tting old--and--somehow--I am missing poor Stryker
damnably!"

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES

By O. Henry (1862-1910)

[From _The Junior Munsey_, February, 1902. Republished in the volume,
_Sixes and Sevens_ (1911), by O. Henry; copyright, 1911, by Doubleday,
Page & Co.; reprinted by their permission.]

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss
Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a
boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the
quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a
portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately
locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and
white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high box bushes lined the fence
and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that
pleased the eyes of the Talbots.

In this pleasant private boarding house they engaged rooms, including
a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his
book, _Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and
Bar_.

Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little
interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period
before the Civil War when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine
cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was
the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the
aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its
old pride and scruples of honor, an antiquated and punctilious
politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe.

Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The Major was
tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he
called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That
garment was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased
to shy at the frocks and broad-brimmed hats of Southern Congressmen.
One of the boarders christened it a "Father Hubbard," and it certainly
was high in the waist and full in the skirt.

But the Major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of
plaited, raveling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with
the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in
Mrs. Vardeman's select boarding house. Some of the young department
clerks would often "string him," as they called it, getting him
started upon the subject dearest to him--the tradition