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it.”

“We’ve got it now,” cried Riley. “ ’Twas that we lacked. ’Tis the water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, and get two bottles of ’pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out the proportionments with me pencil.”

An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy’s café. Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the vicinity where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction.

A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness.

“Began fighting each other in the back room,” explained Kenealy to Con. “And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much up. But they’re good men. They’ll pay for everything. Trying to invent some new kind of cocktail, they was. I’ll see they come out all right in the morning.”

Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs.

“Good evening again, Mr. Lantry,” said she. “And is there no news from the weather yet?”

“Still threatens r-rain,” said Con, slipping past with red in his smooth, pale cheek.

Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles.

On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid⁠—a bright golden liquid that seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths.

Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it.

As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the stairs.

“No news yet, Mr. Lantry?” she asked with her teasing laugh.

Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there.

“The news is,” he said, “that we’re to be married.”

“Put me down, sir!” she cried indignantly, “or I will⁠—Oh, Con, where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?”

An Unfinished Story

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.

There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare