The Furnished Room

“They sing ‘Home, Sweet Home’ in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.”

This line offers several historical and Biblical allusions. The reference to ragtime, a popular style of music between 1890 and 1910, establishes the time period. The phrase “lares et penates,” stemming from guardians in Roman mythology who were protectors of the home, refers to household possessions. The fact that all of their possessions can fit in a bandbox, a small box used to hold delicate apparel, highlights the transitory nature of the population. The allusion to the vine and fig tree comes from Micah 4:4 in the Bible, referencing the act of setting up home. By indicating that their only household possessions are a hat and a plant, O. Henry emphasizes that the city does not offer its residents a true home.

“It would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these vagrant guests.”

O. Henry introduces the idea of ghosts early in the text to foreshadow the young man’s experience when he gets to the room. At the end of the text, the reader realizes that Eloise’s ghost haunted the furnished room.

“To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.”

The housekeeper is compared to a worm with an insatiable appetite. This parasitic imagery indicates she is looking for more unsuspecting victims on whom to prey.