A Service of Love by O Henry

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety, a service of love by O Henry.

When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story should draw a conclusion from it and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in the logic and a feat in storytelling, somewhat older than the great wall of China.

Joe Larribee came out of the post oak flats of the middle-west pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six, he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drugstore window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty, he left for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhere closer.

Delia Carruthas did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine tree village in the south that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go to north and finish. They could not see her for well, but that is our story. Joe and Delia met in Atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss Choraskaro, Wagner, Music, Rembrandt's works, Pictures, Wallpaper, Shopping and Ulong.

Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other and each of the other as you please and in a short time were married, four, see above, when one loves one's art no service seems too hard. Mr and Mrs. Larapie began housekeeping in a flat. It was a loan some flat, something like the A-sharp way down the left hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy for they had their art and they had each other.

And my advice to the rich young man would be sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, the privilege of living in a flat with your art and your Delia. Flat dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close, like the dresser collapse and become a billier table, let the mantle turn to a rowing machine. Let the washstand be an upright piano.

Let the four walls come together if they will so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind let it be wide and long, enter you at the golden gate and your hat on the hatterers, your cape on the cape horn and go out by the Labrador. Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister, you know his fame. His fees are high, his lessons are light, his highlights have brought him renown.

Delia was studying under Rosenstock, you know his repute as a disturbor of the piano keys.

They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted, so is every. But I will not be cynical, their aims were very clear and defined. Joe must become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentleman with thin side whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was too to become familiar and then contemptuous with music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes and soul she could have a sore throat and lobster in a private dining room and refused to go on the stage.

But the best in my opinion was the home life in the little flat, the ardent, valuable chats after the day's study, the cozy dinners and fresh light breakfasts, the interchange of ambitions, ambitions into woven each with the others or else inconsiderable, the mutual help and inspiration. And overlook my artlessness, stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11pm.

But after a while art flagged, it sometimes does. And if some switchman doesn't flag it, everything going out and nothing coming in as the Volgaerian say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and hair rose and stock their prices. When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard.

So Delia said she must give music lessons to keep chopping dish bubbling for two or three days. She went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated. "Jo, dear," she said clefully, "I'm a pupil and oh, the loveliest people."

General AB Pinkney's daughter on 71st Street, such as splendid house, "Jo, you want to see the front door?" By Zantine I think you would call it, and inside, "Oh, Jo, I never saw anything like it before."

My pupil is his daughter Clementina, I dearly love her already. She said delicate thing, dress is always in white and the sweetest, simplest manners. Only 18 years old. I'm to give three lessons a week and just think Jo, five dollars a lesson.

I don't mind it a bit. But when I get to her three more pupils, I can resume my lessons with her Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows dear, and let's have a loveliest supper. "That's all right for you, Delie," said Jo, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and a hatchet.

But how about me? Do you think I'm going to let you rustle for wages, what's I for lander in the regions of High Art? Not by the bones of Ben Vendee, dole Selene. I guess I can sell papers and lay cobblestones and bring in a dollar or two.

Delia came and hung around his neck. "Jo, dear, you are silly. You must keep on it, your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else.

While I teach, I learn. I am always with my music, and we can live as happily as millionaires on fifteen dollars a week. You mustn't think of leaving, Mr. Magister." "All right," said Jo, reaching for the blue, scalloped vegetable dish.

"I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't art, but you're a Trump and a dear to do it." When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard," said Delia. Magister praised the sky in the sketch I made in the park, said Jo, and Tinkall gave me permission to hang two of them in his window.

I may sell one for the right kind of manured, idiot season. "I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. And now, let's be thankful for Jen Pinkney and this veal rose. During all of the next week, the Larabies had an early breakfast.

Jo was enthusiastic about some morning effect sketches he was doing in Central Park. And Delia, well, she packed him off of the breakfast, coddled, praised and kissed at seven o'clock. "Art is an engaging mistress. It was most time seven o'clock when he returned in the evening."

At the end of the week, Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five dollar bills on the eight by ten centre table of the eight by ten flat parlour. Sometimes she said a little weirily, "Clementina tries me. I'm afraid she doesn't practice enough and I have to tell her the same things so often." And then she always dresses in tiling white and that gets so monotonous.

"General Pinkney is the dearest old man. I wish you could know him, Jo." He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano. He is a widower, you know, and stands there pulling his white coatie.

And how are they, the semi-quavours and the demi-semi-quavours progressing? He always asks. I wish you could see the wanes coating in the drawing room, Jo." And those astrakhan rug potty ears and their Clementina has such a funny little cough.

I hope she is stronger than she looks. "Oh, I really am getting attached to her." She is so gentle and hybrid. General Pinkney's brother was once minister to Bolivia.

And then Jo, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew fourth at ten at five, a two and a one, all legal tender notes and laid them beside Dele's earnings. Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Poraria he announced overwhelmingly. "Don't joke with me," said Dele. Not from Poraria.

All the way? I wish you could see him, Dele. That man, with a woolen muffler and a quill tooth pick. He saw the sketch in Tinkel's window and thought it was a minmill at first.

He was game, though, and brought it anyhow. He ordered another, an oil sketch, of the lacqueruana freight depot to take back with him. Music lessons, or I guess, artists still in it. "I'm so glad you've kept on," said Dele.

"Materally, you're bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars. We've never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters tonight."

And Philip Minion with "Champions," said Jo. "Where's the olive fork?" On the next Saturday evening, Jo reached home first. He spread his eighteen dollars on the pilot table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.

Half an hour later, Dele arrived. Her right hand tied up in his shape, the bundle of wraps and bandages. "How is this?" asked Jo after the usual greetings. Dele alarmed.

But not very joyously. Clementina, she explained, insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon.

The general was there. You should have seen him run for the chaffing dish. "Oh, Jo, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health.

She is so nervous." In serving the rabbit, she spilled a great deal of it, boiling hot all over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Jo, and the dear girl was so sorry. The general picnic, Jo, the old man nearly went distracted.

He rushed downstairs and sent body. They said that the furnace man or somebody in the basement out to the drugstore for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now. What's that?

Jo, taking the hand tenderly and pulling it some white strands beneath the bandages. It's something soft, said Deelia, that had oil on it. "Oh, Jo, did you sell another sketch?" She had seen the money on the table.

"Did I," said Jo, "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot today, and he isn't sure, but he thinks he wants another park scape and a view of the Hudson." "What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Deli?" "Five o'clock, I think," said Deli, plaintively.

The iron, I mean, the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen General Pintny Jo when, sit down here a moment, Deli, said Jo. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her, and put his arm across her shoulder. "What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Deli?" he asked.

She braved it for a moment or two, with an eye full of love and stubbornness, a mermaid of phrase or two, vaguely of General Pintny. But at length, down went ahead and out came the truth in tears. I couldn't get any pupils, she confessed, and I couldn't bear to have you give up the lessons, and I got a place ironing shirts in that big 24-street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pintny and Clementina.

"Don't you?" "Don't you?" "And when a girl in the laundry sat down, a hot iron on my hand this afternoon, I was all the way home making up that story about the well-trabbid. "You're not angry, are you?

Please, Jo." And if I hadn't got the work, you might have sold those sketches to the man from Peoria. He wasn't from Peoria, said Jo slowly. "Well, it doesn't matter where he was from, how clever you are, Jo, and kiss me, Jo, and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?"

"I didn't," said Jo, until tonight. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had burned her hand with a smoothing iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks. And then you didn't.

My purchaser from Peoria, said Jo, and General Pintny, are both creations of the same art, but you wouldn't call it either painting or music. And then they both laughed, and Jo began. When one loves one's art, no service seems, but Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. No, she said, just when one loves.