________________________________________________
Title: A Municipal Report
Author: O Henry [
Henry's work(s)]
A Municipal Report
The cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each--
This from her mountainside,
That from her burthened beach.
R. KIPLING.
Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
Tennessee! There are justthree big cities in the United States
that are "story cities"--New York, of course, New Orleans, and,
best of the lot, San Francisco. --FRANK NORRIS.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians.
Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants
of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans
are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they
stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building.
But Californians go into detail.
Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for
half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy
underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for
conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of
the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a
matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins
all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay
his finger on the map and say: "In this town there can be no
romance--what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and a rash
deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand
and McNally.
NASHVILLE--A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the
State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the
N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded
as the most important educational centre in the South.
I stepped off the train at 8 P.M. Having searched the thesaurus in
vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison
in the form of a recipe.
Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts;
dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of
honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville
drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as
pea-soup; but 'tis enough--'twill serve.
I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression
for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation
of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone
era and driven by something dark and emancipated.
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid
it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure
you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about
its old "marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah."
The hotel was one of the kind described as 'renovated." That
means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights
and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and
a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms
above. The management was without reproach, the attention full
of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress
of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was
worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in
the world where you can get such chicken livers _en brochette_.
At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in
town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: "Well,
boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin' after
sundown."
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle
long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth
upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.
It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted
by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.
As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a
company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with--no, I saw with
relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a
caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts,
"Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned
that I was merely a "fare" instead of a victim.
I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how
those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they
were "graded." On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in
stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy
burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of
conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing
from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than
"main" seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated
to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind
discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly
and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little "doing."
I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel.
In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against
Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas.
The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a
terrible conflict.
All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine
marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-
chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There
were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in
the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed
that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been
able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But,
although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy
had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched,
they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor--the
beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of
Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some
deductions about hereditary marksmanship.
Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth
Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from
the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old
friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything:
Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
And curse me the British vermin, the rat.
Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable _ad lib_. A rat
is a rat.
This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that
had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great
acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like
that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue--he was very
smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a
man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not
used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the
criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the
addition of one murder.
I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when
Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough
to percieve that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of
squirrel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized
the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the
blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had
dragged me to the bar.
I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not
one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat,
the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by
Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do
not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and,
well, order another W"urzburger and wish that Longstreet had--but
what's the use?
Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at
Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox
I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and
demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral
branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up,
to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife,
traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible
rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.
By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to
obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the
chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when
they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar.
Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had
paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more
of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly
of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver
money.
When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously:
"If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to
make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a
loafer, and without any known means of support, although he
seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to
be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally."
"Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear
to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record
as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town," I
continued, "seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment,
adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within
your gates?"
"Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next
Thursday. It is--I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up
to your room with the ice water. Good night."
After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only
about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle
continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a
cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.
"A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling
of the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here
that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West.
Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town."
Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing
centres of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market
in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing
city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods,
grocery, and drug business.
I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the
digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was
traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission
from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish
a personal connection between the publication and one of its
contributors, Azalea Adair.
Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting)
had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the
editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So
they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by
contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other
publisher offered her ten or twenty.
At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers _en
brochette_ (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into
the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first
corner, I came upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older
than the pyramids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of
Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo. He
wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to
see. It reached to his ankles an had once been a Confederate gray
in colors. But rain and sun and age had so variegated it that
Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I
must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story--the story
that is so long in coming, because you can hardly expect anything
to happen in Nashville.
Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of
it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and
tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone.
In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some
surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted
common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It
must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished
splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed
faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete
the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone
save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The
coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the
buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side.
There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked
and of so many mottled hues. The lone button was the size of a
half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.
This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might
have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two
animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door,
drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in
deep, rumbling tones:
"Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it--jus' got back from a
funeral, suh."
I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra
cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there
was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb.
I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.
"I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and was about to
step into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like
arm of the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine
face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment.
Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly:
"What are you gwine there for, boss?"
"What is it to you?" I asked, a little sharply.
"Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of
town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The
seats is clean--jes' got back from a funeral, suh."
A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could
hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the
uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now
further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of
tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming
windows were two rows of dim houses.
The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets,
of which 137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost
$2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.
Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty
yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove
of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed
and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept
closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first
paling of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861
was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence.
But in the story, I have not yet got inside.
When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds
came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional
quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He
refused it.
"It's two dollars, suh," he said.
"How's that?" I asked. "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel:
'Fifty cents to any part of the town.'"
"It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. "It's a long ways
from the hotel."
"It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued.
"Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you
see those hills over there?" I went on, pointing toward the
east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was
born and raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't
you tell people from other people when you see 'em?"
The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. "Is you from the
South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They
is somethin' sharp in the toes for a Southern gen'lman to wear."
"Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?" said I inexorably.
His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility,
returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished.
"Boss," he said, "fifty cents is right; but I _needs_ two dollars,
suh; I'm _obleeged_ to have two dollars. I ain't _demandin'_ it
now, suh; after I know whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I _has_
to have two dollars to-night, and business mighty po'."
Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had
been luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a
greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.
"You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket,
"you ought to be turned over to the police."
For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; _he knew_. HE
KNEW.
I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed
that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand
corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but
joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split,
preserved its negotiability.
Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy,
lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate.
The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it
in twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not
have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the
trees that hugged it close--the trees that saw the battle of Nashville
and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and
enemy and cold.
Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the
cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the
cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a
queen's, received me.
The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing
in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves,
a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa
and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall,
a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around
for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket
but they were not there.
Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be
repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently
nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was
deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope.
She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world
was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the
precious, small group of essayists made. Whle she talked to me I
kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them
guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb,
Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood. She was
exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody
nowadays knows too much--oh, so much too much--of real life.
I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house
and a dress she had, not much else, I fancied. So, divided between
my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists
who fought Thomas in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to
her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and found that I could
not speak of contracts. In the presence of the nine Muses and the
three Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There
would have to be another colloquy after I had regained my
commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of
the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business
proposition.
"Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is
the time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate
place. A home town, I should say, where few things out of the
ordinary ever happen."
It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with
the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity
of more than 2,000 barrels.
Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.
"I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of
sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. "Isn't it in the
still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God
began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could
have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing
from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the
noisiest project in the world--I mean the building of the Tower of
Bable--result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in the
_North American Review_."
"Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same
everywhere; but there is more color--er--more drama and
movement and--er--romance in some cities than in others."
"On the surface," said Azalea Adair. "I have traveled many times
around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings--print
and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan
of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had
uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear
up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face
covered--with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw
the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling
almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American
lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three
inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the
other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates
and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The
boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could
have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to
table. Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red
brick houses and mud and lumber yards."
Some one knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair
breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She
came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush
on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders.
"You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar
cake."
She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro
girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with
thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.
Azlea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a
dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two
pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper.
It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro--there was
no doubt about it.
"Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said,
handing the girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of
tea--the kind he always sends me--and ten cents worth of sugar
cakes. Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be
exhausted," she explained to me.
Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet
had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek--I was sure it was
hers--filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an
angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and
unintelligible words.
Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared.
For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then
someting like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly
to her chair.
"This is a roomy house," she said, "and I have a tenant for part of
it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was
impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps to-
morrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me."
I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I
inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After
I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea
Adair's name. But to-morrow would do.
That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this
uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days,
but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to
be an accomplice--after the fact, if that is the correct legal
term--to a murder.
As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of
the ploychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the
dungeony door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather
duster and began his ritual: "Step right in, boss. Carriage is
clean--jus' got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any--"
And then he knew me and grinned broadly. "'Scuse me, boss; you
is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you
kindly, suh."
"I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three," said I,
"and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss
Adair?" I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.
"I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he replied.
"I judge that she is pretty poor," I said. "She hasn't much money
to speak of, has she?"
For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King
Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro
hack driver.
"She ain't gwine to starve, suh," he said slowly. "She has reso'ces,
suh; she has reso'ces."
"I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I.
"Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly. "I jus' _had_
to have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss."
I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine:
"A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word."
The answer that came back was: "Give it to her quick you duffer."
Just before dinner "Major" Wentworth Caswell bore down upon
me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men
whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so
difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me;
therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would
have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping, thereby, to escape another;
but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers
who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent
that they waste in their follies.
With an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills
from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once
more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing,
torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue
paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other.
I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary,
eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I
remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of
the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clew to
a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying
to myself sleepily: "Seems as if a lot of people here own stock
in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, too.
Wonder if--" Then I fell asleep.
King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones
over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back
again when I was ready.
Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had
looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract at
eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of
her chair. Whitout much trouble I managed to get her up on the
antediluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and
yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor. With a
wisdom that I had not expected in him, he abandoned his team and
struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In
ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired and capable man
of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each)
I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery. He
bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old Negro.
"Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, "Run up to my house and ask Miss
Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half
a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive--run. I
want you to get back sometime this week."
It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the
speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar
was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked
me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until
he had decided that I might do.
"It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said. "In other
words, the result of poverty, pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell
has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she
will accept nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who
was once owned by her family."
"Mrs. Caswell!" said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the
contract and saw that she had signed it "Azalea Adair Caswell."
"I thought she was Miss Adair," I said.
"Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor.
"It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old
servant contributes toward her support."
When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived
Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn
leaves that were then in season, and their height of color. She
referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old
palpitation of the heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa.
The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to the door. I
told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a
reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future
contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.
"By the way," he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you
have had royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a
king in Congo. Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have
observed."
As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside:
"Did he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?"
"Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I
went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor.
I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting
it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain. And then
Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel.
Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The
rest must be only bare statements of facts.
At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at
his corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his
duster and began his depressing formula: "Step right in, suh.
Fifty cents to anywhere in the city--hack's puffickly clean, suh----
jus' got back from a funeral--"
And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad.
His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine
strings were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button--
the button of yellow horn--was gone. A motley descendant of
kings was Uncle Caesar!
About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front
of a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens this was
manna; so I edged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of
empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of
Major Wentworth Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the
immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous
by its absence.
The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and
brought by curious and ennuied citizens to the drug store. The
late human being had been engaged in terrific battle--the details
showed that. Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had
been also a warrior. But he had lost. His hands were yet clinched
so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle
citizens who had know him stood about and searched their vocabularies
to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him.
One kind-looking man said, after much thought: "When 'Cas' was about
fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school."
While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of "the man that
was" which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and
dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly,
and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned
that in his last struggle his hand must have seized that object
unwittingly and held it in a death grip.
At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the
possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of
Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners:
"In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by somme of these
no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this
afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When
he was found the money was not on his person."
I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was
crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my
pocket a yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece,
with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out
of the window into the slow, muddy waters below.
_I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!_
-THE END-
[William Sidney Porter] O Henry's short story: A Municipal Report
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
