Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorne.

Great to be with you today.

I was checking out some O'Henry's stories the other day and came up with this one. I'd never seen it before. It's called

a departmental case. And this was written by O. Henry during the time that he lived in Austin,

Texas. About halfway through the stories I was already picturing

two characters in my mind, Robert Duvall as our central character, and Diane Lane, reprising

their roles in Lonesome Dove. It's a great, great story. Hope you enjoy it.

And now a departmental case by O'Henry.

In Texas, you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased.

Clouds there sails serenely against the wind.

The whippoor will delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes exactly reversed from those of his northern brother.

Given a draught and a subsequently lively rain, and low, from a glazed and stony soil,

will spring in a single night, blossomed lilies, miraculously fair. Tom Green County was once

the standard of measurement. I have forgotten how many New Jersey's and Rhode Islands it was that

could have been stowed away

and lost in its chaparral. But the legislative acts has slashed Tom Green into a handful of counties

hardly larger than European kingdoms. The legislature convenes at Austin, near the center of the state,

and while the representative for the Rio Grande

country is gathering his palm leaf fan and his linen duster to set out for the capital,

the panhandle Solon winds his muffler above his well-buttoned overcoat and kicks the snow from

his well-greased boots, ready for the same journey. All this merely to hint that the big ex-republic of the Southwest forms a sizable star on the

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