No Story

O Henry

To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will

assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved,

omniscient city editor, no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story--no

anything.

But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the reporters' room of the

Morning Beacon, I will repay the favor by keeping strictly my promises set forth above.

I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary. Some one had cleared

with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled high with

about twenty-five and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red

whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He was pale and

unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower of sums ranging from

twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as

well as the Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H20 that collateral will show on

analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the other to keep both from

shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of lightness and bravado about him that deceived

no one, but was useful in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.

This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as a grumbling advance

on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace

"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and his dog-like eyes that

blinked in the narrow space between his high- growing matted beard and his low-growing

matted hair.

"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and inhospitably, "and four besides.

And I had hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew

them," I continued, "to meet a want--a hiatus--a demand--a need--an exigency--a

Milhares de livros grátis para download.

requirement of exactly five dollars."

I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of the dollars on the

spot.

"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I thought you'd like to get

put onto a good story," he went on. "I've got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make

it run a column at least. It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably cost you a

dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out of it myself."

I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he

Thirty-fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she's a beauty that

would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street

and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find George

Brown in New York City! What do you think of that?

"I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd--Hiram

Dodd--next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her

youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city

to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram

got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada--her name's Ada

Lowery--saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45

harness store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful she is. You know those little Long

Island water-front villages like Greenburg- -a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and

about nine summer visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes from. But,

say--you ought to see her!

"What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning. And she'd paid her

last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, which she had squandered

on gum-drops. She was eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on

Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in soak for a dollar. That's

old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll show you the house."

"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a story. Every ferryboat

that crosses the East River brings or takes away girls from Long Island."

The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously from his tangle of

hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking forefinger.

"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make? You could do it fine. All

about the romance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true

love, and sling in a few stickfuls of funny business--joshing the Long Islanders about being

green, and, well--you know how to do it. You ought to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow.

I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing again. But this grim,

abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken off. His

forehead suddenly became shiningly moist.

"Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that this girl has got to be sent

home to-day--not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day? I can't do anything for her. You

know, I'm the janitor and corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club.. I thought

you could make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money on general results.

But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to get back home before night?"

Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted me via the street-cars

to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-

scented Don Quixote and the smallest minted coin were strangers.

Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldly red-brick boarding- house. At its faint tinkle

he paled, and crouched as a rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-

dog. I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of landladies.

"Give me one of the dollars--quick!" he said.

The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white eyes--they were

white, I say--and a yellow face, holding together at her throat with one hand a dingy pink

bought us entry.

In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping comfortably and

eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her brilliant eyes

brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and

Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop suffered neglect

hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been introduced as his

friend in the presence of so much beauty in distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct

the ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his actions and pose an

intention of foisting the situation upon me as material for a newspaper story, in a lingering

hope of extracting from me his whiskey dollar.

"My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said Tripp, "will tell you, Miss Lowery, the

same that I did. He's a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than I can. That's why I

brought him with me." (0 Tripp, wasn't it the silver-tongued orator you wanted?) "He's wise

to a lot of things, and he'll tell you now what's best to do."

circumstances. It's the first time I've ever been in New York except once when I was five

years old, and I had no idea it was such a big town. And I met Mr.--Mr. Snip on the street

and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked me to wait."

"I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell Mr. Chalmers all. He's a friend of mine" (I

was getting used to it by this time), "and he'll give you the right tip."

"Why, certainly," said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me. "There ain't anything to

tell except that--well, everything's fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday

evening. Hi has got two hundred acres of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best

truck-farms on the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up--he's a white horse

named Dancer--and I rode over to the station. I told 'em at home I was going to spend the

day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I guess, but I don't care. And I came to New York on

G--G--"

hesitated with her word, "you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don't you? He's all right,

and good to you, ain't he?"

"Of course I like him," said Miss Lowery emphatically. "Hi's all right. And of course he's

George. And I was glad I was not Hiram--and yet I was sorry, too.

By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, brave and half-way smiling. She would

have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright and tender. She took

a gum-drop and began her story.

"I guess I'm a terrible hayseed," she said between her little gulps and sighs, "but I can't help

it. G--George Brown and I were sweet- hearts since he was eight and I was five. When he

was nineteen--that was four years ago--he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he

was going to be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then he was coming

back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And I--I--liked him."

I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my duty. Cunningly I had been

inveigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp's first dictum to me had been just and correct.

The young lady must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with,

convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and

despised George; but duty must be done.

Noblesse oblige and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but

sometimes they can be made to jibe. It was mine to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight.

So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon's with that of the general passenger agent of the

Long Island Railroad.

"Miss Lowery," said I, as impressively as I could, "life is rather a queer proposition, after

Lowery had never heard Mr. Cohan's song. "Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our

earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize." The

cherished dreams," I went on, "may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however

impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions

and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could

pass a happy--that is, a contented and harmonious life with Mr.-er--Dodd--if in other ways

And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that he had, still trying to drag in a little

story or drama to earn the miserable dollar that he craved.

"Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city and learn something.

I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to

the dogs on account of whiskey or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home,

and you'll be all right."

But now the time was come for action, for the hands of the clock were moving close to

noon. Frowning upon Tripp, I argued gently and philosophically with Miss Lowery,

and ride home as fast as possible. There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day

spent with Susie Adams. She could "fix" Susie--I was sure of that-- and all would be well.

And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of beauty, I warmed to the adventure. The

three of us hurried to the ferry, and there I found the price of a ticket to Greenburg to be but

a dollar and eighty cents. I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for Miss

Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at

us until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And then Tripp and I faced each other,

brought back to earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of life.

The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwindling. I looked at Tripp and almost

sneered. He looked more careworn, contemptible, and disreputable than ever. I fingered the

two silver dollars remaining in my pocket and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids of

"Can't you get a story out of it?" he asked, huskily. "Some sort of a story, even if you have

"Not a line," said I. "I can fancy the look on Grimes' face if I should try to put over any

slush like this. But we've helped the little lady out, and that'll have to be our only reward."

to me like a find of a big story, you know-- that is, a sort of thing that would write up pretty

Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams to reach for

something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and cavernous

pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest,

and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It

was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel.

"What!" I said, looking at him keenly.

"Oh yes," he responded, dully. "George Brown, alias Tripp. what's the use?"

Barring the W. C. T. U., I'd like to know if anybody disapproves of my having produced

Livros Grátis