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The Assessor of Success
Few people are familiar with the name William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), but, just as many remember Mark Twain and not Samuel L. Clemens, Porter is well known by the pen name O. Henry. And O. Henry became known as a master of surprise, with witty short stories that trade on wordplay and surprise twist endings that have become standard fare in the century following his death.
O. Henry was living the routine life of a young pharmacist who dazzled people with his artistic drawing ability, creativity that successfully translated into literature. At first, O. Henry combined his writing and drawing for satire in The Rolling Stone , a failed venture, but his work helped him get notice around Texas. From there, his witty short stories were nearly as creative as his life, which saw him flee the country before getting arrested and imprisoned for embezzlement, leading to stories being written in settings as different as Honduras and a federal penitentiary. Using a pseudonym to hide the fact he was a prisoner, O. Henry became his best known name, and he used it for hundreds of short stories written between 1902-1910 , when he died of cirrhosis of the liver due to heavy drinking.
O. Henry was living the routine life of a young pharmacist who dazzled people with his artistic drawing ability, creativity that successfully translated into literature. At first, O. Henry combined his writing and drawing for satire in The Rolling Stone , a failed venture, but his work helped him get notice around Texas. From there, his witty short stories were nearly as creative as his life, which saw him flee the country before getting arrested and imprisoned for embezzlement, leading to stories being written in settings as different as Honduras and a federal penitentiary. Using a pseudonym to hide the fact he was a prisoner, O. Henry became his best known name, and he used it for hundreds of short stories written between 1902-1910 , when he died of cirrhosis of the liver due to heavy drinking.
14 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 28, 2015
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About the author
O. Henry
2,919 books1,891 followersSuch 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.
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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October 21, 2022
O. Henry's "The Assessor of Success" is a short story about a man that looks to get what he needs for nothing by using men, women and children for pawns to fulfill his agenda..
Story in short- Hastings Beauchamp Morley can get candy from a baby without the kid making a fuss.
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Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6138
Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is denied us to look further into a man’s bosom than the starch on his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and conversation. Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have no more when the sun’s first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building esor ofon the west side of the square. But Morley would have enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen them lined.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6143
First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman’s door, a pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6146
“Why, Bergman, man,” sang Morley, dulcetly, “is this you? I was just on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to the corner and I’ll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk.” Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed off a call loan at Rothschilds’. When he was penniless his bluff was pitched half a tone lower,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6150
but few are competent to detect the difference in the notes. “You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley,” said Bergman. “Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen you in dree mont’. Pros’t!” Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that Bergman ever went home by that route.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
I was thinking Hastings Beauchamp Morley was an older gentleman, middle aged but it seems that he is on the younger side when he talks about a girl he knew growing up that has just reach womanhood. Morley starts off in the morning with zero and cons his way without working so in the end he either has money or satisfying himself. He is not a bad rogue, he helped prevent a child's death. He seems quite happy until he saw the young lady from his youth, "just entering womanhood", then he wants to die. Is she with baby? She seems pure and has not lost that innocence. Does he see that kind of life more smoothing?
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6157
to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner he lingered, undecided. Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6161
Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. “Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug ‘tore for mamma. She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med’cin.” “Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be doing errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6165
Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. “Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium chloride, ten grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I know all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6169
“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink after he had compounded the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the regular price.” “To gulls,” said Morley, smilingly. He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. “Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said, cheerfully, to his small victim.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6173
Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile, cheap candy from the Italian’s fruit stand. Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that the waiter ventured to
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6177
premise that good news had come his way. “Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. “It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in transactions of all kinds?” “Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from the dry goods stores in the South during
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6180
August, and honeymooners from Staten Island, and” — “Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is just — men, women and children. The world — well, say New York and as far as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island — is full of greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois.” “If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, “Oi’ll” —
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6185
Morley lifted his hand in protest — slightly martyred protest. “It will do,” he said, magnanimously. “And now, green Chartreuse, frappe and a demi-tasse.” Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6189
not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. A joyful party of four — two women and two men — fell upon him with cries of delight. There was a dinner party on — where had he been for a fortnight past? — what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and engulfed him — he must join them — tra la la — and the rest. One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6192
I can do with him?” and added her queen’s command to the invitations. “I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.” The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an arc light down the frolicsome way. Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6196
and laughing gleefully to himself. “‘Front,’” he chanted under his breath; “‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children — forgeries, water-and-salt lies — how they all take it in!” An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side. “Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6200
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done with his street and number.” “I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them. “You had better apply to the police.” “The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6204
he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could” — “I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to” — “Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out, about five foot” — “Oh, ‘Smothers!’” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6209
Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads — according to these watchmakers — are run by. “The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me here at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t leave the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no name for it! I was about
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6213
to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take you to Sol’s house, Mr. Smothers. But, before we take the car I hope you will join me in” — An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in and out amidst
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6217
a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench. Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In Morley’s appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the usual nightly occupants of the benches. “Kind sir,” he whined, “if you could spare a dime or even a few pennies to one who” — Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6221
“God bless you!” said the old man. “I’ve been trying to find work for” — “Work!” echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. “You are a fool, my friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to me whatever I want from it.” “God has blessed you,” said the old man. “It is only work that I have known. And now I can get no more.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6225
“I must go home,” said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. “I stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work.” “May your kindness be rewarded this night,” said the old man. “Oh,” said Morley, “you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6229
Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and neither to the right nor the left.
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Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with her at school. There had been no sentiment between them — nothing but the friendship of innocent days. But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said dully: “God! I wish I could die.”
Story in short- Hastings Beauchamp Morley can get candy from a baby without the kid making a fuss.
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Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6138
Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is denied us to look further into a man’s bosom than the starch on his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and conversation. Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have no more when the sun’s first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building esor ofon the west side of the square. But Morley would have enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen them lined.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6143
First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman’s door, a pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6146
“Why, Bergman, man,” sang Morley, dulcetly, “is this you? I was just on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to the corner and I’ll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk.” Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed off a call loan at Rothschilds’. When he was penniless his bluff was pitched half a tone lower,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6150
but few are competent to detect the difference in the notes. “You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley,” said Bergman. “Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen you in dree mont’. Pros’t!” Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that Bergman ever went home by that route.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert
I was thinking Hastings Beauchamp Morley was an older gentleman, middle aged but it seems that he is on the younger side when he talks about a girl he knew growing up that has just reach womanhood. Morley starts off in the morning with zero and cons his way without working so in the end he either has money or satisfying himself. He is not a bad rogue, he helped prevent a child's death. He seems quite happy until he saw the young lady from his youth, "just entering womanhood", then he wants to die. Is she with baby? She seems pure and has not lost that innocence. Does he see that kind of life more smoothing?
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6157
to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner he lingered, undecided. Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6161
Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. “Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug ‘tore for mamma. She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med’cin.” “Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be doing errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6165
Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. “Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium chloride, ten grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I know all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6169
“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink after he had compounded the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the regular price.” “To gulls,” said Morley, smilingly. He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. “Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said, cheerfully, to his small victim.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6173
Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile, cheap candy from the Italian’s fruit stand. Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that the waiter ventured to
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6177
premise that good news had come his way. “Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. “It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in transactions of all kinds?” “Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from the dry goods stores in the South during
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6180
August, and honeymooners from Staten Island, and” — “Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is just — men, women and children. The world — well, say New York and as far as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island — is full of greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois.” “If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, “Oi’ll” —
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6185
Morley lifted his hand in protest — slightly martyred protest. “It will do,” he said, magnanimously. “And now, green Chartreuse, frappe and a demi-tasse.” Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6189
not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. A joyful party of four — two women and two men — fell upon him with cries of delight. There was a dinner party on — where had he been for a fortnight past? — what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and engulfed him — he must join them — tra la la — and the rest. One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6192
I can do with him?” and added her queen’s command to the invitations. “I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.” The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an arc light down the frolicsome way. Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6196
and laughing gleefully to himself. “‘Front,’” he chanted under his breath; “‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children — forgeries, water-and-salt lies — how they all take it in!” An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side. “Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6200
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done with his street and number.” “I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them. “You had better apply to the police.” “The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house,
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6204
he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could” — “I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to” — “Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out, about five foot” — “Oh, ‘Smothers!’” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6209
Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads — according to these watchmakers — are run by. “The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me here at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t leave the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no name for it! I was about
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6213
to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take you to Sol’s house, Mr. Smothers. But, before we take the car I hope you will join me in” — An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in and out amidst
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6217
a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench. Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In Morley’s appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the usual nightly occupants of the benches. “Kind sir,” he whined, “if you could spare a dime or even a few pennies to one who” — Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6221
“God bless you!” said the old man. “I’ve been trying to find work for” — “Work!” echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. “You are a fool, my friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to me whatever I want from it.” “God has blessed you,” said the old man. “It is only work that I have known. And now I can get no more.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6225
“I must go home,” said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. “I stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work.” “May your kindness be rewarded this night,” said the old man. “Oh,” said Morley, “you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you.”
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6229
Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and neither to the right nor the left.
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 6233
Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with her at school. There had been no sentiment between them — nothing but the friendship of innocent days. But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said dully: “God! I wish I could die.”
December 17, 2023
Акула нью-йоркских улиц снова вышел на охоту по мирному изъятию у простофиль лишних денежных знаков. Элегантно , легко , зло и весело проходит день человека, который никогда не работал, но со вкусом живёт за чужой счет. Когда мошейник так мил и элегантен - с ним даже приятно поделиться содержимым карманов, по крайней мере, этим можно утешиться.
Немного портит впечатление концовка.
свернуть
Серьёзно? У нас понятно : соцреализм, перековка трудом, нет воспеванию жизни нахлебников Но что заставило ОГенри? Как будто цензура местной методистской церкви.
Стал бы профессиональный жулик ей завидовать, уж е��ли она ему нравилась, он мог бы её охмурить, но никак не плакать. Это выбивается из повествования.
Немного портит впечатление концовка.
свернуть
Серьёзно? У нас понятно : соцреализм, перековка трудом, нет воспеванию жизни нахлебников Но что заставило ОГенри? Как будто цензура местной методистской церкви.
Стал бы профессиональный жулик ей завидовать, уж е��ли она ему нравилась, он мог бы её охмурить, но никак не плакать. Это выбивается из повествования.
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