pictures—exercised a directive and lasting influence upon him. Had she lived she would have given to the Porter home an atmosphere that it never had after 1865. She would have enabled her gifted son to find himself many years earlier than he did and she would have brought him to his goal not

By a route obscure and lonely

but along the broad highway of common tastes and common sympathies.

Lyndon Swaim gave his step-daughter every educational advantage that Greensboro offered and then as now no town in North Carolina offered as many to women. There were two colleges for women on old West Market Street, both very near and one almost opposite the house in which O. Henry's mother was to spend all of her short married life. Both institutions had already begun to attract students from other Southern States. One was the Greensboro Female College, now the Greensboro College for Women, a Methodist school, the corner-stone of which was laid in 1843 and the later history of which has been the romance of education in North Carolina. The other was the Edgeworth Female Seminary, a Presbyterian school, founded and owned by Governor John Motley Morehead, whose influence on the industrial and cultural development of the State remains as yet unequalled.

Edgeworth opened its doors in 1840 and was burned in 1872. O. Henry's mother attended both schools, graduating from the Greensboro Female College in 1850, the year in which Dr. Charles F. Deems assumed control. Her graduating essay bore the strangely prophetic title, "The Influence of Misfortune on the Gifted."

She entered Edgeworth at the age of twelve and during her one session there she studied Bullion's "English Grammar," Bolmar's "Physics," Lincoln's "Botany," besides receiving "instruction in the higher classes and in the French language." During her four years at the Greensboro Female College she studied rhetoric, algebra, geometry, logic, astronomy, White's "Universal History," Butler's "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature," and Alexander's "Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration, and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures." She specialized in French and later in painting and drawing. The flyleaves of her copy of Alexander's "Evidences"-and doubtless of Butler's "Analogy" if it could be foundare covered with selections from her favourite poets, while dainty sketches of gates, trees, houses, and flowers, filling the inter-spaces, show that she relieved the tedium of classroom lectures exactly as her son was to do thirty years later.

That O. Henry's mother was an unusually bright scholar is attested by both teachers and classmates. Rev. Solomon Lea, the first President of the Greensboro Female College, writes December 1, 1846, to Lyndon Swaim: "Your daughter Mary ranks No. 1 in her studies, has an excellent mind, and will no doubt make a fine scholar." Says one of her classmates, Mrs. Henry Tate: "Mary Swaim was noted in her school days as a writer of beautiful English and the school girls came to depend upon her for their compositions. She wrote most of the graduating essays for the students." Mrs. Tate adds that O. Henry resembled his mother in personal appearance and in traits of character.

The following letter, written by her at the age of fifteen to her step-father, almost the only letter of O. Henry's mother that has been preserved, seems here and there to hint if it does not fore-announce something of the humorous playfulness of the son. Note especially the tendency to give an unexpected turn to common sayings and quotations, a device that became in O. Henry's hands an art:

Greensboro, Sept. 21, 1848.

DEAR FATHER: Your letter reached us last Monday, having come by Raleigh as also did Dr. Mebane's. We were very anxious to hear from you before we received your letter, but it came like an "Angel's visit" bringing peace to our anxious minds. We are all