The Voice of the City | Page 3

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The Voice of the City
by O Henry

THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons.
The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the
utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I
mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust.
I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated from
the physiology class. The most striking line of it was this:
"The shin-bone is the long-est bone in the hu-man bod-y."
What an inestimable boon it would have been if all the corporeal and
spiritual facts pertaining to man bad thus been tunefully and logically
inculcated in our youthful minds! But what we gained in anatomy,
music and philosophy was meagre.
The other day I became confused. I needed a ray of light. I turned back
to those school days for aid. But in all the nasal harmonies we whined
forth from those bard benches I could not recall one that treated of the
voice of agglomerated mankind.
In other words, of the composite vocal message of massed humanity.

In other words, of the Voice of a Big City.
Now, the individual voice is not lacking. We can understand the song
of the poet, the ripple of the brook, the meaning of the man who wants
$5 until next Monday, the inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs,
the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the
prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert
that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum pro- need by
concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can
comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?
I went out for to see.
First, I asked Aurelia. She wore white Swiss and a bat with flowers on
it, and ribbons and ends of things fluttered here and there.
"Tell me," I said, stammeringly, for I have no voice of my own, "what
does this big - er - enormous - er - whopping city say? It must have a
voice of some kind. Does it ever speak to you? How do you interpret its
meaning? It is a tremen- dous mass, but it must have a key:'
"Like a Saratoga trunk?" asked Aurelia.
"No," said I. "Please do not refer to the lid. I have a fancy that every
city has a voice. Each one has something to say to the one who can hear
it. What does the big one say to you? "
"All cities," said Aurelia, judicially, "say the same thing. When they get
through saying it there is an echo from Philadelphia. So, they are
unanimous."
"Here are 4,000,000 people," said I, scholastic- ally, "compressed upon
an island, which is mostly lamb surrounded by Wall Street water. The
conjunc- tion of so many units into so small a space must result in an
identity - or, or rather a homogeneity that finds its oral expression
through a common chan- nel. It is, as you might say, a consensus of
transla- tion, concentrating in a crystallized, general idea which reveals
itself in what may be termed the Voice of the City. Can you tell me
what it is?
Aurelia smiled wonderfully. She sat on the high stoop. A spray of
insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight
flickered upon her nose. But I was adamant, nickel- plated.
"I must go and find out," I said, "what is the Voice of this city. Other
cities have voices. It is an assignment. I must have it. New York," I
con- tinned, in a rising tone, "had better not hand me a cigar and say: '

Old man,