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humour, was dramatic, as is a whisper compared to a subdued tumult of voices. I believe I am correct in saying that outside his immediate family few were aware that O. Henry was entering this “nine-day town” except Gilman Hall, my associate on Ainslee’s Magazine, the publishers, Messrs. Street and Smith, and myself. For some time we had been buying stories from him, written in his perfect Spencerian copperplate hand that was to become familiar to so many editors. Only then he wrote always with a pen on white paper, whereas once he was established in New York he used a lead pencil sharpened to a needle’s point on one of the yellow pads that were always to be seen on his table. The stories he published at this period were laid either in the Southwest or in Central America, and those of the latter countries form the bulk of his first issued volume, “Cabbages and Kings.” It was because we were sure of him as a writer that our publishers willingly advanced the cheque that brought him to New York and assured him a short breathing spell to look round and settle. Also, it was because O. Henry wanted to come. You could always make him do anything he wanted to do, as he had a way of saying, if you were coaxing him into an invitation he had no intention of pursuing into effect.

It was getting late on a fine spring afternoon down at Duane and William streets when he came to meet us. From the outer gate the boy presented a card bearing the name William Sydney Porter. I don’t