The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

by O. Henry

　　

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Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little oldten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper.Oh, very well! Pass up this _sotto voce_ autobiography of an X ifyou like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to JohnD's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, allright. But don't forget that small change can say a word to thepoint now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk asilver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read thefour words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee?I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seenone in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture ofthe bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millionsof Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn theends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres orMaxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatoryplant. My references is--or are--Section 3,588, Revised Statutes.Ten cold, hard dollars--I don't say whether silver, gold, lead oriron--Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cashme in.I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make--thanks,I knew you would--got that sneaking little respect and agreeablefeeling toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted billdoesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. Inever knew a really cultured and educated person that could affordto hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an ArthurDuffy to the nearest That's All! sign or delicatessen store.For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. Iguess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been ownedby a good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingyfive-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next toit in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher."Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don'tyou think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and gotreissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight.""Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," saysthe fiver. "You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in athick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and thethermometer not a degree under 85 in the store.""I never heard of a pocketbook like that," says I. "Who carriedyou?""A shopgirl," says the five-spot."What's that?" I had to ask."You'll never know till their millennium comes," says the fiver.Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head,spoke up to the fiver:"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer? Ifyou was under all cotton like I've been to-day, and choked up withfactory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half adozen times, you'd have some reason to complain."That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvaniacorrespondents--and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of thefive and two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, everytime.I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed handstwenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought formy owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I nevermissed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down,while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I gotin the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a littlestraight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could.Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcartpeddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again,for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worthof dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble oneday on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I wasrescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. Hechanged me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crapgame in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, afterall, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for winethe next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as gladto get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights ofCharing Cross.A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimonyonce, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes.They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossiningwhenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice creamseason. But it's Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for thelittle Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuseto stick to anything during the rush lobster hour.The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a goodthing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills tobuy a stack of blues.About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk'sand the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lotof other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among themoney tainters."Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look outfor everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glenbefore the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybodyfinds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comicsupplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold;everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night."I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says tome:"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see somethingof life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburgsteak.""Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filetmignon with the kind of sauce you serve.""'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of thisgambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they saidhis money was tainted.""What is a church?" I asked."Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Ofcourse you don't know. You're too much to put into the contributionbasket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--alarge building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each."I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's astreak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters.Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time toloosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary.By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in thewilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hotgullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was therewaiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may havehad a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembertpiling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him;and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then afew of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buyingsouvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterflyoctettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town forJulian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kindof order.At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When thehod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chiefgoal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen--twelve"to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether wemeant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for thefurniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang"Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so thetwenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused.But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammeredthe thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for thestuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin.Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on theoutside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for theproprietor."Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused.Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it'stainted.""I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to thebills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at thechurch fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter tolive in."At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close upthe front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door ofthe restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen thekind--black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes across between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of womanthat's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancysquad--and she stands there without a word and looks at the money.Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with abow."Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a taintedbill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from agentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do methe favor to accept it, it is yours."The woman took me with a trembling hand."Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills intopackages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk inthe Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed myposition. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew--butI won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir--thankyou--thank you."Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To abakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery.And I get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away witha dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbinewater-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowedup in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drugstore the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cementworks.A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills thebaker had given the woman for change."Hallo, E35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in abakery last Saturday night?""Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style."How did the deal turn out?" I asked."She blew E17051431 for mills and round steak," says the one-spot."She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sickkid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread andtincture of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayedsome. Don't get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers,where you hear one. She said something about 'who giveth to thepoor.' Oh, let's cut out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of thecompany that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in societywith you tainted bills.""Shut up," says I; "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it.There's a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my backand read what you see there.""This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts publicand private.""This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I.

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