The Making of a New Yorker

by O. Henry

　　

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Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called atramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was aphilosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer.But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote aline of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have beena Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger with the primaryproposition, Raggles was a poet. Raggles's specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would havebeen sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study theirreflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of adislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study thecages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricksand mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it wasa thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; an individualconglomeration of life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor andfeeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west,Raggles wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his breast.He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars,counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of acity and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless,to another. Fickle Raggles!--but perhaps he had not met the civiccorporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy. Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities arefeminine. So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried aconcrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized andtypified each one that he had wooed. Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion ofMrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest witha soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles wouldawake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression ofideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness andinaccuracy in the description; but that is Raggles's fault. Heshould have recorded his sensations in magazine poems. Pittsburg impressed him as the play of "Othello" performed in theRussian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels.A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though--homely, hearty,with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kidslippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace anddrink champagne with his pigs' feet and fried potatoes. New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He couldsee her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, andthat was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was atdawn, when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette witha pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filledRaggles's shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic andsingular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and thatthe city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly aroundhis brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort.And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and thecloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be removed. Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but yourdisapprobation should be tempered with gratitude, for these arepoets' fancies--and suppose you had come upon them in verse! One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great cityof Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learnher note in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solveand label her and arrange her with the other cities that had givenhim up the secret of their individuality. And here we cease to beRaggles's translator and become his chronicler. Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into thecore of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressedwith care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country,race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association couldhave claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to himpiece-meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inchesaround the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure asthose speciments of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded toyou by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, silkhandkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money--as a poetshould be--but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a newstar in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen inksuddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the greatcity. Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotionwith a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated,puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to himas long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; assend-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oystercocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene,impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outsidefingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. The greetings of the other cities he had known--their homespunkindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses,garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference.This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him.Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never aneye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearnedfor the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; forChicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale andeleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass--even for theprecipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood,bashful, like any country swain. For the first time he experiencedthe poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried toreduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formulahe failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no colorsimiles, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets,no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape andstructure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done withother towns. The houses were interminable ramparts loopholed fordefense; the people were bright but bloodless spectres passing insinister and selfish array. The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles's soul and clogged hispoet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed tosaturate the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one thathe considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit.Humanity was gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone andvarnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for though oblivious ofworship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable,impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on their wayslike statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul andfeeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was anelderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkledface and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gildedyouth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness andfrigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful,clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like theprincesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection ofsunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town ofmarionettes--a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow,with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion ofa baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This typeleaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frappedcontumely. A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled inthe bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like,ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city lefthim downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile,the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindlyspleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch counters, theamiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests andhappy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities thanthis freezing heartlessness. Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace.Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelashto testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then hesaid to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan waswithout a soul; that its inhabitants were manikins moved by wiresand springs, and that he was alone in a great wilderness. Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, ahissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over andover six yards from where he had been. As he was coming down likethe stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned toa fractured dream. Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him--anodor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a handsoft as a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was thewoman clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft andhumid with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silksand furs. With Raggles's hat in his hand and with his face pinkerthan ever from a vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving,stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth andripeness. From a nearby cafe hurried the by-product with the vastjowl and baby complexion, bearing a glass full of a crimson fluidthat suggested delightful possibilities. "Drink dis, sport," said the by-product, holding the glass toRaggles's lips. Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearingthe deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got intothe circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old ladyin a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped oneof his papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddypavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane throughthe crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. "How do you feel, old man?" asked the surgeon, stooping easily tohis task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or twofrom Raggles's brow with a fragrant cobweb. "Me?" said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, "I feel fine." He had found the heart of his new city. In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent wardin the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendantsheard sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggleshad assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent--a gloweringtransient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patchedup. "What's all this about?" inquired the head nurse. "He was runnin' down me town," said Raggles. "What town?" asked the nurse. "Noo York," said Raggles.

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