From the Cabby's Seat E-Book

O. Henry

• Herausgeber: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A cabby picks up a fare and takes her around town only to find she doesn't have the money to pay. O. Henry admits part of the reason for this may be the physical separation caused by how the hansom is built. Even if the cabby were interested in looking at their rider's face, the structure of the hansom makes it pretty much impossible. But, as it happens in this story, the lack of contact can lead to some interesting situations.  But who the fare turns out to be makes for quite a twist ending.  O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. 

Leseprobe

O.Henry

From the Cabby’s Seat

A cabby picks up a fare and takes her around town only to find she doesn't have the money to pay. O. Henry admits part of the reason for this may be the physical separation caused by how the hansom is built. Even if the cabby were interested in looking at their rider's face, the structure of the hansom makes it pretty much impossible. But, as it happens in this story, the lack of contact can lead to some interesting situations.

But who the fare turns out to be makes for quite a twist ending.

O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

Contents

From the Cabby’s Seat

The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to cabby you are only a Fare, he takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebrae and sets you down.

When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal rates you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you have left your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mildness of Dante’s imagination.

It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby’s singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom’s peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap — you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land — and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known.

Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You are a cargo at sea, and the “cherub that sits up aloft” has Davy Jones’s street and number by heart.