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Cupid a la carte

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About the author

O. Henry

2,919 books1,891 followers
Such volumes as Cabbages and Kings (1904) and The Four Million (1906) collect short stories, noted for their often surprising endings, of American writer William Sydney Porter, who used the pen name O. Henry.

His biography shows where he found inspiration for his characters. His era produced their voices and his language.

Mother of three-year-old Porter died from tuberculosis. He left school at fifteen years of age and worked for five years in drugstore of his uncle and then for two years at a Texas sheep ranch.

In 1884, he went to Austin, where he worked in a real estate office and a church choir and spent four years as a draftsman in the general land office. His wife and firstborn died, but daughter Margaret survived him.

He failed to establish a small humorous weekly and afterward worked in poorly-run bank. When its accounts balanced not, people blamed and fired him.

In Houston, he worked for a few years until, ordered to stand trial for embezzlement, he fled to New Orleans and thence Honduras.

Two years later, he returned on account of illness of his wife. Apprehended, Porter served a few months more than three years in a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. During his incarceration, he composed ten short stories, including A Blackjack Bargainer , The Enchanted Kiss , and The Duplicity of Hargraves .

In 1899, McClure's published Whistling Dick's Christmas Story and Georgia's Ruling .

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he sent manuscripts to New York editors. In the spring of 1902, Ainslee's Magazine offered him a regular income if he moved to New York.

In less than eight years, he became a bestselling author of collections of short stories. Cabbages and Kings came first in 1904 The Four Million, and The Trimmed Lamp and Heart of the West followed in 1907, and The Voice of the City in 1908, Roads of Destiny and Options in 1909, Strictly Business and Whirligigs in 1910 followed.

Posthumously published collections include The Gentle Grafter about the swindler, Jeff Peters; Rolling Stones , Waifs and Strays , and in 1936, unsigned stories, followed.

People rewarded other persons financially more. A Retrieved Reformation about the safe-cracker Jimmy Valentine got $250; six years later, $500 for dramatic rights, which gave over $100,000 royalties for playwright Paul Armstrong. Many stories have been made into films.

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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Profile Image for Classic reverie.
1,868 reviews
March 8, 2023
O. Henry's "Cupid a la Carte" is a cute and humorous story about the differences in a waitress and her thoughts about her male customers consuming eating habits which disgusts her to her core.

Story in short - Two gentlemen try to win the heart of a woman who denounces men who like to eat.

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“’Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel,” continued Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery stove, “to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I’ve breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town in the United States. I’ve held ’em spellbound with music, oratory, sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I’ve sold ’em jewelry, medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk
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of other nominations. And during my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I’ve taken cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby’s Anti-explosive Lamp
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proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side. That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me- up hotels. ‘Try Mother’s Home- Made Biscuits,’ ‘What’s the Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard
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Sauce?’ ‘Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy,’ ‘Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow’ — there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I said to myself that mother’s wandering boy should munch there that night. And so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case of Mame Dugan. “Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty memorialising the great

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corn-crop failure of ‘96. Ma Dugan did the cooking, and Mame waited on the table. “As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census reports. There wasn’t but one girl in the United States. When you come to specifications it isn’t easy. She was about the size of an angel, and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a girl she was, you’ll find a belt of ’em reaching from the Brooklyn Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They earn
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their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices. They’re chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look life straight in the eye. They’ve met man face to face, and discovered that he’s a poor creature. They’ve dropped to it that the reports in the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation. “Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you’d have smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. ’Tis my opinion that the biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So, you’ll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame. “Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at irregular times when there wasn’t so many around. Mame would sail in with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: ‘Hello, Jeff — why don’t you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you can be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie’ — and so on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached. Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used as they came to hand. I’d eat about two meals before I left, and string ’em out like a society
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spread where they changed plates and wives, and josh one another festively between bites. Mame stood for it, pleasant, for it wasn’t up to her to take any canvas off the tent by declining dollars just because they were whipped in after meal times. “It wasn’t long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got the between- meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed circus of that tent, and Mame’s turn as waiter a continuous performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or something — I’ve forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of view. So, Collier and me infested the grub tent with care and activity. Mame was level full of impartiality. ’Twas like a casino hand the way she dealt out her favours — one to Collier and one to me and one to the board, and not a card up her sleeve.
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“Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility. “‘I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after the guests have fled,’ says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions. “‘Well, yes,’ says Collier, reflecting; ‘the tumult of a crowded board seems to harass my sensitive nerves.’

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Jeff Peters and Ed Collier both want to marry Mame, they both declare and the fight is on. Mame likes them both but she decided she would never marry because she cannot stand how men love to eat. Ed puts something into Jeff's drinks which increases his appetite to the extreme, and then Ed tries to starve himself but he cannot hold out and runs to gorge himself. Jeff, a saleman needs to go to Oklahoma, and Mame is to travel there for her friend's wedding. Jeff offers to take her their and during the journey a snowstorm has the couple held up in a cabin, without food. Mame becomes hungry for the first time and after the storm, they both eat a large amount. Mame sees how wrong she was and she accepts Jeff's proposal. The life of travel appeals to her too.

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“‘It exasperates mine some, too,’ says I. ‘Nice little girl, don’t you think?’ “‘I see,’ says Collier, laughing. ‘Well, now that you mention it, I have noticed that she doesn’t seem to displease the optic nerve.’ “‘She’s a joy to mine,’ says I, ‘and I’m going after her. Notice is hereby served.’ “‘I’ll be as candid as you,’ admits Collier, ‘and if the drug stores don’t run out of pepsin I’ll give you a run for your money that’ll leave you a dyspeptic at the wind-up.’
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“So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable, and it looks like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in Dugan’s restaurant. “’Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after supper when the things were all cleared away. We strolled out a distance and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such opportunities was seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the Brazilian diamonds and the fire kindler were laying up sufficient treasure to guarantee the happiness of two, and that both of ’em together couldn’t equal the light from somebody’s eyes, and that the name of Dugan should be changed to Peters, or reasons why not would be in order. “Mame didn’t say anything right away. Directly she gave a kind of shudder, and I began to learn something. “‘Jeff,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry you spoke. I like you as well as any of them, but there isn’t a man in the
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world I’d ever marry, and there never will be. Do you know what a man is in my eye? He’s a tomb. He’s a sarcophagus for the interment of Beafsteakporkchopsliver’nbaconham- andeggs. He’s that and nothing more. For two years I’ve watched men eat, eat, eat, until they represent nothing on earth to me but ruminant bipeds. They’re absolutely nothing but something that goes in front of a knife and fork and plate at the table. They’re fixed that way in my mind and memory. I’ve tried to overcome
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it, but I can’t. I’ve heard girls rave about their sweethearts, but I never could understand it. A man and a sausage grinder and a pantry awake in me exactly the same sentiments. I went to a matinee once to see an actor the girls were crazy about. I got interested enough to wonder whether he liked his steak rare, medium, or well done, and his eggs over or straight up. That was all. No, Jeff; I’ll marry no man and see him sit at the breakfast table and eat, and come back to dinner and eat,
Profile Image for Preetam Chatterjee.
7,466 reviews439 followers
December 19, 2025
This story exemplifies O. Henry’s ability to distill romantic illusion into urban choreography, where desire, chance, and economics intersect with quiet irony. Rather than treating love as transcendence, O. Henry presents it as a negotiated experience—subject to timing, misunderstanding, and the invisible pressures of modern life.

The humour emerges not from mockery but from the gentle exposure of how hope disguises itself as certainty.

The story unfolds with O. Henry’s signature economy. Dialogue moves briskly, scenes arrive fully formed, and the city hums in the background as an unspoken participant.

New York here is not merely a setting but a system—one that rewards adaptation and punishes romantic absolutism. Love becomes transactional without losing its emotional weight, a paradox O. Henry handles with remarkable delicacy.

Stylistically, the prose is clean and agile, resisting ornamentation in favour of rhythm and pacing. O. Henry trusts implication over explanation, allowing emotional turns to register through gesture rather than declaration.

This restraint sharpens the humour, which arises from mismatched expectations rather than overt comedy. The laughter is quiet, often delayed, surfacing only after recognition.

From a postmodern lens, the story destabilises the idea of romantic destiny. Cupid, traditionally blind and sovereign, is here reduced to circumstance—a figure constrained by schedules, assumptions, and social codes. Love does not arrive as a revelation but as a recalibration.

What matters is not intensity but adaptability.

O. Henry’s moral vision is humane rather than sentimental. He acknowledges disappointment without bitterness and compromise without cynicism. The story suggests that romantic success is not about perfect alignment but about recognising value where one did not initially look.

This perspective feels strikingly contemporary, anticipating modern narratives that privilege emotional intelligence over idealism.

The humour functions as emotional insulation, preventing despair while refusing fantasy. O. Henry never ridicules longing; he simply refuses to sanctify it. The reader is invited to smile not at failure but at adjustment—the small courage required to revise one’s expectations.

Cupid à la Carte endures because it respects its characters enough to deny them grandeur. It presents love as lived rather than imagined, shaped by environment rather than myth.

In doing so, O. Henry offers a romantic comedy stripped of illusion but rich in understanding.

Most recommended.
Profile Image for James Biser.
3,816 reviews20 followers
February 15, 2019
This is an entertaining story about a man who is instructed that he must change who he is to be loved, but learns that love exists for everyone, without lies or the drama of pretense.
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