Explore "A Ruler of Men" by O. Henry on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains in a sandstorm; and you grow to hate them as you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screwdriver, a buttonhook, a nail-file, a shoehorn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentleman's key-ring.