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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                           The Framed Fifty
+
+                            By KARL DECKER
+
+         _Fifty dollars was the face value of that bill framed
+        over the bar--but it was worth more to sentimental old
+                 Mike O'Donnell than to any one else._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                Argosy All-Story Weekly April 6, 1929.]
+
+
+Over the center of O'Donnell's bar hung a fifty-dollar bill ornately
+framed in mahogany and gilt.
+
+It was to Mike O'Donnell what the gin-bottle-eyed god N'buango is to
+the tribal chief of the Mampasis. It was his fetish and his faith.
+
+An old custom this, of framing the first bill taken over the bar, a
+custom fallen into decay in the United States since the coming in of
+the Volstead law.
+
+To O'Donnell, however, the Volstead law now meant no more than a
+dry-sweeping ordinance to an Eskimo. O'Donnell had left the Volstead
+law far behind him.
+
+When that wrecker of barkeepers' happiness had fallen upon his native
+land O'Donnell migrated. Packing up everything he had--bar, bottles,
+chromos of attractive ladies in attractive if unconventional poses, and
+the framed fifty-dollar bill--Mike O'Donnell had taken ship to Havana.
+There he set up his establishment line for line, bottle for bottle, keg
+for keg, as it had been when it was "Mike's Place" on Broadway. And
+squarely over the center of the bar was placed his talisman, the framed
+fifty-dollar bill. O'Donnell would have left everything behind rather
+than that.
+
+It was part of him, of his prosperity.
+
+Years might come and years might go, but O'Donnell would never forget
+that first night of freedom and independence. He had served his time as
+an apprentice. He had mixed 'em and shaken 'em and poured 'em straight
+for years, in the days before the cash register had cast its blight
+over the bartending fraternity. Making his own change, trusted by his
+boss, he had played fair with that boss. He had never at any time held
+out more than twenty per cent, but this, thriftily hoarded, had set him
+up in business.
+
+Rare good fortune was his when it fell to his lot to locate on a
+Broadway corner in the Thirties, when that section was the very heart
+and center of New York and the Tenderloin police station the busiest in
+the world.
+
+Now, from the vantage point of his safeguarded retreat in la Calle
+Dragones in Havana he grew to look back upon those early days with
+something of dislike and displeasure. Nostalgia never affected him. He
+was glad to be in Havana.
+
+During the long, drowsy summer months he did better than he had ever
+done in the United States. A steady trade in the American colony and
+scores of tourists drifting in day by day kept his bank account sturdy
+and kept him out of the red. He was growing older, but he handled the
+trade himself. To put in an assistant would mean putting in a cash
+register, and O'Donnell was decided and firm in his refusal to permit
+the ghoulish chimes of Dayton to ring out across his bar.
+
+In winter he flourished like a palm tree in a flooded oasis.
+
+The élite of his own country flocked in upon him. Ladies whose names he
+knew from the society columns as well as he had known the politicians
+of his own ward in New York, came fluttering gayly into his bar,
+calling it "quaintly homelike," perched on stools, they ate
+frankfurters and sauerkraut and chile con carne as though to Havana
+bred. Men famous and widely heralded by the press called him by his
+first name and seemed pleased at his recognition of them.
+
+It was paradise to O'Donnell. New York had never been like this.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And always after one of his pleasanter evenings, before drawing the
+heavy steel blinds in front of his door and starting off for his home
+in Jesus del Monte, O'Donnell looked for a moment upon the framed
+fifty-dollar bill as though burning incense before it.
+
+He could never forget the night it came to him, back on Broadway.
+
+His was not a crowded opening. In the street outside, a sweeping,
+whistling wind drove the massed snowflakes in a white cloud across his
+windows. On the pavement, where it drifted, there were white hills four
+feet deep.
+
+He had set his opening for six o'clock in the evening, and at that
+black hour only a scant half dozen of his friends appeared.
+
+But among them was "Red" Walker, smiling, debonair, sheltered in one of
+the huge tan overcoats popular among the wise ones of Broadway in those
+days. Young Mr. Walker exuded prosperity.
+
+"The first bill goes into the frame?" queried Red.
+
+"Sure, sir," said O'Donnell. "The first bill over this bar will hang
+over this bar as long as I live."
+
+"Then frame that," said Red, tossing a fifty-dollar bill on the counter.
+
+It was opposed to all the ethics and conventions of bar openings. One
+is supposed to buy the first drink with a one-dollar bill. It is a
+purely economic proposition, that takes only a small amount out of
+circulation and cripples the finances of the establishment not at all.
+Every one present realized Red had made a faux pas.
+
+But the effect upon O'Donnell was as though he had stepped upon a high
+tension wire. The economics of the situation affected him not at all.
+Whatever of thrift and canny calculation there might have been in his
+blood took a vacation. He flushed with pride--a pride that sent the
+blood dashing through his body as though under fifty pounds pressure.
+He lifted the bill proudly and tenderly.
+
+"It'll always hang over my head, Mr. Walker," he said.
+
+They might have a fifty-dollar bill framed in Delmonico's, he thought,
+although he had never been in the place; or that newly opened castle
+of magnificence on Thirty-Third Street, the Astoria, might be able to
+show some such trophy; but he alone of all the humbler sort in his
+profession could display such an evidence of high-class trade. He was
+smitten with a quality of pride that almost became arrogance.
+
+"You'll always keep it in the frame?" asked Red.
+
+"As long as I live," said O'Donnell almost devoutly.
+
+"That makes me the godfather of the joint," said Red. "Another round
+for everybody."
+
+And then, taking a handful of change that almost wrecked O'Donnell's
+till, Red Walker disappeared into the white-blown night.
+
+He never came back. Long after, O'Donnell gathered from conversation
+in front of his bar that Red Walker had done two stretches in stir,
+one in Joliet and another in San Quentin; and he worried and sorrowed
+as if over a wayward son. He always had the feeling that some day the
+debonair youth who had become godfather to "Mike's Place" would come
+swinging jubilantly through his slatted doors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when he set up shop in Havana this feeling died. He felt now that
+he was cut off forever from the man to whom he felt, in some vague
+fashion, he owed his fattened prosperity. In the bar business so much
+depends upon the auspices under which one makes the first plunge. This
+ranks not with superstition, but with folklore.
+
+More than a third of a century had been tossed into the discard when
+O'Donnell one night discovered that when he wished he might retire.
+
+The statement from his bank over which he pored at his desk told him
+this. In Spanish though it was, he knew what the figure meant. With no
+children to think about and only one aged sister, an annuity that would
+bring him in a yearly fortune lay ready to his hand.
+
+But then the whirl of the arrival of a crowd of Americans changed the
+trend of his purpose. After all, he liked what he was doing too well to
+quit.
+
+In the bar were women in pearls, men in evening clothes; folk fresh
+from the many delights of an Havana afternoon, preparing for the
+delights of an Havana night, were waiting for him. They wanted
+cocktails, the kind he had made in the old days when the number of
+varieties could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
+
+The joshing, kindly meant, the praise of his skill, the happy gay
+atmosphere, strengthened the old man's decision. He would tend bar so
+long as he could stand on the grating.
+
+And as they left, Mike shot one swift look at the framed fifty-dollar
+bill.
+
+How Red Walker would have fitted into this environment! Red was refined
+and had a snappy line, to use the language of these later days. He
+would wise-crack with the best of them. He would have belonged.
+
+"That's a pretty bill you've got up there," said a gray man in gray
+clothes and a gray hat who stood in front of the bar; an inconspicuous
+man, the sort one would never notice whether alone or in a crowd.
+
+"Yes," snapped O'Donnell, suddenly laconic. The man looked like a dick.
+
+"Lemme see it," said the gray one.
+
+"Why?" asked O'Donnell, but there was nothing of the old pugnacity in
+his tone.
+
+"Hand it down," said the other, and O'Donnell, clambering upon a chair,
+detached the small frame and laid it reverently on the counter.
+
+The man in gray squinted at it for a moment then ripped the backing
+off and took out the bill. As a mere formality he tossed upon the bar
+a small gold pin he took from his vest pocket. It was a United States
+Secret Service operative's badge.
+
+"We are working here with the co-operation of the Cuban government,"
+he said. Then he took a fountain pen from his pocket and across the
+bill in red ink scrawled the word "Counterfeit."
+
+"How long you had it?" he asked.
+
+"Thirty-six years," groaned O'Donnell huskily through dry, parched lips.
+
+"Well, you're an innocent party, all right," said the man in gray.
+"This is some of old Paul Schwartz's work, and he's been dead for
+twenty years. We got all his plates. Never made a vignette yet that
+didn't squint. Red Walker used to shove for him, and Red died in
+Atlanta."
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 ***</div>
+
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>The Framed Fifty</h1>
+
+<p class="ph1">By KARL DECKER</p>
+
+<p><i>Fifty dollars was the face value of that bill framed<br>
+over the bar—but it was worth more to sentimental old<br>
+Mike O'Donnell than to any one else.</i></p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br>
+Argosy All-Story Weekly April 6, 1929.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<p>Over the center of O'Donnell's bar hung a fifty-dollar bill ornately
+framed in mahogany and gilt.</p>
+
+<p>It was to Mike O'Donnell what the gin-bottle-eyed god N'buango is to
+the tribal chief of the Mampasis. It was his fetish and his faith.</p>
+
+<p>An old custom this, of framing the first bill taken over the bar, a
+custom fallen into decay in the United States since the coming in of
+the Volstead law.</p>
+
+<p>To O'Donnell, however, the Volstead law now meant no more than a
+dry-sweeping ordinance to an Eskimo. O'Donnell had left the Volstead
+law far behind him.</p>
+
+<p>When that wrecker of barkeepers' happiness had fallen upon his native
+land O'Donnell migrated. Packing up everything he had—bar, bottles,
+chromos of attractive ladies in attractive if unconventional poses, and
+the framed fifty-dollar bill—Mike O'Donnell had taken ship to Havana.
+There he set up his establishment line for line, bottle for bottle, keg
+for keg, as it had been when it was "Mike's Place" on Broadway. And
+squarely over the center of the bar was placed his talisman, the framed
+fifty-dollar bill. O'Donnell would have left everything behind rather
+than that.</p>
+
+<p>It was part of him, of his prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>Years might come and years might go, but O'Donnell would never forget
+that first night of freedom and independence. He had served his time as
+an apprentice. He had mixed 'em and shaken 'em and poured 'em straight
+for years, in the days before the cash register had cast its blight
+over the bartending fraternity. Making his own change, trusted by his
+boss, he had played fair with that boss. He had never at any time held
+out more than twenty per cent, but this, thriftily hoarded, had set him
+up in business.</p>
+
+<p>Rare good fortune was his when it fell to his lot to locate on a
+Broadway corner in the Thirties, when that section was the very heart
+and center of New York and the Tenderloin police station the busiest in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now, from the vantage point of his safeguarded retreat in la Calle
+Dragones in Havana he grew to look back upon those early days with
+something of dislike and displeasure. Nostalgia never affected him. He
+was glad to be in Havana.</p>
+
+<p>During the long, drowsy summer months he did better than he had ever
+done in the United States. A steady trade in the American colony and
+scores of tourists drifting in day by day kept his bank account sturdy
+and kept him out of the red. He was growing older, but he handled the
+trade himself. To put in an assistant would mean putting in a cash
+register, and O'Donnell was decided and firm in his refusal to permit
+the ghoulish chimes of Dayton to ring out across his bar.</p>
+
+<p>In winter he flourished like a palm tree in a flooded oasis.</p>
+
+<p>The élite of his own country flocked in upon him. Ladies whose names he
+knew from the society columns as well as he had known the politicians
+of his own ward in New York, came fluttering gayly into his bar,
+calling it "quaintly homelike," perched on stools, they ate
+frankfurters and sauerkraut and chile con carne as though to Havana
+bred. Men famous and widely heralded by the press called him by his
+first name and seemed pleased at his recognition of them.</p>
+
+<p>It was paradise to O'Donnell. New York had never been like this.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>And always after one of his pleasanter evenings, before drawing the
+heavy steel blinds in front of his door and starting off for his home
+in Jesus del Monte, O'Donnell looked for a moment upon the framed
+fifty-dollar bill as though burning incense before it.</p>
+
+<p>He could never forget the night it came to him, back on Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>His was not a crowded opening. In the street outside, a sweeping,
+whistling wind drove the massed snowflakes in a white cloud across his
+windows. On the pavement, where it drifted, there were white hills four
+feet deep.</p>
+
+<p>He had set his opening for six o'clock in the evening, and at that
+black hour only a scant half dozen of his friends appeared.</p>
+
+<p>But among them was "Red" Walker, smiling, debonair, sheltered in one of
+the huge tan overcoats popular among the wise ones of Broadway in those
+days. Young Mr. Walker exuded prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>"The first bill goes into the frame?" queried Red.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, sir," said O'Donnell. "The first bill over this bar will hang
+over this bar as long as I live."</p>
+
+<p>"Then frame that," said Red, tossing a fifty-dollar bill on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>It was opposed to all the ethics and conventions of bar openings. One
+is supposed to buy the first drink with a one-dollar bill. It is a
+purely economic proposition, that takes only a small amount out of
+circulation and cripples the finances of the establishment not at all.
+Every one present realized Red had made a faux pas.</p>
+
+<p>But the effect upon O'Donnell was as though he had stepped upon a high
+tension wire. The economics of the situation affected him not at all.
+Whatever of thrift and canny calculation there might have been in his
+blood took a vacation. He flushed with pride—a pride that sent the
+blood dashing through his body as though under fifty pounds pressure.
+He lifted the bill proudly and tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll always hang over my head, Mr. Walker," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They might have a fifty-dollar bill framed in Delmonico's, he thought,
+although he had never been in the place; or that newly opened castle
+of magnificence on Thirty-Third Street, the Astoria, might be able to
+show some such trophy; but he alone of all the humbler sort in his
+profession could display such an evidence of high-class trade. He was
+smitten with a quality of pride that almost became arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll always keep it in the frame?" asked Red.</p>
+
+<p>"As long as I live," said O'Donnell almost devoutly.</p>
+
+<p>"That makes me the godfather of the joint," said Red. "Another round
+for everybody."</p>
+
+<p>And then, taking a handful of change that almost wrecked O'Donnell's
+till, Red Walker disappeared into the white-blown night.</p>
+
+<p>He never came back. Long after, O'Donnell gathered from conversation
+in front of his bar that Red Walker had done two stretches in stir,
+one in Joliet and another in San Quentin; and he worried and sorrowed
+as if over a wayward son. He always had the feeling that some day the
+debonair youth who had become godfather to "Mike's Place" would come
+swinging jubilantly through his slatted doors.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But when he set up shop in Havana this feeling died. He felt now that
+he was cut off forever from the man to whom he felt, in some vague
+fashion, he owed his fattened prosperity. In the bar business so much
+depends upon the auspices under which one makes the first plunge. This
+ranks not with superstition, but with folklore.</p>
+
+<p>More than a third of a century had been tossed into the discard when
+O'Donnell one night discovered that when he wished he might retire.</p>
+
+<p>The statement from his bank over which he pored at his desk told him
+this. In Spanish though it was, he knew what the figure meant. With no
+children to think about and only one aged sister, an annuity that would
+bring him in a yearly fortune lay ready to his hand.</p>
+
+<p>But then the whirl of the arrival of a crowd of Americans changed the
+trend of his purpose. After all, he liked what he was doing too well to
+quit.</p>
+
+<p>In the bar were women in pearls, men in evening clothes; folk fresh
+from the many delights of an Havana afternoon, preparing for the
+delights of an Havana night, were waiting for him. They wanted
+cocktails, the kind he had made in the old days when the number of
+varieties could be counted on the fingers of one hand.</p>
+
+<p>The joshing, kindly meant, the praise of his skill, the happy gay
+atmosphere, strengthened the old man's decision. He would tend bar so
+long as he could stand on the grating.</p>
+
+<p>And as they left, Mike shot one swift look at the framed fifty-dollar
+bill.</p>
+
+<p>How Red Walker would have fitted into this environment! Red was refined
+and had a snappy line, to use the language of these later days. He
+would wise-crack with the best of them. He would have belonged.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pretty bill you've got up there," said a gray man in gray
+clothes and a gray hat who stood in front of the bar; an inconspicuous
+man, the sort one would never notice whether alone or in a crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," snapped O'Donnell, suddenly laconic. The man looked like a dick.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemme see it," said the gray one.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked O'Donnell, but there was nothing of the old pugnacity in
+his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it down," said the other, and O'Donnell, clambering upon a chair,
+detached the small frame and laid it reverently on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>The man in gray squinted at it for a moment then ripped the backing
+off and took out the bill. As a mere formality he tossed upon the bar
+a small gold pin he took from his vest pocket. It was a United States
+Secret Service operative's badge.</p>
+
+<p>"We are working here with the co-operation of the Cuban government,"
+he said. Then he took a fountain pen from his pocket and across the
+bill in red ink scrawled the word "Counterfeit."</p>
+
+<p>"How long you had it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty-six years," groaned O'Donnell huskily through dry, parched lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're an innocent party, all right," said the man in gray.
+"This is some of old Paul Schwartz's work, and he's been dead for
+twenty years. We got all his plates. Never made a vignette yet that
+didn't squint. Red Walker used to shove for him, and Red died in
+Atlanta."</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph2">THE END.</p>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78650 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78650
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78650)