О. Генри - Short Stories / Рассказы

“Well, Andy,” says I, “if you are bound to get rid of this accumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work it on some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the business. Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork and beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 more by midnight.”

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

“One o’clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire for place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets were deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There was only a light drizzle falling then.

“A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to scrape the mud off his boots.

“Pardner,” says I, “what has happened? This morning there was hectic gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main port-cullis.”

“The whole town,” says the muddy man, “is up in Sperry’s wool warehouse listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is some gravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and conclusions,’ says the man.

“Well, I hope he’ll adjourn, sine qua non , [22]pretty soon,” says I, “for trade languishes.”

“Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o’clock two Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro. We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his hands and feet.

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

“What was it about?” I asked.

“Temperance,” says he. “And when he got through, every man in Bird City signed the pledge for a year.”

“Many of our great men,” said I (apropos of many things), “have declared that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.”

“I know;” said Jeff Peters. “I’ve read in history and mythology about Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale and Mrs Caudle and Eve and other noted females of the past. But, in my opinion, the woman of to-day is of little use in politics or business – what’s she best in, anyway? – men make the best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers, clerks, hairdressers and launderers. About the only job left that a woman can beat a man in is female impersonator in vaudeville!”

“I would have thought,” said I, “that occasionally, anyhow, you would have found the wit and intuition of woman valuable to you in your lines of business?”

“Now, wouldn’t you,” said Jeff, with an emphatic nod – “wouldn’t you have imagined that? But a woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in any straight swindle. She’s liable to turn honest on you when you are depending upon her most. I tried ’em once.

“Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived the illusion that he wanted to be appointed United States Marshal. At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would go trickling down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The deputies was annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshal might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.

“ ‘Jeff,’ says Bill to me, ‘you are a man of learning and education, besides having knowledge and information concerning not only rudiments but facts and attainments.’

“ ‘I do,’ says I, ‘and I have never regretted it. I am not one,’ says I, ‘who would cheapen education by making it free. Tell me,’ says I, ‘which is of the most value to mankind, literature or horse racing?’

“ ‘Why-er-, playing the po – I mean, of course, the poets and the great writers have got the call, of course,’ says Bill.

“ ‘Exactly;’ says I. ‘Then why do the master minds of finance philanthropy,’ says I, ‘charge us $2 to get into a race-track and let us into a library free? Is that distilling into the masses,’ says I, ‘a correct estimate of the relative value of the two means of self-culture and disorder?’

“ ‘You are arguing outside of my faculties of sense and rhetoric,’ says Bill, ‘what I wanted you to do is to go to Washington and dig out this appointment for me. I haven’t no ideas of cultivation and intrigue. I’m a plain citizen and I need the job.’

“ ‘I’ve killed seven men,’ says Bill; ‘I’ve got nine children; I’ve been a good Republican ever since the first of May; I can’t read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain’t illegible for the office. And I think your partner, Mr Tucker,’ goes on Bill, ‘is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and connected system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you preliminary,’ says Bill, ‘$1,000 for drinks, bribes and carfare in Washington. If you land the job I will pay you $1,000 more, cash down, and guarantee you impunity in boot-legging whiskey for twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put this thing through the White-washed Wigwam of the Great Father of the most eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania Railroad?’ says Bill.

“Well, I talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as I was, saying to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and multum in parvo [23]tuning fork.

Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher’s or a moral man’s by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill’s offer, and strikes out for Washington.

“Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota Avenue, 0.5. S. W. ‘Now Andy, for the first time in our lives, we’ve got to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we’ve never been used to; but we’ve got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble’s sake. In a straight and legitimate business,’ says I, ‘we could afford to introduce a little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly and heinous piece of malpractice like this, it seems to me that the straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,’ says I, ‘that we hand over $500 of this money to the chairman of the national campaign committee, get a receipt, lay the receipt on the President’s desk and tell him about Bill. The President is a man who would appreciate a candidate who went about getting office that way instead of pulling wires.

“Andy agreed with me, but after we talked the scheme over with the hotel clerk we give that plan up. He told us that there was only one way to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady lobbyist. He gave us the address of one he recommended, a Mrs Avery, who he said was high up in sociable and diplomatic rings and circles.

“The next morning at 10 o’clock me and Andy called at her hotel, and was shown up to her reception room. This Mrs Avery was a solace and a balm to the eyesight. She had hair the color of the back of a twenty-dollar gold certificate, blue eyes and a system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.