O. Henry - William Sidney Porter #254867

Grammar, to 0. Henry, says an English critic,1 was only one way of saying a thing. He had others equally eflicient when he wanted, for he was a master, and not a servant, of words. For two years in Texas his favourite companion was a dictionary — which he studied as lovingly as some men study poetry. 0. Henry was a conformist and a non-conformist but conformity and non-conformity were governed by the same law, the law of effect. Few writers knew words better than he or felt more instinctively their limitations as well as their possibilities. Words had more than meaning to 0. Henry: they had flavor, a flavor unknown to Noah Webster, but recognized by every poet and prose writer who has enriched the resources of our speech. To most writers the dictionary says You must, to 0. Henry it said You may, and the freedom thus imparted has contributed no little of the sparkle and humor and suggestiveness of O. Henry's vocabulary.