Rolling Stones | Page 5

her sister Mrs. G. W.
Grubes Little Giant Engines at Adams & Co. Also Sachet powders Mc.
Cormick Reapers and oysters.
All of this was a part of The Rolling Stone, which flourished, or at least
wavered, in Austin during the years 1894 and 1895. Years before,
Porter's strong instinct to write had been gratified in letters. He wrote,
in his twenties, long imaginative letters, occasionally stuffed with
execrable puns, but more than often buoyant, truly humorous, keenly
incisive into the unreal, especially in fiction. I have included a number
of these letters to Doctor Beall of Greensboro, N. C., and to his early
friend in Texas, Mr. David Harrell.
In 1895-1896 Porter went to Houston, Texas, to work on the Houston
POST. There he "conducted" a column which he called "Postscripts."
Some of the contents of the pages that follow have been taken from
these old files in the fair hope that admirers of the matured O. Henry
will find in them pleasurable marks of the later genius.
Before the days of THE ROLLING STONE there are eleven years in
Texas over which, with the exception of the letters mentioned, there are
few "traces" of literary performance; but there are some very

interesting drawings, some of which are reproduced in this volume. A
story is back of them. They were the illustrations to a book. "Joe"
Dixon, prospector and inveterate fortune-seeker, came to Austin from
the Rockies in 1883, at the constant urging of his old pal, Mr. John
Maddox, "Joe," kept writing Mr. Maddox, "your fortune's in your pen,
not your pick. Come to Austin and write an account of your
adventures." It was hard to woo Dixon from the gold that wasn't there,
but finally Maddox wrote him he must come and try the scheme.
"There's a boy here from North Carolina," wrote Maddox. "His name is
Will Porter and he can make the pictures. He's all right." Dixon came.
The plan was that, after Author and Artist had done their work, Patron
would step in, carry the manuscript to New York, bestow it on a
deserving publisher and then return to await, with the other two, the
avalanche of royalties. This version of the story comes from Mr.
Maddox. There were forty pictures in all and they were very true to the
life of the Rockies in the seventies. Of course, the young artist had no
"technique"--no anything except what was native. But wait! As the
months went by Dixon worked hard, but he began to have doubts.
Perhaps the book was no good. Perhaps John would only lose his
money. He was a miner, not a writer, and he ought not to let John go to
any expense. The result of this line of thought was the Colorado River
for the manuscript and the high road for the author. The pictures,
fortunately, were saved. Most of them Porter gave later to Mrs.
Hagelstein of San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Maddox, by the way, finding a
note from Joe that "explained all," hastened to the river and recovered a
few scraps of the great book that had lodged against a sandbar. But
there was no putting them together again.
So much for the title. It is a real O. Henry title. Contents of this last
volume are drawn not only from letters, old newspaper files, and The
Rolling Stone, but from magazines and unpublished manuscripts. Of
the short stories, several were written at the very height of his powers
and popularity and were lost, inexplicably, but lost. Of the poems, there
are a few whose authorship might have been in doubt if the compiler of
this collection had not secured external evidence that made them
certainly the work of O. Henry. Without this very strong evidence, they
might have been rejected because they were not entirely the kind of

poems the readers of O. Henry would expect from him. Most of them
however, were found in his own indubitable manuscript or over his
own signature.
There is extant a mass of O. Henry correspondence that has not been
included in this collection. During the better part of a decade in New
York City he wrote constantly to editors, and in many instances
intimately. This is very important material, and permission has been
secured to use nearly all of it in a biographical volume that will be
issued within the next two or three years. The letters in this volume
have been chosen as an "exihibit," as early specimens of his writing and
for their particularly characteristic turns of thought and phrase. The
collection is not "complete" in any historical sense.
1912.
H.P.S.

This record of births and deaths is copied from the Porter Family Bible,
just lately discovered.
BIRTHS
ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER Son of SIDNEY AND RUTH C.