The Enchanted Profile
By O. HENRY
Copyright by Doubleday, Cage & Co.
HERE are few ca liphesses. Women are Scheherzades by birth, predilection, in instinct and arrangement of the vocal chords. The thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of thousands of visitors' daughters to their respective sultans. But the bowstring will get some of them yet if they don't watch out. I heard a story, though, of one lady caliph. It isn't precisely an "Arabian Nights" story, because it brings in Cinderella, who flourished her dishrag in another epoch and country. So if you don't mind the mixed dates (which seem to give it an eastern flavor, after all) we'll get along.
In New York there is an old, old hotel. You have seen wood cuts of it in the magazines. It was built—let's see—at a time when there was nothing above Fourteenth street except the old Indian trail to Boston and Hammerstein's office. Soon the old hostelry will be torn down. And as the stout walls are riven apart and the bricks go roaring down the chutes, crowds of citizens will gather at the nearest corners and weep over the destruction of a dear old landmark. Civic pride is strong in New Bagdad, and the wettest weeper and the loudest howler against the Iconoclasts will be the man (originally from Terre Haute) whose fond memories of the old hotel are limited to his having.  been kicked out from its free lunch counter in 1873. At this hotel, always stopped Mrs. 