O Henry

                       Cabbages And Kings



                              XVIII

                       The Vitagraphoscope


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея


Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous.  Its audiences
do not demand denouements.  Sufficient unto each "turn" is the evil
thereof.  No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may
have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or
two.  The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound
the moment they have jumped through their last hoop.  They do not
desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic
cyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of (property)
china-ware.  Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle
them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the
lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.

Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of
the united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated
by the comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to
the Cerberi of the fifty-cent seats.

But our program ends with a brief "turn" or two; and then to the
exits.  Whoever sits the show out may find, if he will, the slender
thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that,
perhaps, only the Walrus will understand.


~Extracts from a letter from the first vice-president of the Republic
Insurance Company, of New York City, to Frank Goodwin, of Coralio,
Republic of Anchuria.~

~My Dear Mr. Goodwin:~--Your communication per Messrs. Howland and
Fourchet, of New Orleans, has reached us.  Also their draft on N.Y.
for $100,000, the amount abstracted from the funds of this company
by the late J. Churchill Wahrfield, its former president....  The
officers and directors unite in requesting me to express to you their
sincere esteem and thanks for your prompt and much appreciated return
of the entire missing sum within two weeks from the time of its
disappearance....  Can assure you that the matter will not be allowed
to receive the least publicity....  Regret exceedingly the distressing
death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but... Congratulations on your
marriage to Miss Wahrfield... many charms, winning manners, noble and
womanly nature and envied position in the best metropolitan
society....

~Cordially yours,
Lucius E. Applegate,~
FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT THE REPUBLIC INSURANCE
COMPANY.



~The Vitagraphoscope~
(Moving Pictures)
~The Last Sausage~

SCENE--An Artist's Studio.  The artist, a young man of prepossessing
appearance, sits in a dejected attitude, amid a litter of sketches,
with his head resting upon his hand.  An oil stove stands on a pine
box in the center of the studio.  The artist rises, tightens his waist
belt to another hole, and lights the stove.  He goes to a tin bread
box, half-hidden by a screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage,
turns the box upside-down to show that there is no more, and chucks
the sausage into a frying-pan, which he sets upon the stove.
The flame of the stove goes out, showing that there is no more oil.
The artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage, in a sudden access
of rage, and hurls it violently from him.  At the same time a door
opens, and a man who enters receives the sausage forcibly against
his nose.  He seems to cry out; and is observed to make a dance step
or two, vigorously.  The newcomer is a ruddy-faced, active, keen-
looking man, apparently of Irish ancestry.  Next he is observed
to laugh immoderately; he kicks over the stove; he claps the artist
(who is vainly striving to grasp his hand) vehemently upon the back.
Then he goes through a pantomime which to the sufficiently intelligent
spectator reveals that he has acquired large sums of money by trading
pot-metal hatchets and razors to the Indians of the Cordillera
Mountains for gold dust.  He draws a roll of money as large as
a small loaf of bread from his pocket, and waves it above his head,
while at the same time he makes pantomime of drinking from a glass.
The artist hurriedly secures his hat, and the two leave the studio
together.


~The Writing on the Sands~

SCENE--The Beach at Nice.  A woman, beautiful, still young,
exquisitely clothed, complacent, poised, reclines near the water,
idly scrawling letters in the sand with the staff of her silken
parasol.  The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose
is one that you feel to be impermanent--you wait, expectant, for her
to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably
become stock-still.  She idly scrawls in the sand; and the word that
she always writes is "Isabel."  A man sits a few yards away.  You can
see that they are companions, ever if no longer comrades.  His face
is dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable--but not quite.  The two
speak little together.  The man also scratches on the sand with his
cane.  And the word that he writes is "Anchuria."  And then he looks
out where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle with death in
his gaze.


~The Wilderness and Thou~

SCENE--~The Borders of a Gentleman's Estate in a Tropical Land.~
An old Indian, with a mahogany-colored face, is trimming the grass
on a grave by a mangrove swamp.  Presently he rises to his feet and
walks slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief
twilight.  In the edge of the grove stands a man who is stalwart,
with a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut
loveliness.  When the old Indian comes up to them the man drops money
in his hand.  The grave-tender, with the stolid pride of his race,
takes it as his due, and goes his way.  The two in the edge of
the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close--
for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little round
field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

CURTAIN