BY O. HENRY

A Ladder Edition at the 1,000-word level
Adapted by Elinor Chamberlain

The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories

previously published as O. Henry’s American Scenes

Author: O. Henry

Adaptation: Elinor Chamberlain

First edition 1985. Second printing 1991. Third printing 1993.

Fourth printing 1994. Fifth printing 1996. This printing in 2005.

Originally published by:
Materials Development and Review Branch
English Language Programs Division
United States Information Agency
Washington, D.C.

This printing published by:
Office of English Language Programs
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C.

http://americanenglish.state.gov

ISBN (Print with Audio CD) 978-1-624-25031-6

ISBN (PDF) 978-1-624-25033-0

ISBN (ePub) 978-1-624-25034-7

ISBN (mobi) 978-1-624-25036-1

Layout and Design: Caesar Jackson

Cover photograph: ©Library of Congress

The Ladder Series of books are specially prepared editions of well-known American books. They have been made easier to read for the enjoyment of readers for whom English is a second language.

The series is built on a “ladder” of five steps—from 1,000 to 5,000 different English words. The books have been shortened, but they keep the ideas, facts, and pleasures found in them by American readers.

This book uses 1,000 English words. Some words in the book are above this step and will be found written in boldface letters. They are explained in the glossary at the back.

The publisher hopes the reader will enjoy this series while going up the ladder to more difficult reading.

CONTENTS

Cover

The Gift of the Magi

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

The Last Leaf

The Furnished Room

Hearts and Crosses

The Cop and the Anthem

From the Cabby’s Seat

A Retrieved Reformation

The Romance of a Busy Broker

After Twenty Years

Transients in Arcadia

The Count and the Wedding Guest

Mammon and the Archer

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Green Door

Glossary

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI AND OTHER STORIES

The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. She had put it aside, one cent and then another and then another, in her careful buying of meat and other food. Della counted it three times. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was nothing to do but fall on the bed and cry. So Della did it.

While the lady of the home is slowly growing quieter, we can look at the home. Furnished rooms at a cost of $8 a week. There is little more to say about it.

In the hall below was a letter-box too small to hold a letter. There was an electric bell, but it could not make a sound. Also there was a name beside the door: “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

When the name was placed there, Mr. James Dillingham Young was being paid $30 a week. Now, when he was being paid only $20 a week, the name seemed too long and important. It should perhaps have been “Mr. James D. Young.” But when Mr. James Dillingham Young entered the furnished rooms, his name became very short indeed. Mrs. James Dillingham Young put her arms warmly about him and called him “Jim.” You have already met her. She is Della.

Della finished her crying and cleaned the marks of it from her face. She stood by the window and looked out with no interest. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a gift. She had put aside as much as she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week is not much. Everything had cost more than she had expected. It always happened like that.

Only $ 1.87 to buy a gift for Jim. Her Jim. She had had many happy hours planning something nice for him. Something nearly good enough. Something almost worth the honor of belonging to Jim.

There was a looking-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen the kind of looking-glass that is placed in $8 furnished rooms. It was very narrow. A person could see only a little of himself at a time. However, if he was very thin and moved very quickly, he might be able to get a good view of himself. Della, being quite thin, had mastered this art.

Suddenly she turned from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brightly, but her face had lost its color. Quickly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its complete length.

The James Dillingham Youngs were very proud of two things which they owned. One thing was Jim’s gold watch. It had once belonged to his father. And, long ago, it had belonged to his father’s father. The other thing was Della’s hair.

If a queen had lived in the rooms near theirs, Della would have washed and dried her hair where the queen could see it. Della knew her hair was more beautiful than any queen’s jewels and gifts.

If a king had lived in the same house, with all his riches, Jim would have looked at his watch every time they met. Jim knew that no king had anything so valuable.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, shining like a falling stream of brown water. It reached below her knee. It almost made itself into a dress for her.

And then she put it up on her head again, nervously and quickly. Once she stopped for a moment and stood still while a tear or two ran down her face.

She put on her old brown coat. She put on her old brown hat. With the bright light still in her eyes, she moved quickly out the door and down to the street.

Where she stopped, the sign said: “Mrs. Sofronie. Hair Articles of all Kinds.”

Up to the second floor Della ran, and stopped to get her breath.

Mrs. Sofronie, large, too white, cold-eyed, looked at her.

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Mrs. Sofronie. “Take your hat off and let me look at it.”

Down fell the brown waterfall.

“Twenty dollars,” said Mrs. Sofronie, lifting the hair to feel its weight.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours seemed to fly. She was going from one shop to another, to find a gift for Jim.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the shops, and she had looked in every shop in the city.

It was a gold watch chain, very simply made. Its value was in its rich and pure material. Because it was so plain and simple, you knew that it was very valuable. All good things are like this.

It was good enough for The Watch.

As soon as she saw it, she knew that Jim must have it. It was like him. Quietness and value—Jim and the chain both had quietness and value. She paid twenty-one dollars for it. And she hurried home with the chain and eighty-seven cents.

With that chain on his watch, Jim could look at his watch and learn the time anywhere he might be. Though the watch was so fine, it had never had a fine chain. He sometimes took it out and looked at it only when no one could see him do it.

When Della arrived home, her mind quieted a little. She began to think more reasonably. She started to try to cover the sad marks of what she had done. Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks. It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends—never easy.

Within forty minutes her head looked a little better. With her short hair, she looked wonderfully like a schoolboy. She stood at the looking-glass for a long time.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he looks at me a second time, he’ll say I look like a girl who sings and dances for money. But what could I do—oh! What could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”

At seven, Jim’s dinner was ready for him.

Jim was never late. Della held the watch chain in her hand and sat near the door where he always entered. Then she heard his step in the hall and her face lost color for a moment. She often said little prayers quietly, about simple everyday things. And now she said: “Please God, make him think I’m still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in. He looked very thin and he was not smiling. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and with a family to take care of! He needed a new coat and he had nothing to cover his cold hands.

Jim stopped inside the door. He was as quiet as a hunting dog when it is near a bird. His eyes looked strangely at Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not understand. It filled her with fear. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor anything she had been ready for. He simply looked at her with that strange expression on his face.

Della went to him.

“Jim, dear,” she cried, “don’t look at me like that. I had my hair cut off and sold it. I couldn’t live through Christmas without giving you a gift. My hair will grow again. You won’t care, will you? My hair grows very fast. It’s Christmas, Jim. Let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful nice gift I got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim slowly. He seemed to labor to understand what had happened. He seemed not to feel sure he knew.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me now? I’m me, Jim. I’m the same without my hair.”

Jim looked around the room.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said.

“You don’t have to look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It’s the night before Christmas, boy. Be good to me, because I sold it for you. Maybe the hairs of my head could be counted,” she said, “but no one could ever count my love for you. Shall we eat dinner, Jim?”

Jim put his arms around his Della. For ten seconds let us look in another direction. Eight dollars a week or a million dollars a year— how different are they? Someone may give you an answer, but it will be wrong. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. My meaning will be explained soon.

From inside the coat, Jim took something tied in paper. He threw it upon the table.

“I want you to understand me, Dell,” he said. “Nothing like a haircut could make me love you any less. But if you’ll open that, you may know what I felt when I came in.”

White fingers pulled off the paper. And then a cry of joy; and then a change to tears.

For there lay The Combs—the combs that Della had seen in a shop window and loved for a long time. Beautiful combs, with jewels, perfect for her beautiful hair. She had known they cost too much for her to buy them. She had looked at them without the least hope of owning them. And now they were hers, but her hair was gone.

But she held them to her heart, and at last was able to look up and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And then she jumped up and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful gift. She held it out to him in her open hand. The gold seemed to shine softly as if with her own warm and loving spirit.

“Isn’t it perfect, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at your watch a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how they look together.”

Jim sat down and smiled.

“Della,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas gifts away and keep them a while. They’re too nice to use now. I sold the watch to get the money to buy the combs. And now I think we should have our dinner.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men— who brought gifts to the newborn Christ-child. They were the first to give Christmas gifts. Being wise, their gifts were doubtless wise ones. And here I have told you the story of two children who were not wise. Each sold the most valuable thing he owned in order to buy a gift for the other. But let me speak a last word to the wise of these days: Of all who give gifts, these two were the most wise. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the most wise. Everywhere they are the wise ones. They are the magi.

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all Americans go back to the old home and eat a big dinner. Bless the day. The President gives it to us every year.

Sometimes he talks about the people who had the first Thanksgiving. They were the Puritans. They were some people who landed on our Atlantic shore. We don’t really remember much about them.

But those people ate a large bird called turkey on the first Thanksgiving Day. So we have turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, if we have enough money to buy turkey. That is a tradition.

Yes. Thanksgiving Day is the one day of the year that is purely American. And now here is the story to prove to you that we have old traditions in this new country. They are growing older more quickly than traditions in old countries. That is because we are so young and full of life. We do everything quickly.

Stuffy Pete sat down on a seat in the New York City park named Union Square. It was the third seat to the right as you enter Union Square from the east.

Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had sat down there at one in the afternoon. Every time, things had happened to him. They were wonderful things. They made his heart feel full of joy—and they filled another part of him, too. They filled the part below his heart.

On those other Thanksgiving Days he had been hungry. (It is a strange thing. There are rich people who wish to help the poor. But many of them seem to think that the poor are hungry only on Thanksgiving Day.)

But today Pete was not hungry. He had come from a dinner so big that he had almost no power to move. His light green eyes looked out from a gray face on which there was still a little food. His breath was short. His body had suddenly become too big for his clothes; it seemed ready to break out of them. They were torn. You could see his skin through a hole in the front of his shirt. But the cold wind, with snow in it, felt pleasantly cool to him.

For Stuffy Pete was overheated with the warmth of all he had had to eat. The dinner had been much too big. It seemed to him that his dinner had included all the turkey and all the other food in the whole world.

So he sat, very, very full. He looked out at the world without interest, as if it could never offer him anything more.

The dinner had not been expected.

He had been passing a large house near the beginning of that great broad street called Fifth Avenue. It was the home of two old ladies of an old family. These two old ladies had a deep love of traditions. There were certain things they always did. On Thanksgiving Day at noon they always sent a servant to stand at the door. There he waited for the first hungry person who walked by. The servant had orders to bring that person into the house and feed him until he could eat no more. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to the park. The servant had gathered him in. Tradition had been followed.

Stuffy Pete sat in the park looking straight before him for ten minutes. Then he felt a desire to look in another direction. With a very great effort, he moved his head slowly to the left.

Then his eyes grew wider and his breath stopped. His feet in their torn shoes at the ends of his short legs moved about on the ground.

For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth Avenue toward Stuffy’s seat.

Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there to find Stuffy Pete on his seat. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was trying to make into a tradition. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there. Then he had led Stuffy to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner.

They do these things more easily in old countries like England. They do them without thinking about them.

But in this young country, we must think about them. In order to build a tradition, we must do the same thing again and again for a long time. The Old Gentleman loved his country. He believed he was helping to build a great American tradition. And he had been doing very well. Nine years is a long time here.

The Old Gentleman moved, straight and proud, toward the tradition that he was building. Truly feeding Stuffy Pete once a year was not a very important tradition. There are greater and more important traditions in England. But it was a beginning. It proved that a tradition was at least possible in America.

The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black. He wore eye-glasses. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year. His legs did not seem as strong as they had seemed the year before.

As this kind Old Gentleman came toward him, Stuffy began to shake and his breath was shorter. He wished he could fly away. But he could not move from his seat.

“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to see that the troubles of another year have not hurt you. You continue to move in health about the beautiful world. For that blessing you and I can give thanks on this day of thanksgiving. If you will come with me, my man, I will give you a dinner that will surely make your body feel as thankful as your mind.”

That is what the Old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves were almost a tradition. Always before, they had been music in Stuffy’s ear. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tears of suffering in his eyes. The snow turned quickly to water when it fell upon his hot face. But the Old Gentleman was shaking with the cold. He turned away, with his back to the wind, and he did not see Stuffy’s eyes.

Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman seemed sad as he spoke. He did not know that it was because the Old Gentleman was wishing that he had a son. A son would come there after he himself was gone. A son would stand proud and strong before Stuffy, and say: “In remembrance of my father.” Then it would really be a tradition.

But the Old Gentleman had no family. He lived in a room in one of the old houses near the park. In the winter he grew a few flowers there. In the spring he walked on Fifth Avenue. In the summer he lived in a farmhouse in the hills outside New York, and he talked of a strange bug he hoped some day to find. In the fall season he gave Stuffy a dinner. These were the things that filled the Old Gentleman’s life.

Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, helpless and very sorry for himself. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure. His face was getting older every year, but his clothes were very clean and fresh.

And then Stuffy made a strange noise. He was trying to speak. As the Old Gentleman had heard the noise nine times before, he understood it. He knew that Stuffy was accepting.

“Thank you. I’m very hungry.”

Stuffy was very full, but he understood that he was part of a tradition. His desire for food on Thanksgiving Day was not his own. It belonged to this kind Old Gentleman. True, America is free. But there are some things that must be done.

The Old Gentleman led Stuffy to the restaurant and to the same table where they had always gone. They were known here.

“Here comes that old man,” said a waiter, “that buys that old no-good fellow a dinner every Thanksgiving.”

The Old Gentleman sat at the table, watching. The waiters brought food, and more food. And Stuffy began to eat.

No great and famous soldier ever battled more strongly against an enemy. The turkey and all the other food were gone almost as quickly as they appeared. Stuffy saw the look of happiness on the Old Gentleman’s face. He continued to eat in order to keep it there.

In an hour the battle was finished.

“Thank you,” Stuffy said. “Thank you for my Thanksgiving dinner.”

Then he stood up heavily and started to go to the wrong door. A waiter turned him in the right direction.

The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30, and left fifteen cents more for the waiter.

They said goodbye, as they did each year, at the door. The Old Gentleman went south, and Stuffy went north.

Stuffy went around the first corner, and stood for one minute. Then he fell.

There he was found. He was picked up and taken to a hospital. They put him on a bed, and began to try to discover what strange sickness had made him fall.

And an hour later the Old Gentleman was brought to the same hospital. And they put him on another bed, and began to try to discover what his sickness could be.

After a little time one of the doctors met another doctor, and they talked.

“That nice old gentleman over there,” he said. “Do you know what’s wrong with him? He is almost dead for need of food. A very proud old man, I think. He told me he has had nothing to eat for three days.”

The Last Leaf

In a small part of the city west of Washington Square, the streets have gone wild. They turn in different directions. They are broken into small pieces called “places.” One street goes across itself one or two times. A painter once discovered something possible and valuable about this street. Suppose a painter had some painting materials for which he had not paid. Suppose he had no money. Suppose a man came to get the money. The man might walk down that street and suddenly meet himself coming back, without having received a cent!

This part of the city is called Greenwich Village. And to old Greenwich Village the painters soon came. Here they found rooms they like, with good light and at a low cost.

Sue and Johnsy lived at the top of a building with three floors. One of these young women came from Maine, the other from California. They had met at a restaurant on Eighth Street. There they discovered that they liked the same kind of art, the same kind of food, and the same kind of clothes. So they decided to live and work together.

That was in the spring.

Toward winter a cold stranger entered Greenwich Village. No one could see him. He walked around touching one person here and another there with his icy fingers. He was a bad sickness. Doctors called him Pneumonia. On the east side of the city he hurried, touching many people; but in the narrow streets of Greenwich Village he did not move so quickly.

Mr. Pneumonia was not a nice old gentleman. A nice old gentleman would not hurt a weak little woman from California. But Mr. Pneumonia touched Johnsy with his cold fingers. She lay on her bed almost without moving, and she looked through the window at the wall of the house next to hers.

One morning the busy doctor spoke to Sue alone in the hall, where Johnsy could not hear.

“She has a very small chance,” he said. “She has a chance, if she wants to live. If people don’t want to live, I can’t do much for them. Your little lady has decided that she is not going to get well. Is there something that is troubling her?”

“She always wanted to go to Italy and paint a picture of the Bay of Naples,” said Sue.

“Paint! Not paint. Is there anything worth being troubled about? A man?”

“A man?” said Sue. “Is a man worth—No, doctor. There is not a man.”

“It is weakness,” said the doctor. “I will do all I know how to do. But when a sick person begins to feel that he’s going to die, half my work is useless. Talk to her about new winter clothes. If she were interested in the future, her chances would be better.”

After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom to cry. Then she walked into Johnsy’s room. She carried some of her painting materials, and she was singing.

Johnsy lay there, very thin and very quiet. Her face was turned toward the window. Sue stopped singing, thinking that Johnsy was asleep.

Sue began to work. As she worked she heard a low sound, again and again. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting—counting back.

“Twelve,” she said; and a little later, “Eleven”; and then, “Ten,” and, “Nine”; and then, “Eight,” and, “Seven,” almost together.

Sue looked out the window. What was there to count? There was only the side wall of the next house, a short distance away. The wall had no window. An old, old tree grew against the wall. The cold breath of winter had already touched it. Almost all its leaves had fallen from its dark branches.

“What is it, dear?” asked Sue.

“Six,” said Johnsy, in a voice still lower. “They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It hurt my head to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only five now.”

“Five what, dear? Tell your Sue.”

“Leaves. On the tree. When the last one falls, I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”

“Oh, I never heard of such a thing,” said Sue. “It doesn’t have any sense in it. What does an old tree have to do with you? Or with your getting well? And you used to love that tree so much. Don’t be a little fool. The doctor told me your chances for getting well. He told me this morning. He said you had very good chances! Try to eat a little now. And then I’ll go back to work. And then I can sell my picture, and then I can buy something more for you to eat to make you strong.”

“You don’t have to buy anything for me,” said Johnsy. She still looked out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want anything to eat. Now there are four. I want to see the last one fall before night. Then I’ll go, too.”

“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, “will you promise me to close your eyes and keep them closed? Will you promise not to look out the window until I finish working? I must have this picture ready tomorrow. I need the light; I can’t cover the window.”

“Couldn’t you work in the other room?” asked Johnsy coldly.

“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “And I don’t want you to look at those leaves.”

“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy. She closed her eyes and lay white and still. “Because I want to see the last leaf fall. I have done enough waiting. I have done enough thinking. I want to go sailing down, down, like one of those leaves.”

“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman to come up here. I want to paint a man in this picture, and I’ll make him look like Behrman. I won’t be gone a minute. Don’t try to move till I come back.”

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the first floor of their house. He was past sixty. He had had no success as a painter. For forty years he had painted, without ever painting a good picture. He had always talked of painting a great picture, a masterpiece, but he had never yet started it.

He got a little money by letting others paint pictures of him. He drank too much. He still talked of his great masterpiece. And he believed that it was his special duty to do everything possible to help Sue and Johnsy.

Sue found him in his dark room, and she knew that he had been drinking. She could smell it. She told him about Johnsy and the leaves on the vine. She said that she was afraid that Johnsy would indeed sail down, down like the leaf. Her hold on the world was growing weaker.

Old Behrman shouted his anger over such an idea.

“What!” he cried. “Are there such fools? Do people die because leaves drop off a tree? I have not heard of such a thing. No, I will not come up and sit while you make a picture of me. Why do you allow her to think such a thing? That poor little Johnsy!”

“She is very sick and weak,” said Sue. “The sickness has put these strange ideas into her mind. Mr. Behrman, if you won’t come, you won’t. But I don’t think you’re very nice.”

“This is like a woman!” shouted Behrman. “Who said I will not come? Go. I come with you. For half an hour I have been trying to say that I will come. God! This is not any place for someone so good as Johnsy to lie sick. Some day I shall paint my masterpiece, and we shall all go away from here. God! Yes.”

Johnsy was sleeping when they went up. Sue covered the window, and took Behrman into the other room. There they looked out the window fearfully at the tree. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A cold rain was falling, with a little snow in it too.

Behrman sat down, and Sue began to paint.

She worked through most of the night.

In the morning, after an hour’s sleep, she went to Johnsy’s bedside. Johnsy with wide-open eyes was looking toward the window. “I want to see,” she told Sue.

Sue took the cover from the window.

But after the beating rain and the wild wind that had not stopped through the whole night, there still was one leaf to be seen against the wall. It was the last on the tree. It was still dark green near the branch. But at the edges it was turning yellow with age. There it was hanging from a branch nearly twenty feet above the ground.

“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today, and I shall die at the same time.”

“Dear, dear Johnsy!” said Sue. “Think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I do?”

But Johnsy did not answer. The most lonely thing in the world is a soul when it is preparing to go on its far journey. The ties that held her to friendship and to earth were breaking, one by one.

The day slowly passed. As it grew dark, they could still see the leaf hanging from its branch against the wall. And then, as the night came, the north wind began again to blow. The rain still beat against the windows.

When it was light enough the next morning, Johnsy again commanded that she be allowed to see.

The leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was cooking something for her to eat.

“I’ve been a bad girl, Sue,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how bad I was. It is wrong to want to die. I’ll try to eat now. But first bring me a looking-glass, so that I can see myself. And then I’ll sit up and watch you cook.”

An hour later she said, “Sue, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.”

The doctor came in the afternoon. Sue followed him into the hall outside Johnsy’s room to talk to him.

“The chances are good,” said the doctor. He took Sue’s thin, shaking hand in his. “Give her good care, and she’ll get well. And now I must see another sick person in this house. His name is Behrman. A painter, I believe. Pneumonia, too. Mike is an old, weak man, and he is very ill. There is no hope for him. But we take him to the hospital today. We’ll make it as easy for him as we can.”

The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s safe. You have done it. Food and care now—that’s all.”

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay. She put one arm around her.

“I have something to tell you,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia today in the hospital. He was ill only two days. Someone found him on the morning of the first day, in his room. He was helpless with pain.”

“His shoes and his clothes were wet and as cold as ice. Everyone wondered where he had been. The night had been so cold and wild.

“And then they found some things. There was a light that he had taken outside. And there were his materials for painting. There was paint, green paint and yellow paint. And—

“Look out the window, dear, at the last leaf on the wall. Didn’t you wonder why it never moved when the wind was blowing? Oh, my dear, it is Behrman’s great masterpiece—he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.”

The Furnished Room

Restless, always moving, forever passing like time itself, are most of the people who live in these old red houses. This is on New York’s West Side.

The people are homeless, yet they have a hundred homes. They go from furnished room to furnished room. They are transients, transients forever—transients in living place, transients in heart and mind. They sing the song, “Home, Sweet Home,” but they sing it without feeling what it means. They can carry everything they own in one small box. They know nothing of gardens. To them, flowers and leaves are something to put on a woman’s hat.

The houses of this part of the city have had a thousand people living in them. Therefore each house should have a thousand stories to tell. Perhaps most of these stories would not be interesting. But it would be strange if you did not feel, in some of these houses, that you were among people you could not see. The spirits of some who had lived and suffered there must surely remain, though their bodies had gone.

One evening a young man appeared, going from one to another of these big old houses, ringing the doorbell. At the twelfth house, he put down the bag he carried. He cleaned the dust from his face. Then he touched the bell. It sounded far, far away, as if it were ringing deep underground.

The woman who owned the house came to the door. The young man looked at her. He thought that she was like some fat, colorless, legless thing that had come up from a hole in the ground, hungrily hoping for something, or someone, to eat.

He asked if there was a room that he could have for the night.

“Come in,” said the woman. Her voice was soft, but for some reason he did not like it. “I have the back room on the third floor. Do you wish to look at it?”

The young man followed her up. There was little light in the halls. He could not see where that light came from. The covering on the floor was old and ragged. There were places in the walls made, perhaps, to hold flowering plants. If this were true, the plants had died long before this evening. The air was bad; no flowers could have lived in it for long.

“This is the room,” said the woman in her soft, thick voice. “It’s a nice room. Someone is usually living in it. I had some very nice people in it last summer. I had no trouble with them. They paid on time. The water is at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney had the room for three months. You know them? Theater people. The gas is here. You see there is plenty of space to hang your clothes. It’s a room everyone likes. If you don’t take it, someone else will take it soon.”

“Do you have many theater people living here?” asked the young man.

“They come and go. Many of my people work in the theater. Yes, sir, this is the part of the city where theater people live. They never stay long any place. They live in all the houses near here. They come and they go.”

The young man paid for the room for a week. He was going to stay there, he said, and rest. He counted out the money.

The room was all ready, she said. He would find everything that he needed. As she moved away he asked his question. He had asked it already a thousand times. It was always there, waiting to be asked again.

“A young girl—Eloise Vashner—do you remember her? Has she ever been in this house? She would be singing in the theater, probably. A girl of middle height, thin, with red-gold hair and a small dark spot on her face near her left eye.”

“No, I don’t remember the name. Theater people change names as often as they change their rooms. They come and they go. No, I don’t remember that one.”

No. Always no. He had asked his question for five months, and the answer was always no.

Every day he questioned men who knew theater people. Had she gone to them to ask for work?

Every evening he went to the theaters. He went to good theaters and to bad ones. Some were so bad that he was afraid to find her there. Yet he went to them, hoping.

He who had loved her best had tried to find her. She had suddenly gone from her home. He was sure that this great city, this island, held her. But everything in the city was moving, restless. What was on top today, was lost at the bottom tomorrow.

The furnished room received the young man with a certain warmth. Or it seemed to receive him warmly. It seemed to promise that here he could rest. There was a bed and there were two chairs with ragged covers. Between the two windows there was a looking-glass about twelve inches wide. There were pictures on the walls.

The young man sat down in a chair, while the room tried to tell him its history. The words it used were strange, not easy to understand, as if they were words of many distant foreign countries.

There was a floor covering of many colors, like an island of flowers in the middle of the room. Dust lay all around it.

There was bright wall-paper on the wall. There was a fireplace. On the wall above it, some bright pieces of cloth were hanging. Perhaps they had been put there to add beauty to the room. This they did not do. And the pictures on the walls were pictures the young man had seen a hundred times before in other furnished rooms.

Here and there around the room were small objects forgotten by others who had used the room. There were pictures of theater people, something to hold flowers, but nothing valuable.

One by one the little signs grew clear. They showed the young man the others who had lived there before him.

In front of the looking-glass there was a thin spot in the floor covering. That told him that women had been in the room.

Small finger marks on the wall told of children, trying to feel their way to sun and air.

A larger spot on the wall made him think of someone, in anger, throwing something there.

Across the looking-glass, some person had written the name, “Marie.”

It seemed to him that those who had lived in the furnished room had been angry with it, and had done all they could to hurt it. Perhaps their anger had been caused by the room’s brightness and its coldness. For there was no true warmth in the room.

There were cuts and holes in the chairs and in the walls. The bed was half broken. The floor cried out as if in pain when it was walked on.

People for a time had called this room “home,” and yet they had hurt it. This was a fact not easy to believe. But perhaps it was, strangely, a deep love of home that was the cause. The people who had lived in the room perhaps never knew what a real home was. But they knew that this room was not a home. Therefore their deep anger rose up and made them strike out.

The young man in the chair allowed these thoughts to move one by one, softly, through his mind.

At the same time, sounds and smells from other furnished rooms came into his room. He heard someone laughing, laughing in a manner that was neither happy nor pleasant. From other rooms he heard a woman talking too loudly; and he heard people playing games for money; and he heard a woman singing to a baby, and he heard someone weeping. Above him there was music. Doors opened and closed. The trains outside rushed noisily past. Some animal cried out in the night outside.

And the young man felt the breath of the house. It had a smell that was more than bad; it seemed cold and sick and old and dying.

Then suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet smell of a flower, small and white, named mignonette. The smell came so surely and so strongly that it almost seemed like a living person entering the room. And the man cried aloud: “What, dear?” as if he had been called.

He jumped up and turned around. The rich smell was near, and all around him. He opened his arms for it. For a moment he did not know where he was or what he was doing.

How could anyone be called by a smell? Surely it must have been a sound. But could a sound have touched him?

“She has been in this room,” he cried, and he began to seek some sign of her. He knew that if he found any small thing that had belonged to her, he would know that it was hers. If she had only touched it, he would know it. This smell of flowers that was all around him—she had loved it and had made it her own. Where did it come from?

The room had been carelessly cleaned. He found many small things that women had left. Something to hold their hair in place. Something to wear in the hair to make it more beautiful. A piece of cloth that smelled of another flower. A book. Nothing that had been hers.

And he began to walk around the room like a dog hunting a wild animal. He looked in corners. He got down on his hands and knees to look at the floor.

He wanted something that he could see. He could not realize that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, near to him, calling him.

Then once again he felt the call. Once again he answered loudly: “Yes, dear!” and turned, wild-eyed, to look at nothing. For he could not yet see the form and color and love and reaching arms that were there in the smell of white flowers. Oh, God! Where did the smell of flowers come from? Since when has a smell had a voice to call? So he wondered, and went on seeking.

He found many small things, left by many who had used the room. But of her, who may have been there, whose spirit seemed to be there, he found no sign.

And then he thought of the owner.

He ran from the room, with its smell of flowers, going down and to a door where he could see a light.

She came out.

He tried to speak quietly. “Will you tell me,” he asked her, “who was in my room before I came here?”

“Yes, sir. I can tell you again. It was Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. It was really Mr. and Mrs. Mooney, but she used her own name. Theater people do that.”

“Tell me about Mrs. Mooney. What did she look like?”

“Black-haired, short and fat. They left here a week ago.”

“And before they were here?”

“There was a gentleman. Not in the theater business. He didn’t pay. Before him was Mrs. Crowder and her two children. They stayed four months. And before them was old Mr. Doyle. His sons paid for him. He had the room six months. That is a year, and further I do not remember.”

He thanked her and went slowly back to his room.

The room was dead. The smell of flowers had made it alive, but the smell of flowers was gone. In its place was the smell of the house.

His hope was gone. He sat looking at the yellow gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and took the covers. He began to tear them into pieces. He pushed the pieces into every open space around windows and door. No air, now, would be able to enter the room. When all was as he wished it, he put out the burning gaslight. Then, in the dark, he started the gas again, and he lay down thankfully on the bed.

It was Mrs. McCool’s night to go and get them something cold to drink. So she went and came back, and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those rooms underground where the women who own these old houses meet and talk.

“I have a young man in my third floor back room this evening,” said Mrs. Purdy, taking a drink. “He went up to bed two hours ago.”

“Is that true, Mrs. Purdy?” said Mrs. McCool. It was easy to see that she thought this was a fine and surprising thing. “You always find someone to take a room like that. I don’t know how you do it. Did you tell him about it?”

“Rooms,” said Mrs. Purdy, in her soft thick voice, “are furnished to be used by those that need them. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool.”

“You are right, Mrs. Purdy. It’s the money we get for the rooms that keeps us alive. You have the real feeling for business. There are many people who wouldn’t take a room like that if they knew. If you told them that someone had died in the bed, and died by their own hand, they wouldn’t enter the room.”

“As you say, we have our living to think of,” said Mrs. Purdy.

“Yes, it is true. Only one week ago I helped you there in the third floor back room. She was a pretty little girl. And to kill herself with the gas! She had a sweet little face, Mrs. Purdy.”

“She would have been called beautiful, as you say,” said Mrs. Purdy, “except for that dark spot she had growing by her left eye. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.”

Hearts and Crosses

Baldly Woods reached for a drink, and got it. When Baldy wanted something, he usually got it. He—but this is not Baldy’s story. Now he took his third drink, which was larger than the first and the second. Baldy had been listening to the troubles of a friend. Now Baldy was going to tell his friend what to do. So the friend was buying him the drinks. This was the right thing for the friend to do.

“I would be king if I were you,” said Baldy. He said it loudly and strongly.

Webb Yeager moved his wide hat back on his head. He put his fingers in his yellow hair and moved it about. It now looked wilder than before. But this did not help him to think better. And therefore he also got another drink.

“If a man marries a queen, it ought not to make him nothing,” said Webb. Here was his real problem.

“Surely not,” said Baldy. “You ought to be a king. But you’re only the queen’s husband. That’s what happens to a man in Europe if he marries the king’s daughter. His wife becomes a queen. But is he a king? No. His only duty is to appear with the queen in pictures. And be the father of the next king. That’s not right. Yes, Webb, you are only the queen’s husband. And if I were you, I’d turn everything upside down and I would be king.”

Baldy finished his drink.

“Baldy,” said Webb, “you and I have been cowboys together for years. We’ve been riding the same roads since we were very young. I wouldn’t talk about my family to anyone but you. You were working on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then. But what am I now? Nothing.”

“When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,” continued Baldy, “you were important. You told people what to do. Your commands were as strong as his.”

“That was true,” said Webb, “until he discovered that I wanted to marry Santa. Then he sent me as far away from the ranch house as he could. When the old man died, they started to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ Now I tell the cattle what to do. That’s all. She takes care of all the business. She takes care of all the money. I can’t sell any cattle—not one animal. Santa is the queen, and I’m nothing.”

“I would be king if I were you,” said Baldy Woods again. “When a man marries a queen he ought to be the same as she is. Plenty of people think it’s strange, Webb. Your words mean nothing on the Nopalito Ranch. Mrs. Yeager is a fine little lady. But a man ought to be head of his own house.”

Webb’s brown face grew long with sadness. With that expression, and his wild yellow hair, and his blue eyes, he looked like a schoolboy who had lost his leadership to another, strong boy. Yet his tall body looked too strong for such a thing to happen to him.

“I’m riding back to the ranch today,” he said. It was easy to see that he did not want to go. “I have to start some cattle on the road to San Antonio tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll go with you as far as Dry Lake,” said Baldy.

The two friends got on their horses and left the little town where they had met that morning.

At Dry Lake, they stopped to say goodbye. They had been riding for miles without talking. But in Texas, talk does not often continue steadily. Many things may happen between words. But when you begin to talk again, you are still talking about the same thing. So now Webb added something to the talk that began ten miles away.

“You remember, Baldy, there was a time when Santa was different. You remember the days when old McAllister kept me away from the ranch house. You remember how she would send me a sign that she wanted to see me? Old McAllister had said he would kill me if I came near enough. You remember the sign she used to send, Baldy? The picture of a heart with a cross inside it?”

“Me?” cried Baldy. “Sure I remember. Every cowboy on the ranch knew that sign of the heart and the cross. We would see it on things sent out from the ranch. We would see it on anything. It would be on newspapers. On boxes of food. Once I saw it on the back of the shirt of a cook that McAllister sent from the ranch.”

“Santa’s father made her promise that she wouldn’t write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was her plan. When she wanted to see me, she would put that mark on something that she knew I would see. And when I saw it, I traveled fast to the ranch that same night. I would meet her outside the house.”

“We all knew it,” said Baldy. “But we never said anything. We wanted you to marry Santa. We knew why you had that fast horse. When we saw the heart and cross on something from the ranch, we always knew your horse was going to go fast that night.”

“The last time Santa sent me the sign,” said Webb, “was when she was sick. When I saw it, I got on my horse and started. It was a forty-mile ride. She wasn’t at our meeting-place. I went to the house. Old McAllister met me at the door. ‘Did you come here to get killed?’ he said. ‘I won’t kill you this time. I was going to send for you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And then come out here and see me.’

“Santa was lying in bed very sick. But she smiled, and put her hand in mine, and I sat down by the bed—mud and riding clothes and all. ‘I could hear you coming for hours, Webb,’ she said. ‘I was sure you would come. You saw the sign?’ ‘I saw it,’ I said. ‘It’s our sign,’ she said. ‘Hearts and crosses. To love and to suffer—that’s what they mean.’

“And old Doctor Musgrove was there. And Santa goes to sleep and Doctor Musgrove touches her face, and he says to me: ‘You were good for her. But go away now. The little lady will be all right in the morning.’

“Old McAllister was outside her room. ‘She’s sleeping,’ I said. ‘And now you can start killing me. You have plenty of time. I haven’t anything to fight with.’

“Old McAllister laughs, and he says to me: ‘Killing the best foreman in West Texas is not good business. I don’t know where I could get another good foreman. I don’t want you in the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you stay away from the ranch house. You go up and sleep, and then we’ll talk.’ ”

The two men prepared to separate. They took each other’s hand.

“Goodbye, Baldy,” said Webb. “I’m glad I saw you and had this talk.”

With a sudden rush, the two riders were on their way.

Then Baldy pulled his horse to a stop and shouted.

Webb turned.

“If I were you,” came Baldy’s loud voice, “I would be king!”

At eight the following morning, Bud Turner got off his horse at the Nopalito ranch house. Bud was the cowboy who was taking the cattle to San Antonio. Mrs. Yeager was outside the house, putting water on some flowers.

In many ways Santa was like her father, “King” McAllister. She was sure about everything. She was afraid of nothing. She was proud. But Santa looked like her mother. She had a strong body and a soft prettiness. Because she was a woman, her manners were womanly. Yet she liked to be queen, as her father had liked to be king.

Webb stood near her, giving orders to two or three cowboys.

“Good morning,” said Bud. “Where do you want the cattle to go? To Barber’s as usual?”

The queen always answered such a question. All the business—buying, selling, and banking—had been held in her hands. Care of the cattle was given to her husband. When “King” McAllister was alive, Santa was his secretary and his helper. She had continued her work and her work had been successful. But before she could answer, the queen’s husband spoke:

“You drive those cattle to Zimmerman and Nesbit’s. I spoke to Zimmerman about it.”

Bud turned, ready to go.

“Wait!” called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise in her gray eyes.

“What do you mean, Webb?” she asked. “I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit. Barber has bought all the cattle from this ranch for five years. I’m not going to change.” She said to Bud Turner: “Take those cattle to Barber.”

Bud did not look at either of them. He stood there waiting.

“I want these cattle to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit,” said Webb. There was a cold light in his blue eyes.

“It’s time to start,” said Santa to Bud. “Tell Barber we’ll have more cattle ready in about a month.”

Bud allowed his eyes to turn and meet Webb’s.

“You take those cattle,” said Webb, “to—”

“Barber,” said Santa quickly. “Let’s say no more about it. What are you waiting for, Bud?”

“Nothing,” said Bud. But he did not hurry to move away, for man is man’s friend, and he did not like what had happened.

“You heard what she said,” cried Webb. “We do what she commands.” He took off his hat and made a wide movement with it, touching the floor.

“Webb,” said Santa, “what’s wrong with you today?”

“I’m acting like the queen’s fool,” said Webb. “What can you ex pect? Let me tell you. I was a man before I married a cattle queen. What am I now? Something for the cowboys to laugh at. But I’m going to be a man again.”

Santa looked at him.

“Be reasonable, Webb,” she said quietly. “There is nothing wrong. You take care of the cattle. I take care of the business. You understand the cattle. I understand the business better than you do. I learned it from my father.”

“I don’t like kings and queens,” said Webb, “unless I’m one of them myself. All right. It’s your ranch. Barber gets the cattle.”

Webb’s horse was tied near the house. He walked into the house and brought out the supplies he took on long rides. These he began to tie on his horse. Santa followed him. Her face had lost some of its color.

Webb got on his horse. There was no expression on his face except a strange light burning in his eyes.

“There are some cattle at the Hondo water-hole,” he said. “They ought to be moved. Wild animals have killed three of them. I did not remember to tell Simms to do it. You tell him.”

Santa put a hand on the horse and looked her husband in the eye.

“Are you going to leave me, Webb?” she asked quietly.

“I am going to be a man again,” he answered.

“I wish you success,” she said, with a sudden coldness. She turned and walked into the house.

Webb Yeager went to the southeast as straight as he could ride. And when he came to the place where sky and earth seem to meet, he was gone. Those at the Nopalito knew nothing more about him.

Days passed, then weeks, then months. But Webb Yeager did not return.

One day, a man named Bartholomew, not an important man, stopped at the Nopalito ranch house. It was noon and he was hungry. He sat down at the dinner table. While he was eating, he talked.

“Mrs. Yeager,” he said, “I saw a man on the Seco Ranch with your name. Webb Yeager. He was foreman there. He was a tall yellow-haired man. Not a talker. Someone of your family?”

“A husband,” said Santa. “That is fine for the Seco Ranch. Mr. Yeager is the best foreman in the West.”

Everything at the Nopalito Ranch had been going well.

For several years they had been working at the Nopalito with a different kind of cattle. These cattle had been brought from England, and they were better than the usual Texas cattle. They had been successful at the Nopalito Ranch, and men on other ranches were interested in them.

As a result, one day a cowboy arrived at the Nopalito Ranch and gave the queen this letter:

Mrs. Yeager—The Nopalito Ranch:

I have been told by the owners of the Seco Ranch to buy 100 of your English cattle. If you can sell these to the Seco, send them to us in the care of the man who brings this letter. We will then send you the money.

Webb Yeager,

Foreman, Seco Ranch.

Business is business to a queen as it is to others. That night the 100 cattle were moved near the ranch house, ready for an early start the next morning.

When night came and the house was quiet, did Santa Yeager cry alone? Did she hold that letter near to her heart? Did she speak the name that she had been too proud to speak for many weeks? Or did she place the letter with other business letters, in her office?

Ask if you will, but there is no answer. What a queen does is something we cannot always know. But this you shall be told:

In the middle of the night Santa went quietly out of the ranch house. She was dressed in something dark. She stopped for a moment under a tree. There was moonlight, and a bird was singing, and there was a smell of flowers. Santa turned her face toward the southeast and threw three kisses in that direction, for there was no one to see her.

Then she hurried quietly to a small building. What she did there, we can only guess. But there was the red light of a fire, and a noise as if Cupid might be making his arrows.

Later she came out with some strange iron tool in one hand. In the other hand she carried something that held a small fire. She hurried in the moonlight to the place where the English cattle had been gathered.

Most of the English cattle were a dark red. But among those 100 there was one as white as milk.

And now Santa caught that white animal as cowboys catch cattle. She tried once and failed. Then she tried again, and the animal fell heavily. Santa ran to it, but the animal jumped up.

Again she tried and this time she was successful. The animal fell to earth again. Before it could rise, Santa had tied its feet together.

Then she ran to the fire she had carried here. From it she took that strange iron tool. It was white hot.

There was a loud cry from the animal as the white-hot iron burned its skin. But no one seemed to hear. All on the ranch were quiet. And in the deep night quiet, Santa ran back the ranch house and there fell onto a bed. She let the tears from her eyes, as if queens had hearts like the hearts of ranchmen’s wives; and as if a queen’s husband might become a king, if he would ride back again.

In the morning the young man who had brought the letter started toward the Seco Ranch. He had cowboys with him to help with the English cattle. It was ninety miles, six days’ journey.

The animals arrived at Seco Ranch one evening as the daylight was ending. They were received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.

The next morning at eight a horseman came riding to the Nopalito ranch house. He got down painfully from the horse and walked to the house. His horse took a great breath and let his head hang and closed his eyes.

But do not feel sorry for Belshazzar, the horse. Today he lives happily at Nopalito, where he is given the best care and the best food. No other horse there has ever carried a man for such a ride.

The horseman entered the house. Two arms fell around his neck, and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen together: “Webb, oh, Webb!”

“I was wrong,” said Webb Yeager. “I was a—” and he named a small animal with a bad smell, an animal no one likes.

“Quiet,” said Santa. “Did you see it?”

“I saw it,” said Webb.

What were they speaking of? Perhaps you can guess, if you have read the story carefully.

“Be the cattle queen,” said Webb. “Forget what I did, if you can. I was as wrong as—”

“Quiet!” said Santa again, putting her fingers upon his mouth. “There’s no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of the Bedroom. Come here.”

She led him into a room. There stood a low baby’s bed. And in the bed was a baby, a beautiful, laughing baby, talking in words that no one could understand.

“There is no queen on this ranch,” said Santa again. “Look at the king. He has eyes like yours, Webb. Get down on your knees and look at the king.”

There was a sound of steps outside and Bud Turner was there at the door. He asked the same question he had asked almost a year ago.

“Good morning. Shall I drive those cattle to Barber’s, or—”

He saw Webb and stopped, with his mouth open.

“Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!” cried the king, waving his arms.

“You hear what he says, Bud,” said Webb Yeager. “We do what the king commands.”

And that is all, except for one thing. When old man Quinn, owner of the Seco Ranch, went to look at his new English cattle, he asked his new foreman, “What is the Nopalito Ranch’s mark?”

“X over Y,” said Wilson.

“I thought so,” said Quinn. “But look at that white animal there. She has another mark—a heart with a cross inside. Whose mark is that?”

The Cop and the Anthem

Soapy moved restlessly on his seat in Madison Square. There are certain signs to show that winter is coming. Birds begin to fly south. Women who want nice new warm coats become very kind to their husbands. And Soapy moves restlessly on his seat in the park. When you see these signs, you know that winter is near.

A dead leaf fell at Soapy’s feet. That was a special sign for him that winter was coming. It was time for all who lived in Madison Square to prepare.

Soapy’s mind now realized the fact. The time had come. He had to find some way to take care of himself during the cold weather. And therefore he moved restlessly on his seat.

Soapy’s hopes for the winter were not very high. He was not thinking of sailing away on a ship. He was not thinking of southern skies, or of the Bay of Naples. Three months in the prison on Blackwell’s Island was what he wanted. Three months of food every day and a bed every night, three months safe from the cold north wind and safe from cops. This seemed to Soapy the most desirable thing in the world.

For years Blackwell’s Island had been his winter home. Richer New Yorkers made their large plans to go to Florida or to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea each winter. Soapy made his small plans for going to the Island.

And now the time had come. Three big newspapers, some under his coat and some over his legs, had not kept him warm during the night in the park. So Soapy was thinking of the Island.

There were places in the city where he could go and ask for food and a bed. These would be given to him. He could move from one building to another, and he would be taken care of through the winter. But he liked Blackwell’s Island better.

Soapy’s spirit was proud. If he went to any of these places, there were certain things he had to do. In one way or another, he would have to pay for what they gave him. They would not ask him for money. But they would make him wash his whole body. They would make him answer questions; they would want to know everything about his life.

No. Prison was better than that. The prison had rules that he would have to follow. But in prison a gentleman’s own life was still his own life.

Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once began to move toward his desire.

There were many easy ways of doing this. The most pleasant way was to go and have a good dinner at some fine restaurant. Then he would say that he had no money to pay. And then a cop would be called. It would all be done very quietly. The cop would arrest him. He would be taken to a judge. The judge would do the rest.

Soapy left his seat and walked out of Madison Square to the place where the great street called Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet. He went across this wide space and started north on Broadway. He stopped at a large and brightly lighted restaurant. This was where the best food and the best people in the best clothes appeared every evening.

Soapy believed that above his legs he looked all right. His face was clean. His coat was good enough. If he could get to a table, he believed that success would be his. The part of him that would be seen above the table would look all right. The waiter would bring him what he asked for.

He began thinking of what he would like to eat. In his mind he could see the whole dinner. The cost would not be too high. He did not want the restaurant people to feel any real anger. But the dinner would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter home.

But as Soapy put his foot inside the restaurant door, the head waiter saw his broken old shoes and the torn clothes that covered his legs. Strong and ready hands turned Soapy around and moved him quietly and quickly outside again.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that this easy, this most desirable way to the Island was not to be his. He must think of some other way to getting there.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue was a shop with a wide glass window, bright with electric lights. Soapy picked up a big stone and threw it through the glass. People came running around the corner. A cop was the first among them. Soapy stood still, and he smiled when he saw the cop.

“Where’s the man that did that?” asked the cop.

“Don’t you think that I might have done it?” said Soapy. He was friendly and happy. What he wanted was coming toward him.

But the cop’s mind would not consider Soapy. Men who break windows do not stop there to talk to cops. They run away as fast as they can. The cop saw a man further along the street, running. He ran after him. And Soapy, sick at heart, walked slowly away. He had failed two times.

Across the street was another restaurant. It was not so fine as the one on Broadway. The people who went there were not so rich. Its food was not so good. Into this, Soapy took his old shoes and his torn clothes, and no one stopped him. He sat down at a table and was soon eating a big dinner. When he had finished, he said that he and money were strangers.

“Get busy and call a cop,” said Soapy. “And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.”

“No cop for you,” said the waiter. He called another waiter.

The two waiters threw Soapy upon his left ear on the hard street outside. He stood up slowly, one part at a time, and beat the dust from his clothes. Prison seemed only a happy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A cop who was standing near laughed and walked away.

Soapy traveled almost half a mile before he tried again. This time he felt very certain that he would be successful. A nice-looking young woman was standing before a shop window, looking at the objects inside. Very near stood a large cop.

Soapy’s plan was to speak to the young woman. She seemed to be a very nice young lady, who would not want a strange man to speak to her. She would ask the cop for help. And then Soapy would be happy to feel the cop’s hand on his arm. He would be on his way to the Island.

He went near her. He could see that the cop was already watching him. The young woman moved away a few steps. Soapy followed. Standing beside her he said:

“Good evening, Bedelia! Don’t you want to come and play with me?”

The cop was still looking. The young woman had only to move her hand, and Soapy would be on his way to the place where he wanted to go. He was already thinking how warm he would be.

The young woman turned to him. Putting out her hand, she took his arm.

“Sure, Mike,” she said joyfully, “if you’ll buy me something to drink. I would have spoken to you sooner, but the cop was watching.”

With the young woman holding his arm, Soapy walked past the cop. He was filled with sadness. He was still free. Was he going to remain free forever?

At the next corner he pulled his arm away, and ran.

When he stopped, he was near several theaters. In this part of the city, streets are brighter and hearts are more joyful than in other parts. Women and men in rich, warm coats moved happily in the winter air.

A sudden fear caught Soapy. No cop was going to arrest him.

Then he came to another cop standing in front of a big theater. He thought of something else to try.

He began to shout as if he had had too much to drink. His voice was as loud as he could make it. He danced, he cried out.

And the cop turned his back to Soapy, and said to a man standing near him, “It’s one of those college boys. He won’t hurt anything. We had orders to let them shout.”

Soapy was quiet. Was no cop going to touch him? He began to think of the Island as if it were as far away as heaven. He pulled his thin coat around him. The wind was very cold.

Then he saw a man in the shop buying a newspaper. The man’s umbrella stood beside the door. Soapy stepped inside the shop, took the umbrella, and walked slowly away. The man followed him quickly.

“My umbrella,” he said.

“Oh, is it?” said Soapy. “Why don’t you call a cop? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don’t you call a cop? There’s one standing at the corner.”

The man walked more slowly, Soapy did the same. But he had a feeling that he was going to fail again. The cop looked at the two men.

“I—” said the umbrella man— “that is—you know how these things happen—I—if that’s your umbrella I’m very sorry—I found it this morning in a restaurant—if you say it’s yours—I hope you’ll—”

“It’s mine!” cried Soapy with anger in his voice.

The umbrella man hurried away. The cop helped a lady across the street. Soapy walked east. He threw the umbrella as far as he could throw it. He talked to himself about cops and what he thought of them. Because he wished to be arrested, they seemed to believe he was like a king, who could do no wrong.

At last Soapy came to one of the quiet streets on the east side of the city. He turned here and began to walk south toward Madison Square. He was going home, although home was only a seat in a park.

But on a very quiet corner Soapy stopped. Here was an old, old church. Through one colored-glass window came a soft light. Sweet music came to Soapy’s ears and seemed to hold him there.

The moon was above, peaceful and bright. There were few people passing. He could hear birds high above him.

And the anthem that came from the church held Soapy there, for he had known it well long ago. In those days his life contained such things as mothers and flowers and high hopes and friends and clean thoughts and clean clothes.

Soapy’s mind was ready for something like this. He had come to the old church at the right time. There was a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He saw with sick fear how he had fallen. He saw his worthless days, his wrong desires, his dead hopes, the lost power of his mind.

And also in a moment his heart answered this change in his soul. He would fight to change his life. He would pull himself up, out of the mud. He would make a man of himself again.

There was time. He was young enough. He would find his old purpose in life, and follow it. That sweet music had changed him. Tomorrow he would find work. A man had once offered him a job. He would find that man tomorrow. He would be somebody in the world. He would—

Soapy felt a hand on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a cop.

“What are you doing hanging around here?” asked the cop.

“Nothing,” said Soapy.

“You think I believe that?” said the cop.

Full of his new strength, Soapy began to argue. And it is not wise to argue with a New York cop.

“Come along,” said the cop.

“Three months on the Island,” said the Judge to Soapy the next morning.

From the Cabby’s Seat

The cabby has his own special place from which he looks at life. His view of people is simpler, perhaps, than the view of a man who does any other kind of work. From the high seat of his cab, he looks down upon everybody. People are not important to him unless they wish to go somewhere. Then they are only something to be carried from one place to another.

You may be President or you may be no one, but to a cabby you are only a Fare—only someone who rides in his cab for a price. You get into his cab, he shakes you a while, and he puts you down.

Then the time for payment has arrived. If you pay him the lawful amount and no more, you can easily see what he thinks of you. He thinks you are less than nothing. If you discover suddenly that you have no money with you, you will wish you were dead.

It is probably true that the cabby’s view of life is formed by the shape of his cab. He sits up there on his seat, high as a god. The seat is small; no one shares it with him. While you are in his cab, your future is in his hands. You are helpless. The cab shakes you. You can’t get out until he stops his horse. If you want to speak to him, you must talk through a little hole in the back of the cab.

In a cab you no longer feel like a person. You may be someone very important. But in a cab you are no more than something in a box, being carried from one place to another.

One night there were sounds of pleasure and joy in the big house beside McGary’s Family Restaurant. The sounds seemed to come from the rooms of the Walsh family. A crowd of interested neighbors stood outside the door. Again and again a waiter came bringing food or drink from the restaurant. The neighbors stood aside every time to let him pass. Then they would move near the door again. And all the time they were talking about what was happening inside. Anyone who listened would have learned quickly and easily that Norah Walsh was being married.

After some time had gone by, the happy people started coming out the door. They mixed at once with the neighbors who were standing there. Joyful cries and laughing voices rose in the night air. All this noise was born of the drinks from McGary’s Restaurant.

At the edge of the street stood Jerry O’Donovan’s cab. No cleaner or more shining cab could be found. And Jerry’s horse! I tell you he was fat with good food.

Among the moving crowd Jerry’s high hat could now and then be seen. His nose, too, could be seen; it was thick and red, for it had been beaten by fares who wanted to fight. And also now and then his fine green coat appeared. It was easy to see that Jerry had had more than enough to drink. Everyone had noticed it.

Out of the crowd in the street or perhaps from among the people walking past the house, came a young woman. She stopped beside the cab. Jerry saw her there. A fare! He made a sudden move, and three or four people near him fell down. He himself—No! He caught himself in time and did not fall. Quickly he went up to his seat. When he was there, he was safe. All of McGary’s drink could not throw him down from there.

“Step in, lady,” said Jerry.

The young woman stepped into the cab. The door closed. The crowd in the street jumped away. The horse started and the fine cab rolled down the street.

The horse went fast at first, but after a little time he went more slowly. Then Jerry called down through the hole in the back of the cab. He tried to make his voice soft; he wished to please.

“Where will you be going to?”

“Any place you wish,” was the answer. The voice was happy. It sounded like music.

“She’s riding for pleasure,” thought Jerry. And then he said:

“Take a trip in the park, lady. It will be cool and fine.”

“Just as you wish,” answered the fare, pleasantly.

The cab turned toward Fifth Avenue and then went north on that perfect street. Jerry was moved up and down in his seat, and from one side to the other. McGary’s drinks moved at the same time, and seemed to rise inside his head. He began to sing.

Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the seat. She looked to the right and to the left at the lights and the houses. It was dark inside the cab, and her eyes were shining like stars.

When they came to Fifty-ninth Street, Jerry was half asleep. But his horse went through the park gate. The horse knew where they were. The horse pulled the cab into the park every night.

And the fare sat there, as if in a happy dream. She could smell the clean fresh smell of green leaves and flowers. And the wise animal pulling the cab moved as usual. He was at home here.

Jerry too tried to do as he did every night. His voice was thick, but he asked the questions that cabbies always ask in the park.

“Want to stop at the Casino Restaurant, lady? Have something to eat? Listen to the music? Everyone stops.”

“I think that would be nice,” said the fare.

They made a sudden stop at the door of the restaurant. The cab door opened. The fare stepped out. At once she seemed caught by the wonderful music. The lights and the colors were bright, almost blinding. Someone put a piece of paper into her hand. On it was a number—34.

She looked around and saw her cab. It was twenty yards away, taking its place in a line with other waiting cabs.

She was led inside, and soon she was seated at a table.

She realized that she was expected to buy something. She had a little money. She counted it and found enough to buy something cold and fresh to drink. There she sat, drinking slowly and looking at everything around her. Life here had new color, a new shape. It did not seem real. It was like a beautiful dream.

At fifty tables sat people who looked to her like kings and queens. She thought their clothes and jewels were wonderfully rich. And now and then one of these people would look at her. They saw a small woman in a simple dress. They saw a plain face. But on that face they saw an expression of love of life, and the queens wished that they could look the same.

While she sat there, two hours passed. The kings and queens began to leave. Their cabs rolled away. The music ended. Waiters took everything off tables near hers. She was sitting there almost alone.

Jerry’s fare stood up and held out the numbered piece of paper.

“Is someone going to give me something for this?” she asked.

A waiter told her that it was for her cab. He said that she should go to the door and give it to the man there.

This man took it and called the number. Only three cabs stood in line now. The driver of one of them went and found Jerry asleep inside his cab.

Jerry spoke a few words in anger, and then went up to his seat. He turned the horse and the cab rolled to the door and stopped. His fare entered. The cab turned again, and went through the cool darkness of the park, following the street that would lead most quickly to the gate.

At the gate, Jerry began suddenly to think. He was still half asleep, but there was a doubt in his mind. There were one or two things he had to ask about. He stopped his horse, and his voice came down through the hole in the back of the cab.

“I want to see four dollars before going any farther. Have you got the money?”

“Four dollars!” laughed the fare, softly. “No. I’ve only got a few cents with me.”

Jerry made the horse run. The animal’s feet were very loud on the street. But above the noise of the horse’s feet, Jerry’s voice could be heard. He was full of anger. He shouted at the stars in the sky. He shouted at other cabs as they passed. His words were so bad that another driver, hearing them, could not believe his ears.

But Jerry knew what he could do about this fare without money. He knew where he was going.

At the building with the green lights beside the door he pulled his horse to a stop. He opened the cab door and he jumped to the ground.

“Come on, you,” he said, and his voice was hard.

His fare came out with the dreaming smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her inside. He was going to tell the cops what had happened. They would do something about it.

A gray-haired cop looked across the table. He and the cabby were no strangers.

Jerry began, in his loud, hard voice, “I’ve got a fare here that—”

Jerry stopped. He put his hand, reddened by the weather, to his face. The drink from McGary’s Restaurant no longer clouded his mind so darkly.

“A fare, sir,” he continued, with a wide smile, “that I want you to meet. It’s my wife that I married at old man Walsh’s this evening. And a wild time we had, it’s true. Shake hands with him, Norah, and we’ll go home.”

Before stepping into the cab again, Norah took a long deep breath.

“I’ve had a very nice time, Jerry,” said she.

A Retrieved Reformation

In the prison shoe-shop, Jimmy Valentine was busily at work making shoes. A prison officer came into the shop, and led Jimmy to the prison office. There Jimmy was given an important paper. It said that he was free.

Jimmy took the paper without showing much pleasure or interest. He had been sent to prison to stay for four years. He had been there for ten months. But he had expected to stay only three months. Jimmy Valentine had many friends outside the prison. A man with so many friends does not expect to stay in prison long.

“Valentine,” said the chief prison officer, “you’ll go out tomorrow morning. This is your chance. Make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop breaking safes open, and live a better life.”

“Me?” said Jimmy in surprise. “I never broke open a safe in my life.”

“Oh, no,” the chief prison officer laughed. “Never. Let’s see. How did you happen to get sent to prison for opening that safe in Springfield? Was it because you didn’t want to tell where you really were? Perhaps because you were with some lady, and you didn’t want to tell her name? Or was it because the judge didn’t like you? You men always have a reason like that. You never go to prison because you broke open a safe.”

“Me?” Jimmy said. His face still showed surprise. “I was never in Springfield in my life.”

“Take him away,” said the chief prison officer. “Get him the clothes he needs for going outside. Bring him here again at seven in the morning. And think about what I said, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning, Jimmy stood again in the office. He had on some new clothes that did not fit him, and a pair of new shoes that hurt his feet. These are the usual clothes given to a prisoner when he leaves the prison.

Next they gave him money to pay for his trip on a train to the city near the prison. They gave him five dollars more. The five dollars were supposed to help him become a better man.

Then the chief prison officer put out his hand for a handshake. That was the end of Valentine, Prisoner 9762. Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

He did not listen to the song of the birds or look at the green trees or smell the flowers. He went straight to a restaurant. There he tasted the first sweet joys of being free. He had a good dinner. After that he went to the train station. He gave some money to a blind man who sat there, asking for money, and then he got on the train.

Three hours later he got off the train in a small town. Here he went to the restaurant of Mike Dolan.

Mike Dolan was alone there. After shaking hands he said, “I’m sorry we couldn’t do it sooner, Jimmy my boy. But there was that safe in Springfield, too. It wasn’t easy. Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” said Jimmy. “Is my room waiting for me?”

He went up and opened the door of a room at the back of the house. Everything was as he had left it. It was here they had found Jimmy, when they took him to prison. There on the floor was a small piece of cloth. It had been torn from the coat of the cop, as Jimmy was fighting to escape.

There was a bed against the wall. Jimmy pulled the bed toward the middle of the room. The wall behind it looked like any wall, but now Jimmy found and opened a small door in it. From this opening he pulled out a dust-covered bag.

He opened this and looked lovingly at the tools for breaking open a safe. No finer tools could be found any place. They were complete; everything needed was here. They had been made of a special material, in the necessary sizes and shapes. Jimmy had planned them himself, and he was very proud of them.

It had cost him over nine hundred dollars to have these tools made at a place where they make such things for men who work at the job of safe-breaking.

In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the restaurant. He was now dressed in good clothes that fitted him well. He carried his dusted and cleaned bag.

“Do you have anything planned?” asked Mike Dolan.

“Me?” asked Jimmy as if surprised. “I don’t understand. I work for the New York Famous Bread and Cake Makers Company. And I sell the best bread and cake in the country.”

Mike enjoyed these words so much that Jimmy had to take a drink with him. Jimmy had some milk. He never drank anything stronger.

A week after Valentine, 9762, left the prison, a safe was broken open in Richmond, Indiana. No one knew who did it. Eight hundred dollars were taken.

Two weeks after that, a safe in Logansport was opened. It was a new kind of safe; it had been made, they said, so strong that no one could break it open. But someone did, and took fifteen hundred dollars.

Then a safe in Jefferson City was opened. Five thousand dollars were taken. This loss was a big one. Ben Price was a cop who worked on such important matters, and now he began to work on this.

He went to Richmond, Indiana, and to Logansport, to see how the safe-breaking had been done in those places. He was heard to say: “I can see that Jim Valentine has been here. He is in business again. Look at the way he opened this one. Everything easy, everything clean. He is the only man who has the tools to do it. And he is the only man who knows how to use tools like this. Yes, I want Mr. Valentine. Next time he goes to prison, he’s going to stay there until his time is finished.”

Ben Price knew how Jimmy worked. Jimmy would go from one city to another far away. He always worked alone. He always left quickly when he was finished. He enjoyed being with nice people. For all these reasons, it was not easy to catch Mr. Valentine.

People with safes full of money were glad to hear that Ben Price was at work trying to catch Mr. Valentine.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his bag arrived in a small town named Elmore. Jimmy, looking as young as a college boy, walked down the street toward the hotel.

A young lady walked across the street, passed him at the corner, and entered a door. Over the door was the sign, “The Elmore Bank.” Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgetting at once what he was. He became another man. She looked away, and brighter color came into her face. Young men like Jimmy did not appear often in Elmore.

Jimmy saw a boy near the bank door, and began to ask questions about the town. After a time the young lady came out and went on her way. She seemed not to see Jimmy as she passed him.

“Isn’t that young lady Polly Simpson?” asked Jimmy.

“No,” said the boy. “She’s Annabel Adams. Her father owns this bank.”

Jimmy went to the hotel, where he said his name was Ralph D. Spencer. He got a room there. He told the hotel man he had come to Elmore to go into business. How was the shoe business? Was there already a good shoe-shop?

The man thought that Jimmy’s clothes and manners were fine. He was happy to talk to him.

Yes, Elmore needed a good shoe-shop. There was no shop that sold just shoes. Shoes were sold in the big shops that sold everything. All business in Elmore was good. He hoped Mr. Spencer would decide to stay in Elmore. It was a pleasant town to live in and the people were friendly.

Mr. Spencer said he would stay in the town a few days and learn something about it. No, he said, he himself would carry his bag up to his room. He didn’t want a boy to take it. It was very heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer remained in Elmore. He started a shoe-shop. Business was good.

Also he made many friends. And he was successful with the wish of his heart. He met Annabel Adams. He liked her better every day.

At the end of a year everyone in Elmore liked Mr. Ralph Spencer. His shoe-shop was doing very good business. And he and Annabel were going to be married in two weeks. Mr. Adams, the small-town banker, liked Spencer. Annabel was very proud of him. He seemed already to belong to the Adams family.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room to write this letter, which he sent to one of his old friends:

Dear Old Friend:

I want you to meet me at Sullivan’s place next week, on the evening of the 10th. I want to give you my tools. I know you’ll be glad to have them. You couldn’t buy them for a thousand dollars. I finished with the old business—a year ago. I have a nice shop. I’m living a better life, and I’m going to marry the best girl on earth two weeks from now. It’s the only life—I wouldn’t ever again touch another man’s money. After I marry, I’m going to go further west, where I’ll never see anyone who knew me in my old life. I tell you, she’s a wonderful girl. She trusts me.

Your old friend, Jimmy.

On the Monday night after Jimmy sent this letter, Ben Price arrived quietly in Elmore. He moved slowly about the town in his quiet way, and he learned all that he wanted to know. Standing inside a shop, he watched Ralph D. Spencer walk by.

“You’re going to marry the banker’s daughter, are you, Jimmy?” said Ben to himself. “I don’t feel sure about that!”

The next morning Jimmy was at the Adams home. He was going to a nearby city that day to buy new clothes for the wedding. He was also going to buy a gift for Annabel. It would be his first trip out of Elmore. It was more than a year now since he had done any safe-breaking.

Most of the Adams family went to the bank together that morning. There were Mr. Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel’s married sister with her two little girls, aged five and nine. They passed Jimmy’s hotel, and Jimmy ran up to his room and brought along his bag. Then they went to the bank.

All went inside—Jimmy, too, for he was one of the family. Everyone in the bank was glad to see the good-looking, nice young man who was going to marry Annabel. Jimmy put down his bag.

Annabel, laughing, put Jimmy’s hat on her head and picked up the bag. “How do I look?” she asked. “Ralph, how heavy this bag is! It feels full of gold.”

“It’s full of some things I don’t need in my shop,” Jimmy said. “I’m taking them to the city, to the place where they came from. That saves me the cost of sending them. I’m going to be a married man. I must learn to save money.”

The Elmore bank had a new safe. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and he wanted everyone to see it. It was as large as a small room, and it had a very special door. The door was controlled by a clock. Using the clock, the banker planned the time when the door should open. At other times no one, not even the banker himself, could open it. He explained about it to Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer seemed interested but he did not seem to understand very easily. The two children, May and Agatha, enjoyed seeing the shining heavy door, with all its special parts.

While they were busy like this, Ben Price entered the bank and looked around. He told a young man who worked there that he had not come on business; he was waiting for a man.

Suddenly there was a cry from the women. They had not been watching the children. May, the nine-year-old girl, had playfully but firmly closed the door of the safe. And Agatha was inside.

The old banker tried to open the door. He pulled at it for a moment. “The door can’t be opened,” he cried. “And the clock—I hadn’t started it yet.”

Agatha’s mother cried out again.

“Quiet!” said Mr. Adams, raising a shaking hand. “All be quiet for a moment. Agatha!” he called as loudly as he could. “Listen to me.” They could hear, but not clearly, the sound of the child’s voice. In the darkness inside the safe, she was wild with fear.

“My baby!” her mother cried. “She will die of fear! Open the door! Break it open! Can’t you men do something?”

“There isn’t a man nearer than the city who can open that door,” said Mr. Adams, in a shaking voice. “My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child—she can’t live long in there. There isn’t enough air. And the fear will kill her.”

Agatha’s mother, wild too now, beat on the door with her hands. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of pain, but with some hope, too. A woman thinks that the man she loves can somehow do anything.

“Can’t you do something, Ralph? Try, won’t you?”

He looked at her with a strange soft smile on his lips and in his eyes.

“Annabel,” he said, “give me that flower you are wearing, will you?”

She could not believe that she had really heard him. But she put the flower in his hand. Jimmy took it and put it where he could not lose it. Then he pulled off his coat. With that act, Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place.

“Stand away from the door, all of you,” he commanded.

He put his bag on the table, and opened it flat. From that time on, he seemed not to know that anyone else was near. Quickly he laid the shining strange tools on the table. The others watched as if they had lost the power to move.

In a minute Jimmy was at work on the door. In ten minutes— faster than he had ever done it before—he had the door open.

Agatha was taken into her mother’s arms.

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, picked up the flower and walked toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a voice call, “Ralph!” He did not stop.

At the door a big man stood in his way.

“Hello, Ben!” said Jimmy, still with his strange smile. “You’re here at last, are you? Let’s go. I don’t care, now.”

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

“I guess you’re wrong about this, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “I don’t believe I know you, do I?”

And Ben Price turned and walked slowly down the street.

The Romance of a Busy Broker

Pitcher, who worked in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, usually allowed his face to show no feeling. This morning he allowed his face to show interest and surprise when Mr. Maxwell entered. It was half past nine, and Mr. Maxwell was with his young lady secretary.

“Good morning, Pitcher,” said Maxwell. He rushed to his table as if he were going to jump over it. Then he began to look at the many, many letters and other papers waiting there for him.

The young lady had been Maxwell’s secretary for a year. She was very beautiful, and very different from most other secretaries. Her hair always looked plain and simple. She did not wear chains or jewels. Her dress was gray and plain, but it fitted her very well. On her small black-hat was the gold-green wing of a bird.

On this morning she seemed to shine softly. Her eyes were dreaming but bright. Her face was warmly colored, and her expression was happy.

Pitcher watched her. There was a question about her in his mind. She was different this morning. Instead of going straight to the room where she worked, she waited. She seemed not to know what to do. Once she went over to Maxwell’s table, near enough for him to see that she was there.

The machine sitting at that table was no longer a man. It was a busy New York broker.

“What is it? Anything?” asked Maxwell shortly. Papers lay like snow covering his table. His gray eyes looked at her as if she were another machine.

“Nothing,” answered the secretary, moving away with a little smile.

“Mr. Pitcher,” she said, “did Mr. Maxwell talk to you yesterday about getting another secretary?”

“He did,” Pitcher answered. “He told me to get another one. Several are coming to talk to us this morning. But it’s now after nine. Not one has appeared.”

“I will do the work as usual,” said the young lady, “until someone comes to fill the place.” And she went to her table. She took off the black hat with the gold-green bird wing and put it away as usual.

If you have never seen a busy New York broker on a busy day, you know little about men at work. Every minute of a broker’s hour is crowded.

And this day was Harvey Maxwell’s busy day.

Beside his table stood a machine. From this came a long, narrow, endless piece of paper, bringing him business news as soon as it happened.

Men began to come into the office and speak to him. Some were happy, some were not, some were in a hurry, some were full of anger.

Boys ran in and out with letters for him to read and answer at once.

Pitcher’s face now showed that he was alive. The other men who worked in the office jumped around like sailors during a storm.

And there were storms in the business world, fearful storms. Every storm was felt in the broker’s office.

Maxwell moved his chair against the wall. Now he was like a dancer. He jumped from the machine to his table to the door and back again.

In the middle of all this, he slowly realized that something had come near him. There was golden hair; there was a very large amount of it, high on a head. On top of the hair was a big hat covered with birds’ wings. There was a long silver chain, hanging from a neck until it nearly touched the floor. And among all these things there was a young lady.

Pitcher was beside her to explain.

“Lady for that job as secretary,” said Pitcher.

Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of letters and paper from the machine.

“What job?” he asked.

“Job of secretary,” Pitcher said again. “You told me yesterday to have someone sent here this morning.”

“You are losing your mind, Pitcher,” said Maxwell. “Why should I tell you anything like that? Miss Leslie is a perfect secretary. She can keep the job as long as she wants it.” To the young lady he said, “There is no job here.” And to Pitcher he added this order: “Tell them not to send any more. And don’t bring any more in here to see me.”

The silver chain left the office, hitting against chairs and tables with anger, as it went. Pitcher said to another man in the office that Maxwell was more forgetful every day.

The rush of business grew wilder and faster. Maxwell was working like some fine, strong machine. He was working as fast as he could. He never had to stop to think. He was never wrong. He was always ready to decide and to act. He worked as a clock works. This was the world of business. It was not a human world, or the world of nature.

When the dinner hour was near, things grew quieter.

Maxwell stood by his table with his hands full of papers and his hair hanging over his face. His window was open, for it was the time of year when the weather was beginning to turn warm.

And through the window came a soft sweet smell of flowers. For a moment the broker was held there, without moving. For this smell of flowers belonged to Miss Leslie. It was hers and hers only.

The smell seemed almost to make her stand there before him. The world of business grew smaller and smaller. And she was in the next room—twenty steps away.

“I’ll do it now,” said Maxwell, half aloud. “I’ll ask her now. I wonder why I didn’t do it long ago.”

He rushed into the other room. He stopped beside the secretary.

She looked up at him with a smile. Warm color came into her face, and her eyes were soft and kind.

Maxwell’s hands were still full of papers. “Miss Leslie,” he began quickly, “I have only a moment. I want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven’t had time to make love to you in the usual way. But I really do love you. Talk quick, please. I have to get back to my work.”

“Oh, what are you talking about?” cried the young lady. She rose to her feet and looked at him, round-eyed.

“Don’t you understand?” said Maxwell. “I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you. So I took this moment when I wasn’t too busy. But they’re calling me now. Tell them to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won’t you, Miss Leslie?”

The secretary acted very strangely. At first she seemed lost in surprise. Then tears began to run from her wondering eyes. And then she smiled through her tears, and one of her arms went around the broker’s neck.

“I know now,” she said, softly. “It’s this business. It has put everything else out of your head. I was afraid at first. Don’t you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at eight, in the Little Church around the Corner.”

After Twenty Years

The cop moved along the street, looking strong and important. This was the way he always moved. He was not thinking of how he looked. There were few people on the street to see him. It was only about ten at night, but it was cold. And there was a wind with a little rain in it.

He stopped at doors as he walked along, trying each door to be sure that it was closed for the night. Now and then he turned and looked up and down the street. He was a fine-looking cop, watchful, guarding the peace.

People in this part of the city went home early. Now and then you might see the lights of a shop or of a small restaurant. But most of the doors belonged to business places that had been closed hours ago.

Then the cop suddenly slowed his walk. Near the door of a darkened shop a man was standing. As the cop walked toward him, the man spoke quickly.

“It’s all right, officer,” he said. “I’m waiting for a friend. Twenty years ago we agreed to meet here tonight. It sounds strange to you, doesn’t it? I’ll explain if you want to be sure that everything’s all right. About twenty years ago there was a restaurant where this shop stands. ‘Big Joe’ Brady’s restaurant.”

“It was here until five years ago,” said the cop.

The man near the door had a colorless square face with bright eyes, and a little white mark near his right eye. He had a large jewel in his necktie.

“Twenty years ago tonight,” said the man, “I had dinner here with Jimmy Wells. He was my best friend and the best fellow in the world. He and I grew up together here in New York, like two brothers. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the West. I was going to find a job and make a great success. You couldn’t have pulled Jimmy out of New York. He thought it was the only place on earth.

“We agreed that night that we would meet here again in twenty years. We thought that in twenty years we would know what kind of men we were, and what future waited for us.”

“It sounds interesting,” said the cop. “A long time between meetings, it seems to me. Have you heard from your friend since you went West?”

“Yes, for a time we did write to each other,” said the man. “But after a year or two, we stopped. The West is big. I moved around everywhere, and I moved quickly. But I know that Jimmy will meet me here if he can. He was as true as any man in the world. He’ll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand here tonight. But I’ll be glad about that, if my old friend comes too.”

The waiting man took out a fine watch, covered with small jewels.

“Three minutes before ten,” he said. “It was ten that night when we said goodbye here at the restaurant door.”

“You were successful in the West, weren’t you?” asked the cop.

“I surely was! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a slow mover. I’ve had to fight for my success. In New York a man doesn’t change much. In the West you learn how to fight for what you get.”

The cop took a step or two.

“I’ll go on my way,” he said. “I hope your friend comes all right. If he isn’t here at ten, are you going to leave?”

“I am not!” said the other. “I’ll wait half an hour, at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth, he’ll be here by that time. Good night, officer.”

“Good night,” said the cop, and walked away, trying doors as he went.

There was now a cold rain falling and the wind was stronger. The few people walking along that street were hurrying, trying to keep warm. And at the door of the shop stood the man who had come a thousand miles to meet a friend. Such a meeting could not be certain. But he waited.

About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long coat came hurrying across the street. He went directly to the waiting man.

“Is that you, Bob?” he asked, doubtfully.

“Is that you, Jimmy Wells?” cried the man at the door.

The new man took the other man’s hands in his. “It’s Bob! It surely is. I was certain I would find you here if you were still alive. Twenty years is a long time. The old restaurant is gone, Bob. I wish it were here, so that we could have another dinner in it. Has the West been good to you?”

“It gave me everything I asked for. You’ve changed, Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall.”

“Oh, I grew a little after I was twenty.”

“Are you doing well in New York, Jimmy?”

“Well enough. I work for the city. Come on, Bob, We’ll go to a place I know, and have a good long talk about old times.”

The two men started along the street, arm in arm. The man from the West was beginning to tell the story of his life. The other, with his coat up to his ears, listened with interest.

At the corner stood a shop bright with electric lights. When they came near, each turned to look at the other’s face.

The man from the West stopped suddenly and pulled his arm away.

“You’re not Jimmy Wells,” he said. “Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change the shape of a man’s nose.”

“It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one,” said the tall man. “You’ve been under arrest for ten minutes, Bob. Chicago cops thought you might be coming to New York. They told us to watch for you. Are you coming with me quietly? That’s wise. But first here is something I was asked to give you. You may read it here at the window. It’s from a cop named Wells.”

The man from the West opened the little piece of paper. His hand began to shake a little as he read.

“Bob: I was at the place on time. I saw the face of the man wanted by Chicago cops. I didn’t want to arrest you myself. So I went and got another cop and sent him to do the job.

JIMMY.”

Transients in Arcadia

There is a certain hotel on Broadway that is very pleasant in the summer. Not many people have heard about it. It is wide and cool. Its rooms have walls of dark wood. There are green trees around it, and soft winds. It has all the pleasures of mountain living, and none of the pains. You will eat better fish than you could catch for yourself in streams in the hills. You will have better meat than a hunter brings home from the forest.

A few have discovered this cool spot in the hot summer of New York. You will see these few guests, eating dinner in the hotel restaurant. They are happy to be there, and happy to know that they are very few. They feel especially wise because they have found this delightful place.

More waiters than necessary are always near. They bring what is wanted before anyone asks for it.

The pleasing distant noise of Broadway sounds like running water in a forest. At every strange footstep, the guests turn quickly and look. They are afraid that the restless pleasure-seekers will find their hotel and destroy its pleasant quiet.

And so these few live during the hot season. They enjoy the delights of mountain and seashore. All is brought to them in their Broadway hotel.

This summer a lady came to the hotel giving this name: “Madame Héloise D’Arcy Beaumont.”

The name was like a name in the story of a great romance. And Madame Beaumont was the kind of lady the Hotel Lotus loved. She was beautiful and her manner was very fine. Everyone wished to serve her. The other guests believed that as a guest she was perfection.

This perfect guest did not often leave the hotel. In this, she was like the other guests of the Hotel Lotus. To enjoy that hotel, one needed to forget the city. New York might have been miles away. At night sometimes one might go out. But during the hot day one remained in the cool shade of the Lotus.

Madame was alone in the Hotel Lotus. She was alone as a queen is alone, because of her high position. She rose from bed late in the morning. She was then a sweet, soft person who seemed to shine quietly.

But at dinner she was different. She would wear a beautiful dress. I cannot find words fine enough to tell about it. Always there were red flowers at her shoulder. When the head waiter saw a dress like this, he met it at the door. You thought of Paris when you saw it, and of the theater and of old romances.

A story about Madame Beaumont was told among the guests in the Hotel Lotus. It was said that she was a woman who had traveled all over the world. It was said that she knew the most important people everywhere. It was said that in her white hands she held the future of certain nations.

It was no surprise, they said, that such a lady should choose the Hotel Lotus. It was the most desirable and the most restful place in America during the heat of summer.

On the third day of Madame Beaumont’s stay in the hotel, a young man entered as a guest. His clothes were quiet but good. His face was pleasant. His expression was that of a man who had traveled and could understand the world. He said that he would remain three or four days. He asked about the sailing of certain ships. He seemed to like this hotel the best of all he had known.

The young man put his name on the list of hotel guests: Harold Farrington. It was a name with a fine sound. And the young man belonged perfectly in the quiet life of the Lotus. In one day he became like all the other guests. Like them he had his table and his waiter. He also had the same fear that the wrong people might suddenly discover this hotel and destroy its peace.

After dinner on the next day, Madame Beaumont dropped something as she passed Harold Farrington’s table. He picked it up and, following her, returned it. He spoke only a few quiet words as he did this, and she was pleased by his good manners. She knew that he was a gentleman.

Guests of the Lotus seemed to understand each other very easily. Perhaps it was the result of having discovered this Broadway hotel. Guests felt sure that only especially fine people would enjoy the cool delights of the Lotus. Now, very quickly, a sudden friendship grew between Farrington and Madame Beaumont. They stood and talked for a few moments.

“I have seen too much of the usual summer hotels,” said Madame Beaumont, with a small but sweet smile. “Why go to the mountains or the seashore? We cannot escape noise and dust there. The people who make noise and dust follow us there.”

“Even on the ocean,” said Farrington, sadly, “those same people are all around us. What shall we do when they discover the Lotus?”

“I hope they don’t discover the Lotus this week,” said Madame. “I know only one other place I like as well. It is the beautiful home of a prince in the mountains in Europe.”

“The best people,” said Farrington, “are seeking for the quiet places, like this one, where they can escape the crowds.”

“I promise myself three more days of this delightful rest,” said Madame Beaumont. “The next day my ship sails.”

Harold Farrington’s eyes showed that he was sorry. “I too must leave then,” he said. “But I am not sailing for Europe.”

“We cannot stay here forever, though it is so delightful,” said Madame Beaumont. “I like it better than my usual life, which is too full of people. I shall never forget my week in the Hotel Lotus.”

“Nor shall I,” said Farrington in a low voice. “And I shall never like the ship that carries you away.”

On their last evening the two sat together at a little table. A waiter brought them something cool to eat.

Madame Beaumont was wearing the same beautiful dress. She seemed thoughtful.

When she had finished eating, she took out a dollar.

“Mr. Farrington,” she said, with the smile that everyone in the Lotus loved, “I want to tell you something. I’m going to leave early tomorrow morning because I must go back to work. I work selling women’s clothes at Casey’s shop. That dollar is all the money I have. I won’t have more until I get paid at the end of the week. You’re a real gentleman and you’ve been good to me. I wanted to tell you before I went.

“For a year I’ve been planning to come here. Each week I put aside a little of my pay, so that I would have enough money. I wanted to live one week like a rich lady. I wanted to get up in the morning when I wished. I wanted to be served by waiters. I wanted to have the best of everything. Now I’ve done it, and I’ve been happier than I ever was before. And now I’m going back to work.

“I wanted to tell you about it, Mr. Farrington, because I—I thought you liked me, and I—I liked you. This week I’ve told you many things that weren’t true. I told you things I’ve read about. They never happened to me. I’ve been living in a story. It wasn’t real. I wanted you to think I was a great lady.

“This dress I’m wearing—it’s the only pretty dress I own. I haven’t paid for it yet. I’m paying for it a little at a time.

“The price was seventy-five dollars. It was made for me at O’Dowd and Levinsky’s shop. I paid ten dollars first, and now I have to pay a dollar a week until it’s all paid.

“And that’s all I have to say, Mr. Farrington, except that my name is Mamie Siviter, and not Madame Beaumont. Thank you for listening to me. This dollar is the dollar I’m going to pay for my dress tomorrow. And now I’ll go up to my room.”

As Harold Farrington listened, his face had not changed. When she had finished, he took out a small book and began to write in it. Then he pulled out the small page with his writing on it, and gave it to her. And he took the dollar from her hand.

“I go to work too, tomorrow morning,” he said. “And I decided to begin now. That paper says you’ve paid your dollar for this week. I’ve been working for O’Dowd and Levinsky for three years. Strange, isn’t it? We both had the same idea. I always wanted to stay at a good hotel. I get twenty dollars a week. Like you, I put aside a little money at a time, until I had enough. Listen, Mamie. Will you go to the pleasure park on Coney Island with me on pay day?”

The girl who had been Madame Héloise D’Arcy Beaumont smiled.

“I’d love to go, Mr. Farrington. Coney will be all right, although we did live here with rich people for a week.”

They could hear the night noises of the hot city. Inside the Hotel Lotus it was cool. The waiter stood near, ready to get anything they asked for.

Madame Beaumont started up to her room for the last time.

And he said, “Forget that ‘Harold Farrington,’ will you? McManus is the name—James McManus. Some call me Jimmy.”

“Good night, Jimmy,” said Madame.

The Count and the Wedding Guest

Andy Donovan had his dinner each evening in the house on Second Avenue where he lived in a furnished room. One evening at dinner he met a new guest, a young lady, Miss Conway.

Miss Conway was small and quiet. She was wearing a plain brown dress. She seemed interested in very little except her dinner, and her dinner did not interest her very much. She looked up at Mr. Donovan and spoke his name, and then began to eat again.

Mr. Donovan had a smile that everyone liked. He smiled at her and then thought no more about her.

Two weeks later Andy was sitting outside the house enjoying the cool evening. He heard a movement behind him. He turned his head, and could not turn it back again.

Coming out of the door was Miss Conway. She was wearing a night-black dress of soft, thin cloth. Her hat was black. She was putting black gloves on her hands. There was no white and no color anywhere about her. All black. Someone in her family had died. Mr. Donovan was certain about that.

Her rich golden hair lay soft and thick at the back of her neck. Her face was not really pretty, but her large gray eyes made it almost beautiful. She looked up into the sky with an expression of sadness.

All black, readers. Think of her. All black, and that golden hair, and looking sadly far away.

Mr. Donovan suddenly decided to think about Miss Conway. He stood up.

“It’s a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway,” he said.

“It is to them with the heart to enjoy it, Mr. Donovan,” said Miss Conway. She took a deep slow breath.

“I hope no one—no one of your family—has died?”

“Death has taken,” said Miss Conway, “not one of my family, but one who—I must not speak of my troubles to you, Mr. Donovan.”

“Why not, Miss Conway? Perhaps I could understand.”

Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, her face was sadder than when she was not smiling.

“Laugh and the world laughs with you,” she said. “But the world is not interested in sadness. I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no friends in this city. But you have been kind to me. Thank you for it.”

He had done nothing except offer her the salt at dinner.

“It’s not easy to be alone in New York,” said Mr. Donovan. “But when New York is friendly, it’s very friendly. Shall we take a little walk in the park? It might be good for you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I would enjoy it. But I don’t want my sadness to make you sad.”

They went through the open gates of the park and found a quiet seat.

“We were going to be married soon,” said Miss Conway. “He was a real Count. He had land and a big house in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. My father didn’t want me to marry him. Once we ran away to get married, and my father followed and took me home. I was afraid they were going to fight.

“But then my father agreed. Fernando went to Italy to make everything ready for me. My father’s very proud. Fernando wanted to give me several thousand dollars for new clothes, and my father said no. When Fernando went away, I came to the city. I work in a shop.

“Three days ago I had a letter from Italy. It said that Fernando had been killed.

“That is why I’m wearing black. My heart has died, Mr. Donovan, with Fernando. I cannot take interest in anyone. I should not keep you from your friends who can smile and enjoy things with you. Shall we walk back to the house?”

Now, readers, if a girl tells a man her heart has died, he wants to make it live again.

“I’m very sorry,” said Mr. Donovan. “No, we won’t walk back to the house yet. And don’t say you have no friends in this city, Miss Conway. I’m your friend, and I want you to believe that.”

“I have his picture here,” said Miss Conway. “I wear it on a chain around my neck. I never showed it to anyone, but I will show it to you, Mr. Donovan. I believe you to be a true friend.”

Mr. Donovan looked for a long time and with much interest at the picture. The face of Count Mazzini commanded interest. It was wise, bright—the face of a strong, happy man who could be a leader of other men.

“I have a larger picture in my room,” said Miss Conway. “When we return, I will show you that. I have nothing more to help me remember Fernando. But he will always live in my heart. I am sure of that.”

Mr. Donovan decided that he wanted to take the Count’s place in Miss Conway’s heart. He did not seem to think he could fail. He would be friendly. He would keep smiling.

When they returned to the house, she ran to her room and brought down the larger picture of the Count. Mr. Donovan looked at it. No one could have guessed what he was thinking.

“He gave me this on the night he left for Italy,” said Miss Conway.

“A fine-looking man,” said Mr. Donovan warmly. “Miss Conway, will you go to Coney Island with me next Sunday afternoon?”

A month later they told the other guests in the house on Second Avenue that they were going to be married. Miss Conway continued to wear black.

A week later the two sat on the same seat in the park. Donovan had had a sad face all day. He was so quiet tonight that Miss Conway had to ask him why.

“What’s wrong tonight, Andy?”

“Nothing, Maggie.”

“You never were like this before. What is it?”

“It’s nothing much, Maggie.”

“Yes, it is; and I want to know. Is it some other girl? Why don’t you go to her, if you want her? Take your arm away.”

“I will tell you then,” said Andy, wisely. “But you will not understand. Have you heard about Mike Sullivan? Everyone calls him ‘Big Mike’ Sullivan.”

“I never heard about him,” said Maggie. “Who is he?”

“He is the most important man in New York. He is a mile high and as broad as the East River. If you say anything bad about Big Mike a million men will be ready to fight you.

“Big Mike is a friend of mine. I am only a little man. But Mike is as good a friend to a little man as he is to a big man. I met him today by chance, and what do you think he did? He came up to me to shake my hand. I told him I was going to be married in two weeks. ‘Andy,’ says he, ‘I will come to the wedding.’ That is what he said to me, and he always does what he says.

“You don’t understand it, Maggie, but I want to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would make me very proud.”

“Then why don’t you ask him to come?” said Maggie.

“There’s a reason why I can’t,” said Andy, sadly. “Don’t ask me the reason, for I can’t tell you.”

“But can’t you smile at me?” said Maggie.

“Maggie,” said Andy, after a few minutes, “do you love me as much as you loved Count Mazzini?”

He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply.

And then, suddenly, she put her head against his shoulder and began to cry. She held his arm, and her tears wet the black dress.

“Maggie, Maggie,” said Andy, forgetting his own trouble. “Tell me about it.”

“Andy,” said Maggie. “What I told you was not true, and there never was any Count. There never was a man in love with me. All the other girls had men in love with them. And Andy, I look good in black—you know I do. So I went to a shop where I could buy that picture. And that story about the Count—none of it was true. I said he had died because I wanted to wear black. And no one can love me, because I didn’t tell the truth. I never liked anyone but you. And that’s all.”

But Andy did not move away. Instead, his arm pulled her nearer to him. She looked up and saw that he was smiling.

“Do you—do you still love me, Andy?”

“Sure,” said Andy. “You have made everything fine, Maggie. I hoped you would do it, before the wedding-day. Good girl!”

“Andy,” said Maggie, after a little time, “did you believe all that story about the Count?”

“No, not very much,” said Andy. “Because that is Big Mike Sullivan’s picture that you are wearing on the chain around your neck.”

Mammon and the Archer

Old Anthony Rockwall, who had made millions of dollars by making and selling Rockwall’s soap, stood at a window of his large Fifth Avenue house. He was looking out at his neighbor, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones. This neighbor was a proud member of a proud old New York family. He came out of his door and got into a cab. He looked once quickly, as usual, at Anthony Rockwall’s house. The look showed that Suffolk-Jones was a very important man, while a rich soapmaker was nothing.

“I will have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer,” said the Soap King to himself. “And we’ll see how he likes that.”

And then Anthony Rockwall turned around and shouted, “Mike!” in a loud voice. He never used a bell to call a servant.

“Tell my son,” he said when the servant came, “to come to me before he leaves the house.”

When young Rockwall entered the room, the old man put down the newspaper he had been reading. “Richard,” said Anthony Rockwall, “what do you pay for the soap that you use?”

Richard had finished college six months before, and he had come home to live. He had not yet learned to understand his father. He was always being surprised.

He said, “Six dollars for twelve pieces.”

“And your clothes?”

“About sixty dollars, usually.”

“You are a gentleman,” said his father. “I have heard of young men who pay twenty-four dollars for twelve pieces of soap, and more than a hundred for clothes. You have as much money to throw away as anyone else has. But what you do is reasonable. I myself use Rockwall Soap, because it is the best. When you pay more than ten cents for a piece of soap, you are paying for a sweet strong smell and a name.

“But fifty cents is good for a young man like you. You are a gentleman. People say that if a man is not a gentleman, his son can’t be a gentleman; but perhaps his son’s son will be a gentleman. But they are wrong. Money does it faster than that. Money has made you a gentleman. It has almost made me a gentleman. I have become very much like the two gentlemen who own the houses on each side of us. My manners are now almost as bad as theirs. But they still can’t sleep at night because a soapmaker lives in this house.”

“There are some things that money can’t do,” said the young man rather sadly.

“Don’t say that,” said old Anthony. “Money is successful every time. I don’t know anything you can’t buy with it. Tell me something that money can’t buy. And I want you to tell me something more. Something is wrong with you. I’ve seen it for two weeks. Tell me. Let me help you. In twenty-four hours I could have eleven million dollars here in my hands. Are you sick?”

“Some people call it sickness.”

“Oh!” said Anthony. “What’s her name? Why don’t you ask her to marry you? She would be glad to do it. You have money, you are good-looking, and you are a good boy. Your hands are clean. You have no Rockwall Soap on them.”

“I haven’t had a chance to ask her,” said Richard.

“Make a chance,” said Anthony. “Take her for a walk in the park. Or walk home with her from church.”

“You don’t know the life of a rich girl, father. Every hour and minute of her time is planned. I must have her, or the world is worth nothing to me. And I can’t write to say I love her. I can’t do that.”

“Do you tell me,” said the old man, “that with all my money you can’t get an hour or two of a girl’s time?”

“I’ve waited too long. She’s going to Europe the day after tomorrow. She’s going to be there two years. I’m allowed to see her alone tomorrow evening for a few minutes. She’s coming to the city on a train. I’m going to meet her with a cab. Then we’ll drive fast to the theater where she must meet her mother and some other people. Do you think she would listen to me then? No. Or in the theater? No. Or after the theater? No! No, father, this is one trouble that your money can’t help. We can’t buy one minute of time with money. If we could, rich people would live longer. There’s no hope of talking with Miss Lantry before she sails.”

“Richard, my boy,” said old Anthony, “I’m glad you’re not really sick. You say money won’t buy time? Perhaps it won’t buy all of time, but I’ve seen it buy some little pieces.”

That evening his sister Ellen came to Anthony, to talk about the troubles that lovers have.

“He told me all about it,” said brother Anthony. “I told him he could have all the money he wanted. Then he began to say that money was no use to him. He said money couldn’t help.”

“Oh, Anthony,” said Ellen, “I wish you wouldn’t think so much of money. Money is no help for love. Love is all powerful. If he had only spoken to her earlier! She could never say no to our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. All your gold cannot buy happiness for your son.”

At eight the next evening Ellen took an old gold ring and gave it to Richard.

“Wear it tonight,” she said. “Your mother gave it to me. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the girl you loved.”

Young Rockwall took the ring and tried to put it on his little finger. It was too small. He put it inside his coat, in a place where he thought it would be safe. And then he called for his cab.

At the station he met Miss Lantry.

“We must not keep my mother and the others waiting,” said she.

“To Wallack’s Theater as fast as you can drive,” said Richard to the cabby.

They rolled along Forty-second Street to Broadway and from there to Thirty-fourth Street.

Then young Richard quickly ordered the cabby to stop.

“I’ve dropped a ring,” he said, getting out. “It was my mother’s and I don’t want to lose it. This will take only a minute. I saw where it fell.”

In less than a minute he was again in the cab with the ring.

But within that minute, a wagon had stopped in front of the cab. The cabby tried to pass on the left, but a cab was there. He tried to pass on the right, but another cab was there. He could not go back. He was caught where he was and could not move in any direction.

These sudden stops of movement will happen in the city. Instead of moving along the street in their usual orderly way, all the wagons and cabs will suddenly be mixed together and stopped.

“Why don’t you drive further?” said Miss Lantry. “We’ll be late.”

Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a stream of cabs and wagons and everything else on wheels rolling toward the corner where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street meet. They came from all directions. And more and more were rolling toward them. More and more were caught there. Drivers and cabbies shouted. Everyone on wheels in New York City seemed to be hurrying to this place.

“I’m very sorry,” said Richard. He sat down again. “We can’t move. They won’t get this straight in an hour. If I hadn’t dropped the ring, we—”

“Let me see the ring,” said Miss Lantry. “Since we really can’t hurry, I don’t care. I didn’t want to go to the theater. I don’t like the theater.”

At eleven that night someone stopped at the door of Anthony’s room.

“Come in,” shouted Anthony. He had been reading and he put down his book.

It was Ellen. “They are going to be married Anthony,” she said. “She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theater their cab was stopped in the street. It was two hours before it could move again.

“And oh, brother Anthony, don’t ever talk about the power of money again. It was a little ring, a true love ring, that was the cause of our Richard finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street and had to get out and find it. And before they could continue, the cab was caught among the others. He told her of his love there in the cab. Money is nothing, Anthony. True love is everything.”

“I’m glad the boy got what he wanted,” said old Anthony. “I told him I didn’t care how much money—”

“But, brother Anthony, what could your money do?”

“Sister,” said Anthony Rockwall. “I’m reading a book with a good story in it. It’s a wild adventure story, but I like it. And I want to find what happens next. I wish you would let me go on reading.”

The story should end here. I wish it would. I’m sure you too wish it would end here. But we must go on to the truth.

The next day a person with red hands and a blue necktie, whose name was Kelly, came to Anthony Rockwall’s house to see Anthony.

“That was good soap we made,” said Anthony. “I gave you $5,000 yesterday.”

“I paid out $300 more of my own money,” said Kelly. “It cost more than I expected. I got the cabs, most of them, for $5, but anything with two horses was $10. I had to pay most to the cops—$50 I paid to two, and the others $20 and $25. But didn’t it work beautifully, Mr. Rockwall? They were all on time. And it was two hours before anyone could move.”

“Thirteen hundred—there you are, Kelly,” said Anthony, giving him the money. A thousand for you, and the $300 of your own money that you had to spend. You like money, do you, Kelly?”

“I do,” said Kelly.

Anthony stopped Kelly when he was at the door.

“Did you see,” asked he, “anywhere in the street yesterday a little fat boy with no clothes on? Carrying arrows?”

Kelly looked surprised. “No. I didn’t. But if he was like that, with no clothes, perhaps the cops caught him.”

“I thought Cupid wouldn’t be there,” Anthony said, laughing. “Good-bye, Kelly.”

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

Prince Michael of Valleluna sat in the park on the seat he liked best. In the coolness of the night, he felt full of life. The other seats were not filled. Cool weather sends most people home.

The moon was rising over the houses on the east side of the park. Children laughed and played. Music came softly from one of the nearer streets. Around the little park, cabs rolled by. The trains that traveled high above the street rushed past. These cabs and trains, with their wild noises, seemed like animals outside the park. But they could not enter. The park was safe and quiet. And above the trees was the great, round, shining face of a lighted clock in a tall old building.

Prince Michael’s shoes were old and broken. No shoemaker could ever make them like new again. His clothes were very torn. The hair of his face had been growing for two weeks. It was all colors—gray and brown and red and green-yellow. His hat was older and more torn than his shoes and his other clothes.

Prince Michael sat on the seat he liked best, and he smiled. It was a happy thought to him that he had enough money to buy every house he could see near the park, if he wished. He had as much gold as any rich man in this proud city of New York. He had as many jewels, and houses, and land. He could have sat at table with kings and queens. All the best things in the world could be his—art, pleasure, beautiful women, honor. All the sweeter things in life were waiting for Prince Michael of Valleluna whenever he might choose to take them. But instead he was choosing to sit in torn clothes on a seat in a park.

For he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of life. He had not liked the taste. Here, in this park, he felt near to the beating heart of the world. He hoped it would help him to forget that taste.

These thoughts moved like a dream through the mind of Prince Michael. There was a smile across his face with its many-colored hair. Sitting like this, in torn clothes, he loved to study other men. He loved to do good things for others. Giving was more pleasant to him than owning all his riches. It was his chief pleasure to help people who were in trouble. He liked to give to people who needed help. He liked to surprise them with princely gifts. But he always gave wisely, after careful thought.

And now, as he looked at the shining face of the great clock, his smile changed. The Prince always thought big thoughts. When he thought of time, he always felt a touch of sadness. Time controlled the world. People had to do what time commanded. Their comings and goings were always controlled by a clock. They were always in a hurry, and always afraid, because of time. It made him sad.

After a little while, a young man in evening clothes came and sat upon a seat near the Prince. For half an hour he sat there nervously. Then he began watching the face of the lighted clock above the trees. The Prince could see that the young man had a trouble. He could also see that somehow the clock was part of the trouble.

The Prince rose and went to the young man’s seat.

“I am a stranger, and I shouldn’t speak to you,” he said. “But I can see that you are troubled. I am Prince Michael of Valleluna. I do not want people to know who I am. That is why I wear these torn clothes. It is a small pleasure of mine to help those who need help. First I must feel sure they are worth helping. I think you are. And perhaps your trouble may be ended if you and I together decide what to do about it.”

The young man looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but he was still troubled. He laughed, then, but still the look of trouble remained. But he accepted this chance to talk to someone.

“I’m glad to meet you, Prince,” he said pleasantly. “Yes, I can see you don’t want to be known. That’s easy to see. Thanks for your offer of help. But I don’t see what you can do. It’s my own problem. But thanks.”

Prince Michael sat down at the young man’s side. People often said no to him, but they always said it pleasantly.

“Clocks,” said the Prince, “are tied to the feet of all men and women. I have seen you watching that clock. That face commands us to act, whether or not we wish to act. Let me tell you not to trust the numbers on that face. They will destroy you if they can. Stop looking at that clock. What does it know about living men and women?”

“I don’t usually look at that clock,” said the young man. “I carry a watch, except when I wear evening clothes.”

“I know men and women as I know the trees and the flowers,” said the Prince, warmly and proudly. “I have studied many years. I am very rich. There are few troubles that I cannot help. I have read what is in your face. I have found honor and goodness there, and trouble. Please accept my help. I can see that you are wise. Show how wise you are. Do not judge me by my torn clothes. I am sure I can help you.”

The young man looked at the clock again, and his face grew darker. Then he looked at a house beside the park. Lights could be seen in many rooms.

“Ten minutes before nine!” said the young man. He raised his hands and then let them fall, as if hope had gone. He stood up and took a quick step or two away.

“Remain!” commanded Prince Michael. His voice was so powerful that the young man turned quickly. He laughed a little.

“I’ll wait ten minutes and then I’ll go,” he said in a low voice, as if only to himself. Then to the Prince he said, “I’ll join you. We’ll destroy all the clocks. And women, too.”

“Sit down,” said the Prince softly. “I do not accept that. I do not include women. Women are enemies of clocks. They are born that way. Therefore they are friends of those who wish to destroy clocks. If you can trust me, tell me your story.”

The young man sat down again and laughed loudly.

“Prince, I will,” he said. He did not believe that Prince Michael was really a prince. His manner of speaking proved that. “Do you see that house, Prince? That house with lights in three windows on the third floor? At six tonight I was in that house with the young lady I am going to—was going to marry. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince, and she had heard about it. I was sorry. I wanted her to forget it. We are always asking women to forget things like that, aren’t we, Prince?

“ ‘I want time to think,’ she said. ‘I will either forget it forever, or never see your face again. At half-past eight,’ she said, ‘watch the middle window on the third floor of this house. If I decide to forget, I will hang out a long white cloth. You will know then that everything is as it was before. And you may come to me. If you see nothing hanging from the window, you will know that everything between us is finished forever.’

“That,” said the young man, “is why I have been watching that clock. The time was passed twenty-three minutes ago. Do you see why I am a little troubled, my torn Prince?”

“Let me tell you again,” said Prince Michael in his soft voice, “that women are the born enemies of clocks. Clocks are bad, women are good. The white cloth may yet appear.”

“Never!” said the young man, hopelessly. “You don’t know Marian. She is always on time, to the minute. That was the first thing I liked about her. At 8:31, I should have known that everything was finished. I’m going to go West. I’ll get on the train tonight. I’ll find some way to forget her. Good night—Prince.”

Prince Michael smiled his gentle, understanding smile. He caught the other’s arm. The bright light in the Prince’s eyes was softening. It was dream-like, clouded.

“Wait,” he said, “till the clock tells the hour. I have riches and power and I am wiser than most men. But when I hear the clock tell the hour, I am afraid. Stay with me till then. This woman shall be yours. You have the promise of the Prince of Valleluna. On the day you are married I will give you $100,000 and a great house beside the Hudson River. But there must be no clocks in that house. Do you agree to that?”

“Sure,” said the young man. “I don’t like clocks.”

He looked again at the clock above the trees. It was three minutes before nine.

“I think,” said Prince Michael, “that I will sleep a little. It has been a long day.”

He lay down on the seat, as if he had often done it before.

“You will find me on this park on any evening when the weather is good,” said the Prince. “Come to me when you know the day you’ll be married. I’ll give you the money.”

“Thanks, Prince,” said the young man. “That day isn’t going to come. But thanks.”

Prince Michael fell into a deep sleep. His hat rolled on the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the Prince’s face, and moved one of the Prince’s legs into an easier position. “Poor fellow!” he said. He pulled the torn coat together over the Prince’s body.

It was nine. Loud and surprising came the voice of the clock, telling the hour. The young man took a deep breath, and turned for one more look at the house. And he gave a shout of joy.

From the middle window on the third floor, a snow-white wonderful cloth was hanging.

Through the park a man came, hurrying home.

“Will you tell me the time, please?” asked the young man.

The other man took out his watch and said, “Twenty-nine and a half minutes after eight.”

And then he looked up at the clock.

“But that clock is wrong!” the man said. “The first time in ten years! My watch is always—”

But he was talking to no one. He turned and saw the young man running toward a house with three lighted windows on the third floor.

And in the morning two cops walked through the park. There was only one person to be seen—a man, asleep on a long park seat. They stopped to look at him.

“It’s Michael the Dreamer,” said one. “He has been sleeping like this in the park for twenty years. He won’t live much longer, I guess.”

The other cop looked at something in the sleeper’s hand. “Look at this,” he said. “Fifty dollars. I wish I could have a dream like that.”

And then they gave Prince Michael of Valleluna a hard shake, and brought him out of his dreams and into real life.

The Green Door

Let us think about adventure. You are walking along Broadway. You like looking into the shop windows and you are deciding which theater to go to. You are asking yourself, Do I want something to make me laugh, or something to make me feel sad?

Suddenly a hand is placed on your arm. You turn to look deep into the eyes of a beautiful woman, wonderful in jewels and richly dressed. Quickly she puts into your hand a piece of hot—very hot—bread and butter. She cuts a small piece of cloth from your coat. She speaks one word and it means nothing to you. Then quickly she runs down a side street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder.

That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it?

No. Your face would turn red. You would drop the bread and butter. You would walk straight along, with one hand over the hole in your coat. This you would do, if you are not one of the very few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead.

There have never been many true adventurers. You can read stories about men called adventurers. But they were really businessmen. There was something they wanted—lady, or money, or a country, or honor. And so they got it. But a true adventurer is different. He starts without any special purpose. He is ready for anything he may meet.

There have been many half-adventurers. And they were great men. History is rich with their stories. But each of them had a special purpose. They were not followers of true adventure.

In the big city of New York, Romance and Adventure are always waiting. As we walk along the streets, they are watching us. We look up suddenly and see a face in a window. The face seems to interest us strangely. Or in a quiet street we hear a cry of fear and pain coming from a house where no one lives. A cab takes us to a strange door, instead of to our own. The door opens and we are asked to enter. At every corner, eyes look toward us, or hands are raised, or fingers point. Adventure is offered.

But few of us are ready to accept. We are ready to do only the things we do every day. We wish to do only the things that everyone else does. We move on; and some day we come to the end of a long quiet life. Then we begin to think. Then, when it is too late, we are sorry that we have never known true Romance and Adventure.

Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. There were few evenings when he did not go out seeking something different. He was always interested in what might be waiting around the next corner. Sometimes adventure led him into strange places. Two times the cops arrested him. Again and again he discovered that he had lost all his money. One night his watch was taken from him. But he continued happily to accept every offer of adventure.

One evening Rudolf was walking slowly along a street in the older part of the city. Many people were walking along the street that night.

Some were hurrying home. Others were going to have their dinner at some restaurant.

The adventurer was a pleasant and good-looking young man. By day, he worked in a music shop.

He walked quietly and watchfully.

He passed a busy restaurant and saw beside it an open door. Above the door a sign was hanging, a sign for a doctor’s office. A very large black man stood at the door. He was strangely and brightly dressed in red and yellow. Quietly, he was offering small pieces of paper to those who passed by.

Rudolf had often seen such a thing before. The black man’s small pieces of paper would have the name of the doctor in the office on the third floor. Usually Rudolf walked past without taking the paper that was offered. But tonight the paper was put into his hand very quickly. He kept it, smiling.

When he had walked on further, he looked down at the paper. Surprised, he turned it over, and looked again with interest. On one side there was nothing. On the other side were three words: “The Green Door.”

And then, three steps beyond, another man threw down the paper the black man had given him. Rudolf picked it up. There was the doctor’s name, with the street and the number. This was what Rudolf had expected to find on his own piece of paper.

The young adventurer stopped at the corner to think. Then he went across the street, walked further, and returned across the street to the first side.

Now he again walked past the black man. Again he received a piece of paper. Ten steps away, he looked at it. There were the same words that had appeared on the first paper: “The Green Door.” Three or four other pieces of paper were lying in the street where they had been dropped. He looked at them. Every one had the doctor’s name on it.

Two times, now, Adventure had asked Rudolf to follow. He was ready.

He walked slowly back to where the big black man stood. This time as he passed, he received no paper. The papers were offered to some, but not to all who passed. It seemed to Rudolf that the large black face looked coldly at him.

The look was painful to Rudolf. It seemed to say that he had failed. It seemed to say that he was not a true adventurer.

Standing away from the crowd of people, the young man looked up at the building. He believed that his adventure must be somewhere inside. The building was five floors high. A small restaurant was on the ground floor.

On the floor above that was a hat shop. Above the hat shop was the doctor’s office. Above this were several signs, of dressmakers, music teachers, and other doctors. On the top floor, people seemed to have furnished rooms.

Rudolf entered the door and walked quickly up.

On the second floor he stopped. The hall was not very well lighted. There were two gas lights, one far to his right, the other nearer, to his left.

He looked toward the nearer light and saw a green door.

For one moment he waited. Then he remembered the cold face of the black man at the door below. He walked straight to the green door, striking it loudly with his hand. Then he waited to see who would open the door.

In the moments that passed then, he could feel the quick breath of true adventure. What might not be behind the wood of that green door! Bad men planning bad acts, or beauty in trouble, or death, or love—anything might be there.

A soft sound was heard, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there. Her face was very white, and she was very weak. She put out one hand, and started to fall. Rudolf caught her and carried her inside and put her down on a bed.

He closed the door and looked around. It was very clean, but she was very poor. That was what he saw.

The girl lay with her eyes closed. But now she opened them, and the young man looked at her face. He had never seen it before, but he knew that it was a face he had always hoped to see some day. Her eyes were gray, her nose was small, her hair was brown. It was a face to make this a wonderful adventure. But her face was very thin and it had no color.

The girl looked at him and then smiled. “I fell, didn’t I?” she said. “That is what happens when you don’t eat for three days.”

“What!” cried Rudolf. “Wait till I come back.”

He rushed out the green door and down to the street. In twenty minutes he returned. Both arms were full of things from a food shop and from the restaurant. He put them on the table—bread and butter, cold meats, cakes, fish, milk, and more.

“Only little fools,” said Rudolf, “stop eating. You must not do things like that. Dinner is ready.” He helped her to move to a chair at the table, and asked, “Is there a cup for the milk?”

“There, by the window,” she answered.

He filled the cup. “Drink that first,” he ordered. “And then you shall have something else. And may I be your guest?”

He moved another chair to the table and sat down.

A little color began to come into the girl’s face. She started to eat like some small wild animal that has been without food for a long time. She seemed to think it was not strange that this young man was helping her. Her need had been so great that she was ready to accept any help.

But slowly, as her strength returned, she began to tell him her little story. There are a thousand stories like hers in the city every day. It was the shop girl’s story—not enough pay, illness, a lost job, lost hope. And then the adventurer at the green door.

But to Rudolf it was not a little story. It was a big story.

“And you suffered all that!” he said.

“It was really bad,” said the girl.

“And you have no family or friends in the city?”

“None.”

“I am all alone in the world, too,” said Rudolf.

“I am glad of that,” said the girl. And it pleased the young man to hear that she was glad he was alone.

Very suddenly her eyes closed. It was not easy for her to open them again. “I’m falling asleep,” she said. “And I feel so good.”

Rudolf rose and took his hat.

“Then I’ll say good night. A long night’s sleep will be fine for you.”

He held out his hand and she took it and said, “Good night.” But her eyes asked a question.

He answered with words. “I’m coming tomorrow to see how you are.”

Then, when he was at the door, she asked, “How did you happen to come to my door?”

He looked at her for a moment, and felt a sudden pain. What if those pieces of paper had been placed in some other man’s hand? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth. He must never let her know that he knew that she had taken such a strange way to call for help.

“I was looking for someone else,” he said.

The last thing he saw was her smile.

Outside the door he stopped and looked around the hall. And then he went along the hall to the other end. He came back and went to the floor above, and walked to the far end of that hall. Every door in the house was painted green.

He went down to the street. The black man was there. Rudolf showed him the two pieces of paper with the words, “The Green Door.”

“Why did you give these to me?” he asked.

“I give some of those and some with the doctor’s name,” the black man said. “I’m paid a dollar to give those.”

“But what do they mean?” Rudolf asked.

The black man smiled. “There it is,” he said. He pointed his finger down the street. “But you are a little late.”

Rudolf looked down the street. There he saw a theater, and over the theater was a big sign, in electric lights. It said, “The Green Door.”

In the shop on the corner near his home, Rudolf stopped to buy a newspaper. As he stepped outside again he said to himself, “I know that it was planned that I should meet her that way. I know it.”

For Rudolf Steiner was a true follower of Romance and Adventure.

GLOSSARY

(Meanings given are only those for the sense in which a word is used in this book.)

adventure: a strange and very interesting experience

anthem: a church song

arcadia: a place of simple pleasure and quiet

archer: a person who shoots arrows. Here, the Archer is Cupid.

arrest: to take and hold a person who has broken a law

arrow: a thin pointed stick that is shot from a device called a bow, with the purpose of striking someone or something

broker: a dealer who buys and sells stock shares in large businesses

cabby: a man who drives a cab, a kind of closed cart pulled by a horse

caliph: a ruler, like a king

cattle: large animals raised for meat and milk

Christmas: the day Jesus Christ was born (December 25) which Christians follow yearly as a special church day of rest and gift-giving

comb: an object which is put into the hair to keep it in place and make it look pretty

cop: police officer

count: in Europe, a member of a ruling family

cowboy: a man who takes care of cattle in the American West

Cupid: the god of love. The old Roman people pictured him as a small fat boy without clothes, carrying arrows that he shot into people’s hearts.

foreman: a chief workman

furnished: supplied with tables, chairs, beds, and other things necessary for living

gas: a material that has the same form as air. It is useful—when burning for cooking and lighting—but is dangerous when allowed to fill a room.

guest: a person who comes for bed or food to another’s house or to a hotel

jewel: a valuable stone, or a costly object of gold, silver or such material with valuable stones, which people wear for beauty

magi: three wise men from the East who brought gifts to Jesus Christ when he was born (see Christmas)

mammon: riches thought of as a harmful thing that makes people bad

prince: a king’s son, or a ruler

prison: a place where persons who have broken the law are kept for certain lengths of time

ranch: a very large farm in the American West where horses and cattle are raised

reformation: a change into a newer and better form

retrieve: to save something that seemed to be lost

romance: love; also, a story about love

safe: a very strong box, sometimes as large as a room, specially made to keep money and jewels safe

servant: a person who is paid to work in a house with such duties as cleaning and serving food

Thanksgiving: in the United States, the day when special thanks are given

theater: a building where plays can be seen. Plays are stories told in action, with real people appearing as the people in the story.

tradition: an act, opinion, or belief from the past that is used now and will be used in the future

transient: a person who stays in place for only a short time

wedding: the act of becoming married