Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S. C.

Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth, heart to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune for his last coin.

"I was Dr. Waugh-hoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried only one best bet just then, and that was Resurrection Bitters. It was made of life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by Ta-qua-la, the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while gathering truck to garnish a platter of boiled dog for the annual corn dance.

Business hadn't been good at the last town, so I only had five dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for a half gross of eight ounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and ingredients in my valise, left over from the last town. Life began to look rosy again after I got in my hotel room with the water running from the tap, and the Resurrection Bitters lining up on the table by the dozen.

"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of cinchona and a dime's worth of aniline in that half-gross of bitters. I've gone through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for ‘em again.

"I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on Main Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a compound hypothetical pneumo-cardiac anti-scorbutic tonic was just what I diagnosed the crowd as needing. The bitters started off like sweet breads-on-toast at a vegetarian dinner. I had sold two dozen at fifty cents apiece when I felt somebody pull my coat tail. I knew what that meant; so I climbed down and sneaked a five-dollar bill into the hand of a man with a German silver star on his lapel.

" 'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.'

" 'Have you got a city license,' he asked, 'to sell this illegitimate essence of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?'

" 'I have not,' says I. 'I didn't know you had a city. If I can find it tomorrow I'll take one out if it's necessary.'

" 'I'll have to close you up till you do,' says the constable.

"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the landlord about it.

"'Oh, you won't stand no show in Fisher Hill,' says he. 'Dr. Hoskins, the only doctor here, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they won't allow no fake doctors to practice in town.'

"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've got a State peddler's license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.'                            

"I went to the Mayor's office the next moning and they told me he hadn't showed up yet. They didn't know when he'd be down. So Doc Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpson -weed regalia, and we waits.

"By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to me and asks the time.                                                                    

" 'Half-past ten' says I, 'and you are Andy Tucker. I've seen you work. Wasn't it you that put up the Great Cupid Combination package on the Southern States? Let's see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement ring, a wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and Dorothy Vernon—all for fifty cents.'

"Andy was pleased to hear that I membered him. He was a good street man; and he was more than that—he respected his profession, and he was satisfied with 300 per cent profit. He had plenty of offers to go into the illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never to be tempted off of the straight path.  

"I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out together. I told him about the situation on Fisher Hill and how finances was low on account of the local mixture of politics and jalap. Andy had just got in on the train that morning. He was pretty low himself, and was going to canvass the town for a few dollars to build a new battleship by popular subscription at Eureka Springs. So we went out and sat on the porch and talked it over.

"The next morning at eleven o'clock when I was sitting there alone, an Uncle Tom shuffles into the hotel and asked for the doctor to come and see Judge Banks, who, it seems, was the mayor and a mighty sick man.

" 'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the doctor?'

" 'Boss,' says he. 'Doe Hoskin am done gone twenty miles in the country to see some sick persons. He's de only doctor in de town, and Massa Banks am powerful bad off. He sent me to ax you to please, Suh, come.'

'As man to man,' says I, 'I'll go and look him over.' So I put a bottle of Resurrection Bitters in my pocket and goes up on the hill to the mayor's mansion, the finest house in town, with a mansard roof and two cast-iron dogs on the lawn.

"This Mayor Banks was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. He was making internal noises that would have had everybody in San Francisco hiking for the parks. A young man was standing by the bed holding a cup of water.

" 'Doc,' says the Mayor. 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you do nothing for me?'

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says 1, 'I'm not a regular preordained disciple of S. Q. Lapins, I never took a course in a medical college,' says I. 'I've just come as a fellow man to see if I could be of any assistance.'

"'I'm deeply obliged,' says he. 'Doc Waugh-hoo, this is my nephew, Mr. Biddle. He has tried to alleviate my distress, but without success. Oh, Lordy! Ow-ow-ow!!' he sings out.

"I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the mayor's pulse. 'Let me see your liver— your tongue, I mean,' says I. Then I turns up the lids of his eyes and looks close at the pupils of 'em.

'How long have you been sick?' I asked.

"'I was taken down—ow-ouch—last night,' says the Mayor. 'Gimme something for it, Doc, won't you?'

" 'Mr. Fiddle,' says I, 'raise the window shade a bit, will you?'

" 'Biddle,' says the young man. 'Do you feel like you could eat some ham and eggs, Uncle James?'

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade and listening, 'you've got a bad attack of super-inflammation of the right clavicle of the harpsichord!'

" 'Good Lord!' says he, with a groan. 'Can't you rub something on it, or set it or anything?'

"I picks up my hat and starts for the door.

" 'You ain't going, Doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You ain't going away and leave me to die with this—superfluity of the clapboards, are you?'

" 'Common humanity, Dr. Whoa-ha,' says Mr. Biddle, 'ought to prevent your deserting a fellow-human in distress.'

" 'Dr. Waugh-hoo, when you get through plowing,' says I. And then I walks back to the bed and throws back my long hair.

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'there is only one hope for you. Drugs will do you no good. But there is another power higher yet, although drugs are high enough,' says I.

" 'And what is that?' says he.

" 'Scientific demonstrations,' says I. 'The triumph of mind over sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in arrears. Demonstrate.'

" 'What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?' says the Mayor. 'You ain't a Socialist, are you?'

"'I am speaking,' says 1, 'of the great doctrine of psychic financiering—of the enlightened school of long-distance, subconscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitis—of that wonderful in-door sport known as personal magnetism.'

" 'Can you work it, Doc?' asks the Mayor.

" 'I'm one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner Pulpit,' says I. 'The lame talk and the blind rubber whenever I make a pass at 'em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous control. It was only through me at the recent seances at Ann Arbor that the last president of the Vinegar Bitters Company I could revisit the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling medicine on the streets,' says I, 'to the poor. I don't practice personal magnetism on them. I do not drag it in the dust,' says 1, 'because they haven't got the dust.'

" 'Will you treat my case?' asks the Mayor.

" 'Listen,' says 1. 'I've had a good deal of trouble with medical societies everywhere I've been. I don't practice medicine. But, to save your life, I'll give you the psychic treatment if you'll agree as mayor not to push the license question.'"

"'Of course I will,' says he. 'And now get to work, Doc, for them pains are coming on again.'

" 'My fee will be $250.00, cure guaranteed in two treatments,' says I.

" 'All right,' says the Mayor. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's worth that much.'

"I sat down by the bed and looked him straight in the eye.

" 'Now,' says I, 'get your mind off the disease. You ain't sick. You haven't got a heart or a clavicle or a funny bone or brains or anything. You haven't got any pain. Declare error. Now you feel the pain that you didn't have leaving, don't you?'

" 'I do feel some little better, Doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I don't. Now state a few lines about my not having this swelling in my left side, and I think I could be propped up and have some sausage and buckwheat cakes.'

"I made a few passes with my hands.

" 'Now,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the perihelion has subsided. You're getting sleepy. You can't hold your eyes open any longer. For the present the disease is checked. Now, you are asleep.'

"The Mayor shut his eyes slowly and began to snore.

"'You observe, Mr. Tiddle,' says 1, 'the wonder of modern science.'

" 'Biddle,' says he. 'When will you give uncle the rest of the treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'

" 'Waugh-hoo,'says I. 'I'll come back at eleven to-morrow. When he wakes up give him eight drops of turpentine and three pounds of steak. Good morning.'

"The next morning I went back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle this morning;'

‘He seems much better,' says the young man.

"The Mayor's color and pulse was fine. I gave him another treatment, and he said the last of the pain left him

" 'Now,' says I, 'you'd better stay in bed for a day or two, and you'll be all right. It's a good thing I happened to be in Fisher Hill, Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'for all the remedies in the cornucopia that the regular schools of medicine use couldn't have saved you. And now that error has flew and pain proved a perjurer, let's allude to a cheerfuller subject—say the fee of $250. No checks, please, I hate to write name on the back of a check almost as bad as I do on the front.'

" 'I've got the cash here,' says the Mayor, pulling a pocket book from under his pillow.

"He counts out five fifty-dollar notes and holds 'em in his hand.

" 'Bring the receipt,' he says to Biddle.

"I signed the receipt and the Mayor handed me the money. I put it in my inside pocket careful.

'Now do your duty, officer,' says the Mayor, grinning much unlike a sick man.

"Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm.

'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for practicing medicine without authority under the State law.'

" 'Who are you?' I asks.

" 'I'll tell you who he is,' says the Mayor, sitting up in bed. 'He's a detective employed by the State Medical Society. He's been following you over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this scheme to catch you. I guess you won't do any more doctoring around these parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had, Doc?' the Mayor laughs, 'compound—well it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess, anyway.'

" 'A detective,' says I

'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll have to turn you over to the sheriff.'

" 'Let's see you do it,' says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat and half throws him out the window, but he pulls a gun and sticks it under my chin, and I stand still. Then he puts handcuffs on me, and takes the money out of my pocket.

"’I witness," says he, 'that they're the same bills that you and I marked, Judge Banks. I'll turn them over to the sheriff when we get to his office, and he'll send you a receipt. They'll have to be used as evidence in the case.'

"'All right, Mr. Biddle,' says the Mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo,' he goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?'

"'Come on, officer,' says I, dignified. 'I may as well make the best of it.' And then I turns to old Banks and rattles my chains.

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'the time will come soon when you'll believe that personal magnetism is a success. And you'll be sure that it succeeded in this case, too.'

"And I guess it did.

"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet somebody now, Andy. I reckon you better take 'em off, and --------' Hey? Why, of course it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that's how we got the capital to go into business together." :

 -------- E N D --------

The most serious charge leveled at O.Henry, especially by his latter-day critics and evaluators, is the lack of creative consistency in his writings. A favorite and oft-repeated descriptive phrase, one way or another, complains of the ‘uneven’ craftsmanship between both genre’s and individual stories. And, while the criticism is obviously justified, the discerning reader will quickly come to understand that it could hardly be otherwise.

It should never be forgotten that Bill Porter’s primary occupation was that of a newspaper reporter. In turn, newspaper reporters are not the diamond-cutters of linguistic care and caution.  They don't have time, but they do the best they can between a six o'clock "bulldog" edition and a seven-thirty "extra".

Throughout much of his brief professional life, his essential work was fulfilling the rigorous demands of a ‘General Assignment’ reporter. For people with even the most limited appreciation for the demands of big-city news reporting, it will not be necessary to underscore the fact that this is a full-time occupation. Worse, it is characterized by irregular hours, emergencies, unscheduled interruptions, breaking stories that must be ‘covered’ immediately, during which time everything else must wait; at times seemingly including the functions of life itself.

In view of this fact, Bill Porter’s short-stories were largely extra-curricular; ‘moonlighting’ at the end of long and, we may safely assume, arduously demanding days (or nights) chasing metropolitan news assignments. Needless to say, this is not an arrangement that is likely to produce the most consistently careful narrative structuring and optimally, painstakingly, polished prose.

Writers of books, essays, fiction, poetry and other presumably ‘scholarly’ materials, almost invariably enjoy a luxury that was hardly ever available to Bill Porter. That crucial element in the creative process was - and is - time.

Time to plan the story-line, refine the plot, define the characters, fine-tune narration, setting and - especially - arrange the ultimate denouement, which in the case of Porter, has long been labeled his trade-mark ‘surprise endings’.

Writing a short-story, arguably the most difficult and technically complex assignment in letters, is not to be compared with turning out a matter-of-fact narrative account of a hotel fire, a natural disaster, or a bank robbery. Each news happening offers its own chain of events, leaving it up to the reporter to catch hold of this story ‘string’ and set forth the sequence of events for basic edification of the reader, with a minimum of gratuitous editorial embellishment.

As Sergeant Friday regularly put it, "Just the facts, Ma’am!"

On the other hand, a work of fiction is pure invention. Plot, physical setting, characters, story-line progression, conflicts ebbing and flowing, confrontations and crisis resolution, leading to what some literary analysts prefer calling the ‘climax’, must all be created in the writer’s mind. Then meticulously structured and sequentially arranged within the lean narrative framework. And finally put down on paper.

Moreover, and this is where the ‘rub’ comes, as anyone who has tried his hand at the short-story format already knows. A short story in the O.Henry genre’ must meet the Aristotlean requirements of a ‘beginning, a middle and an end’ within the space of some three- to four-thousand words. Such a space stricture leaves little latitude for either lazy narrative inexactitudes or indulgently excessive verbosity.

Accomplishing this kind of literary trick is somewhat comparable to engraving the Lord’s Prayer on the head of the proverbial pin.

That some of O.Henry’s output failed to measure up to the full expectations of nit-picking literary critics who are clearly  inexperienced in, and unmindful of the demanding professional requirements he had to live with day after day, should come as no surprise to anyone. Rather, the most remarkable fact of O.Henry’s story writing is that, even under the cudgels of daily deadlines and too few hours in those days, so much of his output is so very, very good!

Once Porter’s publishers at the "World" newspaper learned that his stories were attracting a large and loyal claque of readers, it was a short step to making a story from the agile mind of "The Caliph of Baghdad by the Subway" a regular feature. Easier said than done! To bring this feat off, Bill Porter still had to work against the same unyielding dead-lines that proscribed the time limitations of the ‘beat’ reporters who were covering fires, political news and high-society’s endless succession of debuts, weddings, and garden parties.

His demonstrated ability to sustain his prodigious level of creativity, professional quality, and semantic skill under such pressures has to have taken almost superhuman efforts during his ‘spurts’ of protean creativity.

The unadorned numbers speak for themselves: Over a period of some eight years, by hook or by crook, 282 of the approximately 300 lifetime total O.Henry stories, appeared in print. Reduced to plain arithmetic averages, this would indicate a new story about every ten days.  Think about that!

Any writer I know would cringe at such a prospect. But Porter didn’t "get up each morning and bite the nail", as Ernest Hemingway so eloquently put it. Bill Porter spent periods working like a man possessed, interspersed by what he called ‘dry spells’, during which he wrote little or nothing.

In retrospect, even the least charitable among us must credit this constant stress and pressure for an endless stream of stories with playing an important role in William Sydney Porter’s tragic and untimely death. Most self-anointed authorities on the O.Henry topic charge his early death to a simplistic combination of alcoholism and pneumonia.

Without doubt those notorious executioners played leading roles in his demise. However, this observer will make bold to add ‘overwork’ to the fatal mix - and for evidence, allow the Bill lPorter production numbers to stand alone in underpinning the contention.

The only other novelist who (in this writer’s opinion) was forced to carry a somewhat comparable production burden, was Honore de Balzac. Like O.Henry, Balzac’s articles, some of which later became elements in his much celebrated "Human Comedy" became an almost unparalleled circulation "bait" in French newspapers.

The very popularity of Balzac’s output 'in the Paris streets',  like O.Henry’s short-stories, that captivated New York, ultimately played a large role in breaking Balzac’s health and then killing him. Without doubt, it was the demands of meeting impossibly   overwhelming work-loads that sent Balzac to an early grave at age 51, and dropped a 30-dash to end the life of William Sydney Porter, at a relatively youthful 48.

It’s a sad reality that the insatiable appetites for new materials on the part of newspapers, television, radio, magazines and book publishers, often foreclose the opportunity to write quality work, in favor of turning out mere quantity.

In a milieu in which the ‘deadline’ rules supreme, and the ‘closing date’ is immutable, the writing art - perforce - must conform to the unyielding   commercial timetable.

-- And the world of Belles Lettres suffers accordingly.

Lorenzo Dee Belveal