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cerning O. Henry assembled chiefly by the energy of the late Harry Peyton Steger are many curious contrasts—little printed rejection slips from Sunday newspapers of an early date keeping company with long and appreciative letters of later date from magazine editors, and clippings from the London Spectator comparing O. Henry with Stevenson.

There are letters of O. Henry’s telling of his first experiences with “the editor fellers” and recent book reports which show that the public has bought seven hundred and fifty thousand copies of his books in twelve months, and that two of his stories have been put on the stage and many of them dramatized for the “movies.”

But in all the material, reports, biographical sketches, and so forth, the most revealing things are his own letters. Almost always they are filled with quaint conceits, usually with a kind of cartoon humour and sometimes with puns. They show little scholarship but much humanity. They are the kind of letters that give the most pleasure to an average person.

In the last years of his life Sydney Porter was never well and he constantly referred to his ill health in his letters, but always with good humour and good cheer.

For instance, he wrote in a letter to his publishers:

My Dear Mr. Lanier: