Is This Good Dialogue?… starring O. Henry!

Short stories should be more popular than they are. They’re short, so they don’t take long to read. The writing tends to be more efficient than the writing in novels, so readers don’t feel like they’ve wasted their time with filler.

When I feel like reading but I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll sometimes grab an O. Henry short story. Critics today might call his stories too hokey. His characters spoke in unrealistically long and complicated sentences. The stories make references to stuff that doesn’t exist anymore.

O. Henry’s characters weren’t all that bright, but they used big words and spoke in long sentences. My question is… is this actually good dialogue? Here’s an excerpt from the short story “The Ransom of Mack.”

*****

One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the habits and policies of women folks.

“Why, yes,” says I, in a tone of voice; “I know ’em from Alfred to Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude,” says I, “is as plain to my sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I’m onto all their little sidesteps and punctual discrepancies.”

“I tell you, Andy,” says Mack with a kind of sigh. “I never had the least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took the time. I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never seemed to get my ratiocinations equipped with sentiments usually depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had,” says old Mack.

“They’re an adverse study,” says I, “and adapted to points of view. Although they vary in rationale, I have found ’em quite often obviously differing from each other in divergencies of contrast.”

“It seems to me,” goes on Mack, “that a man had better take ’em in and secure his inspirations of the sect when he’s young and so preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I’m too old now to go hopping into the curriculum.”

*****

The dialogue remains like this throughout the rest of the story. In fact, almost all of O. Henry’s characters spoke like this in almost every story that he wrote (that I’ve read).

I mean, I kind of like this dialogue, but reading too much of it at one time can give me a headache.

But enough about me! What do you think? Do you like O. Henry’s style of dialogue? Would too much of it at one time get old? Most importantly, are the men’s observations about women accurate?