The Unprofitable Servant

by O. Henry

I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, theyare my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But nowand then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the sameprintworthy incident of the passing earthly panorama and will send inreportorial constructions thereof to their respective journals. It isthen that, for me, it is to laugh. For it seems that to each of them,trained and skilled as he may be, the same occurrence presents adifferent facet of the cut diamond, life.One will have it (let us say) that Mme. Andre Macarte's apartment waslooted by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore awaya ruby tiara valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollarprize Spitz dog, which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance) wasmaking free with the halls of the WuttapesituckquesunoowetunquahApartments.My second "chiel" will take notes to the effect that while a friendlygame of pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. AndyMcCarty, a lady guest named Ruby O'Hara threw a burglar down six flightsof stairs, where he was pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dollarEnglish bulldog amid a crowd of five hundred excited spectators.My third chronicler and friend will gather the news threads of thehappening in his own happy way; setting forth on the page for you toread that the house of Antonio Macartini was blown up at 6 A. M., by theBlack Hand Society, on his refusing to leave two thousand dollars at acertain street corner, killing a pet five-hundred-dollar Pomeranianbelonging to Alderman Rubitara's little daughter (see photo and diagramopposite).Number four of my history-makers will simply construe from the premisesthe story that while an audience of two thousand enthusiasts waslistening to a Rubinstein concert on Sixth Street, a woman who said shewas Mrs. Andrew M. Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass windowvalued at five hundred dollars. The Carter woman claimed that some onein the building had stolen her dog.Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day's doings needdo no one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough for any man to propagainst his morning water-bottle to fend off the smiling hatred of hiswife's glance. If he be foolish enough to read four he is no wiser thana Higher Critic.I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the parable of thetalents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, firsthands over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents; toanother two; to another one--to every man according to his severalability, as the text has it. There are two versions of this parable, asyou well know. There may be more--I do not know.When the p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have puttheir talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good. Theunprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and handsit out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks,surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin andlaid it away. But the commentator informs us that the talent mentionedwas composed of 750 ounces of silver--about $900 worth. So thechronicler who mentioned the napkin, had either to reduce the amount ofthe deposit or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery usedin those davs. Therefore in his version we note that he uses the word"pound" instead of "talent."A pound of silver may very well be laid away--and carried away--in anapkin, as any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.But let us get away from our mutton.When the returned nobleman finds that the one-talented servant hasnothing to hand over except the original fund entrusted to him, he is asangry as a multi-millionaire would be if some one should hide under hisbed and make a noise like an assessment. He orders the unprofitableservant cast into outer darkness, after first taking away his talent andgiving it to the one-hundred-per cent. financier, and breathing strangesaws, saying: "From him that hath not shall be taken away even thatwhich he hath." Which is the same as to say: "Nothing from nothingleaves nothing."And now closer draw the threads of parable, precept allegory, andnarrative, leading nowhere if you will, or else weaving themselves intothe little fiction story about Cliff McGowan and his one talent. Thereis but a definition to follow; and then the homely actors trip on.Talent: A gift, endowment or faculty; some peculiar ability, power, oraccomplishment, natural or acquired. (A metaphor borrowed from theparable in Matt. XXV. l4-30.)In New York City to-day there are (estimated) 125,000 living creaturestraining for the stage. This does not include seals, pigs, dogs,elephants, prize-fighters, Carmens, mind-readers, or Japanese wrestlers.The bulk of them are in the ranks of the Four Million. Out of thisnumber will survive a thousand.Nine hundred of these will have attained their fulness of fame when theyshall dubiously indicate with the point of a hatpin a blurred figure ina flashlight photograph of a stage tout ensemble with the proudcommentary: "That's me."Eighty, in the pinkest of (male) Louis XIV court costumes, shall welcomethe Queen of the (mythical) Pawpaw Isles in a few well-memorized words,turning a tip-tilted nose upon the nine hundred.Ten, in tiny lace caps, shall dust Ibsen furniture for six minutes afterthe rising of the curtain.Nine shall attain the circuits, besieging with muscle, skill, eye, hand,voice, wit, brain, heel and toe the ultimate high walls of stardom.One shall inherit Broadway. Sic venit gloria mundi.Cliff McGowan and Mac McGowan were cousins. They lived on the West Sideand were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle riding,boxing, German and Irish dialect comedy, and a little sleight-of-handand balancing of wheat straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of theirchins came as easy to them as it is for you to fix your rat so it won'tshow or to dodge a creditor through the swinging-doors of a well-lightedcafe--according as you may belong to the one or the other division ofthe greatest prestidigitators--the people. They were slim, pale,consummately self-possessed youths, whose fingernails were alwaysirreproachably (and clothes seams reproachfully) shiny. Theirconversation was in sentences so short that they made Kipling's seem aslong as court citations.Having the temperament, they did no work. Any afternoon you could findthem on Eighth Avenue either in front of Spinelli's barber shop, MikeDugan's place, or the Limerick Hotel, rubbing their forefinger nailswith dingy silk handkerchiefs. At any time, if you had happened to bestanding, undecisive, near a pool-table, and Cliff and Mac had,casually, as it were, drawn near, mentioning something disinterestedly,about a game, well, indeed, would it have been for you had you gone yourway, unresponsive. Which assertion, carefully considered, is a study intense, punctuation, and advice to strangers.Of all kinships it is likely that the closest is that of cousin. Betweencousins there exist the ties of race, name, and favor--ties thicker thanwater, and yet not coagulated with the jealous precipitations ofbrotherhood or the enjoining obligations of the matrimonial yoke. Youcan bestow upon a cousin almost the interest and affection that youwould give to a stranger; you need not feel toward him the contempt andembarrassment that you have for one of your father's sons--it is thecloser clan-feeling that sometimes makes the branch of a tree strongerthan its trunk.Thus were the two McGowans bonded. They enjoyed a quiet celebrity intheir district, which was a strip west of Eighth Avenue with the Pumpfor its pivot. Their talents were praised in a hundred "joints"; theirfriendship was famed even in a neighborhood where men had been known tofight off the wives of their friends--when domestic onslaught was beingmade upon their friends by the wives of their friends. (Thus do thelimitations of English force us to repetends.)So, side by side, grim, sallow, lowering, inseparable, undefeated, thecousins fought their way into the temple of Art--art with a big A, whichcauses to intervene a lesson in geometry.One night at about eleven o'clock Del Delano dropped into Mike's placeon Eighth Avenue. From that moment, instead of remaining a Place, thecafe became a Resort. It was as though King Edward had condescended tomingle with ten-spots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casuallystrolled in to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England,had accepted an invitation to read selections from "Rena, the Snow-bird"at an unveiling of the proposed monument to James Owen O'Connor atChinquapin Falls, Mississippi. In spite of these comparisons, you willhave to be told why the patronizing of a third-rate saloon on the WestSide by the said Del Delano conferred such a specific honor upon theplace.Del Delano could not make his feet behave; and so the world paid him$300 a week to see them misconduct themselves on the vaudeville stage.To make the matter plain to you (and to swell the number of words), hewas the best fancy dancer on any of the circuits between Ottawa andCorpus Christi. With his eyes fixed on vacancy and his feet apparentlyfixed on nothing, he "nightly charmed thousands," as his press-agentincorrectly stated. Even taking night performance and matinee together,he scarcely could have charmed more than eighteen hundred, includingthose who left after Zora, the Nautch girl, had squeezed herself througha hoop twelve inches in diameter, and those who were waiting for themoving pictures.But Del Delano was the West Side's favorite; and nowhere is there a moreloyal Side. Five years before our story was submitted to the editors,Del had crawled from some Tenth Avenue basement like a lean rat and hadbitten his way into the Big Cheese. Patched, half-starved, cuffless, andas scornful of the Hook as an interpreter of Ibsen, he had danced hisway into health (as you and I view it) and fame in sixteen minutes onAmateur Night at Creary's (Variety) Theatre in Eighth Avenue. Abookmaker (one of the kind that talent wins with instead of losing) satin the audience, asleep, dreaming of an impossible pick-up among theamateurs. After a snore, a glass of beer from the handsome waiter, and atemporary blindness caused by the diamonds of a transmontane blonde inBox E, the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano for athree-weeks' trial engagement fused with a trained-dog short-circuitcovering the three Washingtons--Heights, Statue, and Square.By the time this story was read and accepted, Del Delano was drawing histhree-hundred dollars a week, which, divided by seven (Sunday acts notin costume being permissible), dispels the delusion entertained by mostof us that we have seen better days. You can easily imagine theworshipful agitation of Eighth Avenue whenever Del Delano honored itwith a visit after his terpsichorean act in a historically great andvilely ventilated Broadway theatre. If the West Side could claimforty-two minutes out of his forty-two weeks' bookings every year, itwas an occasion for bonfires and repainting of the Pump. And now youknow why Mike's saloon is a Resort, and no longer a simple Place.Del Delano entered Mike's alone. So nearly concealed in a fur-linedovercoat and a derby two sizes too large for him was Prince Lightfootthat you saw of his face only his pale, hatchet-edged features and apair of unwinking, cold, light blue eyes. Nearly every man lounging atMike's bar recognized the renowned product of the West Side. To thosewho did not, wisdom was conveyed by prodding elbows and growls ofone-sided introduction.Upon Charley, one of the bartenders, both fame and fortune descendedsimultaneously. He had once been honored by shaking hands with the greatDelano at a Seventh Avenue boxing bout. So with lungs of brass he nowcried: "Hallo, Del, old man; what'll it be?"Mike, the proprietor, who was cranking the cash register, heard. On thenext day he raised Charley's wages five a week.Del Delano drank a pony beer, paying for it carelessly out of hisnightly earnings of $42.85 and 5/7c. He nodded amiably but coldly at thelong line of Mike's patrons and strolled past then into the rear room ofthe cafe. For he heard in there sounds pertaining to his own art--thelight, stirring staccato of a buck-and-wing dance.In the back room Mac McGowan was giving a private exhibition of thegenius of his feet. A few young men sat at tables looking on criticallywhile they amused themselves seriously with beer. They nodded approvalat some new fancy steps of Mac's own invention.At the sight of the great Del Delano, the amateur's feet stuttered,blundered, clicked a few times, and ceased to move. The tongues of one'sshoes become tied in the presence of the Master. Mac's sallow face tookon a slight flush.From the uncertain cavity between Del Delano's hat brim and the lapelsof his high fur coat collar came a thin puff of cigarette smoke and thena voice:"Do that last step over again, kid. And don't hold your arms quite sostiff. Now, then!"Once more Mac went through his paces. According to the traditions of theman dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs.His gaze and expression became cataleptic; his body, unbending above thewaist, but as light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on theripples of a running brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased youlike a snare-drum obligato. The performance ended with an amazingclatter of leather against wood that culminated in a sudden flat-footedstamp, leaving the dancer erect and as motionless as a pillar of thecolonial portico of a mansion in a Kentucky prohibition town. Mac feltthat he had done his best and that Del Delano would turn his back uponhim in derisive scorn.An approximate silence followed, broken only by the mewing of a cafe catand the hubbub and uproar of a few million citizens and transportationfacilities outside.Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it heread disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment,praise, and contempt.Thus, in the countenances of those we hate or love we find what we mostdesire or fear to see. Which is an assertion equalling in its wisdom andchiaroscuro the most famous sayings of the most foolish philosophersthat the world has ever known.Del Delano retired within his overcoat and hat. In two minutes heemerged and turned his left side to Mac. Then he spoke."You've got a foot movement, kid, like a baby hippopotamus trying toside-step a jab from a humming-bird. And you hold yourself like a truckdriver having his picture taken in a Third Avenue photograph gallery.And you haven't got any method or style. And your knees are about aslimber as a couple of Yale pass-keys. And you strike the eye asweighing, let us say, 450 pounds while you work. But, say, would youmind giving me your name?""McGowan," said the humbled amateur--"Mac McGowan."Delano the Great slowly lighted a cigarette and continued, through itssmoke:"In other words, you're rotten. You can't dance. But I'll tell you onething you've got.""Throw it all off of your system while you're at it," said Mac. "What'veI got?""Genius," said Del Delano. "Except myself, it's up to you to be the bestfancy dancer in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the colonialpossessions of all three.""Smoke up!" said Mac McGowan."Genius," repeated the Master--"you've got a talent for genius. Yourbrains are in your feet, where a dancer's ought to be. You've beenself-taught until you're almost ruined, but not quite. What you need isa trainer. I'll take you in hand and put you at the top of theprofession. There's room there for the two of us. You may beat me," saidthe Master, casting upon him a cold, savage look combining so muchrivalry, affection, justice, and human hate that it stamped him at onceas one of the little great ones of the earth--"you may beat me; but Idoubt it. I've got the start and the pull. But at the top is where youbelong. Your name, you say, is Robinson?""McGowan," repeated the amateur, "Mac McGowan.""It don't matter," said Delano. "Suppose you walk up to my hotel withme. I'd like to talk to you. Your footwork is the worst I ever saw,Madigan--but--well, I'd like to talk to you. You may not think so, butI'm not so stuck up. I came off of the West Side myself. That overcoatcost me eight hundred dollars; but the collar ain't so high but what Ican see over it. I taught myself to dance, and I put in most of nineyears at it before I shook a foot in public. But I had genius. I didn'tgo too far wrong in teaching myself as you've done. You've got therottenest method and style of anybody I ever saw.""Oh, I don't think much of the few little steps I take," said Mac, withhypocritical lightness."Don't talk like a package of self-raising buckwheat flour," said DelDelano. "You've had a talent handed to you by the Proposition Higher Up;and it's up to you to do the proper thing with it. I'd like to have yougo up to my hotel for a talk, if you will."In his rooms in the King Clovis Hotel, Del Delano put on a scarlet housecoat bordered with gold braid and set out Apollinaris and a box of sweetcrackers.Mac's eye wandered."Forget it," said Del. "Drink and tobacco may be all right for a man whomakes his living with his hands; but they won't do if you're dependingon your head or your feet. If one end of you gets tangled, so does theother. That's why beer and cigarettes don't hurt piano players andpicture painters. But you've got to cut 'em out if you want to do mentalor pedal work. Now, have a cracker, and then we'll talk some.""All right," said Mac. "I take it as an honor, of course, for you tonotice my hopping around. Of course I'd like to do something in aprofessional line. Of course I can sing a little and do card tricks andIrish and German comedy stuff, and of course I'm not so bad on thetrapeze and comic bicycle stunts and Hebrew monologues and----""One moment," interrupted Del Delano, "before we begin. I said youcouldn't dance. Well, that wasn't quite right. You've only got two orthree bad tricks in your method. You're handy with your feet, and youbelong at the top, where I am. I'll put you there. I've got six weekscontinuous in New York; and in four I can shape up your style till thebooking agents will fight one another to get you. And I'll do it, too.I'm of, from, and for the West Side. 'Del Delano' looks good onbill-boards, but the family name's Crowley. Now, Mackintosh--McGowan, Imean--you've got your chance--fifty times a better one than I had.""I'd be a shine to turn it down," said Mac. "And I hope you understand Iappreciate it. Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of getting atry-out at Creary's on amateur night a month from to-morrow.""Good stuff!" said Delano. "I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, thebooker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after mydance. And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes andquarters. There wasn't but nine penny pieces found in the lot.""I ought to tell you," said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, "thatmy cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We've always been what you mightcall pals. If you'd take him up instead of me, now, it might be better.He's invented a lot of steps that I can't cut.""Forget it," said Delano. "Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdaysof every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I'll coach you.I'll make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you. Myact's over every night at 10:15. Half an hour later I'll take you up anddrill you till twelve. I'll put you at the top of the bunch, right whereI am. You've got talent. Your style's bum; but you've got the genius.You let me manage it. I'm from the West Side myself, and I'd rather seeone of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of theFlatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I'll see that JuniusRollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don't climb over thefootlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll let you draw itdown from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on thelevel or am I not?"Amateur night at Creary's Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the samepattern as amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance thehumblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management, makeits debut upon the public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostlyself-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment alongthe broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort,recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines ofArt. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionalsthat adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage.Press-agents delight in recounting to open-mouthed and close-earedreporters stories of the humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whoseorbits they control.Such and such a prima donna (they will tell you) made her initial bow tothe public while turning handsprings on an amateur night. One greatmatinee favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening singingcoon songs of his own composition. A tragedian famous on two continentsand an island first attracted attention by an amateur impersonation of anewly landed Scandinavian peasant girl. One Broadway comedian that turns'em away got a booking on a Friday night by reciting (seriously) thegraveyard scene in "Hamlet."Thus they get their chance. Amateur night is a kindly boon. It ischarity divested of almsgiving. It is a brotherly hand reached down bymembers of the best united band of coworkers in the world to raise upless fortunate ones without labelling them beggars. It gives you thechance, if you can grasp it, to step for a few minutes before some badlypainted scenery and, during the playing by the orchestra of some ten ortwelve bars of music, and while the soles of your shoes may be clearlyholding to the uppers, to secure a salary equal to a Congressman's orany orthodox minister's. Could an ambitious student of literature orfinancial methods get a chance like that by spending twenty minutes in aCarnegie library? I do not not trow so.But shall we look in at Creary's? Let us say that the specific Fridaynight had arrived on which the fortunate Mac McGowan was to justify theflattering predictions of his distinguished patron and, incidentally,drop his silver talent into the slit of the slot-machine of fame andfortune that gives up reputation and dough. I offer, sure of youracquiescence, that we now forswear hypocritical philosophy and bigotedcomment, permitting the story to finish itself in the dress of materialallegations--a medium more worthy, when held to the line, than the mostlaborious creations of the word-milliners....(Page of O. Henry's manuscript missing here.)easily among the wings with his patron, the great Del Delano. For,whatever footlights shone in the City-That-Would-Be-Amused, the freedomof their unshaded side was Del's. And if he should take up an amateur--see? and bring him around--see? and, winking one of his cold blue eyes,say to the manager: "Take it from me--he's got the goods--see?" youwouldn't expect that amateur to sit on an unpainted bench sudorificallyawaiting his turn, would you? So Mac strolled around largely with thenonpareil; and the seven waited, clammily, on the bench.A giant in shirt-sleeves, with a grim, kind face in which many stitcheshad been taken by surgeons from time to time, i. e., with a long stick,looped at the end. He was the man with the Hook. The manager, with hisclose-smoothed blond hair, his one-sided smile, and his abnormally easymanner, pored with patient condescension over the difficult program ofthe amateurs. The last of the professional turns--the Grand March of theHappy Huzzard--had been completed; the last wrinkle and darn of theirblue silkolene cotton tights had vanished from the stage. The man in theorchestra who played the kettle-drum, cymbals, triangle, sandpaper,whang-doodle, hoof-beats, and catcalls, and fired the pistol shots, hadwiped his brow. The illegal holiday of the Romans had arrived.While the orchestra plays the famous waltz from "The Dismal Wife," letus bestow two hundred words upon the psychology of the audience.The orchestra floor was filled by People. The boxes contained Persons.In the galleries was the Foreordained Verdict. The claque was there asit had originated in the Stone Age and was afterward adapted by theFrench. Every Micky and Maggie who sat upon Creary's amateur bench, wisebeyond their talents, knew that their success or doom lay already metedout to them by that crowded, whistling, roaring mass of Romans in thethree galleries. They knew that the winning or the losing of the gamefor each one lay in the strength of the "gang" aloft that could turn theapplause to its favorite. On a Broadway first night a wooer of fame maywin it from the ticket buyers over the heads of the cognoscenti. But notso at Creary's. The amateur's fate is arithmetical. The number of hissupporting admirers present at his try-out decides it in advance. Buthow these outlying Friday nights put to a certain shame the Mondays,Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and matinees of the Broadwaystage you should know....(Here the manuscript ends.)

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