Los Angeles herald., 1910-06-19
By o. HENRY
Copyright by Short Stories and Doubleday. Page e Co.

James Turner had his conception of what hap
piness was, just as you and have ours Our delight
is to CAD about the world in yachts and motor cars
and to hur ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke
a pipe at evenfal and watch badger, rattlesnake
and owl go into their common prairie home one
by one.
James Turner s idea of bliss different; but
it was his. He would go directly to his boarding
house when his days work was done. After his
supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed not
stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would
ascend to his fifth-floor back hall room. Then he
would take off his shoes and socks place the soles
of his burning feet against the cold bars of his iron
bed and read Clark Russell yarns The delicious
relief of the cool metal applied to his smartng soles
his nightly joy.
When James left the hat.cleaning shop he walked
three blocks out of his way home to look over the
goods of a secondhand bookstal- On the sidewalk
stands he had more than once picked up paper
covered volume of Clark Russell at half price.
While he bending with a scholarly stoop over
the markeddown miscellany of castoff literature, old
Tom the caliph sauntered by. His discerning eye,
made keen by twenty years experience in the manu-
facture of laundry soap (save the wrappers) recog
nized instantly the poor and discerning scholar,
worthy object of his caliphanOus mood. He descended
the two shallow stone steps that led from the side
walk, and addressed without hesitation the object of
his designed munifcence. His first words were
worse than salutatory and tentative.
James Turner looked up codly, with Sartor
Resartus" in hand and ga Mad Marriage" in
the other.
"Beat it," said he: II don't want to buy any
Run along, now, and play with your teddy bear"
'Young man., said the caph, ignoring the flip
pancy of the hat cleaner, 81 observe that you of
a studous disposition Learning is of the finest
things in the world. I had any of it worth
mentioning, but 1 admire to it in others. I
from the West, where imagine nothing but facts.
Maybe 1 coudn It understand the poetry and illusions
in them books you picking over, but | like to
see somebody else seem to know what they mean.
Now, d like to make you proposition. IN worth
about $40,000O00, and IN getting richer every day.
I made the height of it manufacturing Aunt Pattys
Silver Soap. 1 invented the art of making it. l ex-
perimented for three years before got just the right
quantity of chloride of sodium solution and causc
potash mixture to curdle properly. And after had
taken some $9000,000 out of the soap business made
the rest in and wheat futures. Now, you
to have the literary and scholarly turn of character
and IL tell you what II do IL pay for your edu
cation at the finest college in the world II pay tho
expense of your rummagng Europe and the art
galleries, and finally set you up in good business.
You needn make it soap if you have any objections.
L see by your clothes and frazzled neckte that you
mighty poor; and you can It afford to turn down
the offer. Well, when do you want to begin?'
The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of
the Big City, which is eye expressive of cold and
justifable suspicion, of judgment suspended high
Haman hung, of sefpreseryation of challenge,
curiosity Defiance cynicism and, strange you may