O. Henry

        Sociology In Serge And Straw


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The season of irresponsibility is at hand.  Come,
let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that
is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology
in the summer fields.

Likely as not the world is flat.  The wise men have
tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success.
They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us
observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid
from our view all but the vessel's topmast.  But we
picked up a telescope and looked, and saw the decks
and hull again.  Then the wise men said: "Oh, pshaw!
anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator
and the ecliptic proves it."  We could not see this through
our telescope, so we remained silent.  But it stands to
reason that, if the world were round, the queues of China-
Men would stand straight up from their heads instead
of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure us they do.

Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory
is the fact that all of life, as we know it, moves in little,
unavailing circles.  More justly than to anything else,
it can be likened to the game of baseball.  Crack!  we
hit the ball, and away we go.  If we earn a run (in life
we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit
upon a bench.  If we are thrown out, we walk back to the
home plate -- and sit upon a bench.

The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may
have sailed the rim of a watery circle back to the same
port again.  The truly great return at the high tide of
their attainments to the simplicity of a child.  The
billionaire sits down at his mahogany to his bowl of bread
and milk.  When you reach the end of your career, just
take down the sign "Goal" and look at the other side of
it.  You will find "Beginning Point" there.  It has been
reversed while you were going around the track.

But this is humour, and must be stopped.  Let us
get back to the serious questions that arise whenever
Sociology turns summer boarder.  You are invited to
consider the scene of the story-wild, Atlantic waves,
thundering against a wooded and rock-bound shore --
in the Greater City of New York.

The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long
Island, is noted for its clam fritters and the summer
residence of the Van Plushvelts.

The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars,
and their name is a household word with tradesmen and
photographers.

On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded
up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited
their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not
to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed
away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone
the shade -- Amaryllis not being in their class.  If
a subscriber to the Toadies' Magazine, you have
often -- You say you are not?  Well, you buy it at a
news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to
you.  But he knows about it all.  HE knows -- HE
knows!  I say that you have often seen in the Toadies'
Magazine pictures of the Van Plushvelts' summer home;
so it will not be described here.  Our business is with
young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir
to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods
and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner
of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined
by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.

One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled
out between the granite gate posts of "Dolce far Niente"
-- that's what they called the place; and it was an improve-
ment on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you.

Haywood walked down into the village.  He was
human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed
upon him.  Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest.
He was the product of private tutors.  Even under his
first hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn.  He had
been born with a gold spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in
his mouth.  For which I hope, later, to submit justification,
I must ask your consideration of his haberdashery and
tailoring.

Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark
blue serge, a neat, white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes,
of the well-known "immaculate" trade mark, a
neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender,
neat, bamboo cane.

Down Persimmon Street (there's never tree north of
Hagerstown, Md.) came from the village "Smoky"
Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst boy in Fishampton.
"Smoky" was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked
and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers
of the "serviceable" brand.  Dust, clinging to the mois-
ture induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of
his face.  "Smoky" carried a baseball bat, and a league
ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers
pocket.  Haywood stopped and passed the time of day.

"Going to play ball?"  he asked.

"Smoky's" eyes and countenance confronted him
with a frank blue-and-freckled scrutiny.

"Me?"  he said, with deadly mildness; "sure not.
Can't you see I've got a divin' suit on?  I'm goin' up in
a submarine balloon to catch butterflies with a two-inch
auger.

"Excuse me," said Haywood, with the insulting polite-
-ness of his caste, "for mistaking you for a gentleman.  I
might have known better."

"How might you have known better if you thought I
was one?"  said "Smoky," unconsciously a logician.

"By your appearances," said Haywood.  "No gentle-
man is dirty, ragged and a liar."

"Smoky" hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his
hand, got a firm grip on his baseball bat and then dropped
it against the fence.

"Say," said he, "I knows you.  You're the pup that
belongs in that swell private summer sanitarium for city-
guys over there.  I seen you come out of the gate.  You
can't bluff nobody because you're rich.  And because
you got on swell clothes.  Arabella!  Yah!"

"Ragamuffin!"  said Hay-wood.

"Smoky" picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on
his shoulder.

"Dare you to knock it off," he challenged.

"I wouldn't soil my hands with you," said the aristocrat.

"'Fraid," said "Smoky" concisely.  "Youse city-
ducks ain't got the I sand.  I kin lick you with one-
hand."

"I don't wish to have any trouble with you," said
Haywood.  "I asked you a civil question; and you replied,
like a -- like a -- a cad."

"Wot's a cad?"  asked "Smoky."

"A cad is a disagreeable person," answered Haywood,
"who lacks manners and doesn't know his place.  They,
sometimes play baseball."

"I can tell you what a mollycoddle is," said "Smoky."
"It's a monkey dressed up by its mother and sent out too
pick daisies on the lawn."

"When you have the honour to refer to the members
of my family," said Haywood, with some dim ideas
of a code in his mind, "you'd better leave the ladies out
of your remarks."

"Ho!  ladies!"  mocked the rude one.  "I say ladies!
I know what them rich women in the city does.  They,
drink cocktails and swear and give parties to gorillas.
The papers says so."

Then Haywood knew that it must be.  He took off
his coat, folded it neatly and laid it on the roadside grass,
placed his hat upon it and began to unknot his blue silk
tie.

"Hadn't yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?"
taunted "Smoky."  "Wot yer going to do -- go to bed?"

"I'm going to give you a good trouncing," said the
hero.  He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far
beneath him socially.  He remembered that his father
once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two col-
umns, first page.  And the Toadies' Magazine had a
special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and
ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at
Fishampton.

"Wot's trouncing?"  asked "Smoky," suspiciously.
"I don't want your old clothes.  I'm no -- oh, you mean
to scrap!  My, my!  I won't do a thing to mamma's pet.
Criminy!  I'd hate to be a hand-laundered thing like
you.

"Smoky" waited with some awkwardness for his
adversary to prepare for battle.  His own decks were
always clear for action.  When he should spit upon the
palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to "You may
fire now, Gridley."

The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves
neatly rolled up.  "Smoky" waited, in an attitude of
ease, expecting the affair to be conducted according to
Fishampton's rules of war.  These allowed combat
to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse
and insult gradually increasing in emphasis and degree.
After a round of these "you're anothers" would come the
chip knocked from the shoulder, or the advance across
the "dare" line drawn with a toe on the ground.  Next
light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force
until finally the blood was up and fists going at their best.

But Haywood did not know Fishampton's rules.
Noblesse oblige kept a faint smile on his face as he walked
slowly up to "Smoky" and said:

"Going to play ball?"

"Smoky" quickly understood this to be a putting
of the previous question, giving him the chance to make
practical apology by answering it with civility and
relevance.

"Listen this time,' said he.  "I'm goin' skatin' on
the river.  Don't you see me automobile with Chinese
lanterns on it standin' and waitin' for me?"

Haywood knocked him down.

"Smoky" felt wronged.  To thus deprive him of
preliminary wrangle and objurgation was to send an
armoured knight full tilt against a crashing lance without
permitting him first to caracole around the list to the
flourish of trumpets.  But he scrambled up and fell upon
his foe, head, feet and fists.

The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes.
It was lengthened until it was more like a war or a family
feud than a fight.  Haywood had learned some of the
science of boxing and wrestling from his tutors, but these
he discarded for the more instinctive methods of battle
handed down by the cave-dwelling Van Plushvelts.

So, when he found himself, during the mкlйe, seated
upon the kicking and roaring "Smoky's" chest, he
improved the opportunity by vigorously kneading hand-
fuls of sand and soil into his adversary's ears, eyes and
mouth, and when "Smoky" got the proper leg hold and
"turned" him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt
hair and pounded the Plushvelt head against the lap of
mother earth.  Of course, the strife was not incessantly
active.  There were seasons when one sat upon the other,
holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat
out the more inconveniently large sections of gravel and
and strove to subdue the spirit of his opponent
with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare.

At last, it seemed that in the language of the ring, their
efforts lacked steam.  They broke away, and each
disappeared in a cloud as he brushed away the dust of
the conflict.  As soon as his breath permitted, Haywood
walked close to "Smoky" and said:

"Going to play ball?"

"Smoky" looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying
on the ground, and at the "leaguer" rounding his pocket.

"Sure," he said, offhandedly.  "The 'Yellowjackets'"
plays the 'Long Islands.' I'm cap'n of the 'Long
Islands.'

"I guess I didn't mean to say you were ragged," said
Haywood.  "But you are dirty, you know."

"Sure," said "Smoky."  "Yer get that way knockin'
around.  Say, I don't believe them New York papers
about ladies drinkin' and havin' monkeys dinin' at the
table with 'em.  I guess they're lies, like they print
about people eatin' out of silver plates, and ownin' dogs
that cost $100."

"Certainly," said Haywood.  "What do you play on
your team?"

"Ketcher.  Ever play any?"

"Never in my life," said Haywood.  "I've never known
any fellows except one or two of my cousins."

"Jer like to learn?  We're goin' to have a practice-
game before the match.  Wanter come along?  I'll put
yer in left-field, and yer won't be long ketchin' on."

"I'd like it bully," said Haywood.  "I've alway-
wanted to play baseball."

The ladies' maids of New York and the families of
Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember
well the sensation that was created by the report that the
young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was
playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton.  It
was conceded that the millennium of democracy had
come.  Reporters and photographers swarmed to the
island.  The papers printed half-page pictures of him
as short-stop stopping a hot grounder.  The Toadies'
Magazine got out a Bat and Ball number that covered
the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat
and ending with the Patriarchs' ball -- illustrated with
interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat.
Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed
the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal
brotherhood of man.

One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near
the shore at Fishampton in the esteemed company of
an eminent, bald-headed young sociologist.  By way
of note it may be inserted that all sociologists are more
or less bald, and exactly thirty-two.  Look 'em over.

The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as
the most important "uplift" symptom of a generation,
and as an excuse for his own existence.

Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds.
And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and
distributed themselves, shouting, about the diamond.
"There," said the sociologist, pointing, "there is young
Van Plushvelt."

I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann)
and gazed.

Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground.  He was
dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and weather-
worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the "ser-
viceable" brand.  Dust clinging to the moisture induced by
free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face.

"That is he," repeated the sociologist.  If he had said
"him" I could have been less vindictive.

On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire's
chum.

He was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat
white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the
well-known "immaculate" trade mark, a neat, narrow
four-in-hand tie, and carried a- slender, neat bamboo
cane.

I laughed loudly and vulgarly.

"What you want to do," said I to the sociologist, "is
to establish a reformatory for the Logical Vicious Circle.
Or else I've got wheels.  It looks to me as if things are
running round and round in circles instead of getting
anywhere."

"What do you mean?"  asked the man of progress.

"Why, look what he has done to "Smoky," I replied.

"You will always be a fool," said my friend, the sociolo-
gist, getting up and walking away.