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Options-Part28_O.Henry(1862-1910)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are

wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, "It is



engendered in the eyes." There are three kinds of beauties--I was

foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story.



The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The

second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in



Bouguereau's paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the

mayoress of Spotless Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming



to her as Helen of the Troy laundries.

The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its



circumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them.

One meal--one smile--one dollar. But, with all her impartiality,



Ileen seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According

to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself last.



The first was an artificial product known as Bryan Jacks--a name that

had obviously met with reverses. Jacks was the outcome of paved



cities. He was a small man made of some material resembling flexible

sandstone. His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house;



his eyes were twin cranberries; his mouth was like the aperture under

a drop-letters-here sign.



He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to

Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had



mastered every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in

the world, had been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every head-



line event that had ever occurred between oceans since he was five

years old. You might open the atlas, place your finger at random upon



the name of a town, and Jacks would tell you the front names of three

prominent citizens before you could close it again. He spoke



patronizingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill,

Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St. Louis Four Courts.



Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wandering Jew would have

seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything the world could teach



him, and he would tell you about it.

I hate to be reminded of Pollock's Course of Time, and so do you; but



every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet's description of

another poet by the name of G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply



drank--drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then

died of thirst because there was no more to drink."



That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma,

which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station- and



express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who

knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such



an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a

hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and



stockholders of the S. P. Ry. Co.

One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore



bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same

cloth as his shirt.



My rival No.2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been engaged by a

ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle to keep



within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off

the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore the



sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his

neck.



Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the

Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at a



tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly

under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his



hoofs would plough canals yards long in the loam.

Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of course.



The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as

there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-



chairs, and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row.

And a little upright piano in one comer.



Here Jacks and Bud and I--or sometimes one or two of us, according to

our good-luck--used to sit of evenings when the tide of trade was



over, and "visit" Miss Hinkle.

Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher things (if



there can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a

barbed-wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks



would have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, rising

superior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the nature of



a salon--the only one in Paloma.

"Don't you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" she would ask,



with such a pretty little knit of her arched brows that the late




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