The Cop and the Anthem: the Story

Two. The shop window. He takes a cobblestone and smashes a plate-glass window on Sixth Avenue, then stands still with his hands in his pockets and smiles at the policeman. It fails because the policeman refuses to believe it: men who smash windows do not stay to talk to the law, they run. Seeing a man running to catch a car, the officer joins the pursuit.

Three. The cheap restaurant. A modest place with thick crockery and thin soup. He eats beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie, and then tells the waiter that he has no money. "Now, get busy and call a cop," he says. "And don't keep a gentleman waiting." It fails because the waiter says "No cop for youse" and two waiters throw him out on his left ear, while a policeman two doors away laughs and walks off.

Four. The young woman. He decides to play the "masher", that is, a man who pesters women in the street, in front of a large policeman leaning against a water plug. He straightens his tie, sets his hat at a killing cant, and says "Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?" It fails because the young woman is delighted: "Sure, Mike, if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching." He walks past the policeman with her on his arm, "overcome with gloom" and "doomed to liberty".

Five. Disorderly conduct. Outside a bright theatre he yells drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice, dances, howls and raves. It fails because the policeman turns his back and explains to a citizen that it is one of the Yale lads celebrating a victory over Hartford College: "Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be."

Six. The umbrella. In a cigar store he takes another man's silk umbrella from beside the door and walks off with it slowly. The owner follows and claims it. Soapy sneers, admits the theft in terms, and points to a policeman on the corner: "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it." It fails because the umbrella man turns out to have found the umbrella himself that morning in a restaurant, and retreats apologising. The policeman, meanwhile, hurries off to help a blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a car two blocks away.

Soapy's own comment on the pattern. He mutters against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs, and thinks that because he wants to fall into their clutches, "they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong."

The anthem

He turns east, towards Madison Square, "for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench". On a quiet corner he comes to an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled, with a soft light through a violet-stained window where the organist is practising for Sunday.

What the music does. The anthem holds him against the iron fence, because he had known it well "in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars."

The change. He sees with sudden horror the pit into which he has tumbled, "the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives" that make up his existence, and an impulse moves him to fight his fate. He will pull himself out of the mire, make a man of himself again, and go downtown tomorrow to find work: a fur importer had once offered him a place as a driver. He would be somebody in the world. He would...

The arrest

The sentence breaks off, and a hand is laid on his arm.

"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.

"Nothin'," said Soapy.

"Then come along," said the policeman.

The story ends in one line of a different voice altogether.

"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

Why the ending is placed exactly there. He is arrested at the only moment in the story when he is committing no offence and intends none, and he is given precisely the sentence he had spent the whole story trying to earn. The reform is destroyed by the granting of the wish.

A worked answer

Question. "Give an account of Soapy's attempts to get himself arrested." Six marks.

A model answer. Soapy makes six attempts, each defeated for a different reason. He first tries to dine expensively and then declare himself insolvent, and is turned out at the door because the head waiter notices his frayed trousers and worn shoes. He smashes a plate-glass window with a cobblestone and waits beside it, and the policeman refuses to suspect him because men who break windows run away. He eats a full meal at a cheap restaurant and announces that he cannot pay, and is thrown into the street by two waiters who will not call a policeman at all. He plays the masher to a young woman in front of a watching officer, and she turns out to be perfectly willing to go with him, so that he walks off, in the story's phrase, doomed to liberty. He shouts and dances in drunken disorder outside a theatre, and the policeman explains to a passer-by that he is a college boy celebrating and that there are instructions to leave such men alone. Finally he steals a silk umbrella and openly admits it, and the owner, who had picked the umbrella up himself that morning, apologises and retreats.

The sentence that turns the list into an answer. In every case the failure is caused by somebody's assumption about what a person like Soapy would do, and the story's point is made by the seventh event, when he is arrested for standing still.

Quick revision

O. Henry, pen name of William Sydney Porter, 1862 to 1910. The Four Million, 1906, named for the population of New York.

The plan: three months on Blackwell's Island, chosen over charity because charity is paid for in humiliation of spirit, a bath and a private inquisition.

The six attempts: the expensive café, the smashed window, the cheap restaurant, the masher, disorderly conduct, the umbrella.

The anthem: the old church, the organist practising, the memory of mothers and roses and ambitions and immaculate thoughts and collars, the resolution to find work with the fur importer.

The arrest: "What are you doin' here?" "Nothin'." "Then come along."

The last line: "Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

Test yourself

1. Why does Soapy prefer prison to charity? Because charity is paid for in humiliation: every bed has its toll of a bath and every loaf its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. The law, though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs, so in his opinion the Law is more benign than Philanthropy.

2. Why does the policeman not arrest him for smashing the window? Because Soapy stays where he is, and the policeman's assumption is that men who smash windows take to their heels. Seeing a man running for a car, he chases him instead.

3. What happens when he plays the masher? The young woman is glad to be approached and takes his sleeve, saying she would have spoken sooner but the cop was watching, so that he walks past the policeman with her on his arm and, in the story's phrase, is doomed to liberty.

4. What causes the change in him outside the church? An anthem the organist is practising, which he had known in the days when his life contained mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars. It makes him see the degradation of his present life and resolve to find work and make a man of himself again.

5. What is he finally arrested for, and what does he get? For nothing. A policeman asks what he is doing there, he answers "Nothin'", and he is taken. The magistrate gives him three months on the Island the next morning, which is exactly what he had spent the story trying to obtain.