Read Online 41 Stories by O. Henry - Free Book Online Page A

A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload—the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out “The Cloister and the Hearth,” the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.
    The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she did!
    And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear’s.
    You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners.
    â€œWhy haven’t you written-oh, why?” cried Sarah.
    â€œNew York is a pretty large town,” said Walter Franklin. “I came in a week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it didn’t prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since!”
    â€œI wrote!” said Sarah, vehemently.
    â€œNever got it!”
    â€œThen how did you find me?”
    The young farmer smiled a springtime smile.
    â€œI dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,” said he. “I don’t care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived.”
    â€œI remember,” sighed Sarah, happily. “That was dandelions below cabbage.”
    â€œI’d know that cranky capital W ‘way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,” said Franklin.
    â€œWhy, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah in surprise.
    The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket and pointed to a line.
    Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys.
    Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item:
    â€œDEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG.”

Best-Seller
    One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh—well, I had to go there on business.
    My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the sleeper.
    The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the windowsill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of No. 9.
    Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw