As you finish the foregoing review of fiction writers, you may ask, “Why do you make no mention of one of the best known and most widely read of all our modern story-tellers—O. Henry?” We have reserved a special place for him on this page. O. Henry occupied a position of unique distinction among fiction makers, and it is only fitting that he should have a place of his own in this number of The Mentor. As there is in literature only one Edgar Poe and one Maupassant, so there is only one O. Henry—and the gamut of life’s keynotes that his fingers swept was wider than that of Poe and Maupassant combined. Tragedy, Comedy, Mystery, Adventure, Romance and Humor—he knew them all, and it was with no uncertain, amateur touch, but with the strong, sure stroke of a master that he played in those varied keys. His Tragedy is grim, his Comedy light and skilful, his Mystery baffling, his Adventure absorbing, his Romance charming, and his Humor irresistible.
*****
O. HENRY(William Sydney Porter—from the latest photograph made of him)
O. HENRY(William Sydney Porter—from the latest photograph made of him)
O. HENRY
(William Sydney Porter—from the latest photograph made of him)
William Sydney Porter—for that was O. Henry’s real name—was born at Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1867. His father was a doctor of ability, and something of an inventive genius. His mother wrote poetry, and her father was, at one time, a newspaper editor. There was nothing unusual about this family outfit—it was quite ordinary, in fact, and in no way explained the genius of O. Henry. Nor did his school days, nor his term of employment as a clerk in a drug store. His boyhood was like that of thousands. But, as we read of him: “In those days Sunday was a day of rest, and Porter and a friend would spend the long afternoons out on some sunny hillside sheltered from the wind by the thick brown broom sedge, lying on their backs gazing up into the blue sky dreaming, planning, talking or turning to their books and reading. He was an ardent lover of God’s great out-of-doors, a dreamer, a thinker and a constant reader.”
*****
At eighteen years of age he went to Texas and, as he put it, “ran wild on the prairies.” If he had any ambitions to write at that time, he did not show them. He lived in an atmosphere of adventure, and he loved to tell stories, but apparently just for the pleasure of it. He was a good singer, a clever mimic, and something of a sketch artist. But his pen had not yet begun to flow. From the Texas ranch he went to Austin, where he engaged in newspaper work. After that came a period of wandering—and then the New York life. He lived in two big rooms on quiet Irving Place, three doors from Washington Irving’s old home—and he found it lonesome. So he became a wanderer in New York, and he saw and noted many things in the life of that city that no other writer had taken account of. New York is better known to the world since O. Henry lived there. His stories were written under pressure and with great rapidity. He contracted to furnish the New YorkWorldone story a week for a year, and his product was so good that the contract was renewed. During the same period he was contributing to magazines. His total of stories amounts to two hundred and fifty-one, and they were written during eight years. Then, in 1910, he died, leaving the world enriched by a heritage of short stories that stand high among the classic productions of their kind.
W. S. WoffatEDITOR
W. S. WoffatEDITOR
W. S. Woffat
EDITOR
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