CHAPTER THREE

Although neither Joe Lincoln nor Irving S. Cobb will probably be considered a major figure of American literature, the audience of each was larger and more devoted than the followers of the most adroit of our craftsmen. There was a pronounced difference between them and one outstanding similarity. Lincoln had Cape Cod in his heart, soul and mind. He portrayed the sandy, salty stretches and their inhabitants far more appealingly than anyone else who has written about that section. He did but one thing, but he did it in a way which endeared him to millions and especially those who know “The Narrow Land” on the other side of the Cape Cod Canal.

Cobb did for rugged Kentucky what Lincoln accomplished for the flat Southeastern Massachusetts peninsula. The tobacco-chewing Judge Priest of the Cobb detective stories is just as redolent of the border-state mountains as the Lincoln figures are of the Cape. But Cobb was also a journalist, a humorist, a wit, an essayist, a political writer, a war correspondent, a sophisticated cosmopolite. Lincoln was satisfied to cultivate his own country intensively. Cobb liked to plow all over the world. He is said to have remarked that he had traveled in Pullman cars so often that he couldn’t sleep at home without a cinder in his eye.

Neither Lincoln nor Cobb looked abroad for material. Each was a red hot American and found no end of stuff under their noses here at home. They visualized their own surroundings just as vividly as Herman Melville told about his whaling days. Lincoln was probably the favorite of women readers than of the men. Cobb, fat, lusty, go-as-you-please, slopping over with zest at being alive, and fond of associating with all kinds of folks, hit the men pretty hard; but his vivid imagination and remarkable facility with words led him to the painting of canvases more lurid and perhaps true than those of Lincoln. As each of them had qualities which none of their contemporaries possessed in such richness their passing left vacancies in the world of American letters which will be hard to replace.

Joe Lincoln was at the peak of his career during an era in American letters when such colorful names as O. Henry, Joyce Kilmer, Tarkington and a host of other beloved American writers were also fellow contributors to such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Ainslee’s Magazine, and many other well known publications. During his winters in New York Lincoln was fortunate enough to have for his friends other writers like O. Henry, whose real name was Sidney Porter. Along with magazine editors, and other writers in New York Lincoln often lingered over the luncheon table talking of men, events, and books.

In a newspaper interview in 1926 Lincoln recalled that, “Porter (O. Henry) was very popular with the crowd and in his very modest, unostentatious way said many things which none of us could forget. He loved the city and could hardly ever be persuaded to leave New York. It was also hard to get him out anywhere--he shunned crowds. Then we thought it was due a very peculiar sensitiveness. Later we realized that although his love for the city was genuine, he was afraid someone would recognize him and connect him with his unhappy past.

“Several times I asked him home to dinner, but he would not come. Finally, I met him on the street one day and he told me he was coming out that night.

“‘Well, it’s about time,’ I said. ‘I’ve asked you enough.’

“‘But there’s just one thing I want to know first,’ he said. ‘have you got a butler at your house?’”

“‘No,’ I answered, ‘nothing like that.’

“‘Then I’ll come,’ he said. He did and we spent a delightful evening.

“Once a friend of his who had a big estate on Long Island got him to come out for the week end. He had had many arguments with Porter about the superiority of the country, and was anxious to show him the many advantages of living out of town. He took him proudly around his place, showed him the stables, etc., and finally wound up on the top of a high hill where there was an excellent view. Porter followed him around dutifully but saying little. After his friend had finished pointing out the beauties of the scenery, he talked of the good train service, and told him that one could obtain anything there which could be found in the city.

“‘Anything you want,’ he wound up, ‘you can get here.’

“Porter rose to his feet and picked up his hat. ‘Can you get a ticket to New York?’ he asked.”

Once Lincoln was trying to persuade Porter to do something or other over the week end, and Porter protested that he was behind in his work. At the time he was doing a series of Sunday stories in the NEW YORK WORLD, stories that since have become famous and can be found in thousands of libraries in his collected works.

While they were talking the telephone rang and the Sunday editor of THE WORLD wanted to know when O. Henry was going to get his story in--it was about Christmas time and a story dealing with Christmas was due for the following Sunday. Porter had not even started it.

“Well, tell me what it is about,” said the editor, “so I can get the artist busy with the illustration.”

O. Henry thought a minute and told the editor to have the artist draw a picture of a girl in the living room of a cheap flat leaning against a table, and a young man looking down at her.

“What is the story about?” asked Lincoln when O. Henry had finished his instructions.

Porter replied that he had no more idea than Lincoln did, but he got busy and dashed off a story in time for the paper. The story was “The Gifts of the Magi,” the tale of the young wife who sold her hair to buy her husband a fob for his watch, while he unknown to her pawned his watch to buy her a comb for her beautiful hair.

Then there was the story of the halberdier, so well known to lovers of O. Henry plots and people. “I had two endings to that story,” Porter told Lincoln. “At first I thought I would have the man get mad at the whole game and smash the showcase with his halberd, but then I thought it would be better to have the girl come in and have a romantic ending on the spot.”

“Porter hated to mix at big affairs,” Lincoln reminisced, “though he loved the city and crowds of people. Once there was an excursion of newspaper men and illustrators up the Hudson to Albany, and to the great surprise of us all, Porter came along. There were four or five hundred of us, and finally it got on his nerves, and he disappeared. He left the boat at Poughkeepsie and went back.

“That man loved mankind and saw only the best in people. Those qualities have been an inspiration to all of us who knew him. There are writers today who apparently see only the evil and cynical things of life--and call their work realism. We laugh at Pollyanna, but she is no more unnatural than some of the cynical specimens we find in present day novels,” Lincoln continued.

“Someone with whom I was talking recently summed it up this way: you walk along a country road. There is mud in the middle, and spring flowers growing by the roadside. Both are there, and the man who sees the mud and not the flowers is not in the true sense of the word a realist. A smile is just as real as a tear.”