The Complete Short Stories. O. Hooper HenryЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The Proem By The Carpenter

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      They will tell you in Anchuria, that President Miraflores, of that volatile republic, died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio; that he had reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences of an imminent revolution; and that one hundred thousand dollars, government funds, which he carried with him in an American leather valise as a souvenir of his tempestuous administration, was never afterward recovered.

      For a real, a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of wood stands at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with a hot iron this inscription:

      RAMON ANGEL DE LAS CRUZES

      Y MIRAFLORES

      PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA

      DE ANCHURIA

      QUE SEA SU JUEZ DIOS

      It is characteristic of this buoyant people that they pursue no man beyond the grave. “Let God be his judge!” — Even with the hundred thousand unfound, though greatly coveted, the hue and cry went no further than that.

      To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the story of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove to escape from the country with the public funds and also with Doña Isabel Guilbert, the young American opera singer; and how, being apprehended by members of the opposing political party in Coralio, he shot himself through the head rather than give up the funds, and, in consequence, the Señorita Guilbert. They will relate further that Doña Isabel, her adventurous bark of fortune shoaled by the simultaneous loss of her distinguished admirer and the souvenir hundred thousand, dropped anchor on this stagnant coast, awaiting a rising tide.

      They say, in Coralio, that