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X. The Unknown Quantity |
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The poet Longfellow--or was it Confucius, the inventor of wisdom?--remarked:
"Life is real, life is earnest; As mathematics are--or is: thanks, old subscriber!--the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the great goddess Two-and-Two-Makes-Four. Figures-- unassailable sums in addition--shall be set over against whatever oposing element there may be. A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, would say: "Ahem! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus-- that is, that life is real--then things (all of which life includes) are real. Anything that is real is what it seems. Then if we consider the proposition that 'things are not what they seem,' why--" But this is heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, seductive, pursued, satisfying, mysterious X. Not long before the beginning of this century, Septimus Kinsolving, an old New Yorker, invented an idea. He originated the discovery that bread is made from flour and not from wheat futures. Perceiving that the flour crop was short, and that the Stock Exchange was having no perceptible effect on the growing wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market. The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she never had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accomodated) bought a five-cent load of bread you laid down an additional two cents, which went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his perspicacity. A second result was that Mr. Kinsolving quit the game with $2,000,000 prof--er--rake-off. |
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