The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle.  The Colonel poured out a glass of the spirit and drank it with his old deliberation.

“You’re quite right, Jim,” he said, putting down his glass, “but I’m—­er—­getting old—­and—­somehow—­I am missing poor Stryker damnably!”

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES

By O. Henry (1862-1910)

[From The Junior Munsey, February, 1902.  Republished in the volume, Sixes and Sevens (1911), by O. Henry; copyright, 1911, by Doubleday, Page & Co.; reprinted by their permission.]

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues.  It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars.  The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass.  Rows of high box bushes lined the fence and walks.  It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots.

In this pleasant private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his book, Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and Bar.

Major Talbot was of the old, old South.  The present day had little interest or excellence in his eyes.  His mind lived in that period before the Civil War when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the South.  Out of that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honor, an antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe.

Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years.  The Major was tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor.  That garment was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the frocks and broad-brimmed hats of Southern Congressmen.  One of the boarders christened it a “Father Hubbard,” and it certainly was high in the waist and full in the skirt.

But the Major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited, raveling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman’s select boarding house.  Some of the young department clerks would often “string him,” as they called it, getting him started upon the subject dearest to him—­the traditions and history of his beloved Southland.  During his talks he would quote freely from the Anecdotes and Reminiscences.  But they were very careful not to let him see their designs, for in spite of his sixty-eight years he could make the boldest of them uncomfortable under the steady regard of his piercing gray eyes.