There was an essential fact about him which his official biographer fails to mention; he was a true Southern gentleman in another respect--that he drank too much. Al Jennings records that he was half drunk when Jennings encountered him, sitting in front of the American consulate in the little town of Trujillo, Honduras. They proceeded to get all the way drunk, and to celebrate the Fourth of July by shooting up the place. And there is much other drinking scattered through the story. In the prison O. Henry was in charge of certain supplies, and he found that contractors were robbing the prison, and he wanted to expose them; but Jennings showed him that if he did so, he would get himself thrown into the hole, and beaten to death by the prison powers who were sharing in the graft. So our poor Southern gentleman kept silence, and received large presents of wine and liquor. When he came to New York, this habit had him in its grip, and never let him go. So here is a point about the O. Henry stories; they are alcoholic stories, and take the alcoholic attitude toward life. The friends of O. Henry, who spent their time trying to save him, will understand what all of us know who have had to do with Southern gentlemen of the old school: that a victim of alcohol can weep with pity and can mingle laughter with his tears; he can be charming and beautiful, gentle and kind; but one thing he can rarely have, and that is a firm grasp of the realities about him; another thing he can never by any possibility have, and that is an attitude of persistent and unflinching resolve. Yet these are exactly the qualities which the Four Million will have to develop before they can escape from their slavery in Bagdad-of-the-Traction-Trust. CHAPTER CVIII SUPERMANHOOD We come now to the first of the writers of our time who was born of the working class, and carried his working-class consciousness into his literary career. He was the true king of our story tellers, the brightest star that flashed upon our skies. He brought us the greatest endowment both of genius and of brain, and the story of what America did to him is a painful one. Jack London was born in San Francisco, in 1876, which made him two years my senior. We took to exchanging our first books, and a controversy started between us, which lasted the rest of his life; the last letter I received from him was an invitation to come up to the ranch and continue it. “You and I ought to have some ‘straight from the shoulder’ talk with each other. It is coming to you, it may be coming to me. It may illuminate one or the other or both of us.” I answered that I was finishing a job of writing; but that as soon as the job was done I would come and “stand the gaff.” And then I read that he was dead!