blind-bridle—a bridle with flap-like extensions partly covering the horse's eyes to prevent him from looking to the side or turning his head to the side
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star wayno—probably a corruption of "esta bueno" ("that's good)
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orchestrion—a large mechanical instrument capable of imitating various musical instruments or even an entire orchestra. It usually included components of an organ, piano, and percussion instruments. Those made by the Seeburg Company were also called nickelodeons because they played when a coin was inserted into a slot. The Seeburg Company later made "juke boxes."
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O. Henry was not fond of national bank examiners. One (F. B. Gray) accused him of embezzling funds from the First National Bank of Austin, where he worked as a teller. The owners of the bank wanted to let the matter drop, possibly because some of them were guilty, but the examiner persisted. O. Henry (then William Sidney Porter) was convicted and spent three years in prison. To this day no one knows whether he was really guilty; he often claimed he took the blame for what others had done, but occasionally he made comments that might be construed as admissions of guilt.
Prison was good for O. Henry in one respect: it gave him the opportunity to write. At least a dozen of his stories were published (under various pen names) before his release in 1901, including "Georgia's Ruling," which, to this annotator, is one of his three best stories.
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