Hide Article Text (OCR)
technical excellence with .whimsical sparkling wit, abundant humor and a fertile invention is so raro that thereader ,is content without comparisons/* The “freshness and originality amounting to genius” which professional jadedBy Mark Stoyvnrtmt How O. Henry Won Succets After a Long Struggle.^ # * * 9*0 ' *Greensboro, North Carolina# on become a cartoonist, for he was for-Sept. juf 1S62,-there was bom a;boy ever catching the odd, the ludlcroua/who grew up to be called “actually the distinctive in pencil sketches which that rare bird of which we so often often were the delight of the town, hear false reports—a^born story teller/* .Never very strong, and with the Sometimes compared with Francois shadow of consumption upon some of Villon, Dickens, De Maupassant, Mark hie ancestors, the young man eagerly1 Twain and others of the elect, many a adpepted the opportunity to go into critic has ended, as does Formah: “It Texas and work on a ranch for twdis idle to compare p. Henry with any-d years. ^The wife of the ranch owuei1body. No talent could be more original said “his thirst for knowledge* was un-! or more delightful. The combination of I quenchable/' Webster’s “Unabridged!constant company Ion. *“I carried it around with me foif two years, O. Henry said, “whileiherding sheep for Dick Hall.” ,But even here O. Henry’s fame that * of an artist in pencil, for DixOi*. who had written a book andr wanted someone who knew the life of the ranches to illustrate it, sought him for the purpose. “Will,” Dixon writes that he said to him one day, • “why don’t you try your hand at writing* for I the -magazines?’’ But O. Henry had no i confidence in himself and destroyed his I stories as fast as .he wrote them, at any rate,” Dixon begged, “tryhand at newspaper work.” But couldn't see it, and went, on and destroying.The boy was but 20 then, yet he wagstriving to learn to write, and he pos-; sessed enough judgment not to accept;the plaudits of even good friends, but to rely upon his own critical faculty to tell him whether or not#he had hit thej mark for which he was aiming. Inj later years he worked on a newspaper,, got out a sheet of his own, then was; married and turned to banking. Yet all; the time he wrote, perfecting hi» product. !Through the years that followed, in-l eluding those when his wife died and other great personal troubles came to him, O. Henry worked hard with his; pen. At last dire necessity drove him; to send some of his stories to meet their* fate. It is said that O. Henry was 36: years old when his first short sbory was accepted, paid for and publish*®.But it was in New' York city—to which he went at the suggestion of amagazine editor in 1902—that O. Henry; “found himself. To his second wife he said when he was trying to win back! health in Asheville, “I could look at; these mountains a hundred years and’ never got an. idea, but just one block, downtown and I catch a sentence, see!something In a face—and I’ve got mystory. \And so O. Henry returned to the city; and to work. But he had not recu-; perated as much as he had thought. He died in New' York city on June 5. 1*10, J at the age of 4S. jO. HenryWilliam Sydney Portercritics as well as casual readers find in O. Henry's stories, did not come, however, by accident. It seems likely they were not born with him. For, contrary to the belief of many who knew little about O. Henry, he worked hard for years to win the success that came to jhim.Indeed, during the five years he spent !as a clerk in his uncle’s drug store in Greensboro, no one thought of plain Will Porter as a budding author. Almost everyone prophesied that he wouldSTAR, ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND,ansTHE HALL OffAME OF THE STATES
Newspaper Details
St Johns Daily Star
St Johns, Newfoundland, CA
Fri, Dec 03, 1920
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
TX, USA 11 Oct 2022
Other Publications Near St Johns, Newfoundland
St Johns Plaindealer
St Johns Morning Courier
St Johns Daily News
St Johns Evening Telegram
St Johns Daily Star GS
