The Romance of a Busy Broker — A Classic Humorus Story by O. Henry

Don McDonald (0:02)

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Hi, I'm Don McDonald. There are those for whom work becomes an obsession to the detriment of their personal lives. Well, the businessman in our next story gives new meaning to the modern term workaholic in The Romance of a Busy Broker by O.

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell Broker, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half past nine in company of his young lady stenographer. With a snappy, good morning, Pitcher, Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to leap over it and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams waiting there for him.

The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forwent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets, or lockets. She had not the air of a being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was gray and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green wing of a macaw.

On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peach blow, her expression a happy one tinged with reminiscence.

Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence.

The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man. It was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs. Well, what is it? Anything? Asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay like a bank of staged snow on his crowded desk. His keen gray eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half-impatiently. Nothing, answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile. Mr. Pitcher, she said to the confidential clerk, Did Mr. Maxwell say anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer? He did, answered Pitcher. He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning. It's nine-forty-five o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing gum has showed up yet. I will do the work as usual, then, said the young lady, until someone comes to fill the place. And she went to her desk at once, and hung the black turban hat and the gold green McCaw wing in its accustomed place.

He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the crowded hour of glorious life. The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms. And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape. The desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the railing jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something resembling animation. On the exchange, there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to phone, from desk to door with the trained agility of a harlequin. In the midst of this growing and important stress, the broker became suddenly aware of a high rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sack and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories and Pitcher was there to construe her. A lady from the stenographer's agency to see about the position, said Pitcher. Maxwell turned half around with his hands full of papers and ticker tape. What position? he asked with a frown. Position of stenographer, said Pitcher. You told me yesterday to call them up and have one sent over this morning. You are losing your mind, Pitcher, said Maxwell. Why should I have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Counterman that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any more of them in here.