_THE OPEN LETTER_
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 widelyread of all our modern story-tellers--O. Henry?” We have reserved aspecial place for him on this page. O. Henry occupied a position ofunique distinction among fiction makers, and it is only fitting that heshould have a place of his own in this number of The Mentor. As thereis in literature only one Edgar Poe and one Maupassant, so there isonly one O. Henry--and the gamut of life’s keynotes that his fingersswept was wider than that of Poe and Maupassant combined. Tragedy,Comedy, Mystery, Adventure, Romance and Humor--he knew them all, and itwas with no uncertain, amateur touch, but with the strong, sure strokeof a master that he played in those varied keys. His Tragedy is grim,his Comedy light and skilful, his Mystery baffling, his Adventureabsorbing, his Romance charming, and his Humor irresistible.
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O. HENRY
(William Sydney Porter--from the latest photograph made of him)]
William Sydney Porter--for that was O. Henry’s real name--was bornat Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1867. His father was a doctor ofability, and something of an inventive genius. His mother wrote poetry,and her father was, at one time, a newspaper editor. There was nothingunusual about this family outfit--it was quite ordinary, in fact, andin 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 boyhoodwas like that of thousands. But, as we read of him: “In those daysSunday was a day of rest, and Porter and a friend would spend the longafternoons out on some sunny hillside sheltered from the wind by thethick brown broom sedge, lying on their backs gazing up into the bluesky dreaming, planning, talking or turning to their books and reading.He was an ardent lover of God’s great out-of-doors, a dreamer, athinker and a constant reader.”
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At eighteen years of age he went to Texas and, as he put it, “ranwild 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 heloved to tell stories, but apparently just for the pleasure of it. Hewas 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 toAustin, where he engaged in newspaper work. After that came a periodof wandering--and then the New York life. He lived in two big rooms onquiet Irving Place, three doors from Washington Irving’s old home--andhe found it lonesome. So he became a wanderer in New York, and he sawand noted many things in the life of that city that no other writerhad taken account of. New York is better known to the world since O.Henry lived there. His stories were written under pressure and withgreat rapidity. He contracted to furnish the New York _World_ one storya week for a year, and his product was so good that the contract wasrenewed. During the same period he was contributing to magazines. Histotal of stories amounts to two hundred and fifty-one, and they werewritten during eight years. Then, in 1910, he died, leaving the worldenriched by a heritage of short stories that stand high among theclassic productions of their kind.
W. S. Woffat
EDITOR]
The Mentor: Makers of American Fiction, Vol. 6, Num. 14, Serial No. 162, September 1, 1918 Page 9