Mammon And The Archer

by O. Henry

Genres: Short Stories, Romance, Humor, Fiction, Classics

Unknown Binding

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mammon and the Archer by O'Henry
9 out of 10

If Mammon is familiar, the Archer in this is Cupid.
He is of course well known and playing in a different team here.

Well, maybe

Anthony Rockwell is a retired wealthy man that enjoys his position.
He seems to come from the prairie and is looked upon with arrogance by his neighbors.

They come from aristocratic backgrounds and are unhappy with the presence of this rich bourgeois in their midst.
He is thinking of painting his mansion in red, white and blue, just to see if these snobs could get their noses any higher.

The author has a great sense of humor, but he is also dealing with some serious issues, like Time, Money and Love.
Richard is the son of the rich king of soap making.

And he holds the opposite view in financial matters from the opinion expressed by Anthony Rockwell.
The latter is sure that money are of vital importance...

- "There are some things that money can't accomplish" says the younger man

Indeed, psychology research points out to the fact that the happiest people have a strong social support in common and not a sizable fortune.
But the father is asking:

- "Tell me something that money can't buy"

And Richard mentions the fact that money can't buy one access to the higher circles.
If there was a time when the aristocracy stayed away from the nouveau riches, that criteria is no longer valid.

The issue that is troubling Richard is out in the open and it regards a girl...

- "Ask her...she'll jump at you...you have the money and the looks and you're a decent boy"

And father becomes funny when he says "you've been to college, but she'll overlook that"

And then we learn that this girl is so busy that Richard has had and looks like he will not have the time to talk to her about marriage or much else.
Anthony Rockwell is again surprised that with the money his boy has he could not get an hour with this girl.

His insistence on financial matters and solutions is wrong in general, even if it might work in this narrative.
Again, psychological research has been centered on lottery winners, who have benefited from winning more than one million dollars.

Using the Anthony Rockwell doctrine, we would say that these people have become happy over night.
And indeed they have, but only for a few months, after which they returned to a set point, a base level of happiness.

Anyway, adding luck and a charm to the ingredients, aunt Ellen gives Richard a special ring.
It is supposed to bring good fortune and has a special history.

The young man takes the ring with him and keeps it in the pocket during the few minutes that he is allowed with his beloved.
They have to travel from the train station to a meeting with her mother and that is supposed to take only a few minutes.

However, along the way, Richard drops the ring, stops the carriage and by the time he is back they are stuck in a traffic jam.
And it takes two hours to untangle.

During this time, Richard has his chance and the girl accepts his proposal.
There is nevertheless an important twist at the end.

Without a spoiler alert I cannot reveal it.
But it casts a completely different light on the account.

In Stumbling Upon Happiness, the great Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert explains how very often we are not happy with events that we thought will us blissful, ecstatic.

In this story, it could unexpectedly be Mammon the reason and not the Archer for whatever happens.

[Roberto Galindo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is like Pixar in 1900, the way shorts went before cinema.

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

O. Henry's "Mammon and the Archer" is a cute romantic short story that is fairly predictable but quite enjoyable and has a good amount of truth to a point.

Story in short- A rich man thinks money can buy anything but his son disagrees.


➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
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When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the keys in his pocket with the other.
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“Richard,” said Anthony Rockwall, “what do you pay for the soap that you use?” Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of unexpectednesses as a girl at her first party. “Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad.” “And your clothes?” “I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule.” “You’re a gentleman,” said Anthony, decidedly. “I’ve heard of
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these young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred mark for clothes. You’ve got as much money to waste as any of ’em, and yet you stick to what’s decent and moderate. Now I use the old Eureka — not only for sentiment, but it’s the purest soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But 50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position and condition. As I said, you’re a gentleman. They say it takes three generations
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to make one. They’re off. Money’ll do it as slick as soap grease. It’s made you one. By hokey! it’s almost made one of me. I’m nearly as impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can’t sleep of nights because I bought in between ’em.” “There are some things that money can’t accomplish,” remarked young Rockwall, rather gloomily. “Now, don’t say that,” said old Anthony, shocked. “I bet my money on money every time. I’ve been
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through the encyclopaedia down to Y looking for something you can’t buy with it; and I expect to have to take up the appendix next week. I’m for money against the field. Tell me something money won’t buy.” “For one thing,” answered Richard, rankling a little, “it won’t buy one into the exclusive circles of society.” “Oho! won’t it?” thundered the champion of the root of evil. “You tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor hadn’t
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had the money to pay for his steerage passage over?” Richard sighed. “And that’s what I was coming to,” said the old man, less boisterously. “That’s why I asked you to come in. There’s something going wrong with you, boy. I’ve been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it’s your liver, there’s the Rambler down in the bay, coaled, and ready to
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steam down to the Bahamas in two days.” “Not a bad guess, dad; you haven’t missed it far.” “Ah,” said Anthony, keenly; “what’s her name?” Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to draw his confidence. “Why don’t you ask her?” demanded old Anthony. “She’ll jump at you. You’ve got the money and the looks, and you’re a decent boy.

❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert ❌❌❌

Old Rockwell has made his fortune and feels money can buy him anything, they are not of a certain society and the girl that young Rockwell loves he finds he has only less then 10 minutes to talk to her about his love be for her until she goes abroad. He laments to his father that money cannot buy him time and all is hopeless. His aunt wishes him the best and gives him a ring that belonged to his mother which she wants him to have in case. He picks up Miss Lantry and while in the carriage he lost the ring and finally finds it but an unbelievable traffic jam prevents them for going to the theater. The aunt tells her brother that his son is engaged to Miss Lantry, and love was the cause, money had nothing to do with it. Old Rockwell's man is paid for the participants who accomplished this traffic disturbance. Money helped but if not for the girl liking the boy it would be a lost cause, unless she just wanted to marry him for his money.


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Your hands are clean. You’ve got no Eureka soap on ’em. You’ve been to college, but she’ll overlook that.” “I haven’t had a chance,” said Richard. “Make one,” said Anthony. “Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw ride, or walk home with her from church. Chance! Pshaw!” “You don’t know the social mill, dad. She’s part of the stream that turns it. Every hour and minute of her time is arranged for days in advance. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp forevermore. And I can’t write it — I can’t do that.” “Tut!” said the old man. “Do you mean to tell me that with all the money I’ve got you can’t get an hour or two of a girl’s time for yourself?” “I’ve put it off too late. She’s going to sail for Europe at noon day after to-morrow for a two years’ stay. I’m to see her alone to-morrow evening for a few minutes. She’s at Larchmont now at her aunt’s. I can’t go there. But I’m allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station to-morrow evening
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at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallack’s at a gallop, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me during that six or eight minutes under those circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one tangle that your money can’t unravel. We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer. There’s no hope
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of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails.”
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“Oh, Anthony,” sighed Aunt Ellen, “I wish you would not think so much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned. Love is all-powerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not have refused our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son.” At eight o’clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold
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ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard. “Wear it to-night, nephew,” she begged. “Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved.” Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he ‘phoned for his cab.
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At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two. “We mustn’t keep mamma and the others waiting,” said she.
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At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop.
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“I’ve dropped a ring,” he apologised, as he climbed out. “It was my mother’s, and I’d hate to lose it. I won’t detain you a minute — I saw where it fell.” In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring. But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but
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dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in the big city. “Why don’t you drive on?” said Miss Lantry, impatiently. “We’ll be late.” Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and
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Thirty-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers’ imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a
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street blockade of the proportions of this one. “I’m very sorry,” said Richard, as he resumed his seat, “but it looks as if we are stuck. They won’t get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn’t dropped the ring we—” “Let me see the ring,” said Miss Lantry. “Now that it can’t be helped, I don’t care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway.” At 11 o’clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwall’s door.
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“Come in,” shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading a book of piratical adventures. Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey-haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake. “They’re engaged, Anthony,” she said, softly. “She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it. “And oh, brother Anthony, don’t ever boast of the power of money again. A little emblem of true love
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— a little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affection — was the cause of our Richard finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred. He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared with true love, Anthony.” “All right,” said old Anthony. “I’m glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn’t spare any expense in the matter if—”
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“But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?”
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The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth. The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie,

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who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall’s house, and was at once received in the library. “Well,” said Anthony, reaching for his chequebook, “it was a good bilin’ of soap. Let’s see — you had $5,000 in cash.” “I paid out $300 more of my own,” said Kelly. “I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops
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struck me hardest — $50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and $25. But didn’t it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I’m glad William A. Brady wasn’t onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn’t want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley’s statue.” “Thirteen hundred — there you are, Kelly,” said Anthony, tearing off a check. “Your thousand, and the
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$300 you were out. You don’t despise money, do you, Kelly?” “Me?” said Kelly. “I can lick the man that invented poverty.” Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door. “You didn’t notice,” said he, “anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did you?” “Why, no,” said Kelly, mystified. “I didn’t. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there.”
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“I thought the little rascal wouldn’t be on hand,” chuckled Anthony. “Good-by, Kelly.”

[gayatri · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love u o henry

[Scott Doherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Money is successful every time. I don’t know anything you can’t buy with it.”

A fantastic short story that depicts a rich entrepreneur, Anthony Rockwall, whose son is trying to marry one of New York’s aristocratic daughters. Anthony believes that money can buy everything and tries to prove it to himself by using his money to stage an elaborate event that helps his son win his bride. O. Henry is fast becoming the king of twist or surprise endings. They creep up on you like being part of the sting and its wonderful.

[Shweta Kesari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henry very-well knows how to surprise his readers, and does that with sparkling good amount of twist in his short stories.

[Romel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Money!! Money!! Money!!

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aww, this was nice. My solution was more expensive - to ship him there LOL.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing. I think the father in the story thinks he's proved his point, but his logic is faulty. Still, it is amusing and i'd read it again

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a momentously congenial tome from the Master’s pen. The utter skill of Henry in conceiving the shock but rational ending, in a niftily conceived plot is brought to the front in this tale. It is a story of pulls between Mammon the divinity of wealth and ‘the Archer’ Cupid the idol of Love. Can Arthur Rockwall, a self-made magnate help his son Richard in winning over his lady-love? Will Richard's romantic view of love and romance see him through in the end? Is 'wealth' important or 'love'? Are they reciprocally inclusive, or exclusive? Read this once in a lifetime story and discover an ending, entirely at variance with your expectations.

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and of course, well written. It is often said that money can't buy you time or love but, Anthony Rockwall does not agree. It can, at least, grease the wheels according to his thinking. Anthony Rockwall uses his money and some ingenuity to help the course of true love for his son. Humorous and sweet. Sometimes the older generation can see more clearly than the young swept up in the melodrama of youth and love.

[April Helms · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever title for a clever short story. A young man expresses his despair to his father about a woman he is afraid he will never get to call his own. The rich dad and the man's aunt both try to help the young man — and try to determine if money can indeed buy anything, or if love conquers all. The answer is open to interpretation.

[Cicuta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Giving 3 stars only because, this time, money defeated love instead of the opposite, usual route, which this mister favours in his stories.
But my dislike for him does not falter nor waver in the slightest I promise.

[Станислав · Rating 3 out of 5]

Когда-то давно читал похожую итальянскую сказку с характерным названием: "Деньги делают всё". Так любовь не купишь, но если есть смекалка и много-много денег, то вполне.

[Mari]

He laments that he will only have 8 minutes in the carriage with girl, but it so happens that there is a traffic jam.

[Jina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this one!! Great short story audio book read by Brian Kelly.

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

An tale of what all money can buy:)

[Annika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook narrated by B.J. Harrison on The Classic Tales Podcast