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The Lady Higher Up

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless, for
the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze was
south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of feminine
gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five feet above the
heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan pointed her
vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction of her exalted
sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden were out; the b
enches in the Square were filled with sleepers in postures so strange that
beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno
would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the
tower of the Garden -- its constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its
innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to
style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by
its habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture
of swift flight to catch a Harlem train -- remained poised with its arrow
pointed across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally
it would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose
duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other
lands.

Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began to
cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden upon
her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened her) would
have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that
of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the world
(as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities.
And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator,
must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her
field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an
empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B,
C's.

"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.

"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoarse I am I can hardly
talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by
that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis after being a
fine evening, miss."

"If you don't mind my asking," came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I didn't
know that Liberty was necessarily Irish."

"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye'd not
need to ask," replied the offshore statue. "If ye wasn't so light-headed
and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the
American people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of
welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York. 'Tis that
I've been doing night and day since I was erected. Ye must know, Miss
Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with people -- 'tis not their
makers nor the purposes for which they were created that influence the
operations of their tongues at all -- it's the associations with which
they become associated, I'm telling ye."

"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of the
old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in the
ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a Coney
Island car conductor and a five-cent fare."

"I'm right glad ye've made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana," said
Mrs. Liberty. "'Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there anything
doin' up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?"

"Oh, la, la, la! -- no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt
Liberty? Got that from 'Paris by Night' on the roof garden under me.
You'll hear that 'la, la, la' at the Cafe McCann now, along with
'garsong.' The bohemian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong' since
O'Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling him it.
Oh, no; the town's strickly on the bum these nights. Everybody's away.
Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this evening with his
stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A waiter biting on a
dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up. He looks around and sees
his little pothooks perpetrator. 'H'm!' says he, 'will you take a letter,
Miss De St. Montmorency?' 'Sure, in a minute,' says she, 'if you'll make
it an X.'

"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!"

"'Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the cat
show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the privates
look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as
floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl that
measures 36 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam on the
banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the Vanderbilts,
Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the
French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund
Society dance the Highland fling one with another. And ye have the grand
O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant in the world, where the
French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers in doin' the cake walk. Ye
have the best job for a statue in the whole town, Miss Diana."

"'Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the science of
liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down at Ellis
Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light up, 'tis
tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write out their
naturalization papers."

"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came the
sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. "It must be awfully
lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see how you
ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are wearing went
out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to be held for
damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady. That's where Mr.
St. Gaudens was wise. I'm always e little ahead of the styles; but
they're coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a moment -- I caught a
puff of wind from the north -- shouldn't wonder if things had loosened up
in Esopus. There, now! it's in the West -- I should think that gold plank
would have calmed the air out in that direction. What were you saying,
Mrs. Liberty?"

"A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one of them
European steamers a-sailin' up the Narrows, and I must be attendin' to me
duties. 'Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of Liberty to welcome all
them that survive the kicks that the steerage stewards give 'em while
landin.' Sure 'tis a great country ye can come to for $8.50, and the
doctor waitin' to send ye back home free if he sees yer eyes red from
cryin' for it."

The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points on
the horizon with its aureate arrow.

"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some night,
when the wind's right. I'll call you up again. But -- say! you haven't
got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept a pretty good
watch on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here. That's a pretty
sick-looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down at your end of it;
but they don't all stay that way. Every little while up here I see guys
signing checks and voting the right ticket, and encouraging the arts and t
aking a bath every morning, that was shoved ashore by a dock labourer born
in the United States who never earned over forty dollars a month. Don't
run down your job, Aunt Liberty; you're all right, all right."




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