The Washington herald., 1920-12-31
An 0. Henry Story
The Fool Killer

|HowN South whenever any one
- perpetrates some particularly
monumental piece of fooIishness ev-
erybody says: Send for Jesse
Holmes"
Jesse Holmes is the Fool-Killer.
OF course he is a myth. like Santa
Clause and Jack Frost and General
Prosperitysnd all those concrete
conceptions that are supposed to
represent an idea that Nature has
failed to embody. The wisest of the
Southrons cannot tell you whence
comes the Fool-Killer's name; but
few and happy are. the households
from the Roanoke to the Rio Grande
in which the name of Jesse Holmes
has not been pronounced or invoked.
Always with a smile. and often with
a tear. is he summoned to his off,
cial duty. A busy man is Jesse
Holmes.
l remember the clear picture of
him that hung on the walls of my
fancy during my barefoot days
when / was lodging his oft-threat-
ened devoirs. To me he was a ter
rible old man, in gray clothes, with
long, ragged, gray beard. and red
dish. fierce eyes. / looked to see
him come stumping up the road in
a cloud of dust, with a white oak
stan in his hand and his shoes tied
with leather thongs. / may yet
But this is a story, not a sequel.
/ have taken notice with regret,
that few stories worth reading have
been written that did not contain
drink of some sort. Down go the
fluids, from Arizona Dicks three
fingers of red pizen to the inefficaci-
Gus Oolong that nerves Lionel Mon
tressor to repartee in the "Dotty
Dialogues So, in such good COM
pany / may introduce an absinthe
drip-one absinthe drip, dripped
through a silver dripper, orderly,
opalescent, cool, green-eyed-decep
tive.
Kerner was a fool. Besides that,
he was an artist and my good
friend. Now. IL there is one thing
on earth utterly despicable to an
other, it is an artist in the eyes
of an author whose story he has
illustrated. Just try it once. Write
story about a mining camp in
Idaho. Sell IT. Spend the money.
and then, six months later. borrow
quarter Cor a dime), and buy
the magazine containing it. You
find full-page wash drawing of
your hero. Black Bill, the cowboy.
Somewhere in your story you en-
ployed the word horse" Aha! the
artist has grasped the idea. Black
Bill has on the regulation trousers
Of the NJ. F. II. Of the westchester
County Hunt. He carries a parlor
rife, and wears a monocle. In the
distance is a section of Forty-second
street during a search for a lost
gas-pipe, and the Tai Mahal, the
famous mausoleum in India.
Enough! I hated Kerner. and one
day / met him and we became
friends. He was young and glo-
riously melancholy because his spir-
its were so high and life had so
much in store for him. Yes, he was
almost riotously sad. That was his
youth. When a man begins to be
hilarious in s-sorrowful way you
can bet a million that he is dyeing
his hair. Kerner's hair was plen-
tiful and carefully matted as an
artists thatch should be. He was
a cigaretteur. and he audited his
dinners with red wine. But, most
of all, he was fool. And, wisely.
1 envied him and listened patiently
while he knocked velasquez and
Tintoretto. Once he told me that
he had liked a story of mine that
ne had come across in an anthology
He described 1t to me, and 1 was
sorry that Mr.. Fitz-James O'Brien
was dead and could not learn of
the eulogy of his work. But mostly