she loved him after all, and that if he would get a furlough and come home she
would marry him. . . . Then, as if she feared such a temptation might be too
strong for him, she added a postscript in these words: "Don t come without a
furlough; for if you don't come honorable, I won't marry you." This letter had
been taken from the pocket of a private dead on the battlefield of one of the
battles around Richmond, and, as the date was only a week or two before the
battle occurred, its pathos struck me very much. I remember I said, "The poor
fellow got his furlough through a bullet." The idea remained with me, and 1
went to my office one morning and began to write "Marse Chan," which was
finished in about a week.
JAMES LANE ALLEN
Two GENTLEMEN OF KENTUCKY (PAGE 348) Cheapside: the scene of the story is Lexington, Kentucky. Cheap- side is one of the business streets of that city, so named from the famous Cheapside of London.
QUESTIONS, i. What characteristics are ascribed to Colonel Romulus
Fields? 2. What to Peter? 3. Do such traits of character among whites and blacks in the South give encouragement to believe that the two races can find a common basis whereon they can live in friendship?
WILLIAM SIDNEY PORTER (" O. HENRY")
The roving life of Porter gave him a wide range of acquaintance with human types in different sections of the country and in different levels of society. As Professor Stuart P. Sherman has said, "He has made a great harvest of the sounds and sights and smells of New York City in chop house, lobster-palace, flat, tenement, park, police court, Broadway, Coney Island. He knows, too, the roads and railways branch ing into the South, and stretching across the West; the various features and characters of towns and cities from Chicago down the Mississippi Valley to New Orleans and out to Frisco; the ranchers and miners and the picturesque riff-raff of adventurers floating through Arizona, Texas, Mexico, and South America, and the returned wanderer from the Philippines." Such a statement should not, however, be understood to mean that his stories are mere studies in localism. Against such a view Porter always protested, as in the following remark, " They say I know New York well. Just change Twenty-Third Street in one of
