Programming note: Tomorrow, Sunday, please join me for Part Fourteen of the new audio serialisation of my highly prescient demographic bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
~Ahead of that, welcome to the seventy-fifth audio entertainment in our series Tales for Our Time. We are in our ninth season, and we've built a spectacular archive that runs the gamut from A to Z ...well, not quite, but certainly A to W - Jane Austen to P G Wodehouse.
For the first yarns in this year's Christmas season, we're spending this weekend in the company of the ingenious O Henry. Last night we presented his most famous story, The Gift of the Magi, which Tim Neilson, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, calls "one of the most beautiful tales ever". For Saturday and Sunday, we're presenting the premiere of my brand new reading of a second O Henry Christmas caper, Christmas by Injunction, first published in 1907. Tonight's episode opens a few days before Christmas, in a mining town in the new west:
Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and hospitality, sent out invitations to his friends in three States to drop in and share his luck...
When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named the town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee, and presented Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets.
Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee's claim played out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and Cherokee smiled and congratulated them.
Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smiling loser...
To hear Part One of Christmas by Injunction by O Henry, please click here and log-in.
Cherokee does not stay a smiling loser for long. And, for those listeners who have been following our other current audio adaptation, its theme is not unrelated: stratagems for maintaining Christmas in a world without children.
~We launched The Mark Steyn Club eight-and-a-half years ago, and I'm immensely heartened by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. As I said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all my columns, audio output, video content, every movie feature and Song of the Week.
That said, we have introduced a few bonuses for our members - not locking up our regular content, which will always be free, but admitting members to a few experimental features, such as this series of audio adventures. In Tales for Our Time I revisit some classic fiction I've mentioned in books and columns over the years - old stories that nevertheless speak to our own age. Our first serialisation was The Tragedy of the Korosko by the aforementioned Arthur Conan Doyle; next came The Time Machine by H G Wells; and then The Secret Agent by the aforementioned Mr Conrad, and The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Two of those I've since updated in contemporary iterations. I always liked reading stories, and I did do a little of it professionally a zillion years ago. So, if it works, we may release them as audio books on CD or Audible a ways down the road. But for the moment they're an exclusive bonus for Mark Steyn Club members.
If you'd like to hear this Tale, all you need to do is join the Club - either for a full year or, if you suspect we're some fly-by-night shifty Canuck scamsters and you want to see how it goes, a mere experimental quarter. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as this coming Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and our other video content;
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~Advance booking for my live appearances such as our annual Mark Steyn Cruise;
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~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our gift membership.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this Tale for Our Time, or consider my reading of it a bust, then feel free to comment away below. I weigh in on the comment threads myself from time to time, but I regard it as principally your turf, to have at it as you so desire. And do join us tomorrow for Part Two of Christmas by Injunction.