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take it that, at long last, O. Henry is triumphantly entering into his kingdom.

In a brilliant appreciation of The Amazing Genius of O. Henry,^[1] in his new book, “Essays and Literary Studies” (John Lane), Professor Stephen Leacock speaks of the wide and increasing popularity of O. Henry in America, and of his “strange obscurity” in Great Britain. He thinks it “only too likely that many, perhaps the majority, of British readers have never heard of O. Henry.” That was certainly true when it was written, but in the last six months our long-suffering public has risen above the reproach. Professor Leacock tries to suggest a reason for our indifference. “The British reader turns with distaste,” he says, “from anything which bears to him the taint of literary vulgarity or cheapness; he instinctively loves anything which seems to have the stamp of scholarship, and revels in a classical allusion even when he doesn’t understand it.” But for the sting in its tail and the passage that succeeds it, I should suspect this sentence of irony, for the British reader received at once and with open arms the joyous extravagances of Max Adeler (who, by the way, should not have been entirely ignored in Professor Leacock’s essay on “American Humour”), and there is nothing in “Elbow Room” or “Out of the Hurly-Burly” that is funnier or more quaintly humorous than some of Henry’s stories. But O. Henry can move you to tears as