Strictly Business | Page 3

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Strictly Business More Stories of the Four Million
by O Henry

CONTENTS
I. STRICTLY BUSINESS II. THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED III.
BABES IN THE JUNGLE IV. THE DAY RESURGENT V. THE
FIFTH WHEEL VI. THE POET AND THE PEASANT VII. THE
ROBE OF PEACE VIII. THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT IX. THE
CALL OF THE TAME X. THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY XI. THE
THING'S THE PLAY XII. A RAMBLE IN APHASIA XIII. A
MUNICIPAL REPORT XIV. PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER
XV. A BIRD OF BAGDAD XVI. COMPLIMENTS OF THE
SEASON XVII. A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA XVIII. THE GIRL
AND THE HABIT XIX. PROOF OF THE PUDDING XX. PAST
ONE AT RODNEY'S XXI. THE VENTURERS XXII. THE DUEL
XXIII. "WHAT YOU WANT"

I
STRICTLY BUSINESS
I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been
touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and
the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the
long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your
ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something
like this:
Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no
better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are
inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk
back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable
actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on

Broadway and their step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is
Boyle O'Kelley. The ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph
were stolen from the first sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is
funnier than E. H. Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he
was.
All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne
and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures
have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.
Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the
profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at
the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority-- and we go
home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our
looking glasses.
Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It
seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring
bacchanalias and diamond-hungry loreleis they are businesslike folk,
students and ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real
estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and
unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the
chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.
Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the true