O. Henry

                   The Lost Blend


   Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open 
the dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotallers 
need not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, 
where a dime dropped into the cold boullion aperture will bring forth 
a dry Martini.
   Con Lantry worked in the sober side of the bar in Kenealy's 
café. You and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side, 
and went into voluntary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite 
danced Con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, 
punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money.
   The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little 
"places" which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited by 
laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have 
nothing to do with either.
   Over the café lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter 
Katherine had eyes of dark Irish-but why should you be told? Be 
content with your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; 
and when she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the 
pitcher of beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk 
punch in the shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if 
you hurl the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for a whisky, 
the bar-tender shall take it, and marry his boss's daughter, and good 
will grow out of it.
   But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tonguetied and 
scarlet. He who would quell with is eye the sonorous youth whom the 
claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the 
obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle 
coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was 
voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of 
bashfulness and misery. What, then, was he before Katherine? A 
trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, 
the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of 
his divinity.
   There came to Kenealy's two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They 
had conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a back 
room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and 
druggist's measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of a 
saloon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long the two 
sweltered in there, pouring and mixing unknown brews and decoctions 
from the liquors in their store. Riley had the education, and he 
figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and quarts to 
fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed each 
unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste pipes with curses 
gentle, husky and deep. They laboured heavily and untiringly to 
achieve some mysterious solution like two alchemists striving to 
resolve gold from the elements.
   Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered 
Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bar-
tenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's 
store of liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless experiments.
   Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on 
Gweebarra Bay.
   "Good-evening, Mr. Lantry," says she. "And what is the news to-day, 
if you please?"
   "It looks like r-rain," stammered the shy one, backing to the wall.
   "It couldn't do better," said Katherine. "I'm thinking there's 
nothing the worse off for a little water." In the back room Riley and 
McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange compounds. From 
fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured after Riley's 
figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass vessel. Then 
McQuirk would dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and they would begin 
again.
   "Sit down," said Riley to Con, "and I'll tell you."
   "Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this 
nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where 
there's nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The 
natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; 
and a good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical 
inconveniences.
   "So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar 
fixtures and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a 
line steamer. On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays seven-
up with the captain and steward, and already begins to feel like the 
high-ball kings of the tropic of Capricorn.
   "When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to 
introduce to long drinks and short change, the captain calls us over 
to the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things.
   "`I forgot to tell you, boys,' says he, `that Nicaragua slapped an 
import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods 
last month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by 
mistake for tabasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is 
free.'
   "`Sorry you didn't mention it sooner,' says we. And we bought two 
forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we 
had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent. 
would have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1200 
cocktail rather than throw the stuff away.
   "Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was 
something heartrending. It was the colour of a plate of Bowery pea-
soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt 
makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We 
gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a 
cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused 
to sign a testimonial.
   "But the other barrel! Say, bar-tender, did you ever put on a straw 
hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty 
girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That's what 
thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it 
inside you, you would bury your face in your hands and cry because 
there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to lick than 
little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was 
distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the colour of 
gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine 
was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll get a drink like 
that across the bar.
   "Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it 
was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive 
of bees. If that barrel had lasted, that country would have become the 
greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a line of 
Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a block 
long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a drink. 
The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful stuff. 
It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; at the 
same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or fresh from 
the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua had repudiated 
the National Debt, removed the duty on cigarettes, and was about to 
declare war on the United States and England.
   "'Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and 'twill be 
by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been trying. 
Small lots at a time, we've mixed barrels of all the harmful 
ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have stocked 
ten bars with the whiskeys, brandies, cordials, bitters, gins and 
wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied 
to the world! 'Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The United States as 
a nation would welcome a drink of the sort, and pay for it."
   All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring 
together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, 
from his latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of a 
vile, mottled chocolate colour. McQuick tasted it, and hurled it, with 
appropriate epithets, into the waste sink.
   "'Tis a strange story, even if true," said Con. "I'll be going now 
along to my supper."
   "Take a drink," said Riley. "We've all kinds except the lost 
blend."
   "I never drink," said Con, "anything stronger than water. I am just 
after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. 
`There's not anything,' says she, `but is better off for a little 
water."'
   When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the 
back.
   "Did you hear that?" he shouted. "Two fools are we. The six dozen 
bottles of 'pollinaris we had on the ship-ye opened them yourself-
which barrel did ye pour them in-which barrel, ye mud-head?"
   "I mind," said McQuirk slowly, "'twas in the second barrel we 
opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it."
   "We've got it now," cried Riley. "'Twas that we lacked. 'Tis the 
water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, 
and get two bottles of 'pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out 
the proportionments with me pencil."
   An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy's 
café. Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation 
hours, the vicinity where they labour, drawn by some mysterious 
attraction.
   A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were 
half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The 
eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and 
assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed 
upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness.
   "Began fighting each other in the back room," explained Kenealy to 
Con. "And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much up. 
But they're good men. They'll pay for everything. Trying to invent 
some new kind of cocktail, they was. I'll see they come out all right 
in the morning."
   Con sauntered into the back room to view the battle-field. As he 
went through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs.
   "Good-evening again, Mr. Lantry," said she. "And is there no news 
from the weather yet?"
   "Still threatens r-rain," said Con, slipping past with red in his 
smooth, pale cheek.
   Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. 
Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of 
alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles.
   On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the 
bottom of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid-a bright golden liquid 
that seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths.
   Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it.
   As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the 
stairs.
   "No news yet, Mr. Lantry?" she asked, with her teasing laugh.
   Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there.
   "The news is," he said, "that we're to be married."
   "Put me down, sir!" she cried indignantly, "or I will-Oh, Con, 
where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?"