So much for the title. It is a real O. Henry title. Contents of this last volume are drawn not only from letters, old newspaper files, and _The Rolling Stone_, but from magazines and unpublished manuscripts. Of the short stories, several were written at the very height of his powers and popularity and were lost, inexplicably, but lost. Of the poems, there are a few whose authorship might have been in doubt if the compiler of this collection had not secured external evidence that made them certainly the work of O. Henry. Without this very strong evidence, they might have been rejected because they were not entirely the kind of poems the readers of O. Henry would expect from him. Most of them however, were found in his own indubitable manuscript or over his own signature. There is extant a mass of O. Henry correspondence that has not been included in this collection. During the better part of a decade in New York City he wrote constantly to editors, and in many instances intimately. This is very important material, and permission has been secured to use nearly all of it in a biographical volume that will be issued within the next two or three years. The letters in this volume have been chosen as an "exihibit," as early specimens of his writing and for their particularly characteristic turns of thought and phrase. The collection is not "complete" in any historical sense. 1912. H.P.S. This record of births and deaths is copied from the Porter Family Bible, just lately discovered. BIRTHS ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER Son of SIDNEY AND RUTH C. PORTER Was born August 22, 1825 MONDAY EVENING, May 29, 1858 Still-born Son of A. S. AND M. V. PORTER MONDAY, August 6, 1860, 9 o'clock P.M. SHIRLEY WORTH Son of A. S. AND M. V. PORTER THURSDAY, September 11, 1862, 9 o'clock P.M. WILLIAM SIDNEY [1] Son of A. S. AND M. V. PORTER SUNDAY, March 26, 1865, at 8 o'clock A. M. DAVID WEIR Son of A. S. AND M. V. PORTER MARY JANE VIRGINIA SWAIM [2] Daughter of WILLIAM AND ABIAH SWAIM Was born February 12, 1833 DEATHS MARY VIRGINIA PORTER TUESDAY EVENING, September 26, 1865 At 7:30 o'clock ATHOL ESTES PORTER SUNDAY EVENING, July 25,1897 At 6 o'clock ALGERNON SIDNEY PORTER SUNDAY MORNING, September 30, 1888 At 20 minutes of 2 o'clock [Footnote 1: O. Henry] [Footnote 2: Mother of O. Henry] [Illustration: O. Henry at the age of two] THE DREAM [This was the last work of O. Henry. The _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ had ordered it from him and, after his death, the unfinished manuscript was found in his room, on his dusty desk. The story as it here appears was published in the _Cosmopolitan_ for September, 1910.] Murray dreamed a dream.