what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don't know how I did it-I painted what I saw.

But O. Henry's distinctive skill, the skill of the story teller that was to be, is seen to better advantage in his pictures of groups than in his pictures of individuals. Into the group pictures, which he soon came to prefer to any others, he put more of himself and more of the life of the community. They gave room for a sort of collective interpretation which seems to me very closely related to the plots of his short stories. There is the same selection of a central theme, the same saturation with a controlling idea, the same careful choice of contributory details, the same rejection of non-essentials, and the same ability to fuse both theme and details into a single totality of effect. "He could pack more of the social history of this city into a small picture," said a citizen of Austin, Texas, "than I thought possible. Those of us who were on the inside could read the story as if printed. Let me show you," and he entered into an affectionate rhapsody over a little pen and ink sketch which he still carried in his inside coat pocket.

An illustration is found in a sketch of the interior of Clark Porter's drug store. The date is 1879. Every character is drawn to the life, but what gives unity to the whole is the grouping and the implied comment, rather than criticism, that the grouping suggests.

The picture might well be called, to borrow one of O. Henry's story names, "The Hypothesis of Failure." Indeed Clark Porter's expression, as he gazes over the counter, signifies as much. But the failure is due to good-natured foibles rather than to faults. The central figure is the speaker. He was a sign painter in Greensboro, a dark, Italianate-looking man, whose shop was immediately behind the drug store. He was one of the first to recognize O. Henry's genius and treasured with mingled affection and admiration every drawing of the master's that he could find. He did not rightfully belong, however, to the inner circle of the drug store habitués. If he had, he would never have said "I'll pay you for it." He is here shown on his way to the rear room. His ostensible quest is ice, but the protrusions from the pitcher indicate that another ingredient of "The Lost Blend" is a more urgent necessity. His plaintive query about cigars finds its answer in the abundant remains, mute emblems of hospitality abused, that already bestrew the floor. On the right is the Superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday School. He was also a deacon and kept a curiosity shop of a store. His specialties were rabbit skins and Mason and Hamlin organs. But he made his most lasting impression on O. Henry as a dispenser of kerosene oil.

It happened in this way: the Pastor of the Presby

terian Church had always carried his empty oil can, supposed to hold a gallon, to be replenished at the Superintendent's font. But one day the Superintendent's emporium was closed and the pastoral can journeyed on to the hardware store of another deacon. "Why," said the latter, after careful measurement, "this can doesn't hold but three quarts." "That's strange," said the minister pensively; "Brother M. has been squeezing four quarts into it for twenty years." The reply went the rounds of the town at once and O. Henry, who no more doubted Brother M's good intentions than he did his uncle's or the sign painter's, put him promptly into the picture as entitled to all the rights and privileges of the quartette. The venerable figure on the left is Dr. James K. Hall, the Nestor of the drug store coterie and the leading physician of Greensboro. He was a sort of second father to O. Henry, whom he loved as a son, though O. Henry drew about as many cartoons of him as he filled prescriptions made by him. Three years later Doctor Hall was to take O. Henry with him to Texas where the second chapter in his life was to begin. Doctor Hall was the tallest man in Greensboro and the stoop, the pose of the head, the very bend of the knee in the picture are perfect. He is sketched at the moment when, having contributed his full quota of cigar stumps, he is writing a prescription for Clark or O. Henry to fill.