2D EOE 7G. AC RD ekeN 
MAGAZINE 
Jury, 1916 
a? 
O. HENRY 
EAR after year the sale of Sydney 
Porter’s (O. Henry’s) books grows. Not 
far from 125,000 sets have now been 
sold, and all summer the presses will be busy 
preparing stock for the fall and winter. There 
are always interesting things floating about 
the shop in connection with the name of ‘O. 
Henry”’: for instance, here is a note from Pro- 
fessor Stephen Leacock, of McGill University: 
I am greatly obliged for your letter about my essay 
on O. Henry, and very glad to hear about the English 
edition. I was first led to O. Henry (two years ago) by 
noticing that reviewers of my books when they wanted 
to pay me a compliment said, “There is here at times 
something that suggests O. Henry’; and when they 
wanted to do the reverse they said, ‘Compare this 
idiotic drivel with such work as that of O. Henry.” 
I wondered who O. Henry was, so one day I went into 
a store here and asked if they had a book by O. Henry. 
They had one (“‘Strictly Business’’). I took it home 
and read as far as the end of “A Municipal Report,” 
then I telephoned to the store and said, ‘‘Send to New 
York and get me every last word that O. Henry wrote.” 
I imagine that a lot of people have felt that way about 
his books. 
In a new volume of essays by Professor 
Leacock, entitled “Essays and Literary Stud- 
ies,” there is a most delightful one on the books 
of O. Henry which was written chiefly to tell 
English readers that they would do well to 
try to understand the popularity of the author 
of “The Four Million.” 
There is a real biography of Sydney Porter 
in the making, by Professor C. Alphonso 
Smith, of the University of Virginia, which 
will be ready, we confidently expect, this fall, 
and a volume of his letters will be published 
some time in the autumn. 
A CURIOSITY FROM THE TRENCHES 
Mr. E. K. Hoak, the manager of our Pacific 
Coast office in Los Angeles, sends us this note, 
which may interest our readers: 
Letters are laid upon my desk every month addressed 
to the publications represented by this office from al- 
most every country in the world regarding investments, 
travel, communities, lands, etc., on the Pacific Coast 
and Southwest Country. 
Mr. R. B. Bishop, Vice President of the Reynolds 
Mortgage Company of Fort Worth, Texas, has for- 
warded to me a clipping from the World’s Work of an 
advertisement of the Reynolds Mortgage Company, 
which was taken from a dead Turk’s pocket at the 
Dardanelles by Corporal S. Renfro, R.A. M.C., a 
-THE- TALK: OF- THE - OFFICE: 
“To business that we love we rise betime 
And go to ’t with delight.” —Antony and Cleopatra 
Texas boy serving under British colors, who is now 
in a hospital at Netley, England, and forwarded by 
him to Mr. Bishop. In his letter, Renfro says: 
“T don’t happen to have any money to invest, but 
you will probably be interested in this bit of paper, 
with your advertisement, when I tell you where I 
found it. 
“Tt was one of the most peculiar coincidences I 
think I’ve ever had happen to me. I found the page, 
torn from some American magazine evidently, in a 
dead Turk’s pocket at the Dardanelles. Where the 
Turk got it from I don’t know, unless he took it off 
one of our chaps, after he had been knocked off. The 
rest of the page was covered with blood, so I tore it off. 
“T am a Greenville boy, and your advertisement 
brought home right up close to me, although I was in 
that God-forsaken hole, dodging shrapnel and snipers. 
I was wounded in the fight at Suvia Bay, on August 7th. 
It was hell there, and while I was lying in a dugout 
at the field hospital a Jack Johnson landed on top of 
the dugout and buried me. 
“T came back to England with a set of shattered 
nerves and a Turkish bullet in my leg, but kept the piece 
of paper, and I would have sent it before, but have been 
unable to write on account of my nerves. However, 
I am much better, and I hope to get my own back on 
the Turks before this little dispute is settled, but I 
think I’ve accounted for a few of them. 
“T’ve a cousin, Elmer Renfro, cashier of the Fort 
Worth National Bank. If you happen to know him, 
tell him-I’ve learned to use the .44 Colts I had the last 
time he saw me. 
“T trust you will excuse me taking this liberty, but 
the idea of sending this to you appealed to me so 
strongly I couldn’t resist it; also, if you have any doubts 
regarding the circulation of this magazine, whatever 
it is, this letter will remove those doubts, because it 
evidently took some circulating to circulate it into that 
Turk’s pocket.” 
With this letter and clipping, Mr. Bishop writes: 
“How is this for advertising? I have the original 
framed and in a conspicuous place on my desk. This 
was clipped from World’s Work.” 
ADVICE ABOUT FINANCE 
The story related above impresses us again 
with the interest shown in what we call 
The Readers’ Service. This department was 
started about ten years ago in a small way, and 
was especially aimed to guard our readers as 
much as possible from get-rich-quick concerns, 
which were at that time (and are even now, 
but to a much less degree) taking money out 
of the pockets of widows, orphans and the in- 
experienced generally. 
At first a very large number of letters came 
to us asking advice upon investing often large 
sums in the veriest ‘cats and dogs” and the 
most highly speculative stocks. These letters 
were easy to reply to, because they repre- 
sented the activities of a gang of crooks which 
at that time flooded the United States mails 
with its circulars. Later the Post Office 
Department attacked the worst of this class. 
Some went to jail, and many were frightened 
out of the business. But during all these 
years letters from people who have money to 
invest have kept coming in increasing quanti- 
ties, the intelligence of the would-be buyers 
has constantly improved, and the queries have 
represented many, many, millions of dollars. 
Our readers in the World’s Work have seen 
the hundreds of questions and answers printed 
in the magazine itself, and know to what pains 
we go to give reliable information. We have 
on the staff of the magazine a man who makes 
this his life work, and the work is done as 
conscientiously as he knows how to, do it. 
No letter ever leaves our hands, no information 
or name is ever given to a broker or bondseller, 
and we hope and believe that we have served 
our readers well. 
In this Service Department there are many 
other branches of questions and answers, and 
every kind of thing is asked about—gardening, 
bulbs and plants, destructive insects, soils 
and farm animals.. The letters come in hun- 
dreds, and sometimes we are tempted to say 
that if our subscribers would buy and read the 
Garden and Farm Almanac for 1916, which 
costs a quarter, a good many of these service 
letters need never be written. 
However, they are all welcome, and the 
force of the Service Department is always at 
your command. 
“THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS 
AMERICA” 
by the Williamsons, is published, and is selling 
as it well deserves to do. One fifty at all 
bookstores. 
“THEY SHALL NOT PASS” 
Mr. Frank Simonds,who first attractedatten- 
tion by his articles on the War in the New York 
Evening Sun and afterward in the New York 
Tribune, has writtena little book with the above 
title, and it refers, of course, to Verdun. Itisa 
book which is illuminating and deserves a 
place beside Kipling’s latest two little books, 
“The Fringes of the Fleet,” and ‘France at 
War.” Ask your bookseller about them. 
