The stories that make up the present volume have for forty years remained unnoticed in the files of the _Houston Post_. The general belief that O. Henry was simply a columnist on the Post is probably the reason for their being overlooked. The idea that his column appeared regularly has, furthermore, tended to dismiss the question of what sort of work he really did on the paper. When I examined the files of the Post, I was surprised to find that the column "Some Postscripts" was often missing. In February, 1896, it came out only four times, in April seven, in June three. In spite of this irregularity Will Porter's salary had gradually been raised from $15 to $25 a week. Here is a situation which has only one logical explanation. O. Henry must have done other work in order to draw this steadily increasing weekly salary. A close examination of the Houston Post files from October 19, 1895, to June 22, 1896, reveals a mass of material, heretofore unidentified, as unmistakably the work of Will Porter. What first attracts the eye is the abundance of unsigned comic drawings and clever cartoons. The style of these drawings is unquestionably O. Henry's. We know from various sources that he was constantly drawing pictures, and we have a positive statement from Colonel R. M. Johnston, under whom Will Porter worked on the Houston Post, that his ability to draw cartoons was called into requisition soon after he joined the staff of the Post. Some of the best of these cartoons depict the political situation of the time. Others are entirely independent of politics and point to the development of the present-day comic strips in all newspapers. Sometimes they portray character traits and are accompanied by rhymed quips. At other times they are used to illustrate lengthy stories. These stories, of course, were composed by Will Porter, and from them the selections for this volume have been made. The word-usage, sentence-structure, mythological allusion, plot-manipulation, character types, and central ideas that characterize O. Henry's short stories generally, are also plainly recognizable in these selections from the _Houston Post_. For example, "A Tragedy" not only turns on a pun, as O. Henry's stories often do, but is based upon the story of The Arabian Nights, which later colored O. Henry's whole conception of New York City, Little-Old-Bagdad-on- the-Subway. The central idea of "An Odd Character," the story of a tramp who claims to be 241 years old, appeared later in "The Enchanted Kiss" and "Door of Unrest."