1 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

PAGE 1
I The Gift of the Magi
ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. And sixty cents
of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the
silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times
Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be
Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch
and howl. So della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made
up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the
second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8per week. It did not
exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the
mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an
electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining
thereunto was a card bearing the name ‘Mr. James Dillingham Young.’
The ‘Dillingham’ had been flung to the breeze during a former period of
prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the
income was shrunk to $20, the letters of ‘Dillingham’ looked blurred, as though
they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But
whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above
he was called ‘Jim’ and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young,
already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She
stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in
a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87
with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for
PAGE 2
months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had
been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a
present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for
something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling – something just a
little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have
seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by
observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly
accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
2 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes
were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds.
Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his
father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the Queen of
Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out
the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts.
Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the
basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see
him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade
of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment
for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered
for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts
and the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down
the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: ‘Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.’
One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too
white, chilly, hardly looked the ‘Sofronie.’
‘will you buy my hair?’ asked Della.
‘I buy hair,’ said Madame. ‘Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks
of it.’
Down rippled the brown cascade.
‘Twenty dollars,’ said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
PAGE 3
‘Give it to me quick,’ said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was
no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It
was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its
value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation – as all good
things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she
knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value – the
description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and
she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be
properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he
3 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used
in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and
reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work
repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a
tremendous task, dear friends – a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, closelying curls that made
her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the
mirror long, carefully, and critically.
‘If Jim doesn’t kill me,’ she said to herself, ‘before he takes a second look at
me, he’ll say I look like a coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do – oh!
What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?’
At seven o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the
stove, hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the
corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step
on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a
moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest
everyday things, and now she whispered: ‘Please God, make him think I am still
pretty.’
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very
serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two – and to be burdened with a
family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
PAGE 4
Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His
eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could
not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor
horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply
stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
‘Jim, darling,’ she cried, ‘don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and
sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a
present. It’ll grow out again – you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My
hair grows awfully fast. Say “Merry Christmas!” Jim and let’s be happy. You
don’t Know what a nice – what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.’
‘You’ve cut off your hair?’ asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at
that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.
‘Cut it off and sold it,’ said Della. ‘Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m
me without my hair, ain’t I?’
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Jim looked about the room curiously.

‘You say your hair is gone?’ he said with an air almost of idiocy.
‘You needn’t look for it,’ said Della. ‘It’s sold, I tell you – sold and gone, too.
It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of
my head were numbered,’ she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, ‘but
nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?’
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten
seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the
other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year – what is the difference?
A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought
valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be
illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
‘Don’t make any mistake, Dell,’ he said, ‘about me. I don’t think there’s
anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me
like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you
had me going awhile at first.’
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic
scream of joy; and then, alas! A quick feminine change to hysterical tears and
wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of
the lord of the flat.
PAGE 5
For there lay The Combs – the set of combs, side and back, that Della had
worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoiseshell, with jewelled rims – just the shade to wear in the beautiful
vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply
craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now
they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments
were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with
dim eyes and a smile and say: ‘My hair grows so fast, Jim!’
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, ‘Oh, oh!’
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon
her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her
bright and ardent spirit.
‘Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at
the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it
looks on it.’
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the
5 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

back of his head and smiled.

‘Dell,’ said he, ‘let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep’em awhile.
They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy
your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.’
The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men who brought
gifts to the babe in the manager. They invented the art of giving Christmas
presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the
privilege of the exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related
to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most
unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a
last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts these
two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
PAGE 6
II A Cosmopolite in a Café

AT MIDNIGHT THE CAFÉ was crowded. By some chance the little table at
which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it
extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.
And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory
that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and
we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of
cosmopolites.
I invoke your consideration of the scene – the marble-topped tables, the range of
leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state
toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or
art, the sedulous and largess-loving gorgons, the music wisely catering to all
with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter and, if you
will, the Wurzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe
cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor
from Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian.
My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from
next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new ‘attraction’ there, he
informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along
parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand,
so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of
a Maraschino cherry in a table-d’hote grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of
the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he
mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would
6 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in

Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki.
Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas Postoak swamp, let you dry for a
moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the
society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he
acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos
Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You would have
PAGE 7
Addressed the letter to ‘E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the
Universe,’ and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to
him.
I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I
listened to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local
note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he
was as impartial cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation.
And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a
great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself
to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the
cities of the earth, and that ‘the men that breed from them, they traffic up and
down, but cling to their cities’ hem as a child to the mother’s gown.’ And
whenever they walk ‘by roaring streets unknown’ they remember their native
city ‘most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond
upon their bond.’ And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling
napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow
boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his
whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.
Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the
third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography
along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding
air was ‘Dixie,’ and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost
overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table.
It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every
evening in numerous cafes in the city of New York. Tons of brew have been
consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all
Southerners in town hie themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the
‘rebel’ air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The
war with Spain, many years’ generous mint and water-melon crops, a few long-
shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by
the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society, have
7 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

made the South rather a ‘fad’ in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that
your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman’s in Richmond, Va.
Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now – the war, you know.

PAGE 8
When ‘Dixie’ was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from
somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed
hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our
table and pulled out cigarettes.
The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned
three Wurzburgers to the winter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his
inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question
because I wanted to try out a theory I had.
‘Would you mind telling me,’ I began, ‘whether you are from-’
The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence.
‘Excuse me,’ said he, ‘but that’s a question I never like to hear asked. What
does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office
address? Why, I’ve seen Kentuckians who hated whisky, Virginians who
weren’t descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn’t written a novel,
Mexicans who didn’t wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the
seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners,
narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an
hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer’s clerk do up cranberries in
paper bags. Let a man be a man and don’t handicap him with the label of any
section.’
‘Pardon me,’ I said, ‘but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the
South, and when the band plays “Dixie” I like to observe. I have formed the
belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible
sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district
between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put
my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with
your own – larger theory, I must confess.’
And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that
his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.
‘I should like to be a periwinkle,’ said he, mysteriously, ‘on the top of a valley,
and sing too-ralloo-ralloo.’
This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.
‘I’ve been around the world twelve times,’ said he. ‘I know an Esquimau in
Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goat-herder in
8 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

Uruguay who won a price in a Battle Creek breakfast-food puzzle competition. I

pay rent on a room in

PAGE 9
Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year round. I’ve got slippers
waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don’t have to tell’em how to
cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It’s a mighty little old world. What’s
the use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor-
house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike’s Peak, or Fairfax
County, Va., or Hooligan’s Flats or any place? It’ll be a better world when we
quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just
because we happened to be born there.’
‘You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite,’ I said admiringly. 'But it also seems
that you would decry patriotism.’
‘A relic of the stone age,’ declared Coglan warmly. ‘We are all brothers-
Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the
Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one’s city or state or section or
country will be wiped out, and we’ll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to
be.’
‘But while you are wandering in foreign lands,’ I persisted, ‘do not your
thoughts revert to some spot – some dear and-’
‘Nary a spot,’ interrupted E. R. Coglan flippantly. ‘The terrestrial, globular,
planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth,
is my abode. I’ve met a good many object-bound citizens of this country
abroad. I’ve seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight
night and brag about their drainage canal. I’ve seen a Southerner on being
introduced to the King of England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes,
the information that his grandaunt on his mother’s side was related by marriage
to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for
ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he
came back to Kabul with the agent. “Afghanistan?” the natives said to him
through an interpreter. “Well, not so slow, do you think?” “Oh, I don't know,”
says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab-driver at Sixth Avenue and
Broadway. Those ideas don’t suit me. I’m not tied down to anything that isn't
8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of
the terrestrial sphere.’
My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought that he saw
someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the
would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wurzburger without further ability to
9 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley.

I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the the poet
had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and

PAGE 10
I believed in him. How was it? ‘The men that breed from them they traffic up
and down, but cling to their cities’ hem as a child to the mother’s gown.’
Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his –
My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another
part of the cafe. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore
Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the
tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were
knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing “Teasing.”
My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the
waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation
and bore them outside, still resisting.
I called McCarthy, one of the French garcons, and asked him the cause of the
conflict.
“The man with the red tie’ (that was my cosmopolite), said he, ‘got hot on
account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he
come from by the other guy.’
‘Why,’ said I, bewildered, ‘that man is a citizen of the world – a cosmopolite.
He –’
‘Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,’ continued McCarthy, ‘and he
wouldn’t stand for no knockin’ the place.’

PAGE 6
III Between Rounds
THE MAY MOON SHONE BRIGHT upon the private boarding-house of Mrs.
Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be
discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heyday, with hay
fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the
Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing;
the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and
pinochle were playing everywhere.
The windows of Mrs. Murphy’s boarding-house were open. A group of
boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German
pancakes.
In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey
10 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

PAGE 11
awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs.
McCaskey.
At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his
teeth; and he apologized for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected
spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.
As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual
stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.
Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of
his spouse.
‘I heard ye,’ came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. ‘Ye can apollygize to
riff-raff of the streets for settin’ yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but
ye’d walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much
as a “Kiss me fut,” and I’m sure it’s that long from rubberin’ out the windy for
ye and the victuals cold such as there’s money to buy after drinkin’ up yer
wages at Gallegher’s every Saturday evenin’, and the gas man here twice to-day
for his.’
‘Woman!’ said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, ‘the noise
of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the
mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society. ‘Tis no more than
exercisin’ the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies
blockin’ the way for steppin’ between them. Will ye bring the pig’s face of ye
out of the windy and see to the food?’
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in
her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went
down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and
tinware.
‘Pig’s face is it?’ said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and
turnips at her lord.
Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the
entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He
retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an
earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck
Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot
full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should
have ended.
But Mr. McCaskey was no 50 cent table d’hoter. Let cheap Bohemians consider
coffee the end, if they would. Let them make
11 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

PAGE 12
that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of
his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their
equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash-basin at the
head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached
for a flat-iron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the
gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused
both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice.
On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with
one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.
‘’Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missus at it again,’ meditated the policeman. ‘I
wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and
few pleasures they have. ‘’Twill not last long. Sure, they’ll have to borrow more
dishes to keep it up with.’
And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire
extremity. ‘’Tis probably the cat,’ said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in
the other direction.
The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by
birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He
returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy’s little boy Mike was lost. Following
the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy – two hundred pounds in tears and
hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds
of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of
Miss Purdy, milliner, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old
maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls,
inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.
Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his
coat. ‘The little one lost?’ he exclaimed. ‘I will scour the city.’ His wife never
allowed him out after dark. But now she said: ‘Go, Ludovic!’ in a baritone
voice. ‘Whoever can look upon that mother’s grief without springing to her
relief has a heart of stone.’ ‘Give me some thirty or – sixty cents, my love,’ said
the Major. ‘Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need car-fares.’
Old man Denny, hall-room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying
to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article
about the carpenter’s strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: ‘Oh, ar-r-Mike,
f’r Gaw’'s sake, where is me little bit av a boy?’
12 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

PAGE 13
‘When’d ye see him last?’ asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of
the Building Trades League.
‘Oh,’ wailed Mrs. Murphy, ‘’twas yesterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno.
But it’s lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin’ on the sidewalk only this
mornin’ – or was it Wednesday? I’m that busy with work ‘tis hard to keep up
with dates. But I’ve looked the house over from top to cellar, and it’s gone he is.
Oh, for the love av Hiven –’
Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it
hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its
streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would
have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a
lobster without good and sufficient claws.
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a
little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and
strange.
Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy’s place.
‘Gimme a rye-high,’ he said to the servitor. ‘Haven’t seen a bow-legged, dirty-
faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you?’
Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. ‘Think of that dear little
babe,’ said Miss Purdy, ‘lost from his mother’s side perhaps already fallen
beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds oh, isn’t it dreadful?’
‘Ain’t that right?’ agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. ‘Say I start out and
help look for um!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Purdy, ‘you should. But oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so
dashing - so reckless – suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should befall
you, then what –’
Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the
lines.
In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to
recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest
with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the
roast pork had not benefited.
They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the window.
‘’Tis little Mike is lost,’ said Mrs. McCaskey in a hushed voice, ‘the beautiful,
little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!’
‘’Tis little Mike is lost,’ said Mrs. McCaskey in a hushed voice, ‘the beautiful,
little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!’
‘The bit of a boy mislaid?’ said Mr. McCaskey leaning out of
13 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

PAGE 14
the window. ‘Why, now, that’s bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be
different. If ’twas a woman I’d be willin’, for they leave peace behind’em when
they go.’
Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband’s arm.
‘Jawn,’ she said sentimentally, ‘Missis Murphy’s little bye is lost.
‘’Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, ‘tis the same
age our little bye would have been if we had one six years ago.’
‘We never did,’ said Mr.McCaskey, lingering with the fact.
‘But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with
our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all.’
‘Ye talk foolishness,’ said Mr. McCaskey. ‘’Tis Pat he would be named, after
me old father in Cantrim.’
‘Ye lie!’ said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. ‘Me brother was worth tin dozen
bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named.’ She leaned over
the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below.
‘Jawn,’ said Mrs. McCaskey softly, ‘I’m sorry I was hasty wid ye.’
‘’Twas hasty puddin,’ as ye say,’ said her husband, ‘and hurry up turnips and
get-a-move-on-ye coffee. ‘Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, tell
no lie.’
Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband’s and took his rough hand
in hers.
‘Listen at the cryin’ of poor Mrs. Murphy,’ she said. ‘’Tis an awful thing for a
bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If ‘twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I’d
be breakin’ me heart.’
Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing
shoulders of his wife.
‘’Tis foolishness, of course,’ said he, roughly, ‘but I’d be cut up some meself, if
our little – Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for
us. Sometimes I’ve been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget it.’
They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below.
Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning,
filling the air with rumours and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed
back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an
audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went.

PAGE 15
Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house.
14 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

‘What’s up now, Judy?’ asked Mr. McCaskey.

‘’Tis Missis Murphy’s voice,’ said Mrs. McCaskey, harking.
‘She says she’s after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum
under the bed in her room.’
Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.
‘That’s yer Phelan,’ he shouted sardonically ‘Divil a bit would a Pat have done
that trick if the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him
Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup.’
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went toward the dish closet, with the corners
of her mouth drawn down.
Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed.
Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment where the crash
of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as
before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.
‘By the deported snakes!’ he exclaimed, ‘Jawn McCaskey and his lady have
been fightin’ for an hour and a quarter by the watch.
The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm.’
Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.
Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy
was about to lock the door for the night.

IV The Skylight Room

FIRST MRS. PARKER would show you the double parlours. You would not
dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the
gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to
stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs.
Parker’s manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never
afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to
train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker’s parlours.
Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floor back at $8.
Convinced by her second-floor manner that it

PAGE 16
was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take
charge of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where
Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with
private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper.
If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s
large hall-room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant. He wrote
15 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made
to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from
the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.
Then – oh, then – if you still stood on one foot with your hot hand clutching the
three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and
culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She
would honk loudly the word ‘Clara,’ she would show you her back, and march
downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted
ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It
occupied 7 by 8 feet of floorspace at the middle of the hall. On each side of it
was a dark lumber closet or store-room.
In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair A shelf was the dresser. Its four
bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coin. Your hand crept
to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well -- and breathed once
more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.
‘Two dollars, suh,’ Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, half-
Tuskegeenial tones.
One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made
to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes
and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if
they were saying;
‘Goodness me. Why didn’t you keep up with us?’
Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. ‘In this closet,’ she said, ‘one
could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal –’
‘But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist,’ said Miss Leeson with a shiver.
Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept
for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the
second floor back.
‘Eight dollars?’ said Miss Leeson. ‘Dear me! I’m not Hetty if I

PAGE 17
do look green. I’m just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher
and lower.’
Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his
door.
‘Excuse me, Mr. Skidder,’ said Mrs. Parker, with her demon’s smile at his pale
looks. ‘I didn’t know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your
lambrequins.’
‘They’re too lovely for anything,’ said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly the way
16 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

the angels do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired
heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one
with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.
‘Anna Held’ll jump at it,’ said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up
against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial
cuttlefish.
Presently the tocsin call of ‘Clara!’ sounded to the world the state of Miss
Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust
her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and
cabalistic words ‘Two dollars!’
‘I’ll take it!’ sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed.
Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers
with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she
had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with
the other roomers.
Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn
for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies.
Once she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished)
comedy, ‘It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway.’
There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had
time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde
who taught in a public school and said ‘Well, really!’ to everything you said, sat
on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at
Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step
and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would quickly
group around her
Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a
private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And

PAGE 18
especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flushed and foolish. And
especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to
ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her ‘the funniest and jolliest
ever,’ but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.

**** **** **** **** **** **** ****

I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an
epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of
17 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might
have rendered more romance to the ton than would have Romeo’s rickety ribs to
the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are
the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt.
Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen
herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat, is meat for perdition. There
was never a chance for you, Hoover.
As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked
up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh:
‘Why, there’s Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too.’
All looked up – some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an
airship, Jackson-guided.
‘It’s that star,’ explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. ‘Not the big
one that twinkles – the steady blue one near it.
I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.’
‘Well, really!’ said Miss Longnecker. ‘I didn’t know you were an astronomer,
Miss Leeson.’
‘Oh, yes,’ ' said the small star-gazer, ‘I know as much as any of them about the
style of sleeves they’re going to wear next fall in Mars.’
‘Well, really!’ said Miss Longnecker. ‘The star you refer to is Gamma, of the
constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian
passage is –’
‘Oh,’ said the very young Mr. Evans, ‘I think Billy Jackson is a much better
name for it.
‘Same here,’ said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. ‘I
think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old
astrologers had.’

PAGE 19
‘Well, really!’ said Miss Longneckar.
‘I wonder whether it’s a shooting star,’ remarked Miss Dorn. ‘I hit nine ducks
and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday.’
‘He doesn’t show up very well from down here,’ said Miss Leeson. ‘You ought
to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from
the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal-mine, and it
makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her
kimono with.’
There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers
home to copy. And when she went in the morning, instead of working, she went
18 O HENRY – 100 SELECTED STORIES

from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals
transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on.
There came and evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker’s stoop at the
hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had no
dinner.
As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He
asked her to marry him,