Man About Town by O Henry

Books at bedtime by Calming anxiety. Man about town by O. Henry. There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery, so I began to inquire.

It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suitcases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like an undrammed. I was at last assured that it doubled form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of women who makes up the beds.

I was so foolish as to persist begging to know why, then they were not made into equal pieces whereupon I was shunned. The third draft that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as a man about town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of the anything, even if it be an imaginary idea before we can comprehend it.

Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue. He wears a brown vest and a shiny black surge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing something and he keeps half-shatting his pocket knife and opening it again with his thumb.

And if the man higher up is ever found, take my assurance for it. He will be a large pale man with blue bracelets that show under his cups and he will be sitting to have his shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley and there will be somewhere about him with turquoise. But the canvas of my imagination when it came to lining the man about town was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer like the smile of a cheshire cat and attached cuffs and that was all.

And there upon I asked a newspaper reporter about him. "Why?" he said he, "a man about town is something between a rounder and a clubman." He isn't exactly, well, he fits in between Mrs. Fishy's receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn't, well, he doesn't belong either to the Lotus Club or to the Jerry McGowhen galvanized iron work and apprentices.

I don't know exactly how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere, there's anything going. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every evening.

Knows the ropes, calls every policeman and way to entound by their first names. No, he never travels with the high-dredoom derivatives. You genuinely see him alone with another man. My friend the reporter left me and I wandered further afield.

By this time the thirty-one twenty-six electric lights of the realtor were a light. People passed, but they held me not. Pafian eyes rad upon me and left me unscathed. Diners, shopgirls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlunders harried.

They skipped, they strolled, they sneaked, they swagged, and they scurried by me. But I took no note of them. I knew them all. I had read their hearts, they had served.

I had wanted my man about town. He was a type and to drop him would be an era, a typograph, but no. Let us continue. Let us continue with moral digression.

To see a family reading in the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window. But there, there, Mama is interested in trying to guess the meeting-lessers of the word "new" and "york."

The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports. For a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in the Q, Y and Z. Willie, the 18-year-old son who attends the New York Public School, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hoped to take a prize in sewing on graduation day. Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two hours grip and little totty the baby is rocking along the best she can with the real estate transfers.

This view is intended to be reassuring. For it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped for it introduces strong drink.

I went into a cafe too, while it was being mixed, I asked the man who crabs up your hot scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down when he understood by the term "epiphect." Description designation. Characterisation and appellation. There's a man about town.

"Why?" said he carefully. It means a fly guy that's wise to all night push, you see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail anywhere between the flatter-on scene. I guess that's about what it means.

I thanked him and departed. On the sidewalk, a salvation lassie shook her contribution receptable gently against my waistcoat pocket. "Would you mind telling me?" I asked her. "If you ever meet with the character commonly denominated as a man about town during your daily wonderings?"

"I think I know who you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile. We see them in the same place as night after night. They are the devil's bodyguard. And if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are, their commanders are well served.

We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service. She shook the box again and I dropped a dime in it. In front of a glittering hotel, a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure and I put my question to him.

He answered me most conscientiously as I was sure he would. There is a type of man about town in New York, he answered. The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen.

I would say, offhand, that is, is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see a no. At six o'clock each day, life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and manners, but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not belong, he could give pointers to a Cefet Cat or Jack Door. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from Rath Scala to Ruth Garden and from Hester Street to Harlem.

Until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your man about town has done that. He is always on the scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence.

Hansons were made for him and gold-banded cigars and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him, but his minority report is adopted everywhere. I am glad you brought up the subject. I have felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it before.

I can see now that your man about town should have been classified long ago. In his wake-spring, there are up the wine agents and cloak models and the orchestra plays let all go up to mords for him. But by request, instead of handle, he makes his rounds every evening. While you and I see the elephant once a week, when the cigars store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground and walks away in moon.

While you and I search among the presidents for names and amongst the stars for addresses to give the desk sergeant. My friend, the critic, pours to a choir breath for fresh eloquence, I seized my advantage. You have classified him, I cried with joy. You have painted his portrait in the gallery of the city types, but I must meet one face to face.

I must study the man about town at first hand. Where shall I find him? How shall I know him? Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on and his cab driver was waiting for his fair to.

His sublimated essence of but in, the refined intrinsic extract of rubber, the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of curiosity in inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils. When his experience is exhausted, he explores new fields with the indefatigability of a, excuse me, I interrupted. But can you produce one of this type?

It is a new thing to me, I must study it. I will research the town over until I find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway. "I am about to dine here," said my friend, "come inside and if there is a man about town present, I will point him out to you.

I know most of the regular patrons here." "I am not dining yet," I said to him, "you will excuse me. I am going to find my man about town this night. If I have to rake New York from the battery to the little cloney island, I left the hotel and walked down Broadway.

The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant saver of life and interest to the air I breathe. I was glad to be in the city so great, so complex and diversified. Lesually, and with something of an air I should roll along with my heart expanding, but I thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a share in its magnificence and pleasures, a pura taker in its glory and prestige. I turned across the street, I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long pleasant ride with a Santos dermal.

When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline and said aloud, "Hasn't it passed yet?" A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned and handed me a morning newspaper. "Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily.

I read the article, "It's headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It closed with these lines." I love you hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not serious. He appeared to be a typical man about town.