Vanity / O Henry

A Poet sang so wondrous sweet

That toiling thousands paused and listened long;

So lofty, strong and noble were his themes,

It seemed that strength supernal swayed his song.

Two Portraits / O Henry

Wild hair flying, in a matted maze,

Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze;

Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze,

As o'er the keno board boldly he plays.

—That's Texas Bill.

The Peewee / O Henry

In the hush of the drowsy afternoon,

When the very wind on the breast of June

Lies settled, and hot white tracery

Of the shattered sunlight filters free

Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward;

On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard

Of the birds that be;

'Tis the lone Pewee.

The Old Farm / O Henry

Just now when the whitening blossoms flare

On the apple trees and the growing grass

Creeps forth, and a balm is in the air;

With my lighted pipe and well-filled glass

Of the old farm I am dreaming,

And softly smiling, seeming

To see the bright sun beaming

Upon the old home farm.

The Murderer / O Henry

"I push my boat among the reeds;

I sit and stare about;

Queer slimy things crawl through the weeds,

Put to a sullen rout.

I paddle under cypress trees;

All fearfully I peer

Through oozy channels when the breeze

Comes rustling at my ear.

The Lullaby Boy / O Henry

The lullaby boy to the same old tune

Who abandons his drum and toys

For the purpose of dying in early June

Is the kind the public enjoys.

But, just for a change, please sing us a song,

Of the sore-toed boy that's fly,

And freckled and mean, and ugly, and bad,

And positively will not die.

Tamales / O Henry

This is the Mexican

Don José Calderon

One of God's countrymen.

Land of the buzzard.

Cheap silver dollar, and

Cacti and murderers.

Why has he left his land

Land of the lazy man,

Land of the pulque

Land of the bull fight,

Fleas and revolution.

Nothing to Say / O Henry

"You can tell your paper," the great man said,

"I refused an interview.

I have nothing to say on the question, sir;

Nothing to say to you."

And then he talked till the sun went down

And the chickens went to roost;

And he seized the collar of the poor young man,

And never his hold he loosed.

Hard to Forget / O Henry

I'm thinking to-night of the old farm, Ned,

And my heart is heavy and sad

As I think of the days that by have fled

Since I was a little lad.

There rises before me each spot I know

Of the old home in the dell,

The fields, and woods, and meadows below

That memory holds so well.

Drop A Tear In This Slot / O Henry

He who, when torrid Summer's sickly glare

Beat down upon the city's parched walls,

Sat him within a room scarce 8 by 9,

And, with tongue hanging out and panting breath,

Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat,

Wrote variations of the seaside joke

We all do know and always loved so well,

Chanson de Boheme / O Henry

Lives of great men all remind us

Rose is red and violet's blue;

Johnny's got his gun behind us

'Cause the lamb loved Mary too.

—Robert Burns' "Hocht Time in the aud Town."

A Contribution / O Henry

There came unto ye editor

A poet, pale and wan,

And at the table sate him down,

A roll within his hand.

Ye editor accepted it,

And thanked his lucky fates;

Ye poet had to yield it up

To a king full on eights.

Let Me Feel Your Pulse / O Henry

This is the last story completed by O. Henry.

So I went to a doctor.

"How long has it been since you took any alcohol into your system?" he asked.

Turning my head sidewise, I answered, "Oh, quite awhile."

He was a young doctor, somewhere between twenty and forty. He wore heliotrope socks, but he looked like Napoleon. I liked him immensely.

"Now," said he, "I am going to show you the effect of alcohol upon your circulation." I think it was "circulation" he said; though it may have been "advertising."

Elsie in New York / O Henry

No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this.

Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. And this will tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all peril to the goal that she was seeking.

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner / O Henry

Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, very well! Pass up this sotto voceautobiography of an X if you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John D's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read the four words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee?

The Ferry of Unfulfilment / O Henry

At the street corner, as solid as granite in the "rush-hour" tide of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the glaciers.

He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad-gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of sound—the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes and ale of one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from Nome sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of street noises and Dead Sea apple pies.

The Country of Elusion / O Henry

The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia.

Grainger, sub-editor of Doc's Magazine, closed his roll-top desk, put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the "down" button, and waited for the elevator.

The Count and the Wedding Guest / O Henry

One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, business and political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one from the tablets of his consideration.

A Midsummer Knight's Dream / O Henry

"The knights are dead;

Their swords are rust.

Except a few who have to hust-

Le all the time

To raise the dust."

Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was—oh, bother thermometers!—who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so hot that—

According To Their Lights / O Henry

Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic alma mater.