"I!" said the New Yorker. "I was never farther west than Eighth Avenue. I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortège at Eighth. There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am familiar with the West."

But each theme that has been mentioned is but an illustration of that larger quest in which all of O. Henry's stories find their common meeting-place-the search for those common traits and common impulses which together form a sort of common denominator of our common humanity. Many of his two hundred and fifty stories are impossible; none, rightly considered, are improbable. They are so rooted in the common soil of our common nature that even when dogs or monuments do the talking we do the thinking. The theme divisions that we have attempted to make are, after all, only sub-divisions. The ultimate theme is your nature and mine.

It is too soon to attempt to assign O. Henry a comparative rank among his predecessors. We may attempt, however, to place him if not to weigh him. It was Washington Irving who first gave the American short story a standing at home and abroad. There is a calm upon Irving's pages, an easy quiet grace in his sentences, an absence of restlessness and hurry, that give him an unquestioned primacy among our masters of an elder day. He was more meditative and less intellectual than Scott but, like Scott, he was essentially

retrospective. He used the short story to rescue and re-launch the small craft of legend and tradition which had already upon their sails the rime of eld. He legendized the short story.

Poe's genius was first and last constructive. It was the build of the short story rather than its historical or intellectual content that gripped his interest. Poe's art, unlike that of Irving, is identified with no particular time or place. He was always stronger on moods than on tenses, and his geography curtsied more to sound than to Mercator or Maury. But in the mathematics of the short story, in the art of making it converge definitely and triumphantly to a pre-ordained end, in the mastery of all that is connoted by the word technique, Poe's is the greatest name. The short story came from his hands a new art form, not charged with a new content but effectively equipped for a new service. In his equal exercise of executive, legislative, and judicial authority, Poe standardized the short story.

Hawthorne made the short story a vehicle of symbolism. Time and place were only starting-points with him. He saw double, and the short story was made to see double, too. Puritan New England, New England of the past, was his locale; but his theme was spiritual truth, a theme that has always had an affinity for symbols and symbolism. Hawthorne allegorized the short story.

With Bret Harte the short story entered a new era. He was the first of our short story writers to preempt a definite and narrowly circumscribed time and place and to lift both into literature. Dialect became for the first time an effective ally of the American short story, and local colour was raised to an art. Though Bret Harte's appeal is not and has never been confined to any one section or to any one country, it is none the less true that he first successfully localized the American short story.

A glance through O. Henry's pages shows that his familiarity with the different sections of the United States was greater than that of any predecessor named. He had lived in every part of the country that may be called distinctive except New England, but he has not preëmpted any locality. His stories take place in Latin America, in the South, in the West, and in the North. He always protested against having his stories interpreted as mere studies in localism. There was not one of his New York stories, he said, in which the place was essential to the underlying truth or to the human interest back of it. Nor was his technique distinctive. It is essentially the technique of Poe which became later the technique of De Maupassant but was modified by O. Henry to meet new needs and to subserve diverse purposes. O. Henry has humanized the short story.

CHAPTER

NINE

LAST DAYS

"I CANNOT help remarking," wrote Alexander Pope to a Mr. Blount, "that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humour." In O. Henry's case sickness affected neither his wit nor his humour but it made creative work hard and irksome. There is as much wit and humour in his last complete story, "Let Me Feel Your Pulse," or "Adventures in Neurasthenia," as in any story that he wrote, but the ending of no other story was so difficult to him. Plans for a novel and a play were also much in his mind at this time but no progress was made in actual construction.

In fact, O. Henry had been a very sick man for more than a year before his death. "He had not been well for a long time," writes Mrs. Porter, referring to the time of their marriage, "and had got behind with his work." He did not complain but sought creative invigoration in frequent changes of environment. Early in 1909, however, his letters begin to show that writer's cramp was with him only another name for failing health. From his workshop in the Caledonia,

he writes to Mr. Henry W. Lanier, who was then secretary to Doubleday, Page & Company:

MY DEAR MR. LANIER:

February 13, 1909.

I've been ailing for a month or so-can't sleep, etc.; and haven't turned out a piece of work in that time. Consequently there is a hiatus in the small change pocket. I hope to be in shape Monday so that I can go to Atlantic City, immure myself in a quiet hotel, and begin to get the "great novel" in shape.

March 16, 1909.

It seems that the goddess Hygiene and I have been strangers for years; and now Science must step in and repair the damage. My doctor is a miracle worker and promises that in a few weeks he will double my working capacity, which sounds very good both for me and for him, when the payment of the bill is considered.

April 6, 1909.

I hope to get the novel in good enough shape to make an "exhibit" of it to you soon. I've been feeling so rocky for so long that I haven't been able to produce much. In fact, I've noticed now and then some suspicious tracks outside the door that closely resembled those made by Lupus Americanus. Has anything accrued around the office in the royalty line that you could put your finger on to-day?

In the fall of 1909, broken in health and suffering greatly from depression, he went to Asheville to be with his wife and daughter. Here on the fifth story of a building on Patton Avenue he set up his workshop. Ideas were plentiful but the power to mould them as he knew he once could have moulded them lagged behind.