Page:Waifs and Strays (1917).djvu/181
About the time that he succeeded in selling his first stories to Everybody’s he began a correspondence with an old friend, A. J. Jennings, ex-train robber, lawyer, author, and reformer, which contains the history of the now famous story Holding up a Train.[1] The first letter was as follows:
Dear Jennings
I have intended to write you and Billy every week since I left, but kept postponing it because I expect to move on to Washington (sounds like Stonewall Jackson talk, doesn’t it?) almost any time. I am very comfortably situated here, but expect to leave in a couple of weeks anyhow.
I have been doing quite a deal of business with the editors since I got down to work, and have made more than I could at any other business. ******* Special regards to “Tex.” Love to Hans and Fritz.
Sincerely yours,
W. S. P.
This letter suggested the idea which was later worked out between them, Jennings supplying the data and Porter putting on the finishing touches. In a second letter [included in the Letters already published in “Rolling Stones”] O. Henry explained how the article ought to be written. A part of this letter might well be in every beginner’s scrapbook, for there was never better advice about writing: “Begin abruptly without any philosophizing” is part of his doctrine. I know of one magazine office where they
- ↑ See “Sixes and Sevens.”
163