The Pride of the Cities

"The Pride of the Cities" is a delightful short story by O. Henry that explores themes of love, ambition, and the complexities of urban life. Set in a bustling city, it follows a chance encounter between two characters from different walks of life, highlighting the contrasts and connections between them. Through his signature wit and clever storytelling, O. Henry paints a vivid picture of city life, capturing both its charm and its challenges. The narrative reveals the characters' personal aspirations and the unexpected twists that love and fate can bring.

• Short story

								
Said Mr. Kipling, “The cities are full of pride, challenging each to
each.” Even so.

New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away for
the summer. Three million eight hundred thousand remained as caretakers
and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred thousand are
an expensive lot.

The New Yorker sat at a roof-garden table, ingesting solace through a
straw. His panama lay upon a chair. The July audience was scattered
among vacant seats as widely as outfielders when the champion batter
steps to the plate. Vaudeville happened at intervals. The breeze was
cool from the bay; around and above—everywhere except on the stage—were
stars. Glimpses were to be had of waiters, always disappearing, like
startled chamois. Prudent visitors who had ordered refreshments by
’phone in the morning were now being served. The New Yorker was aware
of certain drawbacks to his comfort, but content beamed softly from his
rimless eyeglasses. His family was out of town. The drinks were warm;
the ballet was suffering from lack of both tune and talcum—but his
family would not return until September.

Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada. The
gloom of the solitary sightseer enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through
loneliness, he stalked with a widower’s face through the halls of
pleasure. Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted in
the metropolitan draught. Straight to the New Yorker’s table he
steered.

The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of
a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life’s traditions.
He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive,
hair-brained act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his
existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous inspiration he
nodded slightly to the stranger as he drew nearer the table.

The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the New
Yorker’s closest friends. He took a chair at the table, he gathered two
others for his feet, he tossed his broad-brimmed hat upon a fourth, and
told his life’s history to his new-found pard.

The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartment-house furnace warms
when the strawberry season begins. A waiter who came within hail in an
unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor
Wiley experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a
musical vagary, and danced upon the stage programmed as Bolivian
peasants, clothed in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian fisher
maidens, in others as ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette,
historically denuded in other portions so as to represent sea nymphs,
and presenting the tout ensemble of a social club of Central Park
West housemaids at a fish fry.

“Been in the city long?” inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the
exact tip against the waiter’s coming with large change from the bill.

“Me?” said the man from Topaz City. “Four days. Never in Topaz City,
was you?”

“I!” said the New Yorker. “I was never farther west than Eighth Avenue.
I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortege at Eighth.
There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker
mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am
familiar with the West.”

“Topaz City,” said the man who occupied four chairs, “is one of the
finest towns in the world.”

“I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis,” said the
New Yorker, “Four days is not a sufficient length of time in which to
view even our most salient points of interest, but one can possibly
form a general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what
generally strikes visitors to our city most forcibly. Of course you
have seen our Flatiron Building. It is considered—”

“Saw it,” said the man from Topaz City. “But you ought to come out our
way. It’s mountainous, you know, and the ladies all wear short skirts
for climbing and—”

“Excuse me,” said the New Yorker, “but that isn’t exactly the point.
New York must be a wonderful revelation to a visitor from the West.
Now, as to our hotels—”

“Say,” said the man from Topaz City, “that reminds me—there were
sixteen stage robbers shot last year within twenty miles of—”

“I was speaking of hotels,” said the New Yorker. “We lead Europe in
that respect. And as far as our leisure class is concerned we are far—”

“Oh, I don’t know,” interrupted the man from Topaz City. “There were
twelve tramps in our jail when I left home. I guess New York isn’t so—”

“Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you visited
the Stock Exchange and Wall Street, where the—”

“Oh, yes,” said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania
stogie, “and I want to tell you that we’ve got the finest town marshal
west of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of the
crowd when Red Nose Thompson laid the cornerstone of his new saloon.
Topaz City don’t allow—”

“Have another Rhine wine and seltzer,” suggested the New Yorker. “I’ve
never been West, as I said; but there can’t be any place out there to
compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I—”

“One man,” said the Topazite—“one man only has been murdered and robbed
in Topaz City in the last three—”

“Oh, I know what Chicago is,” interposed the New Yorker. “Have you been
up Fifth Avenue to see the magnificent residences of our mil—”

“Seen ’em all. You ought to know Reub Stegall, the assessor of Topaz.
When old man Tilbury, that owns the only two-story house in town, tried
to swear his taxes from $6,000 down to $450.75, Reub buckled on his
forty-five and went down to see—”

“Yes, yes, but speaking of our great city—one of its greatest features
is our superb police department. There is no body of men in the world
that can equal it for—”

“That waiter gets around like a Langley flying machine,” remarked the
man from Topaz City, thirstily. “We’ve got men in our town, too, worth
$400,000. There’s old Bill Withers and Colonel Metcalf and—”

“Have you seen Broadway at night?” asked the New Yorker, courteously.
“There are few streets in the world that can compare with it. When the
electrics are shining and the pavements are alive with two hurrying
streams of elegantly clothed men and beautiful women attired in the
costliest costumes that wind in and out in a close maze of
expensively—”

“Never knew but one case in Topaz City,” said the man from the West.
“Jim Bailey, our mayor, had his watch and chain and $235 in cash taken
from his pocket while—”

“That’s another matter,” said the New Yorker. “While you are in our
city you should avail yourself of every opportunity to see its wonders.
Our rapid transit system—”

“If you was out in Topaz,” broke in the man from there, “I could show
you a whole cemetery full of people that got killed accidentally.
Talking about mangling folks up! why, when Berry Rogers turned loose
that old double-barrelled shot-gun of his loaded with slugs at
anybody—”

“Here, waiter!” called the New Yorker. “Two more of the same. It is

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