The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-13

rarely rising above 25O0 degrees in the shade and hardly ever falling below z12 % In the Post, he treated the same happy theme, thus:
 You re at the wrong place. said Ger berus. This is the gate that leads 10 the internal regions, while this is pass port to heaven that you have handed me.
 know it., said the departed Shade, yearly, but it allows stop-over here. You see I'm from Galveston, and I've to make the change gradually"
 Like MT. Wegg, the immortal, the Post g tame paragrapher would now and then drop into poetry" and if you hail from section of the United States where the inhabitants squelch their final r's you will have no difficulty with the following: An old woman who lived in Fla, Had some neighbors who always ba., Tea, sugar and soap A
 Till she said, I do hope I'll never see folks that are ha.'
 But do you find a deep, warm, tender understanding of character in these friv- olous exploits? It required diversity to bring out the best in the man and glor- fly his humor and by the time my friend Richard Duffy coaxed him to New York, o. Henry was prepared to peer down into the very soul of our cOmical metrop- ois How he loved it's people! Not the four hundred-heavens, no!-but the ever endearing four million. If he laughed at them, it was always genially. If they laughed at him. he was delighted. In a type written batch of anecdotes some one must have intended to use as material for a life of o. Henry, find this charming tale:
 SHORT OF GRAMMAR.
 "Once he asked a little shop girl with whom he had talked several times and who knew nothing of his identity to go to an East Side theatre with him. She asked if she might bring along a girl friend of hers, and he said, Yes, in deed They went to the theatre and he did not see the girl again for sev- eral days. He was, however, using her
 ua,a acter in one of his stories, so he went to have a chat. As soon as she saw him she came up to him and shook her finger at him. Why she said, was so mortified the other night before my lady friend You spoke so ungram nautical the whole time
 Further on in the typewriter account the writer tells how he and some friends were strolling up Broadway one night when "a poor, flashy, purple e-nosed night errant with a sandwich sign of Madame Juliet, Palmist, hooked about him. snuff
 
 apology. o. Henry turned back and fell a little behind the people he was with. Then he came back and all of us went on. It had not struck any of us that he had given the man money until he charged on us full tilt and plucked O. Henrys sleeve with his horn hand. You must have made a mistake, sir, he whined, and in the hand he stretched put to o. Henry we beheld a $20 bill. 70 Henry turned on him like beast l snraged, and said with a curse, Whats | your game? Get away from here before 1 kick you into the gutter!' The friend who wrote this concluded | hat O. Henry was only concealing his 1 ,harity. For my own part, l think he | 'elished the weird absurdity of its meth | ,d In that sense O. Henry's humor was | he sort that has fled from the heart l 70 the head" No matter how amusing | he iheadwork behind his jokes, they in l originated in the impulses of ! lis generous, affectonate heart. He loved | people. He never gushed about loving l lem. I don't suppose he ever stopped | D consider how unusual thing his love | ,or them was. He loved them nstinctive- V. In consequence every one who knew | ). Henry was devoted to him, while at | he same time regarding him with as onished admiration. No wonder! That | ewing heart of his was as brave as it vas kind. Imagine his joking about the l llness that was to be his last, and say ng, These doctors are all clans. I'm going to an oysterpath!'' Imagine his | his last words from the lines , ,f a comic song! Gallantly humorous to | he end he said, Pull up the shades. l I'm afraid to 20 home in the dark Copyright, 1919, by the Bell Syndicate, l
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