Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-09-26
THE LIBRARY TABLE
By the Booklover

WHICH the most recent DlOSIdpliSio vi
O. Henry, Robert H. Davis ard Arthur
B. Maurice, give to their biography
| indicates their point of view, that they
are dealing with an Arabian Nights
parsonage They begin their foreword
! with the last words of o. Henry as he
| lay dying. 81 years ago, at the Poly
clinic Hospital, New York. His last
| testing words were in echo of q popu-
| lar song of the hour. There are two
| versions of the exact phrasing. One
was that 1t began, Pull up the shades;
| the other, Turn up the lights Then
as both agree, he continued: I don't
want to go home in the dark In
| that little conflict of evidence we have
one aspect of his life in epitome,"
| The four parts of the biography are
| headed by Arabian Nights story titles;
Aladdin, Sinbad, Haroun. Scheherezade.
| Aladdin" tells of the boyhood of
William Sidney Porter. far better
known as 0. Henry, during reconstruc-
ton days in North Carolina; his young
manhood IN Texas. his growing fame
as a caricaturist, his marriage to his
| hoyhood sweetheart, his position in the
First National Bank of Austin, Tex,
which was to end so tragically; the
discovery of irregularities in his bank
accounts, his wife's death, the begin
/ ming of his newspaper work and his
|
! for embezzlement.
X ~ x
,, The first part of this biography of
| o. Henry is preliminary to his becom-
| ing a striking figure in American lit
erature. The second part, "Sindbad,"
| tells of his flight TO Central America,
| what is known of his life there, his re-
| turn to Austin to stand trial, his con-
viction and term in the Ohio Peni-
Tertiary, his release after three years
and three months, his establishment
Part three, "Haroun," tells of his New
York life and his success as short>
story writer. Part four, "Scheherezade,"
is an account of the stories of o. Henry
and their backgrounds, how they
came to be written. With regard to
o. Henry's prison sentence and the
question of his guilt, the present au-
passed since Will Porter stood trial in
Austin. The judge and the prose-
cutting attorney are dead. The writers
| of this book would like nothing bet
ter than to remove forever the last
| stigma, the last doubt, furnishing o.
Henry's memory, But the clinching
documentary evidence necessary for
that has not been forthcoming. Yet
the conceded facts are enough to
Justify posterity in rendering the YER
dict not guilty"
The story of o. Henry's daughter
Margaret. as told In The Caliph of
Bagdad," Is a sad one. From both
sides she inherited the scourge of
phthisis. Like both parents, she died
young. Naturally she had wanted to
write ). AS Miss o. Henry she was
launched. But she never went far
|. Margaret married first Oscar
Cesare, the cartoonist. But it was not
a happy marriage and after a time the
two parted. She was struggling along,
hoping to do something worth while
with her pen, when her fatal inheri-
lance became her chief problem. Doc
tors told her that she must go to the
desert, to land of dry winds and warm
sunshine. She left New York for the
Pacific Coast, staying at Reno a suf-
f1cient time to obtain divorce from
Cesare. Then she proceeded to Cali
fornia. In Hollywood her Illness
took a highly serious turn" One of
her friends there, young Englishman
named Guy Sartin, insisted on going
with her to find her a home and to
look after her welfare. A plot of
ground was bought at the town of
Benning and bungalow was built.
There, at an altitude of about $500
/ leu d valley OClWGGn 0dI
Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio Pass,
Margaret Porter spent the last two
years Of her life. Sartin lived nearby
and came every day to read to her.
Three days before her death she and
Sartin were married. She had a pretty
new bed jacket made for wedding
gown and he gathered roses from the
garden. A few neighbors were wit
nesses. ITO her husband of those three
-I,o IAfE ktzfxz H., ~I,1 -.
the royalties from o. Henry'S books, her
hillside home and all its belongings,
her unfinished manuscripts, one of
them being half a volume of a memoir
dealing with her father, and her we'd
ding gown, the one of black lace over
pink chiffon which she wore only on
her deathbed.'
Katherine Mayo does not meekly ac-
cept criticism of her denunciation of
child marriage in India, especially
when she can prove her statements.
Entirely unsubdued by the vehement
denials and excavations, chiefly from
Indian writer's. which followed her
Mother India she comes back with
another book on the same subject,
Volume Two which contains mass
of new evidence. Following the publ
cation of Mother India" probably at
least partly as a result of it, the Age
of Consent Committee of the Indian
Legislature began to collect evidence
and finally printed many pages of tes-
timony and report to the Legislature.
Volume Two" quotes word-for- word
extracts from this testimony. The
Judgment of the committee is shown by
the sentence in its report: Every sue
ceeding generation of men and women
in India realizes that it is weaker than
any preceding generation" In 1929 a
law was enacted prohibiting marriage
of girl under IA, but unfortunately
the law did not invalidate a marriage
violating the law; it simply imposed a.
fine. According to Hindu evidence,
many Hindus merely consider the fine
as an additional marriage expense. The
bride becomes the property of the nus
band when the fine is paid Miss Mayo
presents evidence of many cases of this
kind.
If world disarmament should ever
become an actual fact, instead of a
pious hope, the industries which engage
in the manufacture of arms should be
fairly dealt with says Victor Lefebure
in his book Scientific Disarmament"
ut would be absurd" he argues. ito
color any policy of compensation or
adjustment by the suggestion of the
supposed reprehensible characteristics
of the armament industry. These firms
have operated in legitimate manner
and have given their nations and the
world the services required of them
with great zeal and efficiency. The
situation is simply that an industry
with important vested and widespread
| interests finds itself threatened by new
| forms of international policy and organ
ization." Exactly this same argument
might, and probably should, have been
used with regard to the slavery ques-
1 ,trxy