When William Sydney
Porter, pseudonym O. Henry, was a teenager in Greenville, N.C., he tended to be
a somewhat cruel practical joker. How he developed this inclination is a
mystery, though we do know that his aunt home-schooled him and encouraged his
satirical cartoons and caricatures as well as his sometimes quite poignant
writings. Further, he had little patience with people’s vices and foibles.
Some of the practical
jokes got out of hand as reported in Gerald Langford’s biography of the writer.
Apparently Porter’s father was an alcoholic physician who, because of his
drinking, had to quit his practice. Since he was not doctoring, he took up a
project in the shed behind the house, intending to create perpetual motion with
a water-driven apparatus. The ruined doctor apparently thought he could actually
create a self-powering “machine.” Knowing otherwise, young Porter would
regularly sneak into the shed and subtly skew the project, secretly laughing
with glee when his frustrated father discovered the flaw. Thus he contributed
to keeping the old man busy.
Another of his jokes
had a remedial intention. One of the employees at the pharmacy where he worked
had created a long tube or “straw” that he secretly sank into the whisky cask
in the cellar of the drug store. (I think that store used to prescribe whisky
for toddies). Porter hid in the basement and observed the employee sampling the
whisky through the tube repeatedly and with gusto. So, when that employee was
out delivering some meds, Porter got some very hot pepper flakes and laced the
interior of the straw with them. The next time the employee went to the
basement, he came bursting back up through the store and ran out front to the
watering trough, into which he plunged mouth open. Langford reports that Porter
joined him at the trough and got a confession out of him while he and the other
pharmacy personnel howled with laughter.
So, I suppose it
shouldn’t be a surprise that O. Henry’s first published story, “Whistling Dick’s
Christmas Stocking,” contains a turn of events that could be classified as a
joke played on some criminals. Dick, the hobo who was a great whistler, picks
up a new stocking that has fallen off a high class buggy. He follows the buggy
full of rich people and goes behind the great plantation where it stops. There
he encounters a group of crooks who let him in on their plans to start a fire
in the field and when all the menfolk are dealing with the fire, steal all the
valuables from the house. Dick wants no part of it so he writes a warning note
revealing the plot, inserts it into the stocking with a big rock. He throws the
missile through a window, thereby thwarting the sinister plot and saving the
plantation.
Now that I think about
it, all his stories are, in a sense, practical jokes on the reader. Isn’t that
what a surprise ending is—an unexpected twist that tricks you away from your
expectations?
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