Explore "Last Fall of the Alamo" by O. Henry on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I am -- / Excuse me, I was -- the Alamo. / Ye who have tears to shed, / Shed. / Shades of Crockett, Bowie and the rest / Who in my sacred blood-stained walls were slain! / Shades of the fifty or sixty solitary survivors, / Each of whom alone escaped; / And shades of the dozen or so daughters, / Sisters, cousins and aunts of the Alamo, / Protest! / Against this foul indignity.
Ain't there enough jobs in the city / That need whitewashing / Without jumping on me? / Did I stand off 5,000 Mexicans in '36 / To be kalsomined and wall-papered / And fixed up with dados and pink mottoes / In '96? / Why don't you put bloomers on me at once, / And call me / The New Alamo? -- / Tamaleville! / You make me tired. / I can stand a good deal yet, / So don't have any more chrysanthemum shows / In me. / If you do / I'll fall on you. / Sabe?"
(_Houston Daily Post_, Monday morning, April 13, 1896.)