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The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry
page 91 of 172 (52%)
all his money in the last five years. He's got professors posting him
up now in education--art and literature and haberdashery and such
things.

"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
Corporation man that there'd be four suicides in the Allegheny rolling
mills to-day. So everybody in sight had to walk up and have drinks on
him. He took a fancy to me and asked me to dinner with him. We went to
a restaurant in Diamond alley and sat on stools and had a sparkling
Moselle and clam chowder and apple fritters.

"'Then he wanted to show me his bachelor apartment on Liberty street.
He's got ten rooms over a fish market with privilege of the bath on
the next floor above. He told me it cost him $18,000 to furnish his
apartment, and I believe it.

"'He's got $40,000 worth of pictures in one room, and $20,000 worth of
curios and antiques in another. His name's Scudder, and he's 45, and
taking lessons on the piano and 15,000 barrels of oil a day out of his
wells.'

"'All right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay
vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?'

"'Now, that man,' says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, 'ain't
what you would call an ordinary scutt. When he was showing me his
cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke
oven. He says that if some of his big deals go through he'll make
J. P. Morgan's collection of sweatshop tapestry and Augusta, Me.,
beadwork look like the contents of an ostrich's craw thrown on a
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