The Cop and the Anthem by O Henry

Books at bedtime by calming anxiety. The cop and the anthem, by O. Henry On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of knights, and when women without seal-skin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A deadly fell in Soapy's lap.

That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular delecines of Madison Square, and gives their warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets, he hands his pastorboard to the north wind, the footmen of the Madison of all outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready. Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular committee of ways and means to provide against the coming riggle, and therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.

The high-bernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the island was what his soul craved. Three months of a shortboard and bed and congenial company.

Safe from embodies and blue coats seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable. For years the hospitable blackwolds had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had brought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter. Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual high-year to the island.

And now the time was come. On the previous night, three Sabbath newspapers distributed beneath his coat about his ankles and over his lap had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependence.

In Soapy's opinion the law was more benign than philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food, accorded with his simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit, the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin, you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy.

As Caesar had his brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bar. Every loaf of bread, its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a crest of the law which though conducted by rules does not meddle and duly with a gentleman's private affairs. Soapy, having decided to go to the island at once set about accomplishing his desire, there were many easy ways of doing this.

The Pleasantist was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant and then after clearing insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman, an accommodating madducer straight would do the rest. Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flowed together. Up Broadway he turned and halted at a glittering cap, where I gathered together nightly the choices products of the grape, the silkworm and the proto-plasm. Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upwards.

He was shaven and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready tied for in a hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant, unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the weight his mind. A roasted mallard duck thought soapy would be about the thing with a bottle of shabble and then camembert, a demi-tas and a cigar, one dollar for the scar would be enough.

The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge. But as soapy set foot inside the restaurant door, the head-weight's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted, the innobel fate of the menaced mallard. Soapy turned off Broadway, it seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurian one.

Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of. At the corner of 6th avenue, electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate glass made a shot window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead.

Soapy stood still with his hands in his pockets and smiled at the sight of brass buttons. Where's the man that done that inquired the officer excitedly? Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly as one greats good fortune. The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue.

Men who smash windows do not remain to parlay with the laws minions they take to their hands. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a car. With a drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loathed along, twice, unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick. It's soup and napri thin.

To this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beef steak, flapjacks, donuts and pie. And then to the waiter be betrayed the fact that the minutest coin of himself was strangers. Now get busy in our corner cops, Soapy, and don't keep a gentleman waiting.

No cop for use said the waiter, with a voice like Buttercake in an eye like the cherry in a manhattan cocktail. Hey, Conn. Neatly upon his left ear, on the callous pavement two waiters pitch Soapy. He arose, joined by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens and beat the dust of his clothes.

A rest seemed but a rosy dream. The island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drugstore two doors away laughed and walked down the street. Five blocks.

Soapy travelled before his carriage permitted him to move capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fortuitously turned to himself a cinch. A young woman of a modest and pleasing gaze was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and ink stands. And two yards from the window, a large policeman of severe demeanor leaned against a water plug.

He was soapy's design to assume the wrong of a despicable and exasperated masher. The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the congenuity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel a pleasant official clutch upon his arm. And that would ensure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little aisle. Soapy's greatened, the ladies' missionaries already made tie.

Dranked his shrinking cups into the open, set his hat at a killing cart and sidled towards the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden cops and hems smiled, smirked, and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the masher. And half an eye, soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixately. The young woman moved away a few steps and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs.

Soapy followed, for boldly stepping to her size, raising his hat and said, "Ah, there, Battelia, don't you want to come and play in my yard?" The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station house.

The young woman faced him and stretching out her hand, caught soapy's coat sleeve. "Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, "and if you'll blow me a pale of suds, I'll have spoke you sooner, but the cop was watching." With the young woman playing the clingy naivety to his cloak, soapy walked past the policeman, overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.

At the next corner, he shook off his companion in a round. He halted in the district where by night I found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and lips, troves. Women in thirs and men in great coats moved galley in the winter air. A sudden fear seized soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest.

The thought brought a little panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman, lounging grandly in front of a trans-blendent theatre, he caught at the immediate straw of disorderly conduct. On the sidewalk, soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the welkin. The policeman, twirled his club, turned his back to soapy and remarked to a citizen.

It is one of them Yale lads solverate in, the goose eggs they give to the Hartford College, noisy but no harm. Weave instructions to leave them be. This consulate, soapy ceased his unavailing racket, would never a policeman lay hands on him, and his bouncy, the island seemed an unattailable Arcadia. He battoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store, he saw a well dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. So peace stepped inside. He brought the umbrella and saunted off with it slowly.

The man at the cigar light followed hastily. My umbrella, he said sternly. "Oh, is it, snared soapy, adding insults to petty lasty?" "Well, why don't you call the policeman, I took it, your umbrella, why don't you call a cop, there stands one on the corner?"

The umbrella owner slowed his steps, so pedid likewise, with a presentment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two cruiriously. Of course said the umbrella man, that is well, you know how these mistakes occur. I, if it's your umbrella, I hope your excuse me.

I picked it up this morning in a restaurant. If you recognize it at yours, why, I hope your, of course it's mine said soapy viciously." The umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.

So people walked eastward, through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella, rapidly into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs, because he wanted to crawl into their clutches. They seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.

At length soapy reached one of the avenues to the east, where the glitter and turmoil were but faint. He set his face down. He set it down towards Madison Square, where the homing instinct survives, even when the home is a park bench. But on an unusually quiet corner, soapy came to a standstill.

Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gambled. Though one violet stained window, a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loiter over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For their drifted out to soapy zers, sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the confrontations of the Iron Fence. The moon was above, lustrous and serene.

Vehicles and pedestrians were few. Sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves. For a little while, the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem, that the organist played, cemented soapy to the Iron Fence.

The he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses, ambitions and friends, and the immaculate thoughts and comments. A conjecture of soapy's receptive state of mind and the influence is about the old church raw to sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed, with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, the dead hopes, the wrecked faculties, and base motives that made up his existence. But also, in a moment, his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood.

An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire. He would make a man of himself again. He would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him.

There was a time. He was comparatively young yet. He would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn, but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him.

Tomorrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fair importer had once offered him a place as a driver. He would find him tomorrow and ask for a position. He would be somebody in the world.

He would. "Sopey" felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman. "What are you doing here?" asked the officer.

"Nothing," said Sopey. Then Camelong said to policemen. Three months on the island said the magistrate in the police court the next morning.