An Adjustment of Nature

An Adjustment of Nature by O.Henry (d. 1910) (in Short Story Collection Vol. 069 )

In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been
sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named
Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an
unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His
theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was
a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a
fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft--but that is not the beginning of the
story.

Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at
Cypher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say "took." When we had money, Cypher got
it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called
for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in
Cypher's sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless
soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten
desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the
bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for.
Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed
perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of
his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked
back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now
and then we paid up back scores.

But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She
was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of
nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of
scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled
and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of h