WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER (1862-1910)

A few men, mostly humorists like Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, are better known by the pen name they assumed than by the patronymic which was their birthright. Among these is William Sydney Porter, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, who is known to the majority of readers only by the name of O. Henry. Like Jack London and many others among the later producers of fiction, he was unschooled. As a boy he was a clerk in his uncle's drug store; at twenty he went to Texas where he saw considerable of ranch life and where at length he found employment in a bank. An unfortunate combination of circumstances for which his biographer, C. Alphonso Smith, declares that he was not wholly responsible, sent him fleeing to South America. After some months of residence there, he returned. surrendered himself to the authorities, was tried for embezzlement and served a term in the Ohio Federal prison. He arrived in New York in 1902 and during the eight years that followed poured out a profusion of short stories that were eagerly accepted by the magazines and Sunday papers. He had served his literary apprenticeship as a humorist. As early as 1887 he was in charge of the humorous column of the Detroit Free Press. Later he published a humorous journal of his own, and still later he was in charge of the Tales of the Town' column of the Houston, Texas, Daily Post. It was while in prison that he turned to fiction, and it was from this unusual literary sanctum that he sent forth his first twelve short stories. The first of these, Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking,' was published in McClure's Magazine in December, 1899.

His stories, so far as materials are concerned, fall into four groups: stories of the SouthWest, stories of his native Southland, stories of South America, and stories of New York City. It was in the last that he did his most distinctive work. First of all he was a humorist, and secondly he was an artisan who had carefully learned all the technique of his profession as story-teller. But these two facts by no means explain his success: whatever one may think about his work and his influence, one is forced to admit that he was a genius, original, and startling, the creator of a new genre. His devices for mystifying his reader, for entertaining him are all his own. His success was phenomenal. Since the appearance of his first volume Cabbages and Kings in 1904 over two million copies of his books have been sold in America alone.

A MUNICIPAL REPORT1

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities '-New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco.- Frank Norris.

East is East, and West is San Fran- 10 cisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; 15 but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail.

1 Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co.

Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as 5 they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: In this town there can be no romance - what could happen here?' Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally.

NASHVILLE.-A city, port of delivery, and 20 the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N. C. &

St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational center in the South.

I stepped off the train at 8 P. M. Hav- 5 ing searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe.

Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise. 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.

ΤΟ

The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor 15 as thick as pea-soup; but 't is enough't will serve.

I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and 20 giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated.

I was sleepy and tired, so when I got 25 to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old 'marster' or anything that 30 happened befo' de wah.'

streets are lighted by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.

As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with - no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents,' I reasoned that I was merely a 'fare' instead of a victim.

I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they did n't until they were graded.' On a few of the main streets' I saw lights in stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a sodawater and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than 'main' seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little 'doing.' I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel.

In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas. The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible conflict.

The hotel was one of the kind described as renovated.' That means $20,ooo worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the 35 lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, 40 the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such 45 tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hochicken livers en brochette.

At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied. Well, boss, I don't really reckon 50 there's anything at all doin' after sundown.'

Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I 55 went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.

It is built on undulating grounds; and the

All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the

tel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so widemouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nash

ville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship.

Here I first saw Major (by misplaced Courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything:

Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,

And curse me the British vermin, the rat.

of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent 5 back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.

By this time I began to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact 10 that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver money.

Let us regard the word 'British' as 15 interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat.

This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with 20 a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue - he was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. 25 I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder.

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I happened to be standing within five. feet of a cuspidor when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squir-35 rel rifles: so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the 40 bar.

I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the num- 45 ber of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Würzburger 50 and wish that Longstreet had - but what's the use?

Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort Sumter reechoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin

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When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally.'

'Why, no,' said I, after some reflection; 'I don't see my way clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town,' I continued, seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?'

'Well, sir,' said the clerk, 'there will be a show here next Thursday. It is I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night.'

After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.

A quiet place,' I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. Nothing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business

town.'

Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing centers of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods, grocery, and drug business.

ished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos 5 of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled hues. The lone button was the size of a half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with

I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal connection 15 coarse twine. between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea Adair.

This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones: 'Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it jus' got back from a funeral,

Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that 20 had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her output at two cents a word before some 25 suh.' other publisher offered her ten or twenty.

I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair

'I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street,' I said, and was about to step into the

At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers en brochette (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an 30 unlimited run. At the first corner I came upon Uncle Cæsar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the 35 hack. But for an instant the thick, long, late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and age had 40 so variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story the story that is so long in coming, because you can 45 hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville.

Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged 50 and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassels were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving black mammy ') new frogs made of cunningly twisted com- 55 mon hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for van

gorilla-like arm of the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly, What are you gwine there for, boss?'

What is that to you?' I asked, a little sharply.

Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The seats is clean - jes' got back from a funeral, suh.'

A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses

The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of which 137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.

Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed to and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a 15 shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside.

When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came to a rest 20 I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He refused it.

'It's two dollars, suh,' he said.

'How's that?' I asked. 'I plainly heard you call out at the hotel: "Fifty cents to any part of the town."

he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.

'You confounded old rascal,' I said, 5 reaching down to my pocket, 'you ought to be turned over to the police.'

For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; he knew; HE KNEW.

I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through in the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability.

Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened the creaky gate.

The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it in twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close the trees that saw 25 the battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold.

It's two dollars, suh,' he repeated obstinately. 'It's a long ways from the 30 hotel.'

It is within the city limits and well within them,' I argued. Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills over there?' I went 35 on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); well, I was born and raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from other people when you see 'em?'

The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. Is you from the South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They is somethin' sharp in the toes for a Southern gen'l'man to wear.'

Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?' said I inexorably.

His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished.

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'Boss,' he said, fifty cents is right; but I needs two dollars, suh: I'm obleeged to have two dollars. I ain't demandin' it now, suh; after I knows whar you 's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I has to have two dol-55 lars to-night, and business is mighty po'.'

Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than

Azalea Adair, fifty years old, whitehaired, a descendant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received me.

The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marbletop table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pine-cone hanging basket but they were not there.

Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad. but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made. While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb,