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

The snake reporter of the Post was wending his way homeward last night when he was approached by a very gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and an emaciated face.

“Can you tell me, sir,” he inquired, “where I can find in Houston a family of lowborn scrubs?”

“I don’t exactly understand,” said the reporter.

“Let me tell you how it is,” said the emaciated man. “I came to Houston a month ago, and I hunted up a boarding house, as I can not afford to live at a hotel. I found a nice, aristocratic-looking place that suited me, and went inside. The landlady came in the parlor and she was a very stately lady with a Roman nose. I asked the price of board, and she said: ‘Eighty dollars per month.’ I fell against the door jamb with a dull thud, and she said:

“ ‘You seem surprised, sah. You will please remember that I am the widow of Governah Riddle of Virginia. My family is very highly connected; give you board as a favah; I never consider money an equivalent to advantage of my society. Will you have a room with a door in it?’

“ ‘I’ll call again,’ I said, and got out of the house, somehow, and went to another fine, three-storied house, with a sign ‘Board and Rooms’ on it.

“The next lady I saw had gray curls, and a soft gazelle-like eye. She was a cousin of General Mahone of Virginia and wanted $16 per week for a little back room with a pink motto and a picture of the battle of Chancellorsville in it.

“I went to some more boarding houses.

“The next lady said she was descended from Aaron Burr on one side and Captain Kidd on the other. She was using the Captain Kidd side in her business. She wanted to charge me sixty cents an hour for board and lodging. I traveled around all over Houston and found nine widows of Supreme Court judges, twelve relicts of governors and generals, and twenty-two ruins left by happy departed colonels, professors, and majors, who put fancy figures on the benefits of their society, and carried victuals as a side line.

“I finally grew desperately hungry and engaged a week’s board at a nice, stylish mansion in the third ward. The lady who kept it was tall and imposing. She kept one hand lying across her waist and the other held a prayer book and a pair of ice hooks. She said she was an aunt of Davy Crockett, and was still in mourning for him. Her family was one of the first in Texas. It was then supper time and I went in to supper. Supper was from six-fifty to seven, and consisted of baker’s bread, prayer, and cold slaw. I was so fatigued that I begged to be shown to my room immediately after the meal.

“I took the candle, went into the room she showed me, and locked the door quickly. The room was furnished in imitation of the Alamo. The walls and the floor were bare, and the bed was something like a monument only harder. About midnight I felt something as if I had fallen into a prickly pear bush, and jumped up and lit the candle. I looked in the bed and then put on my clothes, and exclaimed:

“ ‘Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had a thousand.’

“I slipped out of the door and left the house.

“Now, my dear sir, I am not wealthy, and I can not afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors with my board. Corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a coat-of-arms does not warm me. I am desperate and hungry, and I hate everybody who can trace their ancestors farther back than the late Confederate Reunion. I want to find a boarding house whose proprietress was left while an infant in a basket at a livery stable, whose father was an unnaturalized dago from the fifth ward, and whose grandfather was never placed upon the map. I want to strike a low-down, scrubby, piebald, sans-culotte outfit that never heard of finger bowls or grace before meals but who can get up a mess of hot corn bread and Irish stew at regular market quotations. Is there any such place in Houston?”

The snake reporter shook his head sadly. “I never heard of any,” he said. “The boarding houses here are run by ladies who do not take boarders to make a living; they are all trying to get a better rating in Bradstreet’s than Hetty Green.”

“Then,” said the emaciated man desperately, “I will shake you for a long toddy.”

The snake reporter felt in his vest pocket haughtily for a moment, and then refusing the proposition scornfully, moved away down the dimly lighted street.

And it came to pass that a man with a Cathode Ray went about the country finding out and showing the people, for a consideration, the insides of folks’ heads and what they were thinking about. And he never made a mistake.

And in a certain town lived a man whose name was Reuben and a maid whose name was Ruth. And the two were sweethearts and were soon to be married.

And Reuben came to the man and hired him with coin to take a snap shot at Ruth’s head, and find out whom she truly loved.

And later on Ruth came and also hired the man to find out whom Reuben truly loved. And the man did so and got two good negatives.

In the meantime Reuben and Ruth confessed to each other what they had done, and the next day they came together, hand in hand, to the man with the Ray, for their answer. The man saw them, and he wrote two names on two slips of paper and gave them into their hands.

“On these slips of paper,” he said, “you will