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He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it.
Behrman is old by early twentieth-century standards, having a prodigious beard like the one on Michelangelo’s Moses sculpture. The narrator links Behrman to one of history’s greatest artists, though not in talent so much as in terms of his physical likeness to the great master’s work. The narrator also compares him to a satyr, which is a lustful and drunken hybrid of man and goat that comes from Greek mythology. The narrator also compares Behrman to another mythical figure: a small and mischievous creature known as an imp. These comparisons suggest that Behrman has a wicked side.
As a failed artist, Behrman has not even come close to achieving his masterpiece. Art is Behrman’s “Mistress,” which is to say a woman who holds power or authority. Though he has tried to approach his mistress, he’s not come near enough even to touch “her” robe. In other words, he’s failed to produce the masterpiece he’s always dreamed of making.
It’s also worth noting that the narrator’s use of the phrase “touch the hem” alludes to a New Testament story in the Bible. In Mark 5:21–34, a terminally ill woman believes that by touching Jesus’s robe she will be healed and restored to her community, which has cast her out because of her disease. The allusion suggests that Behrman is like the woman. His illness is his lack of artistic inspiration, and he is an outcast by successful artists because of it.
“Vass!” he cried. “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy.”
Sue has informed Behrman of Johnsy’s illness and her lack of will to live. O. Henry uses dialect in Behrman’s response to create humor and to suggest that Behrman is a European immigrant. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the eastern United States experienced a great wave of European immigrants. Steamships made immigration faster and cheaper than ever before. New immigrants were often a target for humorists.
Additionally, Behrman expresses a pragmatic attitude, thinking that Johnsy is foolish and silly to let her imagination rob her of the will to live. Perhaps this view of imagination is what prevents Behrman from painting his masterpiece. Yet, he shows his tenderness for “dot poor little Miss Yohnsy.” Although O. Henry uses Behrman’s dialect for humor, he also humanizes his character as sympathetic and self-sacrificing.
