Best Seller By O Henry

BEST SELLER BY O HENRY: CLASS IX (C.B.S.E.) 
PART-1

L-5: Best Seller by O. Henry: Class IX

The narrator was going to Pittsburgh on a business tour one day during last summer. He was travelling in a chair car which was filled with people.

Some of them were ladies wearing brown silk dresses stitched in several styles. Men were also travelling among them. They seemed to from different business. The narrator was sitting in chair No. 07 and he was busy noticing the back side of the head of a person, who was sitting in the chair No. 09.

All of  a sudden, the person sitting in the chair No. 09 hurled (threw) a book on the floor between his chair and the window uttering some critical comments. The narrator read its title ‘’The Rose Lady and Trevelyan’, one of the bestselling novels of that time. After that, the person turned his chair towards the window.

The moment the narrator had a glimpse of the man in the chair No. 09, he recognized him immediately. He was John A Pescud, whom he met two years ago. He was a travelling salesman of a plate-glass company 'Cambria Steel Works'.

Within a few minutes, they started talking about the usual topics about rain, prosperity, health, residence and destination. Very soon those topics were exhausted. It seemed that the narrator did not like politics.

Then we come to know from the narrator that Pescud was a man of small stature and did not look handsome . He also believed that plate glass was the most important commodity (a useful thing) and his company Cambria Steel Works was the best company. He also told the narrator that a person ought to be decent and law-abiding in his home-town.

The narrator said that he had never had the chance to know about his views on life, romance, literature and ethics (moral principles that control one’ behaviour) in his small meetings in the past.

The narrator also came to know from Pescud that his business was flourishing and he was going to Coke-town. After that, he stirred (moved) the discarded (thrown) book with his hand and asked the narrator if he had read any of such best sellers. He also explained that he meant to say if he had read the novel in which the hero was an American wealthy person, maybe from Chicago, who fell in love with a royal princess from Europe, travelling in the guise of an ordinary girl under a fake name and the hero followed her to her father’s home (palace). The Pescud told the narrator that all such novels had the same theme and the story. Such things do not happen in real life.

After that Pescud continued telling the story of the princess being followed by the hero of the story. He said that the hero chased the girl to her residence and came to know all about the girl. Then he met her in the evening and talked for a long time. The line ‘She reminds him of the difference in their stations’ may mean that she told him about the difference between the statuses of their families. It may also mean the geographical distance between their houses. Another line ‘that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages about America’s uncrowned sovereigns’ means that…

Pescud continues saying that if the narrator had read any of such novels, he would come to know that the hero slaps the king’s Swiss body-guards whenever they get in his way. He was a great fencer also.

He also said that such stories are real and believable and he also knew something about literature in spite of his odd business.