Page 15 - The English Carnival 7

“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes,

fire and flood--in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and
cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a
kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”

“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy amused and
quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old Dorset.”

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a
blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the
cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of
two thousand. “I ain’t attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of
parental affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody
to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m

willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up
to me.”

An excerpt from The Ransom of Red Chief by O. HENRY

Word Meanings

undeleterious not harmful or damaging

apparition a supernatural appearance or manifestation of a person or thing,
especially a ghost

fancied imagined or believed without sufficient evidence; supposed

diatribe a forceful and bitter verbal attack or criticism

sylvan related to or characteristic of the woods or forest; wooded.

somnolent sleepy or drowsy; inducing sleep

reconnoitre to make a military observation, especially to locate an enemy or
ascertain strategic features

peremptory insisting on immediate attention or obedience; brusque

decry to express strong disapproval of; criticize

wildcat a term used to describe something or someone untamed, unruly, or
unconventional. in this context, it refers to the boy, red chief.

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The English Carnival–8