The Lady Higher Up

"The Lady Higher Up" is a short story by O. Henry that explores themes of social class, romance, and the unexpected twists of fate. Set in a bustling urban environment, the narrative follows a charming but somewhat aimless young man who encounters a mysterious woman of higher social standing. As their paths cross, witty dialogue and O. Henry's signature twist culminate in a surprising revelation that underscores the complexities of love and status. The story blends humor and poignancy, reflecting the author's keen observations of human nature and societal norms.

• Short story

								
New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze
was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of
feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five
feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan
pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction
of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden
were out; the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in
postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore’s
illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into tailor’s
dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden—its constancy
shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold
that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single, graceful
flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing
the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to
catch a Harlem train—remained poised with its arrow pointed across the
upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it would have
passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose duty it is
to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other lands.

Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began
to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
upon her. “Liberty Lighting the World” (as her creator christened her)
would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it,
than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to
“enlighten” the world (as our learned civic guardians “Englished” it)
requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a
sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua
schoolma’am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid,
classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel
the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C’s.

“Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!” called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.

“Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I’m not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And ’tis so hoarse I am I can hardly
talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by
that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. ’Tis after being a
fine evening, miss.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, “I’d like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I didn’t
know that Liberty was necessarily Irish.”

“If ye’d studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye’d
not need to ask,” replied the offshore statue. “If ye wasn’t so
light-headed and giddy ye’d know that I was made by a Dago and
presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for
the purpose of welcomin’ Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New
York. ’Tis that I’ve been doing night and day since I was erected. Ye
must know, Miss Diana, that ’tis with statues the same as with
people—’tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were
created that influence the operations of their tongues at all—it’s the
associations with which they become associated, I’m telling ye.”

“You’re dead right,” agreed Diana. “I notice it on myself. If any of
the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in
the ancient Greek I couldn’t tell it from a conversation between a
Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare.”

“I’m right glad ye’ve made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,”
said Mrs. Liberty. “’Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there
anything doin’ up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?”

“Oh, la, la, la!—no,” said Diana. “Notice that ‘la, la, la,’ Aunt
Liberty? Got that from ‘Paris by Night’ on the roof garden under me.
You’ll hear that ‘la, la, la’ at the Café McCann now, along with
‘garsong.’ The bohemian crowd there have become tired of ‘garsong’
since O’Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling
him it. Oh, no; the town’s strickly on the bum these nights.
Everybody’s away. Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this evening
with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A waiter
biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up. He looks
around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator. ‘H’m!’ says he, ‘will
you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?’ ‘Sure, in a minute,’ says
she, ‘if you’ll make it an X.’

“That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!”

“’Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the cat
show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the privates
look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as
floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen’s Show, where the girl that
measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam on the
banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the Vanderbilts,
Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the
French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund
Society dance the Highland fling one with another. And ye have the
grand O’Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant in the world,
where the French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers in doin’ the
cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole town, Miss
Diana.

“’Tis weary work,” sighed the island statue, “disseminatin’ the science
of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down at Ellis
Island and see the gang of immigrants I’m supposed to light up, ’tis
tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write out their
naturalization papers.”

“Say, it’s a shame, ain’t it, to give you the worst end of it?” came
the sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. “It must be
awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don’t see
how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are
wearing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to be
held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady. That’s
where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I’m always a little ahead of the
styles; but they’re coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a
moment—I caught a puff of wind from the north—shouldn’t wonder if
things had loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it’s in the West—I should
think that gold plank would have calmed the air out in that direction.
What were you saying, Mrs. Liberty?”

“A fine chat I’ve had with ye, Miss Diana, ma’am, but I see one of them
European steamers a-sailin’ up the Narrows, and I must be attendin’ to
me duties. ’Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of Liberty to welcome
all them that survive the kicks that the steerage stewards give ’em
while landin.’ Sure ’tis a great country ye can come to for $8.50, and
the doctor waitin’ to send ye back home free if he sees yer eyes red
from cryin’ for it.”

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