INTRODUCTION
On April 18, 1918, the Society of Arts and Sciences of New York City paid tribute to the memory of William Sydney Porter at a dinner in honour of his genius. In the ball-room of the Hotel McAlpin there gathered, at the speakers’ table, a score of writers, editors and publishers who had been associated with O. Henry during the time he lived in Manhattan; in the audience, many others who had known him, and hundreds yet who loved his short stories.
Enthusiasm, both immediate and lasting, indicated to the Managing Director of the Society, Mr. John F. Tucker, that he might progress hopefully toward an ideal he had, for some time, envisioned. The goal lay in the establishing of a memorial to the author who had transmuted realistic New York into romantic Bagdad-by-the-Subway.
When, therefore, in December, 1918, Mr. Tucker called a committee for the purpose of considering such a memorial, he met a glad response. The first question, “What form shall the monument assume?” drew tentative suggestions of a needle in Gramercy Square, or a tablet affixed to the corner of O. Henry’s home in West Twenty-sixth Street. But things of iron and stone, cold and dead, would incongruously commemorate the dynamic power that moved the hearts of living men and women, “the master pharmacist of joy and pain,” who dispensed “sadness tinctured with a smile and laughter that dissolves in tears.”
In short, then, it was decided to offer a minimum prize of $250 for the best short story published in 1919, and the following Committee of Award was appointed:
Blanche Cotton Williams, Ph.D.
Edward J. Wheeler, Litt.D.
Ethel Watts Mumford
Robert Wilson Neal, M.A.
Merle St. Croix Wright, D.D.
vii
