O. Henry Biography Page: 77

                                
BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS
vividly the incidents and characters already projected
into the story, but a constructive imagination that
could interpret and fuse them. Need I say that the
creator of "The Four Million" found his keenest de-
light in this exercise or that his contributions were
those most eagerly awaited by teacher and pupil?
In the long summer evenings after school Miss
Lina's boys would gather on the old Edgeworth grounds
for a kind of recreation which the contracted Porter
premises did not permit. In an English magazine O.
Henry had read two serial stories called "Jack Hark-
away" and "Dick Lightheart."     These gave him the
suggestion for two clubs or societies into which the
more congenial of Miss Lina's pupils were forthwith
divided. One was the Brickbats, the other the Union
Jacks. The Union Jacks, to which O. Henry belonged,
had selected for their armory one of the few minor
buildings on the Edgeworth campus which had been
spared by the fire. Here they had stored a rich col-
lection of wooden battleaxes, shields, spears, helmets,
cavalry sabres, and all other things Jane Porterish,
and here they held nightly conclave. The planning
of raids which never took place, the discussion of the
relative values of medieval weapons of which they had
read, the facile citation of well-known non-existent
authorities on attack and counter-attack, the bestowal
of knightly titles on themselves and of less knightly
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