The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1907-06-30
GENTLE CRATER
The Chair of phlIanthromsthe.
mates.
BY o. HENRY.

received the p~rinoely gift OF more than
fifty millions OF dollars" said /.
was cleaning the stray items from the
evening papers while JeR Peters packed
his briar pipe with plug cut.
(which same said JEFF, calls for a new
deck and a recitation by the entire class
in Observation-Disclosures.
"Is that an illusion?' / asked.
1T IT," said jeff. Il never told you
about the time when me and Andy tucker
was philanthropists, did !?
1T was eight years q in Arizona. Andy
and me was out In the ella mountains wlth
a two horse wagon prospecting for silver.
We struck IL and sold out to parties in
Tucson for s2s 900.
They paid our check at the bank in
silver-a thousand dollars in a sack. We
loaded il in our wagon and drove east a
hundred miles before we recovered our
presence OF intellect
Twenty-Five thousand dollars doesn't
sound like so much when you're reading
the annual report Of the Pennsylvania
Railroad or listening 10 an actor talking
about his salary: but when you can raise up
a wagon sheet and kick around with your
boot heel and hear every one Of EN- ring
against another it makes you feel like you
was a night and day bank with the clock
striking twelve.
THE third day out we drove into one
OF the most spacious aud tidy little towns
that nature or Rand d McNally ever
turned out. 1t was in the foothills and
mitigated with trees and flowers and about
1000 mead OF cordial and dilatory inhab-
itants. The town seemed TO he called
F1oresville, and nature had not contain
mated It with many railroads, fieas or
Eastern tourists.
ME and Andy deposited our money to
the credit of Peters g. Tucker in the Es-
peranza Savings Bank and got rooms at
the Skyview Hotel. After supper We lit
up and sat out on the gallery and smoked,
Then was when this philanthropy idea
struck me-. | suppose every CRATER gets
10 sometimes.
"When a man swindles the public out
OF q certain amount lie begiGs 20 get scared,
and wants to return part Of it, And il
you'll watch close and notice the way his
charity runs you'll see that he tries to re-
store it to the people he got it from
AS a hydrostatical case. take. let's say.
A. A made his millions selling oil to poor
students who sit up nights studying polfti-
cal economy and methods for regulating
the trusts So. back to the universities
and colleges go his conscience dollars,
There's B got his from the common
laboring man that works with his hands
and tools. How's he to get some OF the
remorse fund back into their overalls?
s'Aha!' says b. I'm do it in the name of
education. I've skinned the laboring man,
says he to himself. but. according 10 the
old proverb. Charity covers a multitude Of
skins-''
so he puts up $50, 900, 900 worth OF libra
ries: and the boy s with the dinner pail that
builds EN- gets he benefit.
Where; the books?' asks the reading
public.
~ dinna ken. says b. i offered We
libraries and there they are. 1 suppose il
I'd given We preferred steel trust stock
instead ye'd have wanted the water in it
Aet out in cut glass decanters. Hoot, for
ye!'
But, as l said, the owning Of 80 much
money was beginning to give me philan-
thropitis. 1t was the first time me and
Andy had ever made a pile big enough to
make us stop and think now we got it.
ANDY says l. we're wealthy-not
beyond the dreams Of average; but in our
humble way we are comparatively as rich
as Greasers. / feel as il I'd like to do some
thing for as well as to humanity
81 was thinking the same thing, JEFF,
says he, We've been gouging the public
for a long time with all kinds Of little schemes
3 from selling self-igniting celluloid collars to
flooding Georgia with Hoke Smith Presi-
dental campaign buttons. I'd like. myself,
to hedge a bet or two in the graft game If
could do It without actually banging the
cymbalines in the Salvation Army or teach
ing a Bible class by the Bertillon system.
s'What'll we doY' says Andy. Give free
grub to the poor or send a couple Of thou
sand to George Cortelyou?'
Neither says /. We've got too much
money TO be implicated in plain charity:
and we haven't got enough to make restitu-
ton, 30 we'll look about for something
that's about half way between the TWO
sThe next day in walking around Flores
vile we see on a hill a big red brick build
ing that appears to be disinhabited. The
citizens speak up and tell us that it was
begun for a residence several years before
by a mine owner. After running up the
house he finds he had only 81. 30 left to fur
nish II with, so he invests that in whiskey
and jumps off the roof on a spot where he
now requiescats in pieces.
sAs soon as me and Andy saw that build
ing the same idea struck both OF us. We
would AZ 1t up with lights and pen wipers
and professors and put an iron dog and
statues of Hercules and Father John on
the lawn and start one Of the finest free
educational institutions in the world right
there.
$50 wes talks It over to the prominent
citizens Of Floresville, who Galls in fine
with the idea. They give a banquet In the
engine house to us, and we make our bow
for the first time as benefaotors to the cause
of progress and enlightenment. Andy
makes an hour and a half speech on the sub
iect Of irrigation in lower Egypt, and we
have a moral tune on the photograph and
pineapple sherbet.
ANDY and me didn't lose any time in
philanthropping. We put every man in
tow that could tell a hammer from a
stepladder 10 work on the building, divid-
ing 1t into classrooms and lecture halls.
I'VE wire 10 Frisco for a carload OF desks,
footballs, Na~rithmetics, penholders, die
tionarics, chairs for the professors, states,
skeletons, sponges, twenty-seven craven
cited gowns and caps for the senior class