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Strictly Business | O Henry | |
IV. The Day Resurgent |
Page 3 of 5 |
Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him. "Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March--but why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of politics?" "'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It extends up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political." "Thanks," said Danny. "And say--did you ever hear a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean." "Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and there was wood alcohol in that." Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his. The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly. The family entrance of Dugan's caf'e was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee. "Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?" |
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