Master of Arts

by O. Henry

A story from "Cabbages and Kings"

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

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have arranged my takeaway thoughts into a haiku:

"It's easy to rage,
Until it’s your principles
That are put to test."

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

O'Henry's "Master of Arts" is from "Cabbages and Kings" and sadly reminds me of the United States and the politicians selling out influence to benefit other countries and not giving a damn about its own citizens, building up personal power and income, looking to be the benevolent leader when in actuality selling its citizens to its ruin.

Story in short-Keogh is out to make a buck and knowing President Losada is extremely vain, enlists a starving artist to paint his portrait for money.


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In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch
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the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom-houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.

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


Keogh goes to New York and finds artist Carry White, who looks to take his part of the money to travel and study in Paris. They arrive in Coralio and a price is fixed but White's ideals of being an artist, he cannot paint the ridiculous painting the dear leader wants, and tells Keogh her refuses but then is convinced to paint it. When time comes for the money to come to him, he tears up the note and ruins the painting. Keogh is upset but later does the similar thing when he takes a picture from his camera of the dear leader and an Englishman who he is accused of selling out his country which he denies. He is about to blackmail but dies the same thing as the artist done but a little differently.


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A TWO-INCH STUB of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned. The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed, and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events. President Losada — many called him Dictator — was a man whose genius would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo- Saxons, had not that genius been intermixed with other traits that
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were petty and subversive.
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Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it nearly free from the shackles of
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ignorance and sloth and the vermin that fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of nations. He established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges, railroads and palaces, and bestowed generous subsidies upon the arts and sciences. He was the absolute despot and the idol of his people. The wealth of the country poured into his hands. Other presidents had been rapacious without reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but his people had their share of the benefits.

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The joint in his armour was his insatiate passion for monuments and tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness.
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One of the sycophants in his court painted him as St. John, with a halo and a train of attendants in full uniform. Losada
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saw nothing incongruous in this picture, and had it hung in a church in the capital.
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This was the man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle buccaneer had observed the rain of favors that fell upon those who ministered to the president’s vanities, and he did not deem it his duty to hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid fortune.
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Soon came the Karlsefin again — she of the trampish habits — gleaning a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip. “Yes, I’m going to New York,” he explained to the group of his countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. “But I’ll be back before you miss me. I’ve undertaken the art education of this piebald
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country, and I’m not the man to desert it while it’s in the early throes of tintypes.”
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“Name doesn’t matter,” said Keogh, largely; “it’s the frame and the varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a minute what I want. I’ve come on a little voyage of two thousand miles to take you in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as the scheme showed itself to me. How would you like to go back with me and paint a picture? Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand dollars for the job.”
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Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative professional labours. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who had trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the lineaments of the president, and secure a share of the pesos that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.

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“I’ll go you, Billy,” he said, in the quiet tones of decision. “I’ve got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I’ll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I’ll begin to pack to-morrow.”
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The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White’s fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before the public.
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Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The president desired that Señor White come to the Casa Morena for an informal interview.
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“Get out!” said Keogh, with splendid confidence. “I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country. Off you go.” The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down, puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour
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the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White, and vanished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.
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The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn’t move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, ‘Whatever you say.’ I am to go back to-morrow
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and discuss with him the details of the picture.” Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his downcast countenance. “I’m failing, Carry,” he said, sorrowfully. “I’m not fit to handle these man’s-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man’s limit to within two cents. He’d have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say — Carry — you’ll see

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old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won’t you, if he makes a break like that again?”