The Handbook Of Hymen

O Henry

'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational

system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you

good reasons for it; and you can't tell me why our college professors shouldn't be

transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they

could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what

kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side of the proposition. I am going on to

tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A

the bottom of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."

That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved

camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November

flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we

was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub

enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.

If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up in a eighteen by

twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't stand it.

When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each other's jokes and

praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks

"Mr. Green," says I, "you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in

confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow,

three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just

at present."

This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another.

We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the

fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a

fire all day.

You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing "if John had

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three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt any special need for a university

degree, though we had acquired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around

the world that we could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter

Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions and

the higher branches of information, we'd have had some resources in the line of

high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's

eye. He speaks for the first time in a week.

"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're only fit to be the

companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a square deal. And that's more than

your parents did when they turned you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-

snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up, the

winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other."

We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then each of us got

on his side of the house and went to reading.

I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And Idaho took at his

a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all cities in it, and

the way to tell a girl's age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest

tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break

out, what a lady's neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the

Roman aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy,

the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant

an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of hairs on a blond lady's

head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of

all wars and battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number

of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to do

"Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?"

Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or

malignity.

"Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M."

"Homer K. M. what?" I asks.

K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of

"I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem book," says he, "by

Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I

wouldn't have missed this book for a pair of red blankets."

"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the

mind to work on, and that's what I seem to find in the book I've drawn."

"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists.

They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s system of surmises. He seems to be a

kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch,

but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an

invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have sensations of scorn for

explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your

"Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-

eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you as quick as light could

travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand

miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the

middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human

skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska

Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.

About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly know. Idaho

boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but I wasn't so sure.

be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to his tail. After running

Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia producing anything

worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats.

That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell out quick and

keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight thousand dollars apiece; and then

we drifted down to this little town of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some

human grub, and have our whiskers harvested.

the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-

met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.

Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town. It was

painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see it as plain as egg on

the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was

trying to stake a claim on that yellow house.

There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked out of the Hall.

Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-

stepped the two-step, and asked permission to escort her home. That's where I made a

hit.

On the way home says she:

"Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?"

would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years."

"My!" says Mrs. Sampson. "I never knew that before. How warm it is! I'm as damp as I

can be from dancing so much."

"That's easy to account for," says I, "when you happen to know that you've got two

million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of your perspiratory ducts, which

are a quarter of an inch long, was placed end to end, they would reach a distance of

seven miles."

scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a real pleasure to

converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be gratified to have you call at my house

whenever you feel so inclined."

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday

and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her about the wonders of the universe as

discovered, tabulated, and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay

Lutherans of the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.

"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I believe."

"For nine years," says I.

"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"

"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the

usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion

had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the

sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him

impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idaho's society,

Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him

imputed."

"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take up the curmudgeons

sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady."

"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of

irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she

should be, if you judge by her poetry."

"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by a man who

writes under the nom de plume of K. M."

"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was. And to-day he caps

the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr.

wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with

there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend

now, Mr. Pratt?"

"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no

harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law

and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something

that they don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says I, "and let us

extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and

fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our

"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful

"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of

the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalised measures that

beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics

more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of

two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine

in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide,

and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it

above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned

in 1841."

"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think

statistics are just as lovely as they can be."

But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer.

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every masculine,

feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting in the way

of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away from six firemen who were holding him.

They was telling him the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it

and come out alive.

"Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks.

"She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps up- stairs. We've tried to get

in, but we can't, and our company hasn't got any ladders yet."

pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands --I reckon I was some daffy with the

what!" says I.

I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. I run my finger down the

page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said:

Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.--There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a

few seed in the outer corner of the eye.

I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.

Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death, they say, to go in the

"How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like it, "do you expect

me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?"

I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one citizen's shin, and

tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I busted into the house. If I die first I'll

write you a letter and tell you if it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow

house was; but don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of

broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had me down on the

floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their

little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness

from the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well,

the floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never could have done it--not by no means.

I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass. Then, of course,

"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?"

"S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy."

I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks the bag of

flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips three or four

of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye.

Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson's

pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such sandblasted nonsense.

show you my authority, anyway."

the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know whether it works as a smoke consumer

or whether it hikes the compound gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer

says it, and he was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there's

no objection."

Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a fireman's lantern.

"Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in reading your

diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the patient into fresh air as quickly as

she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm again, and says: "Put some in the

And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you'd see a fine new

yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellishing and adorning it.

And if you was to step inside you'd see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour

"Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information," all rebound in red morocco, and

ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom.