O. Henry

                     The Assessor of Success

HASTINGS BEAUCHAMP MORLEY sauntered across Union Square with a pitying 
look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a 
motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; 
the women wriggling and self conscious, twining and untwining their 
feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks.
   Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few mil-lions 
in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park 
Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange for 
benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women to sit 
upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I might furnish 
libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build sanatoriums for 
crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I wanted to.
   Women's rights societies have been labouring for many years after 
equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they 
must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their highest 
French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, ladies. 
Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of mental 
equality.
   Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That 
was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is 
denied us to look farther into a man's bosom than the starch on his 
shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and 
conversation.
   Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a 
hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have no 
more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building 
on the west side of the square. But Morley would have enough by then. 
Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen 
them lined.
   First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison Avenue and 
presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to 
issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up 
by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance.
   On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a pale-
faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist, and the 
voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.
   'Why, Bergman, man,' sang Morley dulcetly, `is this you? I was just 
on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt 
arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to 
the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk.'
   Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about 
Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed off 
a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was 
pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the 
difference in the notes.
   `You gum to mine blace und bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley ' said 
Bergman. `Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen 
you in dree mont'. Pros't!'
   Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. 
The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to 
avoid Twenty-ninth Street in the future. He had not been aware that 
Bergman ever went home by that route.
   At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley 
knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the 
length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of 
an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was 
admitted.
   In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung 
for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, and 
was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the forty 
cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At 
the corner he lingered, undecided.
   Across the street was a drug store well lighted; sending forth 
gleams fram the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and 
glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, 
stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to 
which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he 
clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.
   Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.
   `Me?' said the youngster. `I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma. 
She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin.'
   `Now, now, now!' said Morley. `Such a big man you are to be doing 
errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the 
cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some chocolates. Or 
would he rather have lemon drops?'
   Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He 
presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.
   On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. 
   `Aqua pura, one pint,' said he to the druggist. `Sodium chloride, 
ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know 
all about the number of gallons of H20 in the Croton reservoir, and I 
always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.'
   `Fifteen cents,' said the druggist, with a wink, after he had 
compounded the order. `I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the 
regular price.
   `To gulls,' said Morley smilingly.
   He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and 
escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the eighty-
five cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.
   `Look out for the cars, sonny,' he said cheerfully, to his small 
victim.
Two street-cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the 
youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile 
messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then, from the corner of 
his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with 
vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand.
   Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of 
inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely 
that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had come his way.
   `Why, no,' said Morley, who seldom held conversation with anyone. 
`It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what 
three divisions of people are easiest to overreach in transactions of 
all kinds?'
   `Sure,' said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised 
by the careful knot of Morley's tie; `there's the buyers from the dry 
goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten 
Island, and -'
   `Wrong!' said Morley, chuckling happily. `The answer is just men, 
women and children. The world - well, say New York and as far as 
summer boarders can swim out from Long Island - it is full of 
greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this 
steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois.'
   `If yez t'inks it's on de bum,' said the waiter, `Oi'll -'
   Morley lifted his hand in protest - slightly martyred protest.
   `It will do,' he said magnanimously. `And now, green Chartreuse, 
frappe and a demitasse.'
   Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful 
arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket he 
stood on the kerb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the 
tides of people that tlowed past him. Into that stream he must cast 
his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak 
Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.
   A joyful party of four - two women and two men - fell upon him with 
cries of delight. There was a dinner party on - where had he been for 
a fortnight past? - what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded 
and engulfed him - he must join them - tra la la - and the rest.
   One, with a white hat-plume curving to the shoulder, touched his 
sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: `See what 
I can do with him!' and added her queen's command to the invitations.
   `I leave you to imagine,' said Morley, pathetically, `how it 
desolates me to forgo the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the 
New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor-car at eight.'
   The white plume tossed, and the quartette danced like midgets 
around an arc light down the frolicsome way.
   Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and 
laughing gleefully to himself.
   `"Front," ' he chanted under his breath; ` "front" does it. It is 
tnunps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children - 
forgeries, water-and-salt lies - how they all take it in!'
   An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling, grey beard and a 
corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street-
cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side.
   `Stranger,' said he, `excuse me for troubling you, but do you know 
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son; and 
I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what 
I done with his street and number.'
   `I do not, sir,' said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy 
in them. `You had better apply to the police.'
   `The police!' said the old man. `I ain't done nothin' to call in 
the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-
story house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could 
-'
   `I told you I did not,' said Morley coldly. `I know no one by the 
name of Smithers, and I advise you to -'
   `Smothers, not Smithers,' interrupted the old man hopefully. `A 
heavy-sot man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth 
out, about five foot -'
   `Oh, "Smothers"!' exclaimed Morley. `Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in 
the next house to me. I thought you said "Smithers." ' 
   Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it 
for a dollar. Better go hungry than forgo a gunmetal or the ninety-
eight-cent one that the railroads - according to these watchmakers - 
are run by.
   `The Bishop of Long Island,' said Morley, `was to meet me here at 
eight to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave the 
father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, 
Mr. Smothers, we Wall Street men have to work! Tired is no name for 
it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have a glass of 
ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let 
me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But before we take the car I 
hope you will join me in -'
   An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in 
Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and 
$140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-
hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in 
and out amidst a maze of f