The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-06-10
From the New York Post.

- u
IL ness and the point of the anec-
- dote. In this he was like Maupas-
SAINT, with whom he has been somewhat
recklessly compared. 1t is the essence
of the anecdote that it shall keep its sur
prise to the end. Just enough art must
be employed to keep alive the hearers
interest for the laugh or the gasp to
which everything else leads up. This is
the way the schoolboy tries to write a
short story and this is the way Maupas-
SAINT wrote his close-packed little tales
of 1900 words apiece. This final start
of humor or surprise, which imprints a
narrative sharply on the mind, o. Henry
had in the stories that first brought him
into notice. 1t appears in the burlesque
adventure of the two American ,roust-
abouts in Venezuela who call up their last
reserve of manhood to celebrate the
Fourth of July with appropriate pa
triotic ceremonies, only to discover that
the day is Christmas. 1t appears in the
story of the little East Side tailor who
gives up his weeks wages for the honor
of shaking hands with the saloon
keeper who achieves the honor Of shaking
hands in a Broadway restaurant with
weary member of the four hundred
who, In turn, breaks the monotony of ex-
istence by going down to the East Side
and shaking hands with the little tailors
apprentice. Later, o. Henry fell away
from this highly architectural form of the
short story. He went in more for the
long and sprawling narrative, where the
cimaxes come In every paragraph and
where the beginning or the middle is just
as exciting as the end. The final little
choke-up of laughter or tears was not
quite so apparent.
But at all times the anecdotal quality
was strong in o. Henrys stories. and
it was this quality that made them cap
able of conveying the romance of New
Yorks streets and her common life as no
one before him had succeeded in doing
The anecdote must have swiftness and
point, and they were most easily OBJ
tanned by seizing a cross-section of life
and giving to it the polish Of fancy. o.
stories about possible people, whereas the
ordinary product of the magazines today
is impossible stories about impossible
people. He took the tramp, the waitress.
the shop girl, the clerk and put them into
setting of tragedy or farce, but al
ways in a romantic setting He put plot
into their drab lives, keeping the psyche
logical realities largely true. He lacked
Maupassants perfection of form, which
consisted in a seeming unconsciousness
of form. On this point the difference be-
tween the two men might be something
like the difference between the survivor
of a shipwreck who tells of his escape
and the gifted narrator who tells the story
at second hand. Maupassant would be
the actual survivor In the case. o. Henry
would be the anecdotist. He was always
aware that he was telling a story. The
art of it was quite visible. But beneath
| the art the sense Of something real, some
thing poignantly human was seldom lack
| ing.
| 1t is probably by his earlier stories,
his dramatic pen sketches OF New York.
that he will be best remembered. With
| pTObpeIity cdiic d ctItdlii cOdIbcHlHB, VI
at least an over-emphasis, of his manner.
| He made concessions to the .pubics raw
ening demand for slang; his fancy often
became fantastic, his humor grew bois-
| ferrous. But the instinct for dramatic sur
Nprise, which is the making of real
short story, he retained. And with 1t
that sense of human reality which, united
to fanciful form, makes romance. How
was it that the romance of New York
should have been SO well caught by one
who, until almost middle age. had not
known New York?\ He himself once sup
! piled the answer. 1t was not the ro-
nance of the common human heart and
of the common life. He put the case In
simple fashion:
They say know New York well. Just
change Twenty-third street in one of my
New York stories to Main street, rub out
the Flatiron building and insert town hail.
and the story will At any upstate town
1ust as we'll. So long as story Is true
to human nature all you need to do to
make It At any town is to change the
local color You can make all the charac-
ters Of the Arabian Nights parade up ana
down BroadwAy. ...s. Ks 4
4 xhh y 30 old and 30 updisputsd : tor