The Gentle Grafter

“The Gentle Grafter” (The Gentle Grafter) is a collection of short stories by O. Henry first published in 1908 by McClure in New York. The stories in the collection are united by a recurring hero—Jeff Peters (Jeff Peters)—from whose point of view the narration is told (more precisely, the novellas in this collection are constructed as Jeff’s account to the author). The second recurring hero of the cycle is Andy Tucker, Peters’s friend and companion.

Both characters, with varying success, make a living through small-time fraud, exploiting human greed, stupidity, fear, and vanity—falling into the traps of their more resourceful fellow professionals from time to time.

The collection includes the stories:
1. Jeff Peters as a personal magnet
2. The hand that tortures the whole world
3. Marriage as an exact science
4. Porcine ethics