O. Henry

                     Springtime a la Carte

IT WAS A DAY IN MARCH.
   Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening 
could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to 
consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the 
following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is 
too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face-of 
the reader without preparation.
   Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.
   Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!
   To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters 
were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that 
she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett 
matinee. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let 
the story proceed.
   The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he 
with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is 
not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice 
anyone try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to 
wait for a dozen raw opened that way?
   Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon 
far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. 
She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in 
stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, 
not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of 
office talent. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd 
jobs of copying.
   The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the 
world was the deal she made with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant. The 
restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-
roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40cent five-course 
table d'hote (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the 
coloured gentleman's head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. 
It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor 
German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a 
toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the 
week.
   The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu 
was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled 
under their right and proper heads from `hors d'oeuvre' to `not 
responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.'
   Schulenberg became a naturalized citizen on the spot. Before Sarah 
left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to 
furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the 
restaurant - a new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for 
breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as 
neatness required.
   In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to 
Sarah's hall-room by a waiter - an obsequious one if possible and 
furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in 
store for Schulenberg's customers on the morrow.
   Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's 
patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature 
sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, 
which was the main thing with her.
   And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring 
comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like 
adamant in the cross-town streets: 'The hand-organs still played `In 
the Good Old Summertime,' with their December vivacity and expression. 
Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors 
shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the 
city is still in the clutches of winter.
   One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall-bedroom; `house 
heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated.' She 
had no work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards.
   Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. 
The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: `Springtime is here, 
Sarah - springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures 
show it. You've got a neat figure yourself, Sarah - a - nice, 
springtime figure - why do you look out the window so sadly?' Sarah's 
room was at the back of the house. Looking out the
window she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory 
on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was 
looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and 
bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses.
   Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some 
must have the flowering crocus, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice 
of bluebird - even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of 
the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in 
Green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin there come 
straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they 
shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be.
   On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a 
farmer.
(In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and 
cripples interest. Let it march, march.)
   Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to 
love old Farmer Franklin's son, Walter. Farmers have been loved and 
wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin 
was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow-house, and 
he could figure up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop 
would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon.
   It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed 
and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions 
for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow 
blossoms against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet 
there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her 
hands.
   They were to marry in the spring - at the very first signs of 
spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her 
typewriter.
   A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A 
waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's 
next day fare in old Schulenberg's angular hand.
   Sarah sat down at her typewriter and slipped a card between the 
rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the 
twenty-one menu cards were written and ready.
   To-day there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The 
soups were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring 
only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of 
spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the 
greening hill-sides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that 
commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, 
was diminuendo con amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, 
behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the 
richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped 
about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thanatopsis with the 
buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple.
   Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down 
through the courses she worked, giving each item its position 
according to its length with an accurate eye.
   Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and 
peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and 
succotash, lima beans, cabbage - and then 
   Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of 
some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down 
went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled 
a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs.
   For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the 
next item on the bill of fare was dandelions - dandelions with some 
kind of egg - but bother the egg! - dandelions, with whose golden 
blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride - 
dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow - 
reminder of her happiest days.
   Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test: Let the 
Marechal Niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him 
your heart be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes 
at a Schulenberg table d'hote. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens 
dishonoured the sooner would she have sought the lethean herbs of the 
good apothecary.
   But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and 
iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the 
little hardy courier of the fields with his rough, green coat and 
modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion - this 
lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist 
at love-making, wreathed in my lady's nut-brown hair; young and callow 
and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of 
his sovereign mistress.
   By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. 
But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she 
fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her 
mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she 
came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the 
typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker's motor-car.
   At six o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the 
typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, 
the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As 
this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-endorsed 
flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted 
and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself but Sarah 
could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as 
ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection.
   At 7.30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel; the man in 
the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; 
three coal wagons started to unload - the only sound of which the 
phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward 
Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. 
She got out The Cloister and the Hearth, the best non-selling book of 
the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with 
Gerard.
   The front-door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left 
Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, 
just as she did!
And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped 
for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily 
the bear's.
   You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her 
farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with 
nothing left for the gleaners.
   `Why haven't you written - oh, why?' cried Sarah.
   `New York is a pretty large town,' said Walter Fanklin. I came in a 
week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a 
Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad 
luck. But it didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and 
otherwise ever since!'
   `I wrote!' said Sarah vehemently `Never got it!'
   `Then how did you find me?'
   The young farmer smiled a springtime smile.
   `I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,' said 
he. `I don't care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens 
at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice, typewritten 
bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below 
cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He 
told me where you lived.'
   `I remember,' sighed Sarah happily. `That was dandelions below 
cabbage.'
   `I'd know that cranky capital W 'way above the line that your 
typewriter makes anywhere in the world,' said Franklin.
   `Why, there's no W in dandelions,' said Sarah, in surprise.
   The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to 
a line.
   Sarah recognized the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. 
There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where 
a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the 
name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms 
had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys.
   Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item:
   `DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG.'