The Gentle Grafter

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The Gentle Grafter

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry, Illustrated by H. C. Greening and Mary Wilson Preston
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Title: The Gentle Grafter The Octopus Marooned -- Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet -- Modern Rural Sports -- The Chair of Philanthromathematics -- The Hand That Riles the World -- The Exact Science of Matrimony -- A Midsummer Masquerade -- Shearing the Wolf -- Innocents of Broadway -- Conscience in Art -- The Man Higher Up -- A Tempered Wind -- Hostages to Momus -- The Ethics of Pig
Author: O. Henry

Release Date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1805] [Most recently revised: December 18, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE GENTLE GRAFTER
by
O. HENRY
Illustrated by H. C. Greening and Mary Wilson Preston
1919

[Illustration: "They began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars." (Frontispiece)]

CONTENTS
I. The Octopus Marooned II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet III. Modern Rural Sports IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics V. The Hand That Riles the World VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony VII. A Midsummer Masquerade VIII. Shearing the Wolf IX. Innocents of Broadway X. Conscience in Art XI. The Man Higher Up XII. A Tempered Wind XIII. Hostages to Momus XIV. The Ethics of Pig

THE OCTOPUS MAROONED
"A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.
"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, 'Why is a policeman?'"
"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a policeman. My remark was an epitogram--an axis--a kind of mulct'em in parvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not like an egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the outside. The only way to break up a trust is from the inside. Keep sitting on it until it hatches. Look at the brood of young colleges and libraries that's chirping and peeping all over the country. Yes, sir, every trust bears in its own bosom the seeds of its destruction like a rooster that crows near a Georgia colored Methodist camp meeting, or a Republican announcing himself a candidate for governor of Texas."
I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered, plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise of the class to which the word "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to my surprise he acknowledged the corner.
"Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into a charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimate octopusing. We had everything in our favor--wind, water, police, nerve, and a clean monopoly of an article indispensable to the public. There wasn't a trust buster on the globe that could have found a weak spot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculation look like a bucket shop. But we lost out."
"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.
"No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson says.
"You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for some years. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I ever saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy was educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for hours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic lantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Association convention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood alcohol distilled from nutmegs.
"One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip during which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a half interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.
"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes against a little town in Texas on the bank of the