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about then we had on hand a lot of cuts of Gilmore, of Gilmore’s Band, which played at the dedication of the State capitol at Austin. We would run these cuts of Gilmore for any one, from Li Hung Chang to Governor Hogg.

“The Populist Party was coming in for all sorts of publicity at this time, and the famous ‘Sockless’ Simpson, of Kansas, was running for Congress. Porter worked out a series of ‘Tictocq, the Great French Detective,’ in burlesque of ‘Lecoq,’ and in one story, I remember, had a deep-laid conspiracy to locate a pair of socks in Simpson’s luggage, thus discrediting him with his political following.

“The paper ran along for something over a year, and then was discontinued. Following the political trouble and the other troubles in which Porter became involved, he left the State. Some time was spent in Houston; the next stop was New Orleans; then he jumped to South America, and only returned to Texas for a short period before leaving the State forever. His experiences on a West Texas ranch, in Texas cities and in South America, however, gave him a thorough insight into the average run of people whom he pictured so vividly in his later work. He was a greater man than any of us knew when we were with him in the old days.”

His coming to New York, with the resolution “to write for bread,” as he said once in a mood of acrid