| scribers for one year and will |
| have returned to him |
| on the spot |
| FIFTY CENTS IN CASH |
| |
+------------------------------------------------+
The editor's own statement of his aims




INTRODUCTION


This the twelfth and final volume of O. Henry's work gets its title from
an early newspaper venture of which he was the head and front. On April
28, 1894, there appeared in Austin, Texas, volume 1, number 3, of The
Rolling Stone, with a circulation greatly in excess of that of the only
two numbers that had gone before. Apparently the business office was
encouraged. The first two issues of one thousand copies each had been
bought up. Of the third an edition of six thousand was published and
distributed FREE, so that the business men of Austin, Texas, might know
what a good medium was at hand for their advertising. The editor and
proprietor and illustrator of _The Rolling Stone_ was Will Porter,
incidentally Paying and Receiving Teller in Major Brackenridge's bank.

Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the paper was "The Plunkville
Patriot," a page each week--or at least with the regularity of the
somewhat uncertain paper itself--purporting to be reprinted from a
contemporary journal. The editor of the Plunkville _Patriot_ was Colonel