The Gentle Grafter Read online

  THE GENTLE GRAFTER

  by

  O. HENRY

  Illustrated by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston

  1919

  "They began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars."(Frontispiece)]

  CONTENTS

  I. The Octopus Marooned II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet III. Modern Rural Sports IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics V. The Hand That Riles the World VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony VII. A Midsummer MasqueradeVIII. Shearing the Wolf IX. Innocents of Broadway X. Conscience in Art XI. The Man Higher Up XII. A Tempered WindXIII. Hostages to Momus XIV. The Ethics of Pig

  THE OCTOPUS MAROONED

  "A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.

  "That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks suchas, 'Why is a policeman?'"

  "It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and apoliceman. My remark was an epitogram--an axis--a kind of mulct'em inparvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is notlike an egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from theoutside. The only way to break up a trust is from the inside. Keepsitting on it until it hatches. Look at the brood of young collegesand libraries that's chirping and peeping all over the country. Yes,sir, every trust bears in its own bosom the seeds of its destructionlike a rooster that crows near a Georgia colored Methodist campmeeting, or a Republican announcing himself a candidate for governorof Texas."

  I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered,plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise ofthe class to which the word "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to mysurprise he acknowledged the corner.

  "Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit intoa charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimateoctopusing. We had everything in our favor--wind, water, police,nerve, and a clean monopoly of an article indispensable to the public.There wasn't a trust buster on the globe that could have found a weakspot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculationlook like a bucket shop. But we lost out."

  "Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.

  "No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case ofauto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennysonsays.

  "You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for someyears. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I eversaw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it asa personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy waseducated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He hadacquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk forhours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had beenin every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magiclantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Associationconvention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus woodalcohol distilled from nutmegs.

  "One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying tripduring which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a halfinterest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was allright. The other half interest must have been worth two or threethousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.

  "In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toesagainst a little town in Texas on the bank of the Rio Grande. Thename of it was Bird City; but it wasn't. The town had about 2,000inhabitants, mostly men. I figured out that their principal means ofexistence was in living close to tall chaparral. Some of 'em werestockmen and some gamblers and some horse peculators and plenty werein the smuggling line. Me and Andy put up at a hotel that was builtlike something between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. Itbegan to rain the day we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquariuswas sure turning on the water plugs on Mount Amphibious.

  "Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither Andynor me drank. But we could see the townspeople making a triangularprocession from one to another all day and half the night. Everybodyseemed to know what to do with as much money as they had.

  "The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, some and Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. BirdCity was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo thatused to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream andits old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on accountof the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time.That man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me ainstantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organizeda trust; and we walked back into town and put it on the market.

  "First we went to the main saloon in Bird City, called the Blue Snake,and bought it. It cost us $1,200. And then we dropped in, casual, atMexican Joe's place, referred to the rain, and bought him out for$500. The other one came easy at $400.

  "The next morning Bird City woke up and found itself an island. Theriver had busted through its old channel, and the town was surroundedby roaring torrents. The rain was still raining, and there was heavyclouds in the northwest that presaged about six more mean annualrainfalls during the next two weeks. But the worst was yet to come.

  "Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pin feathers andstrolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place wasclosed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So,naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise andports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?

  "Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with asixshooter on each side of him, ready to make change or corpses as thecase may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten footsign reading: 'All Drinks One Dollar.' Andy sits on the safe in hisneat blue suit and gold-banded cigar, on the lookout for emergencies.The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having beenpromised free drinks by the trust.

  "Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it wasin a cage. We expected trouble; but there wasn't any. The citizens sawthat we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and itwould be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. Sothey began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till itsounded like a selection on the xylophone.

  "There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had arrivedat years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from threeto twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was theonly place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It wasbeautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

  "About ten o'clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed downto playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out thewindow and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line atBird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing moremoney to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus.

  "At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. Wetold the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same.Then me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. Wecalculated that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeksthe trust would be able to endow the Chicago University with a newdormitory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthypoor man in Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.

  "Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, therudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises andpremonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in thehouse.

  "Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem."]

  "'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world youcould find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treadingthe proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tu
cker,incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow inthe sole apoplectic region. No?'

  "'Well,' says I, 'it does look as if we would have to take upgastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves.This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I canstand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant any day.'

  "Andy pours himself out four fingers of our best rye and does with itas was so intended. It was the first drink I had ever known him totake.

  "'By way of liberation,' says he, 'to the gods.'

  "And then after thus doing umbrage to the heathen diabetes he drinksanother to our success. And then he begins to toast the trade,beginning with Raisuli and the Northern Pacific, and on down the lineto the little ones like the school book combine and the oleomargarineoutrages and the Lehigh Valley and Great Scott Coal Federation.

  "'It's all right, Andy,' says I, 'to drink the health of our brothermonopolists, but don't overdo the wassail. You know our most eminentand loathed multi-corruptionists live on weak tea and dog biscuits.'

  "Andy went in the back room awhile and came out dressed in his bestclothes. There was a kind of murderous and soulful look of gentleriotousness in his eye that I didn't like. I watched him to see whatturn the whiskey was going to take in him. There are two times whenyou never can tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takeshis first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.

  "In less than an hour Andy's skate had turned to an ice yacht. He wasoutwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside hewas impromptu and full of unexpectedness.

  "'Jeff,' says he, 'do you know that I'm a crater--a living crater?'

  "'That's a self-evident hypothesis,' says I. 'But you're not Irish.Why don't you say 'creature,' according to the rules and syntax ofAmerica?'

  "'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm all aflame and crammedinside with an assortment of words and phrases that have got to havean exodus. I can feel millions of synonyms and parts of speech risingin me,' says he, 'and I've got to make a speech of some sort. Drink,'says Andy, 'always drives me to oratory.'

  "'It could do no worse,' says I.

  "'From my earliest recollections,' says he, 'alcohol seemed tostimulate my sense of recitation and rhetoric. Why, in Bryan's secondcampaign,' says Andy, 'they used to give me three gin rickeys andI'd speak two hours longer than Billy himself could on the silverquestion. Finally, they persuaded me to take the gold cure.'

  "'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I, 'whynot go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to methere was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go anddisincorporate himself of his windy numbers along the seashore.'

  "'No,' says Andy, 'I must have an audience. I feel like if I onceturned loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the GrandYoung Sphinx of the Wabash. I've got to get an audience together,Jeff, and get this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on meand I'd go about feeling like a deckle-edge edition de luxe of Mrs. E.D. E. N. Southworth.'

  "'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desirefor vocality seem to be connected with?' I asks.

  "'I ain't particular,' says Andy. 'I am equally good and varicose onall subjects. I can take up the matter of Russian immigration, orthe poetry of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature,or drainage, and make my audience weep, cry, sob and shed tears byturns.'

  "'Well, Andy,' says I, 'if you are bound to get rid of thisaccumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work iton some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of thebusiness. Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt porkand beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 moreby midnight.'

  "So Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men onthe street and talking to 'em. By and by he has half a dozen in abunch listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms andelocuting at a good-sized crowd on a corner. When he walks away theystring out after him, talking all the time; and he leads 'em down themain street of Bird City with more men joining the procession as theygo. It reminded me of the old legerdemain that I'd read in books aboutthe Pied Piper of Heidsieck charming the children away from the town.

  "And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City."]

  "One o'clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire forplace; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets weredeserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. Therewas only a light drizzle falling then.

  "A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake toscrape the mud off his boots.

  "'Pardner,' says I, 'what has happened? This morning there was hecticgaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities ofTyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the mainport-cullis.'

  "'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's woolwarehouse listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is somegravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters andconclusions,' says the man.

  "'Well, I hope he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'fortrade languishes.'

  "Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock twoMexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with hishands and feet.

  "Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. Imet a man who told me all about it. Andy had made the finest two hourspeech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else inthe world.

  "'What was it about?' I asked.

  "'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every man in BirdCity signed the pledge for a year.'"