Confessions Of A Humorist

O Henry

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke

out on me, and people said I was It.

But they called it humor instead of measles.

The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth

birthday. We crowded into his private office to present it. I had been selected for

spokesman, and I made a little speech that I had been preparing for a week.

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that brought down the

house--which was a very solid one in the wholesale hardware line. Old Marlowe himself

business matters and the day's topics, but from me something gamesome and airy was

required.

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the granite ware with

persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a balance sheet without

something comic about the footings or could find no cause for laughter in an invoice of

plows, the other clerks were disappointed. By degrees my fame spread, and I became a

local "character." Our town was small enough to make this possible. The daily

newspaper quoted me. At social gatherings I was indispensable.

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and spontaneous

repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And the nature of it was kindly

At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I considered peculiarly

happy, and had sent them to certain periodicals that print such things. All of them had

been instantly accepted. Several of the editors had written to request further

contributions.

One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly publication. He suggested

that I submit to him a humorous composition to fill a column of space; hinting that he

would make it a regular feature of each issue if the work proved satisfactory. I did so,

and at the end of two weeks he offered to make a contract with me for a year at a figure

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that was considerably higher than the amount paid me by the hardware firm.

I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind with the

imperishable evergreens of literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a bottle of

blackberry wine for supper that night. Here was the chance to liberate myself from

drudgery. I talked over the matter very seriously with Louisa. We agreed that I must

resign my place at the store and devote myself to humor.

After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen. Dear girl! There

was my table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And all the author's trappings--

the celery stand full of fresh roses and honeysuckle, last year's calendar on the wall, the

dictionary, and a little bag of chocolates to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl!

I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or odalisks or--perhaps--it

is trapezoids. Upon one of the figures I fixed my eyes. I bethought me of humor.

A voice startled me--Louisa's voice.

"If you aren't too busy, dear," it said, "come to dinner."

I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim scytheman. I

went to dinner.

And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I was referred to in a

gossipy way by the critics as something fresh in the line of humorists. I augmented my

income considerably by contributing to other publications.

I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of

it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve up cold as a quatrain,

doubling its producing value. By turning the skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you

would hardly recognize it as vers de societe with neatly shod feet and a fashion-plate

illustration.

I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople

began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifier I

droll sayings no longer fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes hard run for

material. I found myself listening to catch available ideas from the conversation of my

friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed at the wall paper for hours trying to

build up some gay little bubble of unstudied fun.

ever bid for their smiles now. They were too precious. I could not afford to dispense

gratuitously the means of my livelihood.

I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow's, that they might

Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not even paying that

much for the sayings I appropriated.

No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search of

material. Even in church my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn aisles

and pillars for spoil.

Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began: "Doxology --

sockdology--sockdolager--meter--meet her."

an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient

ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked her. She was a gold mine of those

amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind.

I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched only

the sacred precincts of home. With devilish cunning I encouraged her to talk.

Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the cold, conspicuous, common, printed

page I offered it to the public gaze.

A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet

confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them dance in the market

place.

Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender lamb,

next day's grind. There is worse to come.

God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my

little children.

Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. I

found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnishing a regular department in a

destruction of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent.

Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon

them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: "Here comes papa,"

wretch that I was!

And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I had saved a

thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort.

But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was everything that it

sounds like. I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoyment of life. The happiness of my

family had been sacrificed. I was a bee, sucking sordid honey from life's fairest flowers,

dreaded and shunned on account of my stingo.

He asked me inside.

The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire burned, in a little

place. There were rows of shining rosewood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes,

mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was peace,

order, silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of life,

was a little niche pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest.

When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no inclination

to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings. My mind seemed to

stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts.

A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, full of

serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip,

from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the restless reach after the nimble

repartee.

I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk, fearful that he

But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have I known a man's

talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter's was. Compared with it the Dead Sea is a

geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of wit marred his words. Commonplaces as trite

and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from his lips no more stirring in quality than a

Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from one's labor

which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a

smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my

I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my hours of holiday

with a schoolboy's zest.

Mv work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often

whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my

tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to get to his

tavern.

My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought

One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and a fine, fluffy

her with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in her eyes that the prejudice was

not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at double-quick time.

One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his

sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and explained that his profits and his

business were increasing rapidly. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash.

He would rather have me than any one he knew. When I left his place that afternoon

Peter had my check for the thousand dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner in his

undertaking business.

I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I

was dreading to tell my wife about it. But I walked on air. To give up the writing of

humorous stuff, once more to enjoy the apples of life, instead of squeezing them to a

be!

At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come during my absence.

Several of them contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first began going to

Heffelbower's my stuff had been coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had

been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had

labored like a bricklayer, slowly and with agony.

pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted quite

a large proportion of our readers. But for the past two months we

have noticed a decided falling off in its quality. Your earlier work

showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun and wit. Of late it

toil and drudging mechanism.

Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions

available any longer, we are, yours sincerely,

THE EDITOR.

I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew extremely long, and

there were tears in her eyes.

"The mean old thing!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I'm sure your pieces are just as good

as they ever were. And it doesn't take you half as long to write them as it did." And then,

I suppose, Louisa thought of the checks that would cease coming. "Oh, John," she

Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for

their old playmate as of yore.

supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!"

And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous

undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth

and ashes for all me.

With the editor's letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance

no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good

thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef--no, of Heffelbower & Co's. undertaking

establishment.

In conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town as well liked, as

jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once

while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of

Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter

attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any

funeral into a regular Irish wake.